Mideast News Digest
Arafat: The Murderers of Rabin Are Now in the Israeli Government
In a teleconference address to the Non-Aligned Summit in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 24, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat declared that those behind the assassination of the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (slain in November 1995), are now in power in Israel. Arafat, who was prevented by the Israelis, through military force, from attending the NAM summit in person, said that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had attempted "to break our will and determination, and our adherence to the peace of the brave, which I signed with my partner, the late Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by radical elements now participating in the government of Israel."
He added that the second Sharon government would take advantage of a war with Iraq: "The Palestinian people, who are suffering the greatest hardships as a result of the Israeli aggression against them and the occupation of their land, are going to pay a heavy price if war is waged. The Israeli government is the first in line to push for this war, in order to exploit the situation, while the world is busy with Iraq."
Two days earlier, on Feb. 22, according to Bernama, Jenin Mayor Walid Musa Abu Mowes, briefed press attending the NAM summit on conditions in his West Bank city. He reported that to date, 5,000 homes have been demolished in Jenin province, of which 1,360 are in the city of Jenin. About 13,000 Palestinians have been jailed, including 2,030 from Jenin city. The city's infrastructure, including sanitation, water, and electricity, has been destroyed. Unemployment has reached 70%, and all service facilities and buildings have been destroyed, as well as police stations, jails, all official buildings, and the only hospital in the city, which has forced people to seek medical care in other provinces.
He also described the difficulty of moving about, pointing out that it took him 14 hours to travel the short distance from Jenin to the Jordanian border, but it only took him 10 hours to reach the summit in Kuala Lumpur.
When asked what Sharon would do, were there a war on Iraq, Mowes said Sharon might take the opportunity to "go all out" against the Palestinians and "wipe them out."
The speeches by Arafat and Mayor Mowes, were received with great support by the heads of state and government attending the NAM summit; a statement supporting a fully sovereign independent state of Palestine was adopted at the summit (excerpted below).
Non-Aligned Summit Issues Statement on Palestine
On Feb. 25, the 23rd Non-Aligned Summit meeting in Kuala Lumpur issued a statement on Palestine, of which highlights include:
"1. The Heads of State or Government expressed grave concern at the continued destruction and devastation of Palestinian society and the Palestinian Authority being caused by the Israeli occupying forces since 28 September 2000. They strongly condemned the systematic human rights violations and reported war crimes that have been committed by the Israeli occupying forces against the Palestinian people. In this regard, they condemned in particular the willful killing of Palestinian civilians, including extrajudicial executions; the excessive and indiscriminate use of force, resulting in extensive loss of life and injury; the wanton destruction of homes, infrastructure, and agricultural lands; the detention and imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians; and the imposition of collective punishments on the entire Palestinian population, including severe restrictions on the movement of persons and goods, resulting in the socioeconomic debilitation of the Palestinian people, amounting to a dire humanitarian crisis.
"2. The Heads of State or Government also expressed their grave concern at the policies and practices of the Israeli government that have undermined the Oslo agreements and obstructed efforts to end the tragic situation on the ground, including the Mitchell recommendations. They called for the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from Palestinian cities to ... arrangements prior to September 2000. In this regard, they stressed the importance of the full implementation of relevant Security Council Resolutions, including 1322 (2000), 1397 (2002), 1403 (2002) and 1435 (2002).
"3. The Heads of State or Government emphasized that the main danger to the realization of the national rights of the Palestinian people and the achievement of a peaceful solution is the settler colonialism that has been carried out in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, since 1967, through land confiscation, settlement building, and the transfer of Israeli nationals to the Occupied Territory...."
Further points call for the International Criminal Court to act against Israeli crimes; the two-state solution; and support for the Arab peace initiative.
Diplomats, Intelligence Veterans Revolt Against Iraq War
The Bush Administration is coming under immense criticism from within its own intelligence and diplomatic ranks, in addition to top international diplomats. See this week's U.S. NEWS DIGEST for the report of the resignation of a senior U.S. diplomat in Athens over the war policy. Some of the notable incidents are summarized here:
According to AFX in Hamburg on Feb. 23, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Mohammed ElBaradei said that he cannot rule out resigning his position as a chief UN weapons inspector, if the U.S. attacks Iraq without a UN mandate. In an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, ElBaradei said that as long as the inspectors can report progress, he sees no reason why they should stop their work.
*Joseph Wilson, the senior American diplomat in Baghdad during 1991 Gulf War, in an article called "Republic or Empire?" said of a second Gulf War that: "The underlying objective of this war is the imposition of a Pax Americana on the region and installation of vassal regimes that will control restive populations." Wilson said that Iraq was just the first target for the neo-cons: "American pre-eminence in the Gulf is necessary but not sufficient for the hawks. Nothing short of conquest, occupation and imposition of handpicked leaders on a vanquished population will suffice."
*Roy Jonkers, editor of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers' (AFIO) weekly e-mail briefing, wrote in the Feb. 18 edition that: "While the Intelligence Community is contorting itself to provide allies and others with publishable intelligence to serve as a figleaf of justification, the planned U.S./U.K. invasion and occupation of Iraq is proceeding inexorably. It gives no pleasure to see our Secretary of State embarrassed by citing as evidence a 10-year-old paper inserted by a partisan think tank [i.e., 'The Blair Dossier'], or to see the DCI [Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet] waving the bin Laden statement as proof of a connection with Saddam, apparently unaware that the statement lambasts the Saddam government as an infidel regime....
"The planned Iraq invasion is made for strategic reasons ... [in which] the Administration is being propelled by a strategic vision that draws strength from Realpolitik power considerations of Pax Americana (American world dominance and peacekeeping), from proponents of security for Israel on its own terms (Israeli regional dominance), [and from] various [other questionable sources]...."
*Sir Harold Walker, the British Ambassador from 1990-91, and a veteran diplomat, in various Arab countries wrote in the lead letter to the London Times on Feb. 26 that: "The current threat [from Iraq] is not so immediate as to justify a full-scale war, the only outcome of which would be incalculable harm to an already suffering Iraqi population...."
'Clean Break' Blueprint Exposed as Basis for Iraq War
When Lyndon LaRouche exposed the "Clean Break" document, and its authors behind the Iraq war scheme, in September 2002, with a series of campaign statements, and a webcast on the anniversary of Sept. 11, the LaRouche movement initiated the exposé that has played a crucial role in creating worldwide resistance against the Iraq war. Last week, the "Clean Break" exposé was everywhere:
*On Feb. 26, a Letter to the Editor published in the Washington Post by Robert L. Norberg, a retired 31-year career employee of the Saudi oil giant ARAMCO, rebutted the Feb. 18 op-ed by Lawrence Kaplan which claimed that critics of "Clean Break" are just anti-Israel. Norberg traced the policy directly to the utopian troika of Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser, and called upon them to "recuse themselves," because they are co-authors of "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," which was "hand-delivered" to then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
*On Feb. 21, PBS "Frontline" ran an hour-long exposé of the Wolfowitz Cabal, drawing on all of the material EIR has published for the last year (without crediting EIR). Also echoing other EIR exposés, the show traced the origins of the new imperial dogma of "preemptive war," to the Bush "41" Pentagon, under Dick Cheney, where Paul Wolfowitz, Lawrence Libby, and others first came up with the idea of preemption.
*On Feb. 23, on NBC's "Meet the Press," Anglo-Israeli agent in the Bush Administration Richard Perle was confronted by moderator Tim Russert, who challenged Perle to deny that the current U.S. war strategy had originated as an Israeli plan. Russert said, "The roots of the overall strategy can be traced to a paper published in 1996 by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), an Israeli think tank. The document was titled 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Security of the Realm.'... Israel, according to the 1996 paper, would 'shape its strategic environment, beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein.' ..." All Perle could say is that the U.S. interests are the same as the Israeli governments of Sharon and Netanyahu.
Neo-Cons Target Iran for Nuclear Program
On Feb. 20, in two separate but obviously coordinated events, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) held a forum attacking Russian collaboration with Iran. Speaker Henry Sokolski, the former Senate staffer who has groomed himself as the "proliferation expert" of the Chickenhawk loonies, said that Iran is clearly building a nuclear weapon, and that they are using Russian technical assistance to do so.
Meanwhile, across town, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), formerly known as the Iranian Mujaheddin, presented new "evidence," including satellite pictures of a site at Natanz, Iran, at which they claim the Iranians are working on testing centrifuges and working on enriched uranium production. However, the "People's Mujaheddin" are suspect, since their spokesman, Alireza Jafarzadeh, told the audience that "Our only interest is in overthrowing the government of the mullahs."
While the Iranians have committed to developing a full fuel-cycle nuclear energy program, the site at Natanz has apparently not been under IAEA inspection. Only CNN played up the NCRI "exposé," because of its obvious bias.
Meanwhile, IAEA Director Mohammed ElBaradei visited the nuclear site of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) near Natanz on Feb. 22 "fingered" by NCRI. ElBaradei visited the site together with the AEOI head Reza Aqazadeh. Iran has signed all the relevant anti-proliferation treaties, and is open to regular inspections.
In a related development, Russia's Atomic Energy Minister Aleksandr Rumyantsev told a press conference in Moscow on Feb. 22 that, given the benefits of the technology, "It is the natural right of Iran to use the nuclear energy." He also stressed, "The nuclear technology provided by Russia at Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Plant is under direct supervision of the IAEA."
Saudi Arabia, Jordan Reject U.S. Strikes
On Feb. 26, according to wires and a press conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal denied reports that had been printed in The Washington Post that his nation would permit expanded use of Saudi airspace to attack Iraq. Prince Saud added that: "Either Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or it doesn't. If it does, then it should produce them. If it doesn't, it should respond to the inspectors' demands and, when it does, we expect the crisis will end and the sanctions will be lifted."
He also called on the U.S.: "Unilateral action would not be advisable nor in the interest of the situation in Iraq ... or to the interests of the United States. Thankfully, we have seen the United States agreeing to allow the United Nations to tackle the issue of Iraq."
Meanwhile, Jordan's Prime Minister Ali Abul-Ragheb also said that Jordan would not be "a launching pad or participate in any military action against Iraq." The Prime Minister added that "several hundred" U.S. troops are in Jordan, but only to man anti-missile batteries to protect the Kingdom's airspace.
National Security Archive Releases Documents Proving U.S. Helped Iraq in War in 1980s
On Feb. 25, the National Security Archive released documents that include briefing materials and diplomatic reports on two trips by Donald Rumsfeld, currently Secretary of Defense, to Baghdad in the 1980s. The documents also concern Iraq's chemical weapons and their use, and Presidential directives from that period (the Reagan Administration) on U.S. priorities regarding oil and military access.
An NSA report summarizes the documents as showing that while the U.S. re-established ties and supported Saddam, "he had invaded his neighbor, had long-range nuclear aspirations that would 'probably include an eventual nuclear weapon capability,' harbored known terrorists, abused human rights of his citizens, and possessed and used chemical weapons on Iranians and his own people."
A 1984 public U.S. condemnation of chemical weapons included the following interesting formulation: "The U.S. finds the present Iranian regime's intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighboring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms of behavior among nations and the moral and religious basis which it claims."
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