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N. Korea promises ‘merciless
deadly blows’ against US
Compiled by Seán Marquis
Apr. 30 (AGR)— Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Tuesday
that a North Korean proposal to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile
programs would not lead in the right direction.
“It is a proposal that is not going to take us in the direction
we need to go. But nevertheless we will study it,” he told the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Powell’s comments came just days after negotiations with North
Korea ended early and abruptly amidst conflicting statements from North
Korea and fiery rhetoric and strong statements from both nations.
On Friday, Apr. 25, Powell said that three-way talks between North Korea,
China and the United States had ended a day earlier than expected and
warned Pyongyang that Washington would not respond to threats.
Three days of talks, from Apr. 23-25 had been initially scheduled.
While announcing the end of the discussions, Powell delivered a strongly
worded warning for North Korea not to make threats as Pyongyang ratcheted
up its rhetoric.
“They should not leave this series of discussions that have been
held in Beijing with the slightest impression that the United States
and its partners and the nations in the region will be intimidated by
bellicose statements or by threats or actions they think might get them
more attention or might force us to make a concession that we would
not otherwise make,” Powell said.
As the second day of talks wrapped up, Pyongyang said the situation
on the peninsula was “so tense that a war may break out any moment
due to the US moves.”
During the talks North Korea warned it would deal “merciless deadly
blows” to US troops in the event of war, as talks were underway
in Beijing to defuse a crisis over its nuclear ambitions.
The warning came from Kim Il-Chol, minister of the People’s Armed
Forces, during a ceremony on Apr. 24 to mark the 71st anniversary of
the army’s founding, the North’s official Korean Central News
Agency said.
“If the US imperialists and their followers invade even an inch
of our inviolable sky, land and seas despite our serious warning, our
people’s army will deal merciless deadly blows at the aggressors
and win a final victory in the confrontation with the US,” he was
quoted as saying.
The communist state’s army was “equipped with powerful offensive
and defensive means capable of defeating any formidable enemy at one
swoop,” he said.
North Korea apparently used the stormy talks with the US to assert what
Washington has long assumed – that the reclusive Communist state
already has nuclear weapons.
According to some accounts, the North Korean side not only told the
US delegation – led by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly
– that it did possess weapons but also that it would prove the
fact “soon” implying it would conduct a test explosion, if
the US did not offer specific security guarantees. But other accounts
stress the word “test” was not mentioned.
Though details of the talks remained confidential, United States officials
told NBC television that North Korea said it had begun reprocessing
spent fuel rods into plutonium, and might export the weapons-grade material
to the highest bidder.
In a possible “carrot and stick” approach, a secret Donald
Rumsfeld memorandum calling for regime change in North Korea was leaked
on Apr. 21 – just before the scheduled negotiations with North
Korea and China.
The classified discussion paper, circulated by the defense secretary,
does not call for military action against North Korea, but wants the
United States to team up with China in pushing for the collapse of Kim
Jong-il’s bankrupt but belligerent regime, the New York Times reported.
The White House claims that regime change in North Korea is not official
policy, despite the country’s inclusion with Iraq and Iran in President
George W. Bush’s “axis of evil.”
Representatives of 187 countries attended the Preparatory Committee
of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which began on Apr. 28
in Geneva, Switzerland in the shadow of North Korea’s departure
from the global treaty and with the bleakest prospects for progress
in the pact’s 33-year history.
The NPT was supposed to lead to a non-nuclear world, but experts say
the risks of proliferation are worse now than for the past 50 years.
In the past two years the multilateral effort to contain and reduce
the nuclear risk has unraveled.
North Korea became the first state ever to defect from the NPT –
Israel, India, and Pakistan, all known nuclear states, have never been
members – when it announced its departure in January.
Pyongyang’s off-the-record announcement last week that it already
had the bomb was a further blow. “Everyone is at a loss as to how
to move forward on North Korea,” said Kathryn Crandall of the British
American Security Information Council, a research organization.
At least as damaging as North Korea’s departure have been successive
moves by Washington to distance itself from nuclear disarmament.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush signed National Security Presidential
Directive 17, which said: “The United States will continue to make
clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force
– including potentially nuclear weapons – to the use of [weapons
of mass destruction] against the United States.”
This assertion, analysts say, undermined an important prop of the NPT
process: the so-called “negative security assurances,” initially
made in 1978 and strengthened by the adoption of UN Security Council
Resolution 984 in 1995, for nuclear states not to use nuclear weapons
against the non-nuclear weapon states.
The assurances were considered vital in discouraging states from developing
their own nuclear weapons.
The popularizing of the term “Weapons of Mass Destruction”
has blurred the formerly stark distinction between nuclear and other
weapons, and has paved the way for this change, claims Crandall. She
said: “Such terminology reduces the understanding of the unparalleled
destructive capacity of nuclear weapons compared to the less destructive
effects of chemical and biological weapons.”
More and more states are likely to buy the argument that the only way
to be secure in a unipolar world is to go down the nuclear road –
“to pre-empt pre-emption,” one analyst said. “People
look at the different ways that the ‘Axis of Evil’ states
– Iraq and North Korea – have been treated and they draw their
own conclusions.”
Sources: Agence France-Presse, Daily Telegraph
(UK), Independent (UK), Reuters
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Eviction of workers creates
tension in Buenos Aires
By Marcela Valente
Buenos Aires, Argentina, Apr. 22 (IPS)— Some 20 protesters remained
under arrest Tuesday after police and demonstrators clashed outside
a factory in the Argentine capital Monday, creating a tense climate
ahead of this Sunday’s presidential elections.
An estimated 28 people were injured Monday when riot police used tear
gas, rubber bullets, and batons to enforce a court order for the eviction
of the Brukman textile factory workers who formed a cooperative and
got the bankrupt company going again after it was abandoned by its owners
in late 2001.
Last Friday, police forcibly evicted the 57 workers, mainly women, who
were running the factory and a heavy police guard was posted around
the building to keep them from reentering.
But the members of the cooperative, who are backed by left-wing political
forces, associations of unemployed workers, human rights groups, and
community organizations, decided to re-occupy the factory on Monday.
Many of the estimated 5,000 protesters who gathered outside the factory
in solidarity with the workers Monday fled into the University of Buenos
Aires psychology faculty building and the Garraham children’s hospital,
which are near the company. Police tossed tear gas cylinders into the
buildings and tried to force their way in after the demonstrators.
Around 100 people were arrested, although most were released in the
early hours of Tuesday morning.
Several vehicles, among them a police car, were set alight in the tumult.
A number of people were hospitalized as a result of their injuries,
including a police officer.
Buenos Aires Mayor Anibal Ibarra and Labor Minister Graciela Camaño
said they were surprised that the street violence broke out just as
efforts were underway to negotiate a solution to the legal dispute between
the Brukman factory workers and owners.
Journalist Miguel Bonasso, one of the protesters who was detained, said
the first person to knock down part of the mobile barrier cordoning
off the factory was an unidentified man who might have been a provocateur.
Only then did the female workers follow in the attempt to enter the
building.
Bonasso said that his sources told him that the current secretary of
intelligence, Miguel Angel Toma, had been offered a post in the next
government if former president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) wins the elections.
Analysts say Menem stands to benefit most from a climate of unrest and
violence, due to his promises to go tough on crime and to put an end
to the frequent demonstrations and roadblocks staged by the unemployed
movement, by calling out the army if necessary.
It was reported Tuesday that the president of the Association of Foreign
Correspondents, Edgardo Esteban, who works for the local TV newscast
Telemundo, was forced by the police to kneel down at gunpoint for 20
minutes before he was taken into custody during Monday’s disturbances.
Meanwhile, employees and directors of the Garraham children’s hospital
expressed their indignation at the attempt by riot police to chase protesters
into the building.
“We have children here with pneumonia who now have headaches and
are vomiting since the police forced their way into the hospital,”
said a nurse, adding that the excessive use of force by the police should
be denounced before international human rights organizations.
“The repression was extremely harsh and could have been avoided,
but there was clearly an official decision to intimidate the workers
with a huge security operation that exceeded what would be the normal
enforcement of a court order,” said the Brukman workers’ lawyer
Miriam Breckman.
The Brukman factory was occupied by its workers in December 2001, after
its owners fled, owing nearly six months in back wages and other debts.
The employees formed a cooperative and got the plant running again.
Although they were expelled twice on court orders, they were allowed
back in each time by legal action.
Brukman is just one example of a movement that began in late 1998, at
the start of a hard-hitting recession in Argentina that culminated in
outright economic collapse three years later.
More than 150 cooperatives have taken over businesses that were driven
under by the economic meltdown, and in many cases literally abandoned
by their owners.
The businesses involved range from metallurgical, chemical, and car
parts factories, to food products companies, transport companies, and
printing presses.
The general pattern is that the owners of a teetering business stop
paying wages for several months before declaring bankruptcy or suddenly
leaving the country and fleeing their debts.
The employees, with no money and no hope of obtaining the back wages
they are owed, take over the business and seek permission from the courts
to set themselves up as a cooperative.
The movement really began to grow after the crisis peaked in late December
2001, when rioting, looting, and protests toppled two governments in
less than two weeks, and the country defaulted on its bulky foreign
debt.
According to official figures, 57 percent of the population of this
once-rich Southern Cone country, Latin America’s third-largest
economy, has fallen into poverty, and unemployment has soared to over
21 percent.
Most of the cooperatives forming part of the National Movement of Recuperated
Companies have peacefully occupied the businesses where their members
had been employed, and have sought and secured legal permission to continue
running the factories.
They are now operating normally, paying off the debts incurred by the
previous owners, expanding the payroll, and in some cases even increasing
wages.
The workers and the former owners generally agree to an arrangement
for the cooperative to rent the building and gradually pay off the machinery
and equipment. In some cases, the owners even form a partnership with
their former employees.
But at times, the relationship between the cooperative and the owners
becomes stormy, legal action is taken, the police are sent in, and it
becomes difficult for the company to operate normally again and regain
the confidence of its clients.
Brukman is a high-profile example of companies that remain the object
of legal battles.
The owners of the factory simply disappeared in December 2001. They
had failed to pay full wages since 1995. In the second half of 2001,
things took a turn for the worse in Brukman, as in the rest of the country,
and the weekly paychecks, which had already dropped from 100 to 50 pesos
(on par with the dollar at the time), shrunk to just five pesos.
On Dec. 14, 2001, the owners paid their employees two pesos, and laid
everyone off.
A number of the workers decided to occupy the factory, assuming that
the three owners would try to remove the equipment the next day. But
none of them showed up.
Then began the several days of looting and rioting that forced then-president
Fernando de la Rúa to resign on Dec. 20, and the workers decided
to stay on in the factory.
The owners never showed up or responded to telephone calls by the Labor
Ministry. Around half of the workers who occupied the factory over the
Christmas holidays and through the month of January 2002 decided to
start the company, which manufactures men’s clothing, running again.
They paid off unpaid utility bills and other debts, purchased materials,
and distributed whatever was left over from the clothing sales among
themselves. Although they barely scraped by, they were happy to have
a job.
The first eviction, in 2002, took everyone by surprise, because the
occupation of the factory had been peaceful and the owners had not set
forth any demands -- indeed, had not even showed up when summoned by
the Labor Ministry to discuss the situation.
The weekly community assembly held in the Balvanera neighborhood, where
the factory is located, has given the workers strong support, including
food.
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US unprepared to monitor biotech
Washington, DC, Apr. 25 (ENS)— The US government’s
oversight of biotech crops once they have been approved is inadequate
and has potential vulnerabilities, according to a new report from the
Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a non profit research organization.
The post market oversight of biotech crops, also known as genetically
modified, is intended to ensure compliance with restrictions that agencies
might impose to protect public health and the environment.
The current regulatory oversight system, write the authors of “Post-Market
Oversight of Biotech Foods: Is the System Prepared?” is poorly
equipped to carry out this mandate.
“Our report raises questions about the future preparedness of the
post market oversight program to achieve its traditional objectives,
including the enforcement of regulatory restrictions and the detection
and correction of unanticipated health or environmental problems,”
said Michael Taylor, the report’s key author and senior fellow
at Resources for the Future.
For the rest of this article, please see www.ens-news.com
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US forces kill Iraqis during demonstrations
Military accounts in dispute
Compiled by Eamon Martin
Apr. 30 (AGR)— On Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
flew into Baghdad for the first time since the US invasion of Iraq and
announced to the Iraqi people that the days of “tyranny” were
“gone.”
“I am pleased to visit Iraq -- your country -- to witness your
liberation,” he said.
Hours before Rumsfeld flew into Baghdad in an apparent attempt to win
Iraqi hearts and minds, US troops opened fire on demonstrators for the
second time this week, during a march to protest a previous shooting
less than 48 hours earlier.
On Tuesday, US troops were accused of conducting a “bloody massacre”
after they had killed at least 15 Iraqis during a demonstration in the
same town, which on Wednesday had now claimed two more deaths and 14
wounded.
Wednesday’s shooting was the fourth reported fatal incident involving
US troops and Iraqi protesters in two weeks.
On Apr. 15 and 16, seventeen people were killed when Marines opened
fire during demonstrations in the northern city of Mosul.
On Monday, Jay Garner, the retired United States general and now civil
administrator of Iraq, declared the beginning of the “birth of
democracy” in the ravaged cradle of civilization.
“Today, on the birthday of Saddam Hussein, let us start the democratic
process for the children of Iraq.”
That night, US troops opened fire on the group of Iraqi demonstrators
near Baghdad, in the Sunni city of Fallujah. To the Americans it was
justified self-defense, but to most residents it was murder. What is
beyond dispute is that 15 Iraqis were dead and 70 wounded lay in the
main hospital, surrounded by angry family members. The dead included
three boys, ages 8 to 10. No Americans were injured.
The Iraqi dead and wounded in hospital wards and homes also included
women and children shot inside their walled residences in the neighborhood.
“They shot everyone who moved,’’ Rafid Mahmoud, a cousin
of one wounded man, said at Fallujah hospital Tuesday. He stood in front
of the bed of his brother, who stared at visitors, his foot newly amputated.
Dr. Ahmed Ghanim al-Ali, head of Fallujah’s main hospital, said:
“Medical crews were shot by soldiers when they tried to get to
the injured people.”
The incident began when up to 250 demonstrators approached members of
the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, based at an elementary school,
demanding they leave so classes could resume.
The protests did not start as an anti-American demonstration, residents
told CNN. The gathering started at a mosque, where clerics told them
it was time for the children to resume classes at the school that the
US soldiers had been occupying for ten days. Residents then left the
mosque and marched on the school.
The scene was of a messy kind the Pentagon’s publicists dearly
hope to avoid. On Tuesday, pools of blood remained outside homes across
from the school. Walls of homes were bullet-pitted. Angry Iraqi neighbors
and wailing relatives recounted a tale of the random killing of young
people whose only crime was to demand that the soldiers leave their
neighborhood schoolhouse.
“They were asking the Americans to leave the school so they could
use it,” local Sunni Muslim cleric, Kamal Shaker Mahmoud said.
“They opened fire on the protesters because they went out to demonstrate.”
Protesters insisted their demonstration was unarmed and peaceful. Local
eyewitnesses agreed, saying there was no shooting from the protesters.
The Americans say they were fired on and acted in self-defense against
a crowd in which 25 people had guns. But there are strong doubts about
the US version -- and an absence of evidence. Ahmed al-Essawi, aged
15, who was shot in his arm and leg, says he did not see any guns. “All
of us were trying to run away. They shot at us directly. There were
no warning shots, and I heard no announcements on the loudspeakers.”
Ahmed Karim, a 21-year-old blacksmith who was shot in the thigh, did
not see any guns either. “We arrived at the school building and
were hoping to talk to the soldiers when they began shooting at us randomly.”
Lieutenant Colonel Eric Nantz was not at the scene at the time but he
insisted that people in the crowd fired the first shots at troops in
the school.
Yet there are no bullet holes visible at the front of the school building
or telltale marks of a firefight. The place is unmarked. By contrast,
the houses opposite are punctured with machine-gun fire, which tore
away lumps of concrete the size of a hand and punched holes as deep
as the length of a ballpoint pen. Asked to explain the absence of bullet
holes, Nantz said that the Iraqi fire had gone over the soldiers’
heads.
Reporters were taken to see two bullet holes in an upper window and
some marks on a wall, but they were on another side of the school building.
Demonstrators gave a starkly different account. They say that some of
their number started throwing stones, and that is what prompted the
US soldiers to open fire.
Lying in a hospital with his right foot amputated, Musana Saleh abdel
Latif, 41, told his story. “They just shot at the protesters. Some
of the wounded tried to take cover in my front yard.
“My wife and I started to pull them in. I was hit in the foot.
My wife was hit in both legs. My brother, Walid, came to take me to
the hospital, and he was shot and killed. Another brother was shot and
injured.”
Told that the Americans claimed to have been responding to fire from
the crowd, he said: “They are lying. They’re ready to shoot
for any reason. They’re criminals. Saddam Hussein is gone but I
think he’s better than the US.”
Ebtesam Shamsudein’s husband, whose foot was also amputated, was
wounded when he ran to close the gate to keep protesters out and his
children in. Shamsuedein was shot trying to help him.
One of her brothers-in-law came out to help. He was shot in the heart
and died, relatives and doctors said. The men’s mother, 65, stepped
outside to see, and was shot in the shoulder.
“They are stealing our oil and they are slaughtering our people,”
said Shuker Abdullah Hamid, a cousin of one of the victims, 47-year-old
Tuamer Abdel Hamid.
“Now, all preachers of Fallujah mosques and all youths...are organizing
martyr operations against the American occupiers,” said a man cloaked
in white, using the term often used to describe suicide attacks in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On Tuesday, Murhij Rashid, 52, pointed to a grave where gravediggers
were throwing dry earth on top and kicking up dust. His 18-year-old
son Hussein had just been buried.
“There was a demonstration but he did not have any weapon,”
he said.
On Wednesday about 1,000 people marched down the city’s main street
to protest the earlier incident, stopping in front of a battalion headquarters
of the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.
American officers said US soldiers in the compound and in a passing
convoy opened fire after some protesters started throwing rocks and
some shots were fired at the troops.
Local officials said they saw or heard no shooting from among the protesters.
“The evildoers are deliberately placing at risk the good civilians,”
assessed Lt. Col. Tobin Green of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. “These
are deliberate actions by the enemy to use the population as cover.”
Mysterious explosions
This past week, protests weren’t the only site for dead Iraqi citizens.
Chaos and carnage gripped the streets of Baghdad on Saturday after a
US weapons dump was blown up, killing as many as 40 civilians and setting
off an explosion which showered the area with ordnance and reduced many
homes to rubble. At least 12 people were killed in the blast but one
Iraqi doctor claimed there had been 40 fatalities with many of the dead
buried in the wreckage of their homes. Many people were badly injured
in the blasts, some with burned or severed limbs.
Rockets -- including surface-to-air missiles -- and small arms ammunition
were ignited in vast quantities, spreading shrapnel across a wide area.
Sporadic blasts were still being heard seven hours later.
After the explosions, the local people of Zaafaraniya on the capital’s
southern outskirts, turned their anger on the Americans, shooting at
soldiers and forcing them to retreat. A number of American soldiers
were wounded.
One distraught man, Tamir Kalaal, said his wife, father, brother and
11 other relatives had been killed when a rocket shot out of the arms
dump and destroyed their home. “I am the only one that survived.
All I have left is her,” he said, sobbing and pointing to his one-month-old
daughter.
Throughout the day, the US military gave conflicting accounts of what
had happened. At first, US troops in the city center told reporters
the explosions were a result of controlled detonations to destroy Iraqi
munitions as part of a continuing program. But later the American military
spoke of an attack by “an unknown number of individuals,”
who sparked the chain reaction by firing flares into the dump.
“One soldier was wounded in the attack,” the Central Command
said in a statement. “During the attack, the assailant fired an
unknown incendiary device into the cache, causing it to catch fire and
explode. The explosion caused the destruction of the cache as well as
a nearby building.”
Zaafaraniya residents said US forces had been packing cars with Iraqi
weapons over the last three days and detonating them.
Kalaal had no doubt who was to blame for the tragedy. “Those Americans
did this,” he said, shaking his finger in rage.
US Army spokesman Kevin Braam said the dump stored both Iraqi and US
ammunition but added: “That was not us that caused the explosions.
That was not our doing. I don’t know if it was a civilian upset
at us or if a militia may have caused it, but we’re not the ones.”
Afterwards, a large crowd gathered outside the US command base at the
Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad, with banners saying, “American
forces kill the innocent.”
US troops ‘paraded naked thieves’
On the same day, as the tragedy in Zaafaraniya unfolded, American soldiers
guarding another arms dump in Baghdad stripped four suspected Iraqi
thieves, burned their clothes and forced them onto the streets naked.
A Muslim member of the Delta Squadron 10 Engineer Corps is alleged to
have written “Ali Baba. Haram” in Arabic across the men’s
chests before they were evicted at gunpoint from an amusement park in
the city.
Reports of the incident provoked outrage from human rights organizations
such as Amnesty International. Treating prisoners in such a way would
be a clear breach of the Geneva Convention.
The soldiers’ commanding officer, First Lieutenant Eric Canaday,
confirmed that his men had stripped the Iraqis. “We took their
clothes and burnt them and then we pushed them out with ‘thief’
written on them,” he said.
One of the four men, whose pictures appeared in the Norwegian press,
gave his name as Ziad, aged 20. Ziad said he was so angry from being
humiliated by the soldiers that the only thing he wanted to do was find
a grenade and throw it at the American soldiers and all the other ones
in the city.
Sources: Associated Press, BBC, Guardian
(UK), Independent (UK), Mirror (UK), Reuters, The Scotsman, Times (UK)
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