Ibero-American News Digest
Mexico's Fox 'Disagrees' with Bush War Policy
President Vicente Fox addressed the Mexican nation two hours after U.S. President George Bush issued his 48-hour war ultimatum March 18, to state that Mexico is a nation of peace, and "disagrees" with the war policy. Mexico laments "the path to war," he said, and while it is true that Mexico shares the values and goals of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain, "We disagree on this occasion with the timeframe and procedures. We maintain our belief that the diplomatic means [for disarmament of Iraq] have not yet been exhausted." The world must continue to promote solutions which fulfill the letter and the spirit of the UN Charter, which establishes that the use of force must always be the exceptional and ultimate recourse, "which is only justified when the other paths have failed," Fox said.
What is at stake today is the form itself in which the international community responds to disarmament and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the Mexican President argued. Multilateralism must not be eroded in this effort.
Reflecting the fear of the reprisals threatened against Mexico, Fox repeated several times that Mexico's agreements with the United States are much greater than its differences.
Fox announced also that necessary measures had been taken to guarantee the security of strategic installations in Mexico (oil, ports, etc.), andwith less credibilityto guarantee economic stability. "At a time in which the countdown toward war begins, it is time that our values of peace, plurality, and tolerance be strengthened.... These are times in which to guard the higher interests of the nation. These are times of unity," he said.
Mexico's Political Parties Join Fox in Opposition to the War
The PRI Party, representing the opposition to the ruling PAN Party of President Fox during the campaign for midterm elections in July, nonetheless issued a statement of support for the President's reiteration of Mexico's commitment to the principles of self-determination and non-intervention, and multilateralism, as the only legitimate mechanism to guarantee peace and international security. Armando Salinas Torre, the PANista who heads the leadership body of the Chamber of Deputies, supported Fox's call for unity behind the government's policy of peace, noting that this is the policy which Congress had advocated. He announced that Congress would issue a statement in response to Fox's statement.
War on Iraq Could Blow Out Brazil, Argentina Economies
A war on Iraq could cause a Brazilian debt blowout and endanger Argentina's economy, warned the Argentine daily Clarin March 11. "Immediately, the greatest danger to the local economy [from a war on Iraq] comes" not from any direct effects, but "from Brazil's fragility," the daily stated. "Although Rio de Janeiro is more than 11,000 kilometers from Baghdad, the bombing of Iraq could be much more damaging to the Brazilian economy, than to many of [Iraq's] neighboring countries which have no debt."
After quoting an executive from Standard & Poor's Office on Sovereign Debt, who warned that "Brazil is highly vulnerable today to a contraction in capital flows," Clarin pointed to remarks from a Buenos Aires economist, who said that "Brazil has six months to improve, before it is devoured by a hostile market."
Brazil Daily Condemns Bush's 'Law of the Strongest' Doctrine
George Bush's foreign policy is based on a single concept: the law of the strongest, Brazil's O Estado de Sao Paulo charged in a scathing March 19 editorial. Saddam may be a bloody tyrant and war criminal, Estado said, "but he represents no threat to 'the security of the world.'" It is only Bush's "rhetoric of fear that allows him to turn multilateral collective security institutions into a tabula rasa, for having countered Washington's imperial will." The only goal Washington ever intended to allow was "Saddam's removal, and Iraq's occupation." The role that was to be attributed to the UN in this process, was simply to rubberstamp the U.S. decision. "Had it done so, then appearances could have been maintained on both sides of the Atlantic: America couldn't be attacked for acting unilaterally, or Tony Blair for being Bush's 'poodle.'" Were the UN not to accept that role, "better for the new American right, which has among its most sacred dogmas a foreign policy ... based on the principle of the pure power of the state...."
Now, Estado concluded, the taking of Iraq really means the redrawing of "the political map of the entire, explosive Middle East, which the [American] hard-line has wanted from before Sept. 11." What remains to be seen, "will be the political costs of that war, involving, beyond Blair's career, the fate of the UNO, and U.S. relations with Europe."
Colombia Daily: Bush Ultimatum Illegal; Can Lead to New World Order
Despite the decision of the Uribe government in Colombia to endorse Bush's imperial war drive against Iraq, the leading Establishment daily in Colombia, El Tiempo, devoted its lead editorial March 18 to a violent attack on the Bush Administration's imperial folly. Entitled "War Is Declared," the editorial began:
"Bush's ultimatum to Hussein is the announcement of an illegal war, because the countries that attack Iraq will be doing so against international law.... The leap to war consolidates the rupture of the Atlantic Alliance that has contributed to world stability since the end of World War II, seals European division, proclaims the loud failure of international diplomacy, and opens a breach between those governments [of the Azores meeting] and the peoples of the world who on Saturday [March 15] once again rejected war."
Of preventive war, El Tiempo said: "Just as citizens are not permitted to hang criminals from the nearest tree, neither is the international lynching of a tyrant acceptable." The editors concluded: "Barring a miracle, it now remains only to hope that the Iraqi people will not pay for the faults of a dictator and the stubbornness of a power, with hundreds of thousands of lives. But we will have to return again and again to this cruel theme that changes the ordering of the world."
Other Ibero-American Reactions to the Iraq War
*Brazil: President Lula da Silva sent a message to the U.S. government, criticizing the intervention into Iraq without the support of the United Nations. "We all wish to live peacefully, and [wish] that the norms of international law be fully respected." Lula said Brazil did everything in its power to keep the war from happening, and they now fear for the lives of the innocents in the "friendly countries" of the Middle East. Foreign Minister Celso Amorim reported that Lula's proposal for a world heads-of-state summit still stands.
*Chile: On March 18, Chile, one of the rotating UN Security Council members, expressed its "profound disappointment" at the failure to find a "multilateral solution" to the crisis. "This seriously affects the efficiency of the principal body in charge of protecting the maintenance of international peace and security," a Chilean Foreign Ministry statement said. Chile's Ambassador to the UN, Gabriel Valds, said, "It is a tragedy. Another tragedy is going to begin now."
*Peru: Foreign Minister Alan Wagner said on March 18 that Peru does not agree with any type of unilateral U.S. military intervention in Iraq. Peru takes its position based on the norms of international law.
*Argentina: President Eduardo Duhalde said, "We are against this war, and we are not going to support it or take part in it."
Israel Pushes Argentina To Strike Out at Iran
Adding to the growing threat of general war in the Middle East, Israel is now pressuring Argentina to name the Iranian government as directly responsible for the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish social center, both in Buenos Aires. On March 17, the 11th anniversary of the 1992 embassy bombing, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom issued a statement saying that Iran "planned the attacks against Israeli objectives in Argentina in 1992 and 1994," and demanded that Argentina get moving on the investigation of these events, and "punish all the guilty in Iran, Lebanon, and Argentina." Iran "is responsible; it is the hand which directed the attacks," Shalom said. Not even the Argentine judge investigating the bombings has implicated the nation of Iran in this way, identifying only "Iranian radicals."
Charges similar to Shalom's appear in the report issued recently by SIDE, Argentina's state intelligence service. Israel's Mossad had significant input into the report's preparation, and three weeks ago, SIDE president Miguel Angel Toma travelled to Jerusalem to personally deliver a copy to the head of the Mossad. Shalom made positive references to the report in his March 17 statement.
While Toma was pleased with Shalom's remarks, the Foreign Ministry, which has been attempting to carefully rebuild a relationship with Iran, was said to be "disconcerted" by the Israeli official's accusations. On March 18, Deputy Foreign Minister Fernando Petrella called in Israeli Ambassador Benjamin Oron, to ask that the evidence Shalom said he possessed regarding Iran, be transmitted to the Argentine government. Oron said he would relay the message, but complained that many Argentine government officials hadn't attended the 11th anniversary commemoration, in Buenos Aires, of the 1992 bombing. One high-level diplomat remarked to the daily Clarin that the Israelis are pressuring Argentina to go after Iran, because it is the "next target" in George W. Bush's "axis of evil," after Iraq.
Sao Paulo Assassination: Is Brazil Becoming 'A Colombia'?
The March 14 murder of a Brazilian judge provokes the question: Is Brazil becoming "a Colombia"? Judge Jose Antonio Machado Dias, age 47, who had been in charge of various top organized-crime/drug-trafficking cases, was ambushed and assassinated on March 14 on the streets of Presidente Prudente, the city in Sao Paulo state where he lived.
All the security organs of the state will be deployed against organized crime and drug-trafficking, President Lula da Silva vowed March 16. "We cannot remain with our hands folded, while groups of criminals and drug-traffickers seek to set up territories in the country free of all control." The President's formulation, "territories free of all control," answers the new U.S. doctrine being pushed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Southern Command head Gen. James Hill, that "ungoverned areas" in Ibero-America are targets for supranational military action.
Security was immediately redoubled around every judge in Sao Paulo state. Senate President Jose Sarney, Sen. Magno Malta (who headed the Parliamentary Investigatory Committee into Drug Trafficking), the Association of Magistrates of the State of Rio de Janeiro, and Raymundo Damsceno, Secretary General of the Roman Catholic National Council of Bishops, were among the voices who warned that Brazil must take action because it is rapidly becoming like Colombia, where the drug trade infiltrates, terrifies, and paralyzes the judiciary.
Paulo Sergio Domingues, president of Ajufe, the Association of Federal Judges of Brazil, urged the government to focus on the heads of organized crime, which are not located in the favelas (shantytowns), but in the apparatus of "money-laundering, and arms- and drug-trafficking."
One leading suspect in ordering the hit is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia's (FARC) main trafficker, Fernandinho Beira Mar, who runs the Rio de Janeiro drug gangs from his jail cell. Judge Machado's last decision had been to turn down one of Beira Mar's legal requests.
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