Western European News Digest
Former British MP and Minister Interviews Saddam Hussein
Former British Labour Party MP and Minister Tony Benn (previously known as Anthony Wedgewood Benn) has become the first Westerner to interview Saddam Hussein in 12 years (in 1991, Benn interviewed Saddam, and that interview was credited by some with leading to the release of Britons thought to have been being used as human shields against the then looming Desert Storm). The took place during Benn's recent trip to Baghdad, and he announced it would be made available to any television station which pledged to show it in its entirety. According to Benn, Saddam told him that he is "optimistic" about the chances of avoiding a war.
Before leaving for Baghdad, Benn declared that "all my good friends are telling me I'll be ripped apart, and called me a stooge of the Iraqis, but I would never forgive myself, for not trying to bring back something that could stop this war. I feel I have to go, because a lot of people in the world would like to know if there is an alternative to war, and that is what I am exploring."
The interview lasted an hour, and was broadcast in part on Britain's Channel 4. Filmed by an Iraqi crew, the entire interview is to be put up for sale by the recently launched Arab Television.
Benn said remarked at a news conference after the interview that the Iraqi President had been "courteous and forthcoming. ... I think the cause of peace requires us to hear the President just as we hear President Bush and Prime Minister Blair."
Among the questions broadcast by Channel 4, were these: "Does Iraq have Weapons of Mass Destruction?" and "Does Iraq have ties with al-Qaeda?"
Saddam Hussein declared: "Iraq is free of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and I challenge anyone who claims that we have them to come forward with their evidence and present it before public opinion." Saddam insisted that the reason the U.S. and U.K. want a war with Iraq is to seize Middle East oil. In terms of the second question, Saddam said that "If we had a relationship with al-Qaeda and if we believed in the relationship, we wouldn't be ashamed to admit it.... [However], the answer is no, we do not have any relationship with al-Qaeda."
As CNN.com notes, the broadcast came one day before Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the UN Security Council.
At the press conference after the interview, a couple of American reporters suggested that Benn had lent himself to be used by Saddam Hussein. Benn responded that he had anticipated hostility to his visit and expected more when he returned to Britain. But, the 77-year-old elder statesman added, "I've reached an age where I am too old to bother."
'Vilnius Group' Nations Join the 'Gang of Eight' in Backing U.S. on Iraq War
Week before last, as we reported at the time, eight European countriesBritain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Denmark (known as the "Gang of Eight" by pro-peace forces)signed an open letter asserting that they disagreed with the Franco-German efforts to stave off war with Iraq, and were instead backing the U.S. and implicitly, its drive for war. This was part of the subtext for U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's reference to France and Germany as "Old Europe," and his citing of Central and Eastern Europe as "New Europe," the latter supporting the United States.
Now, this past week, 10 Central and Eastern European countries published a letter of support for U.S. policy on Iraq after Colin Powell delivered his UN speech. The 10 nations, known as the Vilnius Group, are Albania, Croatia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
To counter this pro-war propaganda drive, the European co-thinkers of Lyndon LaRouche are mobilizing organizing events. For example, on Feb. 3, Helga Zepp LaRouche and Jacques Cheminade were featured at an event in Paris, held under the banner "The Old Europe Fights Back."
At least 140 people attended the seminar, including representatives from nine embassies, among them Japan, China, Ukraine, Morocco, and Jordan.
Wehrkunde Meeting: Rumsfeld Says Risk of War Has To Be Balanced Against Risk of Not Acting
In his speech at the 39th Munich Conference on Security, known as the Wehrkunde, last week, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld delivered a clear message:
Sure, there are old allies, but there are also new "friends," for example, in Eastern Europe, which no one would have expected, only a few years ago, to be asserting such whole-hearted support for the U.S. cause against Iraq. The (Gang of Eight) signers of the support letter show that "momentum is building throughout the world" for the case against Saddam Hussein, Rumsfeld said.
He said that "no one wants war" (really?!), but that "the risk of war must be balanced against the risk of doing nothing, while Iraq keeps pursuing weapons of mass destruction." Rumsfeld went so far as to twist the words of West Germany's first postwar Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, as saying that "history is the sum of things that could have been avoided," to make his own case against Baghdad.
Rumsfeld warned "those who are undermining NATO," and then lashed out against the United Nations, as an institution that was just about to elect "one terrorist state"namely, Iraqas chairman of the UN disarmament commission, and "another terrorist state"Libyaas chairman of the UN Human Rights Commission. "That these acts of irresponsibility could happen now, at this moment of history, is breathtaking," Rumsfeld said.
In what looked like an orchestrated division of labor, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) took the role of the provocateur at the Wehrkunde meeting, denouncing the UN inspections in Iraq as useless, and calling for regime change in Baghdad, to send out a signal to all Arabs who want to change their own regimes. He said that at present, North Korea is even more of a problem, but that is why Iraq must be disarmed by force, in order to prevent it from becoming another North Korea. People should finally listen to Winston Churchill's warning that "feeding the crocodile out of hope that it will eat you last," was the wrong approach.
The Franco-German resistance to war is a shock, he said, because these two, formerly among the United States' closest allies, have decided to step out of international solidarity against Saddam, and he warned that the Iraq issue would decide the fate of NATO, just as the case of Abyssinia in the 1930s decided the fate of the League of Nations. In this context, McCain praised the Gang of Eight letter as the "real bond between Europe and the United States."
French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie criticized "those who consider replacing NATO by new coalitions"obviously meaning the Americansand asserted that "alliance means dialogue and respect for the otherunnecessary accusations against the other should be avoided."
She added that the inspections in Iraq have not failed, but have been rather successful, and when she was touring the United States last November, she was deeply disappointed by the fact that there were some who even attacked the UN inspectors personally.
Meantime, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn), a Democratic Presidential hopeful, bragged that he and John McCain gave up on containment of Saddam Hussein five years ago, when they introduced the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Baghdad official U.S. policy. "You might therefore say," he said, "that when it comes to Iraq, President Bush is just enforcing the McCain-Lieberman policy."
German Legal Expert: 'Pax Americana' Strategy Blow Against International Law
In an interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung Feb. 1, Bruno Simma, an internationally renowned legal expert who also works as an official adviser to the German government, said he is concerned about Bush Administration armtwisting at the UN: Should the Europeans give in, it would be the end of international law as we have known it, he charges. A coerced UN Security Council resolution for war might look legal, but it would not be legitimate, Simma said: "Not everything that can be done is legitimate."
As for nuclear non-proliferation, Simma asked the following: "Well, who was the first to have such weapons? What is the difference between the possession of nuclear weapons by a superpower or a country such as Pakistan? Is it established that countries like the U.S.A. are so much more under control and more rational than others?"
If one reads, as the interviewer does, the new U.S. global strategy as a rejection of international law, "This undoubtedly is a heavy blow against international law," Simma went on. "If, therefore, a U.S. strike against Iraq that had no mandate were to establish a precedent, the ban on violence, as the bulwark of international law, would be largely destroyed.
"It cannot be ruled out that the concept of empire, of a Pax Americana, will succeed in driving back the system of the Peace of Westphalia, with its principle of that all states are equality. But even the U.S.A. would not be able to enforce an order on a global scale," Simma said, adding that he would wish the Europeans to become a counterweight against an imperial United States.
German Interior Minister Schily Hears LaRouche Analysis, Attacks Iraq War
Lyndon LaRouche's "State of the Union" analysis was brought into a Jan. 30 meeting of the Aspen Institute in Berlin, featuring German Interior Minister Otto Schily. As the first questioner following Schily's problematic keynote on the conference topic"Is it Necessary to Curb Freedoms in the Fight Against Terrorism?"LaRouche Jonathan Tennenbaum briefed the audience on what LaRouche had said in his historic State of the Union webcast, just hours before Bush's address, about the real nature of international terrorism and the dangerous idiocy of John Ashcroft's "Homeland Defense" policy. Tennenbaum pointed to warnings by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WVa) and others that the Rumsfeld-Cheney preemptive war doctrine runs counter to the U.S. Constitution, and emphasized the blatant disregard for truth in post-Sept. 11 attempts to conjure up a new "enemy image" in the form of a supposedly autonomous "Islamic terrorist" threat. After all, weren't agencies of the U.S. government deeply involved in building up the Afghan Mujaheddin, and Osama bin Laden personally, all the way up through the 1980s? All of this, and above all the mention of LaRouche, caused a considerable stir in the audience.
Schily answered: "In a friendly spirit, I would say that I do not consider LaRouche an expert on these matters." But he followed that by saying, "The Americans made a very big mistake" in supporting the bin Laden networks. Then he insisted: "But that has no relevance today! We have to concentrate on the present situation!" When the next questioner brought up the Iraq war danger, Schily declared that he was absolutely opposed to the war. "We must be careful. We must realize, that so-called collateral damage is a very serious matter. We must ask, what will be the impact on the Islamic world? Won't the danger of terrorism be greatly increased, both in America and in Germany? I demand we should handle this without splitting the U.S.-German friendship that has been so important. Let's not allow all this to be destroyed.... I was an opponent of the Indochina war and I still think it was a great error. But at the time I could always speak openly with the Americans...."
EU Commissioner Chris Patten in Tehran, To Promote Ties
European Union Commissioner Chris Patten visited the Iranian capital Tehran last week ago, starting Feb. 3, to promote stronger EU-Iran ties. First on the agenda was the second round of negotiations on a mutual trade and cooperation agreement, he told IRNA news agency. Also to be discussed were politics, terrorism, human rights, and the regional crisis, including Iraq. He said that Iran and the EU have differences of view, "and we have been discussing those issues in a civilized manner," and he called the EU's expanding relations with Iran of strategic importance, in the interest of the region and the world. Patten was to meet President Mohammad Khatami, as well as the Foreign Minister, and leading parliamentarians. After Iran, he planned to visit Turkey and Lebanon.
Smashing SPD Defeat in Two State Elections in Germany
The disastrous electoral losses for Germany's ruling Social Democrats (SPD) in the two Feb. 2 elections for state parliamentdown 10.3% in Hesse, 14.5% in Lower Saxonyhave to do largely with voter abstention by core SPD constituencies, out of discontent with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's failure to turn the depressed economy around. Also, the stream of neo-liberal SPD leadership proposals for budget cuts in labor, health, and social programs contributed to the election disaster. Furthermore, January showed another drastic increase of unemployment, an additional 280,000 in December, to 4.5 million.
The strong anti-Iraq war mobilization which the SPD launched during the last two weeks of the election campaign certainly compensated for some of the lost constituencies; otherwise, the SPD, which reached a total vote of 29.1% in Hesse and 33.4% in Lower Saxony, would have ended at the 22-25% margin which most of the latest opinion polls gave it, because of the bad economic-social policy performance of the Schroeder government.
By comparison, the Christian Democrats (CDU) managed to mobilize additional voters from latent constituencies, reaching 48.3% of the vote in Lower Saxony and 48.8% in Hesse.
Worth noting is that the LaRouche BueSo party, the only party to address the combination of "Financial Crash and Threat of War" in its main campaign slogan, doubled or tripled the vote it received in the last elections, in both states. The 0.8% which the BueSo reached in Wiesbaden, the Hesse state capital, and the 0.5-0.6% won in several election districts of Hanover, the Lower Saxony state capital, indicate an increased recognition of the LaRouche programmatic input among voters.
German Labor Urges Government: Ignore Maastricht, Invest in Public Sector
The German labor federation the DGB, is urging the government to emphasize more public-sector investments, at the expense of the Maastricht Treaty austerity criteria. "This country needs an investment offensive," Michael Sommer, national chairman of the labor federation DGB, said in a radio interview in Berlin last week. A combination of visibly increased public-sector and private-sector investments, as well as incentives for increasing mass consumption, is required in this particular economic situation, Sommer said.
To pursue a strict Maastricht budget-balancing policy is "profoundly wrong" at present, he added. The government should interpret the Maastricht criteria in a "more flexible way" for the time being.
The Maastricht Treaty underlies the single-currency European Union, and demands strangling austerity measures in the national budgets of EU member states.
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