by pv vivekanand
AFTER failing to establish a link between Saddam
Hussein and Osama Bin Laden -- and by extension to
prove an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks in the US
-- President George W. Bush is citing charges that
Baghdad is continuing to develop weapons of mass
destruction as his reason to launch military action
aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein.
But how authentic is the charge?
On the face of it, the international community is
being told to accept that Iraq has eluded the most
advanced satellite surveillance -- with equipment that
could arguably trace the contours of a grain of wheat
on the ground -- and the strictest-ever
air-sea-land-blockade backed by intense interceptions
and inspection of anything and everything crossing its
border -- and managed to resume its clandestine
weapons programme.
The assertion is based on an argument that the
departure of UN inspectors who were withdrawn by
Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- often wrongly
described by the US as their expulsion by Iraq -- in
late 1998 allowed Baghdad to pick where it had left
off following the destruction of most of its weapons
of mass destruction under the UN verification and
destruction programme.
A review of the UN programme would raise serious
questions about the US charge against Baghdad.
It was known that Baghdad and the UN mission never got
on well and there were always skirmishes, both
diplomatic and otherwise.
Iraq and the UN inspection teams have had many
standoffs, some of them resulting from the personal
postures adopted by inspectors and others because the
Iraqis tried to prevent vital papers on their
country's weapons programme as well as intelligence
documents unrelated to arms inspections being removed
by the UN officials.
"We hated each other's guts," as a former member of
the UN team put it.
It had become clear that Iraq had a much larger weapon
programme than was known to the international
community when the UN inspectors launched their
mission in 1991 as the United Nations Special
Commission (UNSCOM).
It took several years before UNSCOM managed to unravel
the programme, with the Iraqis revealing information
in bits and pieces and only when they were cornered
with solid evidence, and it became a cat-and-mouse
game.
It was not until late 1995 that the UN managed to get
a clear picture of Iraq's military programmes and that
came from Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel,
who "defected" to Jordan in August of that year.
Kamel, who served as Iraq's defence minister and head
of the country's military industry commission, was
believed to have been debriefed not only by the then
UNSCOM chairman, Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, but also by
American and European intelligence agencies.
At that time Kamel's "defection" and revelations about
his country's weapons programmes were seen as
Baghdad's opportunity to come clean with its secrets
to UNSCOM. In fact, Baghdad blamed Kamel for having
kept the secrets for himself and handed over several
cupboards full of files that it said were stashed away
by the defector at his farmhouse outside Baghdad.
The information gained from those files represented a
key pillar of UNSCOM strategy, and it was believed
that the UN mission had managed to unearth more than
90 per cent of Iraq's weapon programmes.
Shortly before the inspections came to a premature end
prompted by Iraq's insistence that a clear blueprint
be given for what was expected of it before the
sweeping UN sanctions imposed on it in 1990 are lifted
and Washington's refusal to meet the demand, UNSCOM
officials had asserted that the bulk of their work was
over although they were seeking answers to some vital
questions, and those questions are now being dusted
off and presented as the reasons for the charges
against Iraq.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which
followed an independent verification programme, said
that it had located Iraq's nuclear programme and had
eliminated the country's nuclear material and
equipment as well as the ability to renew them. But
when the IAEA tried to close the "nuclear file," the
US intervened it and aborted the move.
On the "missiles" file, Richard Butler, who succeeded
Ekeus as UNSCOM chairman, said in July/August 1997
that the UN team had accounted for all but less than
12 long-range Scud missiles that Iraq was known to
have bought from the then Soviet Union and modified.
He also said that the bulk of Iraq's chemical and
biological weapons were destroyed but that the UN team
had not received all answers.
"UNSCOM did a fantastic job," he said. "You have to
understand that when the Gulf war was ended there was
revealed an awesome array of weapons of mass
destruction: almost a nuclear bomb, long-range
missiles, chemical, biological, all of the weapons of
mass destruction. And we, with Iraq, got hold of most
of it, got an account of it or got rid of it."
Such comments had also come from several other key
members of the UN mission as well as American and
international military experts who had access to
classified information collected by UNSCOM.
Seen against the backdrop of such assertions, a look
at the claims and assertions that Iraq continues to
build weapons of mass destruction -- the reason that
Bush cites for his plans to launch military action
aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein -- unveils a
contradiction.
The key question is: With all entry points into Iraq
under close surveillance and a ban on all commercial
and military planes in and out of the country, how is
it possible that Baghdad continued to develop weapons
of mass destruction in the absence of the UN
inspectors since late 1998?
In an appearance before the US Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Butler asserted that Iraq had
extensive chemical and biological weapons programmes
and that there is evidence it has stepped up it
alleged nuclear programmes in recent years.
Is the world then to believe that Iraq managed to get
equipment and material past the American armada
patrolling the seas and checking anything and
everything heading for Iraq, and indeed "suspect"
material headed for Iraq's neighbours that could be
sent to Iraq, and renewed its weapons programme?
It has been 12 years since the sweeping trade embargo
was imposed on Iraq.
Isn't it not fair to anyone to expect that the
enforcers of the sanctions would have perfected their
art?
Almost every vessel, small or big, is inspected before
it docks in Iraq or anywhere with access to Iraq.
American intelligence agents are present in all
neighbours of Iraq -- although to a lesser extent in
Iran -- to ensure that no "contraband" material enters
the country; nothing beyond food and medicine and
related items approved under the UN's oil-for-food
programme is allowed into the country. Any item which
could have slightest "military use" is blocked from
entering Iraq.
An example is caustic soda, a key element in cleaning
and washing of dairy equipment. It could also be used
in production of chemical weapons, according to
experts.
Since the day the sanction and verification regime was
put into place, no consignment of caustic soda has
been allowed into Iraq, and efforts by Jordan-based
exporters to send the material to Iraq across the
border -- presumably for legitimate purposes -- have
been repeatedly thwarted.
That is only an indication of the effectiveness of the
blockade, and it is difficult to see how the Iraqis
managed to lay their hands of components of chemical
weapons.
However, that is not to say that Iraq could not have
done it. Then again, reports from Washington and
London indicate that military generals on both sides
of the Atlantic are not really convinced that Iraq had
developed weapons as alleged or that poses a real
threat to the region. Such scepticism has been voiced
by officers who should be in a position to have access
to classified and top secret information on Iraq's
military capabilities as a key pillar of any strategy
to launch a war on that country.
Some of the allegations are also based on accounts by
Iraqi defectors, both identified and unidentified.
However, the credibility and authenticity of such
accounts are brought under question when considering
that almost all the "defectors" are produced and
paraded by Iraqi dissident groups which have a vested
interest in convincing the world that Baghdad is evil.
In some cases, it has also been found that the
defectors had left Iraq around the same time the UN
inspections were halted and they were making claims
linked to the period after their departure from the
country.
However, regardless of all reasonings and logic based
on available facts that expose the hollowness of the
American argument for striking at Iraq, the Bush
administration is dead bent upon carrying out their
designs in the region and Saddam Hussein has no room
in their strategy.
'Spying' charges
AS was expected sooner or later, the Swedish diplomat
who headed the UN arms inspection programme in Iraq
until 1997 has turned around and extended implicit
endorsement of Baghdad's assertion that the
inspections were mostly a smokescreen for American
intelligence activities in the country.
Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, who chaired UNSCOM since its
creation in 1991 until he quit in 1997, affirmed in
public comments this week that some of his team
members were obviously engaged in work unrelated to
weapon inspections.
In comments carried by Swedish radio, Ekeus said the
US and other powers had exploited UN teams in Iraq
for their own political ends, including monitoring
President Saddam Hussein's movements and that, at
times, crises were created that could possibly form
the basis for military action.
"There is no doubt that the Americans wanted to
influence the inspections to further certain
fundamental US interests," Ekeus said in his first
affirmation that he was aware of what was going on.
That partly vindicates Baghdad's accusations,
particularly that Ekeus was one of the harshest
critics of Iraq while he headed UNSCOM and thereafter
until this week's comments.
Indeed, one of the key arguments Iraq is putting up
against the US demand for renewed inspections of
Baghdad's alleged programmes of producing weapons of
mass destruction is the record that previous
inspectors had spied on the country.
It is not a new position and some of those who served
in the UN mission for verification of arms in Iraq
until it was stopped in late 1998 had admitted in
public that some of their colleagues were intelligence
agents rather than arms experts.
In a statement that went largely unnoticed or played
down deliberately or otherwise, Iraqi Deputy Prime
Minister Tareq Aziz said in mid-1998 -that many of the
UN inspectors appeared unaware of what they were
supposed do in the realm of arms inspections and Iraqi
officers assigned to working with them found a marked
ignorance among them of technical issues related to
weapons of mass destruction.
Ironically, it had also been reported that some of the
inspectors were reporting directly to Israel with or
without US knowledge.
In fact, it was Aziz's statement that enraged
Australian diplomat Butler, who assumed charge of the
UN inspections as successor to Ekeus in mid-1997, and
led to a course of events that culminated in the UN
decision to withdraw the inspectors ahead of
US-British military strikes against Iraq in December
1998.
Obviously Butler was counting on American military
strikes against Iraq everytime he reported to the UN
Security Council that Baghdad was not extending the
level of co-operation he demanded. He was frustrated
that his mission was not making any real headway and
knew within a few months' time and several visits to
Iraq that he would not get anywhere in his mission.
The real reason for the failure was his high-handed
approach and effort to dictate terms from his
self-assumed position of strength stemming from
American military powers to "punish" Iraq if it did
not fall in line with his commands.
It was clear that Aziz's pointed comments angered
Butler if only because he had hand-picked some of
members of the inspection team and the Iraqi
minister's accusation was seen as questioning his
abilities.
He was visibly upset when he appeared before the press
in Bahrain after his last visit to Baghdad during
which Aziz had made the statement to the press.
When asked about a report that a British minister had
said that Iraq was loading missiles with chemical
warheads at the rate of one a day Butler said he was
not aware of the report. In a report he presented to
the UN Security Council two days after the Bahrain
appearance he made no reference to any such Iraqi
activity.
However, a few hours after he presented the report, he
appeared before a pro-Israeli gathering in New York
and accused Iraq of arming missiles with chemical
weapons aimed at "destroying" Israel. He repeated that
allegation in a New York Times interview shortly
thereafter, leaving one wondering why he failed to
include it in his official report to the Security
Council, the very body which had assigned him the
mission and to which he was supposed to report.
The impression one got was that Butler took his
failure in Iraq too personal and waged a pointed
campaign during which he spared no effort to build the
case against Baghdad. And that culminated in the
December 1998 military "punishment" for Iraq.
Scott Ritter, an American who served under Ekeus as
well as Butler, has affirmed in public comments that
some of his team members were obviously engaged in
work unrelated to weapon inspections.
Against such a backdrop, it is only natural that
Baghdad continues to see any renewed inspection as
aimed at gathering more intelligence on the country in
preparation for eventual action to eliminate the
Saddam regime.
The Iraqi reaction to Ekeus's comments was also
predictable.
An official spokesman called the Swedish diplomat's
comments as "another important confirmation of many
statements by Iraq, international parties and foreign
personalities on the exploitation by the United
States of UN arms inspectors to perform tasks that
contradict their mandate as defined by Security
Council resolutions on Iraq."
"The remarks come at a time when extremists in the US
administration are trying to distract attention from
Iraq's legitimate rights according to Security
Council resolutions, in the forefront of them lifting
of the unjust sanctions and respecting Iraq's
sovereignty," he said.
"The new comments by Ekeus confirm Iraq's legitimate
concerns expressed in the questions submitted to the
UN secretary-general in talks on May 7," the
spokesman added. Those questions sought answers
whether US threats against Saddam were a breach of
international law to whether US "spies" would serve on
inspection teams.
Iraq is now demanding that the Security Council answer
Iraq's queries as "a first move to stop the United
States' exploitation of the apparatus of the United
Nations for ends contradicting those stipulated in
the council's resolutions and the UN Charter," said
the spokesman.
Thursday, August 01, 2002
Monday, July 29, 2002
Iraqi exiles on diverse courses
by pv vivekanand
AGREEMENT among the six major groups of Iraqi dissidents is key to any US plan to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, but Washington might find it elusive not only because of the uncertainties of its campaign and regional undercurrents but also the conflicting agendas of the various parties to the oust-Saddam scenario before, during and after it is played out.
Without a unified approach grouping the six factions representing the political and military segments of Iraqis they claim to represent, it is a no-go for the US to implement its plans. Latest reports speak of a purported plan to launch a sudden invasion of Iraq in October and achieve its objectives before the end of the year.
Washington, worried by clear signs of divisions among the groups, has invited their leaders for talks on Aug. 9, but the change in fundamentals that are vital to an agreement among them is unlikely by October or beyond as long as the US does not make it clear whom it wants to install as Saddam's successor i.e. in the hypothesis that it manages to topple the Iraqi president and assumes a position of strength where it could call the shots in Baghdad.
Apart from the problems in trying to find common ground among the diverse agendas of the dissident groups, it would be very difficult for the US to achieve parity between its own "political and strategic as well as oil interests" in Iraq with the interests of Iraqi exiles at this stage with a view to ensuring that an Uncle Sam man is installed in Baghdad.
The six invited to the Washington meeting are:
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr Al Hakim, leader of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Ahmed Chalabi, chairman of the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), Sharif Ali Hussein of the INC, Masoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) based in northern Iraq, Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and also based in northern Iraq, and Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord , which claims to represent dissident Iraqi army officers from all sects in the country.
Each of these six men represents distinct and conflicting interests, and none of them is likely to join meaningful alliances without guarantees that their interests would be protected. But the US would not be able to provide that guarantee with convincing assurances because of the very disparity in their respective positions.
The only cause they share is the ouster of Saddam, and it's anyone's guess how these groups plan to behave in the run-up to the hypothetical ouster of Saddam and in a post-Saddam Iraq.
It is not clear who would attend the Washington meeting.
It is unlikely that SCIRI would accept the invitation but all others are likely to.
In Damascus, the Syrian representative of SCIRI, Bayan Jabber, said his group was invited but had not decided if it would attend. Others have indicated they might go.
In any scenario, Iranian-backed Ayatollah Hakim will seek to ensure that the majority Shiites of Iraq would have a dominant say in the future of a post-Saddam Iraq, but the US, wary of Hakim's Iranian connections, would not want to see Shiite domination of Iraqi affairs.
It is also unclear how Hakim could find compatibility between joining an alliance for military action against Iraq and Tehran's vehement rejection of such a course of events.
Obviously, Iran feels that it could be the next target for American action after Iraq, and Tehran could be counted on to do everything in its power to throw a spanner in the works to ensure that Washington does not achieve its objectives in Iraq. That is arguably one of the strongest wild cards in the equation.
Chalabi and Sharif Hussein claim to represent the democratic school among Iraqis, but the INC's influence among its constituents is limited. Reports from Washington indicate that officials do not trust the INC, particularly when it comes to funds.
Chalabi, who fled Jordan in 1988 in a $300 million scandal after operating a bank there for more than 10 years, has been accused of diverting anti-Saddam US funds.
Chalabi has boasted to this writer, immediately after the war of 1991, that the day was near when he would occupy the presidential palace in Baghdad while one of his old-time lieutenants -- chief foreign exchange dealer at his collapsed Petra Bank in Jordan -- would be his "finance minister."
Sharif Hussein is a descendant of the Hashemite family which ruled Iraq until it was ousted in a bloody coup in 1958, and he has remained a mysterious figure playing his cards close to his chest despite his role in the INC as leader of the small Constitutional Monarchy Movement.
Chalabi and Sharif Hussein are known not to see eye-to-eye on many issues, but the two have tried to put up a picture of close alliance in recent times, and that the US found it fit to invite both of them to the Aug. 9 meeting is an implicit recognition of the differences between them.
Talabani and Barzani, the Kurdish leaders who hold sway in northern Iraq -- or what they call Kurdistan -- under an uneasy alliance after bitter fighting, claim to represent the interests of the nearly five million Kurds living in Iraq.
Doubts are cast on their political inclinations after they worked out a modus videndi under American pressure. The two are the two main powers in the northern Iraq, which is beyond the control of the Baghdad government.
The two groups seem to be more interesting in collecting taxes and tolls from local residents as well as Baghdad-bound vehicles passing through their territory with goods and back across the border to Turkey with oil in violation of the UN sanctions against Iraq.
The KDP is known to be flirting with Baghdad and it was with Saddam's army support that the group managed to consolidate its grip in the north after a round of fierce fighting in 1996.
Both Talabani and Barzani are likely to be wary of any US plan to topple the Saddam regime without assurances that their fiefdoms would not be challenged and their revenues are guaranteed. Equally important, they would demand iron-clad promises that the US would not desert them and leave them in the lurch half-way through military action against Saddam.
In return, the US would demand from them a pledge that they would not seek to secede from Iraq and to set up an "independent and sovereign Kurdistan" -- the dream of the 30 million Kurds scattered in the region but anathema to Turkey, Syria and Iran.
It is easy to figure out why such an entity would be rejected by the region's countries. The so-called Kurdistan in northern Iraq represents, according to a nationalist Kurdish website, only 18 per cent of the "Kurdish homeland." The rest of the territory, it says, was usurped following World War I: Turkey took 43 per cent of the followed by Iran (31 per cent), Syria (six per cent) and the former Soviet Union (two per cent).
With sizeable Kurdish populations in these areas, fears are strong that "Kurdistan" would not be happy to remain in the 18 per cent in Iraq.
Finances are also expected to play a major influencing role the choices of the Kurdish groups.
Under the UN's oil-for-food programme with Iraq, the Kurds living under KDP and PUK control in the north get 17 per cent of the proceeds from exports of Iraqi oil under UN supervision. This has helped improve the post-war lot the Kurds and indirectly boosted the standing of Talabani and Barzani. As such, neither of them is likely to upset the applecart without ensuring that their constituencies would not be deprived of the relative improvement in life brought about by the oil proceeds.
Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord says he represents dissident Iraqi officers both in and out of the country. His group was once seen closer to the US (it was under American pressure the late king Hussein of Jordan allowed Alawi to open an office in Amman in 1996).
Obviously, according to sources close to the Iraqi National Accord, the group believes that the military should be in control of Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the hoped-for ouster of Saddam.
Without a strong military grip throughout Iraq, the group reportedly argues, the country would simply disintegrate.
The Iraqi National Accord claims the support of top Iraqi officers who deserted the country after the 1991 war and also of that of many who continue to serve the regime. The claim has never been put to test.
Thrown into the bargain are assertions by Iraqi exiles that Washington has already shortlisted some 15 former Iraqi generals and would designate one of them to take over Baghdad as Saddam's succesor.
Obviously, it implies that democracy is far from the US mind in a post-Saddam Iraq.
Lending credit to that argument is the complaint by the INC that despite its "commitment" to democracy Washington is not giving it the due consideration it thinks it deserves.
One of those "shortlisted" generals is said to be former army chief Nizar Al Khasraji who served as Iraq's army chief of staff when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. He fled Iraq after the 1991 war and now lives in Copenhagen. The US plans involving him appear to have suffered a setback after the Dutch government launched an investigation into charges that he led an Iraqi military campaign against Kurds after the eight-year Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988.
The US accuses Saddam and some of his close associates of war crimes for the anti-Kurd operations and it would be out of place for Washington to continue to groom Khasraji after limelight has fallen on him as one of those who had masterminded and carried out the alleged crimes against Kurds.
The deep splits among the Iraqi exiles over aspirations for power and strategies forced the INC to call off plans to announce a "government in exile" on Saturday.
The fundamental difference is over who should be named as what in the "government in exile." It is widely perceived that the line-up would be followed in as and when -- and of course "if" -- the "exiles" move into Baghdad. As such, naming the "functionaries" would be as good as tipping the hands of the various groups. Beyond that is the reality that most of those who are left out would opt to remain outside the coalition and might even try to torpedo its moves.
Furthermore, there are some who want a role in running Iraq but are not ready to emerge into the open yet, and they, if the exiles are to be believed, include a few within the Saddam regime who would be signing their fate if prematurely identified as sympathisers of the anti-Saddam campaign.
The difficulties and differences facing the Iraqi exile groups were no more pronounced than when they could not even announce in public the names of the members of a committee they elected at their recent London meeting and they could not agree on who should chair it.
Against the array of divergent interests and agendas, it would be an almost miracle if the US managed to cobble the exiles together into a coherent alliance with the potential to serve its interests in Iraq -- that is, indeed, not to mention the fundamental fault lines in the US approach in defiance of Arab and international public opinion against its plans to oust the leadership of a sovereign country.
AGREEMENT among the six major groups of Iraqi dissidents is key to any US plan to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, but Washington might find it elusive not only because of the uncertainties of its campaign and regional undercurrents but also the conflicting agendas of the various parties to the oust-Saddam scenario before, during and after it is played out.
Without a unified approach grouping the six factions representing the political and military segments of Iraqis they claim to represent, it is a no-go for the US to implement its plans. Latest reports speak of a purported plan to launch a sudden invasion of Iraq in October and achieve its objectives before the end of the year.
Washington, worried by clear signs of divisions among the groups, has invited their leaders for talks on Aug. 9, but the change in fundamentals that are vital to an agreement among them is unlikely by October or beyond as long as the US does not make it clear whom it wants to install as Saddam's successor i.e. in the hypothesis that it manages to topple the Iraqi president and assumes a position of strength where it could call the shots in Baghdad.
Apart from the problems in trying to find common ground among the diverse agendas of the dissident groups, it would be very difficult for the US to achieve parity between its own "political and strategic as well as oil interests" in Iraq with the interests of Iraqi exiles at this stage with a view to ensuring that an Uncle Sam man is installed in Baghdad.
The six invited to the Washington meeting are:
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr Al Hakim, leader of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Ahmed Chalabi, chairman of the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), Sharif Ali Hussein of the INC, Masoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) based in northern Iraq, Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and also based in northern Iraq, and Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord , which claims to represent dissident Iraqi army officers from all sects in the country.
Each of these six men represents distinct and conflicting interests, and none of them is likely to join meaningful alliances without guarantees that their interests would be protected. But the US would not be able to provide that guarantee with convincing assurances because of the very disparity in their respective positions.
The only cause they share is the ouster of Saddam, and it's anyone's guess how these groups plan to behave in the run-up to the hypothetical ouster of Saddam and in a post-Saddam Iraq.
It is not clear who would attend the Washington meeting.
It is unlikely that SCIRI would accept the invitation but all others are likely to.
In Damascus, the Syrian representative of SCIRI, Bayan Jabber, said his group was invited but had not decided if it would attend. Others have indicated they might go.
In any scenario, Iranian-backed Ayatollah Hakim will seek to ensure that the majority Shiites of Iraq would have a dominant say in the future of a post-Saddam Iraq, but the US, wary of Hakim's Iranian connections, would not want to see Shiite domination of Iraqi affairs.
It is also unclear how Hakim could find compatibility between joining an alliance for military action against Iraq and Tehran's vehement rejection of such a course of events.
Obviously, Iran feels that it could be the next target for American action after Iraq, and Tehran could be counted on to do everything in its power to throw a spanner in the works to ensure that Washington does not achieve its objectives in Iraq. That is arguably one of the strongest wild cards in the equation.
Chalabi and Sharif Hussein claim to represent the democratic school among Iraqis, but the INC's influence among its constituents is limited. Reports from Washington indicate that officials do not trust the INC, particularly when it comes to funds.
Chalabi, who fled Jordan in 1988 in a $300 million scandal after operating a bank there for more than 10 years, has been accused of diverting anti-Saddam US funds.
Chalabi has boasted to this writer, immediately after the war of 1991, that the day was near when he would occupy the presidential palace in Baghdad while one of his old-time lieutenants -- chief foreign exchange dealer at his collapsed Petra Bank in Jordan -- would be his "finance minister."
Sharif Hussein is a descendant of the Hashemite family which ruled Iraq until it was ousted in a bloody coup in 1958, and he has remained a mysterious figure playing his cards close to his chest despite his role in the INC as leader of the small Constitutional Monarchy Movement.
Chalabi and Sharif Hussein are known not to see eye-to-eye on many issues, but the two have tried to put up a picture of close alliance in recent times, and that the US found it fit to invite both of them to the Aug. 9 meeting is an implicit recognition of the differences between them.
Talabani and Barzani, the Kurdish leaders who hold sway in northern Iraq -- or what they call Kurdistan -- under an uneasy alliance after bitter fighting, claim to represent the interests of the nearly five million Kurds living in Iraq.
Doubts are cast on their political inclinations after they worked out a modus videndi under American pressure. The two are the two main powers in the northern Iraq, which is beyond the control of the Baghdad government.
The two groups seem to be more interesting in collecting taxes and tolls from local residents as well as Baghdad-bound vehicles passing through their territory with goods and back across the border to Turkey with oil in violation of the UN sanctions against Iraq.
The KDP is known to be flirting with Baghdad and it was with Saddam's army support that the group managed to consolidate its grip in the north after a round of fierce fighting in 1996.
Both Talabani and Barzani are likely to be wary of any US plan to topple the Saddam regime without assurances that their fiefdoms would not be challenged and their revenues are guaranteed. Equally important, they would demand iron-clad promises that the US would not desert them and leave them in the lurch half-way through military action against Saddam.
In return, the US would demand from them a pledge that they would not seek to secede from Iraq and to set up an "independent and sovereign Kurdistan" -- the dream of the 30 million Kurds scattered in the region but anathema to Turkey, Syria and Iran.
It is easy to figure out why such an entity would be rejected by the region's countries. The so-called Kurdistan in northern Iraq represents, according to a nationalist Kurdish website, only 18 per cent of the "Kurdish homeland." The rest of the territory, it says, was usurped following World War I: Turkey took 43 per cent of the followed by Iran (31 per cent), Syria (six per cent) and the former Soviet Union (two per cent).
With sizeable Kurdish populations in these areas, fears are strong that "Kurdistan" would not be happy to remain in the 18 per cent in Iraq.
Finances are also expected to play a major influencing role the choices of the Kurdish groups.
Under the UN's oil-for-food programme with Iraq, the Kurds living under KDP and PUK control in the north get 17 per cent of the proceeds from exports of Iraqi oil under UN supervision. This has helped improve the post-war lot the Kurds and indirectly boosted the standing of Talabani and Barzani. As such, neither of them is likely to upset the applecart without ensuring that their constituencies would not be deprived of the relative improvement in life brought about by the oil proceeds.
Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord says he represents dissident Iraqi officers both in and out of the country. His group was once seen closer to the US (it was under American pressure the late king Hussein of Jordan allowed Alawi to open an office in Amman in 1996).
Obviously, according to sources close to the Iraqi National Accord, the group believes that the military should be in control of Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the hoped-for ouster of Saddam.
Without a strong military grip throughout Iraq, the group reportedly argues, the country would simply disintegrate.
The Iraqi National Accord claims the support of top Iraqi officers who deserted the country after the 1991 war and also of that of many who continue to serve the regime. The claim has never been put to test.
Thrown into the bargain are assertions by Iraqi exiles that Washington has already shortlisted some 15 former Iraqi generals and would designate one of them to take over Baghdad as Saddam's succesor.
Obviously, it implies that democracy is far from the US mind in a post-Saddam Iraq.
Lending credit to that argument is the complaint by the INC that despite its "commitment" to democracy Washington is not giving it the due consideration it thinks it deserves.
One of those "shortlisted" generals is said to be former army chief Nizar Al Khasraji who served as Iraq's army chief of staff when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. He fled Iraq after the 1991 war and now lives in Copenhagen. The US plans involving him appear to have suffered a setback after the Dutch government launched an investigation into charges that he led an Iraqi military campaign against Kurds after the eight-year Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988.
The US accuses Saddam and some of his close associates of war crimes for the anti-Kurd operations and it would be out of place for Washington to continue to groom Khasraji after limelight has fallen on him as one of those who had masterminded and carried out the alleged crimes against Kurds.
The deep splits among the Iraqi exiles over aspirations for power and strategies forced the INC to call off plans to announce a "government in exile" on Saturday.
The fundamental difference is over who should be named as what in the "government in exile." It is widely perceived that the line-up would be followed in as and when -- and of course "if" -- the "exiles" move into Baghdad. As such, naming the "functionaries" would be as good as tipping the hands of the various groups. Beyond that is the reality that most of those who are left out would opt to remain outside the coalition and might even try to torpedo its moves.
Furthermore, there are some who want a role in running Iraq but are not ready to emerge into the open yet, and they, if the exiles are to be believed, include a few within the Saddam regime who would be signing their fate if prematurely identified as sympathisers of the anti-Saddam campaign.
The difficulties and differences facing the Iraqi exile groups were no more pronounced than when they could not even announce in public the names of the members of a committee they elected at their recent London meeting and they could not agree on who should chair it.
Against the array of divergent interests and agendas, it would be an almost miracle if the US managed to cobble the exiles together into a coherent alliance with the potential to serve its interests in Iraq -- that is, indeed, not to mention the fundamental fault lines in the US approach in defiance of Arab and international public opinion against its plans to oust the leadership of a sovereign country.
Sunday, July 21, 2002
US poised to hit Iraq
by pv vivekanand
IF reports are accurate, then a US military strike against Iraq is imminent although it defies logic even in military terms, terrain and weather and of course the regional situation in the Middle East. Perhaps that is the mysterious element in the American approach to executing its declared plan to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein despite international opposition.
Be that it may, the fact remains that there is no well-established legal basis for the US plan within or outside the UN framework.
UN Security Council Resolution 665 adopted in August 1990 authorised the use of force against Iraq since that country had invaded another sovereign state, Kuwait, and Resoluton 678 of November of the same year set the Jan. 15 deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or face war. The international community, including a majority of members of the Arab League, backed the use of force against Iraq at that time after Baghdad refused to quit Kuwait.
The mission was accomplished and Iraq was evicted from February1991 and the authorisation for war offered by UN Security Council resolutions 665 and 678 was terminated when Resolution 687 was adopted in April 1991 formally ending the military action launched by a US-led coalition of 31 countries.
Since then, the UN Security Council has adopted dozens of resolutions related to Iraq, but all of them covered the various by-products of the 1990 Iraqi invasion and the 1991 liberation of Kuwait and none of them prescribed another war or an invasion of Iraq and ouster of its leadership. Those resolutions dealt with the UN trade embargo against Iraq and the conditions under which the sanctions could be lifted and with the "oil-for-food" programme.
In fact, there is no UN endorsement of the "no-fly" zones imposed and patrolled by the US and UK in the north and south of Iraq, and, by extension, their frequent attacks on Iraq in retaliation for alleged provocations have no legal basis within the UN system. Nor was there any UN endorsement of the several rounds of massive missile attacks and bombings of targets in Iraq carried out by the US.
In the framework of the various resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council since the Gulf war of 1991, there is no authorisation for the use of force against Iraq related to its shortl-lived occupation of Kuwait.
In strict legal terms, Iraq's refusal to allow the return of UN inspectors could be construed as defiance of the UN Security Council resolutions that calls for the elimination of Baghdad' alleged weapons programme. However, there is no UN stipulaton for military action for its perceived rejection of the world body's decisions and demands.
Indeed, the Bush administration could revoke the US right to defend itself as a justification for military action in the wake of the Sept.11 attacks in New York and Washington as it did in order to execute the Afghanistan war. The right to self-defence is clearly enshrined in the UN Charter. But can the US rely on the same right to strike against Baghdad now?
Asserting that Iraq was linked to the Sept. 11 attacks and proving it beyond reasonable doubt are two different things. Even in the hypotheis that the US manages to establish such a link -- as it is obviously trying to do through relying on Iraqi defectors with little or no credibility -- would that provide the legal umbrella for a US invasion of iraq?
One of the reasons cited by US President George W. Bush for his moves against Iraq is the alleged Iraqi development and possession of weapons of mass destruction that he contented Baghdad was using to "terrorise" the region.
According to Bush, action against countries "terrorising" neighbours with weapons of mass destruction is part of the US-led war on terrorism; but then how many of Iraq's neighbours are complaining of being "terrorised" by Baghdad? If anything, all of them have opposed the US plan for military action against Iraq and are highly concerned about the repercussions of such a course of events in the region.
No doubt Washington strategists and legal experts are too familiar with the thin ice Washington is skating on towards invading Iraq; and it is obvious why the US reacts with vehemence whenever any government refers to the lack of a legal foundation for its plans to topple Saddam Hussein.
Obviously, the Bush administration is too aware of the futility of an exercise to secure UN endorsement for its designs even from the very same UN members it contents are threatened and terrorised by Baghdad. Any such effort would only open a Pandora's box from where skeletons would emerge of American unilateralism.
As far as Washington is concerned, UN authorisation for whatever action against Iraq already exists in UN Security Council resolutions -- although it fails to be specific -- and of course tough luck if the world fails to see it that way.
The US stand is an affront to the international community and the very foundations of the UN as a watchdog to ensure justice for all, but the sad reality is that no one seems to be able or willing enough to contain the self-assumed US posture of as the sole policeman, judge and executioner of the world.
IF reports are accurate, then a US military strike against Iraq is imminent although it defies logic even in military terms, terrain and weather and of course the regional situation in the Middle East. Perhaps that is the mysterious element in the American approach to executing its declared plan to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein despite international opposition.
Be that it may, the fact remains that there is no well-established legal basis for the US plan within or outside the UN framework.
UN Security Council Resolution 665 adopted in August 1990 authorised the use of force against Iraq since that country had invaded another sovereign state, Kuwait, and Resoluton 678 of November of the same year set the Jan. 15 deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or face war. The international community, including a majority of members of the Arab League, backed the use of force against Iraq at that time after Baghdad refused to quit Kuwait.
The mission was accomplished and Iraq was evicted from February1991 and the authorisation for war offered by UN Security Council resolutions 665 and 678 was terminated when Resolution 687 was adopted in April 1991 formally ending the military action launched by a US-led coalition of 31 countries.
Since then, the UN Security Council has adopted dozens of resolutions related to Iraq, but all of them covered the various by-products of the 1990 Iraqi invasion and the 1991 liberation of Kuwait and none of them prescribed another war or an invasion of Iraq and ouster of its leadership. Those resolutions dealt with the UN trade embargo against Iraq and the conditions under which the sanctions could be lifted and with the "oil-for-food" programme.
In fact, there is no UN endorsement of the "no-fly" zones imposed and patrolled by the US and UK in the north and south of Iraq, and, by extension, their frequent attacks on Iraq in retaliation for alleged provocations have no legal basis within the UN system. Nor was there any UN endorsement of the several rounds of massive missile attacks and bombings of targets in Iraq carried out by the US.
In the framework of the various resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council since the Gulf war of 1991, there is no authorisation for the use of force against Iraq related to its shortl-lived occupation of Kuwait.
In strict legal terms, Iraq's refusal to allow the return of UN inspectors could be construed as defiance of the UN Security Council resolutions that calls for the elimination of Baghdad' alleged weapons programme. However, there is no UN stipulaton for military action for its perceived rejection of the world body's decisions and demands.
Indeed, the Bush administration could revoke the US right to defend itself as a justification for military action in the wake of the Sept.11 attacks in New York and Washington as it did in order to execute the Afghanistan war. The right to self-defence is clearly enshrined in the UN Charter. But can the US rely on the same right to strike against Baghdad now?
Asserting that Iraq was linked to the Sept. 11 attacks and proving it beyond reasonable doubt are two different things. Even in the hypotheis that the US manages to establish such a link -- as it is obviously trying to do through relying on Iraqi defectors with little or no credibility -- would that provide the legal umbrella for a US invasion of iraq?
One of the reasons cited by US President George W. Bush for his moves against Iraq is the alleged Iraqi development and possession of weapons of mass destruction that he contented Baghdad was using to "terrorise" the region.
According to Bush, action against countries "terrorising" neighbours with weapons of mass destruction is part of the US-led war on terrorism; but then how many of Iraq's neighbours are complaining of being "terrorised" by Baghdad? If anything, all of them have opposed the US plan for military action against Iraq and are highly concerned about the repercussions of such a course of events in the region.
No doubt Washington strategists and legal experts are too familiar with the thin ice Washington is skating on towards invading Iraq; and it is obvious why the US reacts with vehemence whenever any government refers to the lack of a legal foundation for its plans to topple Saddam Hussein.
Obviously, the Bush administration is too aware of the futility of an exercise to secure UN endorsement for its designs even from the very same UN members it contents are threatened and terrorised by Baghdad. Any such effort would only open a Pandora's box from where skeletons would emerge of American unilateralism.
As far as Washington is concerned, UN authorisation for whatever action against Iraq already exists in UN Security Council resolutions -- although it fails to be specific -- and of course tough luck if the world fails to see it that way.
The US stand is an affront to the international community and the very foundations of the UN as a watchdog to ensure justice for all, but the sad reality is that no one seems to be able or willing enough to contain the self-assumed US posture of as the sole policeman, judge and executioner of the world.
Sunday, July 07, 2002
Axis of evil ruse
by pv vivekanand
By declaring Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil," US President George W Bush appears to have taken in more that Washington could chew by espousing unilateralism that has alienated his European allies.
Since his state of the union address on Jan.29, Bush has faced a barrage of criticism from Europeans, many of whom outrightly rejected his clear pointer that the next targets in the US-led war against terrorism were Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang. They have warned that Washington should not expect them to remain partners in the coalition that backed the US campaign in Afghanistan.
It was indeed clear for some time now that Bush would be targeting Iraq and others in the US-led drive against terrorism, particularly after he clarified that he defined all countries which develop weapons of mass destruction as supporters of terrorism. And his Jan. 29 speech has come to be known was the Bush doctrine, which is now challenged by his European allies. And they have good reasons too.
In the case of Iraq, US intelligence agencies tried hard but in vain to establish a link between Baghdad and the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington. Reports that the man said to have been the leader of the attacks had met with an Iraqi diplomat in Eastern Europe in early 2001 have come to naught in helping Washington establish a case against Baghdad.
That the US was paving the way for expanding the war against terrorism was made clear in October when Washington formally notified the United Nations that it might target other countries in the war against terrorism and senior Bush administration officials mentioned Iraq as a potential target.
Since then, Arab leaders and the Arab League itself have issued repeated warnings to the US against launching military operations against Iraq or any other Arab country in the name of the war against terrorism.
Joining them were European leaders who had then used diplomatic language to dissuade Washington from pursuing a military assault against Iraq.
But last week, they were unambiguous, saying they want nothing to do with such a course of action.
European Commission pokesman Gunnar Weigand said the European Union leaders "do not agree with that kind of policy."
While the EU shared American concerns over global issues such as human rights, terrorism and proliferation of weapons, the bloc does not "share is the policy desired to achieve these objectives. We believe that engagement and rapprochement...should be used to achieve these aims."
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, called on Washington to act multilaterally and not as a "global unilateralist."
Surprisingly Germany had been in the forefront of opposing military action against Iraq, and it left nothing unsaid.
"We Europeans warn against it," said German Deputy Foreign Minister Ludger Vollmer. "There is no indication, no proof that Iraq is involved in the terrorism we have been talking about for the last few months... this terror argument cannot be used to legitimise old enmities."
Vollmer could not have been more clear in referring to the growing belief that the "axis of evil" charge is the forerunner of a US drive to settle political scores by destablising Iraq and indirectly topple the regime of Saddam Hussein — an objective the US failed to achieve in the 1991 Gulf war.
There is also a strong vein of thought in Europe, and indeed in the Arab World, that the US focus on Iran as a potential target in the war against terrorism has more to do with Israeli interests than US policy and the campagin against terror.
There is little doubt that Bush would find it difficult to enlist European partners in military action against Iraq or Iran.
Most EU member countries agree that the best approach to solving the problem, if any at all, is through dialogue in line with the European bloc's policy of engaging with countries rather than seeking to isolate them.
Even in Britain, the staunchest US ally in Europe, the "axis of evil" comment has drawn dismay. Home Secretary Jack Straw said the Bush assertion was aimed at the American elecotrate ahead of the forthcoming congressional elections and could not be part of a military strategy.
Washington's frustration over the British stand was spelt out by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. "This is not about American politics, and I assume that when the British government speaks about foreign policy, it's not about British politics," she retorted to Straw.
But it should be dawning on Washington that it would not be an easy go to secure international endorsement of military action against Iraq or Iran.
Many countries, mindful of the oil reserves and trade potential of the two countries, have set up strong relations with them; in Iraq's case, business worth tens of billions is waiting for an end to the 11-year-old UN sanctions against Baghdad. The sanctions are already fraying, and it is only a matter of time before few governments would think twice about doing business with Iraq even if in violation of the sanctions.
Indeed, there is strong European suspicion that it is not simply "old enmities" at play in the US strategy towards Iraq.
The Europeans are aware that Washington is unhappy that they have made inroads and set up ground to do post-sanctions trade with Iraq while American businesses were restrained by the law of their country from pursuing the same goal.
"By launching military action against Iraq, the US would precipitate a major crisis that would upset the European apple cart and bring new rules into play for doing business with Iraq," commented an Asian diplomat. "That would be the end of years of European efforts to gain a firm foothold in that country."
If any consolation, there is consensus across the Atlantic: Military action against Iraq would not be limited to a few missile strikes or bombings against strategic installations in that country –– it would aim at replacing the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad, and this would not be an easy task at all without European support.
The European case against the US targeting Iran is even stronger.
Europe has been closely observing the political tug-of-war between the (relatively) moderate regime of President Mohmmed Khatami and the conservative theocratic establishment in Iran since 1997. They have seen a slow shift to moderation in Tehran under Khatami's leadership, and they would like to encourage it.
Europeans are indeed aware of the clout that the Iranian religious establishment wields, and they have recognised that they should not expect miracles from Khatami.
Many European diplomats believe that even if the Israeli charge was true that Iran was behind a recently intercepted arms shipment in the Red Sea, the real "culprit" was not the Khatami government but hardline elements in the clerical establishment in Tehran.
In any event, the Europeans remain convinced that the key to dealing with Iran is encouragement for the "moderate" camp in Tehran rather than confrontation over the US charge that Iran had links with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda group.
Europe recognises that Al Qaeda fighters fleeing US forces in the Afghan war could have sneaked across the border to Iran, but they believe Tehran should not be seen as an Al Qaeda supporter.
They see the Iranian refusal to co-operate with the US in countering Al Qaeda as stemming from Tehran's conviction that such moves would allow Washignton to exploit the situation and make intelligence inroads in Iran.
"Tehran prefers to deal with the Al Qaeda problem, if there is one, on its own," said a European diplomat. "It wants no US role in the affair and is determined to keep the US out. Sharing intelligence information with the US is the last thing it wants to do."
Some speculate that the US frustration over its failure to mend fences with Iran despite repeated overtures to Tehran is also behind the hostility.
Washington has also charged that Iran was "meddling" in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, an allegation that both Tehran and Kabul have denied.
There is a strong Israeli angle to the US-Iran equation, and Bush's "tough" posture might also have to do with his desire to do away with a constant source of "concern" for the US protege in the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underlined it when he said last week that "Iran calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and elimination of the Jewish people. That's why it was so important for President Bush to name them as sponsors of terror."
It is no secret that Israel has seen in Iran a potential threat in the event of a regional conflagration. Israel has for long watched with apprehension Iran aquiring and developing long-range missiles and Tehran's nuclear programme.
Suggestions have remained alive for several years that Israel might even launch "pre-emptive" strikes against Iran's nuclear installations, which Tehran says are intended for peaceful purposes, and other military facilities.
Iran is a staunch supporter of the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbollah, which managed to force Israel to withdraw from parts of Lebanese territory in mid-2000 after many years of fighting the Israeli army and its proxy forces in southern Lebanon.
Sharon has already picked up the fight against Iraq and Iran. One of the items on the agenda for talks between Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington on Thursday was expected to be Israel's "fears" of the "threats" posed by Iraq and Iran to the Jewish state.
Aides have said that Sharon would be lobbying Bush for unspecified American action against Iran and iraq.
Russia has come out fighting from Iran's corner against the US charge against Tehran.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Sunday that there was no evidence that Iran had connections with terrorist organisations. He accused the US of following double standards.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine warned that the interests of the rest of the world were under threat from a "simplistic" US foreign policy that emerged after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Today we are threatened by a simplism that reduces all the problems of the world to the struggle against terrorism, and is not properly thought through," said Vedrine.
Vedrine expressed criticism of the Bush doctrine, a decision by Washington to subordinate all foreign policy decisions to the needs of the "war against terrorism," and of unilateralism in general.
He accused the US of acting "unilaterally, without consulting others, taking decisions based on its own view of the world and its own interests ... refusing any multilateral negotiation that could limit their decision-making, sovereignty and freedom of action."
According to Vedrine, said Europe also had a duty to stand up to the US "hyper-power" over the globalisation of the free market
French Defence Minister Alain Richard said France would not follow Bush's example in vastly increasing defence spending to cope with the new threats of the post-Sept. 11 world.
"We do not share the analysis expressed by President Bush on the threats to international peace and security," he told the French parliament.
Against such opposition from the powerful European bloc, will Bush go it alone?
There are some who suggest he might.
The technology that the US used in the Afghan war established that the sole superpower
doesn't need its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) partners "to fight a distant war, as it demonstrated in Afghanistan, where it basically won alone, except for small but important contributions from Britain, Canada and Australia," Thomas Friedman wrote in the Guardian.
Friedman hammered home an emerging scenario where the US might simply decide its interests were good enough to launch military action wherever it found fit to do so so -- with or without is Nato partners.
"We are increasingly heading for a military apartheid within Nato: America will be the chef who decides the menu and cooks all the great meals, and the Nato allies will be the bus boys who stay around and clean up the mess and keep the peace - indefinitely," according to Fried
By declaring Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil," US President George W Bush appears to have taken in more that Washington could chew by espousing unilateralism that has alienated his European allies.
Since his state of the union address on Jan.29, Bush has faced a barrage of criticism from Europeans, many of whom outrightly rejected his clear pointer that the next targets in the US-led war against terrorism were Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang. They have warned that Washington should not expect them to remain partners in the coalition that backed the US campaign in Afghanistan.
It was indeed clear for some time now that Bush would be targeting Iraq and others in the US-led drive against terrorism, particularly after he clarified that he defined all countries which develop weapons of mass destruction as supporters of terrorism. And his Jan. 29 speech has come to be known was the Bush doctrine, which is now challenged by his European allies. And they have good reasons too.
In the case of Iraq, US intelligence agencies tried hard but in vain to establish a link between Baghdad and the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington. Reports that the man said to have been the leader of the attacks had met with an Iraqi diplomat in Eastern Europe in early 2001 have come to naught in helping Washington establish a case against Baghdad.
That the US was paving the way for expanding the war against terrorism was made clear in October when Washington formally notified the United Nations that it might target other countries in the war against terrorism and senior Bush administration officials mentioned Iraq as a potential target.
Since then, Arab leaders and the Arab League itself have issued repeated warnings to the US against launching military operations against Iraq or any other Arab country in the name of the war against terrorism.
Joining them were European leaders who had then used diplomatic language to dissuade Washington from pursuing a military assault against Iraq.
But last week, they were unambiguous, saying they want nothing to do with such a course of action.
European Commission pokesman Gunnar Weigand said the European Union leaders "do not agree with that kind of policy."
While the EU shared American concerns over global issues such as human rights, terrorism and proliferation of weapons, the bloc does not "share is the policy desired to achieve these objectives. We believe that engagement and rapprochement...should be used to achieve these aims."
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, called on Washington to act multilaterally and not as a "global unilateralist."
Surprisingly Germany had been in the forefront of opposing military action against Iraq, and it left nothing unsaid.
"We Europeans warn against it," said German Deputy Foreign Minister Ludger Vollmer. "There is no indication, no proof that Iraq is involved in the terrorism we have been talking about for the last few months... this terror argument cannot be used to legitimise old enmities."
Vollmer could not have been more clear in referring to the growing belief that the "axis of evil" charge is the forerunner of a US drive to settle political scores by destablising Iraq and indirectly topple the regime of Saddam Hussein — an objective the US failed to achieve in the 1991 Gulf war.
There is also a strong vein of thought in Europe, and indeed in the Arab World, that the US focus on Iran as a potential target in the war against terrorism has more to do with Israeli interests than US policy and the campagin against terror.
There is little doubt that Bush would find it difficult to enlist European partners in military action against Iraq or Iran.
Most EU member countries agree that the best approach to solving the problem, if any at all, is through dialogue in line with the European bloc's policy of engaging with countries rather than seeking to isolate them.
Even in Britain, the staunchest US ally in Europe, the "axis of evil" comment has drawn dismay. Home Secretary Jack Straw said the Bush assertion was aimed at the American elecotrate ahead of the forthcoming congressional elections and could not be part of a military strategy.
Washington's frustration over the British stand was spelt out by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. "This is not about American politics, and I assume that when the British government speaks about foreign policy, it's not about British politics," she retorted to Straw.
But it should be dawning on Washington that it would not be an easy go to secure international endorsement of military action against Iraq or Iran.
Many countries, mindful of the oil reserves and trade potential of the two countries, have set up strong relations with them; in Iraq's case, business worth tens of billions is waiting for an end to the 11-year-old UN sanctions against Baghdad. The sanctions are already fraying, and it is only a matter of time before few governments would think twice about doing business with Iraq even if in violation of the sanctions.
Indeed, there is strong European suspicion that it is not simply "old enmities" at play in the US strategy towards Iraq.
The Europeans are aware that Washington is unhappy that they have made inroads and set up ground to do post-sanctions trade with Iraq while American businesses were restrained by the law of their country from pursuing the same goal.
"By launching military action against Iraq, the US would precipitate a major crisis that would upset the European apple cart and bring new rules into play for doing business with Iraq," commented an Asian diplomat. "That would be the end of years of European efforts to gain a firm foothold in that country."
If any consolation, there is consensus across the Atlantic: Military action against Iraq would not be limited to a few missile strikes or bombings against strategic installations in that country –– it would aim at replacing the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad, and this would not be an easy task at all without European support.
The European case against the US targeting Iran is even stronger.
Europe has been closely observing the political tug-of-war between the (relatively) moderate regime of President Mohmmed Khatami and the conservative theocratic establishment in Iran since 1997. They have seen a slow shift to moderation in Tehran under Khatami's leadership, and they would like to encourage it.
Europeans are indeed aware of the clout that the Iranian religious establishment wields, and they have recognised that they should not expect miracles from Khatami.
Many European diplomats believe that even if the Israeli charge was true that Iran was behind a recently intercepted arms shipment in the Red Sea, the real "culprit" was not the Khatami government but hardline elements in the clerical establishment in Tehran.
In any event, the Europeans remain convinced that the key to dealing with Iran is encouragement for the "moderate" camp in Tehran rather than confrontation over the US charge that Iran had links with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda group.
Europe recognises that Al Qaeda fighters fleeing US forces in the Afghan war could have sneaked across the border to Iran, but they believe Tehran should not be seen as an Al Qaeda supporter.
They see the Iranian refusal to co-operate with the US in countering Al Qaeda as stemming from Tehran's conviction that such moves would allow Washignton to exploit the situation and make intelligence inroads in Iran.
"Tehran prefers to deal with the Al Qaeda problem, if there is one, on its own," said a European diplomat. "It wants no US role in the affair and is determined to keep the US out. Sharing intelligence information with the US is the last thing it wants to do."
Some speculate that the US frustration over its failure to mend fences with Iran despite repeated overtures to Tehran is also behind the hostility.
Washington has also charged that Iran was "meddling" in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, an allegation that both Tehran and Kabul have denied.
There is a strong Israeli angle to the US-Iran equation, and Bush's "tough" posture might also have to do with his desire to do away with a constant source of "concern" for the US protege in the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underlined it when he said last week that "Iran calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and elimination of the Jewish people. That's why it was so important for President Bush to name them as sponsors of terror."
It is no secret that Israel has seen in Iran a potential threat in the event of a regional conflagration. Israel has for long watched with apprehension Iran aquiring and developing long-range missiles and Tehran's nuclear programme.
Suggestions have remained alive for several years that Israel might even launch "pre-emptive" strikes against Iran's nuclear installations, which Tehran says are intended for peaceful purposes, and other military facilities.
Iran is a staunch supporter of the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbollah, which managed to force Israel to withdraw from parts of Lebanese territory in mid-2000 after many years of fighting the Israeli army and its proxy forces in southern Lebanon.
Sharon has already picked up the fight against Iraq and Iran. One of the items on the agenda for talks between Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington on Thursday was expected to be Israel's "fears" of the "threats" posed by Iraq and Iran to the Jewish state.
Aides have said that Sharon would be lobbying Bush for unspecified American action against Iran and iraq.
Russia has come out fighting from Iran's corner against the US charge against Tehran.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Sunday that there was no evidence that Iran had connections with terrorist organisations. He accused the US of following double standards.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine warned that the interests of the rest of the world were under threat from a "simplistic" US foreign policy that emerged after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Today we are threatened by a simplism that reduces all the problems of the world to the struggle against terrorism, and is not properly thought through," said Vedrine.
Vedrine expressed criticism of the Bush doctrine, a decision by Washington to subordinate all foreign policy decisions to the needs of the "war against terrorism," and of unilateralism in general.
He accused the US of acting "unilaterally, without consulting others, taking decisions based on its own view of the world and its own interests ... refusing any multilateral negotiation that could limit their decision-making, sovereignty and freedom of action."
According to Vedrine, said Europe also had a duty to stand up to the US "hyper-power" over the globalisation of the free market
French Defence Minister Alain Richard said France would not follow Bush's example in vastly increasing defence spending to cope with the new threats of the post-Sept. 11 world.
"We do not share the analysis expressed by President Bush on the threats to international peace and security," he told the French parliament.
Against such opposition from the powerful European bloc, will Bush go it alone?
There are some who suggest he might.
The technology that the US used in the Afghan war established that the sole superpower
doesn't need its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) partners "to fight a distant war, as it demonstrated in Afghanistan, where it basically won alone, except for small but important contributions from Britain, Canada and Australia," Thomas Friedman wrote in the Guardian.
Friedman hammered home an emerging scenario where the US might simply decide its interests were good enough to launch military action wherever it found fit to do so so -- with or without is Nato partners.
"We are increasingly heading for a military apartheid within Nato: America will be the chef who decides the menu and cooks all the great meals, and the Nato allies will be the bus boys who stay around and clean up the mess and keep the peace - indefinitely," according to Fried
Saturday, June 08, 2002
US defines "terrorism"
PV Vivekanand
THE US-declared war against terrorism has given a new life to the decades-old debate about a clear and unambiguous definition of who could be called "terrorist" — an Arab demand that has for long been sidestepped by the United States.
Today, when we hear the words "terrorism," "terror" and "terrorist" repeated the world over by officials, commentators and media, we cannot but ask: What constitutes "terrorim"? What is "terror"? Who is a "terrorist"?
At the height of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Washington used to describe the Afghans fighting the Russians as "freedom fighters" and "resistance groups." While we had no quarrel with the concept, it was a slap in our face that the US stood steadfast against the Arab call to apply the same yardstick in Palestine.
Today, we feel all the more humiliated, insulted and frustrated when we hear the US using the term "terrorist" to describe the Palestinians waging a legitimate resistance struggle. They are exercising the rights granted to the occupied to resist the occupier under international laws, particularly the 1948 Geneva conventions.
Beyond that sense of humiliation, insult and frustration is our agony that Israel is given a carte blanche to step up its terrorist actions that have killed and maimed thousands of Palestinians and wrecked the life of millions more.
Can the US honesty deny that it is the blind American backing that appears to transcend all considerations that emboldens Israel to persist in its effort to terrorise the Palestinians into submission?
Against that backdrop, could anyone blame us for asserting that the American rejection of Arab calls for an international debate to define "terrorism" and "terrorists" was based on its concern that its protege and "strategic partner" in the Middle East would be the first to be indicted?
We do not imply that the Sept. 11 attacks in the US were anything but terrorism. We have been exposed to terror and terrorism and believe that we, as part of the international community, have the moral responsibility to ensure that actions similar to the Sept. 11 attacks are never repeated anywhere in the world. We have to and we will do our share to render what it takes to ensure that the world is safe from such heinous, unjustiable, undefendable, unpardonable and dastardly attacks.
However, amid the shocking thoughts provoked by the attacks, the Arab and Islamic worlds cannot but feel angry and frustrated over the selective approach that applies different parameters to terrorism.
No matter whatever arguments some might put up, it is clear to us that the Israeli actions against Palestinians are state-sponsored terrorism. The marked difference, if you will, is that Israel has a mighty army backed by some of the most advanced hi-tech weapons at its disposal to terrorise the Palestinians under its control and is assured of immunity by its superpower friend from international punishment.
The literal definition of a "terrorist" is simple and straight: "A person who uses or favours violent and intimidating methods of coercing a government or community."
The immediate question is: Is Israel not using "violent and intimidating methods" to coerce the Palestinian community? Doesn't it mean that Israel is a terrorist entity?
We wish if the reality was as simple as that to allow the acceptance of that definition in the context of Israel and the Palestinian community it oppresses through nothing but sheer terror: Summary killings and maimings, detentions, torture, and free use of fighter planes, helicopter gunships, rockets, missiles and tanks against unarmed civilians whose only fault is their refusal to accept Israel's occupation their homeland and domination of their life.
Does the fact that Israel is a country and has a recognised government exclude it from being classified as terrorist? Well, it does not and should not, but its status as an ally and "strategic partner" of the US does indeed offer the country the unpredecented and unparalled luxury of the freedom to continue to practise terrorism without fear of censure or punishment.
That is the source for all the Arab and Muslim criticism, warnings, cautions and demands levelled at the US as Washington plots its next moves in its international war against terrorism.
Obviously, the US has no intention whatsover even to "dignify" the Arab demand that the same parameters be used in the case of Israel. That is perhaps we have not heard any public comment whatsover from the US on the demand.
Although the US would never admit it, we all know that there would not have been anything called the Arab-Israeli peace process had it not been for the Gulf war of 1991 that eliminated Iraq as a strong military challenge to Israel, divided the Arabs, weakened the Palestinians and brought some of the Arab states more into the US fold and sphere of influence.
That is not to say that it was the whole objective of the military assault against Iraq, but it was one of the strongest offshoots of the war and the resulting fragmentation of the Arab World.
Washington tends to describe the peace process launched in 1991 as the fruit of its "relentless" diplomacy. But we know differently - that the elements of the regional equation suited the Israeli objective of being in a position to dictate the terms for peace, as it happened after nine years of dilly dallying, and that was why the peace process could be launched at all.
At this critical juncture in time, the Arab World would like to know whether and how the US would deny its endorsement of Israel's state-sponsored terrorism and maintain that it is neutral in the Middle East.
We would also like to know at what it would take for the US to admit in public that Israel should figure high in the list of "international terrorists" and Washington, as the leader of the free world, should have adopted actions to contain the Israeli terrorism decades ago.
We would also like to know what exactly that admission will lead to and whether the rekindled unofficial debate on terrorism would ever lead to a light at the end of the tunnel for the Palestinians.
THE US-declared war against terrorism has given a new life to the decades-old debate about a clear and unambiguous definition of who could be called "terrorist" — an Arab demand that has for long been sidestepped by the United States.
Today, when we hear the words "terrorism," "terror" and "terrorist" repeated the world over by officials, commentators and media, we cannot but ask: What constitutes "terrorim"? What is "terror"? Who is a "terrorist"?
At the height of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Washington used to describe the Afghans fighting the Russians as "freedom fighters" and "resistance groups." While we had no quarrel with the concept, it was a slap in our face that the US stood steadfast against the Arab call to apply the same yardstick in Palestine.
Today, we feel all the more humiliated, insulted and frustrated when we hear the US using the term "terrorist" to describe the Palestinians waging a legitimate resistance struggle. They are exercising the rights granted to the occupied to resist the occupier under international laws, particularly the 1948 Geneva conventions.
Beyond that sense of humiliation, insult and frustration is our agony that Israel is given a carte blanche to step up its terrorist actions that have killed and maimed thousands of Palestinians and wrecked the life of millions more.
Can the US honesty deny that it is the blind American backing that appears to transcend all considerations that emboldens Israel to persist in its effort to terrorise the Palestinians into submission?
Against that backdrop, could anyone blame us for asserting that the American rejection of Arab calls for an international debate to define "terrorism" and "terrorists" was based on its concern that its protege and "strategic partner" in the Middle East would be the first to be indicted?
We do not imply that the Sept. 11 attacks in the US were anything but terrorism. We have been exposed to terror and terrorism and believe that we, as part of the international community, have the moral responsibility to ensure that actions similar to the Sept. 11 attacks are never repeated anywhere in the world. We have to and we will do our share to render what it takes to ensure that the world is safe from such heinous, unjustiable, undefendable, unpardonable and dastardly attacks.
However, amid the shocking thoughts provoked by the attacks, the Arab and Islamic worlds cannot but feel angry and frustrated over the selective approach that applies different parameters to terrorism.
No matter whatever arguments some might put up, it is clear to us that the Israeli actions against Palestinians are state-sponsored terrorism. The marked difference, if you will, is that Israel has a mighty army backed by some of the most advanced hi-tech weapons at its disposal to terrorise the Palestinians under its control and is assured of immunity by its superpower friend from international punishment.
The literal definition of a "terrorist" is simple and straight: "A person who uses or favours violent and intimidating methods of coercing a government or community."
The immediate question is: Is Israel not using "violent and intimidating methods" to coerce the Palestinian community? Doesn't it mean that Israel is a terrorist entity?
We wish if the reality was as simple as that to allow the acceptance of that definition in the context of Israel and the Palestinian community it oppresses through nothing but sheer terror: Summary killings and maimings, detentions, torture, and free use of fighter planes, helicopter gunships, rockets, missiles and tanks against unarmed civilians whose only fault is their refusal to accept Israel's occupation their homeland and domination of their life.
Does the fact that Israel is a country and has a recognised government exclude it from being classified as terrorist? Well, it does not and should not, but its status as an ally and "strategic partner" of the US does indeed offer the country the unpredecented and unparalled luxury of the freedom to continue to practise terrorism without fear of censure or punishment.
That is the source for all the Arab and Muslim criticism, warnings, cautions and demands levelled at the US as Washington plots its next moves in its international war against terrorism.
Obviously, the US has no intention whatsover even to "dignify" the Arab demand that the same parameters be used in the case of Israel. That is perhaps we have not heard any public comment whatsover from the US on the demand.
Although the US would never admit it, we all know that there would not have been anything called the Arab-Israeli peace process had it not been for the Gulf war of 1991 that eliminated Iraq as a strong military challenge to Israel, divided the Arabs, weakened the Palestinians and brought some of the Arab states more into the US fold and sphere of influence.
That is not to say that it was the whole objective of the military assault against Iraq, but it was one of the strongest offshoots of the war and the resulting fragmentation of the Arab World.
Washington tends to describe the peace process launched in 1991 as the fruit of its "relentless" diplomacy. But we know differently - that the elements of the regional equation suited the Israeli objective of being in a position to dictate the terms for peace, as it happened after nine years of dilly dallying, and that was why the peace process could be launched at all.
At this critical juncture in time, the Arab World would like to know whether and how the US would deny its endorsement of Israel's state-sponsored terrorism and maintain that it is neutral in the Middle East.
We would also like to know at what it would take for the US to admit in public that Israel should figure high in the list of "international terrorists" and Washington, as the leader of the free world, should have adopted actions to contain the Israeli terrorism decades ago.
We would also like to know what exactly that admission will lead to and whether the rekindled unofficial debate on terrorism would ever lead to a light at the end of the tunnel for the Palestinians.
Friday, February 15, 2002
American unilateralism
By declaring Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of
evil," US President George W Bush appears to have
taken in more that Washington could chew by espousing
unilateralism that has alienated his European allies.
Since his state of the union address on Jan.29, Bush
has faced a barrage of criticism from Europeans, many
of whom outrightly rejected his clear pointer that the
next targets in the US-led war against terrorism were
Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang. They have warned that
Washington should not expect them to remain partners
in the coalition that backed the US campaign in
Afghanistan.
It was indeed clear for some time now that Bush would
be targeting Iraq and others in the US-led drive
against terrorism, particularly after he clarified
that he defined all countries which develop weapons of
mass destruction as supporters of terrorism. And his
Jan. 29 speech has come to be known was the Bush
doctrine, which is now challenged by his European
allies. And they have good reasons too.
In the case of Iraq, US intelligence agencies tried
hard but in vain to establish a link between Baghdad
and the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and
Washington. Reports that the man said to have been the
leader of the attacks had met with an Iraqi diplomat
in Eastern Europe in early 2001 have come to naught in
helping Washington establish a case against Baghdad.
That the US was paving the way for expanding the war
against terrorism was made clear in October when
Washington formally notified the United Nations that
it might target other countries in the war against
terrorism and senior Bush administration officials
mentioned Iraq as a potential target.
Since then, Arab leaders and the Arab League itself
have issued repeated warnings to the US against
launching military operations against Iraq or any
other Arab country in the name of the war against
terrorism.
Joining them were European leaders who had then used
diplomatic language to dissuade Washington from
pursuing a military assault against Iraq.
But last week, they were unambiguous, saying they want
nothing to do with such a course of action.
European Commission pokesman Gunnar Weigand said the
European Union leaders "do not agree with that kind of
policy."
While the EU shared American concerns over global
issues such as human rights, terrorism and
proliferation of weapons, the bloc does not "share is
the policy desired to achieve these objectives. We
believe that engagement and rapprochement...should be
used to achieve these aims."
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, called
on Washington to act multilaterally and not as a
"global unilateralist."
Surprisingly Germany had been in the forefront of
opposing military action against Iraq, and it left
nothing unsaid.
"We Europeans warn against it," said German Deputy
Foreign Minister Ludger Vollmer. "There is no
indication, no proof that Iraq is involved in the
terrorism we have been talking about for the last few
months... this terror argument cannot be used to
legitimise old enmities."
Vollmer could not have been more clear in referring to
the growing belief that the "axis of evil" charge is
the forerunner of a US drive to settle political
scores by destablising Iraq and indirectly topple the
regime of Saddam Hussein — an objective the US failed
to achieve in the 1991 Gulf war.
There is also a strong vein of thought in Europe, and
indeed in the Arab World, that the US focus on Iran as
a potential target in the war against terrorism has
more to do with Israeli interests than US policy and
the campagin against terror.
There is little doubt that Bush would find it
difficult to enlist European partners in military
action against Iraq or Iran.
Most EU member countries agree that the best approach
to solving the problem, if any at all, is through
dialogue in line with the European bloc's policy of
engaging with countries rather than seeking to isolate
them.
Even in Britain, the staunchest US ally in Europe, the
"axis of evil" comment has drawn dismay. Home
Secretary Jack Straw said the Bush assertion was aimed
at the American elecotrate ahead of the forthcoming
congressional elections and could not be part of a
military strategy.
Washington's frustration over the British stand was
spelt out by National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice. "This is not about American politics, and I
assume that when the British government speaks about
foreign policy, it's not about British politics," she
retorted to Straw.
But it should be dawning on Washington that it would
not be an easy go to secure international endorsement
of military action against Iraq or Iran.
Many countries, mindful of the oil reserves and trade
potential of the two countries, have set up strong
relations with them; in Iraq's case, business worth
tens of billions is waiting for an end to the
11-year-old UN sanctions against Baghdad. The
sanctions are already fraying, and it is only a matter
of time before few governments would think twice about
doing business with Iraq even if in violation of the
sanctions.
Indeed, there is strong European suspicion that it is
not simply "old enmities" at play in the US strategy
towards Iraq.
The Europeans are aware that Washington is unhappy
that they have made inroads and set up ground to do
post-sanctions trade with Iraq while American
businesses were restrained by the law of their country
from pursuing the same goal.
"By launching military action against Iraq, the US
would precipitate a major crisis that would upset the
European apple cart and bring new rules into play for
doing business with Iraq," commented an Asian
diplomat. "That would be the end of years of European
efforts to gain a firm foothold in that country."
If any consolation, there is consensus across the
Atlantic: Military action against Iraq would not be
limited to a few missile strikes or bombings against
strategic installations in that country –– it would
aim at replacing the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad,
and this would not be an easy task at all without
European support.
The European case against the US targeting Iran is
even stronger.
Europe has been closely observing the political
tug-of-war between the (relatively) moderate regime of
President Mohmmed Khatami and the conservative
theocratic establishment in Iran since 1997. They have
seen a slow shift to moderation in Tehran under
Khatami's leadership, and they would like to encourage
it.
Europeans are indeed aware of the clout that the
Iranian religious establishment wields, and they have
recognised that they should not expect miracles from
Khatami.
Many European diplomats believe that even if the
Israeli charge was true that Iran was behind a
recently intercepted arms shipment in the Red Sea, the
real "culprit" was not the Khatami government but
hardline elements in the clerical establishment in
Tehran.
In any event, the Europeans remain convinced that the
key to dealing with Iran is encouragement for the
"moderate" camp in Tehran rather than confrontation
over the US charge that Iran had links with Osama Bin
Laden's Al Qaeda group.
Europe recognises that Al Qaeda fighters fleeing US
forces in the Afghan war could have sneaked across the
border to Iran, but they believe Tehran should not be
seen as an Al Qaeda supporter.
They see the Iranian refusal to co-operate with the US
in countering Al Qaeda as stemming from Tehran's
conviction that such moves would allow Washignton to
exploit the situation and make intelligence inroads in
Iran.
"Tehran prefers to deal with the Al Qaeda problem, if
there is one, on its own," said a European diplomat.
"It wants no US role in the affair and is determined
to keep the US out. Sharing intelligence information
with the US is the last thing it wants to do."
Some speculate that the US frustration over its
failure to mend fences with Iran despite repeated
overtures to Tehran is also behind the hostility.
Washington has also charged that Iran was "meddling"
in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, an allegation
that both Tehran and Kabul have denied.
There is a strong Israeli angle to the US-Iran
equation, and Bush's "tough" posture might also have
to do with his desire to do away with a constant
source of "concern" for the US protege in the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underlined it when
he said last week that "Iran calls for the destruction
of the state of Israel and elimination of the Jewish
people. That's why it was so important for President
Bush to name them as sponsors of terror."
It is no secret that Israel has seen in Iran a
potential threat in the event of a regional
conflagration. Israel has for long watched with
apprehension Iran aquiring and developing long-range
missiles and Tehran's nuclear programme.
Suggestions have remained alive for several years that
Israel might even launch "pre-emptive" strikes against
Iran's nuclear installations, which Tehran says are
intended for peaceful purposes, and other military
facilities.
Iran is a staunch supporter of the Lebanese resistance
movement Hizbollah, which managed to force Israel to
withdraw from parts of Lebanese territory in mid-2000
after many years of fighting the Israeli army and its
proxy forces in southern Lebanon.
Sharon has already picked up the fight against Iraq
and Iran. One of the items on the agenda for talks
between Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
in Washington on Thursday was expected to be Israel's
"fears" of the "threats" posed by Iraq and Iran to the
Jewish state.
Aides have said that Sharon would be lobbying Bush for
unspecified American action against Iran and iraq.
Russia has come out fighting from Iran's corner
against the US charge against Tehran.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Sunday
that there was no evidence that Iran had connections
with terrorist organisations. He accused the US of
following double standards.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine warned that the
interests of the rest of the world were under threat
from a "simplistic" US foreign policy that emerged
after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Today we are threatened
by a simplism that reduces all the problems of the
world to the struggle against terrorism, and is not
properly thought through," said Vedrine.
Vedrine expressed criticism of the Bush doctrine, a
decision by Washington to subordinate all foreign
policy decisions to the needs of the "war against
terrorism," and of unilateralism in general.
He accused the US of acting "unilaterally, without
consulting others, taking decisions based on its own
view of the world and its own interests ... refusing
any multilateral negotiation that could limit their
decision-making, sovereignty and freedom of action."
According to Vedrine, said Europe also had a duty to
stand up to the US "hyper-power" over the
globalisation of the free market
French Defence Minister Alain Richard said France
would not follow Bush's example in vastly increasing
defence spending to cope with the new threats of the
post-Sept. 11 world.
"We do not share the analysis expressed by President
Bush on the threats to international peace and
security," he told the French parliament.
Against such opposition from the powerful European
bloc, will Bush go it alone?
There are some who suggest he might.
The technology that the US used in the Afghan war
established that the sole superpower
doesn't need its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(Nato) partners "to fight a distant war, as it
demonstrated in Afghanistan, where it basically won
alone, except for small but important contributions
from Britain, Canada and Australia," Thomas Friedman
wrote in the Guardian.
Friedman hammered home an emerging scenario where the
US might simply decide its interests were good enough
to launch military action wherever it found fit to do
so so -- with or without is Nato partners.
"We are increasingly heading for a military apartheid
within Nato: America will be the chef who decides the
menu and cooks all the great meals, and the Nato
allies will be the bus boys who stay around and clean
up the mess and keep the peace - indefinitely,"
according to Friedman.
_______________
evil," US President George W Bush appears to have
taken in more that Washington could chew by espousing
unilateralism that has alienated his European allies.
Since his state of the union address on Jan.29, Bush
has faced a barrage of criticism from Europeans, many
of whom outrightly rejected his clear pointer that the
next targets in the US-led war against terrorism were
Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang. They have warned that
Washington should not expect them to remain partners
in the coalition that backed the US campaign in
Afghanistan.
It was indeed clear for some time now that Bush would
be targeting Iraq and others in the US-led drive
against terrorism, particularly after he clarified
that he defined all countries which develop weapons of
mass destruction as supporters of terrorism. And his
Jan. 29 speech has come to be known was the Bush
doctrine, which is now challenged by his European
allies. And they have good reasons too.
In the case of Iraq, US intelligence agencies tried
hard but in vain to establish a link between Baghdad
and the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and
Washington. Reports that the man said to have been the
leader of the attacks had met with an Iraqi diplomat
in Eastern Europe in early 2001 have come to naught in
helping Washington establish a case against Baghdad.
That the US was paving the way for expanding the war
against terrorism was made clear in October when
Washington formally notified the United Nations that
it might target other countries in the war against
terrorism and senior Bush administration officials
mentioned Iraq as a potential target.
Since then, Arab leaders and the Arab League itself
have issued repeated warnings to the US against
launching military operations against Iraq or any
other Arab country in the name of the war against
terrorism.
Joining them were European leaders who had then used
diplomatic language to dissuade Washington from
pursuing a military assault against Iraq.
But last week, they were unambiguous, saying they want
nothing to do with such a course of action.
European Commission pokesman Gunnar Weigand said the
European Union leaders "do not agree with that kind of
policy."
While the EU shared American concerns over global
issues such as human rights, terrorism and
proliferation of weapons, the bloc does not "share is
the policy desired to achieve these objectives. We
believe that engagement and rapprochement...should be
used to achieve these aims."
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, called
on Washington to act multilaterally and not as a
"global unilateralist."
Surprisingly Germany had been in the forefront of
opposing military action against Iraq, and it left
nothing unsaid.
"We Europeans warn against it," said German Deputy
Foreign Minister Ludger Vollmer. "There is no
indication, no proof that Iraq is involved in the
terrorism we have been talking about for the last few
months... this terror argument cannot be used to
legitimise old enmities."
Vollmer could not have been more clear in referring to
the growing belief that the "axis of evil" charge is
the forerunner of a US drive to settle political
scores by destablising Iraq and indirectly topple the
regime of Saddam Hussein — an objective the US failed
to achieve in the 1991 Gulf war.
There is also a strong vein of thought in Europe, and
indeed in the Arab World, that the US focus on Iran as
a potential target in the war against terrorism has
more to do with Israeli interests than US policy and
the campagin against terror.
There is little doubt that Bush would find it
difficult to enlist European partners in military
action against Iraq or Iran.
Most EU member countries agree that the best approach
to solving the problem, if any at all, is through
dialogue in line with the European bloc's policy of
engaging with countries rather than seeking to isolate
them.
Even in Britain, the staunchest US ally in Europe, the
"axis of evil" comment has drawn dismay. Home
Secretary Jack Straw said the Bush assertion was aimed
at the American elecotrate ahead of the forthcoming
congressional elections and could not be part of a
military strategy.
Washington's frustration over the British stand was
spelt out by National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice. "This is not about American politics, and I
assume that when the British government speaks about
foreign policy, it's not about British politics," she
retorted to Straw.
But it should be dawning on Washington that it would
not be an easy go to secure international endorsement
of military action against Iraq or Iran.
Many countries, mindful of the oil reserves and trade
potential of the two countries, have set up strong
relations with them; in Iraq's case, business worth
tens of billions is waiting for an end to the
11-year-old UN sanctions against Baghdad. The
sanctions are already fraying, and it is only a matter
of time before few governments would think twice about
doing business with Iraq even if in violation of the
sanctions.
Indeed, there is strong European suspicion that it is
not simply "old enmities" at play in the US strategy
towards Iraq.
The Europeans are aware that Washington is unhappy
that they have made inroads and set up ground to do
post-sanctions trade with Iraq while American
businesses were restrained by the law of their country
from pursuing the same goal.
"By launching military action against Iraq, the US
would precipitate a major crisis that would upset the
European apple cart and bring new rules into play for
doing business with Iraq," commented an Asian
diplomat. "That would be the end of years of European
efforts to gain a firm foothold in that country."
If any consolation, there is consensus across the
Atlantic: Military action against Iraq would not be
limited to a few missile strikes or bombings against
strategic installations in that country –– it would
aim at replacing the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad,
and this would not be an easy task at all without
European support.
The European case against the US targeting Iran is
even stronger.
Europe has been closely observing the political
tug-of-war between the (relatively) moderate regime of
President Mohmmed Khatami and the conservative
theocratic establishment in Iran since 1997. They have
seen a slow shift to moderation in Tehran under
Khatami's leadership, and they would like to encourage
it.
Europeans are indeed aware of the clout that the
Iranian religious establishment wields, and they have
recognised that they should not expect miracles from
Khatami.
Many European diplomats believe that even if the
Israeli charge was true that Iran was behind a
recently intercepted arms shipment in the Red Sea, the
real "culprit" was not the Khatami government but
hardline elements in the clerical establishment in
Tehran.
In any event, the Europeans remain convinced that the
key to dealing with Iran is encouragement for the
"moderate" camp in Tehran rather than confrontation
over the US charge that Iran had links with Osama Bin
Laden's Al Qaeda group.
Europe recognises that Al Qaeda fighters fleeing US
forces in the Afghan war could have sneaked across the
border to Iran, but they believe Tehran should not be
seen as an Al Qaeda supporter.
They see the Iranian refusal to co-operate with the US
in countering Al Qaeda as stemming from Tehran's
conviction that such moves would allow Washignton to
exploit the situation and make intelligence inroads in
Iran.
"Tehran prefers to deal with the Al Qaeda problem, if
there is one, on its own," said a European diplomat.
"It wants no US role in the affair and is determined
to keep the US out. Sharing intelligence information
with the US is the last thing it wants to do."
Some speculate that the US frustration over its
failure to mend fences with Iran despite repeated
overtures to Tehran is also behind the hostility.
Washington has also charged that Iran was "meddling"
in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, an allegation
that both Tehran and Kabul have denied.
There is a strong Israeli angle to the US-Iran
equation, and Bush's "tough" posture might also have
to do with his desire to do away with a constant
source of "concern" for the US protege in the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underlined it when
he said last week that "Iran calls for the destruction
of the state of Israel and elimination of the Jewish
people. That's why it was so important for President
Bush to name them as sponsors of terror."
It is no secret that Israel has seen in Iran a
potential threat in the event of a regional
conflagration. Israel has for long watched with
apprehension Iran aquiring and developing long-range
missiles and Tehran's nuclear programme.
Suggestions have remained alive for several years that
Israel might even launch "pre-emptive" strikes against
Iran's nuclear installations, which Tehran says are
intended for peaceful purposes, and other military
facilities.
Iran is a staunch supporter of the Lebanese resistance
movement Hizbollah, which managed to force Israel to
withdraw from parts of Lebanese territory in mid-2000
after many years of fighting the Israeli army and its
proxy forces in southern Lebanon.
Sharon has already picked up the fight against Iraq
and Iran. One of the items on the agenda for talks
between Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
in Washington on Thursday was expected to be Israel's
"fears" of the "threats" posed by Iraq and Iran to the
Jewish state.
Aides have said that Sharon would be lobbying Bush for
unspecified American action against Iran and iraq.
Russia has come out fighting from Iran's corner
against the US charge against Tehran.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Sunday
that there was no evidence that Iran had connections
with terrorist organisations. He accused the US of
following double standards.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine warned that the
interests of the rest of the world were under threat
from a "simplistic" US foreign policy that emerged
after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Today we are threatened
by a simplism that reduces all the problems of the
world to the struggle against terrorism, and is not
properly thought through," said Vedrine.
Vedrine expressed criticism of the Bush doctrine, a
decision by Washington to subordinate all foreign
policy decisions to the needs of the "war against
terrorism," and of unilateralism in general.
He accused the US of acting "unilaterally, without
consulting others, taking decisions based on its own
view of the world and its own interests ... refusing
any multilateral negotiation that could limit their
decision-making, sovereignty and freedom of action."
According to Vedrine, said Europe also had a duty to
stand up to the US "hyper-power" over the
globalisation of the free market
French Defence Minister Alain Richard said France
would not follow Bush's example in vastly increasing
defence spending to cope with the new threats of the
post-Sept. 11 world.
"We do not share the analysis expressed by President
Bush on the threats to international peace and
security," he told the French parliament.
Against such opposition from the powerful European
bloc, will Bush go it alone?
There are some who suggest he might.
The technology that the US used in the Afghan war
established that the sole superpower
doesn't need its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(Nato) partners "to fight a distant war, as it
demonstrated in Afghanistan, where it basically won
alone, except for small but important contributions
from Britain, Canada and Australia," Thomas Friedman
wrote in the Guardian.
Friedman hammered home an emerging scenario where the
US might simply decide its interests were good enough
to launch military action wherever it found fit to do
so so -- with or without is Nato partners.
"We are increasingly heading for a military apartheid
within Nato: America will be the chef who decides the
menu and cooks all the great meals, and the Nato
allies will be the bus boys who stay around and clean
up the mess and keep the peace - indefinitely,"
according to Friedman.
_______________
Tuesday, February 12, 2002
Europe faces Israeli wrath
February 17 2002
PV Vivekanand
THE EUROPEANS should be feeling like being hit by a sledgehammer. That is the intensity of the Israeli media attacks on them, apparently triggered by two reasons: First they dared to come up with an initiative to break the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock and then they voiced opposition to the US plan to target Iraq and Iran in the war against terrorism.
Choice words and phrases in the Israeli media include "European foreign policy.... has begun to resemble a schoolyard squabble," "a childish desire to show independence from the United States," "impotence in Bosnia and Kosovo" and "a bizarre coalition of sanctimonious politicians, smarmy intellectuals, graying holdovers from 1968."
The Israeli comments do of course exclude Britain from the summary rejection of the European Union approach to the Israeli-Palestinian problem since Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw have aligned themselves behind US President George W. Bush. If anything, Israel seems to consider the British approach as a counterweight to the EU's quest to involve itself as a key player in the politics of peace-making in the Middle East.
The tone of the comments indicates that the Israelis are worried that the Europeans have finally decided to do way with the constraints imposed on them against assuming an influential political role in the Middle East. The prospect should indeed be worrying for Israel since Europe represents the trade and economic lifeline for the Jewish state, and it is a leverage that the Europeans could use against it if there exists the political will among European leaders and politician.
Apart from that, it is as if Israel has appointed itself as the defender of the US, whose transatlantic relations are being tested as a result of European opposition to Washington's declared plans to expand the war against terrorism.
For that matter, the Europeans do not need any defenders either; but the case in point is a classic example of how they could come under pressure from the only "civilised" country in the region that, however, depends on Europe for the bulk of its economic activities.
It is equally interesting that Israel seems to be telling Europe what it could do and what it could not by pointedly referring to the European Parliament's invitation to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to address the assembly.
It doesn't need an in-depth analysis of the European Union initiative to break the deadlock in the (defunct) peace process or the precise points that Israel has found fit to use to shoot down the initiative. Suffice it is to say that as far as Israel is concerned nothing good could come out of Europe in the political context since the Europeans are sympathetic to the Palestinians.
For decades now, Israel, through using its US card, has prevented the Europeans from having any say in Middle East peacemaking. It is all the more important for Israel to push them back now, given the worsening crisis in Palestine speeded along by Israel's military brutality and one-track mind that is bent upon subduing Palestinian resistance. As such, it is has rejected out of hand the European plan for the declaration of a Palestinian state and Palestinian elections to wipe away the Israeli-created "delegitimisation" of the Palestinian National Authority. The Israeli media have also described the position of France — which formulated the initiative — as "total capitulation to terrorism."
Equally strong is the attack on European opposition to the US plans to target Iraq and Iran.
"European leaders, despite their pretense at unity, have no power or policy of their own but are terminally jealous of America, which has both," says an Israeli commentator with an advise that European statesmen, "rather than preaching to America in order to be different, would do better to cultivate a sense of modesty befitting their own real role in world affairs."
We don't know how European government leaders and politicians are reacting to such attacks, but we do know one thing: Israel is trying to scare the Europeans away from approaching the Middle East with an objective proposal. It also wants to help the US, its "strategic partner," to counter European criticism of what Europe sees as Washington's unilateral approach emerging from the "axis of evil" statement by President Bush.
Beyond that, however, is Israel's desire to eliminate what it considers as a lingering threat from Iraq and the potential of Iran joining a regional conflagration sparked by the growing Arab and Muslim fury and frustration over Israel's immunity against taking whatever action it finds fit to take against the Palestinians.
Of course, it is not the first time that the Europeans have incurred Israel's wrath. At every point wherever Europe has come out with any word or action that casts the slightest question over Israeli deeds and ambitions in the region, it received a kick in the teeth.
But this time around, the situation is different in that the crisis in the Middle East is worsening and courageous initiatives are required to pre-empt the realisation of Israel's objective of eliminating Palestinian resistance. By right and definition, we should have expected the US, the sole superpower, to take the lead and guide all parties involved to a fair and just solution to the problem. Since the US itself appears to have been restrained from doing so by the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington, the next best bet is Europe.
However, our source of concern is whether Europe would indeed be scared into abandoning its moves and withdraw to the sidelines to its previous status as a silent observer and bankroller, ready to step in with cash whenever it is asked to do so.
PV Vivekanand
THE EUROPEANS should be feeling like being hit by a sledgehammer. That is the intensity of the Israeli media attacks on them, apparently triggered by two reasons: First they dared to come up with an initiative to break the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock and then they voiced opposition to the US plan to target Iraq and Iran in the war against terrorism.
Choice words and phrases in the Israeli media include "European foreign policy.... has begun to resemble a schoolyard squabble," "a childish desire to show independence from the United States," "impotence in Bosnia and Kosovo" and "a bizarre coalition of sanctimonious politicians, smarmy intellectuals, graying holdovers from 1968."
The Israeli comments do of course exclude Britain from the summary rejection of the European Union approach to the Israeli-Palestinian problem since Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw have aligned themselves behind US President George W. Bush. If anything, Israel seems to consider the British approach as a counterweight to the EU's quest to involve itself as a key player in the politics of peace-making in the Middle East.
The tone of the comments indicates that the Israelis are worried that the Europeans have finally decided to do way with the constraints imposed on them against assuming an influential political role in the Middle East. The prospect should indeed be worrying for Israel since Europe represents the trade and economic lifeline for the Jewish state, and it is a leverage that the Europeans could use against it if there exists the political will among European leaders and politician.
Apart from that, it is as if Israel has appointed itself as the defender of the US, whose transatlantic relations are being tested as a result of European opposition to Washington's declared plans to expand the war against terrorism.
For that matter, the Europeans do not need any defenders either; but the case in point is a classic example of how they could come under pressure from the only "civilised" country in the region that, however, depends on Europe for the bulk of its economic activities.
It is equally interesting that Israel seems to be telling Europe what it could do and what it could not by pointedly referring to the European Parliament's invitation to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to address the assembly.
It doesn't need an in-depth analysis of the European Union initiative to break the deadlock in the (defunct) peace process or the precise points that Israel has found fit to use to shoot down the initiative. Suffice it is to say that as far as Israel is concerned nothing good could come out of Europe in the political context since the Europeans are sympathetic to the Palestinians.
For decades now, Israel, through using its US card, has prevented the Europeans from having any say in Middle East peacemaking. It is all the more important for Israel to push them back now, given the worsening crisis in Palestine speeded along by Israel's military brutality and one-track mind that is bent upon subduing Palestinian resistance. As such, it is has rejected out of hand the European plan for the declaration of a Palestinian state and Palestinian elections to wipe away the Israeli-created "delegitimisation" of the Palestinian National Authority. The Israeli media have also described the position of France — which formulated the initiative — as "total capitulation to terrorism."
Equally strong is the attack on European opposition to the US plans to target Iraq and Iran.
"European leaders, despite their pretense at unity, have no power or policy of their own but are terminally jealous of America, which has both," says an Israeli commentator with an advise that European statesmen, "rather than preaching to America in order to be different, would do better to cultivate a sense of modesty befitting their own real role in world affairs."
We don't know how European government leaders and politicians are reacting to such attacks, but we do know one thing: Israel is trying to scare the Europeans away from approaching the Middle East with an objective proposal. It also wants to help the US, its "strategic partner," to counter European criticism of what Europe sees as Washington's unilateral approach emerging from the "axis of evil" statement by President Bush.
Beyond that, however, is Israel's desire to eliminate what it considers as a lingering threat from Iraq and the potential of Iran joining a regional conflagration sparked by the growing Arab and Muslim fury and frustration over Israel's immunity against taking whatever action it finds fit to take against the Palestinians.
Of course, it is not the first time that the Europeans have incurred Israel's wrath. At every point wherever Europe has come out with any word or action that casts the slightest question over Israeli deeds and ambitions in the region, it received a kick in the teeth.
But this time around, the situation is different in that the crisis in the Middle East is worsening and courageous initiatives are required to pre-empt the realisation of Israel's objective of eliminating Palestinian resistance. By right and definition, we should have expected the US, the sole superpower, to take the lead and guide all parties involved to a fair and just solution to the problem. Since the US itself appears to have been restrained from doing so by the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington, the next best bet is Europe.
However, our source of concern is whether Europe would indeed be scared into abandoning its moves and withdraw to the sidelines to its previous status as a silent observer and bankroller, ready to step in with cash whenever it is asked to do so.
Saturday, February 02, 2002
Bush's words of mass deception
by pv vivekanand
AFTER failing to establish a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden -- and by extension proving an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks in the US -- President George W. Bush is citing charges that Baghdad is continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction as his reason to launch military action aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein.
But how authentic is the charge?
On the face of it, the international community is being told to accept that Iraq has eluded the most advanced satellite surveillance -- with equipment that could arguably trace the contours of a grain of wheat on the ground -- and the strictest-ever air-sea-land-blockade backed by intense interceptions and inspection of anything and everything crossing its border -- and managed to resume its clandestine weapons programme.
The assertion is based on an argument that the departure of UN inspectors -- often wrongly described as their expulsion by Iraq -- in late 1998 allowed Baghdad to pick where it had left off following the destruction of most of its weapons of mass destruction under the UN verification and destruction programme.
A review of the UN programme would raise serious questions about the US charge against Baghdad.
It was known that Baghdad and the UN mission never got on well and there were always skirmishes, both diplomatic and otherwise.
Iraq and the UN inspection teams have had many standoffs, some of them resulting from the personal postures adopted by inspectors and others because the Iraqis tried to prevent vital papers on their country's weapons programme as well as intelligence documents unrelated to arms inspections being removed by the UN officials.
"We hated each other's guts," as a former member of the UN team put it.
It had become clear that Iraq had a much larger weapon programme than was known to the international community when the UN inspectors launched their mission in 1991 as the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM).
It took several years before UNSCOM managed to unravel the programme, with the Iraqis revealing information in bits and pieces and only when they were cornered with solid evidence, and it became a cat-and-mouse game.
It was not until late 1995 that the UN managed to get a clear picture of Iraq's military programmes and that came from Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who "defected" to Jordan in August of that year.
Kamel, who served as Iraq's defence minister and head of the country's military industry commission, was believed to have been debriefed not only by the then UNSCOM chairman, Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, but also by American and European intelligence agencies.
At that time Kamel's "defection" and revelations about his country's weapons programmes were seen as Baghdad's opportunity to come clean with its secrets to UNSCOM. In fact, Baghdad blamed Kamel for having kept the secrets for himself and handed over several cupboards full of files that it said were stashed away by the defector at his farmhouse outside Baghdad.
The information gained from those files represented a key pillar of UNSCOM strategy, and it was believed that the UN mission had managed to unearth more than 90 per cent of Iraq's weapon programmes.
Shortly before the inspections came to a premature end prompted by Iraq's insistence that a clear blueprint be given for what was expected of it before the sweeping UN sanctions imposed on it in 1990 are lifted and Washington's refusal to meet the demand, UNSCOM officials had asserted that the bulk of their work was over although they were seeking answers to some vital questions, and those questions are now being dusted off and presented as the reasons for the charges against Iraq.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which followed an independent verification programme, said that it had located Iraq's nuclear programme and had eliminated the country's nuclear material and equipment as well as the ability to renew them. But when the IAEA tried to close the "nuclear file," the US intervened it and aborted the move.
On the "missiles" file, Richard Butler, who succeeded Ekeus as UNSCOM chairman, said in July/August 1997 that the UN team had accounted for all but less than 12 long-range Scud missiles that Iraq was known to have bought from the then Soviet Union and modified.
He also said that the bulk of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons were destroyed but that the UN team had not received all answers.
"UNSCOM did a fantastic job," he said. "You have to understand that when the Gulf war was ended there was revealed an awesome array of weapons of mass destruction: almost a nuclear bomb, long-range missiles, chemical, biological, all of the weapons of mass destruction. And we, with Iraq, got hold of most of it, got an account of it or got rid of it."
Such comments had also come from several other key members of the UN mission as well as American and international military experts who had access to classified information collected by UNSCOM.
Seen against the backdrop of such assertions, a look at the claims and assertions that Iraq continues to build weapons of mass destruction -- the reason that Bush cites for his plans to launch military action aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein -- unveils a contradiction.
The key question is: With all entry points into Iraq under close surveillance and a ban on all commercial and military planes in and out of the country, how is it possible that Baghdad continued to develop weapons of mass destruction in the absence of the UN inspectors since late 1998?
In an appearance before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Butler asserted that Iraq had extensive chemical and biological weapons programmes and that there is evidence it has stepped up it alleged nuclear programmes in recent years.
Is the world then to believe that Iraq managed to get equipment and material past the American armada patrolling the seas and checking anything and everything heading for Iraq, and indeed "suspect" material headed for Iraq's neighbours that could be sent to Iraq, and renewed its weapons programme?
It has been 12 years since the sweeping trade embargo was imposed on Iraq.
Isn't it not fair to anyone to expect that the enforcers of the sanctions would have perfected their art?
Almost every vessel, small or big, is inspected before it docks in Iraq or anywhere with access to Iraq. American intelligence agents are present in all neighbours of Iraq -- although to a lesser extent in Iran -- to ensure that no "contraband" material enters the country; nothing beyond food and medicine and related items approved under the UN's oil-for-food programme is allowed into the country. Any item which could have slightest "military use" is blocked from entering Iraq.
An example is caustic soda, a key element in cleaning and washing of dairy equipment. It could also be used in production of chemical weapons, according to experts.
Since the day the sanction and verification regime was put into place, no consignment of caustic soda has been allowed into Iraq, and efforts by Jordan-based exporters to send the material to Iraq across the border -- presumably for legitimate purposes -- have been repeatedly thwarted.
That is only an indication of the effectiveness of the blockade, and it is difficult to see how the Iraqis managed to lay their hands of components of chemical weapons.
However, that is not to say that Iraq could not have done it. Then again, reports from Washington and London indicate that military generals on both sides of the Atlantic are not really convinced that Iraq had developed weapons as alleged or that poses a real threat to the region. Such scepticism has been voiced by officers who should be in a position to have access to classified and top secret information on Iraq's military capabilities as a key pillar of any strategy to launch a war on that country.
Some of the allegations are also based on accounts by Iraqi defectors, both identified and unidentified. However, the credibility and authenticity of such accounts are brought under question when considering that almost all the "defectors" are produced and paraded by Iraqi dissident groups which have a vested interest in convincing the world that Baghdad is evil.
In some cases, it has also been found that the defectors had left Iraq around the same time the UN inspections were halted and they were making claims linked to the period after their departure from the country.
However, regardless of all reasonings and logic based on available facts that expose the hollowness of the American argument for striking at Iraq, the Bush administration is dead bent upon carrying out their designs in the region and Saddam Hussein has no room in their strategy.
'Spying' charges
AS was expected sooner or later, the Swedish diplomat who headed the UN arms inspection programme in Iraq until 1997 has turned around and extended implicit endorsement of Baghdad's assertion that the inspections were mostly a smokescreen for American intelligence activities in the country.
Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, who chaired UNSCOM since its creation in 1991 until he quit in 1997, affirmed in public comments this week that some of his team members were obviously engaged in work unrelated to weapon inspections.
In comments carried by Swedish radio, Ekeus said the US and other powers had exploited UN teams in Iraq for their own political ends, including monitoring President Saddam Hussein's movements and that, at times, crises were created that could possibly form the basis for military action.
"There is no doubt that the Americans wanted to influence the inspections to further certain fundamental US interests," Ekeus said in his first affirmation that he was aware of what was going on.
That partly vindicates Baghdad's accusations, particularly that Ekeus was one of the harshest critics of Iraq while he headed UNSCOM and thereafter until this week's comments.
Indeed, one of the key arguments Iraq is putting up against the US demand for renewed inspections of Baghdad's alleged programmes of producing weapons of mass destruction is the record that previous inspectors had spied on the country.
It is not a new position and some of those who served in the UN mission for verification of arms in Iraq until it was stopped in late 1998 had admitted in public that some of their colleagues were intelligence agents rather than arms experts.
In a statement that went largely unnoticed or played down deliberately or otherwise, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said in mid-1998 -that many of the UN inspectors appeared unaware of what they were supposed do in the realm of arms inspections and Iraqi officers assigned to working with them found a marked ignorance among them of technical issues related to weapons of mass destruction.
Ironically, it had also been reported that some of the inspectors were reporting directly to Israel with or without US knowledge.
In fact, it was Aziz's statement that enraged Australian diplomat Butler, who assumed charge of the UN inspections as successor to Ekeus in mid-1997, and led to a course of events that culminated in the UN decision to withdraw the inspectors ahead of US-British military strikes against Iraq in December 1998.
Obviously Butler was counting on American military strikes against Iraq everytime he reported to the UN Security Council that Baghdad was not extending the level of co-operation he demanded. He was frustrated that his mission was not making any real headway and knew within a few months' time and several visits to Iraq that he would not get anywhere in his mission. The real reason for the failure was his high-handed approach and effort to dictate terms from his self-assumed position of strength stemming from American military powers to "punish" Iraq if it did not fall in line with his commands.
It was clear that Aziz's pointed comments angered Butler if only because he had hand-picked some of members of the inspection team and the Iraqi minister's accusation was seen as questioning his abilities.
He was visibly upset when he appeared before the press in Bahrain after his last visit to Baghdad during which Aziz had made the statement to the press.
When asked about a report that a British minister had said that Iraq was loading missiles with chemical warheads at the rate of one a day Butler said he was not aware of the report. In a report he presented to the UN Security Council two days after the Bahrain appearance he made no reference to any such Iraqi activity.
However, a few hours after he presented the report, he appeared before a pro-Israeli gathering in New York and accused Iraq of arming missiles with chemical weapons aimed at "destroying" Israel. He repeated that allegation in a New York Times interview shortly thereafter, leaving one wondering why he failed to include it in his official report to the Security Council, the very body which had assigned him the mission and to which he was supposed to report.
The impression one got was that Butler took his failure in Iraq too personal and waged a pointed campaign during which he spared no effort to build the case against Baghdad. And that culminated in the December 1998 military "punishment" for Iraq.
Scott Ritter, an American who served under Ekeus as well as Butler, has affirmed in public comments that some of his team members were obviously engaged in work unrelated to weapon inspections.
Against such a backdrop, it is only natural that Baghdad continues to see any renewed inspection as aimed at gathering more intelligence on the country in preparation for eventual action to eliminate the Saddam regime.
The Iraqi reaction to Ekeus's comments was also predictable.
An official spokesman called the Swedish diplomat's comments as "another important confirmation of many statements by Iraq, international parties and foreign personalities on the exploitation by the United States of UN arms inspectors to perform tasks that contradict their mandate as defined by Security Council resolutions on Iraq."
"The remarks come at a time when extremists in the US administration are trying to distract attention from Iraq's legitimate rights according to Security Council resolutions, in the forefront of them lifting of the unjust sanctions and respecting Iraq's sovereignty," he said.
"The new comments by Ekeus confirm Iraq's legitimate concerns expressed in the questions submitted to the UN secretary-general in talks on May 7," the spokesman added. Those questions sought answers whether US threats against Saddam were a breach of international law to whether US "spies" would serve on inspection teams.
Iraq is now demanding that the Security Council answer Iraq's queries as "a first move to stop the United States' exploitation of the apparatus of the United Nations for ends contradicting those stipulated in the council's resolutions and the UN Charter," said the spokesman.
AFTER failing to establish a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden -- and by extension proving an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks in the US -- President George W. Bush is citing charges that Baghdad is continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction as his reason to launch military action aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein.
But how authentic is the charge?
On the face of it, the international community is being told to accept that Iraq has eluded the most advanced satellite surveillance -- with equipment that could arguably trace the contours of a grain of wheat on the ground -- and the strictest-ever air-sea-land-blockade backed by intense interceptions and inspection of anything and everything crossing its border -- and managed to resume its clandestine weapons programme.
The assertion is based on an argument that the departure of UN inspectors -- often wrongly described as their expulsion by Iraq -- in late 1998 allowed Baghdad to pick where it had left off following the destruction of most of its weapons of mass destruction under the UN verification and destruction programme.
A review of the UN programme would raise serious questions about the US charge against Baghdad.
It was known that Baghdad and the UN mission never got on well and there were always skirmishes, both diplomatic and otherwise.
Iraq and the UN inspection teams have had many standoffs, some of them resulting from the personal postures adopted by inspectors and others because the Iraqis tried to prevent vital papers on their country's weapons programme as well as intelligence documents unrelated to arms inspections being removed by the UN officials.
"We hated each other's guts," as a former member of the UN team put it.
It had become clear that Iraq had a much larger weapon programme than was known to the international community when the UN inspectors launched their mission in 1991 as the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM).
It took several years before UNSCOM managed to unravel the programme, with the Iraqis revealing information in bits and pieces and only when they were cornered with solid evidence, and it became a cat-and-mouse game.
It was not until late 1995 that the UN managed to get a clear picture of Iraq's military programmes and that came from Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who "defected" to Jordan in August of that year.
Kamel, who served as Iraq's defence minister and head of the country's military industry commission, was believed to have been debriefed not only by the then UNSCOM chairman, Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, but also by American and European intelligence agencies.
At that time Kamel's "defection" and revelations about his country's weapons programmes were seen as Baghdad's opportunity to come clean with its secrets to UNSCOM. In fact, Baghdad blamed Kamel for having kept the secrets for himself and handed over several cupboards full of files that it said were stashed away by the defector at his farmhouse outside Baghdad.
The information gained from those files represented a key pillar of UNSCOM strategy, and it was believed that the UN mission had managed to unearth more than 90 per cent of Iraq's weapon programmes.
Shortly before the inspections came to a premature end prompted by Iraq's insistence that a clear blueprint be given for what was expected of it before the sweeping UN sanctions imposed on it in 1990 are lifted and Washington's refusal to meet the demand, UNSCOM officials had asserted that the bulk of their work was over although they were seeking answers to some vital questions, and those questions are now being dusted off and presented as the reasons for the charges against Iraq.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which followed an independent verification programme, said that it had located Iraq's nuclear programme and had eliminated the country's nuclear material and equipment as well as the ability to renew them. But when the IAEA tried to close the "nuclear file," the US intervened it and aborted the move.
On the "missiles" file, Richard Butler, who succeeded Ekeus as UNSCOM chairman, said in July/August 1997 that the UN team had accounted for all but less than 12 long-range Scud missiles that Iraq was known to have bought from the then Soviet Union and modified.
He also said that the bulk of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons were destroyed but that the UN team had not received all answers.
"UNSCOM did a fantastic job," he said. "You have to understand that when the Gulf war was ended there was revealed an awesome array of weapons of mass destruction: almost a nuclear bomb, long-range missiles, chemical, biological, all of the weapons of mass destruction. And we, with Iraq, got hold of most of it, got an account of it or got rid of it."
Such comments had also come from several other key members of the UN mission as well as American and international military experts who had access to classified information collected by UNSCOM.
Seen against the backdrop of such assertions, a look at the claims and assertions that Iraq continues to build weapons of mass destruction -- the reason that Bush cites for his plans to launch military action aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein -- unveils a contradiction.
The key question is: With all entry points into Iraq under close surveillance and a ban on all commercial and military planes in and out of the country, how is it possible that Baghdad continued to develop weapons of mass destruction in the absence of the UN inspectors since late 1998?
In an appearance before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Butler asserted that Iraq had extensive chemical and biological weapons programmes and that there is evidence it has stepped up it alleged nuclear programmes in recent years.
Is the world then to believe that Iraq managed to get equipment and material past the American armada patrolling the seas and checking anything and everything heading for Iraq, and indeed "suspect" material headed for Iraq's neighbours that could be sent to Iraq, and renewed its weapons programme?
It has been 12 years since the sweeping trade embargo was imposed on Iraq.
Isn't it not fair to anyone to expect that the enforcers of the sanctions would have perfected their art?
Almost every vessel, small or big, is inspected before it docks in Iraq or anywhere with access to Iraq. American intelligence agents are present in all neighbours of Iraq -- although to a lesser extent in Iran -- to ensure that no "contraband" material enters the country; nothing beyond food and medicine and related items approved under the UN's oil-for-food programme is allowed into the country. Any item which could have slightest "military use" is blocked from entering Iraq.
An example is caustic soda, a key element in cleaning and washing of dairy equipment. It could also be used in production of chemical weapons, according to experts.
Since the day the sanction and verification regime was put into place, no consignment of caustic soda has been allowed into Iraq, and efforts by Jordan-based exporters to send the material to Iraq across the border -- presumably for legitimate purposes -- have been repeatedly thwarted.
That is only an indication of the effectiveness of the blockade, and it is difficult to see how the Iraqis managed to lay their hands of components of chemical weapons.
However, that is not to say that Iraq could not have done it. Then again, reports from Washington and London indicate that military generals on both sides of the Atlantic are not really convinced that Iraq had developed weapons as alleged or that poses a real threat to the region. Such scepticism has been voiced by officers who should be in a position to have access to classified and top secret information on Iraq's military capabilities as a key pillar of any strategy to launch a war on that country.
Some of the allegations are also based on accounts by Iraqi defectors, both identified and unidentified. However, the credibility and authenticity of such accounts are brought under question when considering that almost all the "defectors" are produced and paraded by Iraqi dissident groups which have a vested interest in convincing the world that Baghdad is evil.
In some cases, it has also been found that the defectors had left Iraq around the same time the UN inspections were halted and they were making claims linked to the period after their departure from the country.
However, regardless of all reasonings and logic based on available facts that expose the hollowness of the American argument for striking at Iraq, the Bush administration is dead bent upon carrying out their designs in the region and Saddam Hussein has no room in their strategy.
'Spying' charges
AS was expected sooner or later, the Swedish diplomat who headed the UN arms inspection programme in Iraq until 1997 has turned around and extended implicit endorsement of Baghdad's assertion that the inspections were mostly a smokescreen for American intelligence activities in the country.
Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, who chaired UNSCOM since its creation in 1991 until he quit in 1997, affirmed in public comments this week that some of his team members were obviously engaged in work unrelated to weapon inspections.
In comments carried by Swedish radio, Ekeus said the US and other powers had exploited UN teams in Iraq for their own political ends, including monitoring President Saddam Hussein's movements and that, at times, crises were created that could possibly form the basis for military action.
"There is no doubt that the Americans wanted to influence the inspections to further certain fundamental US interests," Ekeus said in his first affirmation that he was aware of what was going on.
That partly vindicates Baghdad's accusations, particularly that Ekeus was one of the harshest critics of Iraq while he headed UNSCOM and thereafter until this week's comments.
Indeed, one of the key arguments Iraq is putting up against the US demand for renewed inspections of Baghdad's alleged programmes of producing weapons of mass destruction is the record that previous inspectors had spied on the country.
It is not a new position and some of those who served in the UN mission for verification of arms in Iraq until it was stopped in late 1998 had admitted in public that some of their colleagues were intelligence agents rather than arms experts.
In a statement that went largely unnoticed or played down deliberately or otherwise, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said in mid-1998 -that many of the UN inspectors appeared unaware of what they were supposed do in the realm of arms inspections and Iraqi officers assigned to working with them found a marked ignorance among them of technical issues related to weapons of mass destruction.
Ironically, it had also been reported that some of the inspectors were reporting directly to Israel with or without US knowledge.
In fact, it was Aziz's statement that enraged Australian diplomat Butler, who assumed charge of the UN inspections as successor to Ekeus in mid-1997, and led to a course of events that culminated in the UN decision to withdraw the inspectors ahead of US-British military strikes against Iraq in December 1998.
Obviously Butler was counting on American military strikes against Iraq everytime he reported to the UN Security Council that Baghdad was not extending the level of co-operation he demanded. He was frustrated that his mission was not making any real headway and knew within a few months' time and several visits to Iraq that he would not get anywhere in his mission. The real reason for the failure was his high-handed approach and effort to dictate terms from his self-assumed position of strength stemming from American military powers to "punish" Iraq if it did not fall in line with his commands.
It was clear that Aziz's pointed comments angered Butler if only because he had hand-picked some of members of the inspection team and the Iraqi minister's accusation was seen as questioning his abilities.
He was visibly upset when he appeared before the press in Bahrain after his last visit to Baghdad during which Aziz had made the statement to the press.
When asked about a report that a British minister had said that Iraq was loading missiles with chemical warheads at the rate of one a day Butler said he was not aware of the report. In a report he presented to the UN Security Council two days after the Bahrain appearance he made no reference to any such Iraqi activity.
However, a few hours after he presented the report, he appeared before a pro-Israeli gathering in New York and accused Iraq of arming missiles with chemical weapons aimed at "destroying" Israel. He repeated that allegation in a New York Times interview shortly thereafter, leaving one wondering why he failed to include it in his official report to the Security Council, the very body which had assigned him the mission and to which he was supposed to report.
The impression one got was that Butler took his failure in Iraq too personal and waged a pointed campaign during which he spared no effort to build the case against Baghdad. And that culminated in the December 1998 military "punishment" for Iraq.
Scott Ritter, an American who served under Ekeus as well as Butler, has affirmed in public comments that some of his team members were obviously engaged in work unrelated to weapon inspections.
Against such a backdrop, it is only natural that Baghdad continues to see any renewed inspection as aimed at gathering more intelligence on the country in preparation for eventual action to eliminate the Saddam regime.
The Iraqi reaction to Ekeus's comments was also predictable.
An official spokesman called the Swedish diplomat's comments as "another important confirmation of many statements by Iraq, international parties and foreign personalities on the exploitation by the United States of UN arms inspectors to perform tasks that contradict their mandate as defined by Security Council resolutions on Iraq."
"The remarks come at a time when extremists in the US administration are trying to distract attention from Iraq's legitimate rights according to Security Council resolutions, in the forefront of them lifting of the unjust sanctions and respecting Iraq's sovereignty," he said.
"The new comments by Ekeus confirm Iraq's legitimate concerns expressed in the questions submitted to the UN secretary-general in talks on May 7," the spokesman added. Those questions sought answers whether US threats against Saddam were a breach of international law to whether US "spies" would serve on inspection teams.
Iraq is now demanding that the Security Council answer Iraq's queries as "a first move to stop the United States' exploitation of the apparatus of the United Nations for ends contradicting those stipulated in the council's resolutions and the UN Charter," said the spokesman.
Friday, February 01, 2002
Lockerbie - the real story?
This was written on Feb. 1, 2002 as Libyan Abdel Baset Megrahi's appeal was being heard.
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IT SEEMS unlikely that the world would ever know the real story behind the 1988 mid-air bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie..
Several theories have been floating around about who was behind the blast, all of them with their own merits. These included suggestions that the bombing was Iranian revenge for the downing of an Iranian passenger airline in the Gulf by an American warship at the height of the Iran-Iraq war in the mid-80s; that it was the work of fearful Central Intelligence Agents (CIA) involved in illegal activities: that the blast was masterminded by anti-American elements who penetrated a CIA-endorsed
drug running operation; and that the target of the bombing was two Eastern European politicians.
A special court of Scottish judges is hearing the appeal of an alleged agent of Libyan intelligence sentenced to 20 years last year after he as convicted of planting the bomb that exploded in mid-air, killing all the 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground.
The general expectation was that the Libyan government would unveil "shocking" revelations of the mid-air blast during the appeal.
Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi had said that Libya had in its possession evidence that pointed the figure at the "real culprit" behind the bombing, which the US says was Libya's revenge for a 1985 US bombing of Libyan cities.
He asserted that when he produced the purported evidence, it would leave the trial judges with the choice of quitting their profession or committing suicide.
Two Libyans were indicted by the special court, which functions out of a former US military base, Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands, and the court acquitted one of them, Al Amin Khalia Fhima, but convicted and sentenced Abdel Baset Megrahi on circumstantial evidence.
The evidence was based on shreds of clothing that was used to wrap the radio cassette player which was rigged with the explosives that went off and brought down the Pan Am flight on its way from London to New York.
US and British forensic experts traced the clothing to a shop in the Mediterranean island of Malta and the shop's owner testified that Megrahi "could have been" the man who bought the clothes. Apart from that, there was no direct evidence linking Megrahi to the bombing.
Megrahi's appeal is based on an argument that the shopkeeper's testimony was not enough to convict him, and that the trial judges made several errors in arriving in their judgment found him guilty as charged.
During the trial, the defense had argued that the shopkeeper could not positively identify the purchaser as Megrahi and the description he provided fitted another man, Mohammed Abu Talb, a member of a Palestinian group which was mysteriously dropped as a suspect after investigations.
The defense is also seeking to introduce as evidence the testimony of a security guard at London's Heathrow airport that a high-security cargo bay was broken in shortly before the ill-fated plane took in cargo and flew off headed for New York. The guard's evidence emerged after the trial was over in January 2001. The implication is that whoever had carried out the break-in could have planted the bomb-rigged suitcase among other pieces of baggage to be loaded onto Flight 103.
If the appeals court accepts the guard's testimony as evidence, then it rips open the prosecution contention that Megrahi had planted the bomb-laden suitcase with a New York tag in the baggage ramp at Malta's Liqua airport. From Liqua, the suitcase went to Frankfurt and onto London and aboard the Pan Am plane without security checks, the prosecution contented.
No clear explanation has been given why it was not subject to security inspections, particularly that European and American intelligence circles had gotten wind that a bomb attack was being planned against an American airliner.
The trial was held in Camp Zeist after a decade of a tug-of-war between Libya and the US that ended in a compromise worked out in 2000 under which Qadhafi agreed to allow the two Libyans to be tried in "neutral" territory by Scottish judges under Scottish law. In return, the UN lifted sanctions against Libya.
Many assertions and unanswered questions were raised in the wake of the mid-air explosion.
The US has maintained that the bombing was in retaliation for a 1985 April US air attack on the Libyan cities of Benghazi and Tripoli, which killed up to five people, including the adopted daughter of Qadhafi.
That air raid, which fitted into a pattern of US-Libyan confrontations, was ordered by the then president Ronald Reagan to punish Libya for its alleged role in the bombing of a disco in Berlin frequented by US Marines.
But the alleged Libyan connection to the Pan Am bombing is only one of the many theories that were raised at the very outset of investigations into the crash. These theories varyingly pointed the accusing fingers at Iran, Syria, Libya, the Lebanese drug underworld, and even the CIA.
Every theory appeared to be as strong as any, and a widely-held argument in the Middle East was Libya is the scapegoat in the case and the notorious Israeli secret service, Mossad, helped fabricate the case against Tripoli.
Iran was conveniently removed as a potential suspect because taking on Tehran would have been too heavy for the US at that point. Washington was also seeking to pacify the Iranians after having extended support to Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Syria, which supported the US in the 1991 war that ended Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, was off the hook since Washington needed Damascus to enter the Middle East peace process launched in late 1991.
All other theories about the bombing would have dented what the US saw as an opportunity to have a stranglehold on Qadhafi's Libya, one of the most vociferous critics of US policy in Africa and the Middle East.
The Pan Am trial at Camp Zeist was attended by relatives of passengers, and some of them have stated that they were not at all convinced by the evidence presented against Megrahi.
Marina de Larracoechea, whose stewardess sister died in the crash, had formally demanded to know why the plane was only two-third full although it was peak Christmas time, and why some people apparently were warned not to travel on Flight 103.
The court found the submission "incompetent" and rejected it.
The defense strategy during the trial was based on laying out a well-built case where the accusing fingers pointed in several directions. The defense sought to prove that several other parties had as good motives and opportunity (supported by circumstantial evidence) as Libya to carry out the bombing.
But none of those arguments worked in favor of Megrahi.
The key piece of evidence was a tiny piece of a timer that allegedly helped detonate explosives in the suitcase aboard Pan Am Flight 103. The timer was rigged into a Toshiba cassette player and the fragment was found in part of the wreckage of the airliner in Lockerbie.
That timer, according to the prosecutor, was manufactured and supplied to Libya by a small electronics company called MEBO based in Zurich, Switzerland.
But a company official said that similar timers were supplied to several parties, including the Stasi secret service of former East Germany.
Major Owen Lewis, a former British army explosive expert and now an independent security consultant, said he could not fathom how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reached the conclusion that the fragment came from the MEBO timers supplied to Libya because of some fundamental differences in the construction of the devices bought by Libya and those sold by MEBO to others.
Also challenged in court was the record of misguided conclusions and lack of scientific qualifications of an FBI operative who "established" the alleged link between the timer and Libya.
Edwin Bollier, head of MEBO, said that the fragment could have come from one of two timers he had sold to Stasi. He also reported the theft of blueprints for the timer from his office and affirms that whoever had those blueprints could have manufactured a similar timer.
The Stasi connection opened up another avenue.
A Syrian-based group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), which was among the first suspects named by US authorities in the case but dropped eventually despite other circumstantial evidence, did have close links with the Stasi and could have obtained the MEBO timer from the East Germans.
Also challenged was the testimony of a former Libyan intelligence that he had seen Megrahi and Fhima at Malta airport on the day of the explosion.
The testimony was challenged on grounds that he has a vested interest in lying because he was living under a witness protection program in the US and stood to be rewarded by up to $4 million from the US government.
Air Malta has categorically rejected the possibility of an unaccompanied baggage being aboard the concerned flight to Frankfurt and affirmed that all procedures were strictly followed and the suitcase was not aboard that flight.
Air Malta also said that if anyone had substituted the suitcase for one belonging to a passenger on the flight, the airline would have had a claim for a lost bag when the passengers reached Frankfurt. But no such claim was made and every one of the 39 passengers aboard the flight were individually interviewed and they confirmed that there was nothing amiss.
In essence, even in the hypothesis that there was an unaccounted piece of baggage at Frankfurt that was could have eventually found its way to the Pan Am flight, there was no concrete evidence that the baggage came from Air Malta - another major dent in the prosecution case.
During the trial the defense highlighted suspicions that the PFLP was behind the bombing and cited the repeated instances where the Syrian-based group's name cropped up during the investigations.
Initial reports citing US intelligence sources said the PFLP-GC could have carried out the bombing on behalf of Iran, which was seeking revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian plane with 290 passengers aboard by an American warship, USS Vinceness, in the Gulf at the height of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
PFLP-GC leader Ahmed Jibril, a Syrian colonel, was named as having personally undertaken the alleged "contract" to bomb an American passenger plane in Europe several months before the Pan Am attack.
Reports spoke of warnings emanating from Finland and several other European countries, months before the Pan Am explosion, of an impending attack of similar nature.
Figuring high in the reports was a German police raid of a Frankfurt apartment where several men said to have been PFLP-GC members were staying. The raid yielded several weapons, and, most significantly, a Toshiba radio cassette player rigged with a bomb similar to the one that blasted Flight 103 over Lockerbie.
The Palestinians detained during the raid were freed shortly thereafter.
The presence in Malta of the PFLP—GC'S Abu Talb, who is now serving term in Sweden on unrelated charges, at the time of the purchase of the clothes used to wrap the Pan Am bomb and the shopkeeper's description of the buyer was seen as another strong nail in the prosecution's case.
If there was enough ground to warrant an investigation whether PFLP-GC — and by implication Syria and Iran — were involved in the blast, why did the US move away from that direction?
Explanations a theory that the US wanted to "neutralize" Iran in the crisis triggered by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and "secure Syrian support" for the US-led coalition against Iraq. It meant excluding the two countries from the investigations.
Other theories raised in connection with the bombing involved a covert CIA operation involving drug lords in Lebanon whose help the US wanted in order to secure the release of American hostages in that country. This involved allowing drugs to allowed aboard US-bound airplanes without inspection — something the CIA could do with its connections in Europe, said one theory, which was partially supported by the findings of an investigation carried by a private agency hired by Pan Am.
According to the theory, the CIA believed the suspect suitcase contained drugs and allowed its passage through Frankfurt onto the Pan Am flight. Somewhere along the line, someone switched the suitcase with one containing the bomb. It could have been the PFLP-GC or another group with links to the drug lords and this group might have been seeking to eliminate the CIA station chief in Beirut, Charles McKee, who was aboard the same flight.
Closely linked to this theory is another which says that CIA agents knew that the suitcase contained explosives and that McKee was the target but they allowed the blast to take place since the CIA station chief was headed for home with a complaint against them that could have led not only to their dismissal from service but prosecution in the US.
"The inference was obvious - Pan Am 103 was sacrificed by the intelligence community to get rid of Major McKee," according to a detailed report carried by the British Guardian newspaper after extensive investigations.
A local farmer from Lockerbie had reported finding a suitcase containing cellophane packets containing white powder among the debris in his fields, but the suitcase was taken away and no explanation was given. It was also discovered that the name the farmer saw on the suitcase did not correspond with any of the names on the passenger list of the crashed plane.
It was expected that the "evidence" that Qadhafi claimed to possess would be unveiled during the appeal process and throw out the verdict.
But, if reports in the US press are accurate that the US and Libya are involved in secret negotiations on a deal that would see Tripoli owning up "complicity" of its agents in the bombing in return for an end to the US sanctions against Libya, then no such revelations could be expected in Camp Zeist.
According to the reports, the "deal "being negotiated by American and Libyan officials will lead to the lifting of US sanctions against Libya. Although the UN lifted its sanctions, the US is maintaining its own trade curbs on Libya.
If the "deal" is made, then at least four US oil companies could return to Libya and resume their operations and Libya would also be removed from a US list of countries supporting "terrorism."
That is too strategic a prize for Qadhafi to let go.
Analytical report based on hard news on March 15, 2002.
Legal experts are skeptical over the rejection of the appeal filed by the Libyan convicted of the 1988 bombing of an American airliner when seen in light of Scottish criminal procedures and framework of prosecution and defense.
On Thursday, a panel of five Scottish judges announced that they were upholding the conviction of Libyan Abdel Baset Megrahi at a special court set up in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.
The panel ruled that the defense failed to establish grounds to question the evidence presented by the prosecution at the trial court, which was also held at Camp Zeist under a compromise reached with Libya after a 10-year stand-off.
But legal experts are skeptical.
"Scottish law says that the defense has only to show that the crime could have been committed by another party, and this appears to have been done in this trial," said Albert Hickinson, a prominent Scottish criminal lawyer.
"The defense presented reasonable grounds to believe that someone who broke into the cargo bay at Heathrow could have planted the bomb-laded suitcase among the baggage to be loaded on Flight 102. This is enough reasonable ground to indicate that someone had the opportunity and circumstances to carry out the crime."
Under Scottish law, said Hickinson, it is enough for the defense to show grounds to believe that someone other than their client could have committed the crime.
"The defense does not have to prove the case," said Hickinson. "That is a prosecution responsibility."
The lawyer hastened to add that he was not "questioning" the competency of the panel of judges at Camp Zeist, but that "some questions remain unanswered and answers provided by the prosecution to some other questions were unsatisfactory."
Megrahi, 49, was convicted of causing the explosion aboard Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish town of Lockerbie by planting a suitcase rigged with explosives in a cargo bay at Malta that found it way to the ill-fated aircraft.
This suitcase, according to the prosecution, bore a forged Pan Am New York tag and was sent to Frankfurt and then to Heathrow where it was loaded onto Flight 103 in the evening of Dec. 22, 1988.
"There have been many ambiguities in the case from the very beginning, and they have not been cleared by the trial or at the appeal," said James Weatherby, another British lawyer.
Weatherby cited the "many suggestions and reports indicating other groups or government(s) had the motive to carry out the attack and could have been behind those who planted the bomb" as one of the reasons for skepticism.
"The prosecution swept off all that under the carpet and zeroed in on Libya," he said.
The "key" Libyan witness, a defected intelligence agent, was discredited in court because of questions over his motivation, noted Weatherby. "The questions are too many in the case and none has been answered satisfactorily."
"The witness who identified Megrahi as the person 'who could have bought' an umbrella and clothing from his shop (in Malta) has been found to have enjoyed Scottish police hospitality," which is against the law, noted Weatherby.
Megrahi, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in January 2001, filed an appeal, and Thursday's ruling rejected that appeal.
The appeal was based on the argument that the rigged suitcase could have been planted by those who broke into a Heathrow cargo bay.
The defense lawyers produced two witnesses, a security guard and his supervisor who were on duty at that time, who testified in court that there was a break-in at the cargo bay some 16 hours before the flight took off, that those who broken in had access to genuine Pan Am baggage tags and could have stashed the suitcase among the baggage lined up to be placed aboard Pan Am 103. The plane exploded en route from London to New York .
Megrahi's alleged accomplice, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, also a Libyan, was cleared of all charges by the trial court in January 2001.
However, that ruling had the "clear inference" that Libya was behind the "conception, planning and execution" of the bombing.
The Libyan government and the Arab Lawyers Association have rejected Thursday' verdict as politically motivated.
Megrahi "was convicted for political reasons and ... will be considered a political captive according to international law and codes," said the Libyan government.
The verdict will mount pressure on Libya to pay compensation for the victims of the crash. Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi's son has said that his country was willing to pay compensation if only for the sake of lifting completely the UN sanctions imposed on the country and ending its isolation.
A UN resolution demands not only that Libya pay compensation but also that it own up responsibility for the bombing, renounce terrorism and disclose all it knows of the crime, a demand that Libya is unlikely to accept.
The rejection of the appeal said The five-judge court ruled unanimously that the prosecution's circumstantial case against Megrahi was convincing, and the defense had failed to produce evidence to undermine the conviction.
"None of the grounds of appeal is well founded," it said.
Shortly after the verdict was announced, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw welcomed the ruling and called on Libya to take steps to pay compensation.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the decision should prompt Libya to comply with the Security Council requirements.
Speculation has been rife that Washington and Tripoli had been in secret contacts aimed at facilitating the compensation payment in return for the US lifting the ban on American oil companies dealing with Libya and ending the diplomatic isolation of Libya.
US officials have acknowledged that Washington envoys had met with Libyan representatives in London in the presence of British officials, but rejected that this indicated a "rapprochement" between the West and Libya. They said the talks aimed at sorting out the procedures of compensation.
However, Libya has rejected demands for up to $4 billion in compensation presented by lawyers for the victims of the crash.
Qadhafi, who had described Megrahi a "hostage," has said any compensation deal would be conditional on payment of damages "to all victims of the United States." That would mean, among others, victims of an April 1985 US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in which five people, including Qadhafi's adopted daughter, was killed.
Notwithstanding the diplomatic imperatives, the intensity to ward off questions related to the Lockerbie, including suggestions that someone or country or group other than Libya, "has left a sour taste....," said Hickinson, the Scottish lawyer.
"It is as if a process intended for public consumption was played out frontstage while thick curtains sealed off real drama for no one to see," he said.
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IT SEEMS unlikely that the world would ever know the real story behind the 1988 mid-air bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie..
Several theories have been floating around about who was behind the blast, all of them with their own merits. These included suggestions that the bombing was Iranian revenge for the downing of an Iranian passenger airline in the Gulf by an American warship at the height of the Iran-Iraq war in the mid-80s; that it was the work of fearful Central Intelligence Agents (CIA) involved in illegal activities: that the blast was masterminded by anti-American elements who penetrated a CIA-endorsed
drug running operation; and that the target of the bombing was two Eastern European politicians.
A special court of Scottish judges is hearing the appeal of an alleged agent of Libyan intelligence sentenced to 20 years last year after he as convicted of planting the bomb that exploded in mid-air, killing all the 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground.
The general expectation was that the Libyan government would unveil "shocking" revelations of the mid-air blast during the appeal.
Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi had said that Libya had in its possession evidence that pointed the figure at the "real culprit" behind the bombing, which the US says was Libya's revenge for a 1985 US bombing of Libyan cities.
He asserted that when he produced the purported evidence, it would leave the trial judges with the choice of quitting their profession or committing suicide.
Two Libyans were indicted by the special court, which functions out of a former US military base, Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands, and the court acquitted one of them, Al Amin Khalia Fhima, but convicted and sentenced Abdel Baset Megrahi on circumstantial evidence.
The evidence was based on shreds of clothing that was used to wrap the radio cassette player which was rigged with the explosives that went off and brought down the Pan Am flight on its way from London to New York.
US and British forensic experts traced the clothing to a shop in the Mediterranean island of Malta and the shop's owner testified that Megrahi "could have been" the man who bought the clothes. Apart from that, there was no direct evidence linking Megrahi to the bombing.
Megrahi's appeal is based on an argument that the shopkeeper's testimony was not enough to convict him, and that the trial judges made several errors in arriving in their judgment found him guilty as charged.
During the trial, the defense had argued that the shopkeeper could not positively identify the purchaser as Megrahi and the description he provided fitted another man, Mohammed Abu Talb, a member of a Palestinian group which was mysteriously dropped as a suspect after investigations.
The defense is also seeking to introduce as evidence the testimony of a security guard at London's Heathrow airport that a high-security cargo bay was broken in shortly before the ill-fated plane took in cargo and flew off headed for New York. The guard's evidence emerged after the trial was over in January 2001. The implication is that whoever had carried out the break-in could have planted the bomb-rigged suitcase among other pieces of baggage to be loaded onto Flight 103.
If the appeals court accepts the guard's testimony as evidence, then it rips open the prosecution contention that Megrahi had planted the bomb-laden suitcase with a New York tag in the baggage ramp at Malta's Liqua airport. From Liqua, the suitcase went to Frankfurt and onto London and aboard the Pan Am plane without security checks, the prosecution contented.
No clear explanation has been given why it was not subject to security inspections, particularly that European and American intelligence circles had gotten wind that a bomb attack was being planned against an American airliner.
The trial was held in Camp Zeist after a decade of a tug-of-war between Libya and the US that ended in a compromise worked out in 2000 under which Qadhafi agreed to allow the two Libyans to be tried in "neutral" territory by Scottish judges under Scottish law. In return, the UN lifted sanctions against Libya.
Many assertions and unanswered questions were raised in the wake of the mid-air explosion.
The US has maintained that the bombing was in retaliation for a 1985 April US air attack on the Libyan cities of Benghazi and Tripoli, which killed up to five people, including the adopted daughter of Qadhafi.
That air raid, which fitted into a pattern of US-Libyan confrontations, was ordered by the then president Ronald Reagan to punish Libya for its alleged role in the bombing of a disco in Berlin frequented by US Marines.
But the alleged Libyan connection to the Pan Am bombing is only one of the many theories that were raised at the very outset of investigations into the crash. These theories varyingly pointed the accusing fingers at Iran, Syria, Libya, the Lebanese drug underworld, and even the CIA.
Every theory appeared to be as strong as any, and a widely-held argument in the Middle East was Libya is the scapegoat in the case and the notorious Israeli secret service, Mossad, helped fabricate the case against Tripoli.
Iran was conveniently removed as a potential suspect because taking on Tehran would have been too heavy for the US at that point. Washington was also seeking to pacify the Iranians after having extended support to Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Syria, which supported the US in the 1991 war that ended Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, was off the hook since Washington needed Damascus to enter the Middle East peace process launched in late 1991.
All other theories about the bombing would have dented what the US saw as an opportunity to have a stranglehold on Qadhafi's Libya, one of the most vociferous critics of US policy in Africa and the Middle East.
The Pan Am trial at Camp Zeist was attended by relatives of passengers, and some of them have stated that they were not at all convinced by the evidence presented against Megrahi.
Marina de Larracoechea, whose stewardess sister died in the crash, had formally demanded to know why the plane was only two-third full although it was peak Christmas time, and why some people apparently were warned not to travel on Flight 103.
The court found the submission "incompetent" and rejected it.
The defense strategy during the trial was based on laying out a well-built case where the accusing fingers pointed in several directions. The defense sought to prove that several other parties had as good motives and opportunity (supported by circumstantial evidence) as Libya to carry out the bombing.
But none of those arguments worked in favor of Megrahi.
The key piece of evidence was a tiny piece of a timer that allegedly helped detonate explosives in the suitcase aboard Pan Am Flight 103. The timer was rigged into a Toshiba cassette player and the fragment was found in part of the wreckage of the airliner in Lockerbie.
That timer, according to the prosecutor, was manufactured and supplied to Libya by a small electronics company called MEBO based in Zurich, Switzerland.
But a company official said that similar timers were supplied to several parties, including the Stasi secret service of former East Germany.
Major Owen Lewis, a former British army explosive expert and now an independent security consultant, said he could not fathom how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reached the conclusion that the fragment came from the MEBO timers supplied to Libya because of some fundamental differences in the construction of the devices bought by Libya and those sold by MEBO to others.
Also challenged in court was the record of misguided conclusions and lack of scientific qualifications of an FBI operative who "established" the alleged link between the timer and Libya.
Edwin Bollier, head of MEBO, said that the fragment could have come from one of two timers he had sold to Stasi. He also reported the theft of blueprints for the timer from his office and affirms that whoever had those blueprints could have manufactured a similar timer.
The Stasi connection opened up another avenue.
A Syrian-based group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), which was among the first suspects named by US authorities in the case but dropped eventually despite other circumstantial evidence, did have close links with the Stasi and could have obtained the MEBO timer from the East Germans.
Also challenged was the testimony of a former Libyan intelligence that he had seen Megrahi and Fhima at Malta airport on the day of the explosion.
The testimony was challenged on grounds that he has a vested interest in lying because he was living under a witness protection program in the US and stood to be rewarded by up to $4 million from the US government.
Air Malta has categorically rejected the possibility of an unaccompanied baggage being aboard the concerned flight to Frankfurt and affirmed that all procedures were strictly followed and the suitcase was not aboard that flight.
Air Malta also said that if anyone had substituted the suitcase for one belonging to a passenger on the flight, the airline would have had a claim for a lost bag when the passengers reached Frankfurt. But no such claim was made and every one of the 39 passengers aboard the flight were individually interviewed and they confirmed that there was nothing amiss.
In essence, even in the hypothesis that there was an unaccounted piece of baggage at Frankfurt that was could have eventually found its way to the Pan Am flight, there was no concrete evidence that the baggage came from Air Malta - another major dent in the prosecution case.
During the trial the defense highlighted suspicions that the PFLP was behind the bombing and cited the repeated instances where the Syrian-based group's name cropped up during the investigations.
Initial reports citing US intelligence sources said the PFLP-GC could have carried out the bombing on behalf of Iran, which was seeking revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian plane with 290 passengers aboard by an American warship, USS Vinceness, in the Gulf at the height of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
PFLP-GC leader Ahmed Jibril, a Syrian colonel, was named as having personally undertaken the alleged "contract" to bomb an American passenger plane in Europe several months before the Pan Am attack.
Reports spoke of warnings emanating from Finland and several other European countries, months before the Pan Am explosion, of an impending attack of similar nature.
Figuring high in the reports was a German police raid of a Frankfurt apartment where several men said to have been PFLP-GC members were staying. The raid yielded several weapons, and, most significantly, a Toshiba radio cassette player rigged with a bomb similar to the one that blasted Flight 103 over Lockerbie.
The Palestinians detained during the raid were freed shortly thereafter.
The presence in Malta of the PFLP—GC'S Abu Talb, who is now serving term in Sweden on unrelated charges, at the time of the purchase of the clothes used to wrap the Pan Am bomb and the shopkeeper's description of the buyer was seen as another strong nail in the prosecution's case.
If there was enough ground to warrant an investigation whether PFLP-GC — and by implication Syria and Iran — were involved in the blast, why did the US move away from that direction?
Explanations a theory that the US wanted to "neutralize" Iran in the crisis triggered by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and "secure Syrian support" for the US-led coalition against Iraq. It meant excluding the two countries from the investigations.
Other theories raised in connection with the bombing involved a covert CIA operation involving drug lords in Lebanon whose help the US wanted in order to secure the release of American hostages in that country. This involved allowing drugs to allowed aboard US-bound airplanes without inspection — something the CIA could do with its connections in Europe, said one theory, which was partially supported by the findings of an investigation carried by a private agency hired by Pan Am.
According to the theory, the CIA believed the suspect suitcase contained drugs and allowed its passage through Frankfurt onto the Pan Am flight. Somewhere along the line, someone switched the suitcase with one containing the bomb. It could have been the PFLP-GC or another group with links to the drug lords and this group might have been seeking to eliminate the CIA station chief in Beirut, Charles McKee, who was aboard the same flight.
Closely linked to this theory is another which says that CIA agents knew that the suitcase contained explosives and that McKee was the target but they allowed the blast to take place since the CIA station chief was headed for home with a complaint against them that could have led not only to their dismissal from service but prosecution in the US.
"The inference was obvious - Pan Am 103 was sacrificed by the intelligence community to get rid of Major McKee," according to a detailed report carried by the British Guardian newspaper after extensive investigations.
A local farmer from Lockerbie had reported finding a suitcase containing cellophane packets containing white powder among the debris in his fields, but the suitcase was taken away and no explanation was given. It was also discovered that the name the farmer saw on the suitcase did not correspond with any of the names on the passenger list of the crashed plane.
It was expected that the "evidence" that Qadhafi claimed to possess would be unveiled during the appeal process and throw out the verdict.
But, if reports in the US press are accurate that the US and Libya are involved in secret negotiations on a deal that would see Tripoli owning up "complicity" of its agents in the bombing in return for an end to the US sanctions against Libya, then no such revelations could be expected in Camp Zeist.
According to the reports, the "deal "being negotiated by American and Libyan officials will lead to the lifting of US sanctions against Libya. Although the UN lifted its sanctions, the US is maintaining its own trade curbs on Libya.
If the "deal" is made, then at least four US oil companies could return to Libya and resume their operations and Libya would also be removed from a US list of countries supporting "terrorism."
That is too strategic a prize for Qadhafi to let go.
Analytical report based on hard news on March 15, 2002.
Legal experts are skeptical over the rejection of the appeal filed by the Libyan convicted of the 1988 bombing of an American airliner when seen in light of Scottish criminal procedures and framework of prosecution and defense.
On Thursday, a panel of five Scottish judges announced that they were upholding the conviction of Libyan Abdel Baset Megrahi at a special court set up in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.
The panel ruled that the defense failed to establish grounds to question the evidence presented by the prosecution at the trial court, which was also held at Camp Zeist under a compromise reached with Libya after a 10-year stand-off.
But legal experts are skeptical.
"Scottish law says that the defense has only to show that the crime could have been committed by another party, and this appears to have been done in this trial," said Albert Hickinson, a prominent Scottish criminal lawyer.
"The defense presented reasonable grounds to believe that someone who broke into the cargo bay at Heathrow could have planted the bomb-laded suitcase among the baggage to be loaded on Flight 102. This is enough reasonable ground to indicate that someone had the opportunity and circumstances to carry out the crime."
Under Scottish law, said Hickinson, it is enough for the defense to show grounds to believe that someone other than their client could have committed the crime.
"The defense does not have to prove the case," said Hickinson. "That is a prosecution responsibility."
The lawyer hastened to add that he was not "questioning" the competency of the panel of judges at Camp Zeist, but that "some questions remain unanswered and answers provided by the prosecution to some other questions were unsatisfactory."
Megrahi, 49, was convicted of causing the explosion aboard Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish town of Lockerbie by planting a suitcase rigged with explosives in a cargo bay at Malta that found it way to the ill-fated aircraft.
This suitcase, according to the prosecution, bore a forged Pan Am New York tag and was sent to Frankfurt and then to Heathrow where it was loaded onto Flight 103 in the evening of Dec. 22, 1988.
"There have been many ambiguities in the case from the very beginning, and they have not been cleared by the trial or at the appeal," said James Weatherby, another British lawyer.
Weatherby cited the "many suggestions and reports indicating other groups or government(s) had the motive to carry out the attack and could have been behind those who planted the bomb" as one of the reasons for skepticism.
"The prosecution swept off all that under the carpet and zeroed in on Libya," he said.
The "key" Libyan witness, a defected intelligence agent, was discredited in court because of questions over his motivation, noted Weatherby. "The questions are too many in the case and none has been answered satisfactorily."
"The witness who identified Megrahi as the person 'who could have bought' an umbrella and clothing from his shop (in Malta) has been found to have enjoyed Scottish police hospitality," which is against the law, noted Weatherby.
Megrahi, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in January 2001, filed an appeal, and Thursday's ruling rejected that appeal.
The appeal was based on the argument that the rigged suitcase could have been planted by those who broke into a Heathrow cargo bay.
The defense lawyers produced two witnesses, a security guard and his supervisor who were on duty at that time, who testified in court that there was a break-in at the cargo bay some 16 hours before the flight took off, that those who broken in had access to genuine Pan Am baggage tags and could have stashed the suitcase among the baggage lined up to be placed aboard Pan Am 103. The plane exploded en route from London to New York .
Megrahi's alleged accomplice, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, also a Libyan, was cleared of all charges by the trial court in January 2001.
However, that ruling had the "clear inference" that Libya was behind the "conception, planning and execution" of the bombing.
The Libyan government and the Arab Lawyers Association have rejected Thursday' verdict as politically motivated.
Megrahi "was convicted for political reasons and ... will be considered a political captive according to international law and codes," said the Libyan government.
The verdict will mount pressure on Libya to pay compensation for the victims of the crash. Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi's son has said that his country was willing to pay compensation if only for the sake of lifting completely the UN sanctions imposed on the country and ending its isolation.
A UN resolution demands not only that Libya pay compensation but also that it own up responsibility for the bombing, renounce terrorism and disclose all it knows of the crime, a demand that Libya is unlikely to accept.
The rejection of the appeal said The five-judge court ruled unanimously that the prosecution's circumstantial case against Megrahi was convincing, and the defense had failed to produce evidence to undermine the conviction.
"None of the grounds of appeal is well founded," it said.
Shortly after the verdict was announced, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw welcomed the ruling and called on Libya to take steps to pay compensation.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the decision should prompt Libya to comply with the Security Council requirements.
Speculation has been rife that Washington and Tripoli had been in secret contacts aimed at facilitating the compensation payment in return for the US lifting the ban on American oil companies dealing with Libya and ending the diplomatic isolation of Libya.
US officials have acknowledged that Washington envoys had met with Libyan representatives in London in the presence of British officials, but rejected that this indicated a "rapprochement" between the West and Libya. They said the talks aimed at sorting out the procedures of compensation.
However, Libya has rejected demands for up to $4 billion in compensation presented by lawyers for the victims of the crash.
Qadhafi, who had described Megrahi a "hostage," has said any compensation deal would be conditional on payment of damages "to all victims of the United States." That would mean, among others, victims of an April 1985 US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in which five people, including Qadhafi's adopted daughter, was killed.
Notwithstanding the diplomatic imperatives, the intensity to ward off questions related to the Lockerbie, including suggestions that someone or country or group other than Libya, "has left a sour taste....," said Hickinson, the Scottish lawyer.
"It is as if a process intended for public consumption was played out frontstage while thick curtains sealed off real drama for no one to see," he said.
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