PV Vivekanand
This the second and final part of a report on the militant Ansar Al Islam group, which the US says was linked with Al Qaeda and is present in northern Iraq in what appears to an effort to establish a connection between the Baghdad government and Al Qaeda.
What is known about Ansar Al Islam?
The existence of the group and its alleged links with Al Qaeda were highlighted in a Christian Science Monitor report in March.
It is a tight-knit group of less than 800 followers -- Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians and Afghans -- based in Halabja, a Kurdish village on the Iraqi-Iranian border and enforces a Taliban-style Islamic code in a cluster of villages in the area.
Halabja is the site of what the US has described as a massive Iraqi chemical attack towards the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war to quell Iranian Kurdish presence there -- all the more reason for the group to maintain hostility towards the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad.
Ansar Al Islam's leader Mulla Kreekar has refugee status in Norway after landing there from Iran under a UN refugee programme in 1993. He has been out of Norway for the last two years.
The Norwegian government has launched an investigation into his activities in the wake of the US allegation that the group had ties with Al Qaeda.
The group, an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan which was reportedly backed by Tehran.
Iran upports everal Iranian Kurdish groups in the area with a view to countering the influence of Iraqi Kurdish factions that are dominant in northern Iraq, regional experts say.
Mullah Kreekar was a former member of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan who joined Ansar Al Islam after its formation in September 2001. He supposedly replaced Abu Abdullah Shafae - an Iraqi Kurd who allegedly trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan for 10 years - and changed his name from Warya Holery. Shafae is now believed to be Ansar Al Islam's deputy leader.
Traditionally, Tehran has supported the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, and its support for other groups is seen as aimed at using them if, as and when Kurdish activities threaten Iranian interests.
Tehran is eager to ensure that the Kurds living in its north, Iraqi Kurds and Turkish Kurds do not gang up to set up an independent Kurdistan in the border area.
Baghad might have tried to use Ansar Al Islam if only to create confusion among the dozens of Kurdish groups that challenge its control of northern Iraq, analysts say. However, they doubt whether Saddam had much success with the group, which is said to be staunchly fundamentalist bordering on an obsession with their fight against "the blasphemous secularist, political, social, and cultural" society in northern Iraqi villages.
According to reports, Ansar Al Islam activists have ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the veil in the areas under their control.
"Ansar Al Islam is a kind of Taliban," according to PUK leader Jalal Talabani. "They are terrorists who have declared war against all Kurdish political parties. We gave them a chance to change their ways ... and end their terrorist acts. But if we can't do it through dialogue, we are obliged to use force."
The PUK, which is engaged in a running battle with Ansar Al Islam for domination of the villages on the border, does not believe the group is backed by Iran.
"The Iranians are emphatic that this group is a threat to their own security," according to Barham Salih, a senior PUK official.
The other dominant Kurdish group, the Kurdish Democratic Party led by Masoud Barzani, has not commented on the allegations, but it is united with the PUK against Ansar Al Islam.
Another PUK official, Mustapha Saed Qada, claimed in comments carried by the Christian Science Monitor in March that his group had overrun two Ansar camps after Sept. 11 and found "the walls covered with poems and graffiti praising Bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks on the US."
Predictably, Qada claimed that Ansar Al Islam might even have ties with Iraqi government agents operating in northern Iraq. "We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqis and Ansar Al Islam. I believe that Iraq is also funding Ansar Al Islam. There are no hard facts as yet, but I believe that under the table they are supporting them because it will cause further instability for the Kurds."
Given that the PUK is bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime, Qada's comments need a lot more than simple assertions, observers point out.
US officials have voiced similar doubts since the PUK has a vested interested in implicating Baghdad with Al Qaeda.
Reports in the US said the White House had rejected a proposal to launch a pre-emptive strike against the Al Ansar positions in northern Iraq.
Saddam's eldest son Udai has accused Iran of backing the group but rejected its purported links with Al Qaeda.
The ambiguity in Udai's comment was that he referred to a group called "Jund Al Islam," which US officials varying describe as either a mother group from which Ansar Al Islam broke away or an offshoot of Ansar Al Islam itself.
"They (Jund Al Islam) do not have any link whatsoever with Al Qaeda, and this is purely an Iranian game aimed at gaining influence in the area," said Udai Hussein.
Tehran rejected the accusation and said it disapproved of the group's activities.
Since mid-August, more than 1,000 Peshamargas of the PUK are figthing Ansar Al Islam around the Ansar stronghold of Halabja after pushing the group back from from villages further into north Iraq.
It was reported in early August that 19-year-old youth belonging to Ansar Al Islam surrendered to PUK authorities after he had a last-minute change of heart on his way to blow himself among PUK officials.
The youth had strapped himself with explosives and was indoctrinated by his Ansar mentors that he would be serving his people by killing PUK officials in a suicide attack.
However, the youth opted not to carry out the attack and surrendered to the same officials whom he was supposed to have killed, the reports said. He is detained at a PUK jail in Sulaimaniya in north Iraq.
Had the attack taken place, it would have been the first known suicide bombing by an Iraqi Kurd against opponents, and would have introduced a new element in the ongoing battle between Ansar Al Islam and the PUK.
Mullah Kreekar, the Ansar Al Islam leader, has given an interview to Norwegian television that is expected to be broadcast on Tuesday. Possibly, he might throw more light into the group's activities and its connections.
Regardless of all other factors, is abundantly clear that the group espouses militancy and is present in northern Iraq. However, is it not enough to prove that Baghdad is linked with the group, and, inter alia, Al Qaeda, particularly given that the group is active in an area generally under American protection?
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Sunday, August 25, 2002
Ansar Al Islam Part I
by pv vivekanand
ANSAR AL ISLAM, the group whose name rose to prominence last week with the CNN screening of alleged testing of chemical weapons in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda members, has been active in northern Iraq since late 2001 but the connection that the US is trying to make between Baghdad and the faction -- and Al Qaeda by extension -- is weak at best, according to regional experts,
Washington has failed to establish that Baghdad had links with Al Qaeda although several attempts were made: first with a report that an Iraqi diplomat had met with Mohammed Atta, the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, in Europe in early 2001. It could not be confirmed that such a meeting took place, let alone that the two discussed Al Qaeda plans to stage anti-US attacks.
The second attempt was a matter of convenience and it came with the rash of anthrax scares in the US. The finger was immediately pointed at Iraq, since UN inspectors had found anthrax strains in Baghdad's weapons programme. However, the accusation fell apart when it was found that the particular strain in anthrax that caused the massive scare in the US was different from what the UN inspectors had discovered in Iraq.
The third attempt to link Iraq with Al Qaeda came in May with reports that a defecting Iraqi intelligence agent had seen Osama Bin Laden in Baghdad in early 2000. The US media played up the report, but then it became apparent that the defecting agent could not have been telling the truth since he had left Iraq in early 1999 and never went back.
The third attempt seeks to establish that Al Qaeda fighters are present in northern Iraq, but it appears to be a self-defeating exercise since the area where they are said to be present is outside the control of the Baghdad government. If anything, the US is offering protection to the area's residents against attacks by the Iraqi army.
Against that backdrop, the alleged Al Qaeda presence in northern Iraq could not be a strong argument for the US to target Saddam in its war against terrorism.
Regional experts are emphatic that Saddam and Bin Laden, while sharing common enmity towards the US, are ideologically too far apart to strike an alliance and work together.
Bin Laden holds Saddam responsible for having set the ground for US military presence in the region by invading Kuwait in 1990 and has often been bitterly critical of the Iraqi president.
According to Arabs who knew Bin Laden well while they were in Afghanistan and maintained contacts with his supporters after leaving the country in the mid-90s, the Al Qaeda leader had turned down Iraqi offers of asylum after he came under American focus following the 1998 bomb attacks in Kenya and Tanzania.
US intelligence reports say Ansar Al Islam fighters trained with Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000 and the group is harbouring Al Qaeda activists in northern Iraq. They are presumed to have fled overland from Afghanistan in the wake of the American military strikes against that country launched in October 2001. The implication is that they reached northern Iraq through Iranian territory.
Immediately after the CNN screening of the purported tapes of Qaeda testing of chemical weapons last week, US "experts" said it resembled a method followed by Ansar Al Islam.
The New York Times reported that US intelligence had monitored an Ansar Al Islam site in northern Iraq where chemical or biological weapons experiments were conducted with farm animals. It was initially feared this might constitute a significant chemical-biological threat, but US officials decided it was not serious enough to justify a military strike, said the paper.
Even if it is established that Ansar Al Islam, which is led by a Kurd, Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, who goes by the name of Mullah Kreekar, had links with Al Qaeda, it is far from establishing that Baghdad had connections with Ansar Al Islam.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said there are Al Qaeda members in Iraq, but he has not said where they are.
"I have said for some time that there are Al Qaeda in Iraq, and there are," he said last week. "They have left Afghanistan," he said. "They have left other locations. And they've landed in a variety of countries, one of which is Iraq."
US officials initially said Arab members of Ansar Al Islam were involved in the experimentation, but later they said it was unclear whether they were Arabs or Kurds.
Ansar Al Islam is based in northern Iraq near the border with Iran -- territory not controlled by the government of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
As such, says Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, the US, which offers "protection" to Kurds in north Iraq by enforcing a "no-fly" zone, should ask itself how it allowed the group to base itself there.
Aziz, in recent US television interviews, pointed out the irony in the US contention that the Iraqi government was harbouring a group in a territory beyond its control and "protected" by the US.
Aziz questioned why American officials have not publicly raised the Al Qaeda matter with the Kurdish groups Washington supports in northern Iraq.
What is known about Ansar Al Islam?
The existence of the group and its alleged links with Al Qaeda were highlighted in a Christian Science Monitor report in March.
It is a tight-knit group of less than 800 followers -- Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians and Afghans -- based in Halabja, a Kurdish village on the Iraqi-Iranian border and enforces a Taliban-style Islamic code in a cluster of villages in the area.
Halabja is the site of what the US has described as a massive Iraqi chemical attack towards the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and to quell Iranian Kurdish presence there -- all the more reason for the group to maintain hostility towards the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad.
Ansar Al Islam's leader Mulla Kreekar has refugee status in Norway after landing there from Iran under a UN refugee programme in 1993. He has been out of Norway for the last two years.
The Norwegian government has launched an investigation into his activities in the wake of the US allegation that the group had ties with Al Qaeda.
The group, an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, is reportedly backed by Tehran, which supports for several Iranian Kurdish groups in the area with a view to countering the influence of Iraqi Kurdish factions that are dominant in northern Iraq.
Mullah Kreekar was a former member of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan who joined Ansar Al Islam after its formation in September 2001. He supposedly replaced Abu Abdullah Shafae - an Iraqi Kurd who allegedly trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan for 10 years - and changed his name from Warya Holery. Shafae is now believed to be Ansar Al Islam's deputy leader.
Traditionally, Tehran has supported the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, and its support for other groups is seen as aimed at using them if, as and when Kurdish activities threaten Iranian interests.
Tehran is eager to ensure that the Kurds living in its north, Iraqi Kurds and Turkish Kurds do not gang up to set up an independent Kurdistan in the border area.
Saddam might have tried to use Ansar Al Islam if only to create confusion among the dozens of Kurdish groups that challenge his control of northern Iraq, analysts say. However, they doubt whether Saddam had much success with the group, which is said to be staunchly fundamentalist bordering on fanatic obsession with their fight against "the blasphemous secularist, political, social, and cultural" society in northern Iraqi villages.
According to reports, Ansar Al Islam activists have ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the veil in the areas under their control.
"Ansar Al Islam is a kind of Taliban," PUK leader Jalal Talabani has said. "They are terrorists who have declared war against all Kurdish political parties. We gave them a chance to change their ways ... and end their terrorist acts. But if we can't do it through dialogue, we are obliged to use force."
The PUK, which is engaged in a running battle with Ansar Al Islam for domination of the villages on the border, does not believe the group is backed by Iran.
"The Iranians are emphatic that this group is a threat to their own security," according to Barham Salih, a senior PUK official.
The other dominant Kurdish group, the Kurdish Democratic Party led by Masoud Barzani, has not commented on the allegations, but it is united with the PUK against Ansar Al Islam.
Another PUK official, Mustapha Saed Qada, claimed in comments carried by the Christian Science Monitor in March that his group had overrun two Ansar camps after Sept. 11 and found "the walls covered with poems and graffiti praising Bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks on the US."
"In one, there is a picture of the twin towers with a drawing of Bin Laden standing on the top holding a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a knife in the other." he said.
He added that the group has received $600,000 from Al Qaeda and a delivery of weapons and Toyota landcruisers.
According to Qada, Ansar Al Islam might even have ties with Iraqi government agents operating in northern Iraq. "We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqis and Ansar Al Islam. I believe that Iraq is also funding Ansar Al Islam. There are no hard facts as yet, but I believe that under the table they are supporting them because it will cause further instability for the Kurds."
Given that the PUK is bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime, Qada's comments need a lot more than simple assertions, observers point out.
Saddam's eldest son Udai has accused Iran of backing the group but rejected its purported links with Al Qaeda. The ambiguity in Udai's comment was that he referred to a group called "Jund Al Islam," which US officials varying describe as either a mother group from which Ansar Al Islam broke away or an offshoot of Ansar Al Islam itself.
"They (Jund Al Islam) do not have any link whatsoever with Al Qaeda, and this is purely an Iranian game aimed at gaining influence in the area," said Udai Hussein.
As of Sunday, Tehran has not commented on Udai's s statement.
ANSAR AL ISLAM, the group whose name rose to prominence last week with the CNN screening of alleged testing of chemical weapons in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda members, has been active in northern Iraq since late 2001 but the connection that the US is trying to make between Baghdad and the faction -- and Al Qaeda by extension -- is weak at best, according to regional experts,
Washington has failed to establish that Baghdad had links with Al Qaeda although several attempts were made: first with a report that an Iraqi diplomat had met with Mohammed Atta, the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, in Europe in early 2001. It could not be confirmed that such a meeting took place, let alone that the two discussed Al Qaeda plans to stage anti-US attacks.
The second attempt was a matter of convenience and it came with the rash of anthrax scares in the US. The finger was immediately pointed at Iraq, since UN inspectors had found anthrax strains in Baghdad's weapons programme. However, the accusation fell apart when it was found that the particular strain in anthrax that caused the massive scare in the US was different from what the UN inspectors had discovered in Iraq.
The third attempt to link Iraq with Al Qaeda came in May with reports that a defecting Iraqi intelligence agent had seen Osama Bin Laden in Baghdad in early 2000. The US media played up the report, but then it became apparent that the defecting agent could not have been telling the truth since he had left Iraq in early 1999 and never went back.
The third attempt seeks to establish that Al Qaeda fighters are present in northern Iraq, but it appears to be a self-defeating exercise since the area where they are said to be present is outside the control of the Baghdad government. If anything, the US is offering protection to the area's residents against attacks by the Iraqi army.
Against that backdrop, the alleged Al Qaeda presence in northern Iraq could not be a strong argument for the US to target Saddam in its war against terrorism.
Regional experts are emphatic that Saddam and Bin Laden, while sharing common enmity towards the US, are ideologically too far apart to strike an alliance and work together.
Bin Laden holds Saddam responsible for having set the ground for US military presence in the region by invading Kuwait in 1990 and has often been bitterly critical of the Iraqi president.
According to Arabs who knew Bin Laden well while they were in Afghanistan and maintained contacts with his supporters after leaving the country in the mid-90s, the Al Qaeda leader had turned down Iraqi offers of asylum after he came under American focus following the 1998 bomb attacks in Kenya and Tanzania.
US intelligence reports say Ansar Al Islam fighters trained with Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000 and the group is harbouring Al Qaeda activists in northern Iraq. They are presumed to have fled overland from Afghanistan in the wake of the American military strikes against that country launched in October 2001. The implication is that they reached northern Iraq through Iranian territory.
Immediately after the CNN screening of the purported tapes of Qaeda testing of chemical weapons last week, US "experts" said it resembled a method followed by Ansar Al Islam.
The New York Times reported that US intelligence had monitored an Ansar Al Islam site in northern Iraq where chemical or biological weapons experiments were conducted with farm animals. It was initially feared this might constitute a significant chemical-biological threat, but US officials decided it was not serious enough to justify a military strike, said the paper.
Even if it is established that Ansar Al Islam, which is led by a Kurd, Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, who goes by the name of Mullah Kreekar, had links with Al Qaeda, it is far from establishing that Baghdad had connections with Ansar Al Islam.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said there are Al Qaeda members in Iraq, but he has not said where they are.
"I have said for some time that there are Al Qaeda in Iraq, and there are," he said last week. "They have left Afghanistan," he said. "They have left other locations. And they've landed in a variety of countries, one of which is Iraq."
US officials initially said Arab members of Ansar Al Islam were involved in the experimentation, but later they said it was unclear whether they were Arabs or Kurds.
Ansar Al Islam is based in northern Iraq near the border with Iran -- territory not controlled by the government of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
As such, says Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, the US, which offers "protection" to Kurds in north Iraq by enforcing a "no-fly" zone, should ask itself how it allowed the group to base itself there.
Aziz, in recent US television interviews, pointed out the irony in the US contention that the Iraqi government was harbouring a group in a territory beyond its control and "protected" by the US.
Aziz questioned why American officials have not publicly raised the Al Qaeda matter with the Kurdish groups Washington supports in northern Iraq.
What is known about Ansar Al Islam?
The existence of the group and its alleged links with Al Qaeda were highlighted in a Christian Science Monitor report in March.
It is a tight-knit group of less than 800 followers -- Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians and Afghans -- based in Halabja, a Kurdish village on the Iraqi-Iranian border and enforces a Taliban-style Islamic code in a cluster of villages in the area.
Halabja is the site of what the US has described as a massive Iraqi chemical attack towards the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and to quell Iranian Kurdish presence there -- all the more reason for the group to maintain hostility towards the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad.
Ansar Al Islam's leader Mulla Kreekar has refugee status in Norway after landing there from Iran under a UN refugee programme in 1993. He has been out of Norway for the last two years.
The Norwegian government has launched an investigation into his activities in the wake of the US allegation that the group had ties with Al Qaeda.
The group, an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, is reportedly backed by Tehran, which supports for several Iranian Kurdish groups in the area with a view to countering the influence of Iraqi Kurdish factions that are dominant in northern Iraq.
Mullah Kreekar was a former member of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan who joined Ansar Al Islam after its formation in September 2001. He supposedly replaced Abu Abdullah Shafae - an Iraqi Kurd who allegedly trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan for 10 years - and changed his name from Warya Holery. Shafae is now believed to be Ansar Al Islam's deputy leader.
Traditionally, Tehran has supported the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, and its support for other groups is seen as aimed at using them if, as and when Kurdish activities threaten Iranian interests.
Tehran is eager to ensure that the Kurds living in its north, Iraqi Kurds and Turkish Kurds do not gang up to set up an independent Kurdistan in the border area.
Saddam might have tried to use Ansar Al Islam if only to create confusion among the dozens of Kurdish groups that challenge his control of northern Iraq, analysts say. However, they doubt whether Saddam had much success with the group, which is said to be staunchly fundamentalist bordering on fanatic obsession with their fight against "the blasphemous secularist, political, social, and cultural" society in northern Iraqi villages.
According to reports, Ansar Al Islam activists have ransacked and razed beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered women in the streets for refusing to wear the veil in the areas under their control.
"Ansar Al Islam is a kind of Taliban," PUK leader Jalal Talabani has said. "They are terrorists who have declared war against all Kurdish political parties. We gave them a chance to change their ways ... and end their terrorist acts. But if we can't do it through dialogue, we are obliged to use force."
The PUK, which is engaged in a running battle with Ansar Al Islam for domination of the villages on the border, does not believe the group is backed by Iran.
"The Iranians are emphatic that this group is a threat to their own security," according to Barham Salih, a senior PUK official.
The other dominant Kurdish group, the Kurdish Democratic Party led by Masoud Barzani, has not commented on the allegations, but it is united with the PUK against Ansar Al Islam.
Another PUK official, Mustapha Saed Qada, claimed in comments carried by the Christian Science Monitor in March that his group had overrun two Ansar camps after Sept. 11 and found "the walls covered with poems and graffiti praising Bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks on the US."
"In one, there is a picture of the twin towers with a drawing of Bin Laden standing on the top holding a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a knife in the other." he said.
He added that the group has received $600,000 from Al Qaeda and a delivery of weapons and Toyota landcruisers.
According to Qada, Ansar Al Islam might even have ties with Iraqi government agents operating in northern Iraq. "We have picked up conversations on our radios between Iraqis and Ansar Al Islam. I believe that Iraq is also funding Ansar Al Islam. There are no hard facts as yet, but I believe that under the table they are supporting them because it will cause further instability for the Kurds."
Given that the PUK is bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime, Qada's comments need a lot more than simple assertions, observers point out.
Saddam's eldest son Udai has accused Iran of backing the group but rejected its purported links with Al Qaeda. The ambiguity in Udai's comment was that he referred to a group called "Jund Al Islam," which US officials varying describe as either a mother group from which Ansar Al Islam broke away or an offshoot of Ansar Al Islam itself.
"They (Jund Al Islam) do not have any link whatsoever with Al Qaeda, and this is purely an Iranian game aimed at gaining influence in the area," said Udai Hussein.
As of Sunday, Tehran has not commented on Udai's s statement.
Friday, August 16, 2002
Syria and Iran after Iraq
BY PV VIVEKANAND
SYRIA and Iran should have enough reasons to be worried. It is emerging that the planned US action against Iraq for "regime change" in Baghdad could be part of a grand plan to remove all those who challenge US strategic interests in the Middle East, and Syria could be the next US target after Iraq to be followed by Iran.
There are indeed signs of a wider American campaign to consolidate the US' standing as the unchallenged sole superpower of the world, and the Middle East is a very important test case for Washington.
Reports from Washington indicate that the driving force behind the campaign is a small group of "neoconservatives" with powerful political allies and which seeks to serve Israeli interests more than those of the US.
Indeed, it is no coincidence that the three US targets in the Middle East, Iraq, Syria and Iran, are also among the most vocal against Israel. It is not simply a matter of convenience for the US that fundamental changes are made in these countries to remove the challenge to Israel if not to better suit the interests of Washington's sole "strategic ally" in the Middle East; it is indeed a policy objective just as the ouster of Saddam Hussein is.
Washington flirted with Syria in the early 90s because it suited US interests to do so but now Damascus has become more of a liability than an asset only because it insists on its rights and represents the toughest of all Arab parties on whom Israel wants to impose its version of peace.
Similarly, the US hoped it could do business with Iran when "moderate" Mohammed Khatami was elected president in 1997. However, those hopes failed to materialise in view of the "hardline" religious establishment's grip on power on a parallel track with that of the government but with overriding authority.
Now that Khatami would soon step down after serving two terms, the US has little hopes that another "moderate" might take his place, and hence the recent posture that Washington had "given up" on Khatami.
On the Syrian front, George Bush Senior broke new ground in Washington's ties with Damascus by holding a meeting with the late president Hafez Al Assad in late 1990 and secured his endorsement for the US-led military action that evicted Iraq from Kuwait in early 1991.
In the bargain, Bush promised Assad at least two things: The US would ensure that an Arab-Israeli peace process is launched soon after the war over Kuwait and Washington would not question Syria's role in Lebanon.
The peace process, Assad was assured, would aim at implementing United Nations resolutions based on international legitimacy. In the end, apart from a solution to the Palestinian problem, Syria would have its Golan Heights back from Israeli occupation.
But when Arab-Israeli negotiations got under way in earnest after launched in Madrid in late 1991, it became clear that Israel had no intention of returning the Golan Heights, and the Arab camp became weak, as the late Assad saw it, because of the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo accords of 1993 and the peace treaty that Jordan signed with Israel in 1994 -- both under American auspices.
Assad, a political realist, was ready to accept peace with Israel and normal relations with the Jewish state in exchange for the return of the Golan in its entirety.
From the Israeli perspective, there is no way it could return the Golan to Syria since the Heights represents its main source of water. Giving it up would mean surrendering Israel's control over its source of water and that is not a chance it would take no matter what cost. As such Assad's insistence on a return to the lines of June 4, 1967 offered a perfect cover for Israel to stall the process.
Despite flirting with Syria, it would seem that the US never actually "trusted" it. It did not remove Syria from the list of "countries sponsoring terrorism" and demanded a series of reforms before it would think of doing so. Assad tried to comply with some of the demands by expelling some of the groups named as "terrorist" by the US, but it was not enough for Washington.
The US also found it was difficult to keep its pledge to stay away from intervening in Lebanon as calls mounted from Lebanese right-wing groups backed by France for an end to the Syrian domination of Lebanese affairs. Furthermore, Damascus failed to heed American demands to rein in Lebanese resistance against Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, and it soon became apparent that Washington could not do business with Syria.
Indeed, the US hoped that Bashar Al Assad, who succeeded his father in 2000, would be more amenable to its demands. But the hope was short-lived since Bashar remained firm on his father's lines in the peace process.
The US is now convinced that it would be wasting time to persuade Damascus to accept anything less than its demands in the peace process and to dilute the Syrian role in Lebanon. And so, a "regime change" in Damascus is the only way out, as far as the US sees it under the givens today.
On the Iranian front, "liberal" Khatami has been unable to weaken the hardline theologians' grip on power. In the American view, the religious establishment's constitutional authority is too deep-rooted to be pried away through conventional political means adopted by political forces within the country. Again, in the US eyes, a "regime change" aiming at destroying the religious leaders' power is the order of the day in Iran.
The hostility of the theologians towards the US stemmed from the American backing for the ousted Shah dynasty. The hostility was further strengthened and turned into a way of life for the religious establishment of Iran when the US implicitly backed Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Iran's support for Lebanon's Hizbollah and Palestinian groups is a constant source of concern for Israel, and, by extension, the US. Further compounding the concern are the advances that Iran has reportedly made in developing long-range missiles which could hit Israel, its acquisition of two Russian submarines and the ongoing construction of a nuclear power plant on the Gulf coast.
Now it is almost foregone conclusion short of divine intervention or a miracle that US President George W. Bush would not be dissuaded from his plans to launch military strikes against Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. It is also clear that the US action would lead to a reshaping of Iraq, including a disintegration of that country as we know it today.
It is not a new discovery. It was always known that toppling Saddam could not been seen as a surgical operation conducted in isolation from all other realities in Iraq, and Arab leaders have repeatedly warned the US against such action that would definitely have wide-ranging regional implications.
It was also clear these fears plus the immense difficulty in toppling Saddam had forced the then administration of George Bush Senior to stop short of ordering American forces into Baghdad after the 1991 Gulf war.
As such, and given that the ground realities today make it much more predictable that military action against Iraq would destabilise the region, it appears that Washington has accepted the inevitability of such a course of events and, if anything, it suits the post-Sept. 11 American thinking.
That would definitely mean that the "regime change" in Iraq that Bush is seeking is the first step in the grand American plan to change the shape of the region and would be followed by similar action in Syria and Iran.
However, there could be more than meets the eye in the equation.
There is a growing school of thought that believes that purely Zionist -- read Israeli or vice versa -- interests aimed controlling the world's destiny are the guiding force behind the US administration's actions that ultimately would serve Israel rather than the US itself.
A recent report indicated that the main force driving Bush into undertaking such actions is the group of "neoconservatives" in Washington.
Some might even argue that it sounds more like a Zionist-led circle which had planned in the first half of the last century that the best means to serve the goal of Zionist domination of the world was to control the superpower which dominates the world.
The report, carried by Reuters, said that the group known was "neocons" first emerged in the 1960s when a group of thinkers, many of them Jewish and all passionately anti-Communist, became disillusioned with what they saw as a dangerous radical drift within the Democratic Party to which they then belonged.
Some researchers argue that the group was actually formed in the 30s, with Prescott Bush, grandfather of the present president, taking a leading role as an American Christian supporter of Israel but manipulated by Zionist leaders.
That group is now aligned with the Republicans, and might find Bush Junior a willing tool in its hands to serve Israeli interests if only because of his relative inexperience in international affairs, critics say.
It was under this group's influence that the then president Ronald Reagan took the unprecedented step of bombing a foreign country in peace time arguing that it was involved in attacks against Americans.
Under Reagan's orders, American warplanes bombed the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1985 after intelligence reports said that Libya was behind a grenade attack at a Berlin disco frequented by American soldiers. One woman was killed in the grenade attack while the American bombing killed five people, including Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi's adopted daughter.
In concept, it fitted in with the Israeli policy of military retaliation for attacks targeting Israeli interests, and Reagan appeared to have been prompted to taking an Israeli leaf by the Zionist group.
(It is even argued by some critics that the all-too powerful "neocons" were behind "framing" Libya in the 1988 Lockerbie affair despite evidence that pointed the finger at Syria and Lebanon as well as "rogue" agents of the Central Intelligence Agency. The argument goes on to say that the group thought Libya posed an immediate challenge to US interests and Washington was not ready yet to take on Syria or Iran).
Today, according to Stephen Walt, a dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the group, which he described as "small but well-placed" and including "neoconservative officials and commentators, is primarily interested in eliminating what they regard as a threat to Israel."
"Absent their activities, the United States would be focusing on containing Iraq, which we have done successfully since the Gulf War, but we would not be trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein. We would also be pursuing a more evenhanded policy in the Middle East in general," Walt told Reuters.
Among the "allies" of the group are Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz.
Another ally of the group is said to be Richard Perle, another former Reagan Defence Department hawk who serves as chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, "a formerly sleepy committee of foreign policy old timers that Perle has refashioned into an important advisory group."
Incidentally, it was Perle who organised a briefing by RAND Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec, who has no firsthand experience whatsoever with the Middle East.
In his briefing -- which was very conveniently "leaked" to the Washington Post -- Murawiec portrayed Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the US, an assertion that prompted the Pentagon to issue a denial that it is not official policy.
The "neocon" circle is backed by conservative magazines like Commentary, and the Weekly Standard, and think-tanks such as the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for the New American Century, says Reuters.
James Zogby, chairman of the Arab American institute, appeared to have put, perhaps unwittingly, his finger on the Zionist pulse of the group when he commented that the circle's "attitude towards an Iraq invasion is, if you have the ability and the desire to do it, that's justification enough."
That is precisely a part the Zionist ideology, and this seen at work today in the brutal military approach adopted and practised by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon against the Palestinians and his attitude towards the Arabs at large.
SYRIA and Iran should have enough reasons to be worried. It is emerging that the planned US action against Iraq for "regime change" in Baghdad could be part of a grand plan to remove all those who challenge US strategic interests in the Middle East, and Syria could be the next US target after Iraq to be followed by Iran.
There are indeed signs of a wider American campaign to consolidate the US' standing as the unchallenged sole superpower of the world, and the Middle East is a very important test case for Washington.
Reports from Washington indicate that the driving force behind the campaign is a small group of "neoconservatives" with powerful political allies and which seeks to serve Israeli interests more than those of the US.
Indeed, it is no coincidence that the three US targets in the Middle East, Iraq, Syria and Iran, are also among the most vocal against Israel. It is not simply a matter of convenience for the US that fundamental changes are made in these countries to remove the challenge to Israel if not to better suit the interests of Washington's sole "strategic ally" in the Middle East; it is indeed a policy objective just as the ouster of Saddam Hussein is.
Washington flirted with Syria in the early 90s because it suited US interests to do so but now Damascus has become more of a liability than an asset only because it insists on its rights and represents the toughest of all Arab parties on whom Israel wants to impose its version of peace.
Similarly, the US hoped it could do business with Iran when "moderate" Mohammed Khatami was elected president in 1997. However, those hopes failed to materialise in view of the "hardline" religious establishment's grip on power on a parallel track with that of the government but with overriding authority.
Now that Khatami would soon step down after serving two terms, the US has little hopes that another "moderate" might take his place, and hence the recent posture that Washington had "given up" on Khatami.
On the Syrian front, George Bush Senior broke new ground in Washington's ties with Damascus by holding a meeting with the late president Hafez Al Assad in late 1990 and secured his endorsement for the US-led military action that evicted Iraq from Kuwait in early 1991.
In the bargain, Bush promised Assad at least two things: The US would ensure that an Arab-Israeli peace process is launched soon after the war over Kuwait and Washington would not question Syria's role in Lebanon.
The peace process, Assad was assured, would aim at implementing United Nations resolutions based on international legitimacy. In the end, apart from a solution to the Palestinian problem, Syria would have its Golan Heights back from Israeli occupation.
But when Arab-Israeli negotiations got under way in earnest after launched in Madrid in late 1991, it became clear that Israel had no intention of returning the Golan Heights, and the Arab camp became weak, as the late Assad saw it, because of the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo accords of 1993 and the peace treaty that Jordan signed with Israel in 1994 -- both under American auspices.
Assad, a political realist, was ready to accept peace with Israel and normal relations with the Jewish state in exchange for the return of the Golan in its entirety.
From the Israeli perspective, there is no way it could return the Golan to Syria since the Heights represents its main source of water. Giving it up would mean surrendering Israel's control over its source of water and that is not a chance it would take no matter what cost. As such Assad's insistence on a return to the lines of June 4, 1967 offered a perfect cover for Israel to stall the process.
Despite flirting with Syria, it would seem that the US never actually "trusted" it. It did not remove Syria from the list of "countries sponsoring terrorism" and demanded a series of reforms before it would think of doing so. Assad tried to comply with some of the demands by expelling some of the groups named as "terrorist" by the US, but it was not enough for Washington.
The US also found it was difficult to keep its pledge to stay away from intervening in Lebanon as calls mounted from Lebanese right-wing groups backed by France for an end to the Syrian domination of Lebanese affairs. Furthermore, Damascus failed to heed American demands to rein in Lebanese resistance against Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, and it soon became apparent that Washington could not do business with Syria.
Indeed, the US hoped that Bashar Al Assad, who succeeded his father in 2000, would be more amenable to its demands. But the hope was short-lived since Bashar remained firm on his father's lines in the peace process.
The US is now convinced that it would be wasting time to persuade Damascus to accept anything less than its demands in the peace process and to dilute the Syrian role in Lebanon. And so, a "regime change" in Damascus is the only way out, as far as the US sees it under the givens today.
On the Iranian front, "liberal" Khatami has been unable to weaken the hardline theologians' grip on power. In the American view, the religious establishment's constitutional authority is too deep-rooted to be pried away through conventional political means adopted by political forces within the country. Again, in the US eyes, a "regime change" aiming at destroying the religious leaders' power is the order of the day in Iran.
The hostility of the theologians towards the US stemmed from the American backing for the ousted Shah dynasty. The hostility was further strengthened and turned into a way of life for the religious establishment of Iran when the US implicitly backed Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Iran's support for Lebanon's Hizbollah and Palestinian groups is a constant source of concern for Israel, and, by extension, the US. Further compounding the concern are the advances that Iran has reportedly made in developing long-range missiles which could hit Israel, its acquisition of two Russian submarines and the ongoing construction of a nuclear power plant on the Gulf coast.
Now it is almost foregone conclusion short of divine intervention or a miracle that US President George W. Bush would not be dissuaded from his plans to launch military strikes against Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. It is also clear that the US action would lead to a reshaping of Iraq, including a disintegration of that country as we know it today.
It is not a new discovery. It was always known that toppling Saddam could not been seen as a surgical operation conducted in isolation from all other realities in Iraq, and Arab leaders have repeatedly warned the US against such action that would definitely have wide-ranging regional implications.
It was also clear these fears plus the immense difficulty in toppling Saddam had forced the then administration of George Bush Senior to stop short of ordering American forces into Baghdad after the 1991 Gulf war.
As such, and given that the ground realities today make it much more predictable that military action against Iraq would destabilise the region, it appears that Washington has accepted the inevitability of such a course of events and, if anything, it suits the post-Sept. 11 American thinking.
That would definitely mean that the "regime change" in Iraq that Bush is seeking is the first step in the grand American plan to change the shape of the region and would be followed by similar action in Syria and Iran.
However, there could be more than meets the eye in the equation.
There is a growing school of thought that believes that purely Zionist -- read Israeli or vice versa -- interests aimed controlling the world's destiny are the guiding force behind the US administration's actions that ultimately would serve Israel rather than the US itself.
A recent report indicated that the main force driving Bush into undertaking such actions is the group of "neoconservatives" in Washington.
Some might even argue that it sounds more like a Zionist-led circle which had planned in the first half of the last century that the best means to serve the goal of Zionist domination of the world was to control the superpower which dominates the world.
The report, carried by Reuters, said that the group known was "neocons" first emerged in the 1960s when a group of thinkers, many of them Jewish and all passionately anti-Communist, became disillusioned with what they saw as a dangerous radical drift within the Democratic Party to which they then belonged.
Some researchers argue that the group was actually formed in the 30s, with Prescott Bush, grandfather of the present president, taking a leading role as an American Christian supporter of Israel but manipulated by Zionist leaders.
That group is now aligned with the Republicans, and might find Bush Junior a willing tool in its hands to serve Israeli interests if only because of his relative inexperience in international affairs, critics say.
It was under this group's influence that the then president Ronald Reagan took the unprecedented step of bombing a foreign country in peace time arguing that it was involved in attacks against Americans.
Under Reagan's orders, American warplanes bombed the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1985 after intelligence reports said that Libya was behind a grenade attack at a Berlin disco frequented by American soldiers. One woman was killed in the grenade attack while the American bombing killed five people, including Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi's adopted daughter.
In concept, it fitted in with the Israeli policy of military retaliation for attacks targeting Israeli interests, and Reagan appeared to have been prompted to taking an Israeli leaf by the Zionist group.
(It is even argued by some critics that the all-too powerful "neocons" were behind "framing" Libya in the 1988 Lockerbie affair despite evidence that pointed the finger at Syria and Lebanon as well as "rogue" agents of the Central Intelligence Agency. The argument goes on to say that the group thought Libya posed an immediate challenge to US interests and Washington was not ready yet to take on Syria or Iran).
Today, according to Stephen Walt, a dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the group, which he described as "small but well-placed" and including "neoconservative officials and commentators, is primarily interested in eliminating what they regard as a threat to Israel."
"Absent their activities, the United States would be focusing on containing Iraq, which we have done successfully since the Gulf War, but we would not be trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein. We would also be pursuing a more evenhanded policy in the Middle East in general," Walt told Reuters.
Among the "allies" of the group are Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz.
Another ally of the group is said to be Richard Perle, another former Reagan Defence Department hawk who serves as chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, "a formerly sleepy committee of foreign policy old timers that Perle has refashioned into an important advisory group."
Incidentally, it was Perle who organised a briefing by RAND Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec, who has no firsthand experience whatsoever with the Middle East.
In his briefing -- which was very conveniently "leaked" to the Washington Post -- Murawiec portrayed Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the US, an assertion that prompted the Pentagon to issue a denial that it is not official policy.
The "neocon" circle is backed by conservative magazines like Commentary, and the Weekly Standard, and think-tanks such as the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for the New American Century, says Reuters.
James Zogby, chairman of the Arab American institute, appeared to have put, perhaps unwittingly, his finger on the Zionist pulse of the group when he commented that the circle's "attitude towards an Iraq invasion is, if you have the ability and the desire to do it, that's justification enough."
That is precisely a part the Zionist ideology, and this seen at work today in the brutal military approach adopted and practised by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon against the Palestinians and his attitude towards the Arabs at large.
Thursday, August 01, 2002
Like a broken music record
by pv vivekanand
AFTER failing to establish a link between Saddam
Hussein and Osama Bin Laden -- and by extension to
prove an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks in the US
-- President George W. Bush is citing charges that
Baghdad is continuing to develop weapons of mass
destruction as his reason to launch military action
aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein.
But how authentic is the charge?
On the face of it, the international community is
being told to accept that Iraq has eluded the most
advanced satellite surveillance -- with equipment that
could arguably trace the contours of a grain of wheat
on the ground -- and the strictest-ever
air-sea-land-blockade backed by intense interceptions
and inspection of anything and everything crossing its
border -- and managed to resume its clandestine
weapons programme.
The assertion is based on an argument that the
departure of UN inspectors who were withdrawn by
Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- often wrongly
described by the US as their expulsion by Iraq -- in
late 1998 allowed Baghdad to pick where it had left
off following the destruction of most of its weapons
of mass destruction under the UN verification and
destruction programme.
A review of the UN programme would raise serious
questions about the US charge against Baghdad.
It was known that Baghdad and the UN mission never got
on well and there were always skirmishes, both
diplomatic and otherwise.
Iraq and the UN inspection teams have had many
standoffs, some of them resulting from the personal
postures adopted by inspectors and others because the
Iraqis tried to prevent vital papers on their
country's weapons programme as well as intelligence
documents unrelated to arms inspections being removed
by the UN officials.
"We hated each other's guts," as a former member of
the UN team put it.
It had become clear that Iraq had a much larger weapon
programme than was known to the international
community when the UN inspectors launched their
mission in 1991 as the United Nations Special
Commission (UNSCOM).
It took several years before UNSCOM managed to unravel
the programme, with the Iraqis revealing information
in bits and pieces and only when they were cornered
with solid evidence, and it became a cat-and-mouse
game.
It was not until late 1995 that the UN managed to get
a clear picture of Iraq's military programmes and that
came from Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel,
who "defected" to Jordan in August of that year.
Kamel, who served as Iraq's defence minister and head
of the country's military industry commission, was
believed to have been debriefed not only by the then
UNSCOM chairman, Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, but also by
American and European intelligence agencies.
At that time Kamel's "defection" and revelations about
his country's weapons programmes were seen as
Baghdad's opportunity to come clean with its secrets
to UNSCOM. In fact, Baghdad blamed Kamel for having
kept the secrets for himself and handed over several
cupboards full of files that it said were stashed away
by the defector at his farmhouse outside Baghdad.
The information gained from those files represented a
key pillar of UNSCOM strategy, and it was believed
that the UN mission had managed to unearth more than
90 per cent of Iraq's weapon programmes.
Shortly before the inspections came to a premature end
prompted by Iraq's insistence that a clear blueprint
be given for what was expected of it before the
sweeping UN sanctions imposed on it in 1990 are lifted
and Washington's refusal to meet the demand, UNSCOM
officials had asserted that the bulk of their work was
over although they were seeking answers to some vital
questions, and those questions are now being dusted
off and presented as the reasons for the charges
against Iraq.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which
followed an independent verification programme, said
that it had located Iraq's nuclear programme and had
eliminated the country's nuclear material and
equipment as well as the ability to renew them. But
when the IAEA tried to close the "nuclear file," the
US intervened it and aborted the move.
On the "missiles" file, Richard Butler, who succeeded
Ekeus as UNSCOM chairman, said in July/August 1997
that the UN team had accounted for all but less than
12 long-range Scud missiles that Iraq was known to
have bought from the then Soviet Union and modified.
He also said that the bulk of Iraq's chemical and
biological weapons were destroyed but that the UN team
had not received all answers.
"UNSCOM did a fantastic job," he said. "You have to
understand that when the Gulf war was ended there was
revealed an awesome array of weapons of mass
destruction: almost a nuclear bomb, long-range
missiles, chemical, biological, all of the weapons of
mass destruction. And we, with Iraq, got hold of most
of it, got an account of it or got rid of it."
Such comments had also come from several other key
members of the UN mission as well as American and
international military experts who had access to
classified information collected by UNSCOM.
Seen against the backdrop of such assertions, a look
at the claims and assertions that Iraq continues to
build weapons of mass destruction -- the reason that
Bush cites for his plans to launch military action
aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein -- unveils a
contradiction.
The key question is: With all entry points into Iraq
under close surveillance and a ban on all commercial
and military planes in and out of the country, how is
it possible that Baghdad continued to develop weapons
of mass destruction in the absence of the UN
inspectors since late 1998?
In an appearance before the US Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Butler asserted that Iraq had
extensive chemical and biological weapons programmes
and that there is evidence it has stepped up it
alleged nuclear programmes in recent years.
Is the world then to believe that Iraq managed to get
equipment and material past the American armada
patrolling the seas and checking anything and
everything heading for Iraq, and indeed "suspect"
material headed for Iraq's neighbours that could be
sent to Iraq, and renewed its weapons programme?
It has been 12 years since the sweeping trade embargo
was imposed on Iraq.
Isn't it not fair to anyone to expect that the
enforcers of the sanctions would have perfected their
art?
Almost every vessel, small or big, is inspected before
it docks in Iraq or anywhere with access to Iraq.
American intelligence agents are present in all
neighbours of Iraq -- although to a lesser extent in
Iran -- to ensure that no "contraband" material enters
the country; nothing beyond food and medicine and
related items approved under the UN's oil-for-food
programme is allowed into the country. Any item which
could have slightest "military use" is blocked from
entering Iraq.
An example is caustic soda, a key element in cleaning
and washing of dairy equipment. It could also be used
in production of chemical weapons, according to
experts.
Since the day the sanction and verification regime was
put into place, no consignment of caustic soda has
been allowed into Iraq, and efforts by Jordan-based
exporters to send the material to Iraq across the
border -- presumably for legitimate purposes -- have
been repeatedly thwarted.
That is only an indication of the effectiveness of the
blockade, and it is difficult to see how the Iraqis
managed to lay their hands of components of chemical
weapons.
However, that is not to say that Iraq could not have
done it. Then again, reports from Washington and
London indicate that military generals on both sides
of the Atlantic are not really convinced that Iraq had
developed weapons as alleged or that poses a real
threat to the region. Such scepticism has been voiced
by officers who should be in a position to have access
to classified and top secret information on Iraq's
military capabilities as a key pillar of any strategy
to launch a war on that country.
Some of the allegations are also based on accounts by
Iraqi defectors, both identified and unidentified.
However, the credibility and authenticity of such
accounts are brought under question when considering
that almost all the "defectors" are produced and
paraded by Iraqi dissident groups which have a vested
interest in convincing the world that Baghdad is evil.
In some cases, it has also been found that the
defectors had left Iraq around the same time the UN
inspections were halted and they were making claims
linked to the period after their departure from the
country.
However, regardless of all reasonings and logic based
on available facts that expose the hollowness of the
American argument for striking at Iraq, the Bush
administration is dead bent upon carrying out their
designs in the region and Saddam Hussein has no room
in their strategy.
'Spying' charges
AS was expected sooner or later, the Swedish diplomat
who headed the UN arms inspection programme in Iraq
until 1997 has turned around and extended implicit
endorsement of Baghdad's assertion that the
inspections were mostly a smokescreen for American
intelligence activities in the country.
Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, who chaired UNSCOM since its
creation in 1991 until he quit in 1997, affirmed in
public comments this week that some of his team
members were obviously engaged in work unrelated to
weapon inspections.
In comments carried by Swedish radio, Ekeus said the
US and other powers had exploited UN teams in Iraq
for their own political ends, including monitoring
President Saddam Hussein's movements and that, at
times, crises were created that could possibly form
the basis for military action.
"There is no doubt that the Americans wanted to
influence the inspections to further certain
fundamental US interests," Ekeus said in his first
affirmation that he was aware of what was going on.
That partly vindicates Baghdad's accusations,
particularly that Ekeus was one of the harshest
critics of Iraq while he headed UNSCOM and thereafter
until this week's comments.
Indeed, one of the key arguments Iraq is putting up
against the US demand for renewed inspections of
Baghdad's alleged programmes of producing weapons of
mass destruction is the record that previous
inspectors had spied on the country.
It is not a new position and some of those who served
in the UN mission for verification of arms in Iraq
until it was stopped in late 1998 had admitted in
public that some of their colleagues were intelligence
agents rather than arms experts.
In a statement that went largely unnoticed or played
down deliberately or otherwise, Iraqi Deputy Prime
Minister Tareq Aziz said in mid-1998 -that many of the
UN inspectors appeared unaware of what they were
supposed do in the realm of arms inspections and Iraqi
officers assigned to working with them found a marked
ignorance among them of technical issues related to
weapons of mass destruction.
Ironically, it had also been reported that some of the
inspectors were reporting directly to Israel with or
without US knowledge.
In fact, it was Aziz's statement that enraged
Australian diplomat Butler, who assumed charge of the
UN inspections as successor to Ekeus in mid-1997, and
led to a course of events that culminated in the UN
decision to withdraw the inspectors ahead of
US-British military strikes against Iraq in December
1998.
Obviously Butler was counting on American military
strikes against Iraq everytime he reported to the UN
Security Council that Baghdad was not extending the
level of co-operation he demanded. He was frustrated
that his mission was not making any real headway and
knew within a few months' time and several visits to
Iraq that he would not get anywhere in his mission.
The real reason for the failure was his high-handed
approach and effort to dictate terms from his
self-assumed position of strength stemming from
American military powers to "punish" Iraq if it did
not fall in line with his commands.
It was clear that Aziz's pointed comments angered
Butler if only because he had hand-picked some of
members of the inspection team and the Iraqi
minister's accusation was seen as questioning his
abilities.
He was visibly upset when he appeared before the press
in Bahrain after his last visit to Baghdad during
which Aziz had made the statement to the press.
When asked about a report that a British minister had
said that Iraq was loading missiles with chemical
warheads at the rate of one a day Butler said he was
not aware of the report. In a report he presented to
the UN Security Council two days after the Bahrain
appearance he made no reference to any such Iraqi
activity.
However, a few hours after he presented the report, he
appeared before a pro-Israeli gathering in New York
and accused Iraq of arming missiles with chemical
weapons aimed at "destroying" Israel. He repeated that
allegation in a New York Times interview shortly
thereafter, leaving one wondering why he failed to
include it in his official report to the Security
Council, the very body which had assigned him the
mission and to which he was supposed to report.
The impression one got was that Butler took his
failure in Iraq too personal and waged a pointed
campaign during which he spared no effort to build the
case against Baghdad. And that culminated in the
December 1998 military "punishment" for Iraq.
Scott Ritter, an American who served under Ekeus as
well as Butler, has affirmed in public comments that
some of his team members were obviously engaged in
work unrelated to weapon inspections.
Against such a backdrop, it is only natural that
Baghdad continues to see any renewed inspection as
aimed at gathering more intelligence on the country in
preparation for eventual action to eliminate the
Saddam regime.
The Iraqi reaction to Ekeus's comments was also
predictable.
An official spokesman called the Swedish diplomat's
comments as "another important confirmation of many
statements by Iraq, international parties and foreign
personalities on the exploitation by the United
States of UN arms inspectors to perform tasks that
contradict their mandate as defined by Security
Council resolutions on Iraq."
"The remarks come at a time when extremists in the US
administration are trying to distract attention from
Iraq's legitimate rights according to Security
Council resolutions, in the forefront of them lifting
of the unjust sanctions and respecting Iraq's
sovereignty," he said.
"The new comments by Ekeus confirm Iraq's legitimate
concerns expressed in the questions submitted to the
UN secretary-general in talks on May 7," the
spokesman added. Those questions sought answers
whether US threats against Saddam were a breach of
international law to whether US "spies" would serve on
inspection teams.
Iraq is now demanding that the Security Council answer
Iraq's queries as "a first move to stop the United
States' exploitation of the apparatus of the United
Nations for ends contradicting those stipulated in
the council's resolutions and the UN Charter," said
the spokesman.
AFTER failing to establish a link between Saddam
Hussein and Osama Bin Laden -- and by extension to
prove an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks in the US
-- President George W. Bush is citing charges that
Baghdad is continuing to develop weapons of mass
destruction as his reason to launch military action
aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein.
But how authentic is the charge?
On the face of it, the international community is
being told to accept that Iraq has eluded the most
advanced satellite surveillance -- with equipment that
could arguably trace the contours of a grain of wheat
on the ground -- and the strictest-ever
air-sea-land-blockade backed by intense interceptions
and inspection of anything and everything crossing its
border -- and managed to resume its clandestine
weapons programme.
The assertion is based on an argument that the
departure of UN inspectors who were withdrawn by
Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- often wrongly
described by the US as their expulsion by Iraq -- in
late 1998 allowed Baghdad to pick where it had left
off following the destruction of most of its weapons
of mass destruction under the UN verification and
destruction programme.
A review of the UN programme would raise serious
questions about the US charge against Baghdad.
It was known that Baghdad and the UN mission never got
on well and there were always skirmishes, both
diplomatic and otherwise.
Iraq and the UN inspection teams have had many
standoffs, some of them resulting from the personal
postures adopted by inspectors and others because the
Iraqis tried to prevent vital papers on their
country's weapons programme as well as intelligence
documents unrelated to arms inspections being removed
by the UN officials.
"We hated each other's guts," as a former member of
the UN team put it.
It had become clear that Iraq had a much larger weapon
programme than was known to the international
community when the UN inspectors launched their
mission in 1991 as the United Nations Special
Commission (UNSCOM).
It took several years before UNSCOM managed to unravel
the programme, with the Iraqis revealing information
in bits and pieces and only when they were cornered
with solid evidence, and it became a cat-and-mouse
game.
It was not until late 1995 that the UN managed to get
a clear picture of Iraq's military programmes and that
came from Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel,
who "defected" to Jordan in August of that year.
Kamel, who served as Iraq's defence minister and head
of the country's military industry commission, was
believed to have been debriefed not only by the then
UNSCOM chairman, Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, but also by
American and European intelligence agencies.
At that time Kamel's "defection" and revelations about
his country's weapons programmes were seen as
Baghdad's opportunity to come clean with its secrets
to UNSCOM. In fact, Baghdad blamed Kamel for having
kept the secrets for himself and handed over several
cupboards full of files that it said were stashed away
by the defector at his farmhouse outside Baghdad.
The information gained from those files represented a
key pillar of UNSCOM strategy, and it was believed
that the UN mission had managed to unearth more than
90 per cent of Iraq's weapon programmes.
Shortly before the inspections came to a premature end
prompted by Iraq's insistence that a clear blueprint
be given for what was expected of it before the
sweeping UN sanctions imposed on it in 1990 are lifted
and Washington's refusal to meet the demand, UNSCOM
officials had asserted that the bulk of their work was
over although they were seeking answers to some vital
questions, and those questions are now being dusted
off and presented as the reasons for the charges
against Iraq.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which
followed an independent verification programme, said
that it had located Iraq's nuclear programme and had
eliminated the country's nuclear material and
equipment as well as the ability to renew them. But
when the IAEA tried to close the "nuclear file," the
US intervened it and aborted the move.
On the "missiles" file, Richard Butler, who succeeded
Ekeus as UNSCOM chairman, said in July/August 1997
that the UN team had accounted for all but less than
12 long-range Scud missiles that Iraq was known to
have bought from the then Soviet Union and modified.
He also said that the bulk of Iraq's chemical and
biological weapons were destroyed but that the UN team
had not received all answers.
"UNSCOM did a fantastic job," he said. "You have to
understand that when the Gulf war was ended there was
revealed an awesome array of weapons of mass
destruction: almost a nuclear bomb, long-range
missiles, chemical, biological, all of the weapons of
mass destruction. And we, with Iraq, got hold of most
of it, got an account of it or got rid of it."
Such comments had also come from several other key
members of the UN mission as well as American and
international military experts who had access to
classified information collected by UNSCOM.
Seen against the backdrop of such assertions, a look
at the claims and assertions that Iraq continues to
build weapons of mass destruction -- the reason that
Bush cites for his plans to launch military action
aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein -- unveils a
contradiction.
The key question is: With all entry points into Iraq
under close surveillance and a ban on all commercial
and military planes in and out of the country, how is
it possible that Baghdad continued to develop weapons
of mass destruction in the absence of the UN
inspectors since late 1998?
In an appearance before the US Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Butler asserted that Iraq had
extensive chemical and biological weapons programmes
and that there is evidence it has stepped up it
alleged nuclear programmes in recent years.
Is the world then to believe that Iraq managed to get
equipment and material past the American armada
patrolling the seas and checking anything and
everything heading for Iraq, and indeed "suspect"
material headed for Iraq's neighbours that could be
sent to Iraq, and renewed its weapons programme?
It has been 12 years since the sweeping trade embargo
was imposed on Iraq.
Isn't it not fair to anyone to expect that the
enforcers of the sanctions would have perfected their
art?
Almost every vessel, small or big, is inspected before
it docks in Iraq or anywhere with access to Iraq.
American intelligence agents are present in all
neighbours of Iraq -- although to a lesser extent in
Iran -- to ensure that no "contraband" material enters
the country; nothing beyond food and medicine and
related items approved under the UN's oil-for-food
programme is allowed into the country. Any item which
could have slightest "military use" is blocked from
entering Iraq.
An example is caustic soda, a key element in cleaning
and washing of dairy equipment. It could also be used
in production of chemical weapons, according to
experts.
Since the day the sanction and verification regime was
put into place, no consignment of caustic soda has
been allowed into Iraq, and efforts by Jordan-based
exporters to send the material to Iraq across the
border -- presumably for legitimate purposes -- have
been repeatedly thwarted.
That is only an indication of the effectiveness of the
blockade, and it is difficult to see how the Iraqis
managed to lay their hands of components of chemical
weapons.
However, that is not to say that Iraq could not have
done it. Then again, reports from Washington and
London indicate that military generals on both sides
of the Atlantic are not really convinced that Iraq had
developed weapons as alleged or that poses a real
threat to the region. Such scepticism has been voiced
by officers who should be in a position to have access
to classified and top secret information on Iraq's
military capabilities as a key pillar of any strategy
to launch a war on that country.
Some of the allegations are also based on accounts by
Iraqi defectors, both identified and unidentified.
However, the credibility and authenticity of such
accounts are brought under question when considering
that almost all the "defectors" are produced and
paraded by Iraqi dissident groups which have a vested
interest in convincing the world that Baghdad is evil.
In some cases, it has also been found that the
defectors had left Iraq around the same time the UN
inspections were halted and they were making claims
linked to the period after their departure from the
country.
However, regardless of all reasonings and logic based
on available facts that expose the hollowness of the
American argument for striking at Iraq, the Bush
administration is dead bent upon carrying out their
designs in the region and Saddam Hussein has no room
in their strategy.
'Spying' charges
AS was expected sooner or later, the Swedish diplomat
who headed the UN arms inspection programme in Iraq
until 1997 has turned around and extended implicit
endorsement of Baghdad's assertion that the
inspections were mostly a smokescreen for American
intelligence activities in the country.
Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, who chaired UNSCOM since its
creation in 1991 until he quit in 1997, affirmed in
public comments this week that some of his team
members were obviously engaged in work unrelated to
weapon inspections.
In comments carried by Swedish radio, Ekeus said the
US and other powers had exploited UN teams in Iraq
for their own political ends, including monitoring
President Saddam Hussein's movements and that, at
times, crises were created that could possibly form
the basis for military action.
"There is no doubt that the Americans wanted to
influence the inspections to further certain
fundamental US interests," Ekeus said in his first
affirmation that he was aware of what was going on.
That partly vindicates Baghdad's accusations,
particularly that Ekeus was one of the harshest
critics of Iraq while he headed UNSCOM and thereafter
until this week's comments.
Indeed, one of the key arguments Iraq is putting up
against the US demand for renewed inspections of
Baghdad's alleged programmes of producing weapons of
mass destruction is the record that previous
inspectors had spied on the country.
It is not a new position and some of those who served
in the UN mission for verification of arms in Iraq
until it was stopped in late 1998 had admitted in
public that some of their colleagues were intelligence
agents rather than arms experts.
In a statement that went largely unnoticed or played
down deliberately or otherwise, Iraqi Deputy Prime
Minister Tareq Aziz said in mid-1998 -that many of the
UN inspectors appeared unaware of what they were
supposed do in the realm of arms inspections and Iraqi
officers assigned to working with them found a marked
ignorance among them of technical issues related to
weapons of mass destruction.
Ironically, it had also been reported that some of the
inspectors were reporting directly to Israel with or
without US knowledge.
In fact, it was Aziz's statement that enraged
Australian diplomat Butler, who assumed charge of the
UN inspections as successor to Ekeus in mid-1997, and
led to a course of events that culminated in the UN
decision to withdraw the inspectors ahead of
US-British military strikes against Iraq in December
1998.
Obviously Butler was counting on American military
strikes against Iraq everytime he reported to the UN
Security Council that Baghdad was not extending the
level of co-operation he demanded. He was frustrated
that his mission was not making any real headway and
knew within a few months' time and several visits to
Iraq that he would not get anywhere in his mission.
The real reason for the failure was his high-handed
approach and effort to dictate terms from his
self-assumed position of strength stemming from
American military powers to "punish" Iraq if it did
not fall in line with his commands.
It was clear that Aziz's pointed comments angered
Butler if only because he had hand-picked some of
members of the inspection team and the Iraqi
minister's accusation was seen as questioning his
abilities.
He was visibly upset when he appeared before the press
in Bahrain after his last visit to Baghdad during
which Aziz had made the statement to the press.
When asked about a report that a British minister had
said that Iraq was loading missiles with chemical
warheads at the rate of one a day Butler said he was
not aware of the report. In a report he presented to
the UN Security Council two days after the Bahrain
appearance he made no reference to any such Iraqi
activity.
However, a few hours after he presented the report, he
appeared before a pro-Israeli gathering in New York
and accused Iraq of arming missiles with chemical
weapons aimed at "destroying" Israel. He repeated that
allegation in a New York Times interview shortly
thereafter, leaving one wondering why he failed to
include it in his official report to the Security
Council, the very body which had assigned him the
mission and to which he was supposed to report.
The impression one got was that Butler took his
failure in Iraq too personal and waged a pointed
campaign during which he spared no effort to build the
case against Baghdad. And that culminated in the
December 1998 military "punishment" for Iraq.
Scott Ritter, an American who served under Ekeus as
well as Butler, has affirmed in public comments that
some of his team members were obviously engaged in
work unrelated to weapon inspections.
Against such a backdrop, it is only natural that
Baghdad continues to see any renewed inspection as
aimed at gathering more intelligence on the country in
preparation for eventual action to eliminate the
Saddam regime.
The Iraqi reaction to Ekeus's comments was also
predictable.
An official spokesman called the Swedish diplomat's
comments as "another important confirmation of many
statements by Iraq, international parties and foreign
personalities on the exploitation by the United
States of UN arms inspectors to perform tasks that
contradict their mandate as defined by Security
Council resolutions on Iraq."
"The remarks come at a time when extremists in the US
administration are trying to distract attention from
Iraq's legitimate rights according to Security
Council resolutions, in the forefront of them lifting
of the unjust sanctions and respecting Iraq's
sovereignty," he said.
"The new comments by Ekeus confirm Iraq's legitimate
concerns expressed in the questions submitted to the
UN secretary-general in talks on May 7," the
spokesman added. Those questions sought answers
whether US threats against Saddam were a breach of
international law to whether US "spies" would serve on
inspection teams.
Iraq is now demanding that the Security Council answer
Iraq's queries as "a first move to stop the United
States' exploitation of the apparatus of the United
Nations for ends contradicting those stipulated in
the council's resolutions and the UN Charter," said
the spokesman.
Monday, July 29, 2002
Iraqi exiles on diverse courses
by pv vivekanand
AGREEMENT among the six major groups of Iraqi dissidents is key to any US plan to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, but Washington might find it elusive not only because of the uncertainties of its campaign and regional undercurrents but also the conflicting agendas of the various parties to the oust-Saddam scenario before, during and after it is played out.
Without a unified approach grouping the six factions representing the political and military segments of Iraqis they claim to represent, it is a no-go for the US to implement its plans. Latest reports speak of a purported plan to launch a sudden invasion of Iraq in October and achieve its objectives before the end of the year.
Washington, worried by clear signs of divisions among the groups, has invited their leaders for talks on Aug. 9, but the change in fundamentals that are vital to an agreement among them is unlikely by October or beyond as long as the US does not make it clear whom it wants to install as Saddam's successor i.e. in the hypothesis that it manages to topple the Iraqi president and assumes a position of strength where it could call the shots in Baghdad.
Apart from the problems in trying to find common ground among the diverse agendas of the dissident groups, it would be very difficult for the US to achieve parity between its own "political and strategic as well as oil interests" in Iraq with the interests of Iraqi exiles at this stage with a view to ensuring that an Uncle Sam man is installed in Baghdad.
The six invited to the Washington meeting are:
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr Al Hakim, leader of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Ahmed Chalabi, chairman of the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), Sharif Ali Hussein of the INC, Masoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) based in northern Iraq, Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and also based in northern Iraq, and Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord , which claims to represent dissident Iraqi army officers from all sects in the country.
Each of these six men represents distinct and conflicting interests, and none of them is likely to join meaningful alliances without guarantees that their interests would be protected. But the US would not be able to provide that guarantee with convincing assurances because of the very disparity in their respective positions.
The only cause they share is the ouster of Saddam, and it's anyone's guess how these groups plan to behave in the run-up to the hypothetical ouster of Saddam and in a post-Saddam Iraq.
It is not clear who would attend the Washington meeting.
It is unlikely that SCIRI would accept the invitation but all others are likely to.
In Damascus, the Syrian representative of SCIRI, Bayan Jabber, said his group was invited but had not decided if it would attend. Others have indicated they might go.
In any scenario, Iranian-backed Ayatollah Hakim will seek to ensure that the majority Shiites of Iraq would have a dominant say in the future of a post-Saddam Iraq, but the US, wary of Hakim's Iranian connections, would not want to see Shiite domination of Iraqi affairs.
It is also unclear how Hakim could find compatibility between joining an alliance for military action against Iraq and Tehran's vehement rejection of such a course of events.
Obviously, Iran feels that it could be the next target for American action after Iraq, and Tehran could be counted on to do everything in its power to throw a spanner in the works to ensure that Washington does not achieve its objectives in Iraq. That is arguably one of the strongest wild cards in the equation.
Chalabi and Sharif Hussein claim to represent the democratic school among Iraqis, but the INC's influence among its constituents is limited. Reports from Washington indicate that officials do not trust the INC, particularly when it comes to funds.
Chalabi, who fled Jordan in 1988 in a $300 million scandal after operating a bank there for more than 10 years, has been accused of diverting anti-Saddam US funds.
Chalabi has boasted to this writer, immediately after the war of 1991, that the day was near when he would occupy the presidential palace in Baghdad while one of his old-time lieutenants -- chief foreign exchange dealer at his collapsed Petra Bank in Jordan -- would be his "finance minister."
Sharif Hussein is a descendant of the Hashemite family which ruled Iraq until it was ousted in a bloody coup in 1958, and he has remained a mysterious figure playing his cards close to his chest despite his role in the INC as leader of the small Constitutional Monarchy Movement.
Chalabi and Sharif Hussein are known not to see eye-to-eye on many issues, but the two have tried to put up a picture of close alliance in recent times, and that the US found it fit to invite both of them to the Aug. 9 meeting is an implicit recognition of the differences between them.
Talabani and Barzani, the Kurdish leaders who hold sway in northern Iraq -- or what they call Kurdistan -- under an uneasy alliance after bitter fighting, claim to represent the interests of the nearly five million Kurds living in Iraq.
Doubts are cast on their political inclinations after they worked out a modus videndi under American pressure. The two are the two main powers in the northern Iraq, which is beyond the control of the Baghdad government.
The two groups seem to be more interesting in collecting taxes and tolls from local residents as well as Baghdad-bound vehicles passing through their territory with goods and back across the border to Turkey with oil in violation of the UN sanctions against Iraq.
The KDP is known to be flirting with Baghdad and it was with Saddam's army support that the group managed to consolidate its grip in the north after a round of fierce fighting in 1996.
Both Talabani and Barzani are likely to be wary of any US plan to topple the Saddam regime without assurances that their fiefdoms would not be challenged and their revenues are guaranteed. Equally important, they would demand iron-clad promises that the US would not desert them and leave them in the lurch half-way through military action against Saddam.
In return, the US would demand from them a pledge that they would not seek to secede from Iraq and to set up an "independent and sovereign Kurdistan" -- the dream of the 30 million Kurds scattered in the region but anathema to Turkey, Syria and Iran.
It is easy to figure out why such an entity would be rejected by the region's countries. The so-called Kurdistan in northern Iraq represents, according to a nationalist Kurdish website, only 18 per cent of the "Kurdish homeland." The rest of the territory, it says, was usurped following World War I: Turkey took 43 per cent of the followed by Iran (31 per cent), Syria (six per cent) and the former Soviet Union (two per cent).
With sizeable Kurdish populations in these areas, fears are strong that "Kurdistan" would not be happy to remain in the 18 per cent in Iraq.
Finances are also expected to play a major influencing role the choices of the Kurdish groups.
Under the UN's oil-for-food programme with Iraq, the Kurds living under KDP and PUK control in the north get 17 per cent of the proceeds from exports of Iraqi oil under UN supervision. This has helped improve the post-war lot the Kurds and indirectly boosted the standing of Talabani and Barzani. As such, neither of them is likely to upset the applecart without ensuring that their constituencies would not be deprived of the relative improvement in life brought about by the oil proceeds.
Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord says he represents dissident Iraqi officers both in and out of the country. His group was once seen closer to the US (it was under American pressure the late king Hussein of Jordan allowed Alawi to open an office in Amman in 1996).
Obviously, according to sources close to the Iraqi National Accord, the group believes that the military should be in control of Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the hoped-for ouster of Saddam.
Without a strong military grip throughout Iraq, the group reportedly argues, the country would simply disintegrate.
The Iraqi National Accord claims the support of top Iraqi officers who deserted the country after the 1991 war and also of that of many who continue to serve the regime. The claim has never been put to test.
Thrown into the bargain are assertions by Iraqi exiles that Washington has already shortlisted some 15 former Iraqi generals and would designate one of them to take over Baghdad as Saddam's succesor.
Obviously, it implies that democracy is far from the US mind in a post-Saddam Iraq.
Lending credit to that argument is the complaint by the INC that despite its "commitment" to democracy Washington is not giving it the due consideration it thinks it deserves.
One of those "shortlisted" generals is said to be former army chief Nizar Al Khasraji who served as Iraq's army chief of staff when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. He fled Iraq after the 1991 war and now lives in Copenhagen. The US plans involving him appear to have suffered a setback after the Dutch government launched an investigation into charges that he led an Iraqi military campaign against Kurds after the eight-year Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988.
The US accuses Saddam and some of his close associates of war crimes for the anti-Kurd operations and it would be out of place for Washington to continue to groom Khasraji after limelight has fallen on him as one of those who had masterminded and carried out the alleged crimes against Kurds.
The deep splits among the Iraqi exiles over aspirations for power and strategies forced the INC to call off plans to announce a "government in exile" on Saturday.
The fundamental difference is over who should be named as what in the "government in exile." It is widely perceived that the line-up would be followed in as and when -- and of course "if" -- the "exiles" move into Baghdad. As such, naming the "functionaries" would be as good as tipping the hands of the various groups. Beyond that is the reality that most of those who are left out would opt to remain outside the coalition and might even try to torpedo its moves.
Furthermore, there are some who want a role in running Iraq but are not ready to emerge into the open yet, and they, if the exiles are to be believed, include a few within the Saddam regime who would be signing their fate if prematurely identified as sympathisers of the anti-Saddam campaign.
The difficulties and differences facing the Iraqi exile groups were no more pronounced than when they could not even announce in public the names of the members of a committee they elected at their recent London meeting and they could not agree on who should chair it.
Against the array of divergent interests and agendas, it would be an almost miracle if the US managed to cobble the exiles together into a coherent alliance with the potential to serve its interests in Iraq -- that is, indeed, not to mention the fundamental fault lines in the US approach in defiance of Arab and international public opinion against its plans to oust the leadership of a sovereign country.
AGREEMENT among the six major groups of Iraqi dissidents is key to any US plan to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, but Washington might find it elusive not only because of the uncertainties of its campaign and regional undercurrents but also the conflicting agendas of the various parties to the oust-Saddam scenario before, during and after it is played out.
Without a unified approach grouping the six factions representing the political and military segments of Iraqis they claim to represent, it is a no-go for the US to implement its plans. Latest reports speak of a purported plan to launch a sudden invasion of Iraq in October and achieve its objectives before the end of the year.
Washington, worried by clear signs of divisions among the groups, has invited their leaders for talks on Aug. 9, but the change in fundamentals that are vital to an agreement among them is unlikely by October or beyond as long as the US does not make it clear whom it wants to install as Saddam's successor i.e. in the hypothesis that it manages to topple the Iraqi president and assumes a position of strength where it could call the shots in Baghdad.
Apart from the problems in trying to find common ground among the diverse agendas of the dissident groups, it would be very difficult for the US to achieve parity between its own "political and strategic as well as oil interests" in Iraq with the interests of Iraqi exiles at this stage with a view to ensuring that an Uncle Sam man is installed in Baghdad.
The six invited to the Washington meeting are:
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr Al Hakim, leader of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Ahmed Chalabi, chairman of the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), Sharif Ali Hussein of the INC, Masoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) based in northern Iraq, Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and also based in northern Iraq, and Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord , which claims to represent dissident Iraqi army officers from all sects in the country.
Each of these six men represents distinct and conflicting interests, and none of them is likely to join meaningful alliances without guarantees that their interests would be protected. But the US would not be able to provide that guarantee with convincing assurances because of the very disparity in their respective positions.
The only cause they share is the ouster of Saddam, and it's anyone's guess how these groups plan to behave in the run-up to the hypothetical ouster of Saddam and in a post-Saddam Iraq.
It is not clear who would attend the Washington meeting.
It is unlikely that SCIRI would accept the invitation but all others are likely to.
In Damascus, the Syrian representative of SCIRI, Bayan Jabber, said his group was invited but had not decided if it would attend. Others have indicated they might go.
In any scenario, Iranian-backed Ayatollah Hakim will seek to ensure that the majority Shiites of Iraq would have a dominant say in the future of a post-Saddam Iraq, but the US, wary of Hakim's Iranian connections, would not want to see Shiite domination of Iraqi affairs.
It is also unclear how Hakim could find compatibility between joining an alliance for military action against Iraq and Tehran's vehement rejection of such a course of events.
Obviously, Iran feels that it could be the next target for American action after Iraq, and Tehran could be counted on to do everything in its power to throw a spanner in the works to ensure that Washington does not achieve its objectives in Iraq. That is arguably one of the strongest wild cards in the equation.
Chalabi and Sharif Hussein claim to represent the democratic school among Iraqis, but the INC's influence among its constituents is limited. Reports from Washington indicate that officials do not trust the INC, particularly when it comes to funds.
Chalabi, who fled Jordan in 1988 in a $300 million scandal after operating a bank there for more than 10 years, has been accused of diverting anti-Saddam US funds.
Chalabi has boasted to this writer, immediately after the war of 1991, that the day was near when he would occupy the presidential palace in Baghdad while one of his old-time lieutenants -- chief foreign exchange dealer at his collapsed Petra Bank in Jordan -- would be his "finance minister."
Sharif Hussein is a descendant of the Hashemite family which ruled Iraq until it was ousted in a bloody coup in 1958, and he has remained a mysterious figure playing his cards close to his chest despite his role in the INC as leader of the small Constitutional Monarchy Movement.
Chalabi and Sharif Hussein are known not to see eye-to-eye on many issues, but the two have tried to put up a picture of close alliance in recent times, and that the US found it fit to invite both of them to the Aug. 9 meeting is an implicit recognition of the differences between them.
Talabani and Barzani, the Kurdish leaders who hold sway in northern Iraq -- or what they call Kurdistan -- under an uneasy alliance after bitter fighting, claim to represent the interests of the nearly five million Kurds living in Iraq.
Doubts are cast on their political inclinations after they worked out a modus videndi under American pressure. The two are the two main powers in the northern Iraq, which is beyond the control of the Baghdad government.
The two groups seem to be more interesting in collecting taxes and tolls from local residents as well as Baghdad-bound vehicles passing through their territory with goods and back across the border to Turkey with oil in violation of the UN sanctions against Iraq.
The KDP is known to be flirting with Baghdad and it was with Saddam's army support that the group managed to consolidate its grip in the north after a round of fierce fighting in 1996.
Both Talabani and Barzani are likely to be wary of any US plan to topple the Saddam regime without assurances that their fiefdoms would not be challenged and their revenues are guaranteed. Equally important, they would demand iron-clad promises that the US would not desert them and leave them in the lurch half-way through military action against Saddam.
In return, the US would demand from them a pledge that they would not seek to secede from Iraq and to set up an "independent and sovereign Kurdistan" -- the dream of the 30 million Kurds scattered in the region but anathema to Turkey, Syria and Iran.
It is easy to figure out why such an entity would be rejected by the region's countries. The so-called Kurdistan in northern Iraq represents, according to a nationalist Kurdish website, only 18 per cent of the "Kurdish homeland." The rest of the territory, it says, was usurped following World War I: Turkey took 43 per cent of the followed by Iran (31 per cent), Syria (six per cent) and the former Soviet Union (two per cent).
With sizeable Kurdish populations in these areas, fears are strong that "Kurdistan" would not be happy to remain in the 18 per cent in Iraq.
Finances are also expected to play a major influencing role the choices of the Kurdish groups.
Under the UN's oil-for-food programme with Iraq, the Kurds living under KDP and PUK control in the north get 17 per cent of the proceeds from exports of Iraqi oil under UN supervision. This has helped improve the post-war lot the Kurds and indirectly boosted the standing of Talabani and Barzani. As such, neither of them is likely to upset the applecart without ensuring that their constituencies would not be deprived of the relative improvement in life brought about by the oil proceeds.
Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord says he represents dissident Iraqi officers both in and out of the country. His group was once seen closer to the US (it was under American pressure the late king Hussein of Jordan allowed Alawi to open an office in Amman in 1996).
Obviously, according to sources close to the Iraqi National Accord, the group believes that the military should be in control of Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the hoped-for ouster of Saddam.
Without a strong military grip throughout Iraq, the group reportedly argues, the country would simply disintegrate.
The Iraqi National Accord claims the support of top Iraqi officers who deserted the country after the 1991 war and also of that of many who continue to serve the regime. The claim has never been put to test.
Thrown into the bargain are assertions by Iraqi exiles that Washington has already shortlisted some 15 former Iraqi generals and would designate one of them to take over Baghdad as Saddam's succesor.
Obviously, it implies that democracy is far from the US mind in a post-Saddam Iraq.
Lending credit to that argument is the complaint by the INC that despite its "commitment" to democracy Washington is not giving it the due consideration it thinks it deserves.
One of those "shortlisted" generals is said to be former army chief Nizar Al Khasraji who served as Iraq's army chief of staff when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. He fled Iraq after the 1991 war and now lives in Copenhagen. The US plans involving him appear to have suffered a setback after the Dutch government launched an investigation into charges that he led an Iraqi military campaign against Kurds after the eight-year Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988.
The US accuses Saddam and some of his close associates of war crimes for the anti-Kurd operations and it would be out of place for Washington to continue to groom Khasraji after limelight has fallen on him as one of those who had masterminded and carried out the alleged crimes against Kurds.
The deep splits among the Iraqi exiles over aspirations for power and strategies forced the INC to call off plans to announce a "government in exile" on Saturday.
The fundamental difference is over who should be named as what in the "government in exile." It is widely perceived that the line-up would be followed in as and when -- and of course "if" -- the "exiles" move into Baghdad. As such, naming the "functionaries" would be as good as tipping the hands of the various groups. Beyond that is the reality that most of those who are left out would opt to remain outside the coalition and might even try to torpedo its moves.
Furthermore, there are some who want a role in running Iraq but are not ready to emerge into the open yet, and they, if the exiles are to be believed, include a few within the Saddam regime who would be signing their fate if prematurely identified as sympathisers of the anti-Saddam campaign.
The difficulties and differences facing the Iraqi exile groups were no more pronounced than when they could not even announce in public the names of the members of a committee they elected at their recent London meeting and they could not agree on who should chair it.
Against the array of divergent interests and agendas, it would be an almost miracle if the US managed to cobble the exiles together into a coherent alliance with the potential to serve its interests in Iraq -- that is, indeed, not to mention the fundamental fault lines in the US approach in defiance of Arab and international public opinion against its plans to oust the leadership of a sovereign country.
Sunday, July 21, 2002
US poised to hit Iraq
by pv vivekanand
IF reports are accurate, then a US military strike against Iraq is imminent although it defies logic even in military terms, terrain and weather and of course the regional situation in the Middle East. Perhaps that is the mysterious element in the American approach to executing its declared plan to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein despite international opposition.
Be that it may, the fact remains that there is no well-established legal basis for the US plan within or outside the UN framework.
UN Security Council Resolution 665 adopted in August 1990 authorised the use of force against Iraq since that country had invaded another sovereign state, Kuwait, and Resoluton 678 of November of the same year set the Jan. 15 deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or face war. The international community, including a majority of members of the Arab League, backed the use of force against Iraq at that time after Baghdad refused to quit Kuwait.
The mission was accomplished and Iraq was evicted from February1991 and the authorisation for war offered by UN Security Council resolutions 665 and 678 was terminated when Resolution 687 was adopted in April 1991 formally ending the military action launched by a US-led coalition of 31 countries.
Since then, the UN Security Council has adopted dozens of resolutions related to Iraq, but all of them covered the various by-products of the 1990 Iraqi invasion and the 1991 liberation of Kuwait and none of them prescribed another war or an invasion of Iraq and ouster of its leadership. Those resolutions dealt with the UN trade embargo against Iraq and the conditions under which the sanctions could be lifted and with the "oil-for-food" programme.
In fact, there is no UN endorsement of the "no-fly" zones imposed and patrolled by the US and UK in the north and south of Iraq, and, by extension, their frequent attacks on Iraq in retaliation for alleged provocations have no legal basis within the UN system. Nor was there any UN endorsement of the several rounds of massive missile attacks and bombings of targets in Iraq carried out by the US.
In the framework of the various resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council since the Gulf war of 1991, there is no authorisation for the use of force against Iraq related to its shortl-lived occupation of Kuwait.
In strict legal terms, Iraq's refusal to allow the return of UN inspectors could be construed as defiance of the UN Security Council resolutions that calls for the elimination of Baghdad' alleged weapons programme. However, there is no UN stipulaton for military action for its perceived rejection of the world body's decisions and demands.
Indeed, the Bush administration could revoke the US right to defend itself as a justification for military action in the wake of the Sept.11 attacks in New York and Washington as it did in order to execute the Afghanistan war. The right to self-defence is clearly enshrined in the UN Charter. But can the US rely on the same right to strike against Baghdad now?
Asserting that Iraq was linked to the Sept. 11 attacks and proving it beyond reasonable doubt are two different things. Even in the hypotheis that the US manages to establish such a link -- as it is obviously trying to do through relying on Iraqi defectors with little or no credibility -- would that provide the legal umbrella for a US invasion of iraq?
One of the reasons cited by US President George W. Bush for his moves against Iraq is the alleged Iraqi development and possession of weapons of mass destruction that he contented Baghdad was using to "terrorise" the region.
According to Bush, action against countries "terrorising" neighbours with weapons of mass destruction is part of the US-led war on terrorism; but then how many of Iraq's neighbours are complaining of being "terrorised" by Baghdad? If anything, all of them have opposed the US plan for military action against Iraq and are highly concerned about the repercussions of such a course of events in the region.
No doubt Washington strategists and legal experts are too familiar with the thin ice Washington is skating on towards invading Iraq; and it is obvious why the US reacts with vehemence whenever any government refers to the lack of a legal foundation for its plans to topple Saddam Hussein.
Obviously, the Bush administration is too aware of the futility of an exercise to secure UN endorsement for its designs even from the very same UN members it contents are threatened and terrorised by Baghdad. Any such effort would only open a Pandora's box from where skeletons would emerge of American unilateralism.
As far as Washington is concerned, UN authorisation for whatever action against Iraq already exists in UN Security Council resolutions -- although it fails to be specific -- and of course tough luck if the world fails to see it that way.
The US stand is an affront to the international community and the very foundations of the UN as a watchdog to ensure justice for all, but the sad reality is that no one seems to be able or willing enough to contain the self-assumed US posture of as the sole policeman, judge and executioner of the world.
IF reports are accurate, then a US military strike against Iraq is imminent although it defies logic even in military terms, terrain and weather and of course the regional situation in the Middle East. Perhaps that is the mysterious element in the American approach to executing its declared plan to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein despite international opposition.
Be that it may, the fact remains that there is no well-established legal basis for the US plan within or outside the UN framework.
UN Security Council Resolution 665 adopted in August 1990 authorised the use of force against Iraq since that country had invaded another sovereign state, Kuwait, and Resoluton 678 of November of the same year set the Jan. 15 deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or face war. The international community, including a majority of members of the Arab League, backed the use of force against Iraq at that time after Baghdad refused to quit Kuwait.
The mission was accomplished and Iraq was evicted from February1991 and the authorisation for war offered by UN Security Council resolutions 665 and 678 was terminated when Resolution 687 was adopted in April 1991 formally ending the military action launched by a US-led coalition of 31 countries.
Since then, the UN Security Council has adopted dozens of resolutions related to Iraq, but all of them covered the various by-products of the 1990 Iraqi invasion and the 1991 liberation of Kuwait and none of them prescribed another war or an invasion of Iraq and ouster of its leadership. Those resolutions dealt with the UN trade embargo against Iraq and the conditions under which the sanctions could be lifted and with the "oil-for-food" programme.
In fact, there is no UN endorsement of the "no-fly" zones imposed and patrolled by the US and UK in the north and south of Iraq, and, by extension, their frequent attacks on Iraq in retaliation for alleged provocations have no legal basis within the UN system. Nor was there any UN endorsement of the several rounds of massive missile attacks and bombings of targets in Iraq carried out by the US.
In the framework of the various resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council since the Gulf war of 1991, there is no authorisation for the use of force against Iraq related to its shortl-lived occupation of Kuwait.
In strict legal terms, Iraq's refusal to allow the return of UN inspectors could be construed as defiance of the UN Security Council resolutions that calls for the elimination of Baghdad' alleged weapons programme. However, there is no UN stipulaton for military action for its perceived rejection of the world body's decisions and demands.
Indeed, the Bush administration could revoke the US right to defend itself as a justification for military action in the wake of the Sept.11 attacks in New York and Washington as it did in order to execute the Afghanistan war. The right to self-defence is clearly enshrined in the UN Charter. But can the US rely on the same right to strike against Baghdad now?
Asserting that Iraq was linked to the Sept. 11 attacks and proving it beyond reasonable doubt are two different things. Even in the hypotheis that the US manages to establish such a link -- as it is obviously trying to do through relying on Iraqi defectors with little or no credibility -- would that provide the legal umbrella for a US invasion of iraq?
One of the reasons cited by US President George W. Bush for his moves against Iraq is the alleged Iraqi development and possession of weapons of mass destruction that he contented Baghdad was using to "terrorise" the region.
According to Bush, action against countries "terrorising" neighbours with weapons of mass destruction is part of the US-led war on terrorism; but then how many of Iraq's neighbours are complaining of being "terrorised" by Baghdad? If anything, all of them have opposed the US plan for military action against Iraq and are highly concerned about the repercussions of such a course of events in the region.
No doubt Washington strategists and legal experts are too familiar with the thin ice Washington is skating on towards invading Iraq; and it is obvious why the US reacts with vehemence whenever any government refers to the lack of a legal foundation for its plans to topple Saddam Hussein.
Obviously, the Bush administration is too aware of the futility of an exercise to secure UN endorsement for its designs even from the very same UN members it contents are threatened and terrorised by Baghdad. Any such effort would only open a Pandora's box from where skeletons would emerge of American unilateralism.
As far as Washington is concerned, UN authorisation for whatever action against Iraq already exists in UN Security Council resolutions -- although it fails to be specific -- and of course tough luck if the world fails to see it that way.
The US stand is an affront to the international community and the very foundations of the UN as a watchdog to ensure justice for all, but the sad reality is that no one seems to be able or willing enough to contain the self-assumed US posture of as the sole policeman, judge and executioner of the world.
Sunday, July 07, 2002
Axis of evil ruse
by pv vivekanand
By declaring Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil," US President George W Bush appears to have taken in more that Washington could chew by espousing unilateralism that has alienated his European allies.
Since his state of the union address on Jan.29, Bush has faced a barrage of criticism from Europeans, many of whom outrightly rejected his clear pointer that the next targets in the US-led war against terrorism were Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang. They have warned that Washington should not expect them to remain partners in the coalition that backed the US campaign in Afghanistan.
It was indeed clear for some time now that Bush would be targeting Iraq and others in the US-led drive against terrorism, particularly after he clarified that he defined all countries which develop weapons of mass destruction as supporters of terrorism. And his Jan. 29 speech has come to be known was the Bush doctrine, which is now challenged by his European allies. And they have good reasons too.
In the case of Iraq, US intelligence agencies tried hard but in vain to establish a link between Baghdad and the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington. Reports that the man said to have been the leader of the attacks had met with an Iraqi diplomat in Eastern Europe in early 2001 have come to naught in helping Washington establish a case against Baghdad.
That the US was paving the way for expanding the war against terrorism was made clear in October when Washington formally notified the United Nations that it might target other countries in the war against terrorism and senior Bush administration officials mentioned Iraq as a potential target.
Since then, Arab leaders and the Arab League itself have issued repeated warnings to the US against launching military operations against Iraq or any other Arab country in the name of the war against terrorism.
Joining them were European leaders who had then used diplomatic language to dissuade Washington from pursuing a military assault against Iraq.
But last week, they were unambiguous, saying they want nothing to do with such a course of action.
European Commission pokesman Gunnar Weigand said the European Union leaders "do not agree with that kind of policy."
While the EU shared American concerns over global issues such as human rights, terrorism and proliferation of weapons, the bloc does not "share is the policy desired to achieve these objectives. We believe that engagement and rapprochement...should be used to achieve these aims."
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, called on Washington to act multilaterally and not as a "global unilateralist."
Surprisingly Germany had been in the forefront of opposing military action against Iraq, and it left nothing unsaid.
"We Europeans warn against it," said German Deputy Foreign Minister Ludger Vollmer. "There is no indication, no proof that Iraq is involved in the terrorism we have been talking about for the last few months... this terror argument cannot be used to legitimise old enmities."
Vollmer could not have been more clear in referring to the growing belief that the "axis of evil" charge is the forerunner of a US drive to settle political scores by destablising Iraq and indirectly topple the regime of Saddam Hussein — an objective the US failed to achieve in the 1991 Gulf war.
There is also a strong vein of thought in Europe, and indeed in the Arab World, that the US focus on Iran as a potential target in the war against terrorism has more to do with Israeli interests than US policy and the campagin against terror.
There is little doubt that Bush would find it difficult to enlist European partners in military action against Iraq or Iran.
Most EU member countries agree that the best approach to solving the problem, if any at all, is through dialogue in line with the European bloc's policy of engaging with countries rather than seeking to isolate them.
Even in Britain, the staunchest US ally in Europe, the "axis of evil" comment has drawn dismay. Home Secretary Jack Straw said the Bush assertion was aimed at the American elecotrate ahead of the forthcoming congressional elections and could not be part of a military strategy.
Washington's frustration over the British stand was spelt out by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. "This is not about American politics, and I assume that when the British government speaks about foreign policy, it's not about British politics," she retorted to Straw.
But it should be dawning on Washington that it would not be an easy go to secure international endorsement of military action against Iraq or Iran.
Many countries, mindful of the oil reserves and trade potential of the two countries, have set up strong relations with them; in Iraq's case, business worth tens of billions is waiting for an end to the 11-year-old UN sanctions against Baghdad. The sanctions are already fraying, and it is only a matter of time before few governments would think twice about doing business with Iraq even if in violation of the sanctions.
Indeed, there is strong European suspicion that it is not simply "old enmities" at play in the US strategy towards Iraq.
The Europeans are aware that Washington is unhappy that they have made inroads and set up ground to do post-sanctions trade with Iraq while American businesses were restrained by the law of their country from pursuing the same goal.
"By launching military action against Iraq, the US would precipitate a major crisis that would upset the European apple cart and bring new rules into play for doing business with Iraq," commented an Asian diplomat. "That would be the end of years of European efforts to gain a firm foothold in that country."
If any consolation, there is consensus across the Atlantic: Military action against Iraq would not be limited to a few missile strikes or bombings against strategic installations in that country –– it would aim at replacing the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad, and this would not be an easy task at all without European support.
The European case against the US targeting Iran is even stronger.
Europe has been closely observing the political tug-of-war between the (relatively) moderate regime of President Mohmmed Khatami and the conservative theocratic establishment in Iran since 1997. They have seen a slow shift to moderation in Tehran under Khatami's leadership, and they would like to encourage it.
Europeans are indeed aware of the clout that the Iranian religious establishment wields, and they have recognised that they should not expect miracles from Khatami.
Many European diplomats believe that even if the Israeli charge was true that Iran was behind a recently intercepted arms shipment in the Red Sea, the real "culprit" was not the Khatami government but hardline elements in the clerical establishment in Tehran.
In any event, the Europeans remain convinced that the key to dealing with Iran is encouragement for the "moderate" camp in Tehran rather than confrontation over the US charge that Iran had links with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda group.
Europe recognises that Al Qaeda fighters fleeing US forces in the Afghan war could have sneaked across the border to Iran, but they believe Tehran should not be seen as an Al Qaeda supporter.
They see the Iranian refusal to co-operate with the US in countering Al Qaeda as stemming from Tehran's conviction that such moves would allow Washignton to exploit the situation and make intelligence inroads in Iran.
"Tehran prefers to deal with the Al Qaeda problem, if there is one, on its own," said a European diplomat. "It wants no US role in the affair and is determined to keep the US out. Sharing intelligence information with the US is the last thing it wants to do."
Some speculate that the US frustration over its failure to mend fences with Iran despite repeated overtures to Tehran is also behind the hostility.
Washington has also charged that Iran was "meddling" in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, an allegation that both Tehran and Kabul have denied.
There is a strong Israeli angle to the US-Iran equation, and Bush's "tough" posture might also have to do with his desire to do away with a constant source of "concern" for the US protege in the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underlined it when he said last week that "Iran calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and elimination of the Jewish people. That's why it was so important for President Bush to name them as sponsors of terror."
It is no secret that Israel has seen in Iran a potential threat in the event of a regional conflagration. Israel has for long watched with apprehension Iran aquiring and developing long-range missiles and Tehran's nuclear programme.
Suggestions have remained alive for several years that Israel might even launch "pre-emptive" strikes against Iran's nuclear installations, which Tehran says are intended for peaceful purposes, and other military facilities.
Iran is a staunch supporter of the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbollah, which managed to force Israel to withdraw from parts of Lebanese territory in mid-2000 after many years of fighting the Israeli army and its proxy forces in southern Lebanon.
Sharon has already picked up the fight against Iraq and Iran. One of the items on the agenda for talks between Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington on Thursday was expected to be Israel's "fears" of the "threats" posed by Iraq and Iran to the Jewish state.
Aides have said that Sharon would be lobbying Bush for unspecified American action against Iran and iraq.
Russia has come out fighting from Iran's corner against the US charge against Tehran.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Sunday that there was no evidence that Iran had connections with terrorist organisations. He accused the US of following double standards.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine warned that the interests of the rest of the world were under threat from a "simplistic" US foreign policy that emerged after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Today we are threatened by a simplism that reduces all the problems of the world to the struggle against terrorism, and is not properly thought through," said Vedrine.
Vedrine expressed criticism of the Bush doctrine, a decision by Washington to subordinate all foreign policy decisions to the needs of the "war against terrorism," and of unilateralism in general.
He accused the US of acting "unilaterally, without consulting others, taking decisions based on its own view of the world and its own interests ... refusing any multilateral negotiation that could limit their decision-making, sovereignty and freedom of action."
According to Vedrine, said Europe also had a duty to stand up to the US "hyper-power" over the globalisation of the free market
French Defence Minister Alain Richard said France would not follow Bush's example in vastly increasing defence spending to cope with the new threats of the post-Sept. 11 world.
"We do not share the analysis expressed by President Bush on the threats to international peace and security," he told the French parliament.
Against such opposition from the powerful European bloc, will Bush go it alone?
There are some who suggest he might.
The technology that the US used in the Afghan war established that the sole superpower
doesn't need its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) partners "to fight a distant war, as it demonstrated in Afghanistan, where it basically won alone, except for small but important contributions from Britain, Canada and Australia," Thomas Friedman wrote in the Guardian.
Friedman hammered home an emerging scenario where the US might simply decide its interests were good enough to launch military action wherever it found fit to do so so -- with or without is Nato partners.
"We are increasingly heading for a military apartheid within Nato: America will be the chef who decides the menu and cooks all the great meals, and the Nato allies will be the bus boys who stay around and clean up the mess and keep the peace - indefinitely," according to Fried
By declaring Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil," US President George W Bush appears to have taken in more that Washington could chew by espousing unilateralism that has alienated his European allies.
Since his state of the union address on Jan.29, Bush has faced a barrage of criticism from Europeans, many of whom outrightly rejected his clear pointer that the next targets in the US-led war against terrorism were Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang. They have warned that Washington should not expect them to remain partners in the coalition that backed the US campaign in Afghanistan.
It was indeed clear for some time now that Bush would be targeting Iraq and others in the US-led drive against terrorism, particularly after he clarified that he defined all countries which develop weapons of mass destruction as supporters of terrorism. And his Jan. 29 speech has come to be known was the Bush doctrine, which is now challenged by his European allies. And they have good reasons too.
In the case of Iraq, US intelligence agencies tried hard but in vain to establish a link between Baghdad and the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington. Reports that the man said to have been the leader of the attacks had met with an Iraqi diplomat in Eastern Europe in early 2001 have come to naught in helping Washington establish a case against Baghdad.
That the US was paving the way for expanding the war against terrorism was made clear in October when Washington formally notified the United Nations that it might target other countries in the war against terrorism and senior Bush administration officials mentioned Iraq as a potential target.
Since then, Arab leaders and the Arab League itself have issued repeated warnings to the US against launching military operations against Iraq or any other Arab country in the name of the war against terrorism.
Joining them were European leaders who had then used diplomatic language to dissuade Washington from pursuing a military assault against Iraq.
But last week, they were unambiguous, saying they want nothing to do with such a course of action.
European Commission pokesman Gunnar Weigand said the European Union leaders "do not agree with that kind of policy."
While the EU shared American concerns over global issues such as human rights, terrorism and proliferation of weapons, the bloc does not "share is the policy desired to achieve these objectives. We believe that engagement and rapprochement...should be used to achieve these aims."
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, called on Washington to act multilaterally and not as a "global unilateralist."
Surprisingly Germany had been in the forefront of opposing military action against Iraq, and it left nothing unsaid.
"We Europeans warn against it," said German Deputy Foreign Minister Ludger Vollmer. "There is no indication, no proof that Iraq is involved in the terrorism we have been talking about for the last few months... this terror argument cannot be used to legitimise old enmities."
Vollmer could not have been more clear in referring to the growing belief that the "axis of evil" charge is the forerunner of a US drive to settle political scores by destablising Iraq and indirectly topple the regime of Saddam Hussein — an objective the US failed to achieve in the 1991 Gulf war.
There is also a strong vein of thought in Europe, and indeed in the Arab World, that the US focus on Iran as a potential target in the war against terrorism has more to do with Israeli interests than US policy and the campagin against terror.
There is little doubt that Bush would find it difficult to enlist European partners in military action against Iraq or Iran.
Most EU member countries agree that the best approach to solving the problem, if any at all, is through dialogue in line with the European bloc's policy of engaging with countries rather than seeking to isolate them.
Even in Britain, the staunchest US ally in Europe, the "axis of evil" comment has drawn dismay. Home Secretary Jack Straw said the Bush assertion was aimed at the American elecotrate ahead of the forthcoming congressional elections and could not be part of a military strategy.
Washington's frustration over the British stand was spelt out by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. "This is not about American politics, and I assume that when the British government speaks about foreign policy, it's not about British politics," she retorted to Straw.
But it should be dawning on Washington that it would not be an easy go to secure international endorsement of military action against Iraq or Iran.
Many countries, mindful of the oil reserves and trade potential of the two countries, have set up strong relations with them; in Iraq's case, business worth tens of billions is waiting for an end to the 11-year-old UN sanctions against Baghdad. The sanctions are already fraying, and it is only a matter of time before few governments would think twice about doing business with Iraq even if in violation of the sanctions.
Indeed, there is strong European suspicion that it is not simply "old enmities" at play in the US strategy towards Iraq.
The Europeans are aware that Washington is unhappy that they have made inroads and set up ground to do post-sanctions trade with Iraq while American businesses were restrained by the law of their country from pursuing the same goal.
"By launching military action against Iraq, the US would precipitate a major crisis that would upset the European apple cart and bring new rules into play for doing business with Iraq," commented an Asian diplomat. "That would be the end of years of European efforts to gain a firm foothold in that country."
If any consolation, there is consensus across the Atlantic: Military action against Iraq would not be limited to a few missile strikes or bombings against strategic installations in that country –– it would aim at replacing the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad, and this would not be an easy task at all without European support.
The European case against the US targeting Iran is even stronger.
Europe has been closely observing the political tug-of-war between the (relatively) moderate regime of President Mohmmed Khatami and the conservative theocratic establishment in Iran since 1997. They have seen a slow shift to moderation in Tehran under Khatami's leadership, and they would like to encourage it.
Europeans are indeed aware of the clout that the Iranian religious establishment wields, and they have recognised that they should not expect miracles from Khatami.
Many European diplomats believe that even if the Israeli charge was true that Iran was behind a recently intercepted arms shipment in the Red Sea, the real "culprit" was not the Khatami government but hardline elements in the clerical establishment in Tehran.
In any event, the Europeans remain convinced that the key to dealing with Iran is encouragement for the "moderate" camp in Tehran rather than confrontation over the US charge that Iran had links with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda group.
Europe recognises that Al Qaeda fighters fleeing US forces in the Afghan war could have sneaked across the border to Iran, but they believe Tehran should not be seen as an Al Qaeda supporter.
They see the Iranian refusal to co-operate with the US in countering Al Qaeda as stemming from Tehran's conviction that such moves would allow Washignton to exploit the situation and make intelligence inroads in Iran.
"Tehran prefers to deal with the Al Qaeda problem, if there is one, on its own," said a European diplomat. "It wants no US role in the affair and is determined to keep the US out. Sharing intelligence information with the US is the last thing it wants to do."
Some speculate that the US frustration over its failure to mend fences with Iran despite repeated overtures to Tehran is also behind the hostility.
Washington has also charged that Iran was "meddling" in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, an allegation that both Tehran and Kabul have denied.
There is a strong Israeli angle to the US-Iran equation, and Bush's "tough" posture might also have to do with his desire to do away with a constant source of "concern" for the US protege in the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underlined it when he said last week that "Iran calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and elimination of the Jewish people. That's why it was so important for President Bush to name them as sponsors of terror."
It is no secret that Israel has seen in Iran a potential threat in the event of a regional conflagration. Israel has for long watched with apprehension Iran aquiring and developing long-range missiles and Tehran's nuclear programme.
Suggestions have remained alive for several years that Israel might even launch "pre-emptive" strikes against Iran's nuclear installations, which Tehran says are intended for peaceful purposes, and other military facilities.
Iran is a staunch supporter of the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbollah, which managed to force Israel to withdraw from parts of Lebanese territory in mid-2000 after many years of fighting the Israeli army and its proxy forces in southern Lebanon.
Sharon has already picked up the fight against Iraq and Iran. One of the items on the agenda for talks between Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington on Thursday was expected to be Israel's "fears" of the "threats" posed by Iraq and Iran to the Jewish state.
Aides have said that Sharon would be lobbying Bush for unspecified American action against Iran and iraq.
Russia has come out fighting from Iran's corner against the US charge against Tehran.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Sunday that there was no evidence that Iran had connections with terrorist organisations. He accused the US of following double standards.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine warned that the interests of the rest of the world were under threat from a "simplistic" US foreign policy that emerged after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Today we are threatened by a simplism that reduces all the problems of the world to the struggle against terrorism, and is not properly thought through," said Vedrine.
Vedrine expressed criticism of the Bush doctrine, a decision by Washington to subordinate all foreign policy decisions to the needs of the "war against terrorism," and of unilateralism in general.
He accused the US of acting "unilaterally, without consulting others, taking decisions based on its own view of the world and its own interests ... refusing any multilateral negotiation that could limit their decision-making, sovereignty and freedom of action."
According to Vedrine, said Europe also had a duty to stand up to the US "hyper-power" over the globalisation of the free market
French Defence Minister Alain Richard said France would not follow Bush's example in vastly increasing defence spending to cope with the new threats of the post-Sept. 11 world.
"We do not share the analysis expressed by President Bush on the threats to international peace and security," he told the French parliament.
Against such opposition from the powerful European bloc, will Bush go it alone?
There are some who suggest he might.
The technology that the US used in the Afghan war established that the sole superpower
doesn't need its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) partners "to fight a distant war, as it demonstrated in Afghanistan, where it basically won alone, except for small but important contributions from Britain, Canada and Australia," Thomas Friedman wrote in the Guardian.
Friedman hammered home an emerging scenario where the US might simply decide its interests were good enough to launch military action wherever it found fit to do so so -- with or without is Nato partners.
"We are increasingly heading for a military apartheid within Nato: America will be the chef who decides the menu and cooks all the great meals, and the Nato allies will be the bus boys who stay around and clean up the mess and keep the peace - indefinitely," according to Fried
Saturday, June 08, 2002
US defines "terrorism"
PV Vivekanand
THE US-declared war against terrorism has given a new life to the decades-old debate about a clear and unambiguous definition of who could be called "terrorist" — an Arab demand that has for long been sidestepped by the United States.
Today, when we hear the words "terrorism," "terror" and "terrorist" repeated the world over by officials, commentators and media, we cannot but ask: What constitutes "terrorim"? What is "terror"? Who is a "terrorist"?
At the height of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Washington used to describe the Afghans fighting the Russians as "freedom fighters" and "resistance groups." While we had no quarrel with the concept, it was a slap in our face that the US stood steadfast against the Arab call to apply the same yardstick in Palestine.
Today, we feel all the more humiliated, insulted and frustrated when we hear the US using the term "terrorist" to describe the Palestinians waging a legitimate resistance struggle. They are exercising the rights granted to the occupied to resist the occupier under international laws, particularly the 1948 Geneva conventions.
Beyond that sense of humiliation, insult and frustration is our agony that Israel is given a carte blanche to step up its terrorist actions that have killed and maimed thousands of Palestinians and wrecked the life of millions more.
Can the US honesty deny that it is the blind American backing that appears to transcend all considerations that emboldens Israel to persist in its effort to terrorise the Palestinians into submission?
Against that backdrop, could anyone blame us for asserting that the American rejection of Arab calls for an international debate to define "terrorism" and "terrorists" was based on its concern that its protege and "strategic partner" in the Middle East would be the first to be indicted?
We do not imply that the Sept. 11 attacks in the US were anything but terrorism. We have been exposed to terror and terrorism and believe that we, as part of the international community, have the moral responsibility to ensure that actions similar to the Sept. 11 attacks are never repeated anywhere in the world. We have to and we will do our share to render what it takes to ensure that the world is safe from such heinous, unjustiable, undefendable, unpardonable and dastardly attacks.
However, amid the shocking thoughts provoked by the attacks, the Arab and Islamic worlds cannot but feel angry and frustrated over the selective approach that applies different parameters to terrorism.
No matter whatever arguments some might put up, it is clear to us that the Israeli actions against Palestinians are state-sponsored terrorism. The marked difference, if you will, is that Israel has a mighty army backed by some of the most advanced hi-tech weapons at its disposal to terrorise the Palestinians under its control and is assured of immunity by its superpower friend from international punishment.
The literal definition of a "terrorist" is simple and straight: "A person who uses or favours violent and intimidating methods of coercing a government or community."
The immediate question is: Is Israel not using "violent and intimidating methods" to coerce the Palestinian community? Doesn't it mean that Israel is a terrorist entity?
We wish if the reality was as simple as that to allow the acceptance of that definition in the context of Israel and the Palestinian community it oppresses through nothing but sheer terror: Summary killings and maimings, detentions, torture, and free use of fighter planes, helicopter gunships, rockets, missiles and tanks against unarmed civilians whose only fault is their refusal to accept Israel's occupation their homeland and domination of their life.
Does the fact that Israel is a country and has a recognised government exclude it from being classified as terrorist? Well, it does not and should not, but its status as an ally and "strategic partner" of the US does indeed offer the country the unpredecented and unparalled luxury of the freedom to continue to practise terrorism without fear of censure or punishment.
That is the source for all the Arab and Muslim criticism, warnings, cautions and demands levelled at the US as Washington plots its next moves in its international war against terrorism.
Obviously, the US has no intention whatsover even to "dignify" the Arab demand that the same parameters be used in the case of Israel. That is perhaps we have not heard any public comment whatsover from the US on the demand.
Although the US would never admit it, we all know that there would not have been anything called the Arab-Israeli peace process had it not been for the Gulf war of 1991 that eliminated Iraq as a strong military challenge to Israel, divided the Arabs, weakened the Palestinians and brought some of the Arab states more into the US fold and sphere of influence.
That is not to say that it was the whole objective of the military assault against Iraq, but it was one of the strongest offshoots of the war and the resulting fragmentation of the Arab World.
Washington tends to describe the peace process launched in 1991 as the fruit of its "relentless" diplomacy. But we know differently - that the elements of the regional equation suited the Israeli objective of being in a position to dictate the terms for peace, as it happened after nine years of dilly dallying, and that was why the peace process could be launched at all.
At this critical juncture in time, the Arab World would like to know whether and how the US would deny its endorsement of Israel's state-sponsored terrorism and maintain that it is neutral in the Middle East.
We would also like to know at what it would take for the US to admit in public that Israel should figure high in the list of "international terrorists" and Washington, as the leader of the free world, should have adopted actions to contain the Israeli terrorism decades ago.
We would also like to know what exactly that admission will lead to and whether the rekindled unofficial debate on terrorism would ever lead to a light at the end of the tunnel for the Palestinians.
THE US-declared war against terrorism has given a new life to the decades-old debate about a clear and unambiguous definition of who could be called "terrorist" — an Arab demand that has for long been sidestepped by the United States.
Today, when we hear the words "terrorism," "terror" and "terrorist" repeated the world over by officials, commentators and media, we cannot but ask: What constitutes "terrorim"? What is "terror"? Who is a "terrorist"?
At the height of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Washington used to describe the Afghans fighting the Russians as "freedom fighters" and "resistance groups." While we had no quarrel with the concept, it was a slap in our face that the US stood steadfast against the Arab call to apply the same yardstick in Palestine.
Today, we feel all the more humiliated, insulted and frustrated when we hear the US using the term "terrorist" to describe the Palestinians waging a legitimate resistance struggle. They are exercising the rights granted to the occupied to resist the occupier under international laws, particularly the 1948 Geneva conventions.
Beyond that sense of humiliation, insult and frustration is our agony that Israel is given a carte blanche to step up its terrorist actions that have killed and maimed thousands of Palestinians and wrecked the life of millions more.
Can the US honesty deny that it is the blind American backing that appears to transcend all considerations that emboldens Israel to persist in its effort to terrorise the Palestinians into submission?
Against that backdrop, could anyone blame us for asserting that the American rejection of Arab calls for an international debate to define "terrorism" and "terrorists" was based on its concern that its protege and "strategic partner" in the Middle East would be the first to be indicted?
We do not imply that the Sept. 11 attacks in the US were anything but terrorism. We have been exposed to terror and terrorism and believe that we, as part of the international community, have the moral responsibility to ensure that actions similar to the Sept. 11 attacks are never repeated anywhere in the world. We have to and we will do our share to render what it takes to ensure that the world is safe from such heinous, unjustiable, undefendable, unpardonable and dastardly attacks.
However, amid the shocking thoughts provoked by the attacks, the Arab and Islamic worlds cannot but feel angry and frustrated over the selective approach that applies different parameters to terrorism.
No matter whatever arguments some might put up, it is clear to us that the Israeli actions against Palestinians are state-sponsored terrorism. The marked difference, if you will, is that Israel has a mighty army backed by some of the most advanced hi-tech weapons at its disposal to terrorise the Palestinians under its control and is assured of immunity by its superpower friend from international punishment.
The literal definition of a "terrorist" is simple and straight: "A person who uses or favours violent and intimidating methods of coercing a government or community."
The immediate question is: Is Israel not using "violent and intimidating methods" to coerce the Palestinian community? Doesn't it mean that Israel is a terrorist entity?
We wish if the reality was as simple as that to allow the acceptance of that definition in the context of Israel and the Palestinian community it oppresses through nothing but sheer terror: Summary killings and maimings, detentions, torture, and free use of fighter planes, helicopter gunships, rockets, missiles and tanks against unarmed civilians whose only fault is their refusal to accept Israel's occupation their homeland and domination of their life.
Does the fact that Israel is a country and has a recognised government exclude it from being classified as terrorist? Well, it does not and should not, but its status as an ally and "strategic partner" of the US does indeed offer the country the unpredecented and unparalled luxury of the freedom to continue to practise terrorism without fear of censure or punishment.
That is the source for all the Arab and Muslim criticism, warnings, cautions and demands levelled at the US as Washington plots its next moves in its international war against terrorism.
Obviously, the US has no intention whatsover even to "dignify" the Arab demand that the same parameters be used in the case of Israel. That is perhaps we have not heard any public comment whatsover from the US on the demand.
Although the US would never admit it, we all know that there would not have been anything called the Arab-Israeli peace process had it not been for the Gulf war of 1991 that eliminated Iraq as a strong military challenge to Israel, divided the Arabs, weakened the Palestinians and brought some of the Arab states more into the US fold and sphere of influence.
That is not to say that it was the whole objective of the military assault against Iraq, but it was one of the strongest offshoots of the war and the resulting fragmentation of the Arab World.
Washington tends to describe the peace process launched in 1991 as the fruit of its "relentless" diplomacy. But we know differently - that the elements of the regional equation suited the Israeli objective of being in a position to dictate the terms for peace, as it happened after nine years of dilly dallying, and that was why the peace process could be launched at all.
At this critical juncture in time, the Arab World would like to know whether and how the US would deny its endorsement of Israel's state-sponsored terrorism and maintain that it is neutral in the Middle East.
We would also like to know at what it would take for the US to admit in public that Israel should figure high in the list of "international terrorists" and Washington, as the leader of the free world, should have adopted actions to contain the Israeli terrorism decades ago.
We would also like to know what exactly that admission will lead to and whether the rekindled unofficial debate on terrorism would ever lead to a light at the end of the tunnel for the Palestinians.
Friday, February 15, 2002
American unilateralism
By declaring Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of
evil," US President George W Bush appears to have
taken in more that Washington could chew by espousing
unilateralism that has alienated his European allies.
Since his state of the union address on Jan.29, Bush
has faced a barrage of criticism from Europeans, many
of whom outrightly rejected his clear pointer that the
next targets in the US-led war against terrorism were
Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang. They have warned that
Washington should not expect them to remain partners
in the coalition that backed the US campaign in
Afghanistan.
It was indeed clear for some time now that Bush would
be targeting Iraq and others in the US-led drive
against terrorism, particularly after he clarified
that he defined all countries which develop weapons of
mass destruction as supporters of terrorism. And his
Jan. 29 speech has come to be known was the Bush
doctrine, which is now challenged by his European
allies. And they have good reasons too.
In the case of Iraq, US intelligence agencies tried
hard but in vain to establish a link between Baghdad
and the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and
Washington. Reports that the man said to have been the
leader of the attacks had met with an Iraqi diplomat
in Eastern Europe in early 2001 have come to naught in
helping Washington establish a case against Baghdad.
That the US was paving the way for expanding the war
against terrorism was made clear in October when
Washington formally notified the United Nations that
it might target other countries in the war against
terrorism and senior Bush administration officials
mentioned Iraq as a potential target.
Since then, Arab leaders and the Arab League itself
have issued repeated warnings to the US against
launching military operations against Iraq or any
other Arab country in the name of the war against
terrorism.
Joining them were European leaders who had then used
diplomatic language to dissuade Washington from
pursuing a military assault against Iraq.
But last week, they were unambiguous, saying they want
nothing to do with such a course of action.
European Commission pokesman Gunnar Weigand said the
European Union leaders "do not agree with that kind of
policy."
While the EU shared American concerns over global
issues such as human rights, terrorism and
proliferation of weapons, the bloc does not "share is
the policy desired to achieve these objectives. We
believe that engagement and rapprochement...should be
used to achieve these aims."
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, called
on Washington to act multilaterally and not as a
"global unilateralist."
Surprisingly Germany had been in the forefront of
opposing military action against Iraq, and it left
nothing unsaid.
"We Europeans warn against it," said German Deputy
Foreign Minister Ludger Vollmer. "There is no
indication, no proof that Iraq is involved in the
terrorism we have been talking about for the last few
months... this terror argument cannot be used to
legitimise old enmities."
Vollmer could not have been more clear in referring to
the growing belief that the "axis of evil" charge is
the forerunner of a US drive to settle political
scores by destablising Iraq and indirectly topple the
regime of Saddam Hussein — an objective the US failed
to achieve in the 1991 Gulf war.
There is also a strong vein of thought in Europe, and
indeed in the Arab World, that the US focus on Iran as
a potential target in the war against terrorism has
more to do with Israeli interests than US policy and
the campagin against terror.
There is little doubt that Bush would find it
difficult to enlist European partners in military
action against Iraq or Iran.
Most EU member countries agree that the best approach
to solving the problem, if any at all, is through
dialogue in line with the European bloc's policy of
engaging with countries rather than seeking to isolate
them.
Even in Britain, the staunchest US ally in Europe, the
"axis of evil" comment has drawn dismay. Home
Secretary Jack Straw said the Bush assertion was aimed
at the American elecotrate ahead of the forthcoming
congressional elections and could not be part of a
military strategy.
Washington's frustration over the British stand was
spelt out by National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice. "This is not about American politics, and I
assume that when the British government speaks about
foreign policy, it's not about British politics," she
retorted to Straw.
But it should be dawning on Washington that it would
not be an easy go to secure international endorsement
of military action against Iraq or Iran.
Many countries, mindful of the oil reserves and trade
potential of the two countries, have set up strong
relations with them; in Iraq's case, business worth
tens of billions is waiting for an end to the
11-year-old UN sanctions against Baghdad. The
sanctions are already fraying, and it is only a matter
of time before few governments would think twice about
doing business with Iraq even if in violation of the
sanctions.
Indeed, there is strong European suspicion that it is
not simply "old enmities" at play in the US strategy
towards Iraq.
The Europeans are aware that Washington is unhappy
that they have made inroads and set up ground to do
post-sanctions trade with Iraq while American
businesses were restrained by the law of their country
from pursuing the same goal.
"By launching military action against Iraq, the US
would precipitate a major crisis that would upset the
European apple cart and bring new rules into play for
doing business with Iraq," commented an Asian
diplomat. "That would be the end of years of European
efforts to gain a firm foothold in that country."
If any consolation, there is consensus across the
Atlantic: Military action against Iraq would not be
limited to a few missile strikes or bombings against
strategic installations in that country –– it would
aim at replacing the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad,
and this would not be an easy task at all without
European support.
The European case against the US targeting Iran is
even stronger.
Europe has been closely observing the political
tug-of-war between the (relatively) moderate regime of
President Mohmmed Khatami and the conservative
theocratic establishment in Iran since 1997. They have
seen a slow shift to moderation in Tehran under
Khatami's leadership, and they would like to encourage
it.
Europeans are indeed aware of the clout that the
Iranian religious establishment wields, and they have
recognised that they should not expect miracles from
Khatami.
Many European diplomats believe that even if the
Israeli charge was true that Iran was behind a
recently intercepted arms shipment in the Red Sea, the
real "culprit" was not the Khatami government but
hardline elements in the clerical establishment in
Tehran.
In any event, the Europeans remain convinced that the
key to dealing with Iran is encouragement for the
"moderate" camp in Tehran rather than confrontation
over the US charge that Iran had links with Osama Bin
Laden's Al Qaeda group.
Europe recognises that Al Qaeda fighters fleeing US
forces in the Afghan war could have sneaked across the
border to Iran, but they believe Tehran should not be
seen as an Al Qaeda supporter.
They see the Iranian refusal to co-operate with the US
in countering Al Qaeda as stemming from Tehran's
conviction that such moves would allow Washignton to
exploit the situation and make intelligence inroads in
Iran.
"Tehran prefers to deal with the Al Qaeda problem, if
there is one, on its own," said a European diplomat.
"It wants no US role in the affair and is determined
to keep the US out. Sharing intelligence information
with the US is the last thing it wants to do."
Some speculate that the US frustration over its
failure to mend fences with Iran despite repeated
overtures to Tehran is also behind the hostility.
Washington has also charged that Iran was "meddling"
in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, an allegation
that both Tehran and Kabul have denied.
There is a strong Israeli angle to the US-Iran
equation, and Bush's "tough" posture might also have
to do with his desire to do away with a constant
source of "concern" for the US protege in the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underlined it when
he said last week that "Iran calls for the destruction
of the state of Israel and elimination of the Jewish
people. That's why it was so important for President
Bush to name them as sponsors of terror."
It is no secret that Israel has seen in Iran a
potential threat in the event of a regional
conflagration. Israel has for long watched with
apprehension Iran aquiring and developing long-range
missiles and Tehran's nuclear programme.
Suggestions have remained alive for several years that
Israel might even launch "pre-emptive" strikes against
Iran's nuclear installations, which Tehran says are
intended for peaceful purposes, and other military
facilities.
Iran is a staunch supporter of the Lebanese resistance
movement Hizbollah, which managed to force Israel to
withdraw from parts of Lebanese territory in mid-2000
after many years of fighting the Israeli army and its
proxy forces in southern Lebanon.
Sharon has already picked up the fight against Iraq
and Iran. One of the items on the agenda for talks
between Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
in Washington on Thursday was expected to be Israel's
"fears" of the "threats" posed by Iraq and Iran to the
Jewish state.
Aides have said that Sharon would be lobbying Bush for
unspecified American action against Iran and iraq.
Russia has come out fighting from Iran's corner
against the US charge against Tehran.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Sunday
that there was no evidence that Iran had connections
with terrorist organisations. He accused the US of
following double standards.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine warned that the
interests of the rest of the world were under threat
from a "simplistic" US foreign policy that emerged
after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Today we are threatened
by a simplism that reduces all the problems of the
world to the struggle against terrorism, and is not
properly thought through," said Vedrine.
Vedrine expressed criticism of the Bush doctrine, a
decision by Washington to subordinate all foreign
policy decisions to the needs of the "war against
terrorism," and of unilateralism in general.
He accused the US of acting "unilaterally, without
consulting others, taking decisions based on its own
view of the world and its own interests ... refusing
any multilateral negotiation that could limit their
decision-making, sovereignty and freedom of action."
According to Vedrine, said Europe also had a duty to
stand up to the US "hyper-power" over the
globalisation of the free market
French Defence Minister Alain Richard said France
would not follow Bush's example in vastly increasing
defence spending to cope with the new threats of the
post-Sept. 11 world.
"We do not share the analysis expressed by President
Bush on the threats to international peace and
security," he told the French parliament.
Against such opposition from the powerful European
bloc, will Bush go it alone?
There are some who suggest he might.
The technology that the US used in the Afghan war
established that the sole superpower
doesn't need its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(Nato) partners "to fight a distant war, as it
demonstrated in Afghanistan, where it basically won
alone, except for small but important contributions
from Britain, Canada and Australia," Thomas Friedman
wrote in the Guardian.
Friedman hammered home an emerging scenario where the
US might simply decide its interests were good enough
to launch military action wherever it found fit to do
so so -- with or without is Nato partners.
"We are increasingly heading for a military apartheid
within Nato: America will be the chef who decides the
menu and cooks all the great meals, and the Nato
allies will be the bus boys who stay around and clean
up the mess and keep the peace - indefinitely,"
according to Friedman.
_______________
evil," US President George W Bush appears to have
taken in more that Washington could chew by espousing
unilateralism that has alienated his European allies.
Since his state of the union address on Jan.29, Bush
has faced a barrage of criticism from Europeans, many
of whom outrightly rejected his clear pointer that the
next targets in the US-led war against terrorism were
Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang. They have warned that
Washington should not expect them to remain partners
in the coalition that backed the US campaign in
Afghanistan.
It was indeed clear for some time now that Bush would
be targeting Iraq and others in the US-led drive
against terrorism, particularly after he clarified
that he defined all countries which develop weapons of
mass destruction as supporters of terrorism. And his
Jan. 29 speech has come to be known was the Bush
doctrine, which is now challenged by his European
allies. And they have good reasons too.
In the case of Iraq, US intelligence agencies tried
hard but in vain to establish a link between Baghdad
and the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and
Washington. Reports that the man said to have been the
leader of the attacks had met with an Iraqi diplomat
in Eastern Europe in early 2001 have come to naught in
helping Washington establish a case against Baghdad.
That the US was paving the way for expanding the war
against terrorism was made clear in October when
Washington formally notified the United Nations that
it might target other countries in the war against
terrorism and senior Bush administration officials
mentioned Iraq as a potential target.
Since then, Arab leaders and the Arab League itself
have issued repeated warnings to the US against
launching military operations against Iraq or any
other Arab country in the name of the war against
terrorism.
Joining them were European leaders who had then used
diplomatic language to dissuade Washington from
pursuing a military assault against Iraq.
But last week, they were unambiguous, saying they want
nothing to do with such a course of action.
European Commission pokesman Gunnar Weigand said the
European Union leaders "do not agree with that kind of
policy."
While the EU shared American concerns over global
issues such as human rights, terrorism and
proliferation of weapons, the bloc does not "share is
the policy desired to achieve these objectives. We
believe that engagement and rapprochement...should be
used to achieve these aims."
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, called
on Washington to act multilaterally and not as a
"global unilateralist."
Surprisingly Germany had been in the forefront of
opposing military action against Iraq, and it left
nothing unsaid.
"We Europeans warn against it," said German Deputy
Foreign Minister Ludger Vollmer. "There is no
indication, no proof that Iraq is involved in the
terrorism we have been talking about for the last few
months... this terror argument cannot be used to
legitimise old enmities."
Vollmer could not have been more clear in referring to
the growing belief that the "axis of evil" charge is
the forerunner of a US drive to settle political
scores by destablising Iraq and indirectly topple the
regime of Saddam Hussein — an objective the US failed
to achieve in the 1991 Gulf war.
There is also a strong vein of thought in Europe, and
indeed in the Arab World, that the US focus on Iran as
a potential target in the war against terrorism has
more to do with Israeli interests than US policy and
the campagin against terror.
There is little doubt that Bush would find it
difficult to enlist European partners in military
action against Iraq or Iran.
Most EU member countries agree that the best approach
to solving the problem, if any at all, is through
dialogue in line with the European bloc's policy of
engaging with countries rather than seeking to isolate
them.
Even in Britain, the staunchest US ally in Europe, the
"axis of evil" comment has drawn dismay. Home
Secretary Jack Straw said the Bush assertion was aimed
at the American elecotrate ahead of the forthcoming
congressional elections and could not be part of a
military strategy.
Washington's frustration over the British stand was
spelt out by National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice. "This is not about American politics, and I
assume that when the British government speaks about
foreign policy, it's not about British politics," she
retorted to Straw.
But it should be dawning on Washington that it would
not be an easy go to secure international endorsement
of military action against Iraq or Iran.
Many countries, mindful of the oil reserves and trade
potential of the two countries, have set up strong
relations with them; in Iraq's case, business worth
tens of billions is waiting for an end to the
11-year-old UN sanctions against Baghdad. The
sanctions are already fraying, and it is only a matter
of time before few governments would think twice about
doing business with Iraq even if in violation of the
sanctions.
Indeed, there is strong European suspicion that it is
not simply "old enmities" at play in the US strategy
towards Iraq.
The Europeans are aware that Washington is unhappy
that they have made inroads and set up ground to do
post-sanctions trade with Iraq while American
businesses were restrained by the law of their country
from pursuing the same goal.
"By launching military action against Iraq, the US
would precipitate a major crisis that would upset the
European apple cart and bring new rules into play for
doing business with Iraq," commented an Asian
diplomat. "That would be the end of years of European
efforts to gain a firm foothold in that country."
If any consolation, there is consensus across the
Atlantic: Military action against Iraq would not be
limited to a few missile strikes or bombings against
strategic installations in that country –– it would
aim at replacing the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad,
and this would not be an easy task at all without
European support.
The European case against the US targeting Iran is
even stronger.
Europe has been closely observing the political
tug-of-war between the (relatively) moderate regime of
President Mohmmed Khatami and the conservative
theocratic establishment in Iran since 1997. They have
seen a slow shift to moderation in Tehran under
Khatami's leadership, and they would like to encourage
it.
Europeans are indeed aware of the clout that the
Iranian religious establishment wields, and they have
recognised that they should not expect miracles from
Khatami.
Many European diplomats believe that even if the
Israeli charge was true that Iran was behind a
recently intercepted arms shipment in the Red Sea, the
real "culprit" was not the Khatami government but
hardline elements in the clerical establishment in
Tehran.
In any event, the Europeans remain convinced that the
key to dealing with Iran is encouragement for the
"moderate" camp in Tehran rather than confrontation
over the US charge that Iran had links with Osama Bin
Laden's Al Qaeda group.
Europe recognises that Al Qaeda fighters fleeing US
forces in the Afghan war could have sneaked across the
border to Iran, but they believe Tehran should not be
seen as an Al Qaeda supporter.
They see the Iranian refusal to co-operate with the US
in countering Al Qaeda as stemming from Tehran's
conviction that such moves would allow Washignton to
exploit the situation and make intelligence inroads in
Iran.
"Tehran prefers to deal with the Al Qaeda problem, if
there is one, on its own," said a European diplomat.
"It wants no US role in the affair and is determined
to keep the US out. Sharing intelligence information
with the US is the last thing it wants to do."
Some speculate that the US frustration over its
failure to mend fences with Iran despite repeated
overtures to Tehran is also behind the hostility.
Washington has also charged that Iran was "meddling"
in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, an allegation
that both Tehran and Kabul have denied.
There is a strong Israeli angle to the US-Iran
equation, and Bush's "tough" posture might also have
to do with his desire to do away with a constant
source of "concern" for the US protege in the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underlined it when
he said last week that "Iran calls for the destruction
of the state of Israel and elimination of the Jewish
people. That's why it was so important for President
Bush to name them as sponsors of terror."
It is no secret that Israel has seen in Iran a
potential threat in the event of a regional
conflagration. Israel has for long watched with
apprehension Iran aquiring and developing long-range
missiles and Tehran's nuclear programme.
Suggestions have remained alive for several years that
Israel might even launch "pre-emptive" strikes against
Iran's nuclear installations, which Tehran says are
intended for peaceful purposes, and other military
facilities.
Iran is a staunch supporter of the Lebanese resistance
movement Hizbollah, which managed to force Israel to
withdraw from parts of Lebanese territory in mid-2000
after many years of fighting the Israeli army and its
proxy forces in southern Lebanon.
Sharon has already picked up the fight against Iraq
and Iran. One of the items on the agenda for talks
between Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
in Washington on Thursday was expected to be Israel's
"fears" of the "threats" posed by Iraq and Iran to the
Jewish state.
Aides have said that Sharon would be lobbying Bush for
unspecified American action against Iran and iraq.
Russia has come out fighting from Iran's corner
against the US charge against Tehran.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Sunday
that there was no evidence that Iran had connections
with terrorist organisations. He accused the US of
following double standards.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine warned that the
interests of the rest of the world were under threat
from a "simplistic" US foreign policy that emerged
after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Today we are threatened
by a simplism that reduces all the problems of the
world to the struggle against terrorism, and is not
properly thought through," said Vedrine.
Vedrine expressed criticism of the Bush doctrine, a
decision by Washington to subordinate all foreign
policy decisions to the needs of the "war against
terrorism," and of unilateralism in general.
He accused the US of acting "unilaterally, without
consulting others, taking decisions based on its own
view of the world and its own interests ... refusing
any multilateral negotiation that could limit their
decision-making, sovereignty and freedom of action."
According to Vedrine, said Europe also had a duty to
stand up to the US "hyper-power" over the
globalisation of the free market
French Defence Minister Alain Richard said France
would not follow Bush's example in vastly increasing
defence spending to cope with the new threats of the
post-Sept. 11 world.
"We do not share the analysis expressed by President
Bush on the threats to international peace and
security," he told the French parliament.
Against such opposition from the powerful European
bloc, will Bush go it alone?
There are some who suggest he might.
The technology that the US used in the Afghan war
established that the sole superpower
doesn't need its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(Nato) partners "to fight a distant war, as it
demonstrated in Afghanistan, where it basically won
alone, except for small but important contributions
from Britain, Canada and Australia," Thomas Friedman
wrote in the Guardian.
Friedman hammered home an emerging scenario where the
US might simply decide its interests were good enough
to launch military action wherever it found fit to do
so so -- with or without is Nato partners.
"We are increasingly heading for a military apartheid
within Nato: America will be the chef who decides the
menu and cooks all the great meals, and the Nato
allies will be the bus boys who stay around and clean
up the mess and keep the peace - indefinitely,"
according to Friedman.
_______________
Tuesday, February 12, 2002
Europe faces Israeli wrath
February 17 2002
PV Vivekanand
THE EUROPEANS should be feeling like being hit by a sledgehammer. That is the intensity of the Israeli media attacks on them, apparently triggered by two reasons: First they dared to come up with an initiative to break the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock and then they voiced opposition to the US plan to target Iraq and Iran in the war against terrorism.
Choice words and phrases in the Israeli media include "European foreign policy.... has begun to resemble a schoolyard squabble," "a childish desire to show independence from the United States," "impotence in Bosnia and Kosovo" and "a bizarre coalition of sanctimonious politicians, smarmy intellectuals, graying holdovers from 1968."
The Israeli comments do of course exclude Britain from the summary rejection of the European Union approach to the Israeli-Palestinian problem since Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw have aligned themselves behind US President George W. Bush. If anything, Israel seems to consider the British approach as a counterweight to the EU's quest to involve itself as a key player in the politics of peace-making in the Middle East.
The tone of the comments indicates that the Israelis are worried that the Europeans have finally decided to do way with the constraints imposed on them against assuming an influential political role in the Middle East. The prospect should indeed be worrying for Israel since Europe represents the trade and economic lifeline for the Jewish state, and it is a leverage that the Europeans could use against it if there exists the political will among European leaders and politician.
Apart from that, it is as if Israel has appointed itself as the defender of the US, whose transatlantic relations are being tested as a result of European opposition to Washington's declared plans to expand the war against terrorism.
For that matter, the Europeans do not need any defenders either; but the case in point is a classic example of how they could come under pressure from the only "civilised" country in the region that, however, depends on Europe for the bulk of its economic activities.
It is equally interesting that Israel seems to be telling Europe what it could do and what it could not by pointedly referring to the European Parliament's invitation to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to address the assembly.
It doesn't need an in-depth analysis of the European Union initiative to break the deadlock in the (defunct) peace process or the precise points that Israel has found fit to use to shoot down the initiative. Suffice it is to say that as far as Israel is concerned nothing good could come out of Europe in the political context since the Europeans are sympathetic to the Palestinians.
For decades now, Israel, through using its US card, has prevented the Europeans from having any say in Middle East peacemaking. It is all the more important for Israel to push them back now, given the worsening crisis in Palestine speeded along by Israel's military brutality and one-track mind that is bent upon subduing Palestinian resistance. As such, it is has rejected out of hand the European plan for the declaration of a Palestinian state and Palestinian elections to wipe away the Israeli-created "delegitimisation" of the Palestinian National Authority. The Israeli media have also described the position of France — which formulated the initiative — as "total capitulation to terrorism."
Equally strong is the attack on European opposition to the US plans to target Iraq and Iran.
"European leaders, despite their pretense at unity, have no power or policy of their own but are terminally jealous of America, which has both," says an Israeli commentator with an advise that European statesmen, "rather than preaching to America in order to be different, would do better to cultivate a sense of modesty befitting their own real role in world affairs."
We don't know how European government leaders and politicians are reacting to such attacks, but we do know one thing: Israel is trying to scare the Europeans away from approaching the Middle East with an objective proposal. It also wants to help the US, its "strategic partner," to counter European criticism of what Europe sees as Washington's unilateral approach emerging from the "axis of evil" statement by President Bush.
Beyond that, however, is Israel's desire to eliminate what it considers as a lingering threat from Iraq and the potential of Iran joining a regional conflagration sparked by the growing Arab and Muslim fury and frustration over Israel's immunity against taking whatever action it finds fit to take against the Palestinians.
Of course, it is not the first time that the Europeans have incurred Israel's wrath. At every point wherever Europe has come out with any word or action that casts the slightest question over Israeli deeds and ambitions in the region, it received a kick in the teeth.
But this time around, the situation is different in that the crisis in the Middle East is worsening and courageous initiatives are required to pre-empt the realisation of Israel's objective of eliminating Palestinian resistance. By right and definition, we should have expected the US, the sole superpower, to take the lead and guide all parties involved to a fair and just solution to the problem. Since the US itself appears to have been restrained from doing so by the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington, the next best bet is Europe.
However, our source of concern is whether Europe would indeed be scared into abandoning its moves and withdraw to the sidelines to its previous status as a silent observer and bankroller, ready to step in with cash whenever it is asked to do so.
PV Vivekanand
THE EUROPEANS should be feeling like being hit by a sledgehammer. That is the intensity of the Israeli media attacks on them, apparently triggered by two reasons: First they dared to come up with an initiative to break the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock and then they voiced opposition to the US plan to target Iraq and Iran in the war against terrorism.
Choice words and phrases in the Israeli media include "European foreign policy.... has begun to resemble a schoolyard squabble," "a childish desire to show independence from the United States," "impotence in Bosnia and Kosovo" and "a bizarre coalition of sanctimonious politicians, smarmy intellectuals, graying holdovers from 1968."
The Israeli comments do of course exclude Britain from the summary rejection of the European Union approach to the Israeli-Palestinian problem since Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw have aligned themselves behind US President George W. Bush. If anything, Israel seems to consider the British approach as a counterweight to the EU's quest to involve itself as a key player in the politics of peace-making in the Middle East.
The tone of the comments indicates that the Israelis are worried that the Europeans have finally decided to do way with the constraints imposed on them against assuming an influential political role in the Middle East. The prospect should indeed be worrying for Israel since Europe represents the trade and economic lifeline for the Jewish state, and it is a leverage that the Europeans could use against it if there exists the political will among European leaders and politician.
Apart from that, it is as if Israel has appointed itself as the defender of the US, whose transatlantic relations are being tested as a result of European opposition to Washington's declared plans to expand the war against terrorism.
For that matter, the Europeans do not need any defenders either; but the case in point is a classic example of how they could come under pressure from the only "civilised" country in the region that, however, depends on Europe for the bulk of its economic activities.
It is equally interesting that Israel seems to be telling Europe what it could do and what it could not by pointedly referring to the European Parliament's invitation to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to address the assembly.
It doesn't need an in-depth analysis of the European Union initiative to break the deadlock in the (defunct) peace process or the precise points that Israel has found fit to use to shoot down the initiative. Suffice it is to say that as far as Israel is concerned nothing good could come out of Europe in the political context since the Europeans are sympathetic to the Palestinians.
For decades now, Israel, through using its US card, has prevented the Europeans from having any say in Middle East peacemaking. It is all the more important for Israel to push them back now, given the worsening crisis in Palestine speeded along by Israel's military brutality and one-track mind that is bent upon subduing Palestinian resistance. As such, it is has rejected out of hand the European plan for the declaration of a Palestinian state and Palestinian elections to wipe away the Israeli-created "delegitimisation" of the Palestinian National Authority. The Israeli media have also described the position of France — which formulated the initiative — as "total capitulation to terrorism."
Equally strong is the attack on European opposition to the US plans to target Iraq and Iran.
"European leaders, despite their pretense at unity, have no power or policy of their own but are terminally jealous of America, which has both," says an Israeli commentator with an advise that European statesmen, "rather than preaching to America in order to be different, would do better to cultivate a sense of modesty befitting their own real role in world affairs."
We don't know how European government leaders and politicians are reacting to such attacks, but we do know one thing: Israel is trying to scare the Europeans away from approaching the Middle East with an objective proposal. It also wants to help the US, its "strategic partner," to counter European criticism of what Europe sees as Washington's unilateral approach emerging from the "axis of evil" statement by President Bush.
Beyond that, however, is Israel's desire to eliminate what it considers as a lingering threat from Iraq and the potential of Iran joining a regional conflagration sparked by the growing Arab and Muslim fury and frustration over Israel's immunity against taking whatever action it finds fit to take against the Palestinians.
Of course, it is not the first time that the Europeans have incurred Israel's wrath. At every point wherever Europe has come out with any word or action that casts the slightest question over Israeli deeds and ambitions in the region, it received a kick in the teeth.
But this time around, the situation is different in that the crisis in the Middle East is worsening and courageous initiatives are required to pre-empt the realisation of Israel's objective of eliminating Palestinian resistance. By right and definition, we should have expected the US, the sole superpower, to take the lead and guide all parties involved to a fair and just solution to the problem. Since the US itself appears to have been restrained from doing so by the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington, the next best bet is Europe.
However, our source of concern is whether Europe would indeed be scared into abandoning its moves and withdraw to the sidelines to its previous status as a silent observer and bankroller, ready to step in with cash whenever it is asked to do so.
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