Chalabi and his ambitions

PV Vivekanand


For a while it seemed that Ahmed Chalabi, a
London-based Shiite and former banker who leads an
umbrella body of Iraqi exile groups, was most favoured
to take over power in a hypothetical post-Saddam Iraq.
However, American priorities and strategies have
shifted since then, and Chalabi might not find himself
in the presidential palace unless his powerful friends
in Washington turns things around. However, that might
not be easy either, writes PV Vivekanand, who also
traces Chalabi's background as a banker in Jordan and
his experience in dealing with the Iraqi exiles.


AHMED CHALABI, leader of the Iraqi National Congress
(INC) and self-styled candidate to succeed Saddam
Hussein, has been dealt a severe blow to his
aspirations to occupy the presidential palace in
Baghdad.
Obviously, Washington has its own plans and designs
for a post-Saddam Iraq and Chalabi, a Shiite with a
chequered past as a banker in Jordan, appeared to
have found little room to accommodate himself in the
American scheme of things that envisages a military
occupation of the country after toppling Saddam.
Chalabi, who maintains offices in London and
Washington as well as northern Iraq beyond Saddam'
reach, has been building a case for himself as a
potential successor to the Iraqi president since 1991.
He had been a frequent visitor to Washington in order
to promote himself and secure American political and
financial support against Saddam.
The administration seems to have played an off-again,
on-again game with him, with the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) raising questions about his use of
American funds given to him to build a viable Iraqi
opposition front to challenge Saddam. Others say
Chalabi had spent his own money on trying to build an
anti-Saddam coalition in northern Iraq. He had even
set up a radio station to beam anti-Saddam rhetoric to
the people of Iraq. His efforts came to nought in 1996
when two Kurdish groups fought each other for
prominence in the region, and Saddam's agents managed
to penetrate into the area. That posed a direct threat
of military action and Chalabi, like others who had
set up presence there, had no choice but to order his
set-up dismantled and his people evacuated. He has
re-established an INC presence there now.
However, the most prominent American reason to
sideline him now seems to be the realisation that
other Iraqi exile groups had never really accepted the
INC leader as a possible successor to Saddam and that
he might not be the right candidate capable of dealing
with the ground realities in Iraq; and that seems to
have shut out -- at this jucture -- Chalabi's dreams
of riding atop an American military tank into the
presidential palace of Baghdad.
He has publicly rejected US plans to install an
American military administration based on the
remnants of the current Iraqi regime once Saddam is
toppled.
Speaking from an undisclosed location in northern
Iraq, Chalabi told ABC Television on Tuesday: "Iraqis
must choose their own government."
Describing as "unacceptable" the reported US plan to
have a reformed ruling Baath Party "work de facto
under the protection of US military administration,"
Chalabi told ABC: "An extended US administration...in
Iraq is unworkable....a US administration will have
very little knowledge of Arab society."
Chalabi's misfortune of falling out with the American
plans is not unique. It is simply that a liberal like
him with modern views and more attuned to dealing with
Western democratic setups than the peculiarities of
the Iraqi society is no match for the heavy
undercurrents and tribalism that dominate the Iraqi
scene today. The exigencies posed by post-war chaos in
Iraq could be too strong for him to survive.
Over the decades, the Iraqi exile groups -- at one
point there were over 60 of them -- which espouse
differing ideologies, self-interests and political
priorities have never been able to come together on a
practical platform, Their only common interest was a
desire to see Saddam departing from power. They never
trusted each other and suspected that every
group/leader was playing puppet to strings pulled by
external forces with vested interests.
It is not even likely that more than a few hundred
people might even know Chalabi in Baghdad, a fact
admitted by his spin doctor in Washington, Entifadh
Qanbar, who says that people in Baghdad "may not know
the man, but he represents their views."
That is a tall claim indeed.

Banker in Jordan

I have met Chalabi several times at public meetings
while he was a banker in Jordan during the 80s, but
never had an opportunity to get wind of his political
plans. His prominence as a Jordanian banker did not
matter much to me as a journalist since I had access
to the Shomans, who owned the Arab Bank -- the largest
commercial bank in Jordan. But then, it had never
occurred to me that Chalabi, a seemingly streetwise
banker and financier, had political ambitions; and it
is more likely that he did not have any and that he
turned himself to an active anti-Saddam activist after
leaving Jordan in a cloud of controversy and settling
down in London along with some of his close aides from
the banking era.
He established the INC in 1992 and since then his
efforts have been focused on pushing the US to finish
the uncompleted task of the 1991 war -- ouster of
Saddam.
I have spoken to him several times in London in the
late 80s and early 90s, but those conversations had to
do with the banking scandal he left behind in Amman
when he fled in July 1989, purportedly hiding in the
trunk of a car.
Those conversations formed part of the basis for my
numerous reports on the banking scam to the extent
that I was once told that my telephone was tapped
since Jordanian intelligence wanted direct access to
the information that Chalabi was "feeding" me.
However, I was never questioned by Jordanian
intelligence over Chalabi (perhaps because there was
always a trace of animosity in our conversations and I
was not always buying his versions of the scandal and
often challenged him to substantiate his contentions).

I had the first confirmation of Chalabi's political
ambitions after the Gulf war of 1991.
I received a telephone call in Jordan from a close
Chalabi associate, Ali Sarraf, in March 1991. I had
just returned from post-war Baghdad and I told him how
bad the situation was for the people of Iraq after the
war over Kuwait.
Sarraf had earlier given me clues how to locate some
of his relatives in Baghdad (I had opted aginst the
idea since establishing connections with them would
be construed as me acting as a link between Iraqi
exiles and their supporters in Baghdad; this would
have seen me rotting in one of the notorious prisons
of Iraq with my jailers having thrown away the key).
During that March 1991 conversation, the shape of
post-war Iraq came up.
"Give us one year and imagine who you'd see in power
in Baghdad," Sarraf quipped. "The doctor (Chalabi)
will be the president of Iraq and guess who would be
his finance minister," he added with an unmistakeable
echo of glee over the electronic waves, obviously
imagining himself to be in control of the finances of
a country which holds 12 per cent of the world's oil
reserves.
"Best of luck Ali," I told him, "and please tell the
doctor to grant me the first interview from the
presidential palace in Baghdad. I am sure the
Jordanians and others would be anxious to hear what he
has to say."
"Well, you wait and see what we are going to do to
Jordan and the Mickey Mouses there," was Sarraf's
rejoinder in a reference to Jordanian ministers and
officials who were at that time building a case
against Chalabi and others, including Sarraf himself.
"We'd kick butts so bad that Jordan might not exist by
the time we are finished with it."
Here it needs a little background.
Chalabi belonged to an influential Shiite family in
Iraq. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and earned a doctorate in mathematics from
the University of Chicago in 1969.
He left Iraq when the Hashemite monarchy was
overthrown in 1958. He was given refuge in Jordan,
where, using his connections with the Hashemite royal
family there, he set up Petra Bank in 1977.
By mid-80s, Petra Bank had grown to be the second
largest commercial bank in Jordan after the Arab Bank.
It even had a affiliate bank -- Petra International --
in New York. Petra also had a branch in Beirut called
MEBCO that was liquidated by the Central Bank of
Lebanon and Chalabi'ated MEBCO Geneva.
He was also generous to socio-economic projects and
educational development in Jordan. Petra Bank was
among the first to introduce computerised operations
in Jordan.
However, in the second half of the 80s, Jordan's
economy stumbled because of heavy foreign debts and
foreign exchange reserves dried up. The late King
Hussein appointed veteran Mohammed Saed Nabulsi as
governor of the Central Bank with the mandate of
shoring up the country's monetary situation.
Nabulsi took stock of the situation and asked all
commercial banks to deposit 30 per of their foreign
currency holdings in the Central Bank. All banks
obliged, but Petra Bank and another small bank did not
and this prompted a closer look at the banks'
activities. The books showed that Petra Bank held $200
million in foreign currency, but the money was
missing.
Soon, according to Nabulsi, it emerged that Petra Bank
-- and, by extension, the smaller bank -- were
involved in a complex network of illegal operations.
He ordered a Central Bank take-over of Petra Bank and
an investigation June 1989 and this opened a Pandora's
Box that led to the collapse of the bank and Chalabi's
flight from Jordan.
Nabulsi accused Chalabi of spiriting away depositors'
money and Central Bank funds. The collapse of Petra
Bank is said to have caused Jordan $500 million. The
actual amount the treasury lost was eventually put at
$300 million after the liquidation of the bank.
Investigations followed the collapse of the bank and a
government committee submitted its findings that led
to a trial in 1992.
Chalabi and 16 others -- most of them tried in
absentia -- were found guilty on several counts in a
trial after an investigating commitee reported its
findings to the government. He was sentenced in April
1992 to 22 years hard labour by the State Security
Court on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of
depositor funds and speculation with the Jordanian
dinar. The court also handed down harsh sentences and
fines to the others, including several brothers and
close relatives who were members of the board of
Petra Bank, or owners of affiliated companies.
Jordan tried to secure Chalabi's deportation from the
UK to the kingdom, but it did not work out.
Ali Sarraf --the man who wanted to become Iraq's
finance minister under a Chalabi reign in Baghdad --
was Chalabi's chief foreign exchange dealer at Petra
Bank.
When the banking scam came to light, the Jordanian
authorities had seized the passports of Chalabi as
well as several others but almost all of them managed
to flee the country in mysterious circumstances.
Chalabi was believed to have been driven to the Syrian
border by "someone high up" who used his influence to
see the Iraqi across the frontier from where he took
off for London and applied for asylum in the UK.
Sarraf was caught at Amman international airport a few
days later as he was about to board a London-bound
flight with a suitcase full of documents and over
$25,000 in cash. His passport was also seized and he
was detained for a few days and then released.
My instincts told me there was much more than met the
eye in the Petra Bank scam. I got in touch with
Sarraf after his release and invited him to a Chinese
lunch along with one of the my colleagues at the
Jordan Times. I wanted to hear his story first hand.
However, while Sarraf talked at length about how the
Jordanian government had "mistreated" Chalabi and
himself at the behest of Saddam, he gave away little
in substance about how Petra Bank collapsed. He was
evasive to pointed questions and in fact I was more
perplexed about the affair that I started off before
the lunch.
Anyway, we parted with a promise that we'd remain in
touch. He gave me Chalabi's telephone number in
London, but before I could get around to calling the
"doctor," I started receiving calls from the banker
himself, telling me his version of the Petra Bank
episode. His stories made little sense to me, perhaps
because I did not understand high finance banking
practices and the extent of Chalabi's "connections" in
Jordan. However, he used to issue regular threats
against prominent Jordanians, saying "all I need is to
open my mouth and name some names...that would make
the Central Bank governor lose his pants....."
He insisted that he left Jordan because Saddam's
agents were after him and he feared for his life. He
also accused Saddam of pressuring Jordan into forcing
the collapse of Petra Bank.
Chalabi's persistent contention was that there was
nothing wrong with Petra Bank, he had not stolen any
money and that all Jordanian charges against him were
fabricated. However, the facts of the case, as it
unfolded in a Jordanian court much later, spoke
otherwise.
After his every call to me, I tried to match what he
told me with information gleaned from Jordanian
officials, including some from the Central Bank, and
write reports in the Jordan Times. One day a friend of
mine-- with connections in Jordanian intelligence --
advised me to stop covering the Petra Bank issue. "It
is not worth to get too deep into it because it could
harm you....and your reputation" for whatever that was
worth, I was told.
A few days later, Sarraf's Amman telephone stopped
answering, and I found out he had mysteriously fled
the country.
Shortly thereafter, I estabished an excellent rapport
with the head of the committee investigating the Petra
Bank scandal, and I became privvy to an unfolding
tale of Chalabi's banking tentacles spread not only
in Jordan but also in several Arab and African
countries as well as Switzerland and the US. Some of
the details revealed to me went into reports while I
maintained the confidentially of others.
I also developed a close relationship with the finance
minister as well as the governor of the Central Bank.
I could call them on their direct line or at home
whenever I had questions for them. Obvioiusly I was
"safe" because by then they had realised that I knew
what the sensitivities were. Earlier,
the officialdom was upset because they thought Chalabi
was using me to air his version of the bank collapse
(as I came to know much later, some had even suspected
that Chalabi was paying me).
In expert opinion, Petra Bank would not have collapsed
had it not been for Chalabi's one-track mind to build
a business empire with his finger of every pie in the
industrial and trade sectors. He financed businesses,
took them over when they hit troubles and sought to
revive them after appointing "experts" loyal to him --
including a veteran Indian economist then in his 70s
-- to run them. All the "experts" were supposed to
report directly to him, and none of them knew each
other.
His business "interests" included industrial units,
computer firms, travel agencies, export companies,
hotels, real estate, construction, insurance.. you
name it and he had interests in the sector. It took
the investigating committee years to unravel them.
Jordan's banking system tottered for some time after
the Petra Bank collapse because, as officials charged,
Chalabi had drained the last of the country's scarce
foreign exchange reserves, thus adding the kingdom's
burdens.
When the whole picture was unveiled to me, I wrote a
lengthy piece in the Jordan Times saying Chalabi was
either one of the best banking brains in the Arab
World or the worst crook depending on how one viewed
him and his activities.
The very day the report appeared, I got a call from
Chalabi, who was obviously getting Jordanian newspaper
clippings faxed to him in London every day.
"I have half a mind to sue the hell out of you and
your paper for calling me a crook," he told me in a
stern voice. Go ahead and do that, I told him
(knowing well that he stood no chance against me in a
Jordanian court at that point in time). "Don't worry,
I won't do that," he said. "But I am flattered by the
picture you painted of me... that of a banking
superman sitting behind a computer console in the
top-floor office my bank manipulating the economy,
banking and finances of Jordan..."
Well, that was exactly what he was doing and he had
left Jordan in a serious mess.
Jordanian sources who were close to Chalabi affirm
that anti-Saddam politics was never his priority while
in the kingdom. The picture that emerges is of a man
who portrayed himself to be Saddam's victim and
started believing in his own tales and transformed
himself to be a leading opponent of the Iraqi
strongman.
Chalabi now says he was targeted for assassination by
Iraqi agents in at least nine attempts since his
flight from Jordan. Probably it is true.
Senior Iraqi officials whom I met after the 1991 war
dismissed Chalabi as irrelevant and non-consequential.
That was indeed a short-sighted assumption since
Chalabi went on to make himself dear to the US
administration, secured the support of leading
congressmen and built a strong lobby for himself. He
managed to project himself as a possible successor to
Saddam, but fell afoul of US intelligence agencies
when they detected what they saw as discrepancies in
the way he used to spend American funds.
Ironically, a story that went around in Jordan in the
mid-90s was how a group of Iraqi army generals plotted
a coup against Saddam over several months and managed
to keep it top secret. The coup, according to the
sources who had the story, would have been
successfully staged had it not been for the "mistake"
that the generals made by informing Chalabi of their
plans. The next thing the plotters knew was their own
arrest by Saddam's secret police. Almost all of them
and their supporters were executed, went the story.
How did that happen? Well, the story says that when
Chalabi was informed of the plot, he tipped off the
CIA and Saddam got wind of the plans through a CIA
"leak."
Or did Chalabi himself use his channels to tip off
Saddam because he feared that a coup would only lead
to generals assuming power in Baghdad and that would
have dealt the death blow to his own ambitions?
Despite his split with the US over plans for post-war
Iraq, Chalabi might yet stage a comeback. He has
powerful friends in Washington. Apart from influential
members in the US Congress, those who favoured
Chalabi as a democratic alternative to Saddam include
Vice President Richard Cheney, Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfled, Defence Policy Board head Richard
Perle, Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and
the Pentagon's Middle-East policy executors such as
Peter Rodman, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Michael
Rubin, says American writer Robert Dreyfuss.
With such a heavyweight lobby behind him, Chalabi
seemed to have all but clinched his role as Saddam's
successor a few months ago. At that point, the shrewd
banker even promised that American oil companies would
have the run of Iraq's oil wealth as and when he
assumed power in Baghdad.
However, his detractors are in the CIA and the State
Department who describe him as better suited to the
cut and thrust of exile politics and diplomacy in the
West than the cut-throat politics of post-Saddam Iraq
where tribalism is expected to play the dominant role.
Chalabi's hope of salvation hinges on his success to
set up a "leadership" council made up of Iraqi exile
leaders and appoint himself as its head. That would
give him a position of prominence if and when he
enters a Saddamless Iraq or he would find himself as
one of the thousands of exiles returning to their
homeland. Obviously, the way to the top from the
"leadership" council would be easy if his friends in
Washington turns the thinking around in the CIA and
the military establishment.
But then, keeping him popped up in power could come at
the cost of American lives since it would pit the
Chalabi camp against what is emerging as a powerful
alliance grouping the two main Kurdish parties, the
Kurdistan Democratic Party and thePatriotic Union of
Kurdistan, the Iraqi National Accord, a CIA-backed
faction, and the Iranian-supported Supreme Council for
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,

Questions that the US must answer

PV Vivekanand

AT THIS JUNCTURE where the United States is ardently pushing the international community to war against Iraq in the name of the United Nations and citing Baghdad's non-compliance with Security Council resolutions, Washington has to answer a few questions that it has been ducking,
Foremost of those questions are:
Why is it that Washington cites Iraq's violations of UN Security Council resolutions to justify an all-out war while overlooking that US allies like Turkey and Israel continue to violate dozens of Security Council resolutions?
Isn't it a blatant addition of insult to injury when the US not only endorses Israel's aggressive policies but also prevents the international community from pressuring Israel into seeing logic, justice, fairness and reason?
Why does Washington block other countries from taking military action to force truants to comply with Security Council resolutions? Or is it that it is a right it has reserved for itself as the sole superpower?
Isn't it true that the US warning that the Security Council could lose its "relevance" is based on how far the world body agrees to abide by American commands?
Why does Washington insist that Iraq poses a threat to American national security while there is no evidence whatsover of Baghdad had or has any link with any group that has carried out anti-American attacks or has issued any such threat?
Isn't it clear that a war against Iraq would play into the hands of militants and increase the same "security threats" that Washington cites as a reason for a war?
Why does Washington see an Iraqi threat to other Middle Eastern countries while none of them - except Israel - sees such threat?
Why does Washington refrain from acknowledging that it had given an implicit go ahead to Iraq to invade Kuwait in 1990 by saying it would have no role in an "Arab-Arab" dispute?
Why does Washington cite Iraq's use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war and conveniently sidestep the truth that it was the US which provided such weapons to Iraq and also offered satellite intelligence that helped the Iraqi military to pinpoint Iranian positions to be targeted?
Why does Washington speak in general terms and avoid being specific on its allegations that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction?
Why is that the superb satellite intelligence of the US unable to tell the UN inspectors where to look for such weapons in Iraq?
Why does the US waste no opportunity to hit at Iraqi targets in the "no-fly" zones at the slightest "provacation" while not employing the same warplanes to bomb out any Iraqi weapons site? Isn't it because it has failed to find any such site?
Why does the US cite human rights concerns and the "oppression" of the people of Iraq as a reason for war whereas its record speaks of decade-old alliances with much worse regimes than that of Saddam Hussein? Why is the US not applying the same standards and why the sudden concern for the people of Iraq?
Why does the US refrain from any concern for the oppressed people of Palestine who live under perpetual terror posed by the mighty military machinery of the occupying Israeli forces?
Why does the US allow Israel to use US-supplied weapons and military gear against the Palestinians while it insists on such bans attached to military sales to other countries?
How long would it take the US to recognise that the real threat to peace in the Middle East is posed by Israel's expansionist ambitions and oppressive policies against the Palestinians?
Why does the US fail to acknowledge that a war against Iraq would have serious repercussions on the Middle East?
Isn't the American plan for an open-ended military occupation of Iraq a reincarnation of colonialism?
Isn't it true that the planned war against is aimed at securing control of Iraq's oil to serve American economy and oil companies and shutting out Europeans and others in Washington's quest for absolute global dominance?
Isn't it true that the scenario of war was prepared years ago and the ongoing effort at the Security Council for a new resolution is simply a charade?
Isn't it true that the failure of the council to adopt the new resolution would have no impact on the American determination to go to war against Iraq?
Isn't it true that the administration is trying to muzzle the media citing national security in order to ensure that the American people hear only what Washington wants them to hear?
Isn't it true that the US is ignoring Arab concerns for regional security and stability because it has ceased to care for such issues and is arrogantly confident that it would be able to deal with any eventuality -- even it means total chaos in the region?
Finally, isn't true that the entire war scenario where the US would spend tens of billions of dollars and engage upto 250,000 American soldiers is scripted to suit the interests of Israel?

Garner to "govern" Iraq

by pv vivekanand

Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant-general of the US Army, whose name has started figuring in reports about American plans for post-war Iraq, is tipped to be Washingtons' choice as the man to head a military occupation of Iraq after Saddam Hussein is toppled in war.
Not much is known about Garner except that he served in the Gulf during the 1991 war and headed American military-led relief operations for the Kurds in northern Iraq after the war when they came under Iraqi army attack following an ill-fated revolt against Saddam.
Garner's specialisation is missile defence, having served as the US Army's programme executive officer for missile defence and overseen the development of both theater and national missile defence systems for the army.
He submitted a comprehensive report to the US Congress in 1992 on how the Patriot missiles successfully performed during the Gulf war as a defensive shield against incoming missles. Patriot missiles were deployed in Saudi Arabia as well as Israel during the war.
Garner headed the US Army Space and Strategic Defence Command before retirment. In that capacity, he directed the activities of the US Army Space Command, Colorado Springs, the Missile Defence and Space Technology Centre, Huntsville, the Kwajalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands -- test range for ballistic missile defence systems -- and a high energy laser test facility at White Sands, New Mexico where the US is conducting laser research, development, test, and evaluation.
Garner figures in a scandal involving a $48 million contract given by the Space and Missile Defence Command (SMDC) to SY Technology. Garner, who was the president of SV Technology at that time, accuses congressional candidate Biff Baker of making false allegations against his company that have cost it millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Baker, a Libertarian candidate for the House of Representatives from Colorado, continued his public statements against the company and asserted that in addition to the $48 million site activation command (SAC) contract, there were three other contracts worth a total of nearly $100 million in illegal "sweetheart deals" between the active duty generals in Space and Missile Defence Command (SMDC) and Garner. Federal law requires most contracts to be awarded on a competitive bidding basis. Baker is now under a gag order.
SY Tehnology has filed a lawsuit in El Paso county saying Baker falsely accused Garner and SY Technology of fraud, and is asking for millions of dollars in compensation.
Garner now heads a special office consisting of 100 officials from the departments of State, Treasury and Agriculture, the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence arms of the govenment, and the White House's Office of Management and Budget.
Garner, according to reports, has steafastly declined to be interviewed after taking over the new office.
While he heads the special office, he is giving particular focus on preparations for organising, integrating and co-ordinating civilian aid, reconstruction, and civil administration or governance in post-war Iraq.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that the office for post-war Iraq held a secret session over the weekend to assess plans for securing and rebuilding Iraq if Saddam Hussein is toppled.
Washington is said to be bracing for an 18-month-to-two-year military occupation of Iraq after Saddam is ousted in war. However, that timeframe is seen as a deliberate misrepresentation since the US is planning to stay as long as it takes to "slap and shape" the country into a shape suitable to serve US interests, others say.
The secret "classified" meeting was held at the Eisenhower Hall of the National Defence University in Washington and was also attended by representatives of allied countries that have supported Washington on Iraq. , officials told the New York Times.
The Times quoted Douglas J. Feith, the under-secretary of defence for policy, as saying that the meeting reviewed "work that has been done in a number of areas, such as civil administration and reconstruction" in post-war Iraq.
He insisted that the planning office's mission would not be to run Iraq, but other reports said Garner was indeed tipped to take over the military occupation of the country after the war.
The weekend meeting also appears to have been a strategy meeting ahead of a gathering of Iraqi exiles where the US plan for military occupation of post-war Iraq is expected to draw stiff rejection.
The reported plan has unnerved Iraqi exiles like Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) who has made no secret of his plans to occupy the presidential palace in Baghdad, as well as heads of other Iraqi dissident groups opposed to Saddam.
Chalabi's plans call for setting up "a leadership council of the transitional government of Iraq" drawn from the 65 members of a steering committee appointed at an opposition conference in London in December. The leadership council will draft a temporary constitution and assign an executive committee head to create the first post-Saddam government.
There was concern among American officials that Chalabi might use a meeting of anti-Saddam groups in northern Iraq to annouce the council and US President George W.Bush's special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad agreed to attend the conference only s after its Kurdish hosts guaranteed there would be no declaration of a provisional government.
However, as of Monday, reports said Chalabi himself was not invited to the Irbil meeting but the gathering is expected include independents like former ministers and diplomats.
Khalilzad and a small group of American officials arrived in Turkey on Sunday to attend the meeting inside northern Iraq.
The Bush administration has given up hope of unifying the bickering Iraqi exiles and hence the significance of the plan for bringing the country under military occupation. The American who heads it will be given the title "military governor" backed by an "advisory council" of independent Iraqis. The day-to-day government would be left in the hands of low-level Ba'ath party members who are now in the bureaucracy under the current regime.

Israel and Falashas

by pv vivekanand

In the most serious and telling move yet of its intentions to retain the Palestinian territories in its control, Israel has decided to bring in some 20,000 Jewish migrants from Ethiopia who were left behind in transfers carried out in the 1980s and 90s. While it has not been announced where they would be housed, it is a foregone conclusion that they would be herded to Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank in a process paid for by the Americans.
Israel's decision this week to authorise the immigration of 20,000 Jews from Ethiopia - otherwise known as Falasha -- exposes the reality that the government of Ariel Sharon has little or no intention of returning the occupied territories to the Palestinians and allowing the creation of a viable Palestinian state there.
There is little doubt that the newcomers would be sent to the occupied West Bank and live in Jewish settlements there -- meaning the construction of new settlements and expansion of existing ones -- and add to the nearly 200,000 settlers already living there.
The irony, if you will, is that the United States would pay for their transfer and resettlement in the West Bank without the American taxpayer being aware of it or being told about it.
It is naive to argue that the Falashas would be settled in "mainland Israel" that existed within the 1967 borders. "Black" Jewish migrants from Ethiopia smuggled to Israel in 1980s and 1990s have found it difficult to live alongside "white" Jews of European and Middle Eastern origin who look down upon them. They complain they are being segregated in separate neighbourhoods and are denied the same services as other Israelis. Hence, it is elementary that they be settled in dedicated communities away from the "mainstream" society, and that is where the West Bank comes in handy. Furthermore, it suits the thinking of Prime Minister Sharon, who wants to increase the number of Jews living in the occupied territories and thus consolidate the Jewish state's grip of the land where the Palestinians want to set up an independent state.
The 20,000 Falashas, who are also called Black Jews and Beta Israel and live in the Gondar and Tigray regions of northwestern Ethiopia, expected to be airlifted to Israel represent the last of their community there. Most of them have converted to Christianity and their assimilation into Israel would involve a "reconversion and purification" process.

Part of a pattern

The Israeli move to bring them to Palestine comes alongside a continuing flow of Jews from the former Soviet Union, and the Jewish Agency, the organisation which handles the "return" of Jews to their "promised land," is very active in the former Soviet republics scouting for potential migrants. Some 800,000 Jews arrived in Israel from the Soviet republics since the 1980s, and many families have been given free or subsidised accommodation in the illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Notwithstanding the ongoing controversy in Israel over the "Jewishness" of the Falashas and concerns that the new move could encourage many of non-Jewish origin to disguise their religious background and claim the right to d to immigrate to Israel under the country's "law of return," the decision to allow in 20,000 more Ethiopian Jews reflects nothing but Sharon's determination to fight off the Palestinian struggle for statehood.
The Israeli move also comes amid mounting fears that Sharon intends to use the chaos of the expected US-led war on Iraq to expel tens of thousands of Palestinians to the East Bank -- the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan -- in another step to quell Palestinian resistance and reduce the number of Palestinians living in the West Bank. While the feasibility of such a move and international reaction to it remain unpredictable, Jordanian commentators have expressed serious concern that the rules of the game of co-existence under the 1994 Jordan-Israeli peace treaty might not remain valid in the event of a war against Iraq.
The Jordanian fears have to been seen against the fact that Sharon has been an ardent proponent of the "Jordan is Palestine" theory and favours the en masse transfer of all Arabs -- including the nearly one million Arab Israelis -- to Jordan.

Funding the transfer

Indeed, the planned transfer of 20,000 Falashas from Ethiopia to Israel and onto the occupied West Bank demands hundreds of millions of dollars and reports in the Israeli press say that there is no government budget available for the purpose.
However, that is where the $8 billion in "loan guarantees" that Sharon is seeking from the US come into play. Officially, the loan guarantees would be used to give a kick-start to Israel's recession-hit economy, but there is little doubt that part of the loan facilities would be channelled into funding the transfer and resettlement of the wave of Falashas.
The sought-for $8 billion is in addition to $4 billion in additional military assistance and the just under $3 billion a year a year it receives automatically after it signed the 1979 Camp David agreement with Egypt. Another $2 billion to $3 billion reach Israel from the US every year in funds disguised as departmental, project-specific assistance and as direct contributions from major Jewish corporates and organisations.
Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington and well-known critic of American aid to Israel, doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. Stauffer argues that the bonds are likely to be structured so they do not pay interest until they reach maturity and the US would end up paying principal as well as interest in about 10 years.
He also argues that the US would also have to make good its guarantees of $10 billion in commercial loans to Israel and $600 million in "housing loans" granted in the early 90s when they reach maturity.

From 'illegal' to 'hurdle'

What would be the Bush administration's position on the loan guarantees being channelled, directly or indirectly, into financing Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories?
Officially, the US position has changed from calling the settlements illegal (in the 1980s) to describing them as a hurdle (in the 90s) in the path to peace with the Palestinians.
Recent US "initiatives" for Israeli-Palestinian peace called for a freeze in Israel's settlement activities in the occupied territories parallel to peace negotiations, but Israel has steadfastly rejected the calls. It has maintained a cool approach to the so-called "roadmap" for peace drafted the Quartet -- the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- which also calls for a suspension of Israel's building activities in the occupied lands. Obviously, the plan's objective in this context is to leave the issue of settlements to be worked out between the Palestinians and Israel -- that is, if they ever resume peace talks in the present framework. The catch there is that the US and others know only too well that Israel would not compromise on its position that it would not dismantle the settlements and the Palestinians could be eventually forced to accept that situation.
Washington officials have made no comment on the Israeli request for the loan guarantees and additional aid, but speculation is that the assistance would be given as part of a supplemental spending bill that is likely to be passed early this year, perhaps figured in and accounted along with the cost of a war with Iraq.
George Bush Senior used an Israeli request for $10 billion in housing loan guarantees to pressure the then Israeli government of Yitzhak Shamir into attending the 1991 Madrid conference where Arab-Israeli peace negotiations were launched.
Shamir said later that he had agreed to attend the conference and launch peace talks with the Arabs because of American pressure but that he had no intention of ever working out an agreement with the Palestinians. He said he wanted to stretch the negotiations for 10 or 20 years without actually yielding anything to the Palestinians.

Disguised spending

Bush Senior, coming under Arab pressure against Israel's colonialisation of the West Bank, had also attached a condition that the amount that Israel spends on its settlement activities in the occupied territories would be reduced from the guarantee amount. A few hundred million dollars were actually deducted from the loan guarantees but that were made up in other forms of American assistance to Israel.
Furthermore, the loan guarantees afforded Israel the luxury of freeing other funds to be spent on the settlements and thus reduce by more than 80 per cent the actual amount that was deducted from the credit facility guarantees by the US.
But then the loan guarantees of 1991 or that are requested now are only a flash on the pan of American aid to Israel.
Stauffer, the Washington economist, tallies that since 1973 the US has given Israel and spent $1.6 trillion to serve Israeli interests in direct and indirect forms -- more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War.
According to Stauffer, adjusting the official aid to 2001 dollars in purchasing power, Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel.
In addition are direct and indirect US losses resulting from the 1973 oil embargo, several Israeli-blocked arms sales the Arabs and directly and indirectly Israeli-linked sanctions against trade with some Arab and Middle Eastern countries.
However, these figures are not released for public knowledge in the US, although, in Stauffer's tally, every American has paid $5,700 each in aid to Israel and to protect Israeli interests since 1973.
Rather than moving to reduce its assistance to Israel, the US has been raising it over the years, and the latest loan guarantees should be seen as part of that trend, particularly when we see signs of what analysts call a "cohesive Bush-Sharon doctrine" aimed consolidating Israel's status as the dominating power in the Middle East through eliminating Iraq as a potential medium-term threat to the Jewish state.
Seen in light of that "doctrine," it does not take much imagination to reach the conclusion that the Bush administration would think nothing about American tax dollars spent for the air passage of the 20,000 Falashas from Ethiopia to Palestine, for the cost of "reconverting and purifying them" and for resettling them in Jewish colonies built on land to which Israel has no legitimate right.

Shutting out dissent

By PV Vivekanand
Shutting out voices which raise substantiated questions about the truth/lies in the Bush administration's contentions about Iraq seems to be an integral part of Washington spin doctors. The latest to suffer from what is widely perceived as a dedicated campaign to deny critics any forum was a website which has been critical of the administration's policies and allowed a former Iraqi scientist to point out the hollowness of US Secretary of State Colin Powell's contention that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons.
A website which was taken off the Internet after it carried a strong refuttal of charges made by US Secretary of State Colin Powell against Iraq early this month is back in business. While the company which hosted the site cited technical reasons for the shut-down, those who maintained the site argues that the move reflected Washington's anxiety to shut out any dissenting voice against its plans to wage war on that country.
The website, yellowtimes.org, was advised by its hosting company that the site was being shut on Feb.10, less than three days after it carried an article by Imad Khadduri, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist, countering Powell's allegations against Iraq made in a Feb.5 speech at the UN.
The operators of the website has found a new server and host and is now accessible under the same address, according to Firas Al Atraqchi, who is a regular columnist on the website.
Atraqchi says that "the campaign to stifle dissent and censor any questioning of current US policies vis a vis the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular, has reached new levels."
He asserted that websites which host alternative views, and/or views that contradict US foreign policy are no longer tolerated on the Internet and are systematically coming under hacker attack and political pressures to "relocate."
The hosting company claimed that "we were using up too many CPU resources and therefore slowing down their other sites," said Atraqchi. "By CPU resources, I do not mean hard drive
space or bandwidth. We did not exceed what we were paying for (over $100 a month). Yet we were told that they simply no longer had the technical requirements to run our site as is."
He adds that the site had been under "constant malicious attack from people (and groups) regarding our content -- e-mail attacks, defamation, hacking into our website, and possibly denial of service attacks."
Imad Khadduri's articles on the Iraqi nuclear science programme only heightened such activities, says Atraqchi.
The YellowTimes.org website, according to Atraqchi, drew fire because it published views that "directly question, criticise, and berate the US official line regarding the impending invasion of Iraq."
Khadduri, who is now based in Canada, wrote under the title "the nuclear bomb hoax" that the "evidence" that Powell said the US had against Iraq was at best flimsy.
Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, in his Feb.14 report to the UN Security Council, has also raised questions about Powell's assertions.
The charges Powell made in his speech reveal the US administration's "untenable attempt to cover with a fig leaf their thread bare arguments and misinformation campaign" against Iraq, wrote Khadduri, who cited a series of questions based on the realities on the ground in Iraq. These realities, he said, quashed Powell's allegations.
Khadduri, who has a MSc in Physics from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the University of Birmingham, wrote that Powell had a wrong translation of a declaration that Iraqi scientists were asked to sign with a condition that they faced execution if they did not abide by it. The declaration, according to Powell, bound the signatory not to reveal secrets to the International Automic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection teams.
"Exactly the opposite is true," said Khadduri, who worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 until 1998. "The four or five, as I recall such declarations, which I read in detail, held us to the penalty of death in the event that we did not hand in all of the sensitive documents and reports that may still be in our possession."
"Had Powell's intelligence services provided him with a copy of these declarations, and not depended on testimonies of "defectors" who are solely motivated by their self-promotion in the eyes of their "beholders," and availed himself to a good Arabic translation of what these declarations actually said, he would not, had he in any sense been abiding by the truth, mentioned this as "evidence." 
According to Khadduri, "the cache of documents" seized from the house of scientist Faleh Hamza and cited by Powell as evidence that Iraq is hiding or is still working on its "third" uranium enrichment process was actually reported to the UN inspectors in 1997.
The documents contained the summary of a failed project that dated back to 1988 and that the disclosure of the programme had been acknowledged by Mohammed Al Baradei, the head of the IAEA, according to Khadduri, who was able to leave Iraq in late 1998 with his family. and now teaches and works as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada
"The 3,000 pages of documents were financial statements and Faleh's own lifetime research work, and had nothing to do with the nuclear weapon programme," wrote Khadduri. "That is why he kept them at his home."
"Powell only accused but did not provide any evidence that Iraq had tried to get nuclear grade fissile material since 1998," according to Khadduri. "He vainly gave the impression that everything was set and readily waiting for just this material to be acquired and the atomic bomb would be rolling out the other door."
Khadduri has also charged Khidhir Hamza, a former Iraqi scientist with whom Khadduri worked, with fabricating and exaggerating his importance in Iraq's nuclear program outlined in Hamza's book "Saddam's Bombmaker."
Khadduri wrote that Powell should have sought answers to some key questions in order to find the truth behind his charges. These included:
"Where is the scientific and engineering staff required for such an enormous effort when almost all of them have been living in abject poverty for the past decade, striving to simply feed their families on $20 a month, their knowledge and expertise rusted and atrophied under heavy psychological pressures and dreading their retirement pension salary of $2 a month? 
"Where is the management that might lead such an enterprise? The previous management team of the nuclear weapon programme in the eighties exists only in memories and reports. Its members have retired, secluded themselves, or turned to fending for their livelihood of their families. 
"Where are the buildings and infrastructure to support such a programme? The entire nuclear weapon programme of the 80s has been either bombed by the Americans during the war or uncovered by the IAEA inspectors. It is impossible to hide such buildings and structures. Powell should only take a look at North Korea's atomic weapon facilities, or perhaps even Israel's, to realise the impossibility of hiding such structures with the IAEA inspectors scouring everything in sight."
"Powell need only ask those on the ground, the IAEA inspectors delegated by the UN upon America's request, to receive negative answers to all of the questions above," according to Khadduri. "Instead, he chose to fabricate an untruth."

US weaving a web of lies

by 'Inad Khairallah (pen name)

IT IS DISGUSTING at best and frustrating at worst to hear senior US officials continuing to air their self-deceptive contentions about Iraq as they try to con the world into accepting that there is legitimate ground for war against that country. It is as if the rest of the world is ignorant, could not think on its own, and is incapable for ascertaining facts for itself.
The US approach is indeed typical: The US wants to wage war on Iraq in order to serve its strategic, economic and political interests and it is building a web of unsubtantiated allegations and hypothetical scenarios tailored to suit its thinking. Nothing that contradicts its thinking is allowed to stand in its way.
It is like fixing a dome in the air on wobbling poles and then trying to build those poles into concrete pillars. The blatant doctoring of academic studies into intelligence documents is only part of that effort and should not surprise anyone.
It is definitely not as if the US is working through the UN process to prove beyond any trace of doubt that Iraq is in material breach of Security Council resolutions. Washington is perched high in the middle of its planned war scenario, trying to affirm to the world at every given opportunity and building the slightest question against Iraq into massive arguments for war. We heard National Security Council Advisor Condaleeza Rice on CNN on Sunday repeating the themes that Iraq had 12 years to disarm but did not and that Baghdad is a "serious abuser" of UN Security Council resolutions.
It was even more revulsive to hear Rice talk about the UN's credibility and how US viewed the Security Council as the strongest and most powerful international body whose orders have to be obeyed by the world community because that was the very purpose for which it was created.
It is on old story anyway, and it is being replayed now but it only goes to highlight the double-standards that the US had consistently followed while dealing with the Middle East.
Conveninently ignoring the international rejection of a unilateral US war against Iraq and demand for a UN context for such action that forced President George W. Bush into seeking Security Council Resolution 1441, Rice spoke as if her boss had voluntarily taken the issue to the Security Council in September in all good faith.
Don't we all know that Bush was cornered into entering the council rather than voluntarily going in? Don't we know that had it not been for bitter opposition from fellow Security Council permanent members France, Russia and China coupled with bitter European, Arab, Muslim and Third World criticism that left Bush little choice but to seek some grain of legitimacy for his plans against Iraq through the UN?
Indeed, assumptions like those made by Rice and her colleagues in Washington, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others as well Bush's spin doctors could be swallowed by Americans, but not people in this part of the world.
We wish there was some way of reminding them that we could see through their game because we know the realities on the ground in this region.
We also heard Rice talk about the need to preserve the UN Security Council all-embracing authority in world affairs, and how Iraq's behaviour was in total disregard of Security Council decisions. One would indeed be prompted by hearing such lofty assertions that the US and indeed the world community had always taken every country to task for violating UN Security Council resolutions.
Just in case Rice has a short memory, let us remind her:
For more than 50 years Israel has consistently violated UN Security Council resolutions with impunity. It has scoffed at the resolutions, rejecting them out of hand and continuing its practices as if it was beyond the UN Security Council's authority -- that was emphatically highlighted by Rice on Sunday.
For more than 34 years Israel has illegally occupied other's territory. It has refused to accept international conventions and charters that uphold the rights of the Palestinians and reject human rights violations.
It has steadfastly refused to allow UN investigators entry to the Palestinians territories it occupies.
We would like to ask Rice and her colleagues a few questions:
Where is the authority of the Security Council when confronted with the Israeli refusal every year when the investigators seek to go in?
Where was the authority of the Security Council when Israel contented that the mandatory Fourth Geneva Conventions do not apply to the territories it occupies?
Where is the authority of the Security Council when Israel rejects implemention of Resolution 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973 -- and indeed the dozens of other council demands since 1948?
Where is the authority of the Security Council when Israel scoffs at demands that it sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and open its nuclear programmes for inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency?
Why is the Security Council keeping quiet while it is known that Israel's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction is more than those of all other countries in the Middle East put together?
And then we are told by people like Rice of the need to disarm Iraq; even at that there is no substantiation that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
It is adding insult to injury when we are reminded of Iraq's violations of UN resolutions while we know that Israel is in material breach of at least 70 Security Council resolutions (not to mention the scores of draft resolutions that were vetoed by its guardian angel, the US).
It is all the more ironic or even funny that the US administration officials pushing hard to open up the guns against Iraq could keep a straight face while coming out with assertions that any level-headed person would reject.
Who knows, perhaps they themselves are so much indoctrinated that they have started to believe in what they are saying.

Mossad and Kenya

pv vivekanand

ISRAEL has gone silent on its investigations into the November attacks against Israeli targets in Mombassa, Kenya, and the silence is alarming and could herald stunning revelations of the nefarious operations of its super-secret spying agency, Mossad.
It was no empty pledge that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made when he vowed that the notorious Mossad would launch its own investigations and exact revenge for the attacks.
Mossad is ruthless and employs whatever means available to it to accomplish its mission. These could include murder, intimidation, blackmail and other "incentives" to enlist help from whatever source, and the agency leaves no trace behind. "The dead can't talk," that is the philosophy followed by Mossad, as Israeli commentators have affirmed.
For all we know, Mossad could have already traced those behind the attacks and spirited them away to Israel for questioning. An Israeli announcement could be made when Mossad feels it is safe to do so.
Mossad would have no consideration whatsoever except its secrecy and confidentiality even if those could delay a triumphant announcement by the Israeli government of "success in hunting down the enemies of the Jewish people."
Who knows, it could be Sharon's master stroke to make up for the loss of popularity and decline in prospects for an election victory resulting from corruption allegations.
Regardless of the politics involved, it is a fair conclusion that Mossad would have devoted itself to the assigned task of bringing the Mombassa attackers to Israeli-style "justice."
Mossad has an added incentive. It has to "redeem" itself after it suffered a series of setbacks in recent years leading what many see as a crisis of confidence in an agency once seen as a ruthless and highly efficient secret service.
Reports from Africa indicate that Mossad agents are targeting Somalia as the prime area for investigations, probably because of suspicions that Al Ittihad Al Islamiya of that country was alleged to have ties with Al Qaeda.
However, fair-skinned Israelis would stick out like a sore thump in Somalia. As such, the agency is said to be using Ethiopian immigrants to Israel -- the so-called Falasha Jews of Ethiopia -- and other Africans as its operatives in Somalia and elsewhere in the continent.
That is only a flash of the techniques employed by Mossad, which has been responsible for assassinating dozens of Palestinians, Arabs and others who were seen as potential sources of threat for Israel in whatever manner and form.
The "reputation" stemming from those "successes" suffered a series of setbacks in recent years as a result of blotched operations.
These included:
In February 1999, two agents were arrested in Cyprus near prohibited military areas. They were carrying cameras and investigations showed that they were taking photographs for possible delivery to Turkey.
In March 1999, a retired Mossad agent was convicted of fabricating intelligence reports suggesting Syria was about to attack. It was his Mossad background that had lent credibility to the claims.
In February 1998, Mossad agents were caught installing bugging equipment at an apartment in Berne, Switzerland. In a trial that ended in July 2000, One of them was given a one-year suspended prison term and barred from entering Switzerland for five years.
The wire-tapping operation targeted a Swiss citizen of Lebanese origin who Mossad suspected of having links with Lebanon's Hizbollah. The man testified during the trial that he had no links whatsoever with the group.
Israel had furnished a $2 million bail for its operative to secure his release and kept a promise of sending him back for trial. That infuriated Mossad agents to threatening an unprecedented strike and refusal to take up missions in protest against what they saw as a lack of backing from their superiors.
The worst of Mossad operations came in September 1997 where two agents were caught in Amman after they poured a slow-acting poison into the ear of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. Israel had to provide an antidote to the poison and also release Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as well as dozens of Jordanian and Palestinian leaders in return for the two detained agents in Amman who were travelling on false Canadian passports.
Danny Yaton survived as chief of Mossad at the time of the Amman operation until February 1998 but was forced to resign after the agency carried out an in-house investigation.
The Kenyan capital of Nairobi is one of Mossad's main operating bases in Africa. Reports have suggested that it was Mossad which informed the US that Felicien Kabuga, one of the leading figures wanted for crimes in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, was being sheltered in Kenya. Subsequently, the US started applying pressure on Nairobi to hand him over for trial at the Rwandan War Crimes Tribunal.
The timing of the revelation is suspect since it followed the November attacks in Mombassa and a change of guard in the Kenyan government after late December elections.
As such, some observers believe, Mossad used its US connections to apply pressure on the new Kenyan government to ensure it co-operated with the Israeli investigations into the Mombassa bombing.
It would seem to be a far-fetched theory even though it could not be ruled out in view of Mossad's chequered record of exploiting situations to its advantage.
Ten Kenyans and three Israelis were killed when an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombassa is blown up by a car bomb. A simultaneous rocket attack on an Israeli airliner failed and a statement - purportedly from the Al Qaeda network -- claimed responsibility for the two attacks. It also threatened more attacks on Israeli and US targets.
In mid-December, Kenyan police cleared six Pakistanis and three Somalis who were detained after the attacks. They were only charged with entering Kenya illegally and faced fines and deportation.
Kenyan police are still questioning three people who they say witnessed the sale of the car they allege was used in the attack on the hotel.
Police have released computer-generated images of two men they suspect carried out the failed missile attack,
If, as claimed, Al Qaeda was behind the attacks, then we would be witnessing a scenario that involves Mossad tactics matched against the labyrinth of Osama Bin Laden's followers.
And indeed, the war could already be in action behind the scenes and it would have wider implications than simple Mossad-style assassinations.

Israel paid to stay out of war

by pv vivekanand

When United Airlines appealed for $1.8 billion loan guarantees to bail itself out of financial troubles, the Bush administration turned down the plea and the airline went bust. Today, Israel is seeking $8 billion in loan guarantees and the administration appears to be more than willing to extend it, but Israel is not going to go bust if it does not receive it.
In fact, the $8 billion sought by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is in addition to another $4 billion, which would eventually be converted to aid, and that is the price Washington is paying Sharon to stay out of a possible US-led war against Iraq. That is the way leading American commentators see it, and they include columnist and former presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan.
Indeed, it is an issue to debated among American taxpayers. They are footing the bill for what their administration calls as "strategic partnership" with Israel and they should be the ones to demand an explanation to the lopsided policies of their government in the Middle East.
If they need any pointers -- from the look of things it would seem that they do indeed need a nudge since the mainstream media that reach them do not tell them the full truth -- let us remind the Americans that their country is officially paying $3.1 billion in annual aid to Israel, not to mention an equal amount that reaches Israel as contributions from powerful Jewish organisations. In addition are the periodic doses of hundreds of millions of dollars disguised as "emergency assistance," "special project aid" and various other forms. These allocations need not be cleared through the US Congress since the funding comes from the budgets of the various departments of the administration.
The American taxpayers should be looking at the per capita "tax" that they are paying to maintain their administration's "strategic" ties with Israel. Has it been useful to defending the security and safety of Americans, whether in the US or outside? Well, if anything, the US has only reaped the hostility of the Arabs and Muslims around the world. This makes it a simple equation: American tax dollars are sent to Israel and spent on increasing hostility towards the US. It has made life difficult for Americans, and, today the number of countries where American lives are perceived to be under threat and hostility is more than where they are deemed safe and secure.
As Buchanan highlighted it, "journalists and diplomats alike, returning from the Mideast, attest that our almost-blind support of Israel is a major cause of the anti-Americanism that is sweeping the Islamic world."
"Why should we do this?" he asked. "What does America get out of this? What has all the $100 billion in aid we have shovelled out to Israel bought us, other than ingratitude and the enmity of the Arab World?"
Buchanan's sharp references to the unhealthy relationship between the US and Israel represent a segment of the conservatives in the American society, but it is a minority.
However, the silver lining in the horizon, if you will, is the gradual increase in the number of people who realise that there is something wrong in the US approach to the Middle East.
Among them is Victor Marshall, a research fellow at the Independent Institute, a public policy group,.
In Jan.5 issue of the Los Angeles Times, Marshal wrote a courageous article "The lies we are told about Iraq."
He asserts that during the Gulf war of 1991, the then administration of George Bush Senior of misrepresenting the "cause of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the nature of Iraq's conduct in Kuwait and the cost of the Gulf war."
He says that the administration demonised Iraq, exaggerated Iraq's military capabilities, and used
"the confrontation to justify a more expansive and militaristic foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era."
Isn't it ironic? But the irony seems to lost on the American public at large.
On the political front, US President George W.Bush, who is reportedly "very understanding" of the Israeli request for $12 billion, seems to have a short memory.
When, in mid-2001, when Bush articulated his "vision" of Israel and a Palestinian state existing side by side, it was none other than Sharon who warned him off and had the audacity to assert that Israel had more clout in the US Congress than the president himself. Wasn't such an assertion the deepest of the depths of humiliation and insult to an American president?
Wasn't it Sharon who scoffed at Bush, who seemed to have put the prestige of the White House on the firing line and publicly asked him to withdraw the Israeli army from the West Bank?
In simpler terms, Sharon -- and indeed his predecessors -- have always acted as if it was the God-assigned responsibility and duty of the US to back Israel to the hilt wherever, whenever and however asked to do so even it meant losing American prestige and credibility. Whenever the administration showed any reluctance, Israeli leaders have always whipped out their ace card and threatened to "go to the American Congress and people."
Well, Washington has not behaved any different from the Israeli expectations either. That could perhaps also explain why the US spent more than half of the $2.5 billion funding for the much-touted "Arrow" missile defence system for Israel and seems to be willing to shell out another $1 billion for a third battery of the missile system that offers a protective umbrella against missiles that might come Israel's way.
However, the Arabs and Palestinians could not maintain silence and leave it to American debate. The US "aid" to Israel has a direct bearing on life in the Middle East. The $8 billion "loan guarantees" sought by Israel are to be spent on building more settlements in the occupied West Bank to further the Israeli grip on the Palestinian territories. It would only compound the already complex problems that need to be sorted out when the time comes up for realistic peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Again it is only a small patch in the overall picture of the Arab-Israeli equation. Had it not been for the almost unlimited political, military, diplomatic and financial support that the US extended to Israel over the decades, Israel would not have been encouraged to ridicule international laws and conventions and the situation in the Middle East today would have been different.
Amid the mounting US-condoned Israeli brutality against the Palestinians and rising clouds of war against Arab Muslim Iraq, one could only hope for a miracle that Washington wakes up to the realities of its policies and comprehend that its blind support for Israel and obvious hostility towards the Arabs are leading the Middle East to a disaster.

Who will wink first

PV Vivekanand

I was asked the other day what I thought was the reason for the contrasting American approach to Iraq and North Korea. The US insists on a military confrontation with Iraq which says it has no weapons of mass destruction and poses no threat to its neighbourhood. On the other hand, the US is softpedalling around North Korea which has openly declared it is capable of producing nuclear weapons and poses a threat to US allies South Korea and Japan, and, if need be, the US itself.
Well, I had thought, until the question was put to me, that the situation was fairly clear and did not really need an explanation since the whole affair was and is superficial. There was never the possibility of the Korean "dispute" getting out of hand and North Korea firing a nuclear weapon (not that it is known it has one; even if it had, it knows well that it would definitely lead to the obliteration of North Korea as we know it today. There is no reason to believe that the reclusive North Korean leadership is turning suicidal either).
On the surface, North Korea has done everything to attract international punitive measures of a higher intensity than Iraq warrants. It has been established that it has a nuclear weapons programme and it is not willing to co-operate with the world community, whereas it has yet to be proven that Iraq has such a programme and Baghdad is indeed co-operating with UN weapons inspectors .
Why still the US says diplomacy is the way to resolve the Korean "crisis" while it maintains that military means is the way to deal with Iraq?
In direct comparison, it was the US which pushed the Iraq situation into a real crisis and created the possibility of war for purposes that suit American interets, while North Korea was the culprit on the Asian front but with non-war objectives in mind.
The contradiction between the two "problems" is also clear: the US intends to follow up its anti-Iraq campaign with a war in the Middle East whereas North Korea seems to be the last country interested in war and the US would not be drawn into one either.
Pyongyang's implied and implicit suggestions that poses a nuclear threat in its neighbourhood are the roar of a paper tiger aimed at realising its objective of solving critical internal crises. It is hoping to kill two birds with one stone -- securing external help without compromising its isolationist ideology or exposing its leadership to political risks. And it seeks a position to strength to drive a hard bargain.
Deeply mired in economic problems that have led to starvation and mounting unrest among its people and political isolation that has denied timely external help, the North Korean leadership wants a way out. Pyongyang believes that the US is its best bet for securing foreign aid, including food and fuel. But the Stalinist leadership also knows that they would have to "lose face" if they were to seek direct help and that such help would be at the expense of opening up the country which they are not yet ready to do.
North Korea has also accepted the reality that it could no longer count on its traditional friend China to pull it out of the quagmire. Beijing has its own preoccupation with its newfound economic strength without compromising communism and it is highly unlikely that it would risk a halt to its international windfall by throwing its weight behind a "loser" like North Korea.
As such, it appears to me, Pyongyang found the best means to solve its internal problems through external engagement, and the process was launched from a confrontational approach to the US.
It announced that it had violated a 1994 nuclear agreement with the US, was determined to pursue its nuclear plans, kicked out nuclear inspectors, and broke open the seals of a mothballed nuclear plant deemed capable of producing a nuclear bomb. The world has no idea at this point in time whether such a bomb has already been produced, is being produced or whether the country already had a nuclear arsenal at the outset of the "dispute."
In retaliation, the US and others suspended aid to North Korea and turned off the fuel taps, but Washington has consistently maintained that the way out of the crisis was through diplomacy and dialogue. It has ruled out a pre-emptive strike to eliminate North Korea's nuclear facilities and it has not assembled military force to do so either.
As such, it emerges that Washington is fully aware of North Korea's ulterior objective of sitting down to discuss and resolve the "dispute" and there is little chance of a military conflict erupting in the Korean peninsula despite the mix of threatening rhetoric and calls for diplomatic talks oozing out of Pyongyang.
Armed with that knowledge that North Korea is seeking to assume a high ground -- a positions of strength from its point of view -- in eventual negotiations to settle the crisis, the US is letting Pyongyang have its way for the time being until Washington is ready to sit down for talks. Under normal circumstances, the anti-US language coming out of North Korea is not the kind of talk that Washington would tolerate, but then it knows it is not a war cry but an invitation to dialogue.
Indeed, in public statements, the US has ruled out any negotiations with North Korea saying it would be tantamount to nuclear blackmail. It demands that Pyongyang freezes its nuclear weapons programmes first. But North Korea believes agreeing to the US demand would show that it is vulnerable to pressure and therefore rules it out.
South Korea and Japan are caught in the middle. They are not fully convinced and pacified that the North would not use nuclear weapons against them, but then such successful pacification would not serve the US strategic objective of maintaining control in the region since the bogeyman in the equation would cease to exist.
In the US-North Korean dispute it is only a matter of who will wink first and what could follow is a tug-of-war to determine how much Washington -- and its allies -- are willing to foot the bill and take care of Pyongyang's chronic internal problems.

US hoodwinking the world

PV VIVEKANAND


ALONG WITH the growing certainty of a US-led war against Iraq, it is becoming abundantly clear that Washington would be a fighting the war partly for Israel as much as for driving a deep stake of military control in the Gulf region that would suit its strategic interests, primarily in the international oil market.
US officials doing the rounds through the Middle East ahead of the possible war against Iraq have been known to have promised Arab leaders that Washington needs to take care of the Iraq crisis -- that is of American making in the first place in any case -- before turning the wagon to Palestine.
There is as much substance in the American pronouncements that the US is seeking a fair and just Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement as in there is life in the Dead Sea. The Bush administration's promises that it would get around to serious efforts to just, fair, comprehensive and durable peace in Palestine after it takes care of the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad ring hollow since its track record speaks otherwise.
Indeed, the US wants to see peace in Palestine but only at Israel's terms, and that would little semblance of justice, fairness, comprehensiveness or durability.
The shape of peace that the US favours is designed by Israel, and the clearest indication of that came is in the added emphasis in the "revised road map" of the Quartet on the conditions it imposes on the Palestinians by insisting that they end their resistance against occupation while demanding little from Israel.
No doubt, US President George W Bush will definitely seek to settle the crisis in Palestine after the war on Iraq, but the outcome of the American effort would be a peace agreement being forced down the Palestinian throat, with the Arab World and the international community unable to step in and help rectify the lopsidedness.
It is a different story whether the Palestinians would accept any Israeli-designed peace, and Washington should know it better than anyone. But then it has not diluted Washington's hoodwinking assertions.
In the meantime, the sole Middle Eastern beneficiary from sought-for removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, coupled with the installation of a US-friendly (read US-controlled) regime in Baghdad, would be Israel.
For the US, a successful war would open the door for gaining absolute control of Iraq, with all that it entails -- including a base for its military in the region without being held answerable to anyone and the strategic prize of Iraq's oil wealth at its disposal.
That is not to underplay the immense dangers facing the US military in Iraq and prospects of a protracted conflict there that would put off any prospects of peace in Palestine and would only worsen the continuing cycle of violence there.
For Israel, Iraq would cease to be a source of military threat as Israeli leaders like Ariel Sharon and others go around executing their sinister designs in Palestine and elsewhere in the region, including Syria and Lebanon.
As such, there is indeed deceptive substance in American claims that "the road to Arab-Israeli peace will go through Baghdad," with the only difference being the conflicting interpretation of what fair, just and durable peace means.
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who recently visited the Middle East and met Sharon, told a Chicago audience upon his return home: "Military force alone will neither assure a democratic transition in Iraq, bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians, nor assure stability in the Middle East."
According to Hagel, Sharon admitted as much in a private conversation with Hagel and other members of the US Congress that the greatest US assistance to Israel would be to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
Why would Sharon hold Saddam as his arch enemy?
There are many reasons indeed. It was under Saddam that Iraq had tried to develop its nuclear programmes before Israel bombed out the country's nuclear research plant in Baghdad in 1981; Iraq has a track record of taking part in every Arab-Israeli war; its army has acquired better combat skills than any other Arab country from the 1980-88 war with Iran; Saddam refuses to recognise Israel and openly supports and even funds Palestinian resistance in the occupied territories.
Many Arab political observers entertain the notion that the machinations towards a war against Iraq would be frozen if Saddam declares in public today that he recognises the state of Israel and is ready to deal with it. That might indeed be stretching the issue too far at this point in time, but that the idea exists in the Arab mind highlights the perception that the US would be removing a major thorn on Israel's side by ousting Saddam.
Concrete signs of the US moves in the Middle East are largely Israel-centric have also been given by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who has been going around Capitol Hill meetings maintaining that Lebanon's Hizbollah and not Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda is the most dangerous "terrorist" organisation and needs to be taken care of. It was as if Sharon had moved in and was speaking up.
Rice has no explanation to offer when confronted with the question that Hizbollah has no recent record of taking part in any action outside the region or mounting attacks against any government except that of Israel.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, pointed out in a recent interview that "outside this fight [against Israel], we have done nothing." Indeed, the group's anti-US rhetoric is fierce and bitter but that comes in the context of Washington's unreserved support for Israel.
Against the reality that Israel lives in perpetual fear of Hizbollah, which forced an end to the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, Rice's unfounded claim is nothing but a reflection that the US is being manipulated by Israel and American gunsights could turn to Hizbollah after Iraq - meaning that Bush's war against terrorism is also being redesigned to fit Israel.

Israel and world domination

PV Vivekanand

IT IS irony at its peak that Israel is seeking to add to its hi-tech arsenal deployed in its ruthless campaign to wipe out Palestinian resistance, skilfully forcing others into a position of being taken for granted that its annihilation of the Palestinian people has become business as usual.
A classic case has come up with Israel applying pressure on Germany to provide advanced armoured personnel carriers.
The relationship between Germany and Israel has always been characterised by Israel's blatant exploitation of the Germans' feeling of "guilt" over its Nazi past. Indeed, Israel has never wasted an opportunity to capitalise on what it has established as "European collective guilt for the Holocaust," but Germany had been singled out for "special treatment." Never mind that Israelis are engaged in Nazi-like practices against the Palestinians.
That is only one piece of a larger picture where Israel has consistently been successful in manipulating the elements available to it through a powerful propaganda machinery that functions round the clock, exploiting every opportunity to advance Israeli interests with no niceties and compromises.
It was no wonder that Germany was one of the main benefactors of Israel for several decades. Germany was also the first country to send its foreign minister to Israel with a cheque for $150 million and an offer of anti-missle missiles when the first Iraqi Scud landed in Tel Aviv after the US launched the Gulf war in 1991. It was a reflection of Germany's Israeli-nurtured sentiment that the long-persecuted Jews were in mortal danger of annihilation in their newfound home.
This time around also, Germany has agreed to provide US-built Patriot missiles to Israel if Iraq launches Scud missiles against it as during the 1991 war, and indeed Israel is bidding for the best of what it could get from the Germans since it knows well the German generocity might not linger for much longer.
The Berlin government cut off direct financial aid to Israel in the mid-90s when such assistance became incompatible with the base parameters adopted by the Germans: the per capita income in Israel broke the $15,000 ceiling set by Germany for recipients of direct financial assistance.
In all probability, the German sense of "guilt" would not last beyond this generation, and Israel is out to make hay. But we are faced with an immediate situation where the international community is growing accustomed to accepting Israel's use of massive military power against the Palestinians as a way of life in Palestine.
The Israeli request for German-made Fuchs armoured vehicles is a classic case of such exploitation, but it is an open challenge to German laws which ban supply of military equipment to countries involved in armed conflict. Israel has stepped up pressure on the German government to ensure that the request is granted.
Moshe Katsav, the Israeli president, has the audacity to tell the Germans that he could not assure them that the APCs would not be used in Israel's brutal military oppression of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Indeed, the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder might find it immediately difficult t meet the Israeli demand for Fuchs APCs, particularly that the pacifist-oriented Greens, junior partners in the coalition, oppose the move.
However, Katsav's comments were very telling and seemed based on confidence that Israel would be able to circumvent the Greens' objections.
He said Israel would be "very disappointed" if the German answer was no. "As we usually have very good relations, I hope we will find an agreement in this matter," he said.
While the statement could mean sincerity if it was made in good faith, we know that no Israeli leader is known for good faith promises, and, as such, it is a clear affirmation that the APCs would indeed be deployed against the Palestinians.
It is not a good faith situation either; Israel has not baulked at using US-made F-15 fighter/bombers and British-made heavy tanks as well as almost every weapon in its arsenal -- save massive nuclear, chemical and biological arms -- against the Palestinians. It has made no apology to the US or the UK although "end-usage" stipulations related to the supply of military hardware bans such use. But then neither the US nor the UK has exactly been very concerned about the issue as if they could not care less if Israeli blew up the entire West Bank and Gaza -- along with the Palestinians there -- into smithereens. Britain has even started supplying hi-tech electronic gear to be fitted in F-16 fighter/bombers to be supplied by the US to Israel with little regard to any consideration that F-16s are regularly used in Israel's war to annihilate the Palestinian peole; most notable of such use was when Israel dropped a one-tonne bomb in a Gaza neighbourhood that killed 16 people, most of them children, two months ago.
There is a common theme to the Israeli and Palestinian situations with Germany and Britain in that order: If anyone accepts that the Germans has a "historical" responsibility to rally behind Israel, then it should also be noted in equally strong terms that the colonial British government was directly responsible for the plight facing the Palestinians today. The Palestinian problem is a direct result of a British conspiracy with the world Zionist movement that dates back to the turn of the century that led to the creation of the Jewish state in the land of Palestine at the expense of the Palestinian people who lived there in their ancestral land.
Indeed, it is the inability of the Palestinians that they could not implant in Britain the same sense of guilt as Israel has done with Germany. Then again, few in the Arab World have ever managed to do a successful public relations exercise in the West by skilfully using realities and the various elements and extensions of arguments to benefit them. It could be argued that the Israeli propaganda and public relations machinery is so effective that the Arab exercises simply bounce off the West; simply put, it has been a high-stake political battle of wits that the Arabs have lost.
The growing dispute between the United Nations and Israel after the death of at three UN employees, including a Britain who was deliberately shot and killed last month, is just another example of the high state of alert that the Israeli machinery maintains. At any given point in time, Israel has the answers -- never mind their justifiability -- and it has learnt to use them effectively.
The UN, which has censured Israel for the killings, now finds itself at the receiving end of allegations that UN vehicles were being used to transport Palestinians heading for bombing operations within the occupied territories and beyond the 1967 green line.
Israel has jacked up the allegations, which it says are based on intelligence findings, by imposing restrictions on the movement of UN vehicles in the occupied West Bank, and now the world body finds itself cornered into defending itself against the charges rather than being in a position to demand that UN personnel be spared from Israeli assaults and gunfire.
That the level of degeneration that the UN has been forced into by Israel, and, sure enough, without a concerted long-term Arab movement backed by friends of the Arab World, Israel would soon clear the last laps in its race to be in a position to call the shots anywhere in any situation -- the ultimate realisation of the Zionist dream for world domination.

Blair means war on Iraq

By PV Vivekanand

ONE COULD not but sympathise with British Fire Brigades Union leader Andy Gilchrist when he says that Prime Minister Tony Blair is ready to spend money on waging war against Iraq but not to offer a payrise for firefighters. For that matter, Blair should indeed be looking at other pressing issues at home in addition to the demands of the striking firefighters, and, for sure, he would not find equally important problems lacking.
Indeed, the issue is British and it is up to Britons to demand their money should not be spent on waging an American war several thousand kilometres away that would also undermine the country's ties with the Arab World.
In all probability, an overwhelming majority of British voters would not approve their money being squandered on military action which does not make much sense among Britons in terms of what they stand to gain from it (except given a role to play as lieutenants in a self-styled American-captained international police force that few are willing to accept anyway).
But then, a war on Iraq would affect the lives of everyone around in the Middle East, and, as such, we could not but take an interest and try to figure out why Blair is perched high behind US President George W.Bush's war wagon on the way to Baghdad.
It is not known yet how much the British treasury would be forking out to pay for the British military involvement in a US-spearheaded war against Iraq with the aim of toppling Saddam Hussein and replacing him with a US-friendly (US-controlled) puppet in power in Baghdad.
It is generally known that the British contribution to the US war effort could be between 15,000 and 30,000 soldiers and massive back-up equipment.
Unlike the 1991 war, there would not be many -- even the Japanese are squirming -- to foot the bill this time around.
Definitely, the British share of the cost for the war could run into a few billion pounds, and the question being raised is why should the British prime minister be spending that money on action that would not only alienate British friends in the region but also help lead to chaos and destabilisation in the Arab region and what he could be expecting in return.
We are unable to buy the theory that Blair (or Bush for that matter) is genuinely concerned that Saddam poses a military threat to Iraq's Arab neighbours and that is why they are hell-bent upon toppling him in order to uphold world peace and stability.
Both Bush and Blair tried and failed to link Iraq to international terrorism and project it as a natural target in the US-led war on terror before they switched to the "threat" Iraq poses to the world.
"Secret" documents released by Blair failed to convince anyone -- except perhaps those who drew them up for his benefit -- that Saddam's hands are hovering over switches that would activate and launch a massive pile of weapons of mass destruction at his neighbours.
Blair's defence of his posture, in an article in the Pakistani newspaper Daily Jung on Saturday, fails to offer a justifiable explanation. His case that Saddam needed to be disarmed broke no new ground. Blair only tried to rehash and recycle the argument that Saddam's ouster was sought by the international community. He sidestepped the reality that a majority of world governments have welcomed Baghdad's co-operation with UN inspections with the hope that a war could be avoided and even at that they are insisting that the UN has the final say in deciding whether military action was warranted against Iraq.
Obviously aiming to convince Pakistani Muslims, Blair wrote on Saturday that a war on Iraq was not motivated by religious considerations. But then, not many Muslims have said the potential military action against Iraq had anything to do with religion. They are aware that much deeper political and economic considerations are at the core of the US and British motivations to launch war on Iraq.
"I am also waiting for the time when Iraq in the truest sense will have peace and will start living with its neighbours in a peaceful manner and the aspirations and hopes of the people of Iraq will be realised in an appropriate manner," Blair said in the article.
It is ironic that such arguments are put forward when the world knows only too well that these expressions of concern for Iraqis were never really reflected in past British actions.
We know that Bush primarily aims at serving the American oil lobby, which includes his own commercial interests as well as those of some people around him (Vice-President Dick Cheney included), by invading and taking absolute control of Iraq which would then be ruled by a US military occupation force. That situation could last for at least two years, according to reports in the US media; that should be enough for Bush to establish US oil firms' supremacy in Iraq's oil sector (whether Bush survives the presidential race in 2004 is another issue).
Bush is hoping to recoup the $100 billion to $150 billion the US is expected to spend on a war and military occupation of Iraq through benefits to American oil companies which are raring to go into lucrative Iraqi oil fields after having been denied entry since 1990.
Obviously, one of the first priorities of Bush in a hypothetical Saddamless Iraq will be to freeze or nullify altogether all oil agreements that the present Baghdad government has signed with international (non-US) companies since the end of the 1991 war over Kuwait.
However, he appears to have had to make some compromises.
French, Russian, Chinese and Indian companies are among those who have signed such agreements, and US oil giants are frustrated of not being given a share of the Iraqi oil pie, given assumptions that Iraq could hold oil reserves more than even Saudi Arabia.
As such, apart from removing from power a ruler who has steadfastly refused to toe the American line and challenged American strategic interests in the region, Bush has a vested oil interest in Iraq that he hopes would be served with a US military occupation -- meaning absolute control of Iraq and its resources and restored American domination of the international oil market.
Equally important is resumed American exports to Iraq. US companies were deprived of up to $4 billion to $5 billion of annual exports to Iraq when the UN imposed sweeping trade sanctions against Iraq in August 1990. An indication of the loss is clear when we take note that Iraq used to spend about $500 million in imports of American vehicles and spare parts alone every year.
Figuring high in the horse-trading and persuasion that went on among the big powers at the UN Security Council before Resolution 1441 was adopted was haggling over who would get what share of a post-Saddam Iraq's oil resources. As yet unknown is the nature of the assurances that the US offered to its big power colleagues in the council in order to persuade them to raise their hands when the vote was taken on Resolution 1441.
Bush has offered a public assurance to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the US would not undermine Russian interests in Iraq as and when Saddam is removed from power. It was taken to mean that the US would perhaps make sure Russia recovers the $7 billion or so Baghdad reportedly owes Moscow from the days of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. But then, why should Putin be persuaded to accept the pledge and settle for less when Moscow stood to make much more in a potential $40 billion five-year deal that it was reportedly poised to sign with Baghdad?
So we know why Bush is going to Iraq. What then is the deal between Bush and Blair?
Of course, being kept mouthwatering but at arms length from the Iraqi pie are also British firms. Obivously there is a Bush assurance to Blair that British companies would have their share of Iraq when it falls under US military control.
Otherwise, it beats logic to figure out why Blair has already secured his seat on the Bush wagon to Iraq since it is simply difficult to assume that transatlantic political loyalty runs so deep that a British prime minister would be so adventurous into undertaking a mission that would alienate his country's traditional friends in the Arab World.

Iraq UN inspections

by pv vivekanand

AN advance team of UN weapons inspectors heads for Iraq tomorrow on what is definitely the most important mission undertaken by the UN this millennium but weighed down by the realisation that the world's sole superpower wants them to fail in their mission - and their failure means a devastating war that could reshape the Middle East.
The advance team will include 30 experts and they will be followed by 20 others on Nov.27. Others will join them in the run-up to the Dec.8 deadline for Iraq to make a voluntary disclosure of all its weapons programmes.
The Iraqi disclosure will be matched against data provided by US intelligence agencies and by other UN member states, but what would really matter would be the US furnished details and, indeed, the findings of the UN team between now and Dec.8 from surprise inspections and interviews with Iraqi scientists, engineers and army officers involved in the country's military industry.
It might be easier for the experts to approve the Iraqi data as accurate than disproving the US-provided details as inaccurate because the latter carries with it a threat that Washington would undertake unilateral military action against Iraq if it felt the UN inspectors were not doing their job properly.
It is no secret that parallel to pushing through the UN Security Council the key resolution that dictated a "last-chance" opportunity for Iraq to come clean with its weapons programme, the US has also been setting in place a mechanism that pre-empts any possibility that Baghdad could successfully manoeuvre through the elaborate but hidden traps in the resolution.
There is no question of what if Baghdad meets every condition and requirement laid down by the UN weapons inspectors since Washington has reserved for itself the role of the final and absolute judge; even if the UN team issues a super-clean certificate to Iraq, it would only be torn apart by the US, whose scenario does not provide for Saddam Hussein continuing in power in Baghdad. Any success of the UN inspectors succeed in disarming Iraq is bad news for the administration of US President George W. Bush since it would make it difficult justify its aim of removing Saddam Hussein.
It would be a political disaster for Bush to go to re-election in the 2004 with Saddam still in power in Baghdad.
The hardliners surrounding Bush were actually disappointed that Saddam not only accepted Resolution 1441 but also told his people to co-operate with the UN inspectors.
His foreign minister, Sabri Naji, told the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, a former Swedish foreign minister, and Mohammed Al Bardei, head of the he International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), during their two-day visit to Baghdad last week that the Iraqi government would extend to them complete co-operation. Naji also removed a final thorn when he conveyed to Blix his government's acceptance of "no-notice" UN inspections of "presidential sites" in the country.
Such Iraqi gestures are downplayed by the US hardliners, who argue that Saddam Hussein has no intention of coming clean and meeting the UN demands and would only continue a cat-and-mouse game with the UN inspectors, trying to outguess them and outsmart them. That is the very framework for the run-up to the Dec.8 deadline.
There is no argument either that Saddam is prompted by a guitly conscience and is all eager to make up by pleasing the UN. Accepting the UN demands, which Saddam and others around him see as the depth of humiliation for the Iraqi leadership and people, in good faith does not fit into Saddam's track record, but the Iraqi leader seems to have clearly understood that he had no choice but to comply with Resolution 1441 or face war that would be his end. Otherwise, Baghdad would have never agreed that UN inspectors could visit Saddam's palaces at will without prior notice and go through every knook and corner of the structure; for the Iraqis, and most people for that matter, it is the ultimate humiliation.
Bush and other US officials are trying to twist the knife in the Iraqi wound by repeatedly warning Saddam not to conceal any weapon-related information and threatening that his "final days" could be near hoping it would produce a knee-jerk Iraqi reaction that would suit Washington's interests of seeing the UN inspection fail.
The American bait of a new life in the US for some 500 Iraqi scientists who worked with their country's military programmes is part of the American gameplan.
As such, the UN inspectors bear the heavy burden of having to carry out their mission knowing well that their success might not amount to much in terms of averting a war against Iraq.
The technicalities of their work are complex. Indeed, they are armed with wide UN authorisation to make demands at will on the Iraqi government, but finding concrete evidence of Baghdad's alleged weapons of mass destruction and contradict Iraq's expected disclosures could be a difficult if not impossible task.
On the nuclear front, the IAEA said in 1998 that it had bust an Iraqi programme to build an atomic weapon after IAEA experts combed the country. It informed the UN Security Council that all material which could go into producing a nuclear weapon was removed from Baghdad and that the country no longer possessed the ability to renew its nuclear project even in the medium term. However, the US vetoed an IAEA certification that would have closed Iraq's nuclear file.
A hypothesis says that Iraq could have focused on developing a "dirty bomb" -- nuclear material detonated by conventional explosives causing limited but deadly damage to human life and nature in the immediate environment. But to locate such "dirty bombs" would not be easy since they leave little traces of tell-tale radiation.
On the missile front, previous UN inspections have accounted for all but less than half a dozen long-range missiles that Iraq had known to have acquired from the then Soviet Union and developed on its own. This was conceded by Australian Richard Butler, who headed the UN Special Commission which became defunct four years ago, after he paid several visits to Baghdad in mid-1997.
On the two other fronts -- chemical and biological weapons -- the scene is murky. Without actually discovering allegedly hidden caches of such weapons and components, some which have civilian as well as military use, the UN inspectors would only have conjectures and no physical evidence to support any charge. Again, it would be the US intelligence findings, including satellite information and details of Iraqi imports of "dual-purpose" materials -- that would have the final say in the matter; again a deadly trap for Baghdad.
The US has further armed itself by describing Iraqi defiance of Western patrolling of "no-fly" zones in Iraq -- Iraqi fixed wing aircraft are not supposed to fly beyond the 36th parallel in the north and 32nd parallel in the south -- as "material breach" of Resolution 1441. However, Russia, China and France as well as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan have rejected the assertion since there is no UN Security Council authorisation for American and British warplanes to carry out reconnaissance flights in Iraqi airspace.
At the same time, American insistence on its argument is defintely going to be part of Washington's case for war against Iraq.
Seen from the UN inspectors' perspective -- barring perhaps that of the 27 Americans among them -- they are the foot soliders in an immediate war of wits, pitting their boss Blix against US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is in the forefront of the hardliners in Washington who include Vice-President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condaleesa Rice and several top officials at the Pentagon.
The UN inspectors, who have no little means of gathering information except their field work and interviews, need more than prayers for success in their mission; and indeed the Washington hardliners' prayers for their failure is backed by the economic, political and military might of the world's superpower, which also boasts of the best intelligence-gathering capability.