Jan 29, 2003 Op Eds

Jan 29, 2003 Opinion Editorials http://www.aljazeerah.info

How serious is the intention of the Bush administration to invade Iraq before the mercury rises, is a question on the lips of many. For the people of the Middle East and the Gulf the answer is crucial. Will they or won't they? Today, the American President is due to give his State of the Union address when the future may be clearly delineated.

In the meantime we can only speculate. Without being privy to Pentagon secrets, we have little choice but to conclude that the U.S. means business. It is projected that 150,000 plus U.S. and British troops will be situated in and around theatre before February's end along with necessary equipment, hardware, weapons, stocks of atropine and other chemical and biological antidotes.

If the invasion goes ahead it is likely to begin with a punishing bombing campaign leading to civilian casualties which could exceed 500,000.

The Pentagon wants a short war and hopes that the Iraqis will be frightened into an early surrender. Rumours are circulating that the war could begin as early as this week. Others are predicting a mid to end of February start.

Incontrovertible proof that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction has eluded the weapons' inspectors, although they have discovered a quantity of undisclosed chemical warheads, as well as a 3,000-page nuclear-related manual. Even though Iraq's scientists have refused to be interviewed without the presence of officials, these factors together do not a 'smoking gun' make.

Complex mission

Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradei want the United Nations to give them more time to complete their highly complex mission. But Bush and his aggressive advisors, intent on waging war before the support of the American public dwindles have little time to spare. Colin Powell recently said that the U.S. might allow the weapons inspectors a few more weeks while still insisting that war is not inevitable. Could this be a mere red herring?

Powell has further said that America, although seeking UN approval, is prepared to proceed without it, along with a dozen other countries whose names he refuses to disclose. The double standard here is glaring. Why should the Bush administration expect Iraq to comply with UN demands while Washington feels free to render that erstwhile body "irrelevant"?

Such is the concern about unilateral action on behalf of the U.S., the normally politically reticent Switzerland, concerned about a looming humanitarian disaster and the negative impact war would have on the world's economies, has offered to host talks between the U.S. and Iraq.

Foreign policy

A particularly vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy is Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed who told the delegates of the World Economic Forum in Davos that "out-terrorising the terrorists will not work". He also condemned U.S. for trying to impose its own political system on the rest of the planet saying, "It is blasphemy to say anything against democracy. If you do, if you resist, you'll be considered a heretic and starved to death, or bombed out of existence."

The language of President Jacques Chirac of France and Gerhardt Schroeder, the German Chancellor, has been diplomatically couched but the end result is the same. They want no part of a war not sanctioned by the UN Security Council.

These two European stalwarts are still smarting at Powell dismissing France and Germany as "Old Europe" implying that Eastern European countries have more clout with the U.S. today.

Washington's most fervent ally is Britain's Tony Blair. After initially calling for "more space and time" for the inspection teams, the British Prime Minister now sounds even more hawkish than the birds of prey in Washington.

It has been suggested that several of the head honchos in the British military are less than enamoured with the idea of sending their troops to the region at the behest of the U.S. There are further worries about antiquated British equipment, not least army boots, which are said to melt in extreme heat. To add to their woes, British insurance companies are now refusing to provide life insurance for those on active service in Iraq.

There is, however, another school of thought, which maintains that the build-up in the Gulf is a gigantic bluff. It believes that America will be satisfied with having numerous military personnel, strategically positioned to take on any dissenting countries at a moment's notice.

In such a scenario, the U.S. will be able to control regional resources by presenting a permanent unspoken threat to the region without having to fire a shot. But the idea that America's Commander in Chief would be willing to march his troops up the hill before marching them down again, may not be practical.

We might argue that it would, indeed, be more sensible for U.S. troops to remain strategically positioned while weapons inspectors searching under the Iraqi president's bed, ensure that Saddam Hussain could do no harm. Such a policy of containment would on the face of it appear to be a reasonable option and one which would avoid loss of American and Iraqi lives. This is the route preferred by Chirac, but the U.S. President could envision a major problem with this one.

In the event that he said: "Okay folks. It's all over. We're backing off" the United States may be perceived around the world as a paper tiger. Wouldn't America be at risk of losing its credibility and risk being accused of crying wolf?

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright believes that it would. Albright would prefer to see Iraq "punished" with further sanctions while the weapons inspectors enjoy more time but admits that the impetus to wage war has probably reached the point of no return.

Unpalatable dish

From a personal standpoint, Bush could well find retreat from the brink an unpalatable dish. With voter attention deflected from the Gulf, he would find his controversial proposed tax breaks under scrutiny and people would demand answers concerning the growing fragility of the U.S. economy and the corporate scandals.

However, if Saddam agreed to a "golden parachute" deal or was overthrown by his own generals, these might be just the face-savers that Bush seeks when his popularity would soar. The Pentagon recently sent out thousands of emails targeting Iraq's military high-ups urging them to do just that.

The U.S. air force is currently showering Iraq with three million propaganda leaflets, suggesting to Iraqis that their president spends enough in one day to feed a family for a year. Has there ever been a dictator who hasn't?

But nobody in the U.S. administration is holding their breath hoping for a bloodless coup in Iraq. The fact that Americans living overseas have now been told to keep their passports up to date and to stock up on medicines and food, is an ominous sign that an invasion of Iraq is likely to be fairly imminent.

Sovereign integrity

Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran are all intent on averting war. These are the countries, along with the Gulf States, which have the most to lose. Their respective foreign ministers recently attended a meeting, hosted by the Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, and were united in working towards a peaceful solution – one that would safeguard Iraq's sovereign integrity.

In Baghdad, Saddam and his son Uday are defiant, promising American soldiers a sure death if they dare to enter the Iraqi capital. Uday also hinted that the oilfields would be torched, affecting the visibility of enemy pilots. This would prove to be an ecological disaster as well as pushing up the price of oil to over $40 a barrel.

The world is holding its breath to find out whether peace will prevail under the weight of the growing anti-war movement, or if we are destined to witness the gates of hell opening as Arab League chief Amr Moussa has predicted.

Mahathir Mohammed is pessimistic saying: "Sanity has deserted both sides. Just as, in the Stone Age, the man with the biggest club ruled, in our modern and sophisticated global village, the country with the biggest killing power rules." We will just have to wait and see if the rest of the world allows it to do so.

If the opposition to American aggression and hegemony rolls over now, it will have to play dead for a very long time, and we would be forced to agree with the stark words of the Malaysian leader: "No one is free. Fear rules the world".

The writer is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs.

Peace and Justice movement alive and well
By George Monbiot

Arab News, 1/29/03

LONDON — Bush and Blair might have a tougher fight than they anticipated. Not from Saddam Hussein perhaps — although it is still not obvious that they can capture and hold Iraq’s cities without major losses — but from an anti-war movement that is beginning to look like nothing the world has seen before.

It’s not just that people have begun to gather in great numbers even before a shot has been fired. It’s not just that they are doing so without the inducement of conscription or any other direct threat to their welfare. It’s not just that there have already been meetings or demonstrations in almost every nation on Earth. It’s also that the campaign is being coordinated globally with an unprecedented precision. And the people partly responsible for this are the members of a movement which, even within the past few weeks, the mainstream media has pronounced extinct.

Last year, 40,000 members of the Global Justice Movement gathered at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This year, more than 100,000, from 150 nations, have come — for a meeting! The world has seldom seen such political assemblies since Daniel O’Connell’s "monster meetings" in the 1840s.

Far from dying away, our movement has grown bigger than most of us could have guessed. Sept. 11 muffled the protests for a while, but since then they have returned with greater vehemence, everywhere except the US. The last major global demonstration it convened was the rally at the European summit in Barcelona. Some 350,000 activists rose from the dead. They came despite the terrifying response to the marches in June 2001 in Genoa, where the police burst into protesters’ dormitories and beat them with truncheons as they lay in their sleeping bags, tortured others in the cells and shot one man dead.

But neither the violent response, nor Sept. 11, nor the indifference of the media have quelled this rising. Ever ready to believe their own story, the newsrooms have interpreted the absence of coverage (by the newsrooms) as an absence of activity. One of our recent discoveries is that we no longer need them. We have our own channels of communication, our own websites and pamphlets and magazines, and those who wish to find us can do so without their help. They can pronounce us dead as often as they like, and we shall, as many times, be resurrected.

The media can be forgiven for expecting us to disappear. In the past, it was hard to sustain global movements of this kind. The Socialist International, for example, was famously interrupted by nationalism. When the nations to which the comrades belonged went to war, they forgot their common struggle and took to arms against each other. But now, thanks to the globalization some members of the movement contest, nationalism is a far weaker force. American citizens are meeting and debating with Iraqis, even as their countries prepare to go to war. We can no longer be called to heel. Our loyalty is to the principles we defend and to those who share them, irrespective of where they come from.

One of the reasons why the movement appears destined only to grow is that it provides the only major channel through which we can engage with the most critical issues. Climate change, international debt, poverty, the hegemony of the G-8 nations, the IMF and the World Bank, the depletion of natural resources, nuclear proliferation and low-level conflict are major themes in the lives of most of the world’s people, but minor themes in almost all mainstream political discourse. We are told that the mind-rotting drivel which now fills the pages of the newspapers is a necessary commercial response to the demands of younger readers. This may, to some extent, be true. But here are tens of thousands of young people who have less interest in celebrity culture than George Bush has in Wittgenstein. They have evolved their own scale of values, and re-enfranchised themselves by pursuing what they know to be important. For the great majority of activists — those who live in the poor world — the movement offers the only effective means of reaching people in the richer nations.

We have often been told that the reason we’re dead is that we have been overtaken by and subsumed within the anti-war campaign. It would be more accurate to say that the anti-war campaign has, in large part, grown out of the global justice movement. This movement has never recognized a distinction between the power of the rich world’s governments and their appointed institutions (the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization) to wage economic warfare and the power of the same governments, working through different institutions (the UN Security Council, NATO) to send in the bombers. Far from competing with our concerns, the impending war has reinforced our determination to tackle the grotesque maldistribution of power which permits a few national governments to assert a global mandate. When the activists leave Porto Alegre tomorrow, they will take home to their 150 nations a new resolve to turn the struggle against the war with Iraq into a contest over the future of the world.

While younger activists are eager to absorb the experience of people like Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Lula, Victor Chavez, Michael Albert and Arundhati Roy, all of whom are speaking in Porto Alegre, our movement is, as yet, more eager than wise, fired by passions we have yet to master. We have yet to understand, despite the police response in Genoa, the mechanical determination of our opponents.

We are still rather too prepared to believe that spectacular marches can change the world. While the splits between the movement’s Marxists, anarchists and liberals are well-rehearsed, our real division — between the diversalists and the universalists — has, so far, scarcely been explored. Most of the movement believes that the best means of regaining control over political life is through local community action. A smaller faction (to which I belong) believes that this response is insufficient, and that we must seek to create democratically accountable global institutions. The debates have, so far, been muted. But when they emerge, they will be fierce.

For all that, I think most of us have noticed that something has changed, that we are beginning to move on from the playing of games and the staging of parties, that we are coming to develop a more mature analysis, a better grasp of tactics, an understanding of the need for policy. We are, in other words, beginning for the first time to look like a revolutionary movement. We are finding, too, among some of the indebted states of the poor world, a new preparedness to engage with us. In doing so, they speed our maturation: the more we are taken seriously, the more seriously we take ourselves.

Whether we are noticed or not is no longer relevant. We know that, with or without the media’s help, we are a gathering force which might one day prove unstoppable. (The Guardian)

Writing on the wall, EU & Turkey
29 January 2003

Arab News,

If things go the way the UN, the EU and the new Turkish government want, the 28-year-old division of Cyprus could be over in a matter of weeks. That may seem incredible after so many failed attempts in the past, but deadlines are fast approaching: the two sides have until Feb. 28 to accept the UN’s peace plan; a referendum endorsing it has to be held throughout the island on March 30; and on April 16 an agreement will be signed paving the way for all of Cyprus to join the EU. If Turkish northern Cyprus fails to accept the UN deal, only the southern Republic of Cyprus will join.

It is the prospect of joining the EU that has given the UN deal its momentum. The realization that membership is there for the taking has clarified Turkish Cypriot minds to a remarkable degree. Either they can be part of an EU state and enjoy growth and prosperity or they can remain in isolation and poverty — which they will if they stay separate. The choice is theirs. Many have already made that choice. The pro-unification demonstration a fortnight ago attracted a quarter of the Turkish Cypriot population; the anti-unification demonstration in response last week was pathetic in comparison. It is hardly surprising. Turkish Cypriots are sick of living in a wreck of an economy where it is a struggle to buy even bare essentials while their Greek neighbors enjoy the good life. Among the younger generation, the desire for change is almost universal. The pro-peace demonstration two weeks ago was swamped by them; only old women were noticeable in the opposing demonstration last week.

The other major factor fueling the momentum is the new Turkish government. It firmly backs the UN plan, again because of the EU. It too wants to join and it knows that unless the Cyprus issue is resolved — and resolved now so that both north and south enter the EU together — its own bid will be seriously complicated. Not only will it be seen in EU eyes as occupying part of an EU state, the Cypriot government will in future have a veto on it being let in.

It would be good to say that the momentum for a settlement is unstoppable and that one of the world’s great intractable problems is on its way to being resolved. That is, however, not quite true. Rauf Denktash, the north’s veteran leader, is as opposed to this deal as he has been to all previous attempts at a settlement. But time is running out for him. He is dismissed as yesterday’s man by the bulk of Turkish Cypriot public opinion. What was once viewed as determination is now seen as stubbornness, his dream of an internationally recognized sovereign state of Turkish Cyprus, with himself as president, as an impossible fantasy that needs to be consigned to history.

He is a wily operator and last week’s condemnation of the UN reunification plan by a leading member of the Turkish military will have given him heart. Even so, when this week he attacked the head of Turkey’s ruling party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had called on him to be more flexible over the UN plan, there was more than a hint of resignation. If Turkey accepts the plan, he said, it should tell him openly. "Then someone else who would accept this is found and this job is finished."

Iraq invasion seen erupting within weeks
By Alistair Lyon

Arab News, 1/29/03

LONDON — The United States, wooing allies for war, may not wait much beyond the next UN inspectors’ report on Saint Valentine’s Day before unleashing an invasion to disarm Iraq and topple President Saddam Hussein, analysts say. "We’ll hear a deafening drumbeat from the United States in the run-up to Feb. 14," said Iraq expert Toby Dodge of Warwick University. "I would be surprised if the air war had not started within seven days of that."

The tone from Washington and London is already grim, despite appeals from many other capitals for the inspectors to be given more time to prove whether Iraq is defying a Security Council resolution which effectively told it to disarm or face war.

Britain joined the United States in declaring Iraq in "material breach" of UN disarmament demands on Tuesday, a day after chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix told the council that Saddam had not come clean about stocks of lethal weapons. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said a further report by UN weapons inspectors on Feb. 14 was not an ultimatum, but warned Iraq that its "unbelievable" refusal to comply with UN demands had diminished chances of a peaceful outcome.

"The US-British deployment will be in place toward the end of February. They could start the air campaign a bit ahead of that, but probably won’t," said Sir Timothy Garden, a defense expert at London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs. "What happened yesterday (at the Security Council) keep everything bubbling along till mid-February when the Americans, Brits, Australians and anyone else involved will say, ‘We are going to do this anyway’, and challenge the council to come up with a resolution to support it," Garden said. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has urged more time for the UN experts and opposed any solo US action, said on Tuesday Moscow could toughen its line if Iraq hampered the inspectors.

Some oil experts pay more heed to US troop deployments and the uncompromising rhetoric of US President George W. Bush than to the diplomatic skirmishing at the United Nations. "What’s driving the timetable for war is not diplomacy but military readiness," said Roger Diwan of consultancy PFC Energy in Washington. "If the US needs more time to get the military in place it will use that time to seek diplomatic backing but, whether it gets that backing or not, we still expect war to start some time between the middle of February and early March."

George Joffe, a Middle East specialist at Cambridge University, said a ground war could not start before the end of February because US and British forces were not yet in place. "They might start an air war, but not before Feb. 14. That’s when they will say ‘enough is enough’," he said, noting that the Muslim Haj pilgrimage to Makkah would be over by then.

Sir John Moberly, a former British ambassador to Baghdad, said attempts by the United States and Britain to secure a second resolution might delay war, but not indefinitely. "When they judge the moment favorable in terms of international support and when they are militarily ready, they will not wait. The machine is lumbering forward," he said.

"Everyone is making clear the inspectors will have a bit more time, but not very much," a British official said. "Unless Iraq changes its fundamental attitude now, time is running out."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak shares that conclusion. "The United States is determined to get rid of weapons of mass destruction regardless of the price," Al-Ittihad daily in the United Arab Emirates yesterday quoted him as saying. "The strike is coming unless Iraq abides by the resolutions of the international legitimacy and unless it stops putting obstacles in front of international arms inspections," he said. (R)

An issue of more time

Jordan Times, 1/29/03

NOW THAT chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammad Al Baradei have submitted their progress reports after two months of arms inspections in Iraq, the door is open to various scenarios the international community may pursue as follow-ups to these reports. In the end, the UN Security Council and the rest of the world will have to decide first and foremost whether to allow the weapons inspectors more time to continue their mission and how much more time.

The reports are in essence a mixed bag. While not exonerating Baghdad altogether, neither Blix nor Al Baradei went as far as incriminating the Iraqi authorities outright. The indecisive nature of the reports is evidenced by Blix's assessment that while Iraqi authorities were cooperative in many ways they did not account for their country's long-range missile, chemical and biological arms programmes. And although Blix was unable to corroborate US claims that Baghdad had rebuilt its weapons of mass destruction arsenal, he nevertheless said that "Iraq appears not to have come to genuine acceptance, not even today, of disarmament that was demanded of it." Al Baradei was even more circumspect, telling the Security Council that he had "found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons programme since its termination in the 1990s."

But while Al Baradei openly called for additional months to complete his mandate, Blix was careful in not insisting on giving his inspection teams more time. So the world is again at a crossroads. It must decide whether Iraq should be granted more time to satisfy the demands of the inspectors. Most countries including France, Germany, Russia and China are in favour of extending the inspections mission in order to arrive at a more conclusive judgement about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes if any. The US appears to believe that more time would not get the international community any closer to the truth. US Secretary of State Colin Powell's press conference in the wake of the submission of the two reports was blunt. He submitted that Iraq was given all the time necessary to come clean about its weapons programmes. Still Powell did not shut the door completely on the popular demand for granting the UN inspectors more time. Both Blix and Al Baradei are expected to report again to the council on February 14. So, until then all we can count on is that the US and Britain will hold off on firing the first shot.

The Palestinian dialogue in Cairo

By Hasan Abu Nimah

Jordan Times, 1/29/03

FINALLY, THE Palestinians are meeting in Cairo to consider their next moves. The meeting, which for quite a while was meant to only settle differences on how to handle the Intifada between Hamas and Islamic Jihad, on the one side, and Fateh and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) on the other, is now been enlarged to include twelve Palestinian factions, including Damascus-based hardliners such as PFLP-General Command of Ahmad Jibril.

Egypt, which had been pushing for this meeting for months now, will apparently be trying to secure the approval of the participants for a one-year unilateral truce, with cessation of all forms of violence against the Israelis, by way of preparing the grounds for the resumption of the long-stalled peace talks. Since the eruption of the Intifada, in September 2000, every effort to reconcile the Palestinian and the Israeli positions demanded that the Palestinians stop their violence against the Israelis first. That was the case with the Mitchel Report, the Tenet understandings, the Zinni recommendations and the frozen road map of the quartet. None of these “peace plans” has ever seen the light, in spite of the fact that the PNA had promptly accepted the terms of every one of the said plans and kept declaring ceasefires.

Is it going to be different this time? Unfortunately, most available indications point negatively. The recent massacre in Gaza will certainly further harden the resolve of the factions who oppose ceasing fire before the Israelis do. The indiscriminate massacring of 14 people and injuring over fifty Palestinians in one morning, just to satisfy the need for revenge, is not the right encouragement for extracting concessions.

The failure of the previous plans was mainly due to the fact that they assumed that the Palestinians were responsible for the violence (if not blaming them outright). This view, which is a firm Israeli belief, has recently been reinforced by the ill advised calls from some Palestinian leaders, such as Mahmoud Abbas and others, who blamed the violence on “arming the Intifada”. Such one-sided and indeed very incorrect emphasis, further shifted the blame to the Palestinian side and simultaneously vindicated the Israeli view and the media-fed notions that the Israeli army's severe measures and atrocities against the Palestinians were, and still are, merely justified acts of self defence in retaliation to Palestinian “terror”.

It is true that the Palestinians' legitimate resistance, and their rejection of the occupation and of continued confiscation of their rights and land, has involved very objectionable forms of violence, such as the suicide bombings. These were widely and generally condemned, but also specifically, and strongly, by the PNA itself, which repeatedly called on all Palestinian factions to abandon such methods as being immensely harmful to the Palestinian cause; calls which were defiantly ignored.

The devastating nature and impact of the suicide bombings on local and world public opinion, their aiming at soft civilian targets and the media trend of reporting more of the Palestinian violence than that of the Israeli, have also helped eclipse a significant part of the truth, making any diagnosis of the raging violence seriously faulty and dangerously misleading, though this shift in emphasis is at least in part deliberate.

Suppressed truths include such facts as: 1) that the Palestinian struggle for ending an unlawful occupation is totally legitimate under international law; 2) that the Palestinian resistance started with throwing stones at heavily fortified military tanks, mostly by children, and it only developed into armed bloody violence when Israel responded by using guns, F-16s, air-to-ground missiles, heavy machineguns and house-demolishing bulldozers to devastate apartment buildings, market places and passenger cars; 3) that when the Palestinians stopped their attacks for extended periods, the Israeli army was the one which interrupted the peace by flagrant acts of assassinations or by uncalled for raids on Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps for arrests and destruction, which even some moderate Israelis considered as open provocations; and 4) that asking the Palestinians alone to stop their attacks on the occupation forces without demanding the same from the Israelis is tantamount to tying the hands of the victims in order to facilitate the task of the assailant.

Consequently, and as a result of this sustained systematic distortion of the facts, violence became the focus of attention of any effort dealing with this issue. Violence is indeed an ugly manifestation of an historic conflict of which many Palestinians and Israelis have fallen victim. It is causing immeasurable suffering and daily agony to both communities and to the region as well. It is natural, therefore, that the issue of violence be urgently addressed and calls to put an immediate end to it be heeded. Yet, it should be firmly emphasised that the current violence which started just over two years ago should not be treated as if it were the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which started fifty-five years ago. This half-century-old conflict started neither with the present Intifada nor with the suicide bombings, and it will not end by dealing with these two issues as if they were the problem, rather than the consequences and symptoms of the real problem.

The correct starting point for addressing the current crisis should be a willingness to clarify the confusion. It must be recognised that the Palestinian uprising, and the resulting violence, are the logical outcome of the failure of the so-called peace process which, after seven years of sterile negotiations, ended up further diminishing Palestinian rights and presence on the ground, rather than restoring them. It should also be recognised that even if all parties agree to end violence (a remote possibility indeed), that will only bring the region back to the explosion point of Sept. 28, 2000. Keeping it there without immediately addressing the core issues will only cause the same explosion of bloodier violence to erupt again. That is what usually happens when the treatment deals only with symptoms. And that is what the Cairo dialogue should clearly avoid.

It should also avoid creating any impression that the entire effort is meant to settle inter-Palestinian differences and disputes over the issue of abandoning or continuing violence as, in fact, media reports have been persistently suggesting. This is very dangerous as it is wrong. It will further consolidate the prevailing misconception that the source of violence is entirely and purely Palestinian, and that it is a matter for the Palestinians to settle amongst themselves while the Israelis, exempted from any responsibility regarding violence by such dangerous handling, wait for the results.

The Palestinians did the right thing by seizing this opportunity for talks and they should make the best out of them. It is well known that the Palestinian scene is terribly confused. The PNA has been steadily weakened while receiving one blow after the other from the Israelis. But it has been weakened further by loosing control over the many Palestinian factions that have not been able so far to agree on a united strategy. This is the time for all the participants in the Cairo dialogue to assess, plan and agree. There should be one Palestinian strategy for dealing with the occupation and for confronting it. Such a strategy should be neither one of resisting by all possible means, as the radicals may insist, nor of supplication, as the authority has often practised. What is needed is for the Palestinians to seize the initiative and formulate a peace plan for which, with Arab support, they would seek international approval and action.

Whether they end up agreeing or disagreeing on pursuing or abandoning violence, they should uphold their right to fight the occupation until it departs. They should also demand that any cessation of violence on their part be matched by similar and simultaneous measures by the Israelis. But most important is that any agreed truce be the beginning and not the end. It should be the beginning of negotiations for ending the occupation and settling the final status issues justly, correctly and in accordance with international law.

The writer is former ambassador and permanent representative of Jordan to the UN.

The euro's future

By Gwynne Dyer

Jordan Times, 1/29/03

“I WANT the whole of Europe to have one currency,” said Emperor Napoleon in 1807. “It will make trading much easier.” A year ago, his dream came true, more or less, and it didn't even take a conquest to make it happen. But where does the euro go from here?

The simple answer is out and up. It spreads outwards from the existing twelve countries that abandoned their old marks, francs and drachmas for the euro last year to one or more of the three hold-outs among the existing European Union members, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom, and then on to the twelve new countries scheduled to join within the next five years. And it goes back up in value from the rock-bottom $0.90 it hit last year towards the $1.17 it was worth when it was launched. (It's currently at $1.04.)

The euro is not yet much loved by those who use it. There is a widespread perception that retailers used the change-over in currencies as an excuse to hike their prices — and of course they did. The overall inflation rate in the euro countries doesn't show a big jump, so the economists deny that it happened, but in a number of everyday consumer items from newspapers to beer there was a cynical “rounding up” of prices that raised their cost between 3 and 8 per cent.

The experts still promise that in the long run the new “transparency” of prices across the euro-zone means that they will eventually converge towards the cheaper end of the spectrum. Maybe that's true and maybe it isn't, but there's no going back to the old currencies anyway.

The real question (which is almost never discussed in front of the children) is how long it will take the euro-zone countries to give up enough of their sovereign independence to ensure the euro's long-term survival. As it is currently run, the euro would be unlikely to weather a really major international crisis, and most insiders know it.

The problem with any currency union is that you have to impose one-size-fits-all monetary policies on quite diverse economies. For example, Germany's high unemployment and low growth call for low interest rates and deficit spending at the moment, to get its economy moving again. Ireland, with low unemployment and high inflation, needs exactly the opposite to cool its economy down. But the new European Central Bank must set the same interest rate for Ireland, Germany and all the other euro-zone countries.

Even deficit spending is strictly controlled by the European Stability and Growth Pact, which tries to safeguard the euro's credibility by imposing heavy fines on any government whose budget deficit exceeds 3 per cent of gross domestic product. One size really does have to fit all — and that can be very hard on some.

To be fair, any federation has to cope with these regional differentials while maintaining a single finance policy at the national level. The resulting problems are usually smoothed out by internal migration from poor areas to flourishing ones, and perhaps also by direct transfers of funds. The EU's problem is that internal migration is hampered by linguistic and cultural barriers, and the EU's common budget is not nearly big enough to transfer resources between member countries on a meaningful scale.

So the problems of economic divergence fester even in good times, and threaten the survival of the currency in bad times. Currency unions that are not backed by a single, strong central authority tend to founder when the going gets rough, and it sometimes does. There were at least six events in 20th-century history — World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, the Russian and Nazi revolutions, and the `73 oil embargo — that the euro in its present form would be unlikely to survive.

There is probably enough time before the next shock for the EU to get things right, and the architects of the euro privately understand that there has to be far more integrated decision-making at the political level if the euro is to survive the storms that are bound to arrive sooner or later. They just haven't mentioned it much in public yet: first you lure the punters into the deal with promises that it will be easy and painless, and once they have signed up, you tell them the real price.

The real price is probably worth paying, because the ultimate purpose of the euro is not economic at all; it is to embed all of Europe in an economic relationship that makes any return to the catastrophic continent-wide wars of the past unthinkable. But pretty soon now, the people in the know are going to have to reveal the next step of the journey to everybody else.

In fact, it's starting to happen already. In mid-2001 Belgium's Finance Minister Didier Reynders, who was doubling as the chairman of the 12-nation euro group, let a little of the real thinking slip out: “At a certain moment, perhaps in two years, we'll have to put the question. Those who said yes to the euro will move ahead.... You can't indefinitely delay the question of political authority (for the euro-zone), and it's logical that we'll make a choice to pool our forces.”

Down that road, if it is travelled to the end, lies the United States of Europe.

The writer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Arab democracy requires more than American words

The Daily Star, 1/29/03

Colin Powell delivered a highly inspiring address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Monday. He offered an enlightened vision of how democracy and development can be aided from without until they are ready to stand on their own two feet. What remains to be seen is whether his words will actually animate US foreign policy or are destined to do no more than pad the resume of a State Department speech writer. The most pertinent recent evidence comes from the activities of the American-sponsored Iraqi opposition, and so far the signs are not encouraging.
Powell made the excellent point that would-be democracies face a host of difficulties: impatience, uncertainty, obstructionism, extremism, etc. The only way a new government can overcome these is to have a solid plan whose principles all revolve around the rule of law. Once a society accepts the law as ultimate arbiter, the mutual trust required for stability can finally take root. Without such a foundation, elections are window-dressing at best and potential provocations at worst.
One of Washington’s stated goals is the sowing of democracy in the Arab world. The most relevant project in this regard is currently under way in Iraq, where the United States aims to topple Saddam Hussein and install a democratic regime in his stead. Unfortunately, however, the Iraqi opposition itself has yet to articulate anything like the ideals that will be required to prevent the outbreak of civil war if and when Saddam’s iron grip is broken. Its members squabble among themselves and show no sign of producing even the precursor to a new constitution that would guarantee the rights and freedoms which alone can form the basis of rule by popular consent. If this is Washington’s idea of nation-building, it has learned nothing from previous failures in this and other parts of the world.
One of the main problems facing the Iraqi opposition figures under American tutelage is that they have little direct contact with the population they would govern. Apart from the Kurdish parties that enjoy
de facto self-rule in the north of the country, the movement is both rootless and aimless. Isolated from the people who would have to support them, its leaders cannot help but have a limited understanding of their aspirations. In addition, by accepting US sponsorship and failing to build contacts with Arab governments, they risk being viewed as traitors by the very people they want to save from dictatorship.
The US government cannot do everything for its Iraqi friends, and nor should it. They must do most of the important work themselves, and they have to start now. If and when the United States invades Iraq, the aftermath will require some form of structure to hasten the processes of reconstruction and reconciliation. In this sense, it is not just Saddam who faces a monumental countdown.

A war of starvation, the Israeli war on the Palestinian people

By Jamil Hilal

The Daily Star, 1/29/03

In outlining the effects of events since September 2000 on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, one needs to be careful in specifying exactly what is impacting what, rather than dealing with the effects in isolation from their causes. This is necessary to avoid falling into the trap of blaming the victim, a phenomenon that is a characteristic of much current, uncritical political narrative.
Therefore, when comparing the socioeconomic situation as it existed previously to the current situation, we need to remind ourselves that the underlying cause of dramatic deterioration is not the intifada as such, but the policies adopted by successive Israeli governments to crush the intifada and thwart its aims. The basic aims of the second intifada (like those of the first) were not more extensive than ending the occupation and all that has come with it: colonial settlement building on stolen land engulfing Palestinian population centers; daily humiliation; obstruction of the autonomous development of Palestinian society; and, in short, standing in the way of Palestinians exercising their right to self-determination.
A central element of the Israeli governments’ strategy in crushing the intifada consists of subjecting the population to extreme economic hardship via a series of measures. First, Israel has closed the Israeli labor market to Palestinian labor, which before the intifada employed a quarter of the Palestinian workforce. Second, the Israeli government has fragmented Palestinian society by blockading its towns, villages and camps, thus making it impossible or at best extremely difficult for labor and commodities to move from one area to another. Third, the Israeli government has demolished the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) central institutions and the minor symbols of sovereignty that the PA had. This was accomplished by withholding from the PA its financial dues and systematically destroying its material and institutional infrastructure.
The results are that unemployment rates have jumped from about 10 percent just before the eruption of the intifada to five or six times that rate (depending on what definition one uses for employment). Consequently, the poverty rate which is set by the World Bank at $2 per day per person shot up from 20 percent in 1999 to about 50 percent toward the end of 2002, and is likely to keep rising as savings and other resources are exhausted. Poverty is what the future holds for most people as both the public and private sectors are weakened and their resources used up. Losses in the private sector have been enormous both in productive capacity (and thus employment capacity) and in terms of investments, both local and external.
The Palestinian public sector was heavily hit as its tax revenues dwindled to half their pre-intifada levels and as donor assistance began to fall off. The ability of the PA to provide basic services (education, health, personal security and social assistance) has received a very hard knock. The result of all this has been rapidly declining standards of living, increasing poverty and the rapid spread of malnutrition and anemia, particularly among children, the elderly and women. The PA’s monthly scramble to pay its employees (including teachers, policemen and health workers) adds to individual families’ feelings of insecurity. This is further enhanced by the military reoccupation of most Palestinian areas and daily sorties against the civilian population (assassinations, arrests, house demolitions, curfews). All this makes Palestinian society a very “high risk society.”
The Israeli strategy under the Sharon government to use the maximum possible economic, political, military and security pressures to quell the intifada has succeeded in creating untold suffering and misery among the Palestinian civilian population, but has also failed to address the roots of the intifada the Israeli military occupation, colonization and apartheid policies. There is sufficient evidence in history to show that repression, starvation and humiliation do not stop people from dreaming of their freedom or diminish their readiness to die for it.

Jamil Hilal is a sociologist and senior researcher at Muwatin in Ramallah. This commentary was published on bitterlemons.org, a website that presents Israeli and Palestinian viewpoints

Bush and extended play in Iraq

By Michael Young

The Daily Star, 1/29/03

Does the Bush administration have incriminating information on Iraqi weapons, as it alleges, or doesn’t it?
In an article Tuesday, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, stenographer to the mighty, reported: “The Bush administration has assembled what it believes to be significant intelligence showing that Iraq has been actively moving and concealing banned weapons systems and related equipment from United Nations inspectors.”
That this information might be released next week is good news, since the US made similar allegations in the past, with no evidence backing them up. Weeks ago the administration promised it would share intelligence with UN weapons inspectors. What this meant was unclear, but if some expected it would lead to the discovery of a “smoking gun” they were wrong.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that the US not only has evidence Iraq possesses banned weapons, but is actively concealing them “days or hours ahead of visits by UN inspection teams.” Woodward wrote that Washington had what a source called “compelling” and “unambiguous” intelligence proving this.
Ironically, it is the maligned Hans Blix who has provided the only compelling evidence to date. In his report to the Security Council Monday, he pointed out that Iraq might still have chemicals to produce the VX nerve agent, as well as 1,000 tons of other unreported chemical agents. He said the Iraqis might also have anthrax, and had produced no evidence that unauthorized rockets were destroyed.
Significantly, Blix did not ask for weapons inspections to be extended, in contrast to Mohammed al-Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Instead, the Swede allowed his revelations to be interpreted in opposing ways: Supporters of inspections could point to Blix’s resolve and advise he be given more time so that war might be avoided; opponents could argue that Blix gave them the evidence they needed to launch a war.
The Bush administration must have been happy with Blix’s report. It diluted a budding suspicion that Washington has no persuasive evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. Some have indeed suggested the administration may be bluffing, and the palpable ire of senators emerging from closed-door administration briefings on Iraq may corroborate this.
Blix shifted the debate on inspections. By not asking for an extension, he threw the matter back to the Security Council, hoping that by giving his teams more time the international body would strengthen their mandate. The issue has become one of political bargaining. There are signs that even the US is willing to allow inspectors several more weeks of hunting before it opts for war, and this for several reasons.
Officially, the Bush administration says it needs more time to deploy its forces to the Gulf. The Washington Post recently wrote that the “Pentagon has only begun sending major combat elements … and cannot assemble the force required for an invasion of Iraq until late February or early March.” The piece, which cited Defense Department officials, implied that any delay in a war was not the result of Washington’s growing isolation, but of military necessity.
That was probably the administration’s way of putting a brave face on a deteriorating diplomatic hand. Last week France and Germany, but also Russia and China, insisted that more time was needed for inspections. The administration responded with disdain. Nevertheless, George W. Bush does not want to go to war without the support of the Security Council. The US needs time to patch things up on that front.
The primary reason the administration will accept more inspections, however, is that the American public wants them. Polls last week showed that Bush is losing domestic support on Iraq, with a Washington Post-ABC News survey showing that 70 percent of respondents wanted weapons inspectors to be given at least several more months to do their work.
More ominously for Bush the poll found that 53 percent disapproved of his work on the economy, with only 43 percent approving. The president knows that an Iraq war, by pushing up oil prices, will hurt the economy, at least initially. He also knows that his father lost an election because while he focused on Iraq, economic discontent was on the rise.
That doesn’t mean war will be averted. Given the number of troops in the Gulf and, now, Blix’s report, war seems inevitable. However, Bush must, first, shore up both domestic support and his foreign alliances. This means more time for the UN. And time has a habit of being Washington’s worst enemy.

Michael Young writes a regular column for THE DAILY STAR

A few more weeks to await a ‘miracle’ and avoid conflict

An Arab press review, By The Daily Star, 1/29/03

Arab commentators see the UN arms inspectors’ mixed verdict on Iraq’s compliance with UN Resolution 1441 as a double-edged sword, providing ammunition to both advocates and opponents of a US invasion of the country.
The pan-Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabi headlines that the findings unveiled by Hans Blix and Mohammed al-Baradei provide “cover” both to Washington’s war plans, and also to France and Germany’s insistence that inspectors be given more time to search for any evidence of proscribed weapons.
Saudi Arabia’s daily Asharq al-Awsat writes that by acknowledging Iraq’s cooperation with their teams but demanding more, the two disarmament chiefs passed a verdict “that those who reject war can interpret as being in their favor, and those who are keen on war can also interpret in their favor.”
But it writes in its editorial that the Bush administration is likely to seize on three points raised by the inspectors to argue that Iraq is in material breach of 1441: its refusal to allow overflights by American U-2 spy planes; the refusal of Iraqi scientists to be interviewed in private; and the omissions in Iraq’s official account of its arms programs.
Asharq al-Awsat commends Blix and Baradei’s professionalism, and argues that they cannot be blamed for the conclusions Washington chose to draw from their report. But nor can they be counted on to prevent war. The responsibility for that rests with the countries that oppose war, who need to throw their weight behind their interpretation of the report, it says.
The Jordanian daily Al-Rai reports that while Baradei all but gave Iraq a clean bill of health on the nuclear front, Blix’s remarks about Iraq’s chemical, biological and ballistic programs were equivocal. He raised questions about Baghdad’s cooperation that added up to “implicit accusations,” while remaining vague about what his suspicions were, much as the US has done.
Al-Rai says the contrast between the two men’s presentations may be simply due to the fact that it is harder to conceal nuclear activity than it would be to hide material of the kind Blix’s team is looking for.
Nevertheless, the UN chief’s remarks have heightened suspicions that he is under “intense diplomatic and political pressure.” Blix gave his report a “political dimension” that was beyond his professional brief as an impartial official answerable to a world body that takes the prevention of war as one of its principal objectives, the Amman paper complains in its leader.
Al-Rai expects the US and Britain to pull out all the stops to persuade other Security Council members to endorse military action. Yet their reluctance to allow the arms inspectors to continue their work “lends credibility to those who say that the war decision has been taken, and the issue of disarming Iraq is only a pretext concealing other objectives that no one in the world has failed to notice be they economic objectives (oil) or political ones (deposing the existing regime).”
They seem oblivious to the disastrous consequences that war would have, the instability and violence it could generate in the region, and the terrorism and hatred it could fuel, “which ultimately would mean Washington and London winning the war but losing the peace.”
Nevertheless, Al-Rai concludes, there remains a chance of avoiding war, provided “the issue is kept firmly in UN hands until the end.”
In the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, Beshara Sharbel writes that while the inspectors’ report may provide a few weeks’ breathing space for Arab countries opposed to war, the only way they can prevent it is by persuading Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to step down.
He writes that the prospect of the arms inspections in Iraq being extended for another three weeks or so keeps open the “theoretical possibility” of avoiding war. But with the US massing forces in the region and reiterating its determination to change the regime in Baghdad, it would take a miracle for that to actually happen, as King Abdullah of Jordan remarked.
Washington made clear on the eve of the publication of the arms inspectors’ report that it already deemed Iraq to be in violation of 1441, while Secretary of State Colin Powell resurrected the incredible yet impossible to disprove charge that Saddam has links to Osama bin Laden’s network, Sharbel recalls.
“So long as the battle hasn’t begun, there remains a chance; and Blix’s report gives the Arabs some more time to spare Iraq the bitter cup of war.” But the arms inspections won’t be extended indefinitely, and Washington will not be persuaded to revert to its former policy of containment. Thus, if the slim chance that is at hand is to be put to any use, the Arabs must “openly and frankly demand that Iraq’s rulers relieve themselves of the task of ‘defending the nation’s honor’ and relinquish power as a gift to the Iraqi people,” he says.
Sharbel suggests that part of the reason Washington is likely to allow arms inspections to continue for a few more weeks is to complete its military buildup. Whether after that it seeks a second Security Council resolution to authorize military action “would appear a matter of its own choosing.” If it can get one, fine, and if it cannot it can count on a majority of Council members giving it “tacit approval” to go to war, or else claim that it already has the authorization under 1441.
The US will have no trouble finding some kind of justification for military action “unless the Arabs seize on the opportunity to launch a bold initiative that encourages Saddam to quit power, instead of lamenting the fate of Iraq’s children and the Arab order, and talking of conspiracies against the Arab nation that exist only in our imaginations.”
Abdelbari Atwan, publisher/editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi, writes that Saddam’s resignation is what the Jordanian monarch had in mind when he said a “miracle” was needed to resolve the crisis.
“But the miracle King Abdullah alluded to cannot happen, for we are not in the age of miracles, and the Iraqi president will not take flight to Russia, Cuba or Holy Mecca seeking sanctuary, to spend his remaining days near the Holy shrines giving thanks to God for his survival. Nor, as his record shows, is he the type to avoid a confrontation, much though he would prefer like his fellow Arab rulers, most of whom are repressive dictators too to survive in power.”
Atwan adds that the Jordanian monarch was not just speculating when he said it was too late to resolve the standoff peacefully.
“He has visited the White House five times in the past two years and must have based his verdict on information, rather than merely expressing a personal gut feeling as Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah did when he said he was convinced there would be no war.”
Atwan argues that the way world financial markets have been panicking means that Western business leaders expect the war to be “catastrophic.” America’s apologists in the Arab media have been saying the war will be over in a matter of three weeks. But if that were truly the expectation, the markets would not have been reacting so negatively, and the US dollar, usually perceived as a safe haven in wartime, would not have fallen so sharply.
“The Iraqis aren’t going to greet the American invaders with flowers and ululations, otherwise the American and British financial markets wouldn’t be collapsing and anti-Americanism wouldn’t be rife and Bush wouldn’t be the most detested leader in the world,” Atwan writes.
The editor in chief of Asharq al-Awsat, Abderrahman al-Rashed, reserves his venom for the Iraqi leader, and implies that Arabs should not oppose a war aimed at removing him from power. He reminds readers of how much tension and conflict Saddam’s regime has caused in the region since the 1970s, and argues that “in his absence the Arab world would be able to breathe and give itself a chance to stabilize and arrest the fragmentation of the region, which he turned into the world’s laughingstock.”
“I understand and share the fears of the majority that attempting to remove a regime like this will be like trying to extract a decaying tooth. It will hurt and it will bleed. But we must remember that it will eventually have to be extracted, and if it is not done today there can be no escaping that ordeal later,” Rashed says.
War is always cruel, usually makes innocent people suffer and can never be entered into lightly, he continues. “But it is politically shortsighted for the majority here in our region to defend the Baghdad regime’s right to survive.” The idea that the Baghdad regime should be defended in order to safeguard the Arab political order as a whole is wrongheaded, “not in principle (the principle of rejecting external intervention) but in choosing the worst possible regime to defend.”
On the contrary, Rashed writes, the Arabs should dissociate themselves from a regime that discredits them one that the rest of the world can easily justify attacking and changing, that is headed for defeat “either today or tomorrow,” and which “we, rather than America, should have undertaken to remove.”
In the Beirut daily An-Nahar, Gebran Tueni says the US appears only to be waiting to complete its military buildup, and for the mid-February Eid al-Adha to pass, before going on the offensive. Writing from the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, he remarks that Powell pre-empted Blix and Baradei’s report by signaling that the US did not need any authorization for war, and would do so on its own if its allies were reluctant to join it.
Tueni adds that there was also much discussion at Davos of the kind of changes that would sweep the region as a result of an American invasion of Iraq, with the US pressing Arab regimes to democratize, and apparently encouraging the emergence of a new alliance bringing together India, Israel and Turkey.
Only a “fool” would not expect the entire region from the Atlantic to the Gulf to be transformed as an “inevitable result” of a war, he quotes one expert as saying.
Tueni agrees with the assessment of King Abdullah that only a “miracle” can prevent war. “That miracle, according to a top Arab diplomat, can only take the form of Saddam’s abdication. But those who know the man know that the miracle will not happen, unless there is a coup inside the country,” he writes.
Al-Hayat’s Jalal Mashta expects the Bush administration to focus increasingly on the regime’s undemocratic and repressive credentials as a way of justifying war, having failed to persuade the world that either “disarmament” or “self-defense” offer a pretext.
But while the regime “has never been guilty of democracy” and many Iraqis want rid of it, no other country is entitled to determine another’s government, he says. Powerful countries have, of course, often tried “from behind the scenes” to depose or install rulers in other states. But by openly seeking to do so in Iraq, Washington appears to be trying to ascertain that at its godly “right.”
“Should that ‘right’ be established, there’s no guarantee that the government Washington will set up and sponsor in Baghdad will not end up meeting the same fate as its predecessor, should America deem that appropriate,” Mashta remarks.
Moreover, the US is also arrogating to itself the “right” to establish a colonial-style mandate over Iraq, and to take “custody” of the country’s oil and award stakes in it to its allies, hinting that “anyone who wants a slice of the Iraqi cake will get one that is proportionate to the help they provided in seizing it.”
Through such behavior, says Mashta, and by flouting the rules of international behavior it expects everyone else to follow, “Washington risks turning the coalition against terror into an anti-American alliance.”

U.S., UK looking for excuses
Gulf News, 29-01-2003

The much-anticipated report from UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has been made. Sitting alongside his colleague from the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed El Baradei, Blix delivered a sombre report which many infer as being tantamount to endorsing the call by the U.S. and the UK for war against Iraq. Yet El Baradei was not so assertive in his condemnation of Iraq, claiming that while no evidence had been found to support any theory that Iraq was restarting its nuclear programme, more time would be needed - a couple of months, he thought - in which a complete report or "clearance certificate" may be able to be supplied to the Security Council.

   Yet Blix is less certain, accusing the Iraq administration of being less than co-operative and insufficiently proactive in assisting the weapons inspectors. This has immediately been seized upon by both America and Britain who now both make the charge that Iraq is in "material breach" of UN Resolution 1441. This charge raises the level of rhetoric considerably, since it is a "material breach" of said resolution which could entitle the UN to move against Iraq. America and Britain, both, claim that it is not necessary to obtain a further resolution from the UN Security Council for permission to go to war against Iraq. Yet other members of the Security Council, including the permanent members, Russia, China and France, are less certain. They also have indicated that before such a decision is made, it is desirable to get consensus and authority from the Security Council, thus demonstrating full support for such action.

   But America is less sure that a further resolution is necessary, even though Britain has expressed the opinion that it is desirable to have everyone onside. It is likely, therefore, that America will temper its patience and allow the discussions to take place - but not ad infinitum, since the logistics of fighting in Iraq during summer have to be borne in mind.

   Now the Security Council is meeting behind closed doors, and likely receiving more information from both Blix and El Baradei, who doubtless had to be guarded in their public presentation of their reports to the Security Council. Such information may also include confidential material and intelligence, which has now been supplied to the weapons inspectors by America and Britain, demonstrating and reinforcing more positively the line taken by Blix. A line which was received by the general public with some alarm, since it was much harsher than had been predicted, doubtless to the pleasure of the American administration.

   Blix - mainly Blix - will have a hard time trying to persuade the Security Council, other than the U.S. or the UK, of the necessity of war when so little evidence has been found to warrant such an extreme measure. In their desperation, and in an attempt to maintain pressure on Iraq, America and Britain have persuaded Blix that the evidence should no longer be a "smoking gun" but inadequate co-operation given to the weapons inspectors. By moving the goalposts in this way, it smacks very much of frustration on the part of the warmongers and a desire to go to war on any excuse. Yet, despite all that, it is most likely that more time will be given to the weapons inspectors, as requested by the international community. Not least because neither America nor Britain have yet convinced their own people of the necessity of such a war.

Resentment toward U.S. growing in Britain
By Glenn Frankel, Gulf News, 29-01-2003
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In a recently televised satire in Britain titled Between Iraq and a Hard Place, George W. Bush is depicted as an idiot who can't seem to grasp why Saddam Hussain isn't co-operating with the U.S. timetable for war. American democracy is defined as "where there are two candidates and the one with the most votes loses," and Britain's role in the forthcoming military campaign is starkly simple:

"What is it that the Americans want from us?" asks a British official.

"From us?" replies an army general. "Dead bodies."

Prime Minister Tony Blair is the Bush administration's staunchest international ally in its campaign against Iraq and war on terrorism. But apart from Blair and his inner circle, there is growing unease and resentment here not just over Iraq but over U.S. power and foreign policy in general, according to political analysts, commentators and politicians.

There are fears that the United States is determined to act without heeding the concerns of its allies - and fears that Britain will be dragged along in its wake. These fears have spread far beyond the traditionally anti-American hard left - known here as "the usual suspects" - to include moderates and conservatives as well.

"There's no question the anxiety is moving into the mainstream," said Raymond Seitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Britain who is vice chairman of Lehman Brothers Europe. The debate here, he said, has shifted. "It's not about how you deal with weapons of mass destruction or how you combat the threat of terrorism in the world, it's about how do you constrain the United States. How do you tie down Gulliver?"

Opinion polls show that support for military action against Iraq is at its lowest level ever among the British public. The Guardian newspaper and the ICM polling group found last week that 30 per cent of respondents now support the idea, down from 42 per cent in October. Opposition has risen from 37 per cent to 47 per cent.

Other signs of the swing in mood: efforts by the tabloid Daily Mirror to build circulation with an all-out campaign against an attack on Iraq; the sold-out success of The Madness of George Dubya, a north London theatrical satire that depicts a child-like president in pajamas with a giant teddy bear; and the continuing bestseller status of Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men, a blistering critique of the United States.

Criticism of America here begins with Iraq but quickly broadens to accusations that Washington is aiding and abetting Israeli repression of Palestinians and is a gluttonous society of large cars, fast food and environmental degradation seeking cheap Iraqi oil to feed its consumption habits.

"People in America don't understand that Blair is a rather lonely figure within his own party and within the country as a whole" concerning war and the alliance with the United States, Michael Gove, a columnist for The Times of London newspaper, said. "Anti-Americanism is a real force here and a growing one. It starts with tightly focused arguments but broadens into the crudest of caricatures."

Healthy criticism

Other British observers insist that what's growing here isn't anti-Americanism, but rather healthy criticism of a superpower gone awry. "Being critical of U.S. policy does not constitute a prejudice," said Godfrey Hodgson, a veteran journalist and author. "A vast majority of the British people are favourable to the United States, but a substantial majority are opposed to George W. Bush."

Much of the outrage is indeed aimed at Bush, whose colloquial speaking style and Texas accent don't go over well here. A cartoon in a week ago Sunday's Observer newspaper depicted him as the Lone Ranger and Blair as Tonto. When Blair expresses doubts about the Iraq campaign, Bush replies: "Shut up, Tonto, and cover my back."

"Bush is a gift for anti-American cartoonists," Timothy Garton Ash, director of the European Studies Centre at St. Antony's College at Oxford University, said. "If Bill Clinton were still in the White House, I suspect it'd be a very different story."

Garton Ash insists that anti-Americanism is not moving into the British mainstream. "America is the new Rome, the hyper-power, and when you're the imperial power, you get a lot of stick," he said. "But this isn't a clash of civilisations between Europe and America."

British opposition differs from that found in other European allies such as France, which has a complicated relationship with the United States, and Germany, with its post-World War II aversion to warfare.

By contrast, Britain has a martial tradition similar to America's, and its relationship to the United States remains one of the world's enduring love affairs. After the September 11, 2001, attacks, Blair was one of the first foreign leaders to express sympathy and solidarity, and he sat next to Laura Bush during President Bush's speech to Congress regarding the attacks.

Queen Elizabeth II emerged from a memorial service for the victims at St. Paul's Cathedral with tears in her eyes after singing Battle Hymn of the Republic with fellow mourners.

But there always was an alternative view that the United States had gotten some of what it deserved, that the attacks were payback for decades of ignoring Third World grievances. At a BBC televised panel discussion two days after the attacks, a studio audience fired hostile remarks at former U.S. Ambassador to Britain Philip Lader and jeered his responses.

"We share your grief, America - totally," wrote columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, one of the panelists, afterward. "But you must share our concerns."

Novelist John le Carre wrote in an op-ed piece in The Times newspaper that "America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War."

For the traditional left, said Emmanuele Ottolinghi, a research fellow at the Middle East Centre at St. Antony's, anti-Americanism has replaced a belief in socialism as the common denominator that holds disparate groups together. It also binds the left to Britain's growing Muslim population, anti-globalists and anti-Zionists. "Anti-American-ism is glue that holds them together, and hatred of Israel is one aspect," he said.

But there is also unease in the establishment. Some of the architects of Britain's involvement in the first Arabian Gulf conflict in 1991, including former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, former Foreign Minister Douglas Hogg and the former permanent undersecretary of the ministry of defence, Michael Quinlan, have expressed deep reservations about the new campaign similar to those expressed in the United States by Republican veterans such as Brent Scowcroft and James Baker.

Hurd in several opinion pieces has questioned whether overthrowing Saddam Hussain, the Iraqi president, would make the world safer from terrorism or simply trigger more attacks, especially if no steps are taken to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Next month, when the Oxford Union debates the proposition that "This House believes the USA is the greatest barrier to world peace," one of those speaking in favour will be Paul Robinson, a lecturer in security studies at the University of Hull.

He is a former military intelligence officer who calls himself a right-of-centre conservative, yet he argues that the Bush administration is destroying the long-standing international consensus that nations shouldn't wage war unless they are seriously threatened. "We are just becoming naked aggressors," he said of the United States and Britain.

Few observers believe the current unease here poses a serious political danger to Blair, whose ruling Labour Party has a massive majority in Parliament and the backing on Iraq of the leadership of the opposition Conservatives. But if Washington fails to seek UN Security Council support for military action, or if a military campaign bogs down, Blair could face trouble.

Having gotten much credit for steering Bush toward the UN route last fall, Blair needs to do so again when he visits Washington next weekend, analysts said. "He needs plausibly to be able to say we're doing this with the UN," Garton Ash said.

Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service

Brink of a new precipice

By Nihal Singh, Khaleej Times, 1/29/03

AS THE drumbeats of war get louder, the seemingly inevitable American-led invasion of Iraq and its fearful aftermath are giving way to a transformation of the international scene, with nations seeking to redefine the George W. Bush administration's credo of US military and political supremacy. Spats between America and its European allies are not new nor are differences between Washington and client states.

What is startlingly new is the gumption of not merely the traditional dissenter France but of Germany and such unquestioning allies as Turkey and South Korea to challenge American assumptions about 'regime change' in Iraq and its hardline North Korea policy. The rebuff of the old European Nato members to a US request for playing a subsidiary role in the looming war on Iraq has come as a jolt to Washington.

Whether it is the "periodic madness" that grips the US, as the writer John Le Carre has suggested, or a deeper philosophical divide between a post-September 11, 2001 America and much of the remaining world can be debated. Beyond doubt is the fact that not only are the US and its traditional Cold War European allies drifting apart but the latter believe that the basic assumptions of civilised life and society are being challenged by Washington.

Voices of dissent in America are making themselves heard for the first time since September 11 but no one expects them to interfere in W's war plans. The coterie of hawks around the US president will remain supreme and the swing of the pendulum will not take place until the disastrous consequences of the war make themselves apparent. The strength of European feelings cannot be doubted, even in a Britain whose prime minister is giving total support to W. In all probability, the US will launch a war, with the approval of the UN Security Council or otherwise, but the debris left by such an eventuality will come to haunt America.

It is a telling reminder of the present state of things that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should declare France and Germany 'old Europe', fastening on the pro-American formerly communist new members of Nato, possessing the proverbial zeal of new converts, to seek comfort. And countries such as Turkey and South Korea are taking swipes at the United States on its new policies and priorities.

The issues being defined go far beyond the looming tragedy of Iraq. In diverse ways, Europeans, those aspiring to be European and others are chipping away at the proclaimed American dictum of being the king of the universe and the supreme arbiter of conflicts, wherever they might occur. Although in the end America obtained a unanimous UN Security Council resolution on Iraq (1441), France led a two-month guerrilla war to clip American wings. And the contortions spokesmen of the US administration are having to undertake to justify war, despite the continuing UN inspectors' labours in Iraq, are proof of the efficacy of salami tactics.

The truth is that apart from those who choose to identify with W for opportunistic or ideological reasons, a dissonance is growing between America and most other nations over world view and history. For W and his acolytes, it is not the end of history but the beginning of a new American imperial age. But this new age that is being trumpeted sits ill with human progress and the 21st century. The world rebels at being dragged back to the colonial era and advances in science and technology have opened up new avenues for rebels - individuals and nations - to fight their battles.

How long this new and unique crisis in the world will last will depend, above all, on the time it takes the resilience of the American system to correct W's skewed priorities and ambitions. It is, above all, an American disease, but unlike McCarthyism and the Vietnam war, much of America, traumatised by September 11, is in thrall to the neo-conservative mantra of maintaining world supremacy at any cost. Even many of those who define themselves as liberals take it for granted that America, being a benign power, should rule the world.

Contradictions abound elsewhere. A European Union that is expanding and is seeking a more unified security and foreign policy is witnessing the spectacle of one of its important members, Britain, going over to W's camp while the right-leaning administrations of Italy and Spain are tilting towards the American view. An independent European defence force remains a concept, rather than reality, while an expanded European Union next year still faces the problem of inviting Turkey in.

There is a growing feeling that the world is teetering on the brink of a new precipice. In the eyes of many, the new world gendarme is of the roguish variety and cannot be trusted because he is feathering his own nest. Taking the Bush administration at face value, it is going after President Saddam Hussein to protect itself and the world from terrorism and to inaugurate a more democratic dispensation in the Arab world. If there are any idealistic undertones to W's policy, they have got lost in the reality of oil politics and America's continuing affection for some dictators.

It is perhaps the first time in history that poised as America is for launching a major war, its rhetoric is so roundly dismissed by the rest of the world. Serious thinkers are appalled at the inability of the neo-conservatives driving W's policy to think through the horrendous consequences of what they are about to begin. Saddam-fixation hides many other objectives and while the world is powerless to stop the American juggernaut, it cannot love the dangerous dimensions of American megalomania.

Despite last-minute efforts to slow down the American juggernaut, the massing of close to 200,000 American and other troops and instruments of war around Iraq has its own logic and momentum. As one who watched the final days and hours of the last Gulf War from Baghdad, I can smell gun powder. The bugle of war has been sounded. All that remains to be determined is the diplomatic foreplay that can alter the timing.

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