Dec 22, 2002 Op Eds

December 22, 2002 Opinion Editorials http://www.aljazeerah.info

The United States seems to speak with only one diplomatic voice these days, and it is brutish and loud.

The UN Security Council sought via a vote proposed by Syria, to condemn Israel for shooting dead three UN employees and blowing up a Gaza warehouse containing 500 tons of UN food aid. All the other four permanent members of the council — Russia, China, France and the UK—- voted for the Syrian proposal which had been debated and amended over three days. But not the United States. They used their veto to kill the resolution. Why?

What would Washington’s reaction have been if the three unarmed UN staff had been gunned down in Iraq? Would it have argued, as it did over the Syrian resolution condemning Israel, that it was “too particular” and did not take account of the violence being perpetrated on the other side of the Palestinian conflict? One thinks not. Indeed, it is certain that President George W. Bush would by now be risking his first pretzel, as he settled into his big chair in the White House Iraq war room. The US justification for the veto is the more specious because no UN personnel has been killed by Palestinian gunfire, nor have Palestinians destroyed UN aid intended for them.

This resolution was specifically about UN personnel and UN aid. In rejecting it, the Americans are betraying their basic contempt for the organization and its structures and initiatives. It will grab the UN whenever it needs to justify its own foreign policy, but just as quickly discard it like a Kleenex when that purpose has been served.

Washington was prepared to overlook entirely the extremely serious implications for UN officials on duty around the world. Instead, it stood up yet again for Israel, with a slavishness that makes one wonder about the sanity of US foreign policy-makers.

There is even a body of Israeli public opinion which is itself wondering what their military are doing with UN officials. Senior officers have admitted they made mistakes. It would surely not have been too humiliating for Israel to have been censured in a unanimous Security Council resolution? After all, Israel has made an art out of ignoring past UN votes.

And, at least, the UN would have drawn a line in the sand on behalf of the people who serve it, not just in Palestine but throughout the world. But this cut no ice with the US. Unfortunately, US foreign policy seems to be reaching a level of blinkered unsubtlety where even sound arguments for sound causes are drowned out by a brutish roar. Washington is not even bothering to appear to listen to the concerns of its friends.

This is a tall-walking, big stick-carrying presidency which seems increasingly happier to kick down doors rather than stoop and turn the handles.

It is, however, about time that the White House started thinking a few more moves ahead. If an Iraqi invasion goes ahead, the US forces could quickly find themselves in a major jam. Their best and perhaps only way out will be the United Nations, the same United Nations whose staff, the Bush White House currently thinks can be killed without condemnation.

Why Powell’s project was met with sarcasm
By Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid

Arab News, 12/22/02

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to establish a strong base of hope,” said Colin Powell, the American secretary of state, in a long speech at the Heritage Foundation. The speech received no positive comment in any Arab newspaper. In fact, despite its upbeat content, it was attacked aggressively.

In the speech, Powell introduced a US political, cultural and economic project for the Arab world; the idea of the project was to support regional reforms in these areas. It also went further and proposed a special partnership between the US and many countries in the Middle East.

Why Powell’s suggestions met with silence or sarcasm, in my opinion, had nothing to do with the project itself but everything to do with the country proposing it. That country is, of course, the United States. The problem is that the US has a long-standing reputation for offending the people of the Middle East and showing little regard for their wishes and aspirations. Why then should any country in the region cooperate with Washington?

Powell should have understood this when he made his offer to more than 20 Middle Eastern countries. He was, it seems, putting the cart before the horse. His project will never get off the ground, not because the ideas are unsuitable but simply because he will have a hard time convincing people of his country’s good intentions.

Reform must begin with proof of good will. To show good will to the Arab world is not a difficult thing to do, although many people think it is. What would prove conclusively to the Middle East America’s good intentions would be a change in the way Washington approaches the Arab-Israeli conflict. That long-standing problem, the solution to which remains the measure of American sincerity, is invariably cited to prove American insensitivity to the Arabs and to a problem which has plagued them and the world for the last 50 years.

When I say it is easy to solve, I mean to be taken literally. Powell should have looked at the problem as it is today and not as it was in the days of his predecessors. Both sides, Arab and Israeli, have come close to ending the conflict — the Saudi initiative which called for the recognition of Israel, protecting its borders and establishing a Palestinian state on lands occupied since 1967.

What is the problem if this initiative were to be implemented under the auspices of the United Nations or the White House, especially if both sides agree to it? Arabs and Israelis have never been so close to agreeing. In the past, the Arabs granted many concessions that American mediators would never have dreamed of asking for. Nonetheless, no one in Washington stepped up to support strongly or to push for acceptance of so manifestly fair an agreement.

We ask Powell in all honesty how he expects the governments and people of 20 countries involved in this conflict to trust him. What basis is there for such trust? A project calling for political reform such as he made in his speech cannot become reality if his government, with all its capabilities and powers to influence, fails to bring about a final agreement between Arabs and Israelis.

Bush: Time to put up or shut up
By Charley Reese
Arab News, 12/22/02

President George Bush has to put up or shut up. If his administration has hard evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, he has to put that evidence on the table for everyone to see. Otherwise his credibility and the credibility of the United States will be zilch.

It’s beginning to appear that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein isn’t as stupid as the Bush administration believed him to be. He has readmitted the inspectors, he’s cooperating with them, and he’s made his declaration: We have no weapons of mass destruction; if the United States and Great Britain have evidence to the contrary, give it to the international inspectors.

So far, the Bush administration has done nothing but indulge in name-calling, like some bratty kid on a schoolyard. It’s not enough to keep calling Saddam a liar; it’s time to prove it. And if the United States lacks proof, as I personally believe, then it’s time to shut up or else confess the real motives for wanting to go to war. So far, the Bush administration’s credibility hasn’t been that great itself.

Item: It made much to-do about Iraq having drone airplanes. The existence of these planes was made public in 1998. The president even said they could be used in an attack against the United States, which is patently absurd on its face.

Item: Great Britain recently released a dossier on human rights violations in Iraq. Again, it was all old stuff, 10 or 12 years old, and Amnesty International, which had collected the information in the first place, severely criticized the British government for misusing a report that the United Kingdom had ignored a decade ago when it was first issued.

Demonization and name-calling do not constitute evidence that Iraq is a threat to the United States. The Bush administration has no hard evidence that Iraq was involved with Al-Qaeda or any other kind of international terrorism. It has twisted the truth about Iraq’s involvement with the Palestinians, implying that Saddam subsidized suicide bombers. The fact is that Saddam was giving a check to the families of any Palestinian killed in the intifada. That, of course, included the families of suicide bombers, but the program was not specifically directed toward them. Don’t forget, the Israelis have killed nearly 2,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians. Unlike most Arab governments that only pay lip service to the Palestinian struggle for independence, Saddam has put his money where his mouth is.

If it is true, as Richard Pearle, the chief warmonger in the Bush administration, has said publicly, that Bush will go to war against Iraq even if there are no ties to terrorism and no weapons of mass destruction, the American people had better start raising hell with the administration. A war without justification can produce catastrophic consequences.

For one thing, with our economy in the shape it is in, much better use for $200 billion can be found right here at home than to waste it on killing Iraqis. For another, the days when we can inflict death and destruction on other people in other places without paying a price for it are over. Making war against Iraq without justification and international support will produce an enormous increase in terrorism directed at the United States and at Americans everywhere. For still another, it will alienate allies all over the world.

If genuine, publicly exposed proof can be found that Iraq is in violation and if the United States goes back to the United Nations Security Council for a second resolution, then all’s well and good. If the president decides to go it alone based on propaganda, he will be making the mistake of his life. The trouble is it will be other innocent lives, both Iraqi and American, that will pay for his blunder.

U.S., Britain 'determined to attack Iraq'
An interview with Muhammed Mehdi Saleh

By Dahi Hassan, Gulf News, 22-12-2002

A senior Iraqi official yesterday said that the U.S. and UK will go ahead of their plans to strike his country regardless of the results of the weapons inspections or the objection of other Security Council members and the international community to such war.

In an exclusive interview with Gulf News, Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh said that the target of the U.S. and UK "is not the destruction of the alleged weapons of mass destruction, but the desire on part of the American and the British governments to control Iraqi oil and impose their full hegemony on wealth and development resources in Iraq and other parts of the Arab world."

The Iraqi minister also spoke about various other features of the Iraqi crisis, including the opposition abroad, the Iraqi hope that public opinion in the West might pressurise the U.S. and British governments to stop their war plans, and the need for the American and British governments "to learn from the lessons of the past that powerful countries paid heavy prices for occupying smaller nations."

Here are excerpts from the two-hour interview:

Gulf News: Do you think that Iraq will be able to get out of the crisis this time, or it will lead the whole region into full confusion and chaos?
Saleh: It was the U.S. who created the crisis this time, and it is up to the Americans and their British allies to put an end to it.

However, they will never do so since they have already set a target that is for sure not the destruction of the alleged weapons of mass destruction in our country, but the desire on part of the American and British governments to control oil in Iraq and impose their full hegemony of our national wealth and development potentials and those of the other Arab countries.

A very serious new conspiracy is being plotted now by the American and British governments to partition the Arab world into small countries, even much smaller than those are have now. It is a new Sykes-Picot agreement that targets Arab resources, particularly Iraqi oil, and never had been a matter of destroying Iraqi weapons.

GN: But what prompted the U.S. and UK to conspire against Arabs at this particular stage?
Saleh: Things started immediately after September 11 attacks on New York and Washington as America found that its first enemy would be Arabs and Muslims. The U.S. President George W. Bush said it literally when he publicly announced that he wanted it a new "Crusade war".

It is the coalition of Jews with the extreme Christian right in the U.S. that utilises the new developments after 9/11 to redraw the map of the region to serve their own interests.

Iraq had always had good relations with all countries from all over the world before the sanctions were imposed on it in 1991. Even now, our problem is not with the American and the British peoples; it is rather with their governments who deny other nations their rights for self-determination.

By imposing such new policies, the U.S. is setting the stage for changing political regimes in various countries without any minimum consideration of the actual ambitions and desires of the peoples of these countries.

However, the U.S. should be aware that one day a more powerful state will emerge and it will seek to change the U.S. regime without consulting with the American people and simply for having different views with the White House! Is this the new version of the American democracy or the American trend of regimes change?!

GN: But some say that it was Iraq who gave the Americans the pretext to interfer in its affairs and seek regime change in your country.
Saleh: Never! It was only because Arabs are not allowed to acquire the same weapons which Israel already has. It was only few days back that North Korea announced that it would resume its nuclear weapons programme; and the While House responded that they would "try to solve the problem through political channels."

Why are not they opting for the same "political channels' when it comes to the Iraq weapons though they have no proof that we have any?!

GN: By the way, how do you view the performance of the UN weapons inspectors after around one month of beginning their work in Iraq?
Saleh: Things are going quite well so far, and according to the Security Council resolution number 1441. Iraq will go to the extreme of cooperation with the UN weapons inspectors as we will never give the American and British governments the pretext they are looking forward to get in order to start their unfair war against our country.

Iraq will refute all their claims that we have weapons of mass destruction. We are even challenging them to provide any kind of evidence that Iraq possesses such weapons. And if they do have such evidence, let them immediately present it to Hans Blix, chief of the UN arms inspection team, and Mohammed Al El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

I can assure you that all the Iraqi sites mentioned in the dossier presented by British Prime Minister Tony Blair earlier this year, claiming that they are being used for producing weapons of mass destruction, have been recently visited by the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) who found no such weapons at all.

The American and British governments are embarrassed now and this is clear from the fact that they take what they call "gaps or omissions" in the Iraqi declaration as a new pretext to consider Iraq flouting the Security Council resolution number 1441.

However, we are telling them now that we are ready to answer any related questions. Moreover, if they claim that there are any gaps, we are ready to help them fill in such gaps.

We will reveal to the whole world that the Americans are telling lies, and the war they are about to launch against our country has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction.

GN: Do you mean that you take it for granted that the war is surely coming?
Saleh: This is what the Americans themselves are saying openly without any minimum respect of the Security Council that helped them get the resolution 1441 issued.

It seems that the U.S. never expected Iraq to accept that resolution. But to their surprise, we accepted it and made them lose a chance. They also expected us not to cooperate with the UN inspectors; and here we are offering them full cooperation as have have revealed to them all what we have and opened all our sites before them.

GN: Do you think that relations between Iraq and the U.S. and the UK have reached the no-return point?
Saleh: We in Iraq have no hostile stand against any country. On the contrary, we are eager to build strong relations with all nations, except Israel, the way things were before sanctions were imposed on our country in 1991.

However, it is the U.S. which targets all Arabs and Muslims in its fighting against terrorism despite the claims of some American officials that it is not a war against Islam or any particular country. See what is being applied in the U.S. where Muslims are being treated differently even if they are native Americans.

GN: Iraq, then, feels that its stand is logical and strong enough to counter the U.S. and British charges, but what can logic do when the actual war starts?
Saleh: The Arab nation has always faced waves of colonisation and occupation; but our people always stood to the challenge and never surrendered.

We Iraqis liberated our lands from the British occupation after World War I, and the British troops lost more than 100,000 lives at the hands of Iraqi people, including 13,000 in Al Kut city alone. Their graveyards all over Iraq are still standing as witnesses of the heroism of our people.

Arab governments should also realise that nothing can protect them from danger but the solidarity and integration with their people. However, we are depending on Allah first, our people next, and then those millions of good men and women around the world who feel the American and British stand on Iraq is unfair.

We will resist any occupation against our country by all means we have got. It is a fight against dignity, pride, and the future of our country.

GN: I think the last thing your leadership wants to deal with is the Iraqi opposition; how do you view the role of such opposition in the current crisis?
Saleh: If any American or British group of people went to any other country, say Russia, and cooperated with it in matters that harm their native countries, then what will be the American or the British stands towards such groups?

Constitution in any country does not authorise groups or individuals to deal with foreign forces against their native country. Opposition should be first national and should act within its country.

There are many incidents in our country when opposition changed regimes, but all happened within Iraq. Our people also liberated their land from the British occupation without depending on foreign forces. Is this the case with what called Iraqi opposition at hotels in various Western countries?!

Those Iraqis who linked themselves to foreign forces are but few spies and agents conspiring against the interests of their own country. They are looking after their own financial benefits and interests. Such kind of opposition we never accept to deal with and should be punished according to Iraqi law.

As for those who opted to return home and maintain their political stands, we are ready to deal with them for the best of our country.

GN: But what kind of political reforms or garantees have you introduced to assure the opposition that a real democratic Iraq can flourish in future?
Saleh: The release of all prisoners in the country, allowing all opposition members to return home, and issuing the new constitution were the three major steps that have encouraged many Iraqis to actually come back home and be part of the political spectrum of our country.

Iraq is heading towards a real multi-party political system in which all parties and individuals will be able to take part and express their views freely.

We want to rebuild a strong Iraq with the contribution of all faithful Iraqis. Iraq, which had been the cradle of civilisation 5000 years ago, should come back to export civilisation to the whole world. We are looking forward to establish civilised ties with our neighbours and other nations on the basis of humanity not on the basis of power and destruction.

Reveal the evidence
Gulf News, 22-12-2002

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Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix is right to insist that the United States and Britain should show his team of weapons inspectors any evidence the two states might have about Iraq's secret weapons. He has said that he is not getting the intelligence that he needs to prove Iraq may be concealing weapons of mass destruction.

   The United States has said that it will give the evidence to the UN weapons inspectors if this does not compromise the United State's intelligence networks. However, if another war is going to start, with all the human destruction and misery that any war entails, it is important that the world can see the evidence that triggers the war.

   Blix has said the United Nations team would welcome any extra information that could come from the much superior resources available to the United States and Britain. In particular, Blix would like to be tipped off by the intelligence agencies of sites which they think could be possible stores for weapons of mass destruction.

   Blix and his team have agreed with the United States and Britain that the document submitted by Iraq has some gaps. As Blix has said: "If the Iraqis gave us full co-operation, we would not need any intelligence." In particular Blix has pointed out that since Iraq has produced anthrax and mustard gas, there must be some record of it in the report, which apparently is not there.

   However, as a UN official, Blix has expressed no views on whether the gaps in the report are so serious to trigger a war. The United States has not been so bashful. Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that Baghdad was in "material breach" of the UN resolution, which is a stronger position than Britain has adopted. Prime Minister Tony Blair has criticised what he says is the unwillingness of the Iraqis to reveal everything fully. As the inspectors continue to hunt for any weapons of mass destruction, they need all the support they can get. Any country in a position to help, should do so.

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