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Ex-aide: Powell misled Americans

While Baghdad burns, Bush officials insist life is returning to ‘normal’

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Oct. 15 (AGR)— This week, the person responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Colin Powell confessed on primetime television that the Secretary of State misinformed Americans during his speech at the United Nations last winter.

Greg Thielmann told 60 Minutes II on Oct. 15 that at the time of Powell’s speech, Iraq didn’t pose an imminent threat to anyone –- not even its own neighbors.

“I think my conclusion [about Powell’s speech] now is that it’s probably one of the low points in his long distinguished service to the nation,” said Thielmann.

Thielmann also said that he believes the decision to go to war was made first and then the intelligence was interpreted to fit that conclusion.

“The main problem was that the senior administration officials have what I call faith-based intelligence,” said Thielmann. “They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show. They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce. I would assign some blame to the intelligence community and most of the blame to the senior administration officials.”

Steve Allinson and a dozen other UN inspectors in Iraq also watched Powell’s speech. “Various people would laugh at various times [during Powell’s speech] because the information he was presenting was just, you know, didn’t mean anything — had no meaning,” says Allinson.

Perception management

Thielmann’s embarrassing revelations came on the cusp of a week in which the Bush administration, confronting falling polls and balking lawmakers, had announced that they were conducting a public relations offensive to convince voters that the United States is succeeding in Iraq despite the casualties, sabotage and setbacks.

Indeed they did. Less than a week before Thielmann would tell all, Vice President Dick Cheney told the conservative Heritage Foundation last Friday that, “We could not accept the grave danger of Saddam Hussein and his allies turning weapons of mass destruction against us or our friends and allies.”

Yet Cheney offered no new evidence that Hussein posed an imminent threat as the administration claimed before the war. The vice president’s speech also ignored the continuing violence in Iraq, the lack of broad international collaboration, and the failure so far to find any weapons of mass destruction.

“Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands in a single day of war,” Cheney said.

“Remember what we saw on the morning of 9-11,” Cheney said. Cheney, however, did not offer new evidence that there was any link between Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks.

The day before, six months after Saddam Hussein’s statue fell in Baghdad, Bush said he was concerned that “perceptions” didn’t reflect the reality of progress in Iraq. He spoke on a day when more than a dozen people, including a Spanish attaché and two American soldiers, died in just the latest burst of violence in Baghdad.

At an Air National Guard base in Portsmouth, N.H., Bush said that those responsible for the guerrilla attacks in Iraq “believe that America will run from a challenge. They’re mistaken. Americans are not the running kind.”

While Bush spoke, that same day US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz declared US forces were winning their mission, using language almost precisely identical to the president.

As Wolfowitz, a major intellectual force behind Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, received the “Keeper of the Flame” award from the Center for Security Policy, he insisted, “They believe we will run from a challenge. They are mistaken. Americans are not the running kind.”

Bush has faced growing public accusations he exaggerated the threat posed by Iraqi unconventional weapons — none of which have been found — to justify the war in order to benefit his associates in the military, petroleum, construction, and commercial finance sector.

He is also being accused of mismanaging the Iraqi occupation, as US troops are dying almost daily in attacks.

Perhaps no greater disparity in “perceptions” about Iraq’s progress came on Friday, Oct. 10, when two US soldiers were killed and four injured in a gunfight, just hours after a suicide car bombing that killed 10 people and injured 28 in the same Baghdad neighborhood.

The car bomber drove through the gates of a police station and detonated an explosive just as 50 police officers were gathered outside to collect their pay.

An Iraqi policeman who pushed through the thousands-strong crowd around the scene was stabbed in the upper right arm after being set upon by a mob. His arrival created a commotion among the crowd, which began chanting: ‘’No, no to America.’’

Associated Press Television News camera crews also were attacked by the crowds and had some equipment stolen.

The US administrator of the occupation in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer insisted later that day on ABC television that there’s lots of good news in Iraq, and “life is basically quite normal here.”

But hostility towards American troops is growing with scores of attacks every day.

Friday’s deaths brought to 94 the number of US soldiers killed in hostile fire since Bush declared an end to major fighting on May 1. A total of 325 US soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began on Mar. 20.

“We’ve had a really great six months and there has been some bad days,” said Bremer.

American troops are dying at an average of about one per day. And though Bremer didn’t clarify what he considered to be a “bad day”, by most standards what unfolded in the following days could hardly qualify as good.

Two days after Bremer made his remarks, another suicide car bomber killed six Iraqis and wounded 32 others in a huge explosion at one of Baghdad’s most heavily guarded hotels where CIA teams, American contractors and senior Iraqi officials were staying. The explosion tore chunks out of the buildings on either side of the entrance and shattered windows hundreds of yards away.

Later that day, a US soldier was killed in the northern oil town of Baiji.

The following day, a US soldier was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Tikrit.

The day after that, on Oct. 14, a suicide car bomber attacked the Turkish embassy in Baghdad, injuring at least 10 bystanders.

Last week Turkey had announced that it would send troops to Iraq to support the occupation. But the mass majority of Iraqis and Turks, however, are against this move. Even members of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council protested the presence of Turkish soldiers, or those of any other neighboring country, on Iraqi soil.

High suicide rate among US soldiers

The US army announced this week that they have sent mental health specialists to Iraq to determine why so many soldiers are committing suicide there.

Eleven US soldiers and three Marines have killed themselves in the past seven months in Iraq.

“The number of suicides has caused the army to be concerned,” said Lieutenant Colonel Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, an army psychiatrist helping investigate the deaths.

Most of the suicides have occurred since May 1, when major combat operations were declared over.

So far in total, the army has sent 478 soldiers home from Iraq for mental-health reasons.

Aid workers are the ‘running kind’

A great majority of foreign aid workers in Iraq, fearing they have become targets for violence, have quietly pulled out of the country in the past month, leaving essential relief work to their Iraqi colleagues and slowing the reconstruction effort. Projects that have been abandoned because of the exodus include efforts to dig village wells, repair electrical systems and refurbish health clinics and local hospitals.

Nearly every other relief organization has made some reductions, saying that parts of Iraq are now highly risky, between unpredictable spasms of bombing and shooting and high levels of street crime. There have been two killings of aid workers since July, three grenade attacks on aid groups in the last month and at least two carjackings.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has greatly reduced its system to help Iraqis find missing relatives and has cut back on medical assistance to hospitals and clinics. The United Nations Development Program has put off major reconstruction of electrical systems, and some groups, like Oxfam International, a private charity concerned with fighting poverty, have pulled out their foreign workers altogether.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is normally the first to join these dangerous situations and the last to leave, has reduced its work force to 30 from 130.

Sources: ABC, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, CBS, Guardian (UK), Independent (UK), New York Times, Reuters, USA Today, Washington Post

By Jon Henley

Paris, France, Oct. 11— The public prosecutor’s office in Paris said yesterday it was opening a formal judicial inquiry into alleged corruption by a French engineering firm and the American oil services giant Halliburton, which was headed until two years ago by Dick Cheney, the vice-president of the United States.

The investigation is the first of its kind in France under laws introduced as part of an international convention on cross-border corruption signed in 1997 by some 35 countries, including the US.

The financial crimes squad in Paris believes a French oil and gas engineering firm, Technip, and particularly the Halliburton subsidiary KBR were jointly involved during the 1990s in the payment of up to $200 million of under-the-counter “commissions” in relation to a huge gas contract in Nigeria. The convention, under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, aims to fight corporate attempts to buy the favors of public authorities abroad.

It allows the police forces of signatory countries to investigate any company suspected of offering commercial sweeteners of any kind to elected or unelected public officials anywhere in the world. According to Le Figaro newspaper, French police believe KBR was behind a web of off-shore companies and bank accounts set up to “facilitate” the work of TSKJ, a joint venture between four engineering companies that had won a lucrative contract from international oil companies to build a large liquefied natural gas plant on Bonny Island in the eastern Niger delta. TSKJ, in which KBR was the leading player, allegedly paid a second off-shore company at least $180million in commissions — most of which was transferred to a score of different off-shore bank accounts — for “mediating” with the Nigerian authorities. It is alleged that much of that money wound up in the pockets of public officials.

The French judicial investigation into “corruption of foreign public officials, abuse of funds, complicity and receiving misappropriated monies” targets KBR but will inevitably involve Halliburton, KBR’s parent company, which recently won around $1.7 billion worth of contracts from the Bush administration to help rebuild Iraq’s oil industry. Some observers, however, said that the potentially embarrassing French investigation into such a well-connected American company could merely be a cynical tit-for-tat response to an equally sensitive investigation in the US into alleged wrongdoing by Crédit Lyonnais during the French bank’s buyout of Executive Life Insurance Co, a failed US insurance company. French judicial officials said on Wednesday that the US was seeking the extradition of four former senior French executives in the case. Crédit Lyonnais has been under investigation in the US since 1998, when American authorities discovered it had secretly — and illegally — acquired Executive Life’s assets in the 1990s.

At the time, banks were barred from owning insurance companies in America. Executive Life’s assets included California junk bonds, which the French bank later sold at a profit of at least $2 billion.

The French government and Crédit Lyonnais last month struck a preliminary deal to settle the long-running case.

Source: Guardian (UK)

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Quito, Ecuador, Oct. 8 (IPS)— The Ecuadorian government plans to send troops into the territory of Kichwa Indians in the eastern Amazon jungle region of Pastaza in order to allow foreign oil companies to carry out exploration, despite the resistance of local residents and environmental groups.

The announcement by a government minister that the army would be called out to back the operations of US oil giant ChevronTexaco and its Argentine partner CGC (Compañía General de Combustibles) on land to which the Sarayacu Kichwa Indians hold legal title drew an outcry from local and international environmental and human rights groups.

Minister of Energy and Mines Carlos Arboleda said soldiers would be sent to Sarayacu this week, to allow the companies to go ahead with their plans to explore for oil in Kichwa territory.

He also told foreign correspondents last week that the indigenous community in Sarayacu was acting “illegally,” with the support of non-governmental organizations that were “fomenting chaos.”

One of the actions taken by the Sarayacu Kichwa was to form a human chain, made up of men, women, children and elders, along the border of their territory.

Hilda Santi, the vice-president of the Sarayacu community, said “the oil company tries to slander us as terrorists to draw attention away from the abuses they commit against our rights.

“We have merely defended our territory against the aggression of the CGC/ChevronTexaco oil companies according to our customary rights, the Ecuadorian constitution and international conventions” to which this country is a signatory, said Santi.

International Labor Organization convention 169, ratified by Ecuador in 1997, and the Ecuadorian constitution both state the obligation to respect the collective rights of indigenous peoples and to consult with local communities whenever they might be affected by activities like mining or drilling for oil.

The chairman of the congressional Commission of the Affairs of Indigenous and other Ethnic Groups, Ricardo Ulcuango, criticized the position taken by Arboleda, and said he was considering the possibility of asking the minister to appear before Congress to provide explanations for his statements.

“The Energy Ministry’s policies are negative for the indigenous communities of Sarayacu, and run counter to the interests of this country,” said Ulcuango. “Indigenous territory cannot be militarized as he has proposed, and people cannot be forced to accept oil drilling” on their land.

The Sarayacu Kichwa are opposed to drilling in their territory because of the pollution it would cause. According to the World Rainforest Movement (WRM), “oil development in Sarayacu risks devastating a region that is recognized worldwide for its remarkable biological diversity, its unique lake zone (made up of around 100 lakes), and its habitat for critically endangered species like the giant otter.

“Over 95 percent of Sarayacu territory is old-growth lowland rainforest, with several tree species unique to this region,” the WRM added.

Six months ago, local leaders complained that they were being pressured by the oil companies, and that the companies’ armed guards had invaded their territory.

“The Kichwa people of Sarayacu are under pressure from CGC/ChevronTexaco, which is invading our territory and violating the rights of the community,” Kichwa leader Franco Viteri said at the time.

He also denounced the felling of “giant trees that have lived for hundreds of years, to build the oil company camps.” In addition, he said, the bodies of animals, including the tapir, an endangered species, were found mutilated and abandoned, and “gasoline has been spilled along the dirt roads” that have been opened in the jungle.

The president of the Sarayacu Kichwa community, Marlon Santi, told IPS that the indigenous leaders have demanded that the oil companies respect an agreement between the state and the local community, “in which the residents made it clear that they did not agree to the drilling for oil due to the environmental damage it would cause.”

The Indians also asked the government to protect their collective rights.

But “the authorities ignored our complaints, and our leaders began to be persecuted,” said Santi.

The Organization of American States (OAS) working group in charge of drafting the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples expressed concern in February over attacks on Shuar, Achuar and Zápara indigenous communities, and especially the Sarayacu Kichwa, due to “the unilateral application of the Ecuadorian government’s oil policy” with no consultation with local communities.

“In November 2002, the Kichwa of Sarayacu declared their 130,000-hectare ancestral territory in a state of emergency, as a measure to protect their land from the invasion of the CGC oil company working in association with ChevronTexaco,” said Santi.

In Sarayacu, the local economy and educational activities have come to a halt because the community has been forced to mobilize, to protect and patrol the boundaries of their territory, he said.

The declaration of a state of emergency “was a last resort, given the harassment and grave internal divisions brought by the oil consortium,” said the OAS working group. “That drove the communities to the verge of confrontation, demonstrating that the government’s oil policy and the way the companies operate run counter to the collective rights of indigenous peoples.”

The WRM alleges that “CGC/ChevronTexaco is employing bribes, disinformation, character defamation and false documents to create and then exploit conflicts among Sarayacu communities.”

Arboleda reported that the government had reached an agreement with CGC to allow the company’s workers to enter the area last December to explore for oil, and that it had promised to use the forces of law and order to protect the company’s operations if necessary.

“Arboleda’s statements are disturbing, because there might be plans for a crackdown on the people of Sarayacu and the environmental organizations opposed to the drilling for oil,” said Ulcuango.

The Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) issued three precautionary measures in favor of the people of Sarayacu in May.

The precautionary measure is a mechanism designed to protect the lives and safety of persons or groups of persons.

According to the IACHR, the state must act to guarantee the safety of community leaders and local residents in Sarayacu, investigate reports of torture of indigenous people by soldiers and attempted rapes of girls by CGC employees in late January, and respect the Kichwa’s special relationship with their land.

“On Oct. 16, the IACHR will hold a new public hearing in Washington, because the state has sent a letter saying it has complied with the precautionary measures. But we are going to demonstrate that it has not complied with any aspect of the measures, and that the persecution continues,” said Santi.

Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutiérrez himself said last week, during the inauguration of a tunnel in the province of Pastaza, that he would provide military support to allow oil company workers to enter the area.

ChevronTexaco is already facing a lawsuit filed by a coalition of environmental and human rights groups for environmental and health damages in Ecuador’s Amazon jungle.

Indigenous and campesino organizations from the Amazon originally filed the lawsuit in a New York court on Nov. 3, 1993. On May 4, 1995, Texaco and the Ecuadorian government agreed that the oil company would spend $15 million on “an environmental clean-up and completion of obligations, responsibilities and demands.”

The case wound through the US legal system until last year, when the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that it was a matter to be decided in Ecuador.

The suit moved to Ecuador on May 7, and the trial will continue in a court in Nueva Loja, the capital of the northeastern province of Sucumbíos, within the next few weeks.

Campesino leader Luis Yanza with the Amazon Defense Front, one of the groups that brought the suit, said the lawsuit against the US company is a chance for judges in Ecuador to demonstrate that justice can be done in a small country, “even when confronted by an economic monster like [Chevron]Texaco.”

The Front represents 30,000 Siona, Secoya, Cofan and Huaorani Indians, as well as local peasant farmers affected by oil exploration and extraction in the northeastern provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana.

The plaintiffs have evidence that between 1964 and 1992, Texaco — which merged with Chevron in 2000 to become the fourth largest oil company in the world — spilled 16 million gallons of crude and 20 billion gallons of contaminated water in the northeastern provinces.

Environmental groups say that in the areas where the oil company operated, the level of petroleum in the rivers, which local residents depend on for daily use, is 200 to 300 times higher than the limits set for human consumption. They also complain that the oil giant used obsolete technology that caused enormous damages.

The local communities, which report soaring rates of cancer — up to 30 times higher than in non-oil-producing areas of Ecuador — miscarriages and respiratory problems, are demanding compensation for damages to their health and the environment.

Yanza said the company constructed waste spillways just meters from the homes of local residents, provoking the infection and death of hundreds of people and countless animals in the last three decades.

ChevronTexaco does not deny the pollution, but says in its defense that it is not directly responsible, since Texaco had yet to merge with Chevron when the events took place. Furthermore, from its headquarters in California, ChevronTexaco insisted that it had complied with Ecuadorian law and paid for a clean-up operation, which ended in 1998.

By Eamon Martin

Oct. 14 (AGR)— According to newly declassified US State Department documents, during the 1973 October War between Israel and an allied Syria and Egypt, then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger secretly gave the Israeli government a green light to breach a cease-fire agreement arranged with the Soviet Union. Israel’s violation of the cease-fire in turn provoked a US diplomatic crisis with the Soviets who threatened to intervene on behalf of their client state, Egypt. Tensions escalated between the two Cold War superpowers, resulting in a US DEFCON (Defense Condition) III nuclear alert. The conflict had been the closest brush with nuclear war since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The documents published this week by George Washington University’s National Security Archive reveal Kissinger covertly trying to buy time for Israeli military advances despite an impending cease-fire deadline.

Kissinger secretly told the Israelis that he could accept them “taking [a] slightly longer” time in observing the deadline. In conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, Kissinger winked at the prospect of Israeli forces taking military action against Egypt despite the cease-fire:

Meir: The Egyptians and the Syrians haven’t said anything [about the cease-fire]. They have said that the fighting continues.

Kissinger: You won’t get violent protests from Washington if something happens during the night, while I’m flying. Nothing can happen in Washington until noon tomorrow.

Meir: If they don’t stop, we won’t.

Kissinger: Even if they do ...

“During the night,” Israeli forces launched a major attack and surrounded Egypt’s Third Army.

“This set of documents reveals the overriding importance that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger attached to giving the Israelis an edge in the October War fighting even at the risk of a US-Soviet crisis,” National Security Archive analyst William Burr told AGR. “By winking at the prospect of Israeli violations of a UN mandated cease-fire, Kissinger helped trigger a diplomatic confrontation with Moscow that led to the first US DEFCON nuclear alert since the Cuban missile crisis.”

By contrast, Kissinger’s goading back channel dialogue with the Israelis isn’t mentioned in his recently published account of the conflict, Crisis. According to Burr, the declassified documents also “illustrate the limitations of Henry Kissinger’s famous memoirs.”

“For example, while his memoirs hint that he condoned Israel’s breach of the cease-fire and mentions his ‘sinking feeling’ when he realized how far Tel Aviv had gone in violating the cease-fire,” Burr says, “they downplay the encouragement he gave to the Israelis on this point.”

Though the Middle East had long been a hotly contested sphere of strategic geopolitical importance for the United States and the Soviet Union, the 1973 October War shot Arab/Israeli peace negotiations to the forefront of the US foreign policy agenda. By supplying their client states with armaments and airlifts — the US to Israel, and Russia for Egypt — the superpowers revealed the global ramifications of regional conflicts during the Cold War.

As US President Richard M. Nixon put it at the time, “No one is more keenly aware of the stakes: Oil and our strategic position.”

After Israel defied the cease-fire deadline, Premier Leonid Breshnev, incensed by what he suspected to be the result of secret talks between Washington and Tel Aviv, sent a strongly worded threat to the White House warning of direct Russian “unilateral” intervention into the war.

In response, Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, ordered US military commands to raise their alert levels to DEFCON III which involved setting nuclear-armed units on the “highest state of peacetime alert” (DEFCON II would indicate that nuclear forces were ready for imminent use).

The crisis was abated when Washington and Moscow agreed that a definitive cease-fire engineered with the oversight of the United Nations was in the best interest of all parties involved.

When the fighting finally ended on October 25, Israel had seized an extra 165 square miles of territory from Syria, and was decisively established on the west bank of the Suez Canal.

Kissinger had used vicious language to assure the Israeli government of its loyalties. The US plan was to “keep the Arabs down and the Russians down.” In the end, Kissinger told them, “you have won, and I believe we have won.”

The National Security Archive is “an independent non-governmental research institute and library that collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no US government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.”

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Wariness rises as Iran nuke deadline nears

By Ramin Mostaghim

Tehran, Iran, Oct. 13 (IPS)— As the clock ticks toward the end-October deadline set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), debate is raging in Iran on an action that many see as a hostile and western-inspired one.

Many here expressed concern that Iran is being targeted for some kind of action by countries like the US government, whose “axis of evil” list contains Iran along with North Korea and Iraq.

“One thing is certain, regardless of what IAEA decides on deadline day over Iran’s nuke policy, apart from the Iran-Iraq war’s time, our foreign policy is facing the most challenge since the establishment of the Islamic republic,” writes Dr. Sadeq Ziba Kalam, a professor of political sciences in Tehran university, whose columns appear in the reformist Sharq daily.

The IAEA has given Iran until Oct. 31 to suspend its uranium enrichment activities and make all nuclear facilities open to its inspectors, and present proof that its nuclear activities are for energy purposes and not for the development of nuclear weapons.

Last week, Iran began releasing details of components it had imported unofficially for its nuclear program as requested by IAEA.

At the same time, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was quoted last week as telling religious leaders: “We will not allow anyone to deprive us of our legitimate right to use nuclear technology, particularly enrichment for providing fuel for nuclear power stations.”

Concern by foreign governments and the United Nations rose when traces of highly enriched uranium were found during an earlier IAEA inspection this year. Iran maintains that they were from contaminated parts that came from abroad.

Russia is building Iran’s first nuclear power station at the southern port of Bushehr and is supplying uranium over a 10-year period from 2005.

Iran is also under pressure to sign by the end of this month an additional protocol or agreement that would allow IAEA more intrusive inspections, including samplings of air and soil at Iranian sites.

All of this, plus warnings from the United States, Russia, and the European Union in recent months, have put Iranians and their officials on guard.

The Iranian ruling establishment sees the IAEA action, in the wake of its Sept. 12 resolution asking Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment, as signs of a new animosity toward the Iranian nation.

Almost every day, high-ranking officials or politicians give their comment about the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or its additional protocol.

“IAEA is trying to undermine the national sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” according to Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s legal and security advisor, Mohammad Ali Abtahi.

In the streets too, it is easy for many to think that Iran is, or is about to be, under some kind of siege. Ali Kamel, who runs a foreign currency shop opposite the British embassy, says: “If Iran does not sign the additional protocol, for sure London and Tehran will be poised for further diplomatic and economic battles.”

Thus far, Khatami has said that Iran will continue cooperation “to assure the world that we are not pursuing nuclear weapons.” At the same time, however, he has been quoted as saying that “we never sign any document that undermines our national sovereignty.”

Earlier this month, Dr. Hasan Rouhani was quoted as saying that Tehran continues to weigh its options on the international inspection process. “Domestic and foreign media speculate a lot, but we have not decided yet to sign or not the protocol. Various options are open to us and in time we will make a proper decision.”

Iranian officials say the country is enriching uranium to ensure continuity of fuel supply, but other countries doubt this.

Among the Iranians’ fears — especially if Tehran does not reach agreement with the IAEA — is that the United States or Israel might go as far as attacking its nuclear plants, as Israel did to Iraq in 1981.

If this happens, the chairman of the state’s expediency council, Hashemi Rafsanjani, warned: “Iran will retaliate against any Israeli attack to the Bushehr nuclear plant in an unforgettable blow.”

Ayatolla Khamenei, Iran’s conservative religious leader, on various occasions, has said: “With God Almighty’s grace, the Iranian nation would continue to be prepared for resistance and perseverance against its enemies [the United States and Israel]”.

One hardliner says that if such an attack happens, Iranians will rally the Islamic world. “Taking the high human casualty of Americans and British in Iraq into consideration, you will realize that Iran has multiple leverages to make life miserable for any intruder in the Middle East.”

Mohsen Kadivar , an enlightened mullah and advocate of reform, believes that the Islamic state will in the end budge and sign the additional protocol, as the government does not have popular legitimacy and has to appease the United States anyway.

But the real challenge, others say, remains how Iran can convince other countries about its supposedly peaceful intentions in the remaining weeks ahead.

“The problem is how a regime with a black legacy of extremism in hostage-taking in the former United States embassy and openly supports Hamas and Hizbollah in south Lebanon can persuade the US-influenced IAEA that it has only peaceful targets in its nuclear technology,” says Amir Hormoz Bozorgmehr, a sociology teacher who was purged in the post-revolutionary period.

Harare, Zimbabwe, Oct. 13 (IPS)— “Demonstrations here never last more than 10 minutes before the police move in,” photojournalist Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi remarks casually.

It is another misleadingly tranquil day in Zimbabwe’s capital city, Harare, where Mukwazhi and two colleagues are keeping tabs on a group advocating for a new constitution, the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA). Members of the organization are due to march to parliament with placards, agitating for a new constitution as the starting point to resolving the political gridlock in the country.

However, Mukwazhi’s comments turns out to be an understatement. Even before the demonstration begins, it is quashed. Plainclothes police officers sneak up on anyone wearing an NCA shirt and throw them into waiting vehicles.

Mukwazhi and the two other freelance photojournalists are bungled together with the NCA demonstrators within seconds of snapping pictures of NCA chairman Lovemore Madhuku who, with a small group of activists, tries to unfurl a banner.

Altogether, 102 NCA activists are arrested. Together with the three photojournalists they spend 24 hours in custody charged with “engaging in conduct likely to breach the peace.” This is an offense under an all-encompassing law from the country’s colonial past, the Miscellaneous Offenses Act.

Freedom only comes when they pay admission of guilt fines, even though they all know they have committed no crime. “We paid in protest, not paying the fine would have meant staying in prison,” their lawyer, Alec Muchadehama says.

Once released Mukwazhi seeks legal action to have the admission of guilt stuck down. Having three such admissions could cost any journalist his hard-to-get official accreditation card as it is tantamount to having a criminal record.

While the government of President Robert Mugabe digs it’s heels in, the right to peaceful demonstration is one less freedom Zimbabweans have.

Engaging in a public protest is like waiving a red flag in front of the police who have a reservoir of laws to justify a clampdown. The main law against gatherings is the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), which replaced another draconian colonial legislation, the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act.

Since its enactment in January 2002, POSA has been used to target opposition supporters, independent media, and human rights activities. It restricts their right to criticize the government, engage in, or organize acts of peaceful civil disobedience.

On Oct. 9, a demonstration by the country’s powerful labor organization, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), was also foiled before it began. Fifty-five ZCTU members who had planned to speak out against high taxation and the cost of living were arrested. Three of them were seriously assaulted by the police.

Members of the group were cautioned and released. But charges might be pressed later if the police decide to do so. However, the ZCTU remains unintimidated. It has planned more demonstrations against high taxation and inflation until Zimbabwe’s budget is presented next month.

It’s president, Lovemore Matombo, was among those detained. He says the most distasteful irony was finding himself in the same cell that he occupied for 35 days in 1975 for resisting colonial injustice. “You really feel quite depressed purely because we are an independent country and are supposed to be democratic enough to allow the basic freedoms to flow in the normal way,” he says.

The union leader says what disturbed him further was that they were hassled merely for protesting against the well-known issue of taxation. For years Zimbabweans, who are among some of the most heavily taxed people in the world, have unsuccessfully sought tax relief from the government.

Three days after the ZCTU protest, a newly-formed anti-globalization coalition, the Zimbabwe Social Forum which is affiliated to the World Social Forum, was denied permission for a peaceful march.

“Because of the legislation and the political environment in Zimbabwe, it had to be a peace rally instead,” said one of the organizers, Thomas Deve. Matombo says the government’s intolerance for civil disobedience is purely a matter of clinging to power despite all odds.

The government stands accused of plunging the country into it’s worst economic crisis ever, with inflation at over 500 percent, unemployment at 70 percent and the local currency being worth a little more than the paper on which it is printed.

Suppressing all forms of protest is the method of choice in perpetuating control over a very frustrated population.

At the University of Zimbabwe, previously the country’s melting pot of protest, many students’ rooms still do not have doors since soldiers knocked them down during the “final push” mass action organized by the opposition in June to force Mugabe to the negotiating table.

Talks with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have been on and off. To date no headway has been made.

Over the weekend at it’s annual general meeting, the NCA warned members who dare to speak out to expect a lot more state repression. “As we continue in our conviction towards the established of sustainable democracy in Zimbabwe, more arrests, torture, closure, and even worse forms of oppression, suppression, and repression are certain to come our way,” Matombo said.

By Andrew Buncombe and Matthew Beard

Oct. 11— The Red Cross said yesterday that it had noticed a “worrying deterioration” in the mental health of the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. It also criticized the Bush administration for refusing to allow the men access to lawyers or impose a legal framework.

Breaking its silence more than 18 months after the first of the 660 or so alleged Taliban or al-Qaida prisoners were incarcerated at the prison camp, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said more than 30 suicide attempts by prisoners was evidence something was badly wrong. It said it had decided to speak out — an extremely unusual step — because ongoing negotiations with the Bush administration had failed to get results. A spokeswoman said: “Since they have been at Guantanamo Bay they have effectively been put beyond the law. Effectively, none of the prisoners knows their fate. There is no information about how long they are going to be there. We have been able to witness the impact of this. There has been a serious deterioration in their psychological well-being.”

The ICRC, along with campaigners and lawyers for the prisoners, nine of whom are British citizens, have appealed to the Bush administration to either charge or release the men. The Pentagon has announced that six of the prisoners, including two Britons and an Australian, have been selected to be tried by military tribunal. There have been reports that in the absence of legal advice the men have entered into plea bargains, agreeing to plead guilty to various offenses in exchange for reduced sentences.

The ICRC, the only independent organization to have visited the prisoners, said the most frequently asked question by prisoners was related to their future.

Yesterday, Azmat Begg, the father of Mozzam Begg, 35, one of the Britons facing trial by a military tribunal, said the prisoners were being treated like “caged dogs.” Begg, from Sparkbrook, Birmingham, said: “This is what I have been trying to say for two years. All of these prisoners are suffering so much stress and torture. My son doesn’t have any connection with the outside world and is being kept in solitary confinement. If you live in those circumstances and then you are brought before a military court you will do exactly what you are told to do.”

He added: “He should be brought back to the UK where he can receive the support of his family and have medical treatment to establish whether he is fit to stand trial.”

Louise Christian, representing the second Briton facing trial, Feroz Abbasi, 23, said an assessment of her client by a Pentagon-appointed psychologist suggested he had been suffering from depression.

A former Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay has been charged with improperly handling classified information, the US military said yesterday. Army Captain James Yee was charged with two counts of failing to obey a lawful order. He is one of three people arrested in an espionage inquiry.

Source: Independent (UK)