Western European News Digest
UN Resolution On Iraq Passes, But Still No "Coalition"
The Oct. 16 unanimous vote passing UN Security Council Resolution 1511, which was proposed by the U.S. and Britain, does little to change the lack of support for the U.S. occupation. Highly placed Washington, D.C. intelligence sources previously told EIW that all of the troops that were committed or sent to Iraq in "assisting" the U.S. are nothing more than "high priced security guards," for whom the U.S. foots the entire bill. For example, observers point to the $8.5 billion loan package that the U.S. gave to Turkey, just before the Parliament finally voted in favor of allowing Turkish troops into Iraq. (Ironically, the Iraqi National Congress then objected to have any Turkish forces, warning that troops from neighboring countries will destabilize Iraq).
The reality of the continuing isolation of the U.S. and Britain, is reflected in the joint statement issued by Germany, Russia and France after the vote, which states:
"As a result of the proposals and amendments made by our three countries, the resolution we have just adopted has been improved throughout the negotiation process, thus allowing us, in the spirit of unity, to support it as a step in the right direction of the restoration of Iraq, with the participation of the United Nations.
"At the same time, we believe that the resolution should have gone further on two major issues: first, the role of the United Nations, in particular in the political process; and second, the pass or the transfer of responsibilities to the Iraqi people.
"In that context, the conditions are not created for us to envisage any military commitment and any further financial contribution beyond our present engagement."
Blair Oversaw "Strategy" Meeting To Expose David Kelly
Ministry of Defense official, Sir Kevin Tebbit's testimony has pinned the blame for the exposure of MoD weapons scientist, Dr. David Kelly directly on Tony Blair, a senior City of London source told EIR on Oct. 14. He added that now, there is no way that the Hutton Inquiry can make a finding in favor of Blair, because it would be obviously covering up the evidence.
"This will ruin Blair's chance for any 're-launch' of his government," the source emphasized.
Last week, it was revealed that Prime Minister Tony Blair himself chaired the 10 Downing Street meeting which led to the exposure of Dr.. Kelly's name, according to Sir Kevin Tebbit, the highest-ranking civil servant at the British Ministry of Defense. The inquiry was created to probe the alleged suicide of Dr. Kelly, who was "outed" by Blair's government, after he criticized the Iraq war intelligence, but the scope of information that come out in testimony has shaken the government to its foundations.
Tebbit, Minister of Defense (MoD) permanent secretary, told the Hutton inquiry that Blair presided at the meeting which agreed to the "strategy" which led to Kelly's name becoming public. Tebbit was not able to testify earlier, due to health problems.
Tebbit was questioned by Jeremy Gompertz, the legal representative for the family of the late David Kelly. Tebbit said that decisions were taken at the Downing Street meeting on July 8, to have the MoD issue a statement to press officers, giving details about Dr. Kelly admitting to speaking to BBC journalist Gilligan about the "sexed up" Iraq dossier, and that the MoD would agree to confirm his identity, if journalists asked MoD officials about Kelly by name.
Gompertz pressed Tebbit to clarify the "change of stance" in the MoD press statement. In the first drafts, it was said that there was "nothing to be gained by naming the individual"; when it was issued, it said press officers would identify Kelly.
Tebbit responded: "The change of stance, as you put it, was as a result of the meeting chaired by the Prime Minister." Tebbit added, when asked that, "The government, rather than the MoD, felt the need to put out a statement.... The decision was taken at the meeting in Number 10 with which the MoD concurred."
Tebbit said, "I was not invited to challenge the judgment of a meeting chaired by the Prime Minister." Had Kelly objected to the MoD release issued, it would not have made any difference, Tebbit said, as it was "clear the government, through the Prime Minister, had decided a statement would be issued."
Tebbit said that Kelly's letter to senior MoD officials, admitting that he had spoken to Gilligan, was "what we felt to be a ticking bomb" for the government.
The crucial Downing Street meeting was attended by now-resigned spin doctor Alastair Campbell, chief of staff Jonathan Powell, and joint intelligence committee head John Scarlett, all leading players in the Kelly scandal.
Archbishop Of Canterbury: Attack On Iraq "Cannot Be Justified As Just War"
Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of 70 million Anglicans worldwide, at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London on Oct. 14, used the theory of just war citing St. Thomas Aquinas to attack the American and British "case" to justify war against Iraq. Dr. Williams called for a new mechanism to be set up through the United Nations to prevent individual governments from being able to "judge" their own cases in choosing pre-emptive war. He said that Britain and the United States were wrong to assert their own morality as justification for the decision to launch war against Iraq. "No government can simply be judge in its own case," he said.
Williams emphasized that the case for "pre-emptive" warfare "could not be accommodated easily within the traditional Christian tradition," according to the report in The Times of London. "If a state or administration acts without due and visible attention to agreed international process, it acts in a way analogous to a private person.... It purports to be judge of its own interest," said Williams. "Indeed, this issue takes us back to one of the absolute fundamentals of just war theory: violence is not to be undertaken by private persons. If a state or administration acts without due and visible attention to agreed international process, it acts in a way analogous to a private person. It purports to be judge of its own interests."
Williams issued a statement in February, jointly with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, calling for continued weapons inspections in Iraq and warning of the "unpredictable humanitarian and political consequences" of a war.
British AG Scraped "Bottom Of Barrel" To Justify War
The British Attorney General was "scraping the legal barrel" to try and legitimize the war on Iraq, accused Lord Alexander of Weedon, who delivered an annual lecture at the Law Society's hall in London Oct. 14. Lord Alexander, a former chairman of the [legal] bar in Britain and chairman of the all-party law reform group, said it was "risible" [ludicrous] for the government to use a 1990 UN resolution as the basis for invading Iraq. But knowing that the UN Security Council would not authorize the invasion, the government "was driven to scrape the bottom of the legal barrel," and use the same argument domestically.
Lord Alexander called on Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, to disclose what he had told the government, to "justify" that a unilateral strike would be justified under international law. Such revelations are traditionally not made. He added that he found it "almost incomprehensible" that the attorney general refused to release his full judgment, thus not allowing the public to know the rationale for going to war.
Lord Alexander drew the parallel to the Suez "adventure" 47 years ago, when Britain, France and Israel conspired for Israel to invade Egypt. He said that if the courts were to rule on the legitimacy of the Iraq war, they would come to "the firm conclusion that, except in self-defense against actual or imminent attack, we can only use force to invade another country under the authority of a current UN resolution passed to cover the specific situation. And that would seem to mean an end to Suez or Iraqi adventures."
Russia-EU Summit Planning Underway
A series of meetings in preparation for the Nov. 6 European Union-Russia Summit in Rome began, with an EU-Russia Coordinating Committee meeting on Oct. 20 in Moscow. Energy issues feature prominently on the agenda of both diplomatic events.
French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the context of their phone conference calls around the UN vote on Iraq and the Middle East, also discussed the upcoming Rome Summit.
In terms of German-Russian bilateral relations, transportation, as well as energy, is becoming the focus of increased German investments in Russia. In the wake of the Yekaterinburg Summit between Schroeder and Putin, Russian analysts are noting that, in addition to the traditional prominent German interest in oil and gas deals with Russia, there has been more interest in several aspects of the transportation sector, recently.
The Oct. 9 agreement between the German and Russian railways concerning cooperation in containerized freight transfers along the Trans-Siberian route between Asia and Europe, and several other agreements recently signed with relevance to the North-South Transport Corridor, indicate a new "geo-economic" pattern, said Oleg Solntsev of the Moscow Center for Macroeconomic Analysis.
"The construction of the North South transport Corridor and a new version of the Trans-Sib (in which Germany wants to take part) are very promising and potentially profitable projects," according to Solntsev. "It is expected that significant transportation flows between Japan, South Korea, China and Europe will be re-directed in these directions. Until recently, these shipments were made mainly by sea, and new routes will provide significant time-saving."
Eric Kraus, managing director at the Sovlink transport and trading firm, speaks of a vast potential of German-Russian cooperation, as the Russian infrastructure sector will "become the largest consumer of German-produced goods."
In addition to the aforementioned railway agreement, the German-Russian container shipping firm Swan Container Lines will be established; Hamburg's Hafen- und Lagerhaus AG will purchase a 25-percent share in Russia's second-largest Baltic petroleum export firm, Petrolesport; furthermore, St. Petersburg's NCC (National Container Company) and Hamburg's Eurogate plan a joint project for a new, big container sea port at Ust-Luga; daughter projects of NCC-Eurogate are envisaged also at Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea, as well as Bandar Abbas (Iran) on the Persian Gulf (both port projects belonging to the North-South route).
France Represents German Position At EU In Show Of "Mutual Trust"
In order to attend to urgent matters in Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder took the unprecedented step of authorizing French President Jacques Chirac to represent him at the EU Summit in Brussels on Oct. 17, the second day of a two-day meeting. Government spokesmen in Berlin and Paris, characterized the move as "very unusual, showing an unprecedented degree of mutual trust." The same arrangement was made in respect to the two foreign ministers, at the Franco-German meeting in Paris, Oct. 12.
The fact that on European affairs, France and Germany worked out this cooperation, allowed Schroeder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer to return to Berlin on Friday, Oct. 17, to attend a crucial parliamentary vote by name, on the planned labor market reform package. While this does reflect, naturally, the thin majority the Social Democratic Party (SPD) coalition government has in the parliament, Schroeder wants to underline with his personal attendance during the vote that he will not tolerate the slightest chance of destabilization. Even most of the outspoken critics of his reform package have declared in the past few days that in spite of their continued disagreement, they will vote for the government. This is drawing a clear line of defense against the drive by the neocons of the opposition CDU of Angela Merkel (working closely with the U.S. neo-cons).
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