In this issue:

Prominent Labour Parliamentarian Calls on Blair To Resign

Dalyell Call for Blair's Resignation Widely Covered in World Press

On Al-Jazeera, Dalyell Warned of U.S. Nuclear Strike on Iraq

40 Labour MPs Call for Blair To Resign

From Baghdad, Two German CDU Members Attack Bush Administration

FAZ Essay Recalls Fall of Athenian Empire in Pelopponesian War

IHT Columnist Says Rush to War Has Created International Opposition to U.S.

Serbian Prime Minister Killed in Gunfire Ambush

On Eve of War, Schroeder Says Inspections Success Would Make Possible Lifting Sanctions vs. Iraq

From Volume 2, Issue Number 11 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Mar. 17, 2003

Western European News Digest

Prominent Labour Parliamentarian Calls on Blair To Resign

For the first time, a prominent Labour Party Parliamentarian has called on British Prime Minister Tony Blair to resign, according to Agence-France Press/France-Inter March 10. Tam Dalyell, Father of the House of Commons and frequent EIR interlocutor, chose the French France-Inter radio station to call for Blair to resign and make way for a new government, since he has become so committed to the course of war with Iraq that he has lost the ability to handle emerging situations. Only a new government could act effectively now for Britain, Dalyell argued.

The same day, March 10, Blair suffered a much more severe jolt when one of his own Cabinet members denounced Blair's course for war as "extraordinarily reckless." Overseas Development Secretary Clare Short added that "I will resign" if Blair continues to "defend the indefensible" and goes to war with Iraq, without a second United Nations resolution. Short herself demanded to be on BBC-Radio 4's "Westminster Hour," declaring that it is now "ten minutes to midnight," and that she had to speak out.

In its coverage, the Labour-linked Guardian began its article by asserting that Blair is now "facing the opening of the floodgates to a catastrophic rebellion," against his Iraq policy. Indeed, 10 Downing Street was so unnerved that Blair presided over a "crisis meeting" to deal with the Short affair. As BBC stressed, he was in no position to fire her, because that would make her into a "national martyr." After the crisis meeting, it was announced that she would stay on the job.

In her interview, Short denounced the rush to war as "deeply reckless, reckless for the world, reckless for the undermining of the United Nations in this disorderly world, which is wider than Iraq, reckless with our own government.... It's extraordinarily reckless. I'm very surprised by it.... Our failure to use our influence properly is so dangerous for the world.... Allowing the world to be so bitterly divided, the division in Europe, the sense of anger and injustice in the Middle East, is very, very dangerous."

Short also undermined 10 Downing Street's initial claim that it was "surprised" by the vehemence of her statements, as she had never made such feelings clear to Blair. She told BBC that, to the contrary, she had raised her objections in frequent detailed talks with Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw: "People like me are being told, 'Yes, this is all under consideration.' And then the spin, the next day, is, 'We are ready for war.'"

Most dramatic, an op-ed in the Guardian by lawyer Mark Littman suggested that Blair could be tried, under the Nuremberg Tribunal precedent, if he goes ahead with a preemptive war against Iraq.

Dalyell Call for Blair's Resignation Widely Covered in World Press

AP has a March 10 wire to the effect that Dalyell, the longest-serving member of the House of Commons, told radio station France Info (reportedly speaking in perfect French): "I think it's too late for Tony Blair. I want to change Prime Minister. We are looking for a politician other than Tony Blair.".

Dalyell was also all over German television, telling interviewers that, should Blair start a war without UN authorization, he would immediately move for Blair's resignation.

He was also featured on the Arabic Al-Jazeera network, commenting on Blair's growing troubles following the blistering attack by Overseas Development Secretary Clare Short Dalyell responded that he had authored a proposal for Blair to "step down," and that he had already initiated a process for this to happen, in his Scottish constituency of Linlithgow, should Blair go to war without UN authorization. In addition, Dalyell was featured on an early-morning BBC news program broadcast in Washington D.C. on WAMU-FM; he traced the drive to attack Iraq, back to 1991 in the first Bush Administration.

On Al-Jazeera, Dalyell Warned of U.S. Nuclear Strike on Iraq

In his March 10 appearance on the Arabic satellite TV Al-Jazeera, Tam Dalyell warned of an American preemptive nuclear strike on Iraq. After his comments on Blair's being forced out, MP Dalyell was asked by Al-Jazeera what he thought was behind U.S. war plans against Iraq. He said this policy was being driven by "a gang," including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith, that had a specific, nasty policy. This stood in contrast to the reality that "otherwise, America is a great nation."

He warned that "this gang" has plans for a "preemptive nuclear strike on Iraq."

40 Labour MPs Call for Blair To Resign

A March 12 article in the London Independent reported that 40 Members of Parliament, from the leftwing-Labour "Campaign Group," have called for a party conference to discuss "a leadership challenge" to Tony Blair. They called upon Blair to "consider his position"—i.e., step down as Party leader and Prime Minister, and asserted that "we are now placing at risk the fabric of the international community."

The Guardian front-page reported the same day that a delegation from the British Trades Union Confederation (TUC), the mainstream national labor confederation, warned that he would face a "massive desertion" from organized labor's ranks, if he went to war without UN approval.

From Baghdad, Two German CDU Members Attack Bush Administration

Willy Wimmer and Peter Gauweiler, both members of the German parliament, the Bundestag, and both members of the opposition Christian Democratic Union party, visited Iraq last week at the invitation of Chaldean Patriarch Raphael I Bidawid, to meet and pray for peace, with members of the various Christian churches in Iraq.

In several interviews on German media over the weekend, Wimmer, a former assistant Defense Minister, said that "It cannot be tolerated that one power should act without regard for international law and the United Nations. This would open the door to the rule by the fist." Wimmer also said, "The United States being a Christian nation, the next days will show whether the bishops or the generals have more power." Gauweiler made similar remarks, including, "How many children will we kill, before Iraq is totally disarmed?"

The visit of the two politicians, both outspoken opponents to the war, was arranged through the Vatican, outside the usual Christian Democratic party structures—maybe in view of the fact that CDU chairwoman Angela Merkel is pro-Bush. Cardinal Josef Ratzinger personally passed on the invitation, also contacting the leading Roman Catholic and Lutheran bishops in Bavaria, Cardinal Friedrich Wetter and Johann Friedrich, both also outspoken opponents of the war. They gave Wimmer and Gauweiler messages to be conveyed to the Christians in Iraq.

FAZ Essay Recalls Fall of Athenian Empire in Pelopponesian War

In the German paper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung March 10, Ivan Nagel rebutted the claim that opposition to the war on Iraq is "anti-Americanism," quoting Sen. Robert Byrd's Feb. 12 speech to the effect that President Bush's war drive has split alliances and ruined leading international institutions such as NATO and the United Nations, perhaps for all time. Nagel likens such leading U.S. propaganda machines as Fox-TV to the media he recalls from his native Hungary in the Soviet era.

Going beyond these arguments, Nagel urges readers to study the period of 431-404 B.C.—when Athens, as Thucydides describes in his great work The Peloponnesian War, rose—and calamitously fell—as an empire. This was a period when flight-forward activism was praised, at the expense of balanced deliberations, when dissidents to Athens' imperialism were the target of much more hatred than "normal" enemies. And, Nagel asserts, Thucydides (a general on the Athenian side) wrote this history to warn future generations against making the same mistake.

IHT Columnist Says Rush to War Has Created International Opposition to U.S.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune March 11, William Pfaff suggested that the net effect of the Bush Administration's rush to war has been to create an international opposition to American power. Pfaff wrote that, no matter what happens, the Iraq issue has altered the U.S. relationship to the Mideast, and to Western European nations. Furthermore, it has created a situation in which "shifting coalitions of the willing are likely to work through the United Nations ... to counterbalance or contain the United States on many economic and politico-military issues."

Pfaff hinted at an exit strategy that some may be considering, when he writes that "Some in the White House are said to argue that the recent capture of a senior al-Qaeda figure [Khalid Sheikh Muhammad] could be spun so as to shift attention away from Iraq and back to terrorism, while UN inspections were allowed to continue. This could save Tony Blair...."

Be that as it may, Pfaff's conclusion: "Washington only now is discovering that its efforts to override or divide opposition to what it wants on Iraq have created a coherent international opposition that before was not there. It has diminished rather than affirmed its old international leadership."

Serbian Prime Minister Killed in Gunfire Ambush

Leaving the Prime Minister's office building in Belgrade March 12, Serbian Prime Zoran Djindjic was hit by shots in the abdomen and back, perhaps fired on him from inside the yard of the building complex, before he could board his armored car.

On Feb. 21, Djindjic had narrowly escaped an attack, when a heavy truck drove at very high speed into the Prime Minister's motorcade, almost hitting his car. Whether the two incidents are related is not known yet.

Also not known is whether "Balkans mafias" are involved in some strictly mafia-linked way, as some media wrote after the first incident. Other motives for the assassination cannot be ruled out, as the Balkans is heavily embattled over the issue of support for the planned Iraq War.

The week before Djindjic's murder, Iliya Pavlov, a Bulgarian billionaire with close relations to the government and many mafia contacts to Russian oligarchs, as well as to the Russian state-owned Gazprom company, was shot to death in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital.

In spite of the fact that non-permanent UN Security Council member Bulgaria sides with the U.S. on the Iraq issue, numerous Western and pro-Western Bulgarian media have insisted that Bulgaria cannot be considered a firm ally of the U.S. as long as certain links to the Russian mafia have not been severed. Those articles reached a crescendo during a recent visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Bulgaria.

On Eve of War, Schroeder Says Inspections Success Would Make Possible Lifting Sanctions vs. Iraq

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder commented on March 14 that "During the past days and weeks, the [German] Federal government has increased its efforts again, to solve this crisis with political means. Together with our French friends, with Russia, China, and the majority of the world Security Council (UNSC), we are more convinced than before that the disarmament of Iraq can be achieved through peaceful means.

"The reports of the weapons inspectors show that under the pressure of the international community, Iraq is meanwhile cooperating better and more actively. The destruction of the Al-Samoud missiles is a visible sign of real disarmament This proves that inspections are an effective instrument. It is still possible to solve this conflict peacefully. With an expanded inspections regime, we can achieve a lasting and verifiable disarmament.

"And, therefore, it was the right choice, and still is, that we insisted on the logic of peace, rather than entering a logic of war. Iraq must disarm comprehensively and verifiably under international control—so that also the economic sanctions, from which the Iraqi people have been suffering, can be eased, and, later on, lifted. These are conditions under which peace and freedom can blossom."

The Chancellor added that Germany is committed to continuing to work on creating a "multipolar world order of peace and of law."

In interviews with radio and television stations, Schroeder made three points:

1) He has increasing doubts that war still can be prevented.

2) In spite of the general constellation, the government of Germany will continue to work with others, notably France, Russia, and China, to prevent war and achieve a peaceful solution.

3) But the final decision on war or peace lies in the hands of the American President.

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