NEWS
- Environmental deterioration in post sanctions period 19/05/2002
- Iraq "not optimistic" about talks with UN due to US "hegemony" 22/05/2002
- Death toll still rising due to embargo 16/05/2002
- Iraq fears UN arms experts will resume spying 05/05/2002
- Iraq
Decides to Resume Oil Exports 06/05/2002
- UN reduced oil exports endanger Iraqi relief bid
30/03/2002
- Arab leaders agree to protect Iraq from U.S. invasion 30/03/2002
- Thousands march in Baghdad in support of Palestinians 30/03/2002
- US Military Upgrading Gulf Presence 30/03/2002
- Church
accuses Blair of 'cruel thirst for vengeance' 24/03/02
- UK
warns Saddam of nuclear retaliation 21/03/02
- Cheney says U.S. will attack Iraq "for Israel's sake" 20/03/02
- Eliminate weapons of mass destruction: Saddam to US 21/03/02
- British minister warns against attack on Iraq 17/03/02
- US will not be allowed to use Saudi bases to strike Iraq 17/03/02
- US hawk Wolfowitz tones down rheoric on Irak policy 17/03/02
- Iraqi MD's blame U.S. for deformities 15/3/02
-
Bush prepares a lying campaign against Iraq 20/02/02
- IRAQ. THE OFFENSIVE HAS ALREADY STARTED
20/02/02
- Attack will begin after a May ultimatum to Iraq, says a report.
- A forward HQ in the Gulf has already been set up. 21/02/02
- European anger rises amid jitters about Iraqi action.21/02/02
- Poll shows 71 per cent of Germans against participation in Iraq campaign. 22/02/02
-
Voters Say No To Iraq Attack - 51% oppose British backing for US action 20/03/02
- PROBLEM OF IRAQ CAN ONLY BE RESOLVED POLITICALLY - RUSSIA. 21/02/02
- US denies troops in Iraq 22/02/02
- Iraq Puts Weapons Chief on the Spot. 20/02/02
- Subject: Fair and impartial weapons inspections for Iraq? 20/02/02
- banning American citizens to travel 18/02/02
- scenarios of striking Iraq 20/02/02
- Banks Compete Over Iraq Contract 19/02/02
- scenarios of striking Iraq 25/02/02
- UN - low oil exports endangering Iraqi relief program 27/02/2002
- U.S. action soon against Iraq seen as unlikely. 27/02/2002
-
Britain in a pickle
over US plans for Iraq 10/3/2002
- Belgium calls on EU to send top-level mission to Iraq 11/3/2002
Environmental deterioration in post sanctions period
|
Iraq was among the first countries in the region to recognize the importance of environment and its relation to human health and development. This fact is only a natural outcome of the history of civilization in Iraq. Comprehensive environmental programs were carried out with the aim of protecting and improving the quality of the environment. Among of which are the water treatment, sewage system, sanitation and industrial pollution control projects. The US led aggression in 1991 has caused severe damage to environment and the infrastructure of its protection and improvement. Environment deterioration in Iraq has not stopped with the stoppage of military actions but it continued, due to the UN sanctions, which has prevented the efforts to overcome the deterioration of environment caused by the aggression. These sanctions are meant to impair Iraqi develo9pment process the environmental programs are an integrated part of this process. The UNDP that charged with assessment of the aggression effects on environment system in Iraq has realized many conclusions after it had visited Iraq in 1991. It realized some facts that the missiles and air bombing have caused entire destruction to all Iraq's infrastructures among of it electricity generation station, water projects, oil refineries and tanker. As a key result of all what mentioned irrigation pumping stations were brought to a halt. The bombing of many industrial institutions has led to leakage of some poisoned chemical materials into the soil and waterways. The bombing of the fertilizer factories and others has deprived Iraq of many important agricultural requirements needed to agricultural sector. Supply and distribution networks were severely affected. Many water plants are totally worn out and require chlorinating equipment. The leak in the system, many of which are results of the war, are underground. Water engineers are unable to verify this because leak detectors are missing. Many leak detectors, repair collars and large diameter pipes are needed to replace the destroyed feeders. The recurrent power cuts force the systems to shut down, thus causing serious risks of pollution within the networks. Because of a back-siphoned effect which is especially severe in areas with high water tables. Most of the sewage treatment plants have either ceased to operate or operate at low capacity, a matter that led to complicate the problem. As a result, sewage is either overflowing in the streets of cities i.e. Basra, Meisan, Najaf, or being discharged untreated into major rivers and run down the stream. These rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates constitute the main water resources of the country. Many population are obliged to drink this polluted water straight from the river, since most of the waters purification systems they depended upon are no longer functioning. Assessment by Health Prevention and Environment Protection Department of he Health Ministry showed that water supplied to provinces are of doubtful quality since bacteriological tests are carried out haphazardly and results are not reliable. The sanctions circumstances have caused stoppage of 18 project for water purification and treatment whereas these projects were under execution when the aggression started. The condition of wastewater treatment projects is no better as it currently serve no more than 20% of the population. In addition to that, most pumping stations have been out of order, thus causing overflow of sewage water within the populated areas even inside houses to form pools of water that threat the health of the population. In addition to that, most pumping stations have been out of order, thus causing overflow of sewage water within the populated areas even inside houses to form pools of water that treat the health of the population. Moreover, the hazards caused initially through widespread and repeated bombing prolonged through the sanctions, added to the dangers associated with Depleted Uranium (DU) ordnance ad the massive quality of unexploded bombs. |
Iraq "not optimistic" about talks with UN due to US "hegemony"
DOHA, May 21 (AFP) - Iraq is
"not optimistic" about the outcome of its next round of talks with the United Nations because
of US "hegemony" over the world body, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said Tuesday.
"I am not optimistic (because) I do not believe that the secretary general (Kofi
Annan) is free in his actions and dialogue," Ramadan told Qatar's
Al-Jazeera satellite channel.
"How can I be optimistic about the outcome of the dialogue when I know the extent to
which the (US) administration exercises hegemony over the Security Council, with due respect to all members
of the Security Council ... and the role some are playing, chiefly Russia?" he asked.
The United Nations confirmed Tuesday that Annan would hold a third round of talks with
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri in Vienna in early July.
Annan and Sabri met at UN headquarters in New York on March 7 to discuss the possible
return of arms inspectors to Iraq. They and their senior aides
had a second round of talks over three days from May 1 to May 3. Iraq's dialogue with the UN will not change
the US position, Ramadan said.
"The US administration says the issue is not linked to the return of inspectors or
otherwise, that (its) objective is to change the regime" in Baghdad, he said.
Death toll still rising due to embargo
Geneva, May 16, INA
Iraq has affirmed that the decade-old embargo blocked works of health institutions in Iraq, and placed obstacles on the way of expanding and promoting health programs which were necessary for improving health situation.
Iraqi Health Minister Omed Midhat Mubarak delivered a speech in the 55th meetings of the General Association of the World Health Organization (WHO), currently held in Geneva between May 13-19.
Mr. Mubarak said, "The unjust embargo caused serious problems in environment, health, nutrition and humanitarian situation in general. The embargo caused increase in mortality rates, especially among children under the age of five."
Mr. Mubarak said facts and reports, which were confirmed by the U.N Agencies, indicate that the oil-for-food program did not and will never alleviate Iraqis' suffering because of the obstacles which are deliberately put by American and British representatives, a matter that led to delay the implementation of contracts concerning humanitarian items, especially medicines and medical apparatuses.
Mr. Mubarak called for adopting the joint work plan between Iraq and the World Health Organization in a way that helps implement this urgent humanitarian action to confront the unsafe problems and serious effects resulted from depleted uranium, which was used by the United States and Britain in their military actions against Iraq.
The Minister also referred to Palestinians' suffering due to the Zionist occupation. He referred to President Saddam Hussein's initiative on sharing food and medicine with brothers in Palestine in spite of the current difficult circumstances in Iraq because of the unjust embargo.
Iraq fears UN arms experts will resume spying
BAGHDAD, May 5
(AFP) - The return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq would lead to a resumption of spying on behalf of
the United States and Britain, the
ruling Baath party daily said Sunday.
"By insisting on the return of inspectors, the United States and Britain are only
concerned to resume their spying under the cover of inspections,"
Ath-Thawra said.
US and British demands that the monitors are allowed back to verify if Baghdad has resumed
production of weapons of mass destruction are also
intended to "overshadow Iraq's rights and justify their threats" to launch a military offensive to
overthrow President Saddam Hussein, the daily said.
Iraq, which insists it has no weapons of mass destruction and is not manufacturing them,
is due to resume negotiations with the United Nations next
month about the weapons inspectors, who fled Iraq in December 1998 on the eve of a snap US-led air war.
Al-Qadissiya newspaper, another official daily, said the inspectors' work had been
tarnished by "the presence of spies who worked for US and British
intelligence as well as Mossad," Israel's spy agency.
"Mistrust of the inspectors remains high after the previous experience," Baath
party official Saad Kassem Hammudi told AFP.
Calls for their return are intended "to provoke crises which Washington could use to
carry out a new assault on Iraq," Hammudi said.
Hans Blix, head of the new UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission
(UNMOVIC), has vowed his team would not include spies after the
United Nations admitted past Iraqi allegations of spying were partly founded.
Iraq Decides to Resume Oil Exports
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- After failing to win
support for an oil embargo against the United States and other allies of Israel, the Iraqi Cabinet
voted Sunday to resume oil exports beginning midnight on Tuesday, national television reported.
In a statement broadcast on the state-run service, the Cabinet said its April 8 decision to suspend oil
exports for 30 days "did not find a response from Arab oil-producing brothers to take similar measures
so that it would succeed."
President Saddam Hussein presided over the Cabinet meeting, television reported.
Referring to Iraq's unilateral suspension of oil exports, the Cabinet statement added: "Suffice
that we expressed the conscience of the (Arab) nation."
The television quoted Saddam as saying during that meeting: "We consider that the Palestinian
stand has triumphed, thanks to the determination of the heroic Palestinian people."
Saddam announced the suspension as a move to press the United States and other allies of Israel to put
pressure on the Israeli government.
Saddam followed up the suspension by calling on April 22 for all Arab oil-producers to halt sales to
the United States and Israel.
However, other oil-producers did not heed his call. Saudi Arabia, the No. 1 exporter of oil to the
United States, publicly rejected Iraq's call to use the so-called "oil weapon." Another major
producer, Kuwait, also rejected it.
Even Iran, which had suggested cutting oil exports before Iraq did, failed to reduce its own exports.
In late April, Iraqi Oil Minister Amer Mohammed Rashid said the impact of Iraq's suspension had been
"quite good," but "not as good as we would have liked."
Iraq, which has a daily production capacity of 2.3 million barrels, exports about 1.8 million barrels a
day under the supervision of the United Nations. The world body has maintained sanctions on Iraq since it
invaded Kuwait in 1990.
UN reduced oil
exports endanger Iraqi relief bid
UNITED NATIONS (R) - The UN-Iraq humanitarian programme, meant to ease the impact of sanctions, is facing a
financial crisis because of reduced oil exports caused by a political deadlock among Security Council
powers, a senior UN official warned. Unless changes occur quickly, the "implementation of the programme
may grind to a halt," Benon Sevan, the UN undersecretary general in charge of the Iraqi oil-for-food
programme, said on Tuesday.
"I think we are in deep trouble as far as funding of the programme is concerned." he said after
briefing the 15-member council. "There is no money for new contracts."
Fresh from a one-month visit to Iraq, Sevan said the Security Council's Sanctions Committee was politically
paralysed on Iraqi policies. Its new initiative of retroactive oil pricing was delaying bidders for
contracts, causing a 24 per cent drop in Iraqi crude exports since November.
The policy was instituted by the United States and Britain to keep Baghdad from charging oil contractors an
illegal premium, outside of the humanitarian programme. Russia, a benefactor of Iraqi oil contracts, had
blocked other proposals to stop the kickbacks.
Iraq has been under Security Council sanctions since shortly after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990. To ease
the impact on civilians, an "oil-for-food" programme was instituted in December 1996 under which
Iraq could sell oil to buy food, medicine and a host of other goods.
The oil revenues go into a United Nations account, which pays the suppliers. But many goods have to be
approved by the Sanctions Committee on Iraq, any one of whose members can block a contract.
Sevan also again lashed out at the $5 billion worth of contracts blocked by the United States, despite his
frequent pleas to release the most important ones.
"The work of the Security Council committee has bogged down almost to a standstill. One could say -
without any hesitation - that the work of the committee is paralysed with numerous issues awaiting action
for long periods of time," Sevan said.
"We already are witnessing major cracks in our capacity to implement the programme effectively, with so
many political and procedural hurdles," he said.
For the past few years, the United States and Britain have been at loggerheads with Russia, China and
sometimes France, more sympathetic to Iraq. Each blocks the other's proposals.
The United States and Russia are negotiating a new sanctions arrangement under which Iraq would be allowed
to import civilian goods that are not on a specified list the council has to review.
Until this project is completed, US officials have indicated many blocked contracts would remain unreleased.
Arab leaders agree
to protect Iraq from U.S. invasion
By Neil MacFarquhar
New York Times
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Saddam Hussein secured broad Arab support Thursday in heading off any U.S. military action
against his country when the region's leaders declared that an attack on Iraq would be considered an attack
against all Arab states.
In return for this support, given at the close of a two-day Arab League summit meeting, Iraq accepted
policies it had vehemently rejected in the past.
The Iraqi government agreed to recognize Kuwait as an independent state and not to invade again. It also
said it would work with the United Nations in implementing post-gulf-war cease-fire provisions and would
join an Arab initiative, approved at the summit, that envisions peace with Israel.
Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia took the unusual step of publicly kissing Iraq's representative in
front of the television cameras, sealing the idea that the Arabs are ready to begin welcoming Iraq back into
their fold.
This very public embrace appeared to be a rebuff to the Bush administration and another sign of its limited
influence in a region it chose largely to ignore during its first months in office.
In Washington, the State Department expressed grave doubts about the accord between Iraq and Kuwait.
``If true, that would be good,'' said Richard Boucher, the State Department press secretary. ``But Iraq has
never evidenced real intent to respect Kuwaiti sovereignty.''
The Arab leaders declared Thursday that they reject ``the threat of an aggression on some Arab countries,
particularly Iraq, and assert the categorical rejection of attacking Iraq or threatening the security and
safety of any Arab state, and consider it a threat to the national security of all the Arab states.''
Just weeks ago, Vice President Dick Cheney embarked on a Middle East tour promoted as an attempt to line up
regional support for carrying the war on terrorism into Iraq. But Saudi Arabia, like most states in the
region, was skeptical and appeared to have several motives for its embrace of Iraq on Thursday.
The government in Riyadh is sensitive to the idea that it would be once again seen as an ally in any attack
by the United States on Iraq, a Muslim nation. That sensitivity is partly the result of a widespread
domestic impression that America's war on terrorism has actually been an assault on Islam.
In addition, after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Saudis stressed repeatedly that the first step toward ending
the terrorism inspired by Osama bin Laden was to solve the Palestinian conflict, which has inspired many in
the Arab world to take up arms against the United States and its Arab allies.
``I think the Saudis are basically sending a message to the Americans to solve the Palestinian question and
things will fall into place,'' said George Hawatmeh, editor of the Jordanian daily Al-Rai.
While the Iraq-Kuwait agreement called on Iraq to fulfill all its obligations under the U.N. sanctions, it
also called for lifting those sanctions, something Iraq had sought.
Thousands march in Baghdad in support of Palestinians
BAGHDAD, March 30 (AFP) - Thousands of
Iraqis marched in Baghdad Saturday denouncing Israel's "savage attacks" against the
Palestinians and calling on their president to "hit Tel Aviv," AFP correspondents reported.
"Palestine is Arab, down with Zionism," "Don't worry Arafat, with our blood
we will redeem Palestine," "Beloved Saddam, hit Tel Aviv," the demonstrators chanted.
The protesters, who carried portraits of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat, were referring to Scud missiles fired by Iraq at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.
Some read poems over loudspeakers calling for "jihad (holy war) for the liberation of
Palestine."
Iraqi TV stations regularly interrupted their programs Saturday to air footage of the
Israeli assault on Arafat's headquarters inthe West Bank town of Ramallah.
Calls to prayers in mosques were accompanied by exhortations to residents of the capital
to take to the streets "in support of the Palestinian people being slaughtered by the dirty Jews."
Iraq has rallied to defend the Palestinian cause, announcing the mobilization of 6.5
million volunteers for the "liberation of Palestine."
US Military Upgrading Gulf Presence
WASHINGTON (AP)
-- The U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf has increased substantially due to the war in
Afghanistan, but there's little doubt the new troops and equipment could be turned on Iraq in a future
offensive. The number of U.S. military personnel in the Gulf region and Central Asia -- from Saudi
Arabia to Pakistan -- has increased from fewer than 25,000 to nearly 80,000, since the Sept. 11 attacks.
While about 7,000 are in Afghanistan, thousands more have been sent to the Gulf region to support the
Afghan operation.
In Kuwait -- at Iraq's door -- the number of American troops has nearly doubled, from 5,500 to about
10,500, since Sept. 11, defense officials said. Most are support personnel who keep planes flying and food
flowing to troops in the field.
But Gen. Tommy Franks, who commands U.S. forces in the region, said he's considering augmenting the
ground combat force in Kuwait, which now numbers 3,500 to 4,000 troops.
In Saudi Arabia, weapons and other gear are being pulled out of long-term storage. Some computer and
communications equipment is going to a previously secret base in Qatar, potentially giving U.S. forces a
command center outside of Saudi Arabia, where there's little support for a new offensive against Iraq.
Senior U.S. defense officials insist the Gulf buildup is not a prelude to an invasion of Iraq, but they
acknowledge it is serving as a warning to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and would be useful in a future
conflict. They provide both valuable training and "a hedge against miscalculation," by
Saddam, Franks told reporters Friday at a Pentagon briefing.
He said he has received no order to plan for war with Iraq. But the general made clear he's working to
ensure the United States could run a war in the Gulf, even if allies such as Saudi Arabia refused to
allow operations from its soil. "Let me put it this way. We are increasing or improving
our command and control capacity in all of my region," Franks said. The Bush administration
accuses Iraq of developing weapons of mass destruction and sponsoring terrorists, and says options are
being considered ranging from diplomatic efforts to push Saddam to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors to
possible military action.
Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, has made clear that America should not invade Iraq, and that if Bush decides
to go ahead, U.S. troops could not operate from Saudi soil -- at least publicly. In a rebuff to Bush's Iraq
stance, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah on Thursday embraced a top Iraqi official in front of other
leaders at an Arab summit, signaling a reconciliation for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War.
Abdullah is to visit Bush at the president's Texas ranch next month.
The Arab countries also issued a statement saying that any attack on Iraq would be considered a threat
to the security of all Arab countries. And Iraq made conciliatory gestures toward Kuwait, the southern
neighbor it invaded in 1990 to trigger the Gulf War.
The Kuwaiti government has reacted cautiously.
Sandy Berger, a national security adviser in the Clinton administration, said Bush has made it clear he
is ready to take action against Iraq.
But, he said, "It's going to be difficult to do that with the Middle East in flames."
Arab countries friendly to America apparently worry their governments would face widespread internal
unrest if the United States attacked Iraq while the Israeli-Palestinian crisis raged. "It shows (Iraq)
cannot be Afghanistan II," Robert Pelletreau, a former assistant secretary of state and ex-U.S.
ambassador to Egypt, said of the show of Arab support for Iraq.
"It's going to be much more difficult to gather international support for an action against
Iraq," Pelletreau said. Yet, it's unlikely the administration will back off its Iraq policy, he said.
State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Friday that Saddam is a "serious threat to the Iraqi
people, to Iraq's neighbors," and said the administration would keep all options open. Franks said
moving of equipment from Saudi Arabia began a year and a half ago.
Until Vice President Dick Cheney's recent visit to the Middle East, however, the United States had not
even acknowledged the existence of the Qatar base in the desert outside the capital, Doha. The huge U.S.
installation, which offers long runways, is marked only by a handwritten "Army Camp" sign.
Church accuses Blair
of 'cruel thirst for vengeance'
March 24, 2002
By Jonathan Petre, Religious Affairs Correspondent
THE Church of England is on a collision course with the Government over Iraq by producing a report for
bishops which argues that an attack on Saddam Hussein would be immoral and seen as the "cruel thirst
for vengeance".
The report, by the Church's Board for Social Responsibility, says that it would be difficult to see how
Western military action in Iraq could meet the criteria of being a just war.
Instead, in an implicit criticism of the hardening stance being taken by Tony Blair, the briefing paper says
that calls for such action merely "reflect the priorities of American foreign policy".
It adds that the Church would also have "grave concerns" about inter-faith relations in Britain in
the wake of an attack on another Muslim country such as Iraq.
The paper follows Wednesday's warning by Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, that Britain would be ready to
launch a nuclear strike against states such
as Iraq if they used weapons of mass destruction against British forces.
His words came as officials in Washington and London privately predicted that military action to topple
Saddam was likely at the end of the year.
Although Mr Hoon denied that a decision had been taken on such action, his comments about nuclear arms
fuelled beliefs that preparations were being
considered.
The private paper by the Church's board, chaired by the Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Rev Tom Butler, is not
policy but a strong indication of Church thinking. It says that, for a war to be just, it has to have
"proper authority and right intent".
It continues: "It is difficult to see how either of these have been met in the case of Iraq." No
explicit UN resolution existed that would legitimise
military action, and it was hard to see, given the lack of international consensus, how this could be
achieved.
Although Mr Blair originally played down talk of action against Iraq because Saddam was not linked to the
September 11 attacks, ministers have since said that such an operation would be justified because Iraq is in
breach of UN resolutions and Gulf war ceasefire agreements.
The paper says: "Although it is important not to understate the potential threat posed by Iraq, no
convincing evidence has been presented to support the argument that Iraq is rebuilding its WMD [weapons of
mass destruction] programme or that Iraq poses an immediate threat to regional and international security.
"Instead, the arguments put forward in favour of action reflect the priorities of American foreign
policy. This would be difficult to square with the Government's interpretation of the legal position. Any
such attack could be perceived as the `cruel thirst for vengeance'.
"An attack on another Muslim country - particularly one with no proven link to the September 11
atrocities - would be taken by many as evidence of an
in-built hostility to the Islamic world. . . The consequence for inter-faith relations of an attack on Iraq
must therefore be of grave concern."
The paper was dismissed by Ann Widdecombe, the former Tory minister. "If Saddam is stockpiling weapons
of mass destruction, it is not vengeance but
self-defence to stop him," she said.
"I don't know where the Church gets its information that he isn't stockpiling such weapons. Perhaps
they get secret intelligence reports every day?"
UK
warns Saddam of nuclear retaliation
By George Jones, Political Editor and Anton La Guardia - The Telegraph, UK - Thursday, March 21, 2002
BRITAIN would be ready to make a nuclear strike against states such as Iraq if they used weapons of mass
destruction against British forces, Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, told MPs yesterday.
He issued his warning as officials in Washington and London privately predicted that military action to try
to topple Saddam Hussein was likely to be launched at the end of the year.
Mr Hoon was briefing the Commons defence select committee on the threat posed by four countries Britain had
identified as "states of concern": Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea.
He said that Saddam had already used chemical weapons against his own people. The possibility that rogue
states would be prepared to use such weapons again, possibly sacrificing their own population, could not be
ruled out.
He said that dictators such as Saddam "can be absolutely confident that in the right conditions we
would be willing to use our nuclear weapons.
"What I cannot be absolutely confident about is whether that would be sufficient to deter them from
using a weapon of mass destruction in the first place."
Mr Hoon's willingness to confirm readiness to use nuclear weapons in such circumstances was seen at
Westminster as a clear sign that the Government is becoming more alarmed that Saddam is developing chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons.
A joint Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office paper to he committee said it was a "serious cause for
concern" that states were developing a ballistic missile
capability at the same time as they were seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Hoon said that Britain could come within range of missiles fired from the Middle East within the
"next few years".
Although Mr Hoon later denied in the Commons that any decision had been taken on military action against
Iraq, his comments about the nuclear deterrent will add to Labour MPs' concern that such preparations are
being actively considered.
His forthrightness was unexpected, because many Labour MPs are opposed to retaining nuclear weapons.
In the 1980s Labour was unilateralist and Tony Blair was briefly a member of the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament, although as party leader he has backed the nuclear deterrent.
Mr Hoon's comments follow similar noises from America. Two weeks ago a leaked Pentagon policy document laid
out the possibility of a "devastating response" to the use of biological or chemical weapons
against American troops.
The Prime Minister intends to use the large deployment of British fighting forces to Afghanistan as a
political lever to push President Bush into seeking United Nations approval for any military action against
Iraq.
He supports Mr Bush in his campaign to remove Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and topple Saddam, but
wants to broaden the front.
Downing Street hopes the deployment to Afghanistan of 1,700 British troops, led by 45 Commando the Royal
Marines, a unit specialising in Arctic warfare, will strengthen his position when he meets Mr Bush at his
Texas ranch after Easter.
"The speed and size of the deployment to Afghanistan is a cheque that Blair will cash in," a
source said. "He will tell Bush that he needs to carry the international community with him."
The Foreign Office, in particular, is deeply worried about the impact that a war in Iraq would have on the
Middle East. But it appears to have been overruled by Mr Blair.
"The Prime Minister thinks Saddam poses a threat that has to be met with a strong response," a
source said. "He is feeling gung-ho."
Whitehall officials said that America first made its request for commandos at the height of Operation
Anaconda this month in a "panicky" response to the unexpectedly fierce resistance Taliban and
al-Qa'eda fighters put up in the mountains south of Kabul.
The United States suffered its biggest casualties of the war on the opening day of Anaconda, when eight
Americans and at least three Afghan allies were killed.
This week America said Anaconda had been successful, but British officials privately spoke of "a near
disaster" and said many guerrillas appeared to have slipped away despite American claims to have killed
hundreds of the enemy.
Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, headed home yesterday after an 11-day tour of the Middle East in
which he received little support for an attack on Iraq. Instead he was urged to do more to end the fighting
between Israel and the Palestinians.
As Iraq gloated about Mr Cheney's "bitter disappointment", the Turkish prime minister, Bulent
Ecevit, said he felt greatly relieved that Washington was
not planning imminent action against Iraq.
"This does not mean an operation has been ruled out," he said. "But I do not think there
could be military action in the coming few months."
CHENEY
SAYS U.S. WILL ATTACK IRAQ "FOR ISRAEL'S SAKE"
IAP News - 20 March 2002
US vice-President Dick Cheney reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the U.S. was planning
to attack Iraq 'first and foremost for Israel's sake.'
According to Israeli sources quoted by Israeli state-run radio Wednesday, Cheney asked Sharon to 'tone down'
the confrontation with the Palestinians so
as not to disrupt or disturb American plans vis-a-vis Iraq.
The sources quoted Cheney as saying that he expected President Bush to decide to attack Iraq in spite of
widespread opposition in the Arab world.
Sharon said publicly Tuesday that Israel would bless wholeheartedly any American attack on Iraq, telling
Cheney that the US 'can always count on us.'
Israeli press reported this week that Sharon was hoping that a decisive American onslaught against Iraq
would demoralize the Palestinians and force
them to concede defeat and put an end to the intifada.
However, Cheney and Sharon reportedly agreed to keep coordination and cooperation on Iraq behind the curtain
in order not to embarrass pro-American
puppet Arab regimes.
Cheney arrived in Ankara Tuesday on an 11-nation visit to the Middle East and Britain that many have said
was aimed at drumming up support for a
possible campaign to overthrow President Saddam.
Turkish leaders have repeatedly voiced opposition to any action against their southern neighbor.
'There is no question of any military action against Iraq in the foreseeable future,' Turkish Prime Minister
Bulent Ecevit told reporters after meeting with
Cheney. Ankara, the Turkish capital, was the last stop on Cheney's tour.
Cheney said in occupied Jerusalem earlier Tuesday that no decision had yet been made on whether to attack
Iraq.
Turkish police tightened security in downtown Ankara hours before Cheney's arrival and detained 80 people
for lack of proper identification, the
Anatolia news agency reported. A few hundred people from trade unions and small left-wing parties protested
Cheney's visit, shouting anti-US slogans.
Local reports said the Turkish leaders would tell Cheney that Turkey would not contribute any troops to a
possible US campaign against Iraq. However,
Turkey would discuss providing logistical support, such as the use of its air bases, the reports said.
Turkey, a close US and Israeli ally, has strongly supported Washington's anti-terror campaign in
Afghanistan.
Turkey was a staging point for US attacks during the Gulf War and US planes are already based in Turkey's
southern Incirlik air base from which they
patrol a no-fly zone over northern Iraq.
But Turkey fears that a war in Iraq could further destabilise the region, devastate its fragile economy, and
lead to the creation of a separate Kurdish
state in northern Iraq that could in turn encourage similar ambitions among Turkey's 12 million Kurds.
Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani also arrived in Ankara for talks Tuesday. Talabani was not expected to
meet with Cheney, but in a previous visit
the Kurdish leader said he opposed a direct US intervention in Iraq.
Eliminate
weapons of mass destruction: Saddam to US
AFP - The Times of India - Thursday, March 21, 2002
Baghdad - President Saddam Hussein has called on the US to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction,
suggesting it undergo "psychiatric supervision" for its new nuclear weapons strategy that targets
seven countries, including Iraq.
"America must eliminate the first of its weapons of mass destruction before asking the rest of the
world to do the same," Saddam said on Wednesday while receiving a delegation of chemists and
pharmacology experts.
"The enemis (Israel and the United States) must eliminate their nuclear and biological arsenals to
avoid the risk of such weapons being seized by terrorists, as was the case of an American terrorist who
produced anthrax spores," the president said.
If the United States took the first step to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, the "whole
world" would follow suit, Saddam said, quoted by the official INA news agency.
The president added that Washington should be put under "psychiatric supervision for suggesting they
would use nuclear weapons against certain countries."
The US Nuclear Posture Review, a secret report to Congress leaked earlier this month, points to the
potential use of US nuclear strikes against non-nuclear
armed nations pursuing weapons of mass destruction - China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Syria - as
well as former Cold War enemy Russia.
Read the complete news at: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com
British minister warns against attack on Iraq
LONDON, March 17 (AFP) - A
senior British government minister Sunday urged London and Washington not to launch military strikes on
Iraq, hinting that she would resign if Britain joined the United States in taking such action.
International Development Secretary Clare Short said military action against Iraq would be "very
unwise" and would not solve the problem of Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction.
Short, the most senior British minister to have expressed opposition to any strikes on
Iraq, also insisted that any such attacks would have to have UN support.
Washington is believed to be laying the early groundwork for military action against Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein's regime, after identifying the nation as part of an "axis of evil."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been Washington's closest ally in the anti-terror
coalition formed after the September 11 attacks.
But the prospect of British forces joining in a widening of the alliance's aims to cover
Iraq as well is believed to have split the government.
"Blind military action against Iraq does not deal with the problem," Short told
BBC radio.
"The best thing is to get the UN inspectors back in," rather than "crude
military action."
She said that with the Middle East embroiled in perpetual unrest and anger in the Arab
world, "to open up a military flank on Iraq would be very unwise.
"We should face up to how serious this is.
"We cannot put our heads in the sand, but people fear that there's going to be
instant mass bombing or something; that won't do either.
Short's opposition to strikes puts her in a minority in the cabinet, where Blair tends to
brook little debate.
He has publicly supported the US portrayal of Iraq as an "evil" regime and,
while not specifically guaranteeing British troops, has indicated that London is ready to help "deal
with" Saddam.
Yet he is under tremendous pressure from within his own party, with Labour backbenchers
making up the bulk of more than 100 members of parliament signing a motion declaring "deep unease"
over military action.
Robin Cook, the
leader of the lower House of Commons, is also thought to be against military action, while Home
Secretary David Blunkett has urged caution for fear of an Islamic backlash.
Short hinted that if the government pushed beyond her "bottom line" on the
issue, she might resign.
"There are conditions in which I would not be able to support action, but I do not
expect them to be proposed.
"I think like that about everything and I think everybody should. It's not that I
think my government is going to do the wrong thing but we've all got to have our bottom lines, that's about
being a member of the government."
US will not be allowed to use Saudi bases to strike Iraq
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, March 17 (AFP) -
Saudi leaders have told US Vice President Dick Cheney that the United States can not use the
kingdom's territory to launch military strikes on Iraq, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Al-Watan daily quoted "reliable Saudi sources" as saying the Saudi leaders
advised Cheney on Saturday that the United States should "instead exert international efforts to force
Iraq to comply with international resolutions."
The use of Saudi territory and air bases is considered essential for the success of any
effective US war on Baghdad to oust President Saddam Hussein. The kingdom served as a command centre for the
US-led 1991 Gulf war.
The Saudi position was relayed to Cheney during talks with Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul
Aziz that continued late into the night Saturday.
Prince Abdullah told Cheney that launching war on Iraq now will be "catastrophic for
the region because of the expected (negative) consequences and the dangers to the security of the
area," Al-Watan said.
This was especially valid in light of reports that Baghdad was ready to accept the return
of UN arms inspectors.
The prince also called on the US administration to work for the stability of the Middle
East by applying pressure on Israel to stop attacks on the Palestinians, and to establish an independent
Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital, the daily said.
This, the prince reportedly added, would prove the United States was serious about
achieving a fair and lasting peace, and would considerably eliminate the roots of terrorism in the region.
Cheney, currently on a whirlwind visit to the Middle East to drum up support for a
reported plan to attack Iraq, left Jeddah on Sunday for Bahrain.
The prince was said to have urged Washington to play a "more active role" to
stop the bloodshed in the occupied Palestinian territories and to pressure Israel to allow Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat to move freely and attend the Arab summit in Beirut.
The presence of Arafat at the March 27-28 summit was essential for the presentation of the
Saudi peace initiative, which calls for comprehensive peace with Israel in return for full Israeli
withdrawal, Prince Abdullah reportedly said.
According to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA), Abdullah and Cheney's talks covered
efforts to "preserve world security and stability" and to combat terrorism as well as Abdullah's
"views and ideas to resolve the Middle East problem.
They also spoke of "the importance of reaching just solutions ... enabling the
Palestinian people to set up an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital and guaranteeing security
and stability for the states of the region," SPA said.
US hawk Wolfowitz tones down rhetoric on Irak policy
WASHINGTON, March 16 (AFP) - As European
and Middle East leaders showed little enthusiasm for an attack on Irak, US Deputy Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz Saturday eased up on his calls for a change of regime in Iraq. "That's something for the
president to decide. What the president has laid out ... is that we have a situation there that's
really not acceptable," Wolfowitz told CNN.
Wolfowitz, considered a "hawk" on US policy towards Iraq, has been lobbying
within the Bush administration for action against President Saddam Hussein. However, Vice President Dick
Cheney found no support for new US strikes against Iraq on his swing through United Arab Emerites and
top ally Saudi Arabia Saturday.
European leaders meeting in Barcelona, Spain did not bring the matter up for formal
discussion, while Russia and Germany also outright opposed the idea. When asked whether US plans might
include the use of tactical nuclear weapons, Wolfowitz told CNN: "All options are always on the
table, including the diplomatic option."
Iraqi
MDs blame U.S. for deformities
Doctors link cancer and abnormalities found in children living in the south to depleted uranium contained in
bombs that were used in Persian Gulf war. TIMOTHY APPLEBY
BASRA, IRAQ -- When a baby is born in southern Iraq these days, the mother's first question is not whether
the child is male or female. "What she wants to know is whether her baby is normal," says Janan
Ghalib, head of the cancer unit at Basra's Maternity and Children Hospital.
The doctor needs only to flip open a photo album filled with horrors to explain why. There are pictures of
babies without eyes, and some with too many eyes. There are infants with huge growths, amphibian-like limbs
and other deformities so grotesque that the babies barely resemble human beings at all.
And there are before-and-after photographs of normal-looking young children who have apparently been
transformed into monsters -- the result, Dr. Ghalib believes, of depleted uranium used by the U.S. military
during the Persian Gulf war.
The worries at Basra's main children's hospital are about more than the uranium-laden bombs that rained down
on southern Iraq in 1991. If the United States carries through with threats to again strike President Saddam
Hussein's regime, Iraqis such as Dr. Ghalib fear the fallout will again hit them.
Although independent studies have not been carried out, Iraqi medical experts in Basra, near the Kuwaiti
border, believe a sharp rise in recorded deformities and cancer -- especially leukemia -- is linked to the
depleted uranium contained in U.S. bombs dropped during the war. And they fear much more may be coming their
way.
Until the early 1990s, doctors say, the rate of what is termed "congenital malformation" in the
babies of southern Iraq was no higher than anywhere else.
But beginning in about 1995, they say, the numbers began steadily rising. Last year, the doctors knew of at
least 260 instances of deformation in the region, accounting for 3 per cent of all births. That compares
with 221 in 2000 and just 11 in 1994.
As for leukemia, the hospital treated 15 children in 1993, 60 in 2000 and 73 last year. Those figures are
incomplete, the physicians stress, because some children are taken to Baghdad for treatment, while others in
the impoverished south are never brought to their attention.
Health experts warn that the growing numbers, which are not dissimilar to rates found in the West, could be
the result of other factors such as better information, worsening health-care conditions or an environmental
disaster -- a nuclear leak, for example -- that has not been reported.
Still, the World Health Organization believes they are worth investigating. It has tried to launch a
research program, but needs better data and equipment that would have to be cleared by the United Nations
sanctions committee, which must approve all Iraqi imports.
In Basra, doctors believe the time lag between the gulf war and the beginning of the trend is because of the
depleted uranium's "incubation" period of several years. They cite a similar postwar delay in
Japan after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Pentagon has acknowledged using depleted uranium, not only in Iraq and Kuwait but also in Kosovo during
the 1999 conflict there. Depleted uranium is favoured in missiles because it enhances their armour-piercing
capacity.
However, the U.S. military has stated repeatedly it does not believe the substance can have the effect on
humans that the Iraqi government is saying it does.
In nearby Kuwait, there has been no recorded increase in child abnormalities since the war. Another major
difficulty with verification is that Iraq's medical records, like much else within the health-care system,
are in shambles.
But while the Iraqi government is often accused of producing disinformation, Dr. Ghalib and her colleague,
Assad Essa Achim, the hospital's chief doctor in residence, come across as dedicated professionals who have
become almost weary of relaying their findings.
"You reporters come in and listen, then you go away and nothing ever happens," said Dr. Ghalib,
visibly impatient.
While the Basra doctors await help, their hospital, like almost every other one in Iraq, is in dire straits.
Despite the United Nations oil-for-food program that is supposed to allow the import of humanitarian
assistance, including medical equipment, Dr. Achim says, the hospital is getting only 20 per cent of what it
needs.
Chemotherapy is not available because the necessary equipment is considered to have military uses.
As a result, Dr. Achim says, 80 per cent of the children diagnosed with leukemia die, compared with a
15-per-cent to 20-per-cent rate in the world's rich countries. "Bush and Clinton really don't know what
is happening here," he said of U.S. President George W. Bush and former president Bill Clinton.
"If they did, they would hang themselves."
Bush
prepares a lying campaign against Iraq
Five centuries ago Machiavelli observed "that the deceiver will never lack dupes",
but lies have a nasty habit of coming back to bite the deceiver
A South News commentary Feb 20 2002
by Dave Muller
George W. Bush's imperial war cabinet is developing a new major covert news and disinformation campaign,
traditionally the preserve of the CIA black ops, to help Washington win public opinion to attack Iraq.
The New York Times reported the deception yesterday that the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence is
"developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations"
in an effort "to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly
and unfriendly countries."
Further the OSI is being advised by a powerful Washington communications consultancy, the Rendon Group.
Rendon has previously worked for the CIA, the Kuwaiti government and the Iraqi National Congress opposition
group, and is being paid fees of about $100,000 a month, according to Times, which disclosed the existence
of the OSI yesterday.
According to Times officials at the Rendon Group say terms of their contract forbid them to talk about their
Pentagon work. "But the firm is well known for running propaganda campaigns in Arab countries,
including one denouncing atrocities by Iraq during its 1990 invasion of Kuwait",
the Times reported.
While Washington wages wars for plunder, setting out to deliberately lie or spread disinformation can't have
anything but a terrible impact down the road for any nation that claims to be a modern, open and democratic
society.
Here in Australia cynicism to political propaganda is at an all time high. A 1995 Morgan opinion poll found
that nine in 10 Australians believed Aussie politicians twist the truth, 84 per cent that politicians lie.
More than half said they had lost faith in politics.
But what is truly sad in the end the deceiver often ends up believing their own lies. Bush has locked
himself into a trap of high expectations in his "axis of evil" speech. Having cried wolf so
loudly, he will scarcely be able to return to the US public and Congress next year with nothing to show for
it.
IRAQ.
THE OFFENSIVE HAS ALREADY STARTED
American military forces have landed in Iraq, on the territory of the northern no-fly zone near the Turkish
border. They want to examine the opportunities for a military campaign, Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper
has informed with a reference to well-informed sources in
the Pentagon.
The US special elements are to establish contacts with forces in opposition to Iraq's president, organize
the training of soldiers in Iraq's north and south, make arrangements for the supply of weapons, etc. The
USA considers Iraq's internal opposition to be the key force in the struggle with Iraqi legal authorities.
They plan to beset Baghdad from the north and south and expect to
profit by subversions inside the country. Iraq is not like Afghanistan.
Reuters informs that in response, Iraqi representatives made an official statement that the country was
''the central victim of global terrorism'' and would fall victim to US-financed terrorist attacks. The USA
has spent millions of dollars on mercenaries for the organization of diversions and acts of terrorism on
Iraq's territory. In particular, the movement in opposition to Baghdad called the ''Iraqi National
Council'' is quite a real force already. According to
some sources, it has up to 40,000 soldiers. They are stationed in the north of the country.
Iraq has sent a report to the UN Security Council informing that Baghdad has observed the majority of the
international conventions on struggle with terrorism and even plans cooperate in this sphere. Moreover,
Iraq's government has taken special measures for the struggle against terrorism, as is stipulated by the
Security Council's resolutions.
However, despite the numerous protests sent to the United Nations and the UN Security Council, the
organizations have already lost influence in the world. The USA is becoming more active in different
spheres, including the information and propaganda front. Information agencies report that a new department
has been created in the Pentagon for ''public opinion forming,'' especially regarding the Mideast problem.
The department has already developed several suggestions ''for the popularization of the views of the US
authorities of world's events'' by undermining the information sources of those governments that are opposed
to the USA.
NATO Secretary General
George Robertson may explain US's position on Iraq as long as he wishes and say that Americans do not plan
to start an ''anti-terrorist'' operation there, because there is no proof of any connection between
Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda militants. However, an operation has been already launched.
Sergey Yugov
PRAVDA.Ru
Attack will begin after a May ultimatum to Iraq, says a report.
A forward HQ in the Gulf has
already been set up.
WASHINGTON - The United States has begun preparing for an assault on Iraq involving up to 200,000 US troops
later this year and a forward headquarters has been set up in the Gulf to coordinate the war, say
reports.
US allies in the Middle East have been told that a decision has been made to attack Iraq to oust President
Saddam Hussein, The Guardian reported.
President George W. Bush's war Cabinet, known as the 'principals committee', came to the conclusion late
last month that active steps should be taken to topple the Iraqi leader since the policy of containment had
failed.
Quoting a US intelligence source, The Guardian said the Pentagon and the CIA were preparing for a parallel
overt and covert war, and their plans had landed on the President's desk in the past few days.
They envisage the use of a 200,000-strong US force, the bulk of which would invade from Kuwait.
However, a lighter, more mobile force relying more on covert and special operations, may be involved in the
light of the Afghan experience.
The US generals are reportedly deeply uneasy about the possibility of Iraq using chemical and biological
weapons in retaliation against US troop concentrations or against Israel.
The Central Command's forward headquarters in the Gulf has three components.
The air force headquarters (Afcent) is at the Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia, the army headquarters
(Arcent) is in Kuwait and the navy (Navcent) is in Bahrain.
The marine component (Marcent) is to move to Bahrain in the next few days.
The US, Israel and Turkey will hold three joint exercises at the Turkish air force base at Konya in the next
few months.
Konya could be used alongside Incirlik as a base for air strikes on northern Iraq.
The Pentagon is considering the significant risk involved in the war. It fears that the Iraqi President,
aware that his own life is at stake this time, would use chemical and biological weapons.
The generals are said to be concerned that the danger of a chemical or biological weapons attack cannot be
eliminated entirely though it could be minimised by intensive bombing of missile launchers.
According to the plan, the CIA would arm and train Kurdish fighters in Iraq and Shi'ite forces in Kuwait.
CIA trainers and special forces troops have already been sent to Kuwait for that purpose, and may already
have begun work.
The CIA and special forces are expected to launch a campaign of sabotage and information warfare in the next
few months.
The trigger for the war is expected to be a row over weapons inspections in three months' time.
US allies are hoping Baghdad will accept unconditional and unfettered weapons inspections when the
international sanctions regime comes up for review at the United Nations in May.
However, even if Iraq accepts the stringent programme of inspections demanded of it, it may not prevent the
war.
The Guardian quoted a US intelligence source as saying that the White House 'will not take yes for an
answer,' suggesting that Washington would provoke a crisis.
The source said he expected the war to begin soon after the May ultimatum.
Rupert Cornwell: Saddam is next in the firing line.
It's just a matter of when President Bush's talk of an 'axis of evil' is not mere rhetoric - he means it
Independent Digital (UK) 17 February 2002 Well, boys, this is it. This time it's Baghdad. No more messing
around.
George W - no one calls the warrior president "Dubya" any more - is going for the big enchilada in
Iraq. The "axis of evil" has been defined.
This Bush is going to finish the job the previous Bush began, and knock out the hub of that axis by toppling
Saddam Hussein.
Serious armchair strategists have already ringed dates in October, when the desert heat will have abated
sufficiently for a major ground operation to go ahead.
The plans have been drawn up, all that remains is the presidential sign-off.
Or so we are led to believe by the febrile speculation that has gripped Washington since Mr Bush singled out
Iraq, Iran and North Korea in his State of the Union address as the three greatest dangers to the planet.
Tepid efforts to dampen expectations were soon abandoned. The President's speeches raised expectations
further. Even Colin Powell, whom the Europeans wishfully imagine to be a lone kindred spirit in an
administration otherwise comprehensible only through damning clichés, has unequivocally signed on. The
chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in 1991, who initially opposed going to war over Kuwait, has
metamorphosed into a Secretary of State who insists on a change of regime in Baghdad. For good measure, he
warns that America will go it alone if it has to.
The new element is not so much detailed military planning (Pentagon shelves must groan under contingency
plans for Iraq), nor even the abstruse debates over the timing of a new crisis engineered over the United
Nations weapons inspectors and the correct balance between overt and covert action.
What has changed is an underlying assumption.
The question is no longer whether to move to oust Saddam Hussein. It is when and how.
The new reality strikes raw nerves abroad. Britain wanders as usual between two separate worlds - the unease
it shares with its European partners at American high-handedness, and its desire to remain the chosen
courtier who is vouchsafed at least some of the emperor's confidences. Thus Jack Straw - after an
ill-received remark during his visit to the US this month, to the effect that President Bush's speech was
mere rhetoric, playing to the mid-term election gallery this autumn - has since been restrained on the big
subject.
Unburdened by such concerns, the Continent is, as usual, less inhibited. Hubert Vedrine, Joschka Fischer and
Chris Patten fulminate against a "simplistic" America, careless of its allies, a half-witted bull
rampaging amid the Meissen porcelain of Middle East and South Asian diplomacy. But our Foreign Secretary and
his Prime Minister keep their counsel. "If there is a plan," says Mr Blair, "I haven't seen
it." Maybe so. But rhetoric on occasion does change reality. And the axis of evil is for real.
To understand this, it is worth tracing the way in which the Bush team is thinking about how terrorism has
evolved: in other words, not whether, when or how the US should now be going after Iraq, but why. In the
immediate aftermath of 11 September Washington had two overriding goals: to wind up al-Qa'ida and to destroy
the state that harboured it. The campaign in Afghanistan has produced some success on the first count and
near-complete success on the second.
Almost from the outset Bush officials talked about a phase two, targeted at Somalia and the Philippines. In
the case of the Philippines, this has already come to pass. But the three members of the now famous axis
were doing nothing untoward. Indeed, Iran quickly expressed its sympathy with the victims of the terrible
day, and seemed to be edging towards some sort of accommodation with the US.
At that point two things happened. In America there was the anthrax scare, while in Afghanistan US special
forces discovered documents in al-Qa'ida hideouts confirming that the organisation was seeking nuclear and
biological weapons. The events of 11 September had been dreadful enough.
But what if 19 suicide attackers had gone about their business armed with canisters of anthrax or smallpox,
or with a nuclear device?
Thus emerged the link between terrorism, states that might foment terrorism, and weapons of mass
destruction. The administration fed the data into its collective mental computer, and the search yielded
three names that fitted the facts: Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
The last is something of a red herring. North Korea is neither a haven nor a sponsor of terrorism. Its
membership of the club rests on its nuclear and germ warfare programmes and the $1bn-worth of missile
technology it sells every year to the likes of Iran and Iraq, virtually its only source of hard currency.
Iran is more problematic. A reformist faction, widely supported among young people, would like to turn over
a new leaf in relations with the West, and its government shared US abhorrence of the Taliban, albeit for
different reasons. But in the end, Iran's pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons and sponsorship of terrorist groups against Israel destroyed any benefit of the doubt that it might
have been given.
In the case of Iraq, of course, doubt never existed. Saddam may have been far too sensible to leave a
fingerprint on the 11 September outrages. And the anthrax attacks now appear to be of domestic origin. But
he met every one of the new criteria. For a decade he'd thumbed his nose at Washington, and in 1993 had even
tried to assassinate Bush senior. Iraq was the dark sun, from which all evil radiated. And for the Bush
family, there was a personal score to be settled.
But matters aren't as simple as that. There is method in the Bush madness - the calculation that the more
credible the threats, the more likely they are to achieve results, by finally persuading those Iraqis in a
position to act that the game is up.
That reasoning may well be flawed. After all, four decades of pressure have failed to produce a change of
regime in Cuba. Saddam's ruthlessness and talent for survival are unmatched. But - and probably deliberately
- Mr Bush has locked himself into a trap of high expectations. Having cried wolf so loudly this time, he
will scarcely be able to return to Capitol Hill next year with nothing to show for it. All the more reason,
therefore, to move rapidly against this member of the axis.
And if the phrase brings back memories of Ronald Reagan, likewise derided in his time by the Europeans as a
simpleton, that is exactly what is intended. The president this Bush most resembles is not his father, but
Mr Reagan and his gut convictions, first and foremost that the Soviet Union was the "evil empire".
In 1983 as now, the wise and ancient chancelleries of Europe scoffed at the ignorance of the man - just as
they complained at the naivety of America's Moscow Olympic boycott, and were mystified by its early 1980s
crusade against the natural gas pipeline between the Soviet Union and Europe. But the evil empire rhetoric
worked. It encouraged dissidents and drew Moscow into a military race it could not afford.
Mr Reagan, of course, had the crucial insight (again disputed by many who thought they knew better) that the
Soviet Union was a rotten apple. As he declared in the most prescient of his great anti-communist speeches,
delivered to the British Parliament in June 1982, it was gripped by a profound revolutionary crisis,
prisoner of a doctrine that ran against human history.
George Bush can have no such certainty in America's long and perhaps unwinnable struggle against terrorism.
But however much it may be derided, the axis of evil, like the evil empire before it, is certain to become a
defining phrase of our age.
© 2001 Independent Digital (UK) 21/2/2002
European anger rises amid jitters about Iraqi action.
Europe's harsh criticism of US foreign policy has not gone down well in Brussels, where European Union
foreign policy chief Javier Solana is urging EU members, specifically Germany and France, to tone it down.
"We must speak the truth among friends, but you don't necessarily have to do it with a megaphone,"
Solana, the former NATO secretary general, said this week at a seminar of the Brussels-based Centre for
European Reform think-tank.
President George W. Bush last month triggered EU criticism when he announced in his state of the union
address that the US would take its fight against terrorism one step further by possibly launching unilateral
strikes against countries producing weapons of mass destruction. Bush singled out Iraq, Iran, and North
Korea as an "axis of evil."
Subsequent suggestions from US officials that Washington might attack Iraq fueled more EU anger. French
Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine called the US tactics "simplistic," while his German counterpart,
Joschka Fischer, said Washington was treating its European allies like satellites. And while in Qatar this
week, UK deputy premier John Prescott said the UK, a key US ally, is not involved in preparations with the
US for an attack on Iraq, and negotiations should be pursued at the UN.
On Feb. 21, the US military denied rumors that its troops were already in Iraq. The rumors followed the
announcement that the US Defense Department was seeking an additional 1.2 million bbl of jet fuel for US
bases in Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean.
(c) 2002 Energy Intelligence Group. All rights reserved.
________________________________________
Poll shows 71 per cent of Germans against participation in Iraq campaign.
Excerpt from report by German news agency ddp
Berlin: According to a survey, a majority of Germans is against the participation of the Bundeswehr in a
possible US campaign against Iraq. In a survey published on Friday [22 February], which was carried out by
Forsa on behalf of the N24 news channel, 71 per cent of those polled rejected a mission of German soldiers
in Iraq, even if Washington could present evidence for the country's involvement in international terrorism.
Twenty-six per cent of respondents said that they would prefer the Bundeswehr to fight side by side with the
United States in such a case. The remaining respondents were undecided...
_________________________________________
Voters Say No To Iraq Attack - 51% oppose British backing
for US action
By Alan Travis, home affairs editor, Guardian, March 19, 2002
A majority of voters are opposed to British backing for American military action against Saddam Hussein's
Iraq, according to this month's Guardian/ICM opinion poll.
The ICM survey will strengthen the position of Clare Short, who on Sunday became the first Labour cabinet
minister to declare her opposition to "a blind military attack on Iraq" and hinted she might quit
the government over the issue.
But the poll will also encourage even more senior figures in the cabinet, such as the home secretary,
David Blunkett, who has privately warned fellow ministers that there will be a serious rise in
racial tension in Britain and a danger of riots if Britain joined the attack on Saddam.
The poll shows that a clear majority - 51% - would disapprove of British political support for an
American-led attack on Iraq, with or without the presence of British troops. Only 35% say they
would support such action.
Labour voters are split down the middle on the issue with marginally more, 46%, saying they would
disapprove than the 43% who say Britain should back such a US attack.
But Conservative voters are slightly more hostile to an attack on Iraq, with 48% against and 41%
in favour, leaving Iain Duncan Smith at odds with half of his party's voters. He showed his support for
action when he called yesterday for Europe's leaders to "stop gazing at their political
navel" and give their support "until the US completes its unfinished business with the Iraqi
leader".
The ICM poll shows that the Germans and French are more in tune with British public opinion on
this issue than Mr Blair or Mr Duncan Smith. The German defence minister, Rudolph Scharping, yesterday
made clear there was no majority in the German parliament for intervention in Iraq. The French
have also made clear their reluctance.
The ICM survey shows that Liberal Democrat voters are by far the most hostile to new military
action against Iraq, with an overwhelming 67% opposed, indicating that Charles Kennedy has been right
to adopt the most cautious approach of the three main party leaders. Only 21% of Liberal Democrat
voters say they would back British support for an American-led invasion, putting them firmly to the
left of Labour.
Opposition to a new war in Iraq marks a sharp change of mood in British public opinion in recent
months. Last October some 74% said they supported US and British military action against Afghanistan.
It is also signifies a change in long-term attitude towards Iraq among the British public.
In February 1998 a Guardian/ICM poll found that 56% supported bombing raids against Iraq, and in
February 1991 the Guardian/ICM poll showed
that 80% of British voters backed the allied coalition using force to get Iraq to withdraw from
Kuwait.
ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,001 adults aged over 18 by telephone between March 15 and
17. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of
all adults
___________________________________________
PROBLEM OF IRAQ CAN ONLY BE RESOLVED POLITICALLY - RUSSIA.
MOSCOW. Feb 21 (Interfax) - Russia stands for settling the situation in and= around Iraq solely by political
and diplomatic means. A Russian Foreign Min=istry report issued on Thursday says that Russia's firm stance
was expressed= by Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov during his February 8-19 tour= of countries of
the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (Qa=tar, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates and Bahrain). Salt=anov recognized that "the continuing tension around Iraq continues to have
a= destabilizing effect on the situation in the Persian Gulf and the Middle Ea=st as a whole," the
report says. He confirmed the firm stance of Russia. "Th=e solution of the complex knot of old problems
existing in the region should= be sought solely along political and diplomatic lines," the report says.
This approach is shared by the Cooperation Council member-states, the Russi=an Foreign Ministry said.
________________________________________
US denies troops in Iraq
The US military today denied rumours circulating on the foreign exchange, e=nergy and metals markets that US
troops were in Iraq.
"There are no US troops in Iraq," said US Navy Commander Frank Merriman, a =spokesman for the US
Central Command in Tampa, Florida, which has responsibi=lity for military operations in the Middle East and
Afghanistan.
"Are we invading Iraq? No," he added.
Source: MX 22/02/2002 P13
________________________________________
Pariah nations ponder changing their ways - 'Rogue' states, particularly Ir=aq, a
THE AMERICAS - Pariah nations ponder changing their ways - 'Rogue' states, =particularly Iraq, are braced
for the next phase of the US war on terrorism,= and strategic concerns are leading some to show readiness to
change their b=ehaviour, writes Roula Khalaf.
As theUS bombardmentof Afghanistan reached a climax in December and the Tal=iban regime was swept aside, a
different kind of offensive was under prepara=tion in another troubled region more than 2,000 miles away.
By January in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader and long-time enemy= of the US, was dispatching his
diplomats to Arab capitals with soothing wor=ds of reconciliation. In public statements too, he hinted at
Iraq's willingn=ess to compromise and strike a deal with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to resolve= lingering
resentments from the Gulf war.
The charm offensive, noted Arab officials, was a typical manoeuvre by a mas=ter of political survival, who
had wrongly calculated that the US campaign i=n Afghanistan would turn into a political quagmire for
Washington. Instead, =Mr Saddam realised, he faced the prospect of being Washington's next target,= now US
military strength had been proved capable of forcefully and swiftly =toppling the Taliban.
"The lessons learned from Afghanistan are primarily about the US's ability =to bring about a regime
change," says a western diplomat. "Inevitably parall=els were immediately drawn in Washington
between the Northern Alliance and t=he Iraqi opposition, even if they don't hold up analytically."
The display of US military power in Afghanistan promises to alter the natur=e of the stand-off between the
US and the countries it labels as "rogue" sta=tes.
Analysts predict, however, that the impulse for a radical change in behavio=ur will be greater among the
second category of pariah states - countries su=ch as Yemen, Sudan and Libya - than in the more hardline
Iraq, Iran and Nort=h Korea, now the focus of President George W. Bush's "axis of evil".
Despite Mr Saddam's overtures and the possibility of more room for compromi=se, Arab officials say he is
unlikely to satisfy the tough US demands, which= include providing unfettered access to intrusive United
Nations weapons ins=pectors, without the promise of an immediate lifting of the UN embargo.
Meanwhile, the attitudes of leaders in Sudan, Libya and Yemen have already =changed. The threat of US
military force alone drove the leaderships of the =three countries to declare their support for the US-led
anti-terror campaign=.
The shift in Libya, which suffered US military strikes in 1986, may be the =most impressive. Colonel Muammer
Gadaffi has taken full advantage of the cur=rent climate and rushed to share intelligence information with
Washington in= the hope that this will pave the way for a resumption of diplomatic relatio=ns with the US.
In Yemen, where US investigators had long complained of a lack of sufficien=t co-operation on terrorism, the
government has now made the strategic decis=ion to back the US, removing the country from the list of
potential military= targets.
Analysts, however, say Mr Bush stepped up pressure on the most dangerous st=ates - Iraq, Iran and North
Korea - in his "axis of evil" speech because the= Afghanistan victory alone was not a sufficient
deterrent for countries appa=rently determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
"Afghanistan reveals the resolve on the part of the Bush administration to =commit military force and
power but the problem is that you cannot rely on a=udacious military victory in Afghanistan to deter states
inclined to counter= US power," says Jonathan Stevenson, editor of the Strategic Survey, a publi=cation
of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
Europe, which has been a strategic partner in the US anti-terror campaign, =has been dismayed by
Washington's toughening approach. European officials ar=gue that instead of bolstering US deterrence,
hardline policies shut the doo=r to political dialogue, emboldening extremists in Iran and undermining
Sout=h Korea's opening towards the North.
"The show of force might increase the resentment of the US in these (rogue)= states, and raise the
incentive of these states to empower themselves again=st it. It might drive them further underground,"
says Mr Stevenson.
Geoffrey Kemp, director of regional strategic programmes at the Nixon Cente=r in Washington, notes some
countries are more vulnerable to intimidation th=an Iraq and Iran. "Iran is too big and bloody-minded,
and in the short term =what you might do is accelerate the opening between Iraq and Iran," he says.=
>From a military perspective, the US could easily target Iran's nuclear reac=tors. But the political
fall-out would be costly. As to Iraq, despite a seem=ingly growing momentum for applying the Afghanistan
model, the US is proceed=ing with caution and damping expectations of an imminent strike.
"There are some people in this town who think we should've moved directly t=o Baghdad and taken the
region by surprise. But even the hawks are now argui=ng we can't afford to fail and we have to do it
thoroughly," says a Washingt=on policy analyst. "So the rhetoric of 'Show of force might drive
them under=ground' the president's speech is being balanced by some hard-nosed military= checks, which the
military is forcing on the debate."
As the euphoria of the Afghanistan victory fades, the challenges of a campa=ign against Iraq become more
apparent. Would airstrikes be used to promote u=pheavals on the ground or provoke a coup against Mr Saddam,
for example, or =would the US be forced to invade?
Iraq's army has been severely weakened since the Gulf war but it still coun=ts 375,000 men, with
well-equipped units of the Republican Guards and Specia=l Republican Guards loyal to Mr Saddam. The Iraqi
opposition - the Kurds in =the north and the Shias in the south - are not as well trained as Afghanista=n's
Northern Alliance. "With a little bit of distance, people are now realis=ing that it's a big mistake to
extract too many lessons from Afghanistan and= apply them elsewhere," says Mr Stevenson.
Source: FINANCIAL TIMES
_______________________________________
Iraq Puts Weapons Chief on the Spot.
NEW YORK - Saddam Hussein has had more than three years to hide weapons of mass destruction. Hans Blix, the
United Nations' chief weapons inspector, will have 60 days to figure out how to find them, if he gets into
Iraq.
President Bush has made Iraq the key element of his "axis of evil," demanding that Baghdad accept
U.N. inspectors or face the consequences. U.S. officials say Mr. Bush will press the issue hard this spring.
If Iraq accedes, Mr. Blix will be the one to decide whether Baghdad is honoring its post-Gulf War commitment
to do away with its chemical and biological weapons and its long-range missiles. If Iraq doesn't, as
Washington is betting, a confrontation with the U.S. is almost certain.
The divided U.N. Security Council, Mr. Blix's boss, would like to avoid another crisis with Iraq. So while
Mr. Blix and his team are empowered to look anywhere and destroy Iraq's most lethal weapons, they are also
under pressure to tread softly and quickly. They have received cultural-sensitivity training. They've been
told to be less confrontational than their predecessors on the U.N. Special Commission, or Unscom, and to
finish as fast as possible. Mr. Blix's mandate gives him 60 days after starting work in Iraq to come up with
a shortlist of target weapons and facilities and a set of "clearly defined and precise" tasks that
Iraq must fulfill to prove that it is disarming.
Critics have already dubbed Mr. Blix's group "Unscom-lite" after its better-known and famously
aggressive predecessor. Its actual name is the U.N. Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission, or
Unmovic. While acknowledging the challenges, the former Swedish diplomat says he has no intention of running
"cosmetic" inspections. Just to establish a new baseline on Iraq's weapons programs, commission
officials estimate that they will have to visit about 700 sites initially, including 50 to 100 new sites
that have raised suspicions about possible new weapons activities.
The consequences will be enormous. If Mr. Blix reports that Iraq is cooperating in all aspects and that
progress is being made, the Security Council would be ready to vote to suspend economic sanctions on Iraq
for 120 days at a time. After Mr. Bush's "axis of evil" speech, Iraq called for a new
"dialogue" with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, and Baghdad announced Wednesday that the two
sides are discussing a date for the meeting.
Sitting in his U.N. office here, beneath a glossy satellite photo of Baghdad, Mr. Blix thumbs through a
300-page binder detailing about 100 "unresolved disarmament issues": unsettled questions about
Iraq's development of anthrax and the nerve agent VX, its efforts to buy or build ballistic missiles and its
history of concealing it all from outside inspectors.
The binder represents 18 months of analysis of more than a million documents gathered during seven years of
U.N. inspections. More disturbing is what isn't inside: hard information about what Iraq has been up to
during the three years since the first inspectors left. Mr. Blix says he and his team can get "some
ideas" from satellite photos. "We can see new roofs. But we won't know what's going on under those
roofs until we get inside," he says.
Unmovic has already trained 180 new inspectors, with an additional 50 beginning a monthlong course in Geneva
this week. In New York, Mr. Blix's 42 full-time staff members are trying to learn as much about Iraq as they
can while working thousands of miles away.
On a recent morning in the commission's offices in the U.N. Secretariat building, four missile experts
hunched over a large chart detailing the history and different locations of Iraq's ballistic-missile
program. At a nearby computer terminal, a biological-weapons expert reviewed documents on Iraqi imports.
Much of the work here these days is focused on putting the final touches on Mr. Blix's binder of unresolved
issues. For that, experts in each weapon field are combing through the archives of past Iraqi declarations,
old inspection reports, suppliers' records, interviews with defectors, blueprints and thousands of satellite
and surveillance photos.
The amount of information, packed in dozens of filing cabinets and now being scanned into a searchable
database, is massive. The site file on the Al Hakam biological-weapons factory - destroyed by Unscom in 1996
- fills 10 loose-leaf binders. There are also boxes of missile parts, tagged "inlet caps" and
"fuel inducers," and the combustion chamber from an Iraqi Scud missile.
The group's next job will be to start whittling down that list as the Security Council directed. Mr. Blix
says he won't be sure which issues are "key" until his inspectors get in, but he expects that
he'll settle on somewhere between five and 20 unresolved issues. The process of sorting out which kinds of
weapons programs are more important than others won't be easy, he acknowledges. But he says, "There are
degrees even in hell."
The group will have to start outlining the tasks Iraq will have to complete to prove that it has disarmed.
Those might include demands to turn over all records on missile-component imports, or all the purchase
orders and production accounts from chemical factories, or an inventory of all fermenters capable of
producing biological weapons, and reports on their production runs and output for the past decade.
To an outsider, it sounds like a game of 20 questions - unwinnable if the opponent lies. Commission
officials say that two things will save it from being impossible: their knowledge of Iraq's history, and
Iraqis' penchant for keeping even the most self-incriminating records. "There's always somebody who has
a log book or a diary. There's information spread all around," says Demetrius Perricos, the
commission's planning and operations chief.
While the experts plot their strategy, Mr. Perricos is trying to ensure that the inspectors will have
transport and high-tech equipment to do their jobs. He has plenty of money.
The commission receives 0.8% of Iraq's monthly oil revenues from sales overseen by the U.N. - enough to have
already put $250 million in the bank. But he's in no rush to spend it, worrying that computers and cameras
could be obsolete before the inspectors go back. He also worries whether he'll have enough inspectors still
willing to work. He estimates that he needs 80 to 100 in Iraq at any one time. So far very few have fallen
off the roster.
The staff here seems to believe that eventually they will go to Iraq. Mr. B=lix, who is 73 and could retire
to a small island his family owns off the Swedish coast, has just agreed to stay on for another year. Still,
even Mr. Blix stumbles occasionally, starting a sentence "If we go in," and then quickly
correcting it to "when."
When Unscom began work in Iraq in 1991, many observers believed they would be finished in less than a year.
Instead, the hunt for Iraqi weapons stretched for more than seven years, as Baghdad played a desperate game
of cat and mouse. It filed false declarations, hiding as many weapons as it could, and blocking inspectors
when hiding places were discovered. At one point, the Iraqis were thought to be shuttling around
biological-weapons labs in refrigerated trucks. The search was suspended in late 1998 when, after months of
Iraqi obstruction, the U.N. pulled the inspectors out and the U.S. and Britain launched four days of air
strikes against Iraq. Baghdad then banned the inspectors from returning.
At the time, the inspectors believed they had found most of Iraq's long-range missiles and a substantial
portion of its chemical-weapons stocks but had barely begun to grapple with its biological-weapons program.
Even more important, the inspectors believed the Iraqis had managed to hold onto production capabilities for
both chemical and biological weapons. "My judgment was that the Iraqis wanted to have on hand the
ability to restart production on short notice," says Charles Duelfer, former deputy chief of Unscom.
There are other troubling signs for the new inspectors. An Iraqi defector recently claimed that the Iraqi
government has rebuilt its secret facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in the three years
since the inspectors left - hiding laboratories in private residences, inside lead-lined wells, and
allegedly under the largest hospital in Baghdad. U.S. officials say they haven't been able to confirm his
claims. But American satellites have monitored considerable rebuilding at weapons facilities bombed in 1998.
The choice of Mr. Blix to replace the pugnacious Richard Butler, the U.N.'s last chief inspector, also
raised alarms. Mr. Blix had spent 16 years as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency - the same
agency, critics noted, that failed to discover Iraq's clandestine nuclear program before the Gulf War. In
the end, Russia, France and China still abstained in the vote creating Unmovic, and Iraq refused to let the
inspectors back in.
Soft-spoken and given to lawyerly digressions, Mr. Blix wasn't the first choice to run Unmovic. Mr. Annan
nominated Rolf Ekeus, Unscom's original chief and Washington's preferred candidate, only to have France and
Russia block him.
Mr. Blix, the compromise choice, is a longtime Swedish diplomat and an international lawyer who was briefly
Swedish foreign minister in 1978. Critics accuse both him and the commission of not being tough enough or
persistent enough to take on Saddam Hussein. Others argue that he was transformed by his experience with the
IAEA and won't repeat those mistakes, noting that he took a much tougher line on North Korea's clandestine
nuclear efforts and pressed for changes in the way the IAEA does its inspections.
"Hans Blix learned from what happened in Iraq.... How many other people can you say that about in
public life," says Robert Gallucci, dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and a former
Unscom deputy chief.
Subject: Fair and impartial weapons inspections for Iraq?
Along with the threats of a US invasion of Iraq is the renewed insistence from Washington for a return of UN
weapons inspectors to Iraq. Within the US there is a broad consensus within both parties for sanctions,
no-fly-zone bombings, weapons inspectors and the "regime change" invasion strategy against Iraq.
In response Russia, Saudi Arabia and others have called for a return of UN weapons inspections as a
reasonable alternative to US military attack. Accompanying this proposal are vague assurances and mumbled
promises that this time inspections will be fair and impartial and lead
to the end of sanctions. Under the threat of a 200,000 US troop
invasion force, these advisors
council Iraq to accept the reintroduction of UN inspectors. But will the US and Britain cease fire? Will
they stop bombing Iraq? Will they stop the hostile military flights over two-thirds of Iraq's airspace? Will
sanctions imposed to force Iraq from Kuwait be lifted? Iraq is to allow
intrusive inspections while its is bombed and threatened with full-scale invasion by the US?
The proposal to reintroduce UN inspectors follows the same well-worn path that has consistently negated the
sovereign human rights of the Iraqi people for the last eleven years. The people of Iraq are all too
familiar with the integrity of UN weapons inspection. It promises the people of Iraq siege war by other,
more diplomatic and bureaucratic means.
Those who advocate the reintroduction of UN weapons inspection to Iraq are ignorant of its history. I
recommend Dilip Hiro's recent Neighbors
Not
Friends, Iraq and Iran After the Gulf Wars, Routledge, 2001, as a good chronology (pages 45-192) of UN
sanctions and weapons inspection in Iraq.
The weapons inspection mandate stems from the vague and deceptively far-reaching language of UN resolution
715, of October 1991, requiring "a full inventory of plants and other sites with the potential for
making weapons of mass destruction, and all machinery, chemicals, and other materials that might devoted to
such activity." This passage legitimizes sanctions, weapons inspection and war on Iraq because it
"might" have the "potential" for making "weapons of mass destruction."
By 1996 UN inspection weapons inspection chief, Rolf Ekeus reported dispatching 373 inspection teams
involving 3,574 experts to Iraq, and spent $120 million of Iraq's assets.
"The monitoring system, installed in 1994 at more than 250 sites, was the most comprehensive ever
designed. It covered not only the present facilities in building and plant and skilled
manpower with previous experience in the research or production of banned weapons and
long-range missiles, but also on dual-purpose machinery. For instance, a fermenter could be used for making
beer or biological weapons; and a machine tool, car parts or missile components." page 87.
Can you imagine any third world nation successfully functioning where every productive endeavor required
approval and monitoring by hostile foreign surveillance and inspection? As could be expected, this system
combined with sanctions banning imports of essential technology, and a
hostile UN financial administration has paralyzed industry and has kept the country in ruins. The UN
economic war has devastated a people.
And regarding fair and impartial inspections, Hiro sites a Washington Post March 2, 1999 article that
describes CIA operatives using UN inspection monitoring equipment in March 1996.
"But unknown to UNSCOM, the American signals-and-sensors technicians, who built and maintained the
system were intelligence operatives..." and "They constructed boosting stations with covert
capabilities. Concealed in their structures were antennae capable of intercepting microwave transmissions.
The US agents placed some of them near important nodes of Iraq's military communications system." P.
118
And regarding UNSCOM providing information to US intelligence to coordinate targeting for Clinton's December
1998 bombings.
"Baghdad was aware that, given the close links of the CIA and the NSA with UNSCOM, the US knew more
about Iraqi civilian and military facilities than ever before. And, aided further by continuous monitoring
of some 460 sites in the country by the UN, any further bombings were
going to more deadly than ever before.
Unabashed, the Pentagon said "it was inevitable that information supplied by the (UN) monitors had
played a part in the careful selection of targets." (Observer, Nov. 15, 1998, Sunday Times, Nov. 15,
1998) Page 158
The Iraqi claim of UN inspectors as US spies proved to be true. Iraq's failure to cooperate with UN
inspection teams were then grounds for President Clinton launching 415 Cruise and Tomahawk missiles and 600
laser-guided bombs against Iraq in December 1998.
How can anyone conscious of the history of weapons inspection and sanctions in Iraq promote the notion of
impartial and fair weapons inspection leading to an end to sanctions?
There has been neither change in the UN administration nor a radical power shift in the Security Council
that could significantly alter the functioning of this scheme. No one can honestly assure the Iraqis that
this time weapons inspection will not be used against them.
Bob Allen
Campaign to End the Sanctions
Philadelphia PA
The
State Dept. gave the reason for
banning
American citizens to travel
as
follows:-
"There is imminent danger to the public health and/or physical safety of US travelers."
The true reason is that Iraq invited all Iraqis resident abroad or previously held the Iraqi nationality and
their families to attend a conference for Iraqi expatriates at Baghdad on 6-10 April 2002. In addition to
several visits to Iraqi sites, the conference debates a variety of topics.
What makes the State Dept. worry is that Iraqi Americans would witness the miseries confronted by the Iraqi
people since the sanctions were imposed. Therefore, the real reason for travel ban is to avoid these US
citizens to see and then report the truth about the sanctions when they return to the USA.
On the other hand the Pentagon is developing a major covert news and disinformation campaign to help
Washington win propaganda war against terrorism and the Moslem World(Iraq included). The plan is being
elaborated by the Office of Strategic Influence(OSI). It is headed by air force general, Brigadier General
Simon Worden advised by the Washington Communications Consultancy, the Rendon Group.
The main target is the Islamic countries of the
mid-east and Asia but also directed at Western Europe, where criticism has mounted in recent weeks of the
Bush administration's strategy to fight terrorism.
Well friends:-
It seems we are back to the Vietnam War era and all the lies and manipulations which went with it..!
scenarios of striking Iraq
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/020220/2002022009.html
The scenarios of striking Iraq
Iraq-USA, Politics, 2/20/2002
The Kuwaiti paper al-Seyasah said in its Monday's issue, according to Gulf diplomatic sources that the
scenarios of the American military strike of Iraq have become clear and agreed upon.
According to the same sources, the paper added that the strike, if it
takes place, will be according to two of these scenarios. The first
states to use 50,000 American troopers of three air, mechanical and
naval contingents to direct a rapid blow to the heart of the central
rule in Baghdad in order to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's
regime, immediately.
The second scenario states to send a land force of 200,000 soldiers to cross the southern borders towards
Baghdad supported by the American eighteenth air band and these forces will work for getting the contingents
of the Iraqi Republican guards from the battlefield during the first days of the war.
The paper indicated that Saudi Arabia and Turkey will be alienated from taking part in this war directly
because of their internal conditions, while Kuwait might play the role of Pakistan in the war in
Afghanistan, Jordan to play the role of Tajakistan and Uzbekstan as a an American warehouse for the reserve
troops and weapons in an attempt also to alienate the Israelis out of this game.
Banks Compete Over Iraq Contract
Financial Times; Feb 19, 2002, By CAROLA HOYOS
Baghdad is trying to court European banks with the opportunity to compete for billions of
dollars of business under the United Nations humanitarian programme.
After insisting for five years that BNP Paribas was the only bank the UN could use for Iraq's
closely-monitored financial transactions, Baghdad recently agreed to open the contract up for bidding. The
UN secretariat, which had been pushing Iraq to diversify the growing fortune it has amassed in the
UN's escrow account at the New York
branch of BNP Paribas, agreed to Baghdad's change of heart.
European banks, including BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole of France; Deutsche Bank and
Hypovereinsbank of Germany, Banco Bilbao of Spain, Rabobank of the Netherlands and Credit Suisse Group
of Switzerland are competing against each other to become one of few banks that will handle the
money Iraq makes from its oil sales and issue letters of credit for companies wishing to do business
under the UN's oil-for-food programme.
The programme, an exemption to the UN's 11-year-old sanctions regime, allows Iraq to sell its
crude oil and use the revenues to buy humanitarian items and repay its Gulf war debts.
Iraq has Euros 77bn (Dollars 67bn) plus Dollars 6.5bn in the escrow account, in part because it
cannot import goods as quickly as it can export its crude oil because of restrictions on items that
could be used for military purposes.
The UN secretariat has held several bids for the contract, but clear winners are yet to emerge.
The decision has given Iraqi officials the opportunity to play the banks off against each other
as they compete to become one of the two banks that will be chosen by the UN to handle Iraq's crude oil
accounts.
scenarios
of striking Iraq (bis)
Things are not as simple as they seem. Sure the US can always fly a lot of bombing raids and fire some
hundred missiles. But a ground attack seems very difficult given that Saudi Arabia doesn't seem to be
willing to host some hundred thousand US
troops this time. And no other country is prepared to eventually replace SA as the hub to launch a ground
attack. The stationing of troops of that size require an extensive infrastructure which takes years to
build. SA was prepared for a huge number of US troops since the early 1980s. The US Army Corps of Engineers
did most of the construction projects.
"Kuwait on Tuesday announced it will not be the base for the American forces to striking Iraq ..."
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/020220/2002022017.html
Moreover, close US allies were expressing their concerns with unusually clear statements. That doesn't mean
much because they might join later anyway or at least take assignments to replace US troops departing for
the Middle East.
The idea of finding some corrupt Generals to coop against the Iraqi government doesn't seem very likely
either. History proved that it might indeed be a dangerous to be a widely respected General in Iraq.
The 'Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq' might have paramilitary groups in different parts
of Iraq but the organizations close relations with Iran make it unlikely that they will provide the ground
forces for the US attack. Iran is under US containment ever since the revolution and although it seemed for
a short while as if relations would ease, the US reaffirmed their dual containment strategy recently, even
threatening military attacks against Iran.
The Kurds were frequently used to wage attacks against the central government. Barzani in a recent statement
expressed no interest in a separate Kurdish state and seemed open for negotiations with the Iraqi government
on the basis of a
Kurdish independence within an Iraqi federation. Don't know of a statement by Talabani's PUK but can't see
what their benefit would be joining the US in their crusade against Iraq.
Looks like there might not be any opposition group in Iraq strong enough and willing to do the job for the
Americans on the ground.
It is possible that the US sends whatever kind of special forces into Iraq. Indeed we must assume that the
CIA and Pentagon has informants, agents, and even some military personnel all over in Iraq. They could be
supported by some troops coming from SA, Kuwait or even Turkey. The US navy could try to land troops from
the Gulf using the about 40 miles long Iraqi Gulf coast between the Shat al Arab and Umm Qasr. Danger will
be high that Iran will get involved in this manoeuvre. Kuwait will be open for the US to use because it is
just a US protectorate and has no real say in these matters. But it doesn't have the infrastructure to
support large troops over a longer time. There won't be any large scale deployment of US ground troops next
to Iraq without the willingness of SA to be the host for these troops. And anything but a large force will
face a casualty rate unknown in the previous campaigns which were
all designed to avoid any real combat between US intervention and the defending troops.
But whatever the scenario - the US will face a high risk that they might not be able to succeed in occupying
Iraq against forces which outnumber them by far and a people which know that the US is behind so much
suffering and deaths during all these years.
The choices of the US planners are limited. Eventually they have to decide if they prefer to get some kind
of 'smart sanctions' through the UNSC or a new bombing campaign instead.
If they decide for bombing they might not get the support for the tightening of the sanctions regime.
Under current circumstances a bombing campaign will most probably not pose any serious danger for the Iraqi
government and might therefore fail to achieve the declared goal to remove President Saddam Hussain from
power anytime soon.
You never know what happens if you have such war driven, corrupt and brutal people in power like the US
administration. They could side with Israel in an all-out war against the Arabs. They could bomb Iraq until
life in Iraq is virtually impossible and maintain that state until the Iraqi people are all dead or broken.
They might even drop an atomic bomb on Iraq. They can be quite sure that the majority of Americans would
still support them because they are just like that.
While we know that the attack against Iraq will be continued, it seems far from determined how.
carsten Heinrigs.
UN - low
oil exports endangering Iraqi relief program.
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 27 (Reuters) - The U.N.-Iraq humanitarian program, meant to ease the impact of
sanctions, is facing a financial crisis because of reduced oil exports caused by a political deadlock among
Security Council powers, a senior U.N. official warned.
Unless changes occur quickly, the "implementation of the program may grind to a halt," Benon
Sevan, the U.N. undersecretary-general in charge of the Iraqi oil-for-food program, said on Tuesday.
"I think we are in deep trouble as far as funding of the program is concerned." he said after
briefing the 15-member council. "There is no money for new contracts."
Fresh from a one-month visit to Iraq, Sevan said the Security Council's sanctions committee was politically
paralyzed on Iraqi policies. Its new initiative of retroactive oil pricing was delaying bidders for
contracts, causing a 24 percent drop in Iraqi crude exports since November.
The policy was instituted by the United States and Britain to keep Baghdad from charging oil contractors an
illegal premium, outside of the humanitarian program. Russia, a benefactor of Iraqi oil contracts, had
blocked other proposals to stop the kickbacks.
Iraqi has been under Security Council sanctions since shortly after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990. To
ease the impact on civilians, an "oil-for-food" program was instituted in December 1996 under
which Iraq could sell oil to buy food, medicine and a host of other goods.
The oil revenues go into a United Nations account, which pays the suppliers. But many goods have to be
approved by the council's sanctions committee on Iraq, any one of whose members can block a contract.
Sevan also again lashed out at the $5 billion worth of contracts blocked by the United States, despite his
frequent pleas to release the most important ones.
"The work of the Security Council committee has bogged down almost to a standstill. One could say -
without any hesitation - that the work of the committee is paralyzed with numerous issues awaiting action
for long periods of time," Sevan said.
"We already are witnessing major cracks in our capacity to implement the program effectively, with so
many political and procedural hurdles," he said.
For the past few years, the United States and Britain have been at loggerheads with Russia, China and
sometimes France, more sympathetic to Iraq. Each blocks the other's proposals.
The United States and Russia are negotiating a new sanctions arrangement under which Iraq would be allowed
to import civilian goods that are not on a specified list the council has to review. Until this project is
completed, U.S. officials have indicated many blocked contracts would remain unreleased.
U.S.
action soon against Iraq seen as unlikely.
WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Depleted stocks of precision weapons, reluctant allies and a will to do the
job properly in Iraq all work against America launching military action against Baghdad any time soon,
defense and political analysts say.
Speculation has mounted in recent weeks that the United States is preparing a massive military campaign
against Iraq, particularly after the president branded Iraq as part of an "axis of evil" with Iran
and North Korea.
But several analysts said U.S. action - if it took place at all - was unlikely in the next six months for
both military and political reasons.
They pointing to depleted laser-guided weapons stocks after the war in Afghanistan and opposition from key
nations such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey as well as some NATO allies.
Retired Adm. Steve Baker, who commanded the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier during the Gulf War, said the
United States would only attack Iraq when it was certain it had "overwhelming force" to be
successful and not before.
"For that reason, I don't see it happening at the very earliest until fall this year or spring next
year. Any kind of failure or less than 100 percent success in Iraq is totally unacceptable, particularly to
the Bush administration."
"I don't think we would ever contemplate a limited response. The risk is too high," he said.
Baker said laser-guided weapons were now at "war-time reserve levels" and that weapons
manufacturers were working around the clock to boost supplies.
Raising jitters over military action, President George W. Bush has repeatedly warned Baghdad in recent weeks
that Washington would not stand by while Iraq developed weapons of mass destruction and refused to allow
U.N. weapons inspectors into the country.
However, Arab leaders and some Europeans caution any military action against Iraq would smash global
cooperation against terrorism and further destabilize the region.
Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said if the
Pentagon were planning a low-risk campaign against Iraq, it would take several months before any bombing
began.
"I think the military would be more than happy to say 'look we are still not done with Afghanistan and
we don't want to be fighting a war on two fronts,'" he said.
Another factor pointing against imminent action was the windy spring weather in Iraq, which brought with it
dangerous sand storms that played havoc with military equipment.
"A September to March time frame would be a more attractive window (for military action), I would
think," said Krepinevich.
Echoing other views, Krepinevich predicted the United States would push heavily for U.N. weapons inspectors
to return to Iraq and then use Baghdad's anticipated refusal to muster international support for strong
military action.
While massive military action was unlikely soon, Baker suggested the United States might send in covert
forces to suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons sites in Iraq to prove to the world that it was
dangerous.
"If we had credible evidence ... of chemical and biological facilities that are there in Iraq, that
helps out our effort quite a lot."
One of the biggest hurdles for Washington is on the diplomatic front, with Saudi Arabia reluctant to allow
U.S. forces to use its land as a base for attacks against Iraq, said Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for
Strategic and International Studies.
"The constraints (for launching a big attack) at the moment are not so much American assets and
readiness but the support of allies in the region," Cordesman said.
"The problem is not which allies are reluctant, it's which allies are not reluctant," he added.
Vice President Dick Cheney is set to make a trip to the Middle East in mid-March, when he is expected to try
to boost support for possible military action against Iraq.
While it was becoming more and more difficult for Iraq to get weapons, military analysts said Baghdad was
still a force to be reckoned with.
In a report last month, Cordesman said despite the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq was the most effective military power
in the Gulf, with an army of around 375,000 men, about 2,200 main battle tanks, 3,700 other armored
vehicles, 2,400 major artillery weapons and over 300 fixed-wing combat aircraft.
But he said Iraq lacked the training, funds, spare parts and production capabilities to sustain the quality
of its forces.
Suggestions for U.S. troop commitments needed to defeat Iraq range as high as 200,000 but Baker predicted
about half that amount would be enough to do the job
Britain
in a pickle over US plans for Iraq
LONDON, March 10 (AFP) -
Britain's Tony Blair holds talks here Monday with US Vice President Dick Cheney insisting he remains firmly
behind the war on terror, but the spectre of US strikes on Iraq has caught him in a pickle.
On the one hand, according to the Observer newspaper, the United States has asked Britain
to draw up plans for 25,000 troops to join a huge US task force against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Even if plans ultimately do not go that far, London will still be expected to contribute
to any US-led operation in Iraq.
On the other hand, according to reports which the government has failed to damp down,
British involvement could lead to the resignation of senior cabinet ministers.
The prospect of the United States requesting support from British troops has raised new
questions here about how far Blair should go to preserve his vaunted 'special relationship' with US
President George W. Bush.
Bush's decision last week to slap tariffs on imports of foreign steel, putting British
jobs at risk, despite personal protests by Blair, was widely seen as an embarrassing stub to the British
leader.
A Downing Street spokesman said Blair's talks with Cheney would take in a range of issues
including Afghanistan, "the wider campaign on terrorism" and weapons of mass destruction.
But he denied the Observer report. "No decisions have been taken yet alone any
requests been made," he told AFP.
Under the plan, as reported by the paper, Britain would supply soldiers for an overall
ground force of around 250,000 troops who would sweep into Iraq in an operation similar to the 1991 Gulf
War.
It would be the boldest -- and riskiest -- of three main options now being studied by the
British government to tackle Saddam's regime.
Intense speculation that the United States might be preparing to intervene in Iraq has
mounted since January, when Bush called it part of an "axis of evil."
Cheney, who will be in London on the first leg of a 10-day haul focusing on the Middle
East crisis and the war on terror, has fresh evidence of Baghdad's involvement in weapons of mass
destruction, the Observer said.
A second option being studied by London, the paper reported, is for smaller special forces
units to help opposition groups within Iraq.
It would be similar to the tactics used in Afghanistan, where the Northern Alliance had
military support to overthrow the Taliban regime.
The third option, the Observer said, was for "aggressive containment" -- an
intensification of air strikes against Iraq if Saddam does not agree to allow in UN weapons inspectors.
The action in Afghanistan was launched after the September 11 atrocities in the United
States, blamed on the al-Qaeda group of Saudi-born extremist Osama bin Laden.
A British ministry of defence spokesman refused to comment on the Observer report, but
noted that "we do have a close relationship with the Americans."
"We will be in this (the campaign against terror) for the long run with the
Americans," he added.
"We will give them support wherever we can and this may take us into other
areas."
It is the uncertainty of which "other areas" that worries many here.
A parliamentary motion expressing "deep unease" at Britain's potential role in
military action in Iraq has already won the signatures of more than 70 MPs, including several former
ministers.
A poll of just over 2,000 people in the Mail on Sunday showed a split over British
military involvement, 45 percent in favour and 43 percent against.
Several cabinet ministers are reported to be openly hostile to such action, insisting
there is no evidence linking Saddam to al-Qaeda.
"Reports of a Cabinet split on this are in fact completely wrong," retorted
Labour Party chairman Charles Clarke.
But he admitted that Blair wanted Washington to "internationalise" what it aims
to do by explaining its reasons.
"He would certainly urge caution, in the sense that any action of any kind needs to
be taken fully cautiously," Clarke told BBC radio.
"He would also take a position, perhaps even more strongly, that any action in these
fields is only likely to succeed if you have got the world community united in dealing with it."
2 Following up his talks with Cheney, the prime minister will early next month
meet with Bush in Texas. It is then, reports here suggest, that they will finalise what to do with Iraq.
Belgium calls on EU to send top-level mission to Iraq
BRUSSELS, March 11 (AFP) -
Belgium suggested Monday that the European Union quickly dispatch a high-level mission to Baghdad to
convince Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to let UN arms inspectors back into his country.
Such a mission -- proposed in a letter from Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel to his
Spanish counterpart Josep Pique -- would give Saddam a last chance to avoid an attack by the United States.
Spain, which holds the agenda-setting EU presidency, is to host a summit of EU leaders in
Barcelona this Friday and Saturday where developments in the Middle East are to be discussed.
Pique told reporters at the end of an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels on Monday that
the Belgian idea "deserves our attention," but he stopped short of saying it would be on the
agenda in Barcelona.
"We have to continue to insist that UN resolutions be respected, particularly with
regards to the return of inspectors," he said, reiterating the European Union's long-standing policy on
Iraq.
Baghdad has banned the inspectors since they pulled out of the country on the eve of a
December 1998 US-British bombing blitz.
Diplomatic sources said the letter was also sent to EU foreign policy high representative
Javier Solana, and to Britain and France -- the two EU member states with permanent seats on the UN Security
Council.
"It is essential that the union act without delay," Michel wrote in his letter
to Pique, a copy of which was seen by AFP.
The letter -- which asks that the idea be discussed in Barcelona -- does not refer
directly to the prospect of a US military attack on Iraq, but mentions "a very strong concern about the
situation with regards to Iraq."
"This is a particularly opportune moment for the EU to take the initiative in
convincing Iraq to conform with relevant UN Security Council resolutions, in particular to allow the
unconditional return of inspectors."
Michel, whose country held the EU presidency in July through December last year, a period
that included the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington, said the EU could opt to send a
"ministerial troika" to Baghdad.
Alternatively, it could mandate Solana to go to the Iraqi capital, he said.
"It goes without saying that the UN secretary general and our partners, particularly
the United States and Russia, would be fully informed about this undertaking," he said.