MIDEAST NEWS DIGEST
China Makes Clear Record: No Authority for Unilateral Military Action
At the close of meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Friday, China's Ambassador made it clear, in his final statement after the Council voted up the Resolution on Iraq, that his government has received assurances that the "co-sponsors" will not use the resolution as an automatic trigger for war. His statement, which was echoed by many othersincluding U.S. Ambassador John Negropontestated the resolution has eliminated "automaticity" so that military action against Iraq will be preceded by further discussions. China now holds the Presidency of the UN Security Council.
Ambassador Zhang Yishan stated: "The Chinese delegation voted in favor of the Security Council resolution that has just been adopted. Our decision is based on the Chinese government's consistent and clear-cut position on the question of Iraq. China firmly stands for a peaceful solution to the question of Iraq through political and diplomatic means and within the framework of the United Nations.
"China has all along urged Iraq to fully and strictly implement relevant Security Council resolutions and cooperate fully with the United Nations with a view to thoroughly accounting for and destroying its weapons of mass destruction. China has consistently held... that the Security Council should, depending on Iraq's implementation of relevant resolutions, consider suspending and eventually lifting the 12-year-long sanctions against Iraq....
"China supports the two-staged approach. The Chinese delegation has actively participated in all stages of the consultations on the draft resolution and put forward its views and suggestions in a constructive manner. We are pleased to note that after many rounds of consultations, the cosponsors of the draft resolution accommodated our concerns, and the council members have finally reached consensus.
"As the co-sponsors pointed out in their statements some moments ago, the purpose of the resolution is to achieve the disarmament of Iraq through effective inspections. The text no longer includes automaticity for authorizing the use of force. According to the resolution that has just been adopted, only upon receipt of a report by UNMOVIC and the IAEA on Iraq's noncompliance and failure to cooperate fully in the implementation of this resolution shall the Security Council consider the situation and take a position.
"The Security Council shoulders primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and securitya responsibility that is entrusted to it by the UN Charter. Now that the Security Council has adopted this important resolution at this crucial moment, we hope it will contribute to preserving the authority of the Security Council, facilitate a political settlement of the question of Iraq and enable an early return of U.N. inspectors to Iraq....
"Finally, we once again make a strong appeal to all parties to continue to strive for a political solution to the Iraqi issue. This is the common aspiration of the whole international community, particularly the Gulf and the Arab states. We sincerely hope that the adoption and smooth implementation of this resolution will be conducive to the effective conduct of weapons inspections in Iraq, and facilitate a final and comprehensive resolution of the Iraqi issue within the framework of the United Nations."
New U.S. National Security Policy Embraces Israeli-Style 'Targetted Assassinations'
A senior retired U.S. military intelligence official has alerted EIR that the Bush Administration's new national security doctrine of preemptive war, unveiled in September, was not primarily aimed against Iraq. The ex-official, who filed a series of letters of protest over the new doctrine with Administration officials, said that he was told, in response to the letters, that he was wrong in assuming that the new doctrine was related to the pending Iraq war. The new doctrine was actually put into operation for the first time, last week, with the drone missile attack that killed several purported Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen.
The source reported that, rather than alter the standing Presidential orders prohibiting assassinations, the Administration decided to promulgate the new national security doctrine, which approves of "preemptive strikes" against "enemy combatants"a more polite way of lifting the assassination ban. The source warned that there will be other attacks in the coming weeks, probably in northern Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia, as well as along the Pakistani border with Iran and Afghanistan. The targets of the preemptive attacks are al-Qaeda members and supporters, and some targets will be gone after with conventional bombing raids, while others will be stalked by U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Marine units.
If the source report is accurate, the first implementation of the new U.S. National Security Doctrine of "preemptive war" occurred on Nov. 3, when a U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles at a car in Yemen, killing the six occupants, described by U.S. officials as al-Qaeda membersincluding a "suspect" in the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole. It was later reported that one of the six people killed in the attack was an American citizen, alleged to have been the ringleader of an al-Qaeda "sleeper cell" in Lackawanna, N.Y., near Buffalo.
The Hellfire missile was fired from a CIA-operated Predator drone plane, according to numerous accounts which also reported that the CIA was operating under a Presidential Directive signed by President Bush after Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing covert actions by the CIA against Osama bin Laden's organization. The New York Post reported on Nov. 6 that the operation had been directed from a control room at Central Command in Tampa, and that the decision to fire was made by top brass along with Pentagon legal experts. While no one has officially acknowledged it, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the leading Bush Administration "Chickenhawks," boasted that the Yemen action was "a very successful tactical operation."
Sweden's Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, in contrast to Wolfowitz, called the Yemen murders "a summary execution that violates human rights."
At the Nov. 5 State Department briefing, spokesman Richard Boucher ducked numerous questions about the parallels with Israeli "targetted operations," which the U.S. has always condemned. One reporter asked about the State Department's annual Human Rights Report, which describes "extrajudicial killings" as against international humanitarian law. Boucher did not respond.
Brits Sponsor Iraqi Chalabi in Talks To Carve Up Iraq Oil Resources
Talks on carving up Iraq's oil wealth will continue in Britain next month. A meeting in Sandringham in December will be hosted by former Saudi Oil Minister Sheikh Yamani, and include a former head of Iraqi military intelligence, a former Iraqi government minister, and City of London "financiers," according to a Nov. 3 story by Peter Beaumont and Faisal Islam in the London Observer, entitled "Carve-up of Oil Riches Begins." (British Petroleum has complained that it has been left out of the Cecil Rhodes-style raw materials grab.) The Observer says that this meeting is a follow-up on October meetings that took place in Washington between the British-based Iraqi National Congress' Ahmed Chalabi and executives from three U.S. oil multinationals.
The agenda for the upcoming meeting will be Iraq's potential to produce as much oil as Saudi Arabia, and whether a post-Saddam Iraq might destroy OPEC. The Observer points out that it is the neo-conservatives ensconced in Washington thinktanks, together with INC officials, who are driving the planning for a post-Saddam Iraq. Among those named by the author is the Heritage Foundation's Ariel Cohen, who last September offered a detailed blueprint for the privatization of Iraq's nationalized oil industry, while warning that an INC-led government would not be likely to honor oil contracts with France, Russia and China. The Observer also points to remarks by President George W. Bush's economic adviser Larry Lindsey, on how a successful war against Iraq "would be good for the economy."
Iraqi Trade Fair a Major Success
In a report on Nov. 5, AP declared the two-week Baghdad trade fair to have been a major success since its start on Nov. 1. AP sources said that the level of trade had not been seen since before the Persian Gulf War. An estimated 20,000 government officials and businessmen are attending the fair, representing 1,200 companies from 49 nations. The event has been held annually since 1964, drawing people, on average, from 53 nations. This year most of the participants are from small firms that do not have governmental sponsorship.
(For more on the trade fair, see the AFRICA DIGEST.)
Israeli 'Breakaway' Nuclear Strike a Major Threat
"A retaliatory nuclear strike against Baghdad ... has never been more likelyparticularly with Ariel Sharon in power," writes reporter Ross Dunn from Jerusalem in the Nov. 3 issue of The Scotsman. Dunn warns that Sharon never agreed with then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's agreement to refrain from counterattacking Iraq during the Gulf War in 1991, and furthermore, the Israeli nuclear arsenal and posture is much stronger than it was then, and much more out in the open.
For example, Dunn points out, in 1999, a "U.S. Department of Energy document ranks Israel sixth among countries with nuclear weapons, ahead of India, and North Korea," and in 2000, the Knesset, Israel's Parliament, "debated Israel's nuclear weapons program for the first time." Even in the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, thinktanker Anthony Cordesman recently told Senators, "Israel has concluded that the credibility of its deterrent would be undermined if it rode out another series of attacks."
Cordesman's warning is confirmation of the "horrifying scenario" laid out in author Seymour Hersh's 1991 book, The Samson Option, in which Hersh warned that "the size and sophistication of Israel's arsenal allow men such as Ariel Sharon to dream of redrawing the map of the Middle East, aided by the implicit threat of nuclear force." Dunn quotes leading Israelisincluding Sharon himself, Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz, commander of the Israeli air force, and military correspondent Ze'ev Schiffthat Israel will respond: possibly with nukes that Schiff states "would eradicate Iraq as a country."
Under Sharon, One in Five Israelis Live in Poverty
According to Ha'aretz in its Nov. 4 issue, one in every five Israelis is living below the poverty line and more than half a million children (nearly 27%) live in poverty. These figures were gathered by the Israeli National Insurance Institute.
The number of those who have fallen below the poverty line increased by 81,000 last year, 50,000 of whom are children. Researchers forecast that the number of children in poverty could increase again dramatically, after the Likud Party budget cuts go into effect, sending 30% or more children into poverty. Also, the number of people living in poverty will increase from 1.17 million to 1.29 million (21.7%) of the population, while the number of children in poverty will rise to 605,000. Knesset Member Ran Cohen from the pro-peace Meretz Party, commented on the report, that he was "struck dumb," but was able to add, referring to the Sharon government, "This is a mark of Cain on the foreheads of those who brought about this situation."
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