In this issue:

Mubarak Rejects Anglo-American 'Democracy' Reforms

New York Times: U.S. Mideast Initiative May Be Dead

Al Hayat Shows Mideast Initiative Is Blueprint for Resource Grab

Ritter: U.S. Should Pull Out of Iraq

From Volume 3, Issue Number 11 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Mar. 16, 2004
Mideast News Digest

Mubarak Rejects Anglo-American 'Democracy' Reforms

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told British Prime Minister Tony Blair that any "reforms" imposed in the Middle East, from the outside, will only unleash anarchy. Mubarak, who has visited Rome and Paris, was in London to meet Blair, March 8. An Egyptian Embassy spokesman, Ayman al-Kaffa, said, "The President reiterated that any modernization has to stem from the traditions and the culture in the area. There is no magic wand that you can use to bring democracy overnight and definitely it cannot be dictated."

Mubarak's short, private meeting with Blair, dealt with the Greater Middle East Initiative, which the U.S. is planning to push through at the upcoming G-8 meeting in June, to impose a "Helsinki" for the region. In an interview with the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, cited by the British Guardian March 8, Mubarak had pretty tough words for the initiative: "If the American reform plan is not studied very carefully, we could plunge into a spiral of violence and anarchy which will not only affect us ... and then it's good-bye to any glimmer of democracy in the Arab world." He also said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was priority: "Making reforms but ignoring the Palestinian issue, which is at the center of everything, will not produce the desired stability ... like it or not."

Reportedly, the U.S. draft has been circulated to the G-8 governments, but not to the intended victims in the Arab world. However, a copy was leaked to the London-based Arabic newspaper Al Hayat, in February, and Jordan, like Egypt, is making clear that the MEDI is unacceptable (see next item).

New York Times: U.S. Mideast Initiative May Be Dead

Is the Greater Middle East Initiative dead? On March 12, the New York Times reported that the Bush Administration, in response to protests from Arab and European leaders, is setting aside its plans to push for the adoption of its Greater Middle East Initiative, at the G-8 meeting in June. So as not to give the impression of "dictating" reforms from the outside, the G-8 will instead endorse reforms already underway in the Middle East.

Echoing Mubarak's warning to Blair (see above), Jordan's Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher said that Powell had told him, in a meeting between the two, that the G-8 will not adopt the proposal. Referring to the draft GMEI published in Al Hayat in February, Muasher said, "Our objective is for this document never to see the light."

An unnamed Administration official told the New York Times that the Al Hayat draft is considered to be dead.

When a reporter asked about this subject at the March 12 State Department briefing, spokesman Richard Boucher would not deny the Times report, but defensively added, "We're not toning down or muffling our calls for political reform or modernization in the Middle East.... We've made very clear how important we think reform and modernization is to the region and, in fact, we're listening very carefully to all the voices in the region of the people themselves who are talking about it."

Boucher said that the G-8 leaders are discussing the Initiative, but, there may a different document produced, that "will be framed, though, in the way that we've talked about, and that is to support the efforts of countries in the region."

Al Hayat Shows Mideast Initiative Is Blueprint for Resource Grab

The Greater Middle East Initiative draft, leaked to the London-based, Arabic-language Al Hayat in February, provided Arab governments with a view of what was being planned by the Bush Administration and the G-8. The text of the draft had been circulated to G-8 governments (the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia), but not to the "victims" in the region, and for good reason: It is a blueprint for wholesale takeover of the resources of the region, especially the financial resources, and opening up the still largely state-controlled economies to large-scale looting.

Excerpts from Al Hayat's publication of the GMEI are translated here:

The real problem [in the Middle East] is with the economy, as the UN Development Program (UNDP) study on the Arab world, showed, and therefore we must enhance economic opportunities. To bridge the gap between the Greater Middle East (GME) economies (which include the Arab world, plus Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, and Israel), requires an economic shift similar in scope to that implemented for the former communist Eastern Europe. The aim is to free the potentials of the private sector in the region, particularly small and medium industry, which makes up the driving force of economic development and employment. Also, the development of the professional class in the business sector is an important element in democracy and freedom.

The proposal is that the G-8 should adopt the following steps:

Initiative for financing growth: This involves financing small projects, through the World Bank, especially for women. The sum of $500 million is mentioned.

The creation of GME financial institutions which would work on the model of international financial institutions, to help the development of small and medium-size business projects to promote the further integration of the business sector. This should be led by a group of leaders of the private sector of the G-8, who would provide their expertise.

A GME Development Bank: The G-8 and creditors from the GME could establish an institution similar to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, to help the countries which are willing to make reforms, and provide them with the basic needs for development. Resources should come from the richest countries of the region, and be allocated for education, health care, and basic infrastructure projects. Decisions to give credit to countries should be linked to their ability to implement real reforms.

Partnership for a better financial system: In order to reform the financial services in the region and enhance the integration of these countries into the international financial system, the G-8 has the capacity to offer its participation in processes of reforming the financial systems of the advanced countries of the region. The purpose of this participation is to liberate financial services, by giving financial and technical advice.

The focus is on five aspects:

1) implementing reform plans which would reduce the control of the State over financial services;

2) removing all barriers imposed on financial transactions between countries;

3) modernizing banking services;

4) providing, improving, and expanding the financial instruments that support market economies; and,

5) establishing the organizational structures that support the liberating of financial services.

Contract for Chalabi-Linked Neo-Con Slush Fund Cancelled

A "mini-Halliburton" deal, linked to Ahmad Chalabi, the discredited Iraqi quisling, being kept in power in the Iraqi Governing Council by Vice President Dick Cheney's neo-cons, has been exposed, and its $327 million contract with the U.S. Army for reconstruction, cancelled.

A $327-million Iraq "reconstruction" contract awarded to Nour USA and its offshoot, Erinys Iraq, has been cancelled by the Pentagon, the Washington Post reported March 11.

The contract has been under investigation for several weeks, after Chalabi bragged to the London Telegraph, that it didn't matter if intelligence on Iraq was untrue, because "we got what we wanted." Chalabi's INC is under investigation for having provided faulty and fabricated "intelligence" to the Pentagon and the Bush Administration, in order to start the Iraq war.

The INC role, in league with an as yet publicly unnamed Pentagon office, which pays the group millions of dollars for the "Information Collection Program," is analogous to the scandal which rocked the Tony Blair government in Britain over charges of a "sexed-up" dossier justifying a war against Iraq.

The official reasons for the contract cancellation, the Post said, are "vague contract language, missing paperwork, staff turnover, and general instability," but there is more involved.

Investigations into Nour USA, show decades of connections between Chalabi, a convicted bank embezzler (for looting his own, Jordan-based Petra Bank in 1992) and the owner of Nour, A. Huda Farouki, a Virginia-based businessman, who received funds from the Petra Bank, before Chalabi looted it.

The details of Nour USA, which was set up only in May 2003—about six weeks after the Iraq war began—also show connections to British and South African mercenaries, and members of Chalabi's "Iraqi Free Force" army, a group of 700 soldiers of mysterious origin, who escorted Chalabi—reportedly on orders of Dick Cheney—into Baghdad while combat was still going on.

According to an article in Newsday Feb. 15, by Knut Royce, Chalabi got $2 million in fees to help arrange the Nour USA contract with the Pentagon. The original contract was actually awarded to a private security company, Erinys Iraq, that allegedly hired apartheid-era white veterans of South African military and security services to protect the oil pipelines in Iraq. The contract bid was so low, that other competitors, including a Polish company, were not able to compete. Royce reported that one former U.S. Pentagon official explained that "it's the oldest game in the Middle East," where the contractor is told by his "patron" to "low ball" the bid and get it. The patron then promises to iron out the wrinkles, later.

Like the Halliburton fuel-overcharge case, Nour USA could also end up becoming a referral for criminal investigation.

Ritter: U.S. Should Pull Out of Iraq

In an March 9 interview with the German paper Junge Welt, former U.S. Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter called the current debate over WMD in Iraq "political theater." "We have several actors. There's David Kay. If anyone believed even for a second that his statements were those of some independent, objective observer, he is sadly mistaken. David Kay is an ideologue, not a technical expert. The Bush Administration picked him out, in order to do a job in Iraq which had nothing to do with seeking the truth." Kay was supposed to bend facts to his purpose, and that's why he said for a while, he thought he'd find WMD. Until December 2003, when he had to admit there were none. And Kay laid the blame elsewhere. "Not the President is guilty, he says, but the intelligence people."

"Then came the entrance of George Tenet. The CIA director said: 'We never said, there was a real threat, that's a classic case of politicians who drew extreme consequences from the facts that we delivered to them.' Note well," Ritter continued, "that there was no angry reaction after that from the White House, neither to Kay nor to Tenet. Instead, the President invited Kay to dinner." And, then, set up the commission, whose findings should come not before 2005, after the elections.

Asked how he thought the U.S. could restore its lost credibility, Ritter was very direct, saying there is only one way. He said everyone is asking how many war dead we need this time, how many names engraved on Iraqi war memorials, etc. Then: "We will not win this war. This war is already lost. My solution is, then: Pull the troops out immediately! Consider Iraq like a burning nation, from top to bottom, east to west. The oil that is fuelling this fire, is the presence of American troops. In order to put out the fire, we have to cut off the oil."

All rights reserved © 2004 EIRNS