Australian govt. under pressure
to curb trafficking of women
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WORLD BRIEFS
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Cheney firm paid millions in
bribes to Nigerian official
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‘Waivers’ to absolve Israeli army
of killing civilians
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Iraqi villagers suffer sickness from
nuclear power plants
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The two faces of Rumsfeld

By Randeep Ramesh

May 9— Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary, sat on the board of a company which, three years ago, sold two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea -- a country he now regards as part of the “axis of evil” and which has been targeted for regime change by Washington because of its efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, Switzerland, when it won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The current defense secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush administration.

The reactor deal was part of President Bill Clinton’s policy of persuading the North Korean regime to positively engage with the west.

The sale of the nuclear technology was a high-profile contract. ABB’s then chief executive, Goran Lindahl, visited North Korea in November 1999 to announce ABB’s “wide-ranging, long-term cooperation agreement” with the communist government.

The company also opened an office in the country’s capital, Pyongyang, and the deal was signed a year later in 2000. Despite this, Rumsfeld’s office said that the de fence secretary did not “recall it being brought before the board at any time.”

In a statement to the American magazine Newsweek, his spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said that there “was no vote on this.” A spokesman for ABB told the Guardian yesterday that “board members were informed about the project which would deliver systems and equipment for light water reactors.”

Just months after Rumsfeld took office, President George W. Bush ended the policy of engagement and negotiation pursued by Clinton, saying he did not trust North Korea, and pulled the plug on diplomacy. Pyongyang warned that it would respond by building nuclear missiles. A review of American policy was announced and the bilateral confidence building steps, key to Clinton’s policy of detente, halted.

By January 2002, the Bush administration had placed North Korea in the “axis of evil” alongside Iraq and Iran. If there was any doubt about how the White House felt about North Korea this was dispelled by Bush, who told the Washington Post last year: “I loathe [North Korea’s leader] Kim Jong-il.”

The success of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have enhanced the status of Rumsfeld in Washington. Two years after leaving ABB, Rumsfeld now considers North Korea a “terrorist regime teetering on the verge of collapse” and which is on the verge of becoming a proliferator of nuclear weapons. During a bout of diplomatic activity over Christmas he warned that the US could fight two wars at once -- a reference to the forthcoming conflict with Iraq. After Baghdad fell, Rumsfeld said Pyongyang should draw the “appropriate lesson.”

Critics of the administration’s bellicose language on North Korea say that the problem was not that Rumsfeld supported the Clinton-inspired diplomacy and the ABB deal but that he did not “speak up against it.” “One could draw the conclusion that economic and personal interests took precedent over non-proliferation,” said Steve LaMontagne, an analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington.

Many members of the Bush administration are on record as opposing Clinton’s plans, saying that weapons-grade nuclear material could be extracted from the type of light water reactors that ABB sold. Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and the state department’s number two diplomat, Richard Armitage, both opposed the deal as did the Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole, whose campaign Rumsfeld ran and where he also acted as defense adviser.

One unnamed ABB board director told Fortune magazine that Rumsfeld was involved in lobbying his hawkish friends on behalf of ABB.

The Clinton package sought to defuse tensions on the Korean peninsula by offering supplies of oil and new light water nuclear reactors in return for access by inspectors to Pyongyang’s atomic facilities and a dismantling of its heavy water reactors which produce weapons grade plutonium. Light water reactors are known as “proliferation-resistant” but, in the words of one expert, they are not “proliferation-proof.”

The type of reactors involved in the ABB deal produce plutonium which needs refining before it can be weaponized. One US congressman and critic of the North Korean regime described the reactors as “nuclear bomb factories.”

North Korea expelled inspectors last year and withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in January at about the same time that the Bush administration authorized $3.5 million to keep ABB’s reactor project going.

North Korea is thought to have offered to scrap its nuclear facilities and missile program and to allow international nuclear inspectors into the country. But Pyongyang demanded that security guarantees and aid from the US must come first.

Bush now insists that he will only negotiate a new deal with Pyongyang after the nuclear program is scrapped. Washington believes that offering inducements would reward Pyongyang’s “blackmail” and encourage other “rogue” states to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Source: Guardian (UK)

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Australian govt. under pressure
to curb trafficking of women

By Kalinga Seneviratne

Sydney, Australia, May 7 (IPS)— Pressure is rising on the Australian government to tackle a number of thorny issues about the sex trade: the trafficking of women from Asia, the presence of illegal sex workers, and how the government is dealing with the problem.

Last month’s release of a coroner’s report on the death of a 27-year-old Thai woman, believed to have been brought here at the age of 12 to work in the sex trade, is the latest development that strengthens the arguments of groups campaigning for sex workers’ and women’s rights.

Phuongtong Simaplee was arrested during a brothel raid and was suffering from a drug overdose at the time. Put into a detention center for illegal immigrants -- not a hospital -- she died in Sept. 2001 after choking on her own vomit. Her tragic death and grim life were once again brought to the fore by the coroner’s report.

In releasing the report on Apr. 24, New South Wales Deputy Coroner Carl Milovanovich said: “There is evidence that young women are enticed to this country with false identification... only to be exploited and forced to work in brothels.”

Milovanovich called on the authorities to “use whatever means are necessary” to eradicate the trafficking of women. Indeed, police have since conducted a series of raids on Sydney brothels. Prostitution is legal here but their target is foreign sex workers who have been trafficked and do not have legal papers.

Since July 2002, authorities have found 134 such women, which would be the tip of the iceberg as per the data collected by Kathleen Maltzahn, coordinator of Project Respect, a Melbourne-based group advocating sex workers’ rights.

Maltzahn, who researches trafficking for prostitution, says that at any time there are around 1,000 women working in Australian brothels for little or no money. They are paying off the criminal syndicates that brought them here from South-East Asia, mainly Thailand, she said.

They do also come to Australia on their own, intending to repay debts incurred in their home countries, explained Jeffrey Dabbhadatta, multicultural outreach officer of the Sydney-based Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP).

When here, he added, they cannot legally find jobs as sex workers, and are often exploited by syndicates who arrange either student or tourist visas for them. A student visa entitles one to legally work 20 hours a week.

Sripan (not her real name) is 35 and divorced with a teenaged son. She told IPS that she came to Australia in 2002 for three months to visit Thai friends and was introduced to a massage parlor owner.

She returned this year on a three-month tourist visa with an assurance that she will find work. “Some pay 40,000 Australian dollars [US $25,600] to an agent to come here, but I didn’t pay anything,” she said. “I would like to stay for a year so that I can save enough money to educate my son.”

SWOP is lobbying the government to issue 12-month working visas for sex workers, as with other employer-sponsored schemes, where a quota would match supply with demand. But there is little indication that the government is considering this.

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock has said he is not prepared to issue permanent residence visas to women found to have been trafficked to Australia and sexually exploited.

Advocates for sex workers believe that permanent residence visas would enable these women to testify against traffickers without fear of the networks’ vengeance against them were they in their home countries.

Yet investigations by The Australian and Daily Telegraph newspapers have found that trafficking of women for prostitution is widespread in Australia, despite the introduction of tough new laws over three years ago to outlaw forced sex work.

Under legislation passed in 1999, anyone convicted of practicing sexual slavery faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in jail. Forcing someone into prostitution carries a maximum 15-year penalty; deceptive recruitment carries a seven-year maximum.

Ruddock has said that since the new laws came into effect, nine cases of sexual slavery have been referred to the police for investigation. But the Telegraph found last month that young women from Asia continue to be auctioned -- for between 50,000 and 80,000 Australian dollars (US $31,800 and $51,000) in secret inner-city hotel rooms in Sydney.

The women are then forced into sexual slavery for 12 or more months to pay off the “debts” of the purchaser. A former sex worker and now campaigner against sex slavery, Linda Watson, told the newspaper that such auctions take place everyday.

Rights activists claim that the government’s arrest-detain-deport approach ignores the need to record the statements of illegal sex workers about those responsible for bringing them to Australia and the abuses they have suffered.

Pru Goward has in fact called on Ruddock to stop this police approach to penalizing the victims of traffickers, instead of genuinely helping them and breaking up the syndicates that prey on them.

Justice Minister Chris Ellison has also said it is hard to go after trafficking syndicates because “we are having difficulty getting people to give evidence... which stacks up in order to get a conviction.”

But Ellison’s contention is undercut by Maltzahn’s counterargument: “We’re saying to women, we want you to take the huge step of testifying, and we want to do it without any provisions of protection. It’s impossible to ask so much when we give very little.”

The criticism of Australia’s official approach is that to get to the root of the problem - the traffickers and their networks - a protection-for-information arrangement must be put in place.

Without that, Sydney’s suburban weeklies will continue to carry advertisements for Asian “darlings” offering massage services, without a hint of the crime that brought these women here.

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Cheney firm paid millions in
bribes to Nigerian official

May 9— The reputation of Halliburton, the oil industry giant once run by Vice-President Dick Cheney, took a new blow yesterday when it admitted one of its subsidiaries had paid millions of dollars to a Nigerian official in return for tax breaks.

The company said it had informed the US securities and exchange commission (SEC) of about $2.4 million in improper payments to the official, who had posed as a tax consultant, it claimed.

The payments emerged during an audit. Halliburton said they “clearly violated” the company’s code of conduct and “several” employees had been fired. The SEC is investigating, and the firm could face a tax bill of up to $5 million in Nigeria.

It is the second controversy involving the firm within a week. Earlier, army officials acknowledged that the company’s subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root had a far broader role in the Iraqi oil industry than previously disclosed, encompassing not just fighting fires but operating oilfields.

Meanwhile Richard Perle, an influential Pentagon adviser, was accused of a new conflict of interests after it was revealed that he had briefed investors on how to profit from a potential war with Iraq or North Korea after attending a classified intelligence meeting on the two countries.

The defense policy board, of which Perle was then chairman, received the information from the defense intelligence agency in February.

Three weeks later he gave a talk to Goldman Sachs investors, delivered as part of a conference call, titled “Implications of an Imminent War: Iraq Now. North Korea Next?”

A source who was at the defense intelligence agency briefing told the Los Angeles Times: “That bothered me because the title of the talk made it sound like he had the inside track on what we were going to do.”

The Los Angeles Times broke the story.

Perle, who declined to comment yesterday, resigned as chairman of the board in March after bad publicity concerning his links with the failed telecoms firm Global Crossing, which was seeking a favorable ruling from the Pentagon; his directorship of the UK intelligence firm Autonomy; and his meeting with Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi arms dealer, and another businessman who wanted to influence Washington’s Iraq policies.

He remains a member of the defense policy board, a group of private citizens whose nominations are approved by Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense.

At the same classified meeting, on Feb. 27, the board received a presentation about military communications systems, the LA Times reported. Perle’s venture capital firm, Trireme Partners, has been exploring this area for possible investments.

The revelations will increase the pressure on Perle.

But Helmut Sonnenfeldt, another board member, said nothing he heard at the February briefing would have given Perle any advantage in his commercial activities.

He told the LA Times: “To make a hard and fast connection between Perle hearing something at the briefing and using it to further his commercial interests is a jump I wouldn’t want to make.”

Source: Guardian (UK)

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‘Waivers’ to absolve Israeli army
of killing civilians

Compiled by Seán Marquis

May 14 (AGR)— The Israeli military has begun obliging foreigners entering the Gaza Strip to sign waivers absolving the army from responsibility if it shoots them. Visitors must also declare that they are not peace activists.

Amnesty International condemned the new practice and its delegates were denied access to Gaza on May 8 when they refused to sign the “waivers.”

“The organization is categorically opposed to any attempt to get people to sign away their rights,” Amnesty International said. “The signing of ‘waivers’ does not absolve the Israeli army of its responsibility in any way.”

The waiver to enter Gaza requires foreigners, including United Nations relief workers, to acknowledge that they are entering a danger zone and will not hold the Israeli army responsible if they are shot or injured. The army document also warns visitors they are forbidden from approaching the security fences next to Jewish settlements or entering “military zones” in Rafah refugee camp close to the Egyptian border.

The “waiver” states in part: “I am aware of the risks involved and accept that the Government of the State of Israel and its organs cannot be held responsible for death, injury and/or damage/loss of property which may be incurred as a result of military activity. I also undertake not to disrupt IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] operations in any way and declare that I have no association with the organization known as ISM (International Solidarity Movement) nor any other organization whose aim is to disrupt IDF operations.”

Previously, the IDF has charged that many of the ISM peace activists are “provocateurs” and “riot inciters” who deliberately interfere with the IDF’s work, with the goal of blackening Israel’s image.

Peace activists targeted

The Israeli army raided the West Bank offices of the ISM on Friday, confiscating computers and documents, destroying equipment, and arresting an American and an Australian, witnesses and a group spokeswoman said.

About 20 Israeli army jeeps surrounded the ISM offices in the village of Beit Sahour, and soldiers entered and confiscated eight computers.

The Israelis arrested Palestinian Fida Gharib, 22, a secretary for the organization, Christine Razowsky, 28, of Chicago, and Miranda Sissons — Human Rights Watch’s Israel and the Occupied Territories Researcher, an Australian national, who had been making a routine research visit to the ISM.

Sissons has been charged with violating a military order banning foreigners from entering “Area A” of the Palestinian/Occupied Territories and is being held at a facility in Hadera, pending deportation from the country.

The military said it arrested several people who “violated the law” in Beit Sahour, but refused to comment further.

Police spokesman Gil Kleiman said the foreigners were in police custody and were being questioned for entering a restricted military area.

The interrogation documents and other evidence — including the computers — will be used by the Interior Ministry to decide whether the foreigners should be deported, Kleiman said.

The ISM is a pro-Palestinian organization of volunteers who often act as “human shields,” placing themselves between Palestinian civilians and the Israeli army.

In the past two months, an American member of the group, Rachel Corrie, 23, of Olympia, WA, was killed and two other foreign activists, an American and a Briton, were seriously wounded in separate incidents.

“The aim is to deport any foreigner who supports us,” said George Rishmawi, a Palestinian official close to the group. “We consider these people to be international witnesses to the suffering of the Palestinian people.”

An ISM statement about the raid stated: “The Israeli government has declared an open war on international peace and human rights workers. Israeli forces are doing everything in their power to specifically prevent the nonviolent resistance to their military rule. The stepped-up harassment of internationals and journalists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is nothing short of a further attempt to shield from the international community the brutality of daily Israeli military actions against the Palestinian people.”

Also, the parents of a British ISM peace activist who was shot in the head by Israeli troops came under fire themselves as they traveled to the spot where their son was critically injured.

Anthony and Jocelyn Hurndall were in a British diplomatic convoy entering the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip on May 6 when Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint fired a shot, which passed narrowly over the top of their vehicles — two British embassy armored Range Rovers.

The Hurndalls — whose eldest son, Tom, is in a coma with severe brain damage after being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier last month as he attempted to protect a small child from gunfire — were being accompanied by Tom’s youngest brother as well as the military and political attachés to the British embassy in Tel Aviv.

Jocelyn Hurndall, said: “What struck me was the ludicrousness of the situation. Here we were, the parents and brother of someone who has been wounded by Israeli Defense Forces and who then fire a warning shot over our car for no apparent reason.”

Not until the defense attaché, Colonel Tom Fitzalan-Howard, had stepped from the car with his hands in the air to talk with the soldiers inside the tower was the convoy able to proceed.

The incident occurred as the convoy drove through the Abu Houli crossing, even though British officials had notified Israeli forces of their arrival 10 minutes earlier.

Hurndall said Howard immediately called the Israeli army contact he had spoken to minutes earlier.

“His [the Israeli army contact’s] immediate reaction was to say he didn’t get the message down in time. The colonel said: ‘Regardless of that, why did you fire at us? You shot at official embassy cars for no reason.’ The Israeli’s excuse was that we didn’t stop. He said we were supposed to go through one by one but that is simply not true,” Mr Hurndall said. “Then they tried to say they did it to check our documents but they never did.”

More politics than peace

Israel sealed the Gaza Strip on May 12, imposing the most sweeping restrictions in years, and its troops killed three Palestinians in clashes there as US Secretary of State Colin Powell wound up a peace mission.

Powell asked the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers to take action on the “road map” peace plan; Palestinians are expected to rein in militants, and Israel is to end settlement activity and ease restrictions that have caused much hardship in the Palestinian areas.

The visit ended without visible results.

The military reimposed the Gaza closure early Monday, citing unspecified security considerations. It barred Palestinians and -- for the first time in years, all foreigners except diplomats -- from leaving and entering the coastal strip for an open-ended period.

A United Nations agency that assists hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees said the blockade seriously disrupted Gaza operations.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Paul McCann, of the UN Relief and Works Agency. “This morning, we couldn’t even get our diplomatic pouch out.”

The day Powell arrived the Israelis had eased travel restrictions on Palestinians and released a symbolic 129 prisoners.

In tightening restrictions, the military referred to keeping out members of the International Solidarity Movement, and dozens of activists have been deported by Israel.

On May 12, Israel released another 71 Palestinians from prisons.

Palestinians, noting Israel is holding about 5,000 prisoners, dismissed the release as an attempt to impress Powell.

The Palestinians, meanwhile, said they had expected more from the Powell visit. “Mr. Powell came without a positive Israeli response [to the road map] ... and that is very unfortunate,” said Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat.

Sources: Associated Press, Guardian (UK), Ha’aretz, IMC-Israel, Independent (UK)

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Iraqi villagers suffer sickness from
nuclear power plants

By Inigo Gilmore

Baghdad, Iraq, May 11— Doctors fear that hundreds of Iraqis may be suffering from radiation poisoning, following the widespread looting of the country’s nuclear facilities.

Seven nuclear facilities have been damaged or effectively destroyed by ransackers since the country’s invasion. Technical documents, sensitive equipment and barrels containing radioactive material are believed to have been stolen.

Many residents in villages close to the huge Tuwaitha Nuclear Facility, about seven miles south of Baghdad, were showing signs of radiation illness last week, including rashes, acute vomiting and severe nosebleeds.

As Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed last month, villagers began looting barrels of the uranium oxide, known as “yellowcake,” from the site, which they then emptied to use to store water, milk, and yogurt.

Hisham Abdel-Malik, an Iraqi nuclear expert who has worked alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since 1988, said many people were still keeping tainted barrels in their homes, with water inside.

In Al Riyadh village, about a mile from the site, 13-year-old El Tifat Nasser fell ill after her brothers visited the facility on a dozen occasions and returned with barrels. “She is bleeding twice a day through her nose, and she is very sick,” said her mother, Sabieha Nasser, 48. “We are very worried.”

Local hospitals have seen an influx of patients complaining of similar symptoms. “A lot of people seem to be affected,” said one doctor. “It is deeply worrying.”

Villagers said Iraqi officials arrived recently with Geiger counters. One said the men had measured areas where locals had emptied the contents of stolen barrels. “The Geiger counters were screaming,” he said, adding that the officials had then instructed them to cover the areas in concrete.

The failure to secure the nuclear sites has fueled criticism of US forces in Iraq. It is known that at the Tuwaitha facility there were significant quantities of partially enriched uranium, caesium, strontium and cobalt.

Besides Tuwaitha and the adjacent Baghdad Nuclear Research Center, the Ash Shaykhili Nuclear Facility, the Baghdad New Nuclear Design Center, and the Tahadi Nuclear Establishment have all been looted.

It is not yet clear what has been lost in the ransackings. Many of the files, and some of the containers that held radioactive material, are missing. The warehouses at Ash Shaykhili have been destroyed by ransacking and fire and the enrichment processing equipment is either missing or burnt.

Mohammed Zaidan, the former chief agricultural engineer at Tuwaitha, said he had visited the nuclear site with Dr. Hamid Al Bahli, a nuclear scientist, on Apr. 7 when US troops were approaching from the south.

The soldiers, he said, assured the men they would secure Tuwaitha, but two weeks later they returned to find there were no American soldiers, only hundreds of people looting the facility and dogs rolling around in the contaminated uranium oxide.

“The soldiers had promised us they would secure the site, but they did not and we wonder why,” he said. “Perhaps it was because they always knew there were no real weapons there, despite all their claims. But, nevertheless, these materials represent a major health hazard, and before long we may start to see people developing cancer and deformed babies because they did not stop the looting.”

Source: Daily Telegraph (UK) with additional information from Reuters

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