Untitled Document

WORLD NEWS
No. 227, May 22-28, 2003

‘Pay for destruction,’ Indigenous
people tell corporations
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WORLD BRIEFS
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IMF, World Bank join forces with WTO
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WAR BRIEFS
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A CIA officer’s calamitous choices
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The circle: Israel raids, Palestinians
bomb, ‘peace’ evaded
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US threatens to move NATO
after Franks is charged
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Martial law in Aceh means relapse into fear
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Argentine president-elect to face
challenge of weak mandate
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Plan for Iraq interim government scrapped
Iraqis unite for anti-US march
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Bhopal survivors confront Dow
Dow execs accused of lying to shareholders

By Helene Vosters

May 15— Rashida Bee and Champi Devi Shukla have come a long way from their home in Bhopal, India to attend Dow Chemical Corporation’s annual shareholder meeting. But that’s nothing compared to their ordeal over the last 19 years. Survivors of the 1984 Union Carbide disaster, the two women are in the US to confront Carbide’s new owner, Dow Chemical, and demand justice. Eight days into an indefinite hunger strike, Bee and Shukla showed up at Dow’s May 8th Annual General Meeting in Midland, Michigan. But, instead of offers for relief and rehabilitation, they say that Dow executives openly lied to shareholders about the company’s legal liabilities in Bhopal.

In a question-and-answer session at the annual shareholder meeting, Bee asked company chairman William Stavropoulos why Dow accepted Union Carbide’s asbestos liabilities in the US while refusing responsibility for Bhopal.

“His response was misleading to the shareholders,” said Bee, referring to Stavropoulos’ claim that that Carbide’s asbestos liabilities were pending but that there were no such pending liabilities against Union Carbide in Bhopal. Since 1986 both the Union Carbide Corporation and its former CEO, Warren Anderson, have been wanted in India on criminal charges. Neither Carbide nor Anderson have appeared in India to face trial.

“Actually, our chairman did misspeak,” said Dow spokesperson John Musser. “We are fully aware that Union Carbide and Anderson were both named in the criminal charges in India. It wasn’t said with malice, it was a mistake.” According to Musser, Dow has not yet made any formal statement to its shareholders about Stavropoulos’s erroneous statement.

Since its 2001 purchase of Union Carbide, Bhopal courts have directed India’s Central Bureau of Investigation to include Dow as a defendant in its criminal case. With fines determined by the magnitude of the crime and the defendant’s ability to pay, if found guilty, there would be no upper limits to the penalties that Dow could face.

Dubbed the “Hiroshima of the Chemical Industry,” the 1984 gas leak at the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal released forty tons of poisonous gasses into a residential community of over half a million. An estimated eight thousand people died within the first week of the disaster. For years residents continued to die from injuries at a rate of one per day, and Bhopal activists say the death toll has risen to 20,000. An additional 120,000 survivors live with chronic and debilitating gas related ailments and birth defects.

Bee and Shulka, representatives of a trade union made up of women gas survivors, began their hunger strike in New York City a week before Dow’s Annual Meeting on May 1st — International Workers’ Day. In India, hunger strikes are a well-known and revered form of non-violent protest, known as satyagraha, “insisting on the Truth.”

The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal has called on supporters to join its Worldwide Relay Hunger Strike to keep the fast alive until the 19th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster on Dec. 3, 2003. To date over 200 people have joined the fast.

The hunger strike is part of an ongoing campaign of shame that survivors and their supporters have launched against Dow. On Dec. 2, 2002, in commemoration of the 18th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, hundreds of women survivors marched to Dow’s Mumbai (Bombay) headquarters. They brought with them contaminated soil and water from the abandoned pesticide factory site. Dow’s response to the Mumbai protest was to file a lawsuit against the survivors. The suit, filed by Dow’s Indian subsidiary seeks $10,000 in “loss of work” damages for the two-hour protest.

“It’s completely ridiculous,” said G. Krishnaveni, US coordinator of the Justice for Bhopal Campaign. “Dow is suing penniless survivors for a non-violent demonstration instead of facing its criminal liabilities in India.”

“This mobilization in support of justice for the people of Bhopal is a triumph of memory over forgetting,” said Gary Cohen of the Environmental Health Fund in the US. “Local people negotiating and confronting corporate crime and abuse is a very hopeful sign because governments are more and more abdicating their responsibilities.”

Justice for Bhopal activists have five demands: the release of medical studies on the effects of the gases on humans, the clean up of the former Union Carbide site and the surrounding area, medical relief and long-term medical monitoring, economic rehabilitation for survivors, and the extradition of former Carbide CEO Anderson.

Almost two decades after Union Carbide’s deadly leak, a report, “Surviving Bhopal: Toxics Present, Toxics Future,” found that soil, water, vegetables, and breast milk in Bhopal are contaminated with volatile organic compounds and heavy metals, including nickel, chromium, mercury and lead.

But since its 2001 purchase of Union Carbide, Dow has steadfastly refused responsibility for Bhopal. In a private conference after the shareholder meeting, Stavropoulos told a small delegation of Bhopal supporters that as far as Dow is concerned, the government of India and Union Carbide settled in 1989.

Bhopal activists call the $470 million, 1989 out-of-court settlement between Union Carbide and the government of India a “backroom deal” designed more to maintain a desirable investment environment for multinational corporations than to provide justice for the survivors of the gas leak. They note that it was a far cry from the Indian government’s initial claim of $3.3 billion. The day the settlement was announced, shares in Union Carbide rose two dollars.

The effect of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal has placed Dow Chemical under increasing public scrutiny. It may even be impacting Dow’s bottom line. Two years after its purchase of Union Carbide, Dow stocks are down 13 percent.

Dow’s Musser acknowledges that the chemical giant has been experiencing financial difficulties, but he attributes it to general economic conditions. “There is no evidence in my view that any of this controversy has had an impact on the company financially.”

But Forbes magazine writer Phyllis Berman cites “Indian-bred tort litigation,” the “ruckus” raised by Indian citizens, and “a series of demonstrations staged in 2002-2003” as contributing factors in the decline of Dow stock. “There is no telling what [Dow] might have to cough up to buy peace,” observed Berman.

Source: CorpWatch

‘Pay for destruction,’ Indigenous
people tell corporations

By Haider Rizvi

United Nations, May 16 (IPS)— Leaders of the world’s 350 million aboriginal people, gathered here to discuss ways to protect their culture and environment, are demanding that multinational corporations accept legal responsibility for policies that destroy indigenous lands and lifestyles.

“Industries on indigenous lands were meant to bring development, economic growth and reduced poverty,” Victoria Tauli of the Indigenous Peoples Caucus on Sustainable Development told a meeting at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues that started this week. “Rather than bringing development, however, they have brought more poverty and misery to indigenous people.”

The vast majority of indigenous leaders, assembled here from as far as the lush green valleys of the high Himalayas to the rainforests of the Amazon basin, hold a similar view. In meeting after meeting of the two-week annual Forum, they told countless stories about how oil, gas, lumber and mining projects by multinational business, and in some cases national governments, continue to pose threats to the survival of their communities.

“For me, the environment is the single largest issue at this Forum, because it is everything,” said Goodluck Diigbo, president of Partnership for Indigenous Peoples Environment, who grew up in Ogoni, Nigeria, a region with a fragile ecosystem.

“My people once lived in a state of nature, sharing everything in common with the inhabitants of the forests, including animals such as lions and reptiles. I learned from my elders that we are custodians of the planet and it is our responsibility to protect nature.”

Diigbo, whose ancestral lands have been devastated by oil drilling and spills, says multinational corporations interested in drilling for oil and gas or mining for gold, uranium and diamonds should be legally accountable for the environmental impacts of those activities. “We are living in the age of scientific push and technology,” he said. “This is a blessing, but also a curse.”

That curse has been experienced by Nana Akuoko Sarpong for 28 years. “Multinational companies have engaged over the past 50 years in the systematic exploitation of our timber resources,” said the aboriginal leader, who represents the ancient Kingdom of Ashanti in Ghana. “The tropical woods, which sometimes take 200 years to mature, are felled at the stroke of a chainsaw to enrich the homes of Europe.”

Sarpong says the issues of destruction of African rainforests and the effects on biodiversity have been the subject of conference after conference, “yet very little [effort] has been made to arrest it.”

“It is time the international community woke up to its obligation to indigenous people, by creating a fund for indigenous people to assume responsibility for the regeneration of their resources, and the Mother Earth will be richer for humanity,” he added. “This is a wake-up call for those who care about sustainable development.”

Earlier this week, the World Bank launched a $700,000 fund called the “Grants Facility for Indigenous Peoples,” which will provide up to $50,000 for projects on development themes recommended by the Permanent Forum.

“It’s [a] cruel joke,” said Roy Laifungbam of the Center for Organization and Research and a leader of the Meitei people of northeast India. “Many of the World Bank’s officials are earning more money than this every year.”

“The World Bank has lent millions of dollars for projects that had led to the destruction of indigenous communities and their environments,” added Tauli, and it should address the issue of compensation for that devastation. “The small-grants facility should not be used in exchange for those demands,” she said.

Bank officials acknowledge that the amount is insufficient.

“It’s not a huge amount of money, but it is symbolic of our relationship with indigenous people,” said Ian Johnson, vice president of the Bank’s Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Network.

Another of the planet’s most powerful multilateral institutions, the World Trade Organization (WTO), is also under fire at the Forum, which has attracted 1,500 participants from around the globe. Noting that their people have been harmed by WTO agreements — which in some cases have led to the extinction of indigenous lifestyles — a number of aboriginal leaders want the trade body to explain how it will respond to their concerns.

“The Forum must support the indigenous knowledge system and protect intellectual property rights from piracy,” said a delegate from Hawaii. “Research by any biotech or pharmaceutical company without indigenous people’s permission is nothing but piracy.”

Despite representation from nearly 500 aboriginal groups worldwide, the Forum is not empowered to enact laws; it can only advise the UN Economic and Social Council.

After its historic inaugural meeting last year, the Forum, which includes 16 representatives — eight nominated by governments and eight by indigenous people — called among other things for a permanent office and funding at the United Nations in New York. It received both, creating high expectations among some observers.

“It’s quite an exciting moment in terms of its possibilities,” said Marcus Colchester, director of the UK-based Forest Peoples Programs. “But I think it should go beyond just talking — [it should] have bite and be taken seriously.”

For Sebastiao Manchineri of the Yine people of the Amazon rainforests, any approach to addressing indigenous issues will require a fundamental change so that governments recognize their territorial integrity. “When the people have no land, no rights, there is no room for any kind of development.”

IMF, World Bank join forces with WTO

By Emad Mekay

Washington, DC, May 13 (IPS)— Attempts by global financial institutions to synchronize their policies on developing nations threaten to further entrench a one-sided approach to development, fuel instability and widen the gap between the world’s rich and poor, watchdog organizations warned Monday.

The alarm comes only a day before two of the world’s major wardens of the global economy, the Washington-based World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) were to meet in Switzerland with the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO) to develop a common approach to world economic policies called the “coherence agenda.”

The meetings will be attended by senior officials of the increasingly controversial bodies, including IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler, WTO Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi and World Bank President James Wolfensohn.

Prospects of the meeting, under the umbrella of the WTO General Council -- the organization’s highest level decision-making body in Geneva -- sends shivers down the spine of critics of the international financial institutions (IFIs), who see their policies as counter productive and in the service of a few rich nations and their sprawling corporations.

“This will limit the room of choices and policy space,” said Aldo Caliari from the Washington-based Center of Concern, one of 40 groups that signed a petition opposing the meetings and warning of the possible consequences.

“It’s like being forced to shop from one shop -- same policies and same goods.”

The IFIs say their meeting will help strengthen the global multilateral trading system, which they consider an anchor of strength and stability in the world economy.

Developing nations will benefit by getting increased market access for their products in rich developed countries, they add.

But analysts here say the record and the structure of the organizations, especially the two Bretton Woods Institutions, the IMF and the World Bank (named for the place in the US state of New Hampshire where they were launched in 1944) bode ill for developing nations.

“When you understand how much power the industrial countries hold in the governance of the Bretton Woods institutions, you realize why the trade agenda supported by these institutions tends to be aligned with the negotiating interests of those same countries within the WTO,” said Caliari.

The voting structures of the IMF and World Bank are heavily biased towards rich countries. Their leaders, for instance, are chosen through processes open only to US and European citizens. The IMF and the Bank have for years been peddling trade liberalization, deregulation, privatization and budget austerity to developing countries, and the results, critics say, are disappointing.

Feverish privatization urged by the Bank and the Fund, especially of public services like water and utilities, has smoothed the way for foreign corporations to supply these services and introduce commercial pricing systems, which have often led to higher rates for poor citizens, jeopardizing their access and pushing them further into poverty.

“Economies of developing countries have been characterized by slow and erratic growth, increased instability and rising income gaps,” said the groups in their Monday statement.

“With the WTO, such misguided and failed policy reforms are being progressively locked-in through trade law backed by the threat of economic sanctions through its dispute settlement mechanism.”

Under the new distributions of roles to be discussed Tuesday, the IMF and the World Bank would help ease the way for full liberalization of trade by offering “technical and financial support.”

The Washington-based organizations would “assist” developing nations in their efforts to manage lower revenues because of reduced tariffs, withstand a period in which their trade preferences in industrialized nations are eliminated, secure funds to support increased trade and, finally, help create export-oriented economies.

The IMF and the Bank would also raise the profile of trade in borrowing countries’ Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) and Country Assistance Strategies (CAS), documents developed with the support of the two lenders that function as borrowers’ economic roadmaps. In return, the IMF and World Bank will receive observer status in the trade negotiations committee, which handles individual negotiating issues at the WTO and its subsidiary bodies, coupled with a role at the WTO secretariat, a body often accused of bias on disputes between rich and poor countries.

Critics say these plans should cause even more concern. They say so-called “technical assistance” is really one way to force-feed the same policies on developing nations rather than give them the tools to develop independent views and, possibly, development options.

“Technical assistance is being used as a political tool to win support for a ‘development agenda’ that is heavily disputed in the WTO,” said Shefali Sharma from the Geneva office of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in a statement.

“No amount of technical assistance in implementing policies that, in effect, handicap and shackle developing countries in the WTO can improve gains towards development.”

Cooperation between the three bodies is not new. The WTO director general often attends meetings of the IMFC -- the assembly of the IMF and Bank governors -- and of the development committee, the senior decision making body of the institutions.

Most recently, he attended the IMFC meeting in April 2003 and briefed finance ministers on the Doha trade negotiations and work program, according to WTO documents.

The IMF and the World Bank have also been paying greater attention to trade issues in the past few years, both in the course of their regular country work and research papers. Documents have been flooding out of the two organizations in support of “free” trade. In 2002, they issued a joint staff paper on “Market Access for Developing Countries’ Exports,” which examined patterns and costs of restrictions and distortions on developing countries’ exports.

A CIA officer’s calamitous choices

By Jerry Meldon

May 15— Obituaries can barely scrape the surface of anyone’s 86-year life. That’s especially true for a covert intelligence officer whose responsibility for top-secret decisions – and their consequences – is rarely acknowledged.

But long before he succumbed to cancer on April 22, at the age of 86, retired CIA official James Critchfield had owned up to two of his decisions that were so momentous that they still influence the course of international events. One opened the CIA’s doors to ex-Nazis. The other cleared the way for Saddam Hussein’s rise to power in Iraq.

Critchfield made the first of his fateful decisions soon after he joined the fledgling CIA in 1948. Three years earlier, Hitler’s master spy for the Eastern Front, Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, had surrendered to US forces. He then proposed a deal. In return for his freedom, he would turn over his voluminous files on the Soviet Union along with his former agents who had scattered across Europe.

Both the Army and the CIA considered Gehlen a hot potato. They decided to assign someone the task of weighing the pros and cons of his offer. That someone turned out to be James Critchfield, a highly decorated Army colonel who had led wartime units in Europe and North Africa and had greatly impressed senior CIA personnel.

Critchfield was transferred to the Gehlen compound in Pullach, Germany. After a month or so of deliberation, he concluded that Washington would gain substantial advantage over Moscow by annexing the “Gehlen Org” into the CIA. He recommended that the agency do so and it did.

For the next four years, Critchfield remained Gehlen’s CIA handler in Germany. Then, in 1952, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer chose Gehlen as the initial chief of the BND, West Germany’s post-war intelligence agency. Critchfield said Gehlen – on his death bed 27 years later – thanked Critchfield for his vital assistance in the post-war period.

War criminals

Secret documents declassified by the Clinton administration show that the CIA’s collaboration with the ex-Nazis was not merely a marriage of convenience. It was more like a deal with the devil.

The documents reveal that Gehlen had hired and protected hundreds of Nazi war criminals. The more notorious of these Hitler henchmen included Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s right-hand man in orchestrating the Final Solution, and Emil Augsburg, who directed the Wansee Institute where the Final Solution was formulated and who served in a unit that specialized in the extermination of Jews. Another was the former Gestapo chief Heinrich Muller, Adolf Eichmann’s immediate superior whose signature appears on orders written in 1943 for the deportation of 45,000 Jews to Auschwitz for killing.

Furthermore, the Gehlen Org was so thoroughly penetrated by Soviet spies that CIA operations in Eastern Europe often ended in the murder of its agents. To top it off, the Org fed the CIA a steady diet of misinformation that fanned the flames of East-West hostility – and thus assured the Org the continued patronage of Washington.

Many historians of the CIA’s early days have concluded that letting the ex-Nazis in was the CIA’s original sin, a moral failure that also resulted in the distortion of the intelligence given U.S. policymakers during the crucial early years of the Cold War.

Critchfield of Arabia

Critchfield’s second fateful decision was in the Middle East, another flashpoint of Cold War tensions.

In 1959, a young Saddam Hussein, allegedly in cahoots with the CIA, botched an assassination attempt on Iraq’s leader, Gen. Abdel Karim Qassim. Hussein fled Iraq and reportedly hid out under the CIA’s protection and sponsorship.

By early 1963, Qassim’s policies were raising new alarms in Washington. He had withdrawn Iraq from the pro-Western Baghdad Pact, made friendly overtures to Moscow, and revoked oil exploration rights granted by a predecessor to a consortium of companies that included American oil interests.

It fell to Critchfield, who was then in an extended tenure in charge of the CIA’s Near East and South Asia division, to remove Qassim. Critchfield supported a coup d’etat in February 1963 that was spearheaded by Iraq’s Baathist party. The troublesome Qassim was killed, as were scores of suspected communists who had been identified by the CIA.

Critchfield hailed the coup that brought the Baathists to power as “a great victory.” Yet the reality is that the coup further destabilized an Iraq that had survived on the edge of crisis since its creation as a British mandate, with arbitrarily selected borders, in the wake of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The 1963 coup also paved the way for another momentous political development. Five years later, Saddam Hussein emerged as a leader in another Baathist coup. Over the next decade, he bullied his way to power, eventually consolidating a ruthless dictatorship that would lead to three wars in less than a quarter century.

After invading Iraq and ousting Hussein from power in April 2003, US occupiers of Iraq outlawed the Baath party that James Critchfield and the CIA had helped install in the 1960s. Critchfield died two weeks after Hussein’s government was toppled.

In retrospect, the United States and the world paid – and continue to pay – a high price for the clandestine decisions made by Critchfield and his unaccountable CIA cohorts. As was true of many other “intelligence” decisions, actions perceived to be short-term political gains turned out to be long-term calamities, leading to corruption, disorder and human suffering.

Today, with the Washington information flow again tightly controlled and short on factual support, Critchfield’s choices are a reminder that un-elected officials, operating in secret, still make policy decisions – and that their actions can affect the lives of millions in the US and around the world.

Source: Consortiumnews.com

The circle: Israel raids, Palestinians
bomb, ‘peace’ evaded

Compiled by Seán Marquis

May 20 (AGR)— A massive Israeli force surged into Gaza for the second day running on May 15, killing five Palestinians. Israel’s biggest military show of strength in months — involving 70 tanks and armored vehicles, according to witnesses — came as Palestinians commemorated the Naqba — or catastrophe — of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, when 700,000 Arab refugees fled or were forced from their homes during the creation of the state of Israel.

Military commanders said the action was aimed at ending a rash of rocket attacks against the Israeli town of Sderot from the Palestinian town of Beit Hanoun. Twelve Qassam rockets have been fired at Sderot in the past two weeks.

In the ensuing gun battle, two Palestinian militants were killed and 17 people were wounded.

Three Palestinians youths were killed in the operation, according to Palestinian security and hospital officials: Mohammed Zaanin, 12, was shot in the head while throwing stones at Israeli troops, Zuhair Abu Garad, 15, was shot in the head and back while walking in a field outside Beit Hanoun, and a third youth, Abdul Qader Abu Qaas, 16, also was fatally shot.

Two militants from the Popular Resistance Committees, a small organization formed by former members of other radical groups, also were killed.

Senior Palestinian officials said that the Israeli raid — the latest in a recent series into Gaza — was increasing pressure on Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian Prime Minister also known as Abu Mazen, to withdraw from a summit meeting with Ariel Sharon, his Israeli counterpart, planned for Saturday evening.

“I have received calls from every part of Palestine asking me to prevail upon Abu Mazen not to meet with Prime Minister Sharon after the horror he has inflicted on Gaza,” said Nabil Shaath, Foreign Minister in Abbas’ government. Palestinians held a series of events throughout Gaza and the West Bank marking the 1948 Arab defeat. A crowd of 20,000 people marched in Gaza City, many of them wearing T-shirts bearing the features of Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian Authority (PA) leader, whom America and Israel have tried to sideline in favor of Abbas.

In a televised address Arafat said: “No peace before the full Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian and Arab lands to the line of June 1967.”

Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza during a war that year and all Israeli governments since that conflict have said that a full withdrawal from those lands will never happen.

Palestinians attended rallies holding banners with the names of villages in what is now Israel from which they fled or were expelled in the war over the Jewish state’s founding in 1948.

Sirens sounded in Gaza City, bringing life to a halt for three minutes to honor Palestinians killed in violence with Israel. At the Gaza rally a loudspeaker blared: “They said the old die and children forget; we will never forget and we will return.”

Israel rejects any right of return for the estimated four million Palestinian refugees to what is now the Jewish state, saying such an influx would be demographic suicide.

Raids to bombings

A Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least four people and wounded 20 in an Israeli shopping center on May 19 — the fifth bombing in two days.

The blast went off at the Shaarei Amakim mall in the northern city of Afula, near one of the entrances where shoppers were waiting for a security check. The area police chief said the bomber appeared to be a woman.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The Islamic militant Hamas has carried out four bombings over the weekend, including a Jerusalem bus attack that killed seven Israelis and an attack in Hebron which killed a pregnant Israeli woman and her husband.

On the Jewish Sabbath, Palestinians in Hebron are required to stay in their homes to allow Jews safe passage to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a site considered holy by Muslims and Jews.

The Israeli couple lived in the Jewish settlement of Kyriat Arba, outside Hebron, and were killed while on a visit to the tomb.

Also a body found on a beach in Israel last week was identified by forensic scientists as that of a British man suspected of being an accomplice to a suicide bomber.

The body of Omar Sharif was found in the capital Tel Aviv after fellow Briton, Asif Hanif, 21, blew himself up outside a bar, killing three people on May 12.

Sharif’s suicide bomb failed to explode, Israeli authorities said, and he fled the scene, sparking a police hunt.

His body was found shortly afterwards, washed up on a beach in the city.

Omar Abdullah, spokesman for al-Muhajiroun, a UK-based militant group, meanwhile said that many people in the Muslim community believe Sharif could have been killed by Israeli secret service operatives.

“People are unsure how he could have ended up drowned, and many have speculated whether he may have been captured, tortured or even killed by the Israeli security services,” he said.

The string of well-timed bombings, appear to be militants’ response to the Israeli raids in Gaza and a rejection of Abu Mazen and his criteria for peace overtures to Israel.

Hamas said it had no intention of halting attacks, despite Egypt’s ongoing efforts to have Palestinian militant groups agree to a one–year suspension of shootings and bombings. The armed groups have said they might agree to a truce if Israel promises to stop hunting militants – a proposal Sharon has rejected.

Bombings snip ‘peace’ deal

Sharon used the attacks as a premise to cancel his scheduled visit to Washington and immediately announced an emergency cabinet meeting and promised to stay at home to “lead the fight against terrorism.”

Sharon was supposed to meet with US president George W. Bush to inform him of Israeli objections to his proposed “road map” peace plan.

Two of the weekend’s suicide attacks went off just as Sharon and Abbas were holding their meeting on Saturday, the first such high level meeting in two years – putting a damper on any prospects of positive discussions.

As usual, Sharon and his cronies blamed the latest attacks on Arafat.

Ranaan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon, said: “There has to be a surgical operation that would sever one element of that government — which moonlights as a terror organization and which continues to support terrorist activity — from that part that wants to steer a different course of action. You reach a point where you say: ‘Maybe the measures we have taken are not harsh enough.’ ”

The cabinet decided to impose a complete military closure on the Occupied Territories. Palestinians are also forbidden from traveling between cities inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said that he and Sharon decided that Israeli officials will not be allowed to meet with any foreign figures that will meet with Arafat, except for five diplomats who have received special permission to meet with the PA chairman.

Earlier that same day, Abbas accepted the resignation of Saeb Erekat, a top Palestinian negotiator who stepped down after being excluded from the Sharon-Abbas summit. Erekat’s accessibility and fluent English had made him a sought-after guest on television news shows and a prominent spokesman for the Palestinian cause.

Erekat has been a leading Palestinian negotiator with Israel since the Madrid peace talks in 1992. He is close to veteran Palestinian leader Arafat, and growing tensions between Arafat and Abbas might have played a role in his resignation.

Sources: Associated Press, BBC, CNN, Daily Telegraph (UK), Guardian (UK), Ha’aretz, Reuters, Times (UK), Washington Post

US threatens to move NATO
after Franks is charged

By David Wastell

May 18— America’s top military officer has warned that NATO may have to move from its Brussels headquarters after an attempt to bring war crimes charges against General Tommy Franks, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, in the Belgian courts.

General Richard Myers, chief of the US general staff, intervened in the row with Belgium after American officials expressed fears that Belgian war crimes laws would expose NATO officers to the risk of arrest.

He said that the US government saw the lawsuit against Gen. Franks and another senior American soldier, brought by a left-wing lawyer, as a “very, very serious situation” and said: “It clearly could have a huge impact on where we gather.”

His comments reflected the anger felt by military officials of several NATO nations at the Belgian government’s failure to prevent the lawyer, Jan Fermon, from filing the suit. It was lodged last week under Belgium’s 1993 legislation on war crimes and genocide. Its laws of “universal competence” allow prosecution of nationals of any country for war crimes or genocide, no matter where the crime was allegedly committed.

A Brussels-based diplomat told The Telegraph that it would be “clearly unwise” for Gen. Franks to visit the alliance’s headquarters while he faces the possibility of a war crimes prosecution.

A NATO official said: “The US expects the Belgian government to take the necessary action to dismiss the law suit and to be diligent in preventing abuse of the legal system for political purposes.”

Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman in Washington, described the lawsuit as “ludicrous”.

Fermon, who is based in Brussels, launched the action on behalf of 17 Iraqis and two Jordanians who were said to have been injured or bereaved by US attacks.

He said that the accusations against Gen. Franks focused on the bombing of civilian areas, “indiscriminate shooting” by US troops when they entered Baghdad, and the failure to prevent the looting of hospitals.

Fermon has also charged a colonel in the US Marines with ordering troops to fire on ambulances bearing the Red Crescent symbol.

NATO officials fear that if the case proceeds unchecked, it will spawn further politically-motivated prosecutions, making it difficult for officials of all nationalities to travel to Brussels and for NATO to conduct business on Belgian soil.

The American reaction to the lawsuit has caused alarm within the Belgian government, which faces elections today and has belatedly woken up to the threat to its position as host to several international institutions, including the European Union.

A Belgian foreign ministry spokesman said that Gen. Myers’ comments were being taken “very seriously”.

Any attempt to move NATO’s headquarters from Belgium would be privately welcomed by some senior British military figures, who were dismayed by Belgian hostility to the war in Iraq and its support for moves apparently designed to weaken NATO’s trans-Atlantic links.

There was anger when Belgium joined France and Germany in blocking a NATO plan to deploy Patriot missile batteries in Turkey, to defend it against attack from Iraq. Earlier this month Belgium hosted a summit with France, Germany and the Netherlands - all countries which opposed the Iraq war – and agreed to establish a headquarters in Brussels for a rapid reaction force, independent of NATO.

NATO moved to Brussels from France in the 1960s after Charles de Gaulle, the French president, withdrew his country from its military wing. At least 2,000 officials work at NATO’s headquarters and that number will increase next year when countries from Eastern Europe join.

A NATO spokesman said a move from Belgium was “not very realistic” given the alliance’s contractual obligations - and the fact that it would require consensus among all members, including Belgium. However, as one diplomat said: “Moving NATO from France seemed unthinkable until it happened.”

Source: Daily Telegraph (UK)

Martial law in Aceh means relapse into fear

By Kafil Yamin and Prangtip Daorueng

Jakarta, Indonesia, May 19 (IPS)— The breakdown of peace between Indonesia’s government and Aceh’s rebels had been expected, but its occurrence on Monday was no less a disappointment for many — and a relapse into fear for Acehnese who have lived with the separatist conflict for 27 years.

After five months, the ceasefire between the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri and the Free Aceh Movement, known by its Indonesian acronym GAM, collapsed following Jakarta’s imposition of a state of emergency in Aceh starting Monday.

A last-ditch round of talks in Tokyo also ended over the weekend, with already ominous signs. The military prevented Aceh-based members of the GAM negotiating team from flying to Japan, and they had to take part in the discussions by cellular phones.

“The President has made the decision. Aceh is under military emergency. I have ordered field commanders there to launch an integrated operation that includes a social and humanitarian campaign,” said Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono early this morning.

War is far from unknown to the people of Aceh, a province at the northern tip of Sumatra island that has long resented the Indonesian government’s profiting from its rich resources of gas and the Suharto-era military rule aimed at quelling the insurgency.

But it is precisely this familiarity with war and how it takes its biggest toll on civilians that worries many Acehnese with the return to military conflict in the province.

“Yes, I am scared - - very scared,” said a social worker in the province’s capital city of Banda Aceh who declined to be named.

“At the moment Acehnese want to keep silent because we don’t know what will happen to us,” she added during a telephone interview. “We have to protect ourselves as we might be intimidated by both the military and GAM.”

The Acehnese recall very well what happened when the province was put under special military operations for 10 years under Suharto, from 1987 onwards. At least 10,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

The state of emergency will last six months and can be extended. Calls for military action had been increasing in recent months because the peace process was not seen as yielding results, and in the wake of clashes that had started again between the military and GAM.

Yudhoyono said that GAM failed to use the opportunity in the Tokyo meeting to solve the conflict through peaceful means and political solutions, and refused to drop its independence demand.

Indonesia had three requirements for negotiations: that the separatists accept special autonomy scheme, that GAM disarms and that deliberations do not affect Indonesia’s national integrity.

In Tokyo, GAM ruled out the requirements and pressed for independence instead. Since the beginning of the negotiations with the Acehnese started by former President Abdurrahman Wahid, the rebels have neither clearly accepted nor rejected this demand.

Steve Daly, spokesman of the Henry Dunant Center (HDC), a Swiss-based organization that brokered the peace dialogue, said the center had been trying to get the two sides to resolve their immediate differences to prevent a resumption of conflict. “Those efforts were, unfortunately, unsuccessful,” he said to the press.

The last time Indonesia imposed martial law in a province was in its former province of East Timor in 1999. That attempt to restore order failed, and East Timor has since become independent.

Daly explained that there had been hope that GAM would drop its independence demand due to the imminence of military operations and because international support for its independence goals is absent.

A military solution, despite its failure under the Suharto government, also appeared to become less objectionable in the wake of recent examples of the use of force, like the US-led war on Iraq.

Previously, the Megawati government had come under fire for weak stance on GAM, a position that was shaped by concern about international and domestic criticism of any tough crackdown on Aceh.

At one point, Amien Rais, the chairman of the People’s Consultative Assembly, the highest legislative body in Indonesia, said the government has been trapped in a game played by GAM. “Our military hesitates to act, while GAM continues to intimidate and humiliate us,” he said.

The chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara, said: “Aceh is part of our national sovereignty. No single country in the world denies that. And there’s armed rebellion there. No single country denies that. An armed rebellion should be dealt with armed operations. No single country denies that.”

“Then why do we continue to hesitate? We have full rights to act,” he said after the announcement of the state of emergency Monday. “Indonesia is the only legitimate party to solve the Aceh problem, not the Henry Dunant Center, not the United Nations.”

On Monday, clashes broke out in Aceh, and fighter jets fired rockets at GAM rebels east of Banda Aceh.

At least seven GAM members died in a clash with the military in Jambo Kapuk village, south Aceh and one was captured, Maj Bakti Jamaluddin of the Teuku Umar Military Command said. But GAM deputy spokesman Iskandar Al Pase denied this, saying “they are not GAM members. They are all civilians.”

Early this month, Jakarta deployed large numbers of troops to the province after Megawati asked the military to prepare for a crackdown. Altogether, security forces in Aceh now number almost 50,000.

Last week, parliament also voted for a 147 million US dollar budget to finance a military-led campaign in Aceh.

“Villagers are the ones who fear most because armed operations are always conducted in remote areas first,” said a Acehnese social worker. Asked how villagers were preparing for martial law, “I don’t know,” she said. “But I think everybody is frightened.”

Argentine president-elect to face
challenge of weak mandate

By Marcela Valente

Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 15 (IPS)— Argentina’s new president-elect Néstor Kirchner will face the challenge of gaining the legitimacy that he was unable to win at the polls due to his rival Carlos Menem’s withdrawal from the electoral race.

Kirchner became president-elect by default Wednesday when former president Menem (1989-1999), who won the first round of elections on Apr. 27, announced that he would not stand in the run-off that had been scheduled for Sunday.

Due to Menem’s exit, Kirchner, who will take the reins of this crisis-stricken country from caretaker President Eduardo Duhalde on May 25, will not enjoy a popular mandate.

Menem took 24 percent of the votes in the first round. Kirchner, governor of the southern province of Santa Cruz, came in second with just 22 percent. This will make him the president with the lowest proportion of votes in Argentine history.

He had been set to become the president with the largest share of votes ever: according to opinion polls, he would have taken between 71 and 79 percent of the votes next Sunday, compared to Menem’s 21 to 29 percent.

Both belong to the Justicialista (Peronist) Party, in power since the collapse of the government of Fernando de la Rúa (1999- 2001), who had been elected at the head of a center-left alliance that pledged to sweep away the corruption that marked Menem’s two terms in office.

Kirchner now faces the challenge of renegotiating Argentina’s bulky foreign debt—including a large portion on which it has ceased payments, reducing the nearly 60 percent poverty rate, cutting unemployment—which affects nearly one in four workers, and getting the collapsed economy—still in the grip of its worst crisis in history—back on its feet.

He will also have to make good on his promise to renovate the country’s discredited political leadership, a central demand of the massive protests that toppled de la Rúa in December 2001 and continued for months under the slogan, “The whole lot of them should go!”

Kirchner said that just as the main focus of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — who took office in January in neighboring Brazil — was on “zero hunger,” the crux of his policies would be “fighting extreme poverty and unemployment.”

On late Wednesday, Kirchner said Menem’s pullout “culminates a historic cycle of messianic and fundamentalist leadership.” He also announced that, “A new era is about to begin; we are heading towards a new dawn.”

The president-elect described the two days — Tuesday and Wednesday — during which Menem kept the country on edge with contradictory signals on whether or not he was pulling out of the race as “humiliating and disgraceful.”

The country’s “democratic institutions were kept in limbo by a former president who pulled off the tablecloth without the slightest consideration of the damages,” he said, adding that there would be no way that Menem could recover after mounting such a “ridiculous” spectacle.

In Kirchner’s view, Menem’s withdrawal “serves the interests of economic groups that benefited from inadmissible privileges last decade,” because the country’s new leader is assuming with a much weaker mandate than he would otherwise have had.

The little-known Kirchner said he would not be beholden to corporations. “My convictions will not be checked at the doors of the Casa Rosada (the seat of government).”

But the new president will not have an easy road ahead, political analysts warn.

The director of the Center of Studies on Public Opinion, Roberto Bacman, pointed out that even though de la Rúa took office in 1999 with strong legitimacy after garnering 48 percent of the vote, his administration ran into serious governance problems, and he was forced to step down halfway through his term.

Duhalde thus inherited a profound credibility crisis when he was appointed transitional president by parliament in January 2002 to serve out the rest of de la Ruá’s term.

But Duhalde was able to “stabilize the economy,” which strengthened his government, even though he never enjoyed the legitimacy of being elected by the popular vote, the analyst noted.

“Kirchner is facing a double challenge: On one hand, gaining legitimacy for an administration that is starting out with a very low level of electoral support, and on the other, governing a society that still has enormous problems to work out,” said Bacman.

Political analyst Rosendo Fraga said Kirchner would have to build consensus and “seek alliances among the political leaders outside of his party who also made a good showing in the first round of elections.”

The president-elect said Wednesday that, “we are going to talk to all sectors.”

Sociologist Gerardo Adrogué, of the National University of San Martín, said Kirchner would start out with “precarious legitimacy,” but that he could turn that situation around by governing well and fulfilling his campaign promises.

Even before Menem formally announced he was dropping out of the race, vice-president-elect Daniel Scioli said Kirchner was “prepared and has everything ready” to govern.

Political scientist Marcos Novaro warned that it made no sense to downplay the problems that the new president would face as a result of his weak mandate, because his government “was going to be difficult, even if he won strong support in the second round.”

“Now his maneuvering room will be just that much more limited,” said Novaro.

“That may be an advantage, because it will force Kirchner to keep on his toes and avoid mistakes, but it also reveals the limitations that his administration will face,” he added.

Plan for Iraq interim government scrapped
Iraqis unite for anti-US march

Compiled by Eamon Martin

May 21 (AGR)— Up to 10,000 Shia and Sunni Muslims marched peacefully through Baghdad on Monday to protest the American occupation of Iraq and reject what they fear will be a US-installed puppet government.

The demonstrators said those Iraqis negotiating with the Americans were exile groups who did not represent them.

The demonstration underscored the impatience of many with the slow pace at which power is being handed to Iraqis.

“No, no, no USA,” read one placard.

Small groups of US infantrymen, including snipers on nearby rooftops, watched the rally but did not intervene. Several dozen Shiite organizers armed with AK-47 assault rifles also patrolled the area. They too were left alone by the Americans.

Washington is pressing for a vote in the United Nations Security Council this week calling for control of the country and its oil flows by the United States and Britain as “occupying powers.”

The drafted plan is a revised version of a resolution that the US, Britain and Spain submitted a week ago and that sought to lift economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait and to effectively put the country’s vast oil riches under US-British control for at least a year.

But at the United Nations, US Ambassador John Negroponte rejected a request to set a 12-month limit to the occupation of Iraq by US and British forces, with any extension requiring council approval.

“We would not agree to that kind of a limitation,” Negroponte said.

In the background are lingering concerns that the resolution essentially rewrites some of the provisions of the 1949 Geneva Conventions on the duties of occupying powers. They are not meant to have the authority to create a new permanent government — which is the stated aim of London and Washington — or commit the occupied country to long-term contracts, such as oil exploration.

“The United States is asking the Security Council to authorize it to do a series of things that would otherwise violate international law under the guise of ending sanctions,” said Morton Halperin, a former State Department official and director of the Open Society Institute in Washington.

“The purpose of this resolution is to relieve the United States of both its obligations and the limits of what it can do as an occupying power under international law by having the Security Council supersede the requirements of the Geneva Convention,” he said.

Indefinite authority

Six weeks after the US military took Baghdad and Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed, Iraq remains without a formal government. US and British plans for rebuilding Iraq were descending into chaos this weekend as officials admitted they had indefinitely scrapped plans for a transitional government. Iraqi groups are accusing Washington of backing away from its promises to hand real power to Iraqis.

The head of the US-led administration in Iraq, Paul Bremer, put off until July a planned meeting of Iraqi politicians to chart out the country’s political future, while leaders of Iraqi political groups warned that American and British forces could find themselves ruling a hostile nation if they do not support the creation of an interim Iraqi government.

Bremer told exile leaders in a meeting last Friday night that allied officials would remain in charge of Iraq indefinitely. Bremer informed opposition leaders that the previously proposed Iraqi interim government would instead be an interim authority. Its tasks would be limited to supervising the drafting of a new constitution, monitoring the construction of a judicial system and managing large parts of the Health, Agriculture and Education ministries.

But the major ministries, such as Interior, Finance, Foreign, and the security services, would remain in US hands for the foreseeable future.

Bremer said it would be more than a year before an interim Iraqi government would be formed with the power to set policy and run major ministries. The message angered many of the seven opposition leaders in the room, according to participants.

Iraqi politicians have been increasingly frustrated with the ever-lengthening timescale for the US-led occupation to retain the reins of power.

Jalal Talabani, head of one of the two main Kurdish factions, said Wednesday that the US proposal to bring Iraq’s oil revenue under control of the occupation was a threat to Iraq’s sovereignty.

“It shows the United States and Britain backtracking on pledges we have heard repeatedly,” he said.

‘It’s like an insurgency’

Democratic and Republican Senators alike lashed out last Wednesday at the military’s efforts to stabilize Iraq, reprimanding US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for not having a “coherent plan” to tackle the wave of violence sweeping Baghdad.

Rumsfeld responded to the criticism defensively.

“The circumstances of people in that country are better than they were before the war,” he said.

Despite 24-hour patrols by American soldiers, nightly gunfire echoes off the streets of Iraq’s major cities. In some parts of Baghdad, daytime shootouts have become common.

By one count, more than 240 people have been killed in Baghdad during the past three weeks, mostly by gunshots. The Army has still failed to provide security for vital utilities, including 39 electrical substations in Baghdad.

The widespread impression is that US administrators are out of touch with what is happening beyond the palace walls housing their headquarters.

While Bremer was meeting the press last Thursday, looters were setting fire to the already emptied ministry of information, barely two miles away. A US tank and three military police Humvees parked outside the ministry, but the troops took no action as the looters ran through the building.

Last Wednesday night, Faik Amin Bakr, the director of the Baghdad morgue counted through his register of violent deaths. There had been 124 over the previous 10 days, he said, almost all gunshot homicides. That marks a 60 percent rise over the previous 10-day period, despite claims by US officials that the security situation is improving.

In a city where armed carjackings and armed robberies are increasingly common, where many parents do not send their children to school for fear they will be abducted, and where gunfire is heard constantly, violence is claiming growing numbers of victims.

Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, command of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, said the security situation is challenging because troops have to cope with not only a “general criminal element” but also organized resistance determined to undermine the US occupation.

Senior US advisors and mid-level military commanders in recent days have likened it to guerrilla warfare and said the nation’s power grid is a key battleground. Officials say they have been plagued by sabotage, attacks and thefts by Iraqis they insist are remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

In the last two weeks, saboteurs have shot out key insulators and power lines using AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, looted critical parts from power plants and relay stations, stolen more than 40 cars from the national Electricity Commission, carjacked one of its commissioners at gunpoint and staged night looting raids on construction sites for 26 new transmission towers needed to restore the backbone of Iraq’s power grid.

“It’s like an insurgency,” said Col. David Perkins, who commands the US Army brigade that took Baghdad more than a month ago.

“The impact of the looting was greater than we probably realized at the time,” said Col. John Peabody, an Army engineer charged with securing public utility sites. “Everything of value to making things run was stolen.”

Last month, Army engineers were thrilled to find a private construction company with supplies of lumber and other materials needed to start repairs. But, two weeks ago, a gang of thieves broke into that company’s warehouse and cleaned it out.

Jim Lanier, a US Agency for International Development staff member who oversees the reconstruction of Iraq’s sputtering electrical grid, identified a section of power line between Baghdad and the southern city of Basra that has been shot apart in the same place six times. Each time crews have made repairs, only to find it destroyed again.

“That’s not accidental,” said Lanier, who reported gunfights at a nearby oil refinery and word from US soldiers guarding the Al Quds power plant northwest of Baghdad that they are fired upon regularly. “I think it’s far more than just random.”

On Saturday, assailants armed with a rocket-propelled grenade destroyed an army tanker truck at a Baghdad fuel depot. About an hour’s drive northeast of the capital, US military officers in the town of Baqubah said unknown persons have attacked them several times with rocket-propelled grenades. The missiles did not strike their targets and no American soldiers have been wounded, but the attacks illustrate that the US military often has no better success controlling the streets outside Baghdad than inside.

In Baqubah, roaming patrols of US soldiers say they routinely come under fire by shoot-and-run snipers after the 11pm curfew.

“It happens practically every night. Sometimes it appears to be paramilitary and sometimes it just looks like kids thinking it’s cool to shoot at us,” said Lt. Col. Randy Grant, of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry.

Restored British war graves sacked

A British World War I cemetery in Iraq, which was restored by United States Marines has been desecrated by Iraqis.

The cemetery in the eastern city of Kut was vandalized hours after a rededication ceremony attended by British generals and Anglican bishops.

Some gravestones of tens of thousands of British and Indian troops who fell in Kut after being forced to retreat from Baghdad by Turkish forces in 1916 have been toppled. The Union Jack which was hoisted during the ceremony was ripped down and burned and its metal flagpole bent to an angle of 45 degrees.

On Monday, children were swinging on the bent flagpole, leaping over the cracked or broken headstones which had clearly been hit with heavy objects.

Local people outside a shop selling icons of Shiite clerics opposite the cemetery said its desecration was not surprising.

“We respect the dead, whatever their religion, but the soldiers put up the British flag as if to emphasize that they are occupying us and many men put lots of effort into the restoration,” said Abbas Jaber, 32, a glazier. “At the same time we are suffering from lack of food, electricity and security. If only they put as much effort into sorting these problems out.”

Sources: Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, BBC News, Christian Science Monitor, Daily Telegraph (UK), Guardian (UK), Independent (UK), Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, New York Times, Observer (UK), Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post