Southwest Asia News Digest
LaRouche Youth Movement Delegation in Yemen
Yemen Independence Day, Nov. 30, was celebrated this year with speeches by President Saleh, notables and distinguished guests, before a National Youth Congress in the capital, Sanaa. Muriel Mirak-Weissbach, an EIR Editorial Board member and representative of LaRouche, who had come to Yemen with a delegation of the LaRouche Youth Movement, was asked to address the congress. She sketched the fight of LaRouche and the LYM to create a new leadership, for a New Bretton Woods as the exit from the crisis, and said that LaRouche's strategy is for a dialogue of civilizations. President Saleh shook her hand and complimented her on her remarks before addressing the assembly. LaRouche's intervention is very prominently featured in the Yemen media.
Israeli Peace Pioneer Addresses Washington Event On 'Israel After Arafat'
On Dec. 3, at a well-attended event in Washington, D.C., Maxim Ghilan, the founder of the International Jewish Peace Union, and publisher of Israel and Palestine Strategic Update, laid out his analysis of the situation in Israel and Palestine.
First, Ghilan reiterated, as he has said in several meetings in the nation's capital, including a dialogue with EIR, that the intention of Ariel Sharon is not, nor has it ever been, to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Instead, Sharon's view is to withdraw the settlers, and leave the army in place, even if it is technically outside the borders of Gaza, but well within striking distance to reoccupy the area.
Ghilan welcomed the candidacy of West Bank Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti to replace Yasser Arafat as President of the Palestinian Authority. Barghouti, he says, should be freed from his Israeli prison immediately. Barghouti is the one leader who has the political following and the fortitude to represent the Palestinian people. He is what Ghilan calls the Palestinian Nelson Mandela, and is the most able person to be the first President after Arafat. If Sharon is smart, he will release Barghouti, but precisely for that reason, Ghilan said, he did not expect Sharon to do it.
There are also leaders in the Palestinian camp who oppose Barghouti's release, he added, because they have been planning their own rise to power for a long time. People like Abu Mazen and Mohammed Dahlan are not acting out of malice. They just believe they have the right vision to lead a Palestinian state now that Arafat is gone. Ghilan assesses the situation in Palestine as very fragile, despite public assurances from the Palestinian Authority leadership that Palestinians are united.
Ghilan stressed that Israel is also very unstable. Sharon has two Likud "successors" breathing down his neckultra-rightwingers Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, a brutal militarist. Sharon is ruling with a minority coalitionat this point, no more than 40 out of 120 members. Ghilan's assessment is that there will be a political realignment, with both Likud and Labor splitting apart and new parties or blocs coming into being. One bloc will combine the elements of both parties who support a peace agreement and a two-state solution with the Palestinians, along with an economic program that addresses the general welfare, which is in a state of breakdown inside Israel.
The other bloc will be a new Israeli hawk party combining the anti-peace crazies who refuse to give up the Jewish settlements and who reject a Palestinian state. This bloc also supports the austerity measures that Netanyahu has been implementing as Finance Minister, which include drastic cuts in child support for single mothers with children, cuts in pensions, and throwing elderly Alzheimers patients out of institutions with no home carewhat Ghilan labelled as euthanasia.
Ghilan's forecast for the immediate period is that the region is a powderkeg, and the United States must come to its senses, and stabilize the situation.
First of all, the U.S. should back a Palestinian state immediately, says Ghilan, and make it viable through steps that include the following two crucial measures: provide for a military force (UN or multinational) that enforces the border between Israel and Palestine, and secondly, convert the massive U.S. military handouts to Israel, to economic aid, that will begin to solve the Israeli economic breakdown, and also provide the basis for real peace that will inevitably have to take the form of regional projects.
Among those attending the event were U.S. foreign service officers, diplomatic personnel, and Arab and U.S. representatives of think tanks and universities.
Marwan Barghouti Is Candidate for Palestinian Presidency
Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti has decided to submit papers for his candidacy for the Jan. 9 election to choose the Palestinian Authority's President and successor to Yasser Arafat.
The decision came as a surprise, because on Nov. 27, it was reported that Barghouti, the leader of the West Bank Fatah Party, the largest group in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), had endorsed Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as Fatah's candidate for President.
The papers for Barghouti's candidacy will be filed by his wife, who visited him on Dec. 1 in his Israeli jail. Palestinian officials had earlier said Barghouti was a candidate, but later, apparently under pressure, said he was not going to run.
Israeli troops arrested Barghouti in 2002, and he was sentenced to five consecutive life terms last June, after being convicted of attacks that killed five Israeli citizens. He denied involvement. So far, Israel has stonewalled all appeals to release Barghouti.
Israelis who have been involved in peace negotiations with the Palestinians for decades refer to Barghouti as the "Palestinian Mandela."
On Nov. 16, in a radio interview for Louisiana Live, former U.S. Presidential pre-candidate in 2004, Lyndon LaRouche noted that he has endorsed the release of Barghouti from prison, by the Israelis, in order to provide a Palestinian leader with whom the peace negotiations should take place. LaRouche noted that former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III, had also called for the release of Barghouti.
FBI Searches AIPAC Offices
FBI agents conducted searches Dec. 1 in offices of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as part of an espionage investigation over suspicions that senior AIPAC officials received classified information from Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, who worked in the office of neo-con Doug Feith, and passed the information to the government of Israel. Franklin is part of a small circle of operatives who are believed to be involved in the planning of "regime change" in Iranan illegal covert operation being run out of the rogue intelligence organization operating within Feith's section of the Defense Departmentthe Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.
Beginning in December 2001, Franklin attended secret meetings in Italy, with another top neo-con, Michael Ledeen, who was working as a "consultant" to Feith's Office of Special Plans. The meetings that Franklin attended were with the notorious Iran-Contra connected criminal Monsour Ghorbanifar. Franklin is reported in major Washington newspapers, as having passed a classified draft of a Presidential finding on "regime change" in Iran to AIPAC for the Israelis.
Sources in the Washington intelligence community reported that the FBI conducted the Dec. 1 search of AIPAC with "guns drawn," and were looking for evidence of other classified documents from operatives other than Franklin, that AIPAC may have accumulated. Several AIPAC employees were reportedly given subpoenas to appear before a U.S. grand jury for questioning.
EIR Online will be publishing a major background story updating the Franklin/AIPAC investigation.
Bush Blesses Israeli Right-Wing Refusal To Leave Settlements
An important meeting occurred in the Oval Office on Nov. 11. Natan Sharansky, the former political prisoner of the Soviet Union, who is now an ultra-right Israeli Likud minister in Ariel Sharon's cabinet, was received by President Bush. Sources close to Washington's Middle East policy, say that it is worth investigating how the Sharansky visit played a role in the resignation of Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Washington Post indicated that the Sharansky meeting with Bush occurred after Sharansky had been meeting with Cheney's office, for some time.
The meeting with Bush was arranged through a Yale classmate of hisTom Bernstein, who was also a co-owner with Bush of the Texas Rangers baseball team, and who raised about $100,000 for the Bush in 2000 campaign, earning the rank of "Pioneer." Bernstein sent Bush a pre-publication copy of Sharansky's upcoming book, The Case for Democracy, which is being heavily promoted by the neo-cons of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and David Horowitz's Front Page magazine, which is close to Lynne Cheney.
It is the first time since issuing his "Road Map," a policy which is known worldwide to have been "dead on arrival," that Bush has openly met with an opponent of Sharon, and one who opposes the withdrawal from Gaza, or from any settlements in the West Bank.
The contents of what Bush said to the Israeli minister is being kept secret. Sharansky reportedly pushed on Bush the idea of extending "land for democracy"not "land for peace," which was the concept used in the Oslo peace treaty. Sharansky gave a raving speech to AEI two days after meeting Bush, about how the Palestinian Authority is a dictatorship. His vague definition of "democracy" can be used to delay any negotiations with the Palestinians "forever," said an Arab source in Washington.
Sharansky, who is Minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, has demonstrated in support of the Gaza settlers, against Sharon's plans to "tear their homes away from them," and has been featured by the neo-cons as a vehicle to bring the model used to break up the Soviet Union, to the Middle East.
Although the Bush-Sharansky meeting took place on the eve of Powell's trip to Israel, Powell was not included. Present were Andrew Card (White House Chief of Staff), Stephen Hadley (the new National Security Advisor), and Elliot Abrams. No one from the State Department was there.
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