In this issue:

400,000 March in London Against War

U.S.-French Fight Over Issue of New UN Security Council Resolution

Tony Blair Has 'Bad Day at Blackpool'

Blair a Practical Joke Played by History on the Voters?

Group of Jewish Danes Place Ad Blasting Sharon Policies

Debate About Basque Separatism Heating Up in Spain

Italian Deputy Foreign Minister: Argentine Resolution Will Be at Center of EU Chairmanship

From the Vol.1 No.31 issue of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published October 7, 2002

WESTERN EUROPEAN NEWS DIGEST

400,000 March in London Against War

According to BBC, some 400,000 people marched in London Sept. 28 to protest military attacks against Iraq, in one of the biggest anti-war rallies in Europe. According to the organizers of the march and rally in Hyde Park—the Stop the War Coalition and Muslim Association of Britain, as well as London Mayor Ken Livingstone—participation was 400,000, not the 150,000 estimated by police. There were only two arrests for minor offenses.

The protest also called for justice for the Palestinians.

Livingstone, himself a member of Tony Blair's Labour Party, said: "This is the largest march for peace I have seen in 30 years. This will have an electrifying effect on the Labour Party conference [which started Sept. 29 in Blackpool; see below] and on those MPs opposed to war." According to the rally organizers, the Blair government's "dossier" on Iraq has only increased public opposition to war.

Livingstone joined ex-MP Tony Benn and American Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector, in addressing the rally.

Tony Benn said in his speech: "Nothing can take the British people into a war that they do not accept and do not want." It would be "wholly immoral," he said, for the U.S. and Britain to attack Iraq. "Although when the bloodshed begins, if it does, criminal responsibility for what has happened will rest with those who have taken that decision, there is a share of responsibility with us as well."

U.S.-French Fight Over Issue of New UN Security Council Resolution

"A fierce U.S.-French quarrel" has erupted over the issue of a new UN Security Council resolution concerning Iraq, according to International Herald Tribune writer Joseph Fitchett in the Sept. 30 edition. The French are concerned that the U.S.-proposed overall inspections regime "amounts to giving a blank check to Washington to make war in the name of the United Nations," and that the Americans' 30-day ultimatum to Iraq may undermine Iraqi agreements with the UN on inspections.

Fitchett writes that "the risks of miscalculation between Washington and Paris appear high," and may lead to "even a divorce" between the two countries over Iraq.

He further claims that after French President Chirac's Sept. 27 "rebuff" to President Bush, "tempers were boiling this weekend on both sides of the Atlantic." "Hawks" in the Bush Administration are "infuriated" at the French, while French officials are "irate" at Washington. One former U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declared, "Don't they understand how close we Americans feel we are to war?"

Tony Blair Has 'Bad Day at Blackpool'

British Prime Minister Tony Blair suffered what some British press are characterizing as his worst day ever, at the annual Labour Party conference, held in Blackpool. Front-page headlines in the British papers are indicative: the Telegraph writing "Blair's Bad Day At Blackpool," and the Times, "Black Day for Blair as Party Revolts."

First of all, the trade unions rallied to vote down Blair's pet "Private Finance Initiative," the mechanism intended to privatize much of what remains of Britain's state sector. This is only the second time ever, that Blair has suffered a vote defeat at a Labour conference.

But all press concur that the much more damaging factor is Iraq. By a vote of 60% to 40%, a resolution against a new war, citing former South African President Nelson Mandela as its inspiration, was defeated—but the 40% vote for the resolution is enormous for such an event. The Telegraph reported conference delegates speaking of a "nightmare scenario," whereby there are mass defections from the Labour base, if Blair sticks with the Bush Administration in the war drive.

A senior continental European political figure commented that "what is happening in Britain this week, is the most interesting political dynamic now in Europe, since opposition to the war is always expected on the continent, while Britain is supposed to be the faithful ally of Washington. Blair had now better think twice, about plunging into a big war. If he ignores the sizable votes against his own Iraq policy, he might find himself out of a job, and back in the House of Commons, as Margaret Thatcher found herself, before the 1991 Gulf War began."

Blair a Practical Joke Played by History on the Voters?

Times of London writer Simon Jenkins in the paper's Oct. 2 issue produced a column titled, "No Man Is An Island, Except Maybe Tony Blair," which speculated, "Watching him yesterday, I wondered if this Prime Minister might be a practical joke played by history on the British electorate." Of Tony Blair's performance at the annual British Labour Party conference Oct. 1, Jenkins observed:

"The three cardinal virtues proclaimed in his speech were war on Iraq, privatized public services, and getting tough on crime. All were based on what advertisers used to call 'selling a weakness.' A war on Iraq requires Mr. Blair to claim that President Saddam Hussein is a 'real and present threat.' He is not. Privatization requires there to be 'no alternative' to the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). There is an alternative, called public finance. As for tough on crime, even the Tories might have balked at that political cliché....

"As Prime Minister, he bids the Labour Party bed down with the Pentagon's most hawkish adventurers, and the City's most grasping financiers."

With biting sarcasm, Jenkins wrote: "He champions the 'Great Push Forward' of modernization with the cry: 'Caution is retreat and retreat is dangerous.' He would have made a good Red Guard."

Meantime, a London insider commented to EIR Oct. 2 that Blair is "going insane, as all power-hungry British Prime Ministers do in the end."

Said this source: "Yesterday, in his speech before the Labour Party conference, Blair railed on about 'Britain's destiny.' " He then added the zinger reported in the above paragraph, and went on say, that this conference is "a rigged event. In the Iraq debate, they allowed no speakers opposed to the war policy."

But the insider then advised EIR that this is likely to blow up in Blair's face: "You will notice that the speech of [Chancellor of the Exchequer] Gordon Brown was better received than the speech of Blair. I foresee Brown mounting a leadership challenge to Blair any day now. That is why Brown is adopting a much lower profile than Blair on Iraq. Brown is positioning himself, if it comes to that, to back Britain out of its commitments to the U.S. on Iraq. So, what I advise is, watch Brown."

Group of Jewish Danes Place Ad Blasting Sharon Policies

A group of 57 Danes of Jewish extraction placed a hard-hitting paid advertisement in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz and the Danish daily Politiken, denouncing the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and calling for a demonstration in front of the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen. LaRouche representative Michelle Rasmussen, a Dane of Jewish-American background, was given the opportunity to speak at the demonstration held on Sept. 29.

The ad declared that their action was not against "Israel as a nation, let alone against Jews or the Jewish culture and identity.... The demonstration is against an aggressive and irreconcilable Israeli policy; a policy which constitutes a greater threat against the nation, its identity and culture, than that against which it seeks to defend itself.

"By this demonstration, we wish to awaken our Jewish friends and relatives, within and outside Israel, from the paralysis they seem to be afflicted with. We wish to signal to our Arabic and Palestinian friends, that they, too, must acknowledge the responsibility of giving the necessary support to the Israeli peace faction. And we wish to emphasize our dissociation from the spiralling violence and retaliations, which Sharon, in collaboration with Arafat, has turned into the most dominating feature in the conflict between Israel and Palestine."

The long statement is written in seven parts, the first two of which note the "impact of the Holocaust on Jewish identity and history." The third denounces Sharon for "placing massive military forces; [by] erroneously depicting the defeat of the Palestinians as a prerequisite for the survival of Israel, Sharon is gambling with the very existence of Israel. By unashamedly identifying political criticism of these maneuvers with anti-Semitism—towards which all Jews are alert—Sharon and his accomplices are taking all Jews hostage in a struggle that cannot be won by military force, but calls for a political solution.

"We refuse to be identified with such extremist, right-wing politics. They embarrass us and they disgust us. We note that the majority of Israel's Jews see eye-to-eye with us in our desire for a peaceful solution and the foundation of a viable, Palestinian state. We also note, that the majority of Israel's Jews are frightened by the terror of the Palestinians, who in turn have to accept their share of responsibility for the current paralysis of the Israeli peace movement."

The fourth section of the ad declares that "suicide bombs are despicable under any circumstances, and destructive" even if "driven by desperation." Yet as despicable as these actions are, they do "not justify the brutal and uncompromising conduct, which has been indicative of the Israeli military and political approach in recent years. On the contrary, Israel must be politically visionary and avoid actions that lead to additional hatred, frustration, and humiliation within the Palestinian population. Sharon's targetted politics, combined with Arafat's untrustworthy vacillation, have driven the Israelis and the Palestinians into opposite corners with no confidence in the pacific intentions of their opponents. Sharon's aggressive and uncompromising escalation of retaliation is quite on a par with Hamas. Through his unwillingness to compromise and his inability to interpret global realities, Sharon is provoking a situation where the global society is turning its back on Israel. As a consequence, any viable peace agreement will appear as an Israeli defeat.... Israel must accept the heroic/brave task of breaking the vicious circle and initiating an unconditional peace process."

The ad calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state on an area based on the 1967 borders, and declares that "the entire Israeli settlements on the West Bank and the Gaza must be vacated unconditionally in order to grant the Palestinian state territorial unity, true sovereignty, and the possibility for survival. The Palestinian refugees must, in all decency, receive compensation for the property they lost by their eviction, just as Israel should accept resettlement of the nominal number of refugees who wish to settle in Israel. Above all, the rest of the world needs to contribute by opening its borders for those refugees for whom this solution offers no country of settlement."

The ad also calls on the forces of peace on both the sides to work together, saying that if the Palestinians refrain from terror, this will support the efforts of the Israeli peace movement and enable them to politically "overthrow Sharon and his extremists of violence."

The last section of the ad states that "The Administration of George Bush offers Sharon practically unconditional support. This is not, as many believe, due to Bush's dependence on Jewish votes. American Jews traditionally vote Democratic. Bush, however, is dependent on the Protestant right wing of the American Bible belt. Although anti-Semitism is powerful in these circles, they support the Israeli politics for religious reasons. In other countries, Israel's current politics are supported by forces generally in favor of xenophobic politics....

"In our opinion, this unholy alliance is a result of the way Jewish Israel has handled the experiences European Jewry has had for centuries as a suppressed population. Focussing on Shoa [the Holocaust] and one's own suffering has quite overshadowed other factors. Blindness and insensitivity towards the suffering Israel imposes on the Palestinians is a fatal underestimation of the experience that disappeared with our 6 million parents, grandparents and great-grandparents who fell victim to the exterminations. It is a violation of their memory and a threat to Jewish heritage, to base the survival of Israel exclusively on a belief in military solutions and the associated belief in violence, terror, and torture. As a result, unnecessary suffering is imposed on both populations and their young are lured into moral and personal callousness, which may take generations to heal. We consider this assault on fundamental European-Jewish values a disaster."

Debate About Basque Separatism Heating Up in Spain

In the context of the global financial crisis, and the effect that an explosion of the Ibero-American debt crisis will have on Spain, as well as the nervous stepping-up of war preparations, the debate about Basque separatism has been heating up in Spain. In defiance of the government-ordered ban of the political arm of ETA, "Herri Batasuna" (imposed in August), as well as in response to a major crackdown on the ETA terrorist structure by French and Spanish security forces, the Basque party PNV under chairman Juan Jose Ibarretxe has stepped up its separatist campaign, by calling over the weekend for a "referendum" on the question of Basque independence.

Ibarrexte signalled that he wants to convert the Basque region into a "free state" in "free association" with Spain, to become an "associated state" within Europe. All policy, in particular justice and foreign policy, should be in the hands of the Basque state, he asserts. Ibarrexte wants the referendum to be held before 2005. The Basque government chairman also said that in future consultations among Basque parties about the referendum, he would include Herri Batasuna representatives.

Spanish President Aznar responded sharply with a speech in Alicante saying that "he will not allow Spain to be destroyed by fanatics," and that Batasuna is the same as ETA. "Whoever helps Batasuna to survive, helps ETA to survive." Citing the Constitution and the Autonomy Statute of Guernica, both considered pillars of Spanish democracy since the end of Franco's dictatorship, Aznar said he will use all legal means, and not leave "the separatists any maneuvering room for a break."

"When they [meaning Ibarretxe] say that they want to convoke a referendum, they put bombs and bullets on the same level as the state of law," said Aznar. "Nobody will be able to break the Constitution and the community of the Spanish people." Whoever wants to break the rule of law should know that he plays with fire, Aznar said. Also, the chairman of the other major Basque party, PSOE chairman Zapatero, called the plans of Ibarretxe "unacceptable, incoherent and negative for the interests of the Basque citizens."

Italian Deputy Foreign Minister: Argentine Resolution Will Be at Center of EU Chairmanship

Italian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Mario Baccini, who played an active role in the Italian Parliament debate and in the vote on the Argentina resolution calling for a New Bretton Woods system, expressed "full satisfaction with the approval, by a very large majority, of the motion in favor of Argentina in the Chamber of Deputies.... The commitment to solve the crisis in Argentina and other South American countries will be of central importance during Italy's semester of chairmanship of the European Union," which starts in January 2003, he said.

AISE press agency reported Baccini's statements and included broad excerpts of the Parliament's debate, in particular remarks exposing the IMF policy and invoking a "program for reconstruction and national sovereignty" for Argentina, and the call for "proposing a new financial architecture."

AISE wire service is especially dedicated to informing Italian communities abroad about national events, as well as Italian foreign policy and foreign trade circles about Italian communities abroad.

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