Untitled Document

WORLD NEWS
No. 213, Feb. 13-19, 2003

Rumsfeld offends Germans,
thousands protest US war
go to story

Palestinian nurses shot dead
go to story

European Parliament calls for investigation
into reports of forced sterilization in Slovakia
go to story

Mexico: Skepticism on World Court’s
stay on US executions
go to story

US plans for use of gas in Iraq
go to story

N. Korea to US: ‘Pre-emptive
attacks’ our option too
go to story

Protests rock Bolivian government
go to story

US readies 100,000 body bags as global
alliances threaten to fracture over Iraq
go to story

Uganda: Elimination of user fees brings
big increase in clinic utilization rates
go to story

Truth behind US ‘poison
factory’ claim revealed
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BRIEFS
go to Briefs

Rumsfeld offends Germans,
thousands protest US war

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Feb. 12 (AGR)-- The Rumsfelds of Weyhe-Sudweyhe, Germany were once proud of their long-lost cousin, US Secretary of Defense, Donald.

No longer.

Like many Germans, they are appalled by Donald Rumsfeld’s hawkish attitude towards war on Iraq. Some 25,000 demonstrators marched peacefully through Munich on Saturday, Feb. 8 to protest his presence at the 39th Munich Conference on International Security -- chanting slogans such as "No room for Rumsfeld!"

"We think it is dreadful that Donald Rumsfeld is out there pushing for a war against Iraq," Karin Cecere [nee Rumsfeld], 59, said from her home last week. "We are embarrassed to be related to him."

The sentiments of the distant Rumsfeld clan appeared to reflect the pervasive outrage that a vocal majority of Germans expressed towards the US this past week.

Having already ruffled feathers by lumping Germany last week into a group with America’s long-term foes Cuba and Libya, upon arrival the defense secretary described the French, German, and Belgian position regarding Iraq as "shameful" and "inexcusable" referring to the countries’ apparent unwillingness to support America in its attack plans.

All over Germany, several thousand people took part in anti-war demonstrations. Four thousand police officers were drafted into the center of Munich as protesters from across the nation and Switzerland gathered for Rumsfeld’s arrival. Police closed down large sections of downtown Munich for two demonstrations, one called by church and union leaders and another by anti-corporate globalization protesters and radical leftists.

The US State Department had warned Americans earlier in the week to avoid visiting the city, but Munich mayor, Christian Ude, dismissed the warning as ridiculous. "No American citizen has to worry about his or her safety here," he said.

Demonstrators opposing war with Iraq carried signs through snowy Munich, saying, "Rummy, go home" and "Welcome to Cuba."

"I’m demonstrating against Bush because I know what war means. I lived through a bombing attack on a train as a child," said Georg Franz, a 73-year-old retiree.

The protest weekend had started on Friday night with a rally, a satirical pro-capitalist demonstration, and other actions. After Friday’s rally a speaker was arrested for calling for military desertions, but was later released. That evening, police raided an activist convergence center, arresting 22 people, including journalists with press-cards.

Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, refused to attend the high level conference. In his place, Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, whose speech immediately followed Rumsfeld’s opening remarks at the conference, was noticeably taken aback as he reached the podium.

"Why now?" he asked of the Defense Secretary’s thunderous insistence for military action. "Are we in a situation where we should resort to violence?" In a moment of genuine theater, Fischer then turned to the US delegation, switched from German to English, and answered his own question: "Excuse me. I am not convinced."

Commentators in the German media were angered by what they considered to be America’s arrogance.

The Welt am Sonntag newspaper said: "Rumsfeld ... has not only insulted the Chancellor but the Germans in general. There can be no excuse for such behavior.

"By making these stupid comparisons, Rumsfeld has achieved something that he certainly did not intend to. The American Defense Secretary has succeeded in helping the Chancellor [Gerhard Schröder]. Many Germans who were initially put off by Schröder’s electorally motivated maneuvers over Iraq are now fully behind him as a result of Rumsfeld’s insults."

Sources: Associated Press, Independent (UK), Indymedia.org, Telegraph (UK), Times (UK)

Palestinian nurses shot dead

Compiled by Seán Marquis

Feb. 12 (AGR)-- Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) killed two Palestinian nurses on Feb. 7 while the two were at work in a Gaza hospital.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza named the two nurses as Abed al-Karim Anwar Lubbad, 22, and Omar Saad al-din Hussan, 21. They bring to at least 22 the number of Palestinian nurses and doctors killed since the start of the intifada in September 2000.

PCHR said Israeli forces surrounded a house a few meters from the al-Wafa geriatric hospital.

"During the house raid, an Israeli soldier fired a live bullet at a window on the first floor of the hospital, which is clearly marked in Arabic and English. The bullet hit a nurse [Lubbad] in the chest and exited to hit another nurse [Hussan] in the chest as well, thereby killing the two," the group said.

"According to a janitor in the hospital, who had accompanied the nurses, they had gone to check on a patient who was crying out in pain. As soon as they entered the room, a shot was heard. The two men fell to the ground. They were bleeding. Doctors made efforts to save their lives, but Lubbad died immediately and his colleague died shortly after him," according to PCHR.

The IDF gave a different account of the killings, saying its helicopters had fired "warning shots" in support of troops who entered Gaza City in search of a "wanted terrorist." The military claimed the two dead men were in a car when they were shot.

But the hospital’s director, Munir al-Bursh, dismissed the claim.

"Bullets went through the window and killed them. There’s no doubt," he said.

According to Dr Moawya Hassanen, head of the emergency unit at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, "the killings took place while the nurses were performing their duties, fully clothed in medical uniforms."

Two days prior to the shooting of the nurses, an elderly woman was killed on Feb. 5 when the IDF demolished her house while she was still inside, according to Palestinian witnesses and officials.

Kamla Said, 65, was found dead in the rubble of her family home after IDF sappers dynamited it during a raid on the Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said. Doctors at nearby Al-Aqsa hospital, where she was taken, said she died of a crushed chest.

One of her stepsons, Khaled Said, said: "Israeli troops were acting in a brutal way. They got us all out of the house so fast and in an aggressive manner, they gave no chance for us to see who was out and who was in." He said Ms. Said was partially deaf and could not hear warnings from the soldiers to leave the house.

The military said it destroyed Kamila Sha'id's house in al-Maghazi refugee camp because her stepson had killed two Israelis in an attack on a Jewish settlement two years ago.

There have been other occasions when Palestinians were crushed to death when the Israeli army demolished their homes. One of the best-documented was in Nablus in April last year, when eight members of the al-Shubi family died because an Israeli soldier bulldozed their house, despite warnings that there were people inside.

The IDF routinely demolishes the homes of Palestinian militants, even after their deaths, claiming the suffering it inflicts on their families acts as a deterrent. International human rights groups have condemned the practice as collective punishment, which is outlawed under the Geneva conventions.

IDF uses outlawed weapons
IDF troops fired outlawed tank shells at children playing soccer in the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, Israel Radio quoted Palestinians sources as saying.

Palestinian security sources said that of the 11 wounded, eight were aged between 10 and 15 and all were injured by Flachette shells, which scatter thousands of pieces of metal after being fired and whose use is curtailed under international treaties.

The IDF said the shells were fired Jan. 31 at three Palestinians who were apparently trying to launch Kassam rockets and mortar shells east of the camp. According to the Palestinians, the children were playing soccer and had brought with them moveable goalposts that could have been mistaken for rocket launchers.

Controversy in Israel over the use of Flachette shells began after three Palestinian women were mistakenly killed in June 2001 when a Flachette shell was fired on the Gaza encampment in which the women lived.

In another incident, eight Palestinians were killed and more than 50 wounded in October 2002 by Flachette shells in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza.

Rafa wells destroyed
On Jan. 30 Israeli bulldozers demolished the foundations of the pumping station for two water wells that provide nearly 50 percent of drinking and household water to Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

The previous day, IDF bulldozers were operating in the dunes that divide the refugee neighborhood of Tel al Sultan and the southern settlements of the Muwassi area.

Children gathered in the distance, away from the bulldozers and armored personnel carriers and began throwing stones. The armored forces, under attack by the stone throwers, responded with live fire.

A field researcher for PCHR said that after the soldiers opened fire on the children, some armed youths showed up and began shooting back at the soldiers. For several hours the shooting went on, said the residents. Eighteen people were wounded, including eight children from the ages of 10-17.

The next morning, heavy armor appeared and razed the area. Intentionally or not, the bulldozers damaged about 20 houses, including the building with the operating machinery of the two water wells.

One of those wells was dug and built by the Israeli Civil Administration in 1990 and the second was built in 2001 by the Palestinian Authority with funds from the Canadian government. According to the mayor of Rafah, a map identifying the location of the wells had been given to the Israeli authorities. Together, the two wells provide some 6,000 cubic meters of fresh water -- unlike the salty-oily water that comes from four old wells -- out of 13,000 cubic meters produced daily for Rafah's residents.

Now the 130,000 residents of Rafah are on strict water rationing, with water flowing into the neighborhoods only a few hours, and only every few days. People are filling up jerricans straight from the working wells, or from agricultural wells with water unfit for human consumption. The rationing will continue until the money is found to get new pumping equipment and install it.

Sources: Independent (UK), Guardian (UK), Haaretz Daily, Palestine Monitor, Sydney Morning Herald

European Parliament calls for investigation
into reports of forced sterilization in Slovakia

By Ed Holt and Martina Pisarova

Bratislava, Slovakia, Feb. 5 (IPS)-- The European Parliament has asked the Slovak government to investigate a report that many Roma women have been sterilized without their knowledge.

The government has been warned that it will face "complications" in joining the European Union (EU) next year if it fails to act. The European Parliament is due to meet in March to discuss the position of ten states, including Slovakia, that have been invited to join the EU in 2004.

The warning was delivered by European Parliament special rapporteur for Slovakia, Jan Marius Wiersma, after the European Parliament was presented with the joint report by two NGOs (non-governmental organizations).

"The content of the report is disturbing and shocking," Wiersma said. "If such practices are being carried out, they need to be stopped immediately."

Slovakia is believed to have half a million Roma in a total population of about 5.4 million. But the real number could be higher because fear of persecution stops many from declaring their ethnicity on census forms.

Several Roma women have complained before that they have been sterilized without their consent. These complaints have not officially been investigated.

The forced sterilizations have been alleged in a 140-page report "Body and Soul" published by the New York based Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and the local Advisory Center for Civil and Human Rights (POLP).

The report is based on interviews with 230 Roma women from about 40 settlements between August and October last year. It lists 110 recent cases of what it calls forced sterilizations in hospitals in eastern Slovakia.

The practice has continued for more than 60 years under the Nazis, the communists, and now under the present regime, the report says. "Fear of a growing Roma population remains the driving force in justifying reproductive rights violations," the report says.

The report quotes a Roma woman in the eastern Slovak city of Kosice as saying: "The nurses call us Cigani [Gypsies], they tell us that we are dirty and too young to have sex. They call Roma teenagers ‘young whores.’ When they see us pregnant they say: ‘You again! How many children do you want? We have enough of you already’."

The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights had warned as far back as 1992 that many Roma women had not been made fully aware of the irreversible consequences of sterilization when agreeing to the operation.

The report now documents cases where women were made to sign sterilization consent forms while under the effect of anesthesia. It says Roma women are often segregated and subjected to physical and verbal abuse by hospital staff when in labor.

"If you are a Roma woman in Slovakia, it is very likely that you will be sterilized against your will, that you will be put into maternity rooms segregated from white women, [and] be slapped and verbally abused by medical staff," says Barbara Bukovská from POLP.

Doctors named in the report dismissed the allegations. "None of us doctors are prepared to risk their [sic] existence just for the sake of sterilizing any woman without her consent," says Jan Kralik, head of the maternity and gynecological department at the Krompachy city hospital in central Slovakia.

The government has responded quickly to the demand to investigate the claims. Pal Csaky, deputy prime minister for minorities, says he would personally make sure that an investigation is carried out.

Health Minister Rudolf Zajac says that forced sterilizations, if proved true, would be a "heinous and terrible crime."

But a cabinet official overseeing Roma communities, Klara Orgovanova, demanded stronger action. "The recent report is a weighty and grave document that includes a lot of sensitive information and allegations of some very serious criminal cases," she said.

"In many hospitals there are segregated rooms for Roma women, and the staff argue that this is because Roma are not clean," she said. "Such behavior is absolutely unacceptable. There must be more education for medical staff."

Mexico: Skepticism on World Court’s
stay on US executions

By Diego Cevallos

Mexico City, Mexico, Feb. 6 (IPS)-- Rights experts and diplomats are skeptical about the real impacts of Wednesday’s decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to order the United States to temporarily stay the execution of three Mexican prisoners facing death sentences.

Washington will continue to follow its unilateral international policy and will not respect the ruling of the ICJ, says Mexican political expert Alfonso Zárate.

Mexico’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Santiago Oñate, expressed a similar opinion, saying the ruling marks a diplomatic victory for his country but is no guarantee that the executions of the three Mexican prisoners in the United States will be called off.

The Court, the maximum legal arm of the United Nations, ordered the United States, in a unanimous decision by the 15-judge panel, to stay the executions of three of the 51 Mexicans condemned to death in that country.

The ruling states that more time is needed to determine whether the Mexicans on death row had been granted their due right to legal help from their own government

Mexico filed a complaint in January with the ICJ that the United States failed to comply with the Vienna Convention on consular relations by not allowing Mexican citizens arrested in US territory to receive consular assistance.

Although Mexico, which opposes the death penalty outright, asked for a stay on the death sentences for all 51 inmates, the ICJ decision only affects the cases of César Fierro and Roberto Moreno, imprisoned in the state of Texas, and Osvaldo Torres, in Oklahoma.

Mexico’s original complaint before the ICJ covered the cases of 54 Mexicans in US prisons, but in mid-January the governor of the northern state of Illinois issued a blanket pardon to all death row inmates in that state, including three Mexicans.

The Vienna Convention requires the police and legal authorities of the signatory countries to facilitate communication between foreign detainees and their consulate. This did not happen in most of the cases of the Mexicans sentenced to death in the United States, according to the Vicente Fox government.

The US delegation to the international court, however, maintained that Mexico had not demonstrated that the rights of its citizens were not respected in accordance with the Vienna Convention.

Political expert Zárate predicts Washington will ignore the ruling, just as it has in past cases.

Last year, the ICJ ordered the United States to suspend the execution of German citizen Walter LaGrand, ruling that he had not been permitted consular assistance. Nevertheless, LaGrand was executed by authorities in the southwestern state of Arizona.

Ambassador Oñate applauded the ICJ ruling as a victory for international justice, but noted that there is little recourse to ensure that the decisions will be heeded. However, ICJ sources said the Court does have the option to appeal to the United Nations Security Council, which in turn could impose sanctions if the ruling is not obeyed.

US plans for use of gas in Iraq

Austin, Texas and Hamburg, Germany, Feb. 7-- Top US military planners are preparing for the US to use incapacitating biochemical weapons in an invasion of Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed the plans in Feb. 5 testimony before the US House Armed Services Committee.

This is the first official US acknowledgement that it may use (bio)chemical weapons in its crusade to rid other countries of such weapons. The Sunshine Project and other nonprofits have warned since late 2001 that the "War on Terrorism" may result in the United States using prohibited biological and chemical armaments, thereby violating the same treaties it purports to defend. The US announcement creates grave concerns for the future of arms control agreements, particularly the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Rumsfeld stated that plans are being made for multiple applications, including use of gas or aerosols on unarmed Iraqi civilians, in caves, and on prisoners. Rumsfeld reiterated the confusing, typical US official language about so-called "non-lethal" biochemical weapons. Rumsfeld described applications of a "riot agent" that clearly imply the complete incapacitation of victims, combatant and non-combatant, in armed conflict -- a definition and usage that are at odds with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Rumsfeld acknowledged US ratification of the CWC but expressed "regret" about its restrictions, stating that the US has "tangled ourselves up so badly" on policy for use of incapacitating biochemical weapons. Rumsfeld indicated that -- in his opinion -- if President George W. Bush signs a waiver of long-standing restrictions on US use of incapacitating chemicals, that the US will be able to legally field them in Iraq and elsewhere.

The focal points for US development of these weapons are the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate in Quantico, Virginia, and the US Army Soldier Biological Chemical Command, located at Edgewood/Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Following their capture in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the US has used incapacitating chemicals on suspected terrorist "detainees." In October 2002, Russian Special Forces used a so-called "non-lethal" incapacitating biochemical weapon when storming the Palace of Culture Theater in Moscow. It resulted in the deaths of over 100 hostages and was used to facilitate the extrajudicial execution of as many as 50 Chechen separatists. Before the "War on Terrorism" began, British officials stated that they would not cooperate with the US military in missions where US troops used incapacitating chemicals.

Source: The Sunshine Project

N. Korea to US: ‘Pre-emptive
attacks’ our option too

Compiled by Seán Marquis

Feb. 12 (AGR)-- North Korea is entitled to launch a pre-emptive strike against the US rather than wait until the American military have finished with Iraq, the North’s foreign ministry said on Feb. 5.

"The United States says that after Iraq, we are next," said the deputy director Ri Pyong-gap, "but we have our own countermeasures. Pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the US."

His comments came on a day when tension was apparent in the North’s capital, Pyongyang, with an air-raid drill that cleared the city’s streets and the North’s announcement that it has begun full-scale operations at the Yongbyon nuclear plant, the suspected site of weapons-grade plutonium production.

Since reopening the plant in December, the North has kicked out international inspectors and withdrawn from the global treaty to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

North Korea said it was putting the operation of its nuclear facilities on a "normal footing," triggering fears it was about to produce weapons materials.

In Vienna, Austria, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had no comment on the North’s claims and said it would not respond before a Feb. 12 emergency session of the IAEA board of governors.

The 35-nation board is expected to refer the dispute to the Security Council, which could lead to economic sanctions or other punitive measures against the North.

Anxiety in North Korea has been rising since Washington announced plans in the past week to beef up its military strength in the area. Additional bombers will be sent to the region, along with 2,000 extra troops and the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson may also be deployed.

Both sides say they are committed to finding a diplomatic solution but remain far apart in their demands. Pyongyang wants a non-aggression treaty but Washington has said it will not reward "blackmail" and has hinted only at a written guarantee of the North’s security.

This past week featured daily exchanges between the two countries.

The Bush administration warned North Korea on Thursday that it had "robust plans for any contingencies" and though it has no intention of invading, the US is capable of simultaneous military action there and in Iraq.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he believed a diplomatic solution could be found, and he said the US was telling its allies, including China, that they must share the responsibility for keeping North Korea from producing nuclear weapons.

At the White House, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer warned that "the United States is very prepared with robust plans for any contingencies," including military action.

Those remarks followed two announcements from North Korea on Wednesday, the day of Powell’s presentation, that once again seemed designed to cause maximum anxiety in the United States just when the administration was most preoccupied with Iraq.

First, North Korea said it had restarted its Yongbyon nuclear power plant, which is believed capable of producing enough plutonium for perhaps six bombs within six months.

Later Wednesday, Pyong-gap made his "preemptive attacks" comment to Britain’s Guardian newspaper and North Korea’s party newspaper, the Rodong Shinmun, was also reported to have run a commentary warning that "when the US makes a surprise attack on our peaceful nuclear facilities, it will spark off a total war."

Then on Friday President George W. Bush repeated the threat of military action by stating that "all options are on the table."

The N. Korean government countered with a statement of its own saying that any US moves to build up its military force on the Korean Peninsula could lead to "horrible nuclear disasters."

"If the US moves to bolster aggression troops are unchecked, the whole land of Korea will be reduced to ashes and the Koreans will not escape horrible nuclear disasters," North Korea’s official news agency, KCNA, said.

North Korea’s statement Friday was issued by the Committee for Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, a government agency in charge of relations with South Korea.

In line with the North’s strategy to drive a wedge between the United States and its ally South Korea, the statement urged the South Koreans to frustrate US plans for a military buildup.

"The grave situation where there is the real danger of a new war created by the US imperialists on the Korean Peninsula goes to more clearly prove that there exists on the peninsula only confrontation between the Korean nation and the United States," it said.

The North is trying to capitalize on a deepening split between the United States and South Korea.The gap is so wide that some US conservatives, for years the bastion of support for the US military alliance with South Korea, are beginning to call for US troop withdrawals and other changes in the alliance structure.

William Drennan, deputy director of the research program at the US Institute of Peace and a retired US Air Force colonel who served in South Korea, pointed to the recent wave of demonstrations and vigils protesting the acquittals of two US soldiers who killed two Korean schoolgirls while driving a US military vehicle.

Drennan said South Koreans have exhibited the "largest and most sustained wave of anti-Americanism in 50 years."

The protests are significant, he said, because "for the first time since 1987, the middle class has come out and joined with the radical fringe of Korean society."

Sources: Associated Press, Guardian (UK), Inter Press Service, Los Angeles Times

Protests rock Bolivian government

By Jos Antonio Aruquipa

La Paz, Bolivia, Feb. 3-- At least 20 people have died in clashes between protesters and the police and military that began Jan. 8 and have threatened to destabilize the six-month-old government of President Gonzalo Snchez de Lozada.

Campesinos, laborers, transportation workers, and pensioners staged protests throughout the country demanding a better quality of life. Fifty-eight percent of Bolivia's 8 million people live in poverty. Grassroots leaders -- including two congressmen, Evo Morales, a leader of the coca growers, and Felipe Quispe, an Aymara leader known as the "Mallku" or "condor" -- announced on Jan. 22 that they were forming a "staff of the people" and threatened nationwide roadblocks unless Snchez de Lozada resigned.

When the president took office on Aug. 6, he promised to pull Bolivia out of the recession that has battered the economy since 1999. He also pledged to end poverty and create "thousands and thousands of jobs." After taking office, however, he called on Bolivians to unite against a common enemy -- the economic crisis -- and asked grassroots groups for a 90-day grace period while he implemented new measures.

On Nov. 3, Snchez de Lozada announced a program that would put unemployed Bolivians to work on public construction projects. He also announced the re-establishment of Bonosol, a monthly solidarity voucher of US $240 for people over age 65, and universal health coverage for pregnant women and children under age five.

Opposition leaders from Morales' Movement to Socialism (MAS) party and the New Republican Force (NFR) charged that the insurance program would cause the collapse of the health-care system, which was already suffering from a $50 million deficit.

The government planned to finance the solidarity vouchers from the Collective Capitalization Fund (FCC), which contains money from the privatization of state-run companies during Snchez de Lozada's first term in office (1993-97). Because the fund was insufficient to finance the $90 million Bonosol program, however, the president decided to merge the FCC with the Individual Capitalization Fund (FCI), which contains workers' retirement funds.

The Bolivian Workers Central (COB), MAS and NFR appealed that decision to the Constitutional Tribunal, arguing that the government could not appropriate private property -- a reference to borrowing from the retirement fund.

Although the Constitutional Tribunal was already considering the case, the government went ahead with payment of the benefits on Jan. 6. That coincided with the previously announced date for a roadblock by coca growers to pressure the government to suspend the forced eradication of coca crops and expand the area for legal coca cultivation from 12,000 to 30,000 hectares. The coca growers said the increase was necessary to meet rising demand for coca for traditional, legal uses.

Snchez de Lozada met with Morales four times in September and October, but failed to convince the coca growers to accept his proposal for a study of consumption to determine if such an expansion is justified.

After learning that the president planned to make the Bonosol payment, Morales postponed the protests, but pledged to launch them on Jan. 13 unless the government responded to all the demands of grassroots groups.

While officials attempted to isolate Morales in the central coca-growing region of Chapare and negotiate with each group of protesters separately, on Jan. 8 about 300,000 bus drivers went on strike nationwide to protest an increase in the cost of the vehicle insurance required by law.

On the same day, about 7,000 soldiers, hundreds of police, tanks, and helicopters moved into Chapare, while 6,000 pensioners gathered in the village of Patacamaya, 100 kilometers from La Paz, and voted to march to the capital to protest a law that pegged their pensions to inflation rather than to the US dollar.

On Jan. 12, the marchers -- who by then numbered about 10,000 -- stopped in Calamarca, a two-day walk from La Paz, where they blocked the highway and threatened to launch a hunger strike if the government did not rescind the measure.

The next day, hundreds of coca producers began protests in Chapare, blocking the main highway between of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. Two civilians were killed in clashes between protesters and security forces on Jan. 14, hours before Snchez de Lozada was to travel to Ecuador to attend the inauguration of President Lucio Gutirrez.

While the president was in Ecuador, Vice President Carlos Mesa authorized police to quell the pensioners’ protest in Calamarca. On Jan. 15, hundreds of police and soldiers tied the hands of several thousand demonstrators and loaded them onto 50 buses to remove them from the scene of the protests. Twelve pensioners died when one of the buses struck another vehicle head-on on the road to Oruro.

When they heard that two of the accident victims had been leaders at the Huanuni mine), workers from the mine decided to march to Oruro in solidarity. Government officials ordered soldiers and tanks to the mine, and one worker was killed in a clash between the soldiers and miners. At least five people were killed in other confrontations.

On Jan. 22, the government agreed to peg pensions to the US dollar at least for this year.

Although Snchez de Lozada called on the protesters for "dialogue without pressure" and asked the coca growers to lift the roadblocks, saying they were "blocking solutions," on Jan. 26 he and Morales signed a memo of understanding meant to pave the way for talks on the coca growers' demands and those of other groups.

Source: Latinamerica Press

US readies 100,000 body bags as global
alliances threaten to fracture over Iraq

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Feb. 12 (AGR)-- Transatlantic relations faced an unprecedented row last Monday -- with France spearheading efforts to slow the march to a US-led war against Iraq.

In a spectacular move, France, Russia and Germany called for strengthened United Nations (UN) weapons inspections in Iraq, aimed at peacefully disarming that country.

In another significant move Monday, France joined Belgium and Germany in refusing to support any NATO protection for Turkey in the event of an attack on Iraq.

The three countries, taking a stand US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denounced in advance as "a disgrace," said a decision ahead of the UN Security Council meeting this Friday, would constitute a "logic for war" and argued that war preparations, even to defend a NATO ally, could undermine diplomatic efforts to avert a conflict in Iraq.

Rumsfeld, fresh from a heated debate over Atlantic security in Munich over the weekend, said that if necessary the US would ignore NATO’s 54-year-old creed of collective action and mobilize anyway. Rumsfeld said Washington would go ahead with plans to boost Turkey’s defenses despite objections from the three NATO allies.

US president George W. Bush responded with anger to the decision to block military assistance to Turkey.

"I don’t understand that decision. It affects the alliance in a negative way," Bush said.

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw rejected calls for more weapons inspections in Iraq, arguing that "even a 1,000-fold increase" in inspectors would achieve nothing.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned that if Friday’s inspectors’ report shows Iraq is still not cooperating with inspections, the White House will seek a UN resolution authorizing a US-led invasion of Iraq.

The plan calling for strengthening weapons inspectors was dismissed as "irrelevant" by the US Administration, a stance that drew crucial backing Tuesday from China.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin, in a telephone call with French President Jacques Chirac, reiterated China’s stance on finding a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis.

"The inspection in Iraq is effective and should be continued and strengthened," China’s official Xinhua news agency paraphrased Jiang as saying Tuesday. "Warfare is good for no one, and it is our responsibility to take various measures to avoid war."

Together with the United States, China, France and Russia are veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council. Beijing’s support means three permanent members of the council are now lined up against the US and Britain in opposition to war on Iraq. Should the three opposing nations decide to exercise their veto, any attempt to push through a Security Council resolution legitimizing war against Iraq would fail.

Germany is a rotating member and chairs the Security Council this month, but it has no veto power. Germany said all but four Council members back extending weapons inspections.

Chirac presented the joint declaration on weapons inspectors Monday in Paris, after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He said the three countries favor increasing the number of weapons inspectors in Iraq as well as reinforcing their technical capabilities -- a position that runs counter to US President George W. Bush’s warning that "time is running out" for Baghdad to disarm.

"We [Russia and France] think a solution of force could lead to an unpredictable escalation of tension. An overwhelming majority of countries in the international community feel the problem can and should be solved by diplomatic means," the statement, read aloud by Chirac, said.

Chirac said that Iraq’s weapons capability must be neutralized as quickly as possible but that waging war to achieve the objective should be considered only as a last resort. "Nothing today justifies a war," Chirac said. "This region really does not need another war."

Putin, who arrived in Paris Monday for a three-day visit, said Russia believes the crisis in Iraq must be resolved diplomatically. He held talks over the weekend with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin.

"We are against the war," he said. "Both of our countries insist on the need to solve the problem and the crisis diplomatically, and we consider that ... careless action could lead to unknown results."

The Russian President said he believes that inspectors are making progress with Iraq.

"Iraq is offering more information and shown a greater wish and willingness to cooperate," he said. Russia stood ready to contribute "equipment and aviation" to any efforts to enhance inspections.

Ahead of Chirac presenting the joint declaration, German government officials said Sunday they would join France in presenting an initiative to the UN Security Council on Friday to disarm Iraq without the use of force.

Elements of the Franco-German plan were leaked at a security conference in Munich over the weekend.

German Defense Minister Peter Struck said the initiative builds on a French proposal to double or triple the number of weapons inspectors unveiled earlier this month at the Security Council.

Struck denied reports Monday in the German media that the proposal also calls for deploying about one thousand UN peacekeepers -- blue helmets -- in Iraq.

Rumsfeld said international diplomatic efforts to get Iraq to disarm had failed as he brought a bellicose message to Europe on Friday.

"We’ve seen enormous efforts by the international community of a diplomatic nature and they have failed," he said in Rome.

The next day, Rumsfeld said countries such as France and Germany are undermining what slim chance may exist to avoid war.

"There are those who counsel that we should delay preparations" for war against Iraq. "Ironically, that approach could well make war more likely, not less, because delaying preparations sends a signal of uncertainty," Rumsfeld said in the opening address at the widely protested international conference on security policy.

Last Thursday, a grim President Bush prepared the nation for war, saying: "The game is over."

His statement from the White House came a few hours after the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, a premier unit that often leads invasions, received orders to deploy overseas.

At the same time, Colin Powell said the crisis over Iraq would reach a climax "one way or another" within weeks. "I think we are reaching an endgame," Powell told the largely supportive Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee rejected the "game is over" for Iraq remarks.

"I don’t think the game is over. Evidence produced by America should be carefully examined. Inspectors should be encouraged to continue with their work. ... I hope Iraq fully cooperates with the UN Security Council," Vajpayee responded.

Vajpayee was addressing a joint press conference with French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who said India and France had similar views on the situation in Iraq.

Raffarin said, "It’s not a game. It’s not over. There is an alternative to war and we hope that the process begun under Resolution 1441 of the United Nations will be allowed to run its course."

On Sunday, a Catholic archbishop announced that up to 100,000 body bags and 6,000 coffins have been secretly delivered to a US base in Italy.

Archbishop Renato Martino, president of the Pope’s Council of Peace and Justice, said the consignment had arrived at the Sigonella base near Catania on the island of Sicily 10 days ago.

He said: "Americans are expecting a high number of casualties. That is why so many body bags and coffins have been sent to the base.

"A true preventative action would be to try and avoid war. The consequences of this war will make themselves all too obvious on the American people when they start to see coffins with loved ones in them returning home."

Drive to Iraq puts Western alliance system at risk
With the Bush administration in a seemingly headlong rush to war, the current international crisis over Iraq’s disarmament appears to be threatening the global system of alliances Washington built in the post-World War II era.

The latest example is the growing trans-Atlantic divide between the US on the one hand and France, Germany and Belgium -- the very core of Western Europe -- on the other.

By all accounts there have been few more difficult and dramatic meetings in the 54-year history of NATO than this week’s series of emergency sessions. NATO’s disarray drew international headlines, with Danish newspapers proclaiming "NATO in a historic crisis" and "NATO is the hostage of the Iraq conflict."

Already, media mouthpieces for administration hawks, such as the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, are arguing that the French-Belgian veto of Turkey’s request for NATO arms to defend itself against a possible Iraqi attack has put the Atlantic alliance’s very survival into question.

"If this is what the US gets from NATO, maybe it’s time America considered leaving this Cold War institution and reforming an alliance of nations that understand the new threats to world order," the Journal said, reiterating Pentagon chief Rumsfeld’s reaction to the veto as "truly shameful."

The latest flurry of diplomatic moves and counter-moves by Washington and its long-time allies is prompting growing concern about the current crisis’ long-term strategic consequences, especially for the NATO alliance and the United Nations Security Council.

The NATO controversy was one of several sharp diplomatic challenges to the US war effort, as weeks of verbal disputes among traditionally close allies crystallized into formal statements of disagreement.

Although US officials have claimed support from a number of the rest of NATO’s 15 members, none but Bulgaria has said so publicly. Several ambassadors said they were trying to keep their heads down, and not declare a position, while the "Perm-5" fight it out.

Nicholas Burns, US Ambassador to NATO, reacting to this week’s dramatic international resistance against the US said: "NATO is now facing a crisis of credibility."

Sources: Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, BBC News, The Hindu, Independent (UK), Inter Press Service, Mirror (UK), Qatar News Agency, Reuters, Times (UK), Washington Post

Uganda: Elimination of user fees brings
big increase in clinic utilization rates

By Rick Rowden

Washington, DC , Feb. 4-- Buried in the depths of Uganda's official Ministry of Health Annual Performance Report for 2001/02 (page 61) are some startling statistics about the results of Uganda's decision to go against World Bank advice and abolish health user fees: in one year, there has been a spectacular increase in utilization of services totaling a 40 percent increase in attendance for outpatients and an increase from 48 percent to 63 percent for DPT3 immunizations.

"This is a massive good news story which needs to get out," said Robert Yates, a Ugandan Civil Servant who works with the Health Ministry. Although the in-country representatives of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank are "not exactly singing this from the rooftops," President Museveni is quite pleased with the outcome. Museveni, who went against World Bank policy advice on the issue and joined Tanzania and other countries in unilaterally dropping the much-maligned "user fees," went out of his way to criticize the World Bank for "imposing user fees" at the recent Commonwealth Health Ministers' meeting in Entebbe, and was now proudly showing the results of having eliminated them. One key result is that millions of Ugandans are now accessing health care services that the fees had blocked them from receiving.

In the course of in-depth surveys taken as part of the Uganda Participatory Poverty Assessment Program (UPPAP) in 2000/1, President Museveni became aware of just how tremendously unpopular the user fees were, and sought to eliminate them despite World Bank pressure to retain the fees.

"User fees" can best be understood as a symptom of the larger budget cuts in health and education spending that had long come as a result of overall budget austerity insisted upon by the IMF. The IMF is very clear that it never told governments where to cut their budgets, only to reduce the overall budgets to be within certain parameters. It is the resulting budget battles between ministries that always led to the politically weakest ones getting the short end of the stick. After many years of chronic under-funding, the World Bank began suggesting in the late 1980s that health and education ministries charge user fees at clinics and schools as a good way to make up for reduced health and education budgets.

However, 15 years of mounting evidence from UNICEF and others showed the fees were keeping poor people from accessing health care or primary school. This research led many health and education advocates and civil society groups, including the US lobby group RESULTS, to successfully get the US Congress to include language in the 2001 foreign aid appropriations bill report that requires the US to oppose any World Bank, IMF, or other multilateral development bank loan which includes user fees for basic health or education services, and to report to Congress within 10 days should any loan or other agreement be approved that includes such user fees. The US legislation had a significant impact inside the World Bank, which relented under pressure and officially reversed its user fees policy in September 2001.

The Bank’s new policy is quite clear on its new opposition to primary school user fees, but is much more ambiguous on the need do away with health user fees. Despite the Bank's official policy switch, today many other developing countries continue to see the fees as a substitute for larger budgets and as a way of coping with IMF budget austerity.

The results of the elimination of user fees in Uganda take on added significance in advance of the World Bank’s upcoming World Development Report 2004 (WDR), which is likely to be consistent with the Bank’s efforts to argue against increasing support for public health services -- even suggesting that it is not worth investing more money in them. The upcoming WDR is an attempt to rebut the important conclusions reached in 2001 by the report of the World Health Organization’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health. This report turned neoliberal and free market logic on its head: for years the IMF and World Bank have been telling governments to cut state spending in an effort to decrease budget deficits, keep inflation low, and raise overall economic growth rates; and only after economic growth rates materialize could governments then increase spending on health and education. Yet the WHO’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health concluded the very opposite: vast increases in public health and education spending now will lay the social foundation necessary for higher economic growth rates in the future.

Source: RESULTS Educational Fund

Truth behind US ‘poison
factory’ claim revealed

By Luke Harding

Feb. 9-- If Colin Powell were to visit the shabby military compound at the foot of a large snow-covered mountain, he might be in for an unpleasant surprise. The US Secretary of State last week confidently described the compound in north-eastern Iraq -- run by an Islamic terrorist group Ansar al-Islam -- as a "terrorist chemicals and poisons factory."

Yesterday, however, it emerged that the terrorist factory was nothing of the kind -- more a dilapidated collection of concrete outbuildings at the foot of a grassy sloping hill. Behind the barbed wire, and a courtyard strewn with broken rocket parts, are a few empty concrete houses. There is a bakery. There is no sign of chemical weapons anywhere -- only the smell of paraffin and vegetable ghee used for cooking.

In the kitchen, I discovered some chopped up tomatoes but not much else. The cook had left his Kalashnikov propped neatly against the wall.

Ansar al Islam -- the Islamic group that uses the compound identified by Powell as a military headquarters to launch murderous attacks against secular Kurdish opponents -- yesterday invited me and several other foreign journalists into their territory for the first time.

"We are just a group of Muslims trying to do our duty," Mohammad Hasan, spokesman for Ansar al-Islam, explained. "We don’t have any drugs for our fighters. We don’t even have any aspirin. How can we produce any chemicals or weapons of mass destruction?" he asked.

The radical terrorist group controls a tiny mountainous chunk of Kurdistan, the self-rule enclave of northern Iraq. Over the past year Ansar’s fighters have been at war with the Kurdish secular parties who control the rest of the area. Every afternoon both sides mortar each other across a dazzling landscape of mountain and shimmering green pasture. Until last week this was an obscure and parochial conflict.

But last Wednesday Powell suggested that the 500-strong band of Ansar fighters had links with both al-Qaida and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. They were, he hinted, a global menace -- and more than that; they were the elusive link between Osama bin Laden and Iraq.

This is clearly little more than cheap hyperbole. Yesterday Hassan took the unprecedented step of inviting journalists into what was previously forbidden territory in an almost certainly doomed attempt to prevent an American missile strike once the war with Iraq kicks off. Ali Bapir, a warlord in the neighboring town of Khormal, leant us several fighters armed with machine guns and we set off.

We drove past an Ansar checkpoint, marked with a black flag and the Islamic militia’s logo -- the Koran, a sheaf of wheat, and a sword. We kept going. The landscape was littered with the ruins of demolished houses, destroyed during Saddam’s infamous Anfal campaign against the Kurds in 1988. At the corner of the valley we passed a pink mosque, with sandbagging on the roof. Washing hung from a courtyard. A group of Ansar fighters -- in green military fatigues -- smiled and waved us on.

Several of their comrades were in the graveyard across the road. There were numerous fresh plots, each marked with a black flag. After 20 minutes’ drive along a twisting mountain track we arrived in Serget -- the village identified from space by American satellite as a haven of terrorist activity.

Yesterday, however, Hassan was at pains to deny any link with al-Qaida.

"All we are trying to do is fulfill the prophet’s goals," he said. "Read the Koran and you’ll understand."

Senior officials from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan -- the party with which Ansar is at war -- insist that the Islamic guerrillas based in the village have been experimenting with poisons. They claim that they have smeared a crude form of cyanide on door handles, and that they had even tried it out on several farm animals, including sheep and donkeys, they claim. The guerrillas have also managed to construct a 1.5kg "chemical" bomb designed to explode and kill anyone within a 50-meter radius, Kurdish intelligence sources say.

Hassan yesterday dismissed all these allegations as "lies." "We don’t have any chemical weapons. As you can see this is an isolated place," said Ayub Khadir, another fighter. And yet, despite the fact there appeared to be no evidence of chemical experimentation, Ansar’s complex was lavish for an organization that purports to be made up merely of simple Muslims. Concealed in a concrete bunker, we discovered a sophisticated television studio, complete with cameras, editing equipment and a scanner.

In a neighboring room were several computers, beneath shelves full of videotapes. A banner written in Arabic proclaims: "Those who believe in Islam will be rewarded."

Until recently Ansar had its own website where the faithful could log on to footage of Ansar guerrillas in battle. In small concrete bunkers the fighters operated their own radio station, Radio Jihad. The announcer had clearly been sitting on an empty box of explosives. Hassan denied yesterday that his revolutionary group received any funding from Baghdad or from Iran, a short hike away over the mountains.

"If Colin Powell were to come here he would see that we have nothing to hide," he said. But Ansar’s sources of funding remain mysterious -- and their real purpose unclear. "All Ansar fighters are from Iraq," Hassan said. "Iraq is one of the richest countries in the world. Our fighters have brought their own things with them."

But while they appear to pose no real threat to Washington or London, Ansar’s fighters are a brutal bunch. They have so far killed more than 800 opposition Kurdish fighters. They have shot dead several civilians. They have even tried -- last April -- to assassinate Dr. Barham Salih, the Prime Minister of the neighboring town of Sulamaniyah. The plot went wrong and two of the assassins were shot dead. A third is in prison.

"We are fed up with them. We wish they would go away," said one villager, who refused to be named.

The militia’s weapons had been inherited, captured from their enemies or bought from smugglers, Hassan said. Kurdish intelligence sources insist that there is "solid and tangible proof" linking Ansar both to Iraqi intelligence agents and to al-Qaida. They say that a group of fighters visited Afghanistan twice before the fall of the Taliban and met Abu Hafs, one of bin Laden’s key lieutenants.

Hassan yesterday refused to say how many fighters were holed up in the three villages and one mountain valley under Ansar’s control ("It’s a military secret," he said) and claimed that none of his men were Arab volunteers come to fight jihad in Iraq.

Source: Observer (UK)

BRIEFS

Opium trade thrives in ‘democratic’Afghanistan
Despite the establishment of a "democratic government" and the presence of a 4,800 strong international peacekeeping force in Kabul, the cultivation of opium is continuing unabated in Afghanistan, a new UN study concludes. The study questions why the international coalition is "not able to bring under control a phenomenon connected to international terrorism and organized crime," and why the central government in Kabul is "not able to enforce a ban on opium cultivation as effectively as the former Taliban regime in 2000-2001." Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, an industry that is an intensely complex phenomenon and is intermingled with the country’s history, political structure, civil society, and economy. (IPS)

Australians bare all in anti-war protest
On a hillside in a New South Wales beach town, more than 750 women lay end to end, forming a heart around the words "No War" while wearing nothing at all. This visual anti-war statement was intended to convince Prime Minister John Howard to recall Australian troops from the Middle East. Aerial photographs will be used to publicize the stunt. Australia has sent troops to the Gulf and approved the deployment of fighter planes in support of the US military build-up in the region but has yet to publicly commit itself to joining any UN-approved or US-led military action in Iraq. (Associated Press, BBC News)

Protests at return of urban terror to Colombia
An estimated 20,000 Colombians held a peace rally in Bogota’s Simon Bolivar park Sunday in solidarity with the victims of a car bomb on Friday that killed 32 people and called for an end to the violence that has plagued this Andean nation for over 40 years. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, the worst in Colombia in 10 years. Government officials are quick to blame the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country’s largest guerilla army; they in turn blame far-right paramilitary groups. The Colombian president has called on the international community to do more in its efforts to stop the drug trafficking that is fuelling the conflict. (Independent UK)

Millions were in germ war tests
Britains Ministry of Defense turned large parts of England into a giant laboratory to conduct a series of secret germ warfare tests on the public. A government report just released provides for the first time a comprehensive official history of Britain’s biological weapons trials, designed to assess Britain’s vulnerability if the Russians were to have released biological weapons over the country, between 1940 and 1979. Many of these involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and microorganisms over vast swaths of the population without the public being told. The report reveals that military personnel were briefed to tell any "inquisitive inquirer" the trials were part of research projects into weather and air pollution. In most cases, the trials did not use biological weapons but "harmless" alternatives which scientists believed would mimic germ warfare. Families in certain areas of the country who have had children born with birth defects are demanding a public inquiry. (The Observer UK)

Thousands protest privatization in Sri Lanka
Over 4,000 people from all parts of the country gathered on Feb. 1 under the leadership of the Alliance for Protection of National Resources and Human Rights. Farmers, fishers, trade unions, environmentalists, and the urban poor, all came to protest the undemocratic process of economic reforms currently carried out by the government based on World Bank recommendations. This is part of a series of protests launched by the Alliance to prevent the privatization of state banks and other enterprises, the removal of labor regulations, and the privatization of natural resources such as water and forests. (Kadawara Pujawa)

Faslane nuclear weapons base shut down
While UK Prime Minister Tony Blair remains ready to back the US attack on Iraq, ostensibly to disarm its alleged weapons of mass destruction, early last Wednesday peace activists blocked vehicular entrances to Faslane, the base for Britania Trident nuclear weapon submarines, shutting down the whole base for over one hour. Nine activists from the Trident Ploughshares anti-nuclear/anti-war group were arrested. They stated that "Here at Faslane…we have the biggest concentration of illegal weapons in Western Europe." (www.tridentploughshares.org)

Economic protests in Dominican Republic lead to arrests, injury
At least 174 people were arrested and 15 wounded, including four police agents, in the Dominican Republic Feb. 4 during a nationwide day of protests against the government’s economic policies. Protesters charge that after the demonstration, police carried out a series of raids in Santo Domingo resulting in 112 additional arrests. The protest, sponsored by labor and religious groups, centered on demands of lowered taxes on utilities and an end to external debt. The day before, Dominican President Mejia announced a program of social benefits worth $10 million dollars, which he hoped would undercut support for the protests. (Weekly Update on the Americas)

Australian PM censured over Iraq
The Australian senate has passed an historic no-confidence motion against the prime minister over his handling of the crisis in Iraq. John Howard and his conservative Liberal/National coalition were censured for deploying troops to the Gulf ahead of a possible war. Opposition and minor parties joined forces to pass the motion, which has no legislative clout, but is considered an important symbolic gesture as it is the Senate’s first vote of no-confidence in a serving leader in its 102-year history. Howard, a staunch US ally, has insisted the deployment of troops does not mean Australia has decided to support any war with Iraq. So far, Australia and the UK are the only countries to have joined the US in deploying forces to the Gulf region. (BBC)

World powers ‘boycott’ UN Afro-descendents group
The US and the European Union scorn the work of a group of intellectuals who are studying -- at the behest of the US -- the problem of race discrimination suffered by people of African descent. According to the International Association Against Torture, the members of the West European and Other States (WEO) bloc are "boycotting" the session under way this week of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, a body created in 2002 by the UN Commission on Human Rights after the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in South Africa in 2001. In spite of the tensions with the Western European bloc, the Working Group continued with its duties. It addressed the matter of reparations for slavery, one of the most contentious issues separating developing countries and the WEO, which roundly objects to any possibility of compensation for the descendents of victims of slavery or the trans-Atlantic slave trade. While the word "reparations" does not appear in the final documents of the WCAR, the meeting had produced "a form of ‘silent consensus’ that reparations for slavery is in harmony with the simple sense of justice and the basic tenets of international law," said a Working Group Asian delegate. (IPS)

Secret video refers to CIA killing Mugabe
A political consultant told the Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai he had recruited the CIA to "eliminate" President Robert Mugabe, according to a video played in court last Wednesday. Ari Ben Menashe, the Zimbabwean government’s star witness in the case against Tsvangirai on charges he was trying to kill Mugabe and stage a coup, also told the opposition leader his firm had lobbied the US Congress to back a plan to remove Mugabe. Tsvangirai and two colleagues in the Movement for Democratic Change say they were framed to weaken the opposition. They could face the death penalty if convicted. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Guilty while not guilty: the case of Montreal activist Manuel Almeida
On Feb. 4, in Montreal’s municipal court, anti-capitalist activist and postal worker Manuel Almeida, 44, was found guilty of breaking his condition of release on a previous charge. Almeida was charged with the offense after he was rounded up in a downtown park where hundreds had gathered to listen to music before an evening march on Apr. 26, 2002, in a preemptive mass arrest undertaken by Montreal’s riot squad before the demonstration ever began. The events were organized by the Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC) in opposition to the G8 Labor Ministers’ meeting.
Also arrested in a mass round-up after participating in the Sept. 2001 anti-IMF/World Bank protests, Almeida was found not guilty in this original case due to lack of evidence, which led to the draconian "no-protest" conditions imposed on him. Almeida, serving food in the park for the CLAC Food Committee in April, was planning to leave the park before the march in accordance with his falsely-imposed no-protest conditions when he was arrested. He faces sentencing for breaking his conditions at the G8 protest. He also faces trial in Ottawa after being targeted, because of his dedicated political commitment to CLAC, at another G8 protest in July, 2002. (Indymedia Quebec)

Brazil avoids friction by agreeing to FTAA timeline
Brazil has agreed to follow the timeline for Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations, as its regional trade partners urged last week, in a move indicating Brazil wants to ensure its South American leadership role. Many expected the new Brazilian government, under Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, leader of the leftist Workers Party (PT), would stir up change in the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) stance on the FTAA talks, and seek to establish the bloc -- or Brazil itself -- as a counterweight to the US. The platform of the PT describes the FTAA as a project belonging to Washington, an effort to "annex" Latin America, and a threat to the sovereignty of the region’s nations. But Brazil has seemed to come to the conclusion that rejecting the FTAA guidelines would cause friction within Mercosur and jeopardize its strategy for attaining "acceptable leadership" in Latin America. (IPS)

Interior minister links terrorism and political activists
The Italian Interior Minister appeared in parliament on Jan. 27 to answer questions on the threat of terrorism with a detailed report in which he warned of a growing climate of "widespread political illegality" which must be monitored and combated. The Minister mixed together Islamic terrorist groups, indigenous left-wing armed groups, anarchist insurrectionists in general, and right-wing groups as part of a common threat. Thus anarchists are a "vast and armed group" (terrorist organization) despite "a lack of strategic leadership and hierarchical organization." The Minister sought to minimize the differences between illegal acts of demonstrative nature (an occupation or picketing) and terrorism. Members of some groups that have been called into question believe that a "preventative criminalization" of activists is taking place in the run-up to the anti-war demonstration planned for Feb. 15, to justify possible government excesses. (Il Manifesto)

US threatens Russia with sanctions
The US has warned Russia of new sanctions if it continues with plans to provide new advanced weapons systems to Iran. Russian officials say they want to complete a new weapons deal within months. US officials say Iran has intensified contacts with Russia and other former Soviet republics in an effort to complete its nuclear weapons programs. Last year, Washington reported on two Iranian nuclear facilities that have not been inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran is considered to be a much greater threat to world security than Iraq by many political experts. (World Tribune)