Aristide: ‘kidnapped’ by United States in ‘coup’

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Mar. 3 (AGR)— On Sunday, Feb. 29, Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced out of Haiti in a US-brokered coup and was taken to Africa against his will. Aristide, members of Congress, and supporters of the now-former president of Haiti are saying the Bush administration inspired — if not actively supported — the removal of a democratically elected leader after members of an armed movement went on a two week rampage in a dozen Haitian towns, killing more than 60 people. The towns remain under siege by criminal gangs led by former death squad paramilitary members of previous coups and dictatorships. Hours after Aristide was abducted by the US military and flown to the Central African Republic, the United Nations Security Council authorized a multinational intervention force of 5,000 troops for the country.

In the absence of Aristide, nominal authority was passed on to Haitian Supreme Court justice Boniface Alexandre, who was sworn in as interim leader hours after Aristide left. Alexandre has kept a low profile in the days since he was installed.

The Bush administration quickly welcomed Aristide’s departure, just hours after the White House had blamed him for the crisis in his country.

Barely two days prior, Aristide had vowed to fight until his death. “I have the responsibility as an elected president to stay where I am,’’ Aristide had said the day before. “My life is linked to 8 million people.’’

“I will leave the palace on Feb. 7, 2006, which is good for democracy,” he had told CNN. “We have had 32 coup d’états. That is enough.”

Despite denials by Bush’s top officials, Aristide was told that if he remained in Haiti, US forces would not protect him from the paramilitaries threatening to storm the presidential palace and kill him. US Secretary of State Colin Powell relayed that news over the weekend in a telephone call to Ronald Dellums, a former California congressman who is now a Washington lobbyist for Aristide.

Aristide is currently being held captive by French and Central African Republic soldiers. France orchestrated the European Union’s funding of Haitian opposition groups to the tune of almost $1 million last year. France was the first to call for Aristide’s resignation as the paramilitaries seized the northern half of the country just days before his ouster.

‘These people lied’

One day after the Bush administration and Western media had widely reported that Aristide had graciously resigned and “fled” his country, the deposed leader made a series of dramatic statements accusing Washington of staging a coup against him, transporting him to the Central African Republic in conditions he likened to being kidnapped and thrown into jail, and then lying about it.

His hosts, worrying Aristide’s protestations could compromise their relations with the United States, have asked him to stop speaking to the media, the country’s foreign minister Charles Wenezoui told AP the next day. “We fear that this kind of declaration compromises relations between the Central African Republic and the United States,” he said.

Aristide said he did not resign, as was initially reported, but was hustled out of the country at gunpoint, under military escort.

On Monday, Aristide was put in contact with Associated Press by the Rev. Jesse Jackson following a news conference, where the civil rights leader called on Congress to investigate Aristide’s ouster.

When asked if he left Haiti on his own, Aristide quickly answered: “No. I was forced to leave. Agents were telling me that if I don’t leave they would start shooting and killing in a matter of time.”

When asked who the agents were, he responded: “White American, white military. They came at night. ... There were too many, I couldn’t count them.”

Aristide later told CNN that US soldiers forced him to board a plane that landed in Africa 20 hours later. Aristide said that he had no rights during his flight. He called it “a modern kidnapping.”

“We had to leave and spent 20 hours in an American plane not knowing where they were going with us until they told us 20 minutes before we landed in the Central African Republic,” said Aristide. “The Americans were in total control. I call it again and again a coup d’etat.”

Aristide also said that a resignation statement that was published in his name had been doctored and that he had not actually resigned as president, despite the swearing-in Sunday of Alexandre.

Aristide said he would have to verify the copy obtained by CNN because “these people lied.”

The Bush administration is vigorously denying that Aristide was kidnapped by US troops, which is what two US members of Congress said the deposed Haitian president told them in telephone calls on Mar. 1.

White House spokesperson Scott McClellan denied that US forces took Haiti’s president from his home to the airport. “The military presence we had at the time was at the embassy,” McClellan said. “[Aristide] went with his own personal security.”

But Rep. Charles Rangel, D-NY, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, said Aristide told them a very different story.

Waters said Mildred Aristide, the ex-president’s wife, called the congresswoman at her home at 6:30am Monday, and told her “the coup d’etat has been completed,” and then handed the phone to her husband.

Waters said that Aristide told her the chief of staff of the US Embassy in Haiti came to his home, told him that he would be killed “and a lot of Haitians would be killed” if he did not leave.

“He told me: ‘I was kidnapped by US Marines and forced to leave Haiti. I did not resign’,” Waters said.

Similar accounts were given by Waters’ fellow Democratic congressman Charles Rangel, and by TransAfrica forum founder and close Aristide family friend Randall Robinson.

“He asked that I tell the world that it is a coup, that he was abducted by American soldiers and put aboard a plane,” said Robinson who spoke to Aristide on a cell phone that was smuggled to the Haitian president. That account was also corroborated by a report in the French newspaper Libération, which quoted a concierge at Aristide’s residence, Joseph Pierre. “White Americans came by helicopter to get him. They also took his bodyguards,” he said. “It was around two o’clock in the morning. He didn’t want to leave. The American soldiers forced him to. Because they were pointing guns at him, he had to follow them. The Americans are second only to God in terms of strength.”

Rep. Waters says that Aristide, his wife Mildred and three others were rushed out of Port-au-Prince by a senior US diplomat under heavy Marine escort.

Colin Powell said the stories were baseless and that Aristide left Haiti in the company of his own security detail. Powell said that Aristide telephoned US Ambassador to Haiti James Foley on Saturday evening to ask for advice and decided resigning would be the best course of action.

“[Aristide] said it was his decision based on what his security people were telling him,” Powell said. “We made arrangements for his departure, he wrote a letter of resignation, a leased plane was brought in and he departed.”

The secretary said about 15 members of Aristide’s security detachment accompanied him, but Rangel and Waters said Aristide claimed to have only his wife, his brother, and two security members.

Aristide said that on Saturday the United States withdrew the 19 Americans who had been assigned to his security detail.

On Sunday, sources close to Aristide said that the Bush administration had actually blocked a last-minute attempt by the Haitian leader to bolster his bodyguards — mostly former US Special Forces members — fearing he wanted them to organize and lead a counterattack against the commando forces threatening his presidency.

US officials forced a small group of extra bodyguards from the San Francisco-based Steele Foundation to delay their flight from the United States to Haiti from Sunday to Monday — too late to help Aristide.

The sources said that after the Haitian government had recently contacted Steele to provide a large group of extra bodyguards, US Embassy officials in the Haitian capital contacted Steele representatives and warned them off.

US State Dept. assailed

The US Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) vowed Monday to get to the bottom of the allegations. Maryland Democrat Elijah Cummings, who chairs the Black Caucus, said the 43 members will not allow the issue to die.

Rev. Jackson said Congress should investigate whether the United States, specifically the CIA, had a role in the armed offensive that led to Aristide’s exile.

Sen. John Kerry, D-MA, the Democratic Party’s contender for president, wasted no time in saying he thought there ought to be an investigation as well. “I have a very close friend in Massachusetts who talked directly to people who have made that allegation,” Kerry said on “Today” on NBC. “I don’t know the truth of it. I really don’t. But I think it needs to be explored and we need to know the truth of what happened.”

One full week before Aristide’s removal, Rep. Waters, in a letter to Powell, said she was “outraged” at the State Department’s willingness to sabotage democracy and the rule of law in Haiti. “I am convinced that this effort to force President Aristide out of office by any means is a power-grab by the same forces that staged a coup d’etat and forced him out of office in 1991.” She called on the State Department to “discontinue” its actions in support of “violent protesters and thugs” in Haiti.

Three days previous to Aristide’s ouster, Ira Kurzban, the Miami-based attorney who has served as General Counsel to the Haitian government since 1991, said that the paramilitaries fighting to overthrow Aristide were being backed by Washington.

“I believe that this is a group that is armed by, trained by, and employed by the intelligence services of the United States,” Kurzban said. “This is clearly a military operation, and it’s a military coup.”

“I must say, Secretary, that our failure to support the democratic process and help restore order looks like a covert effort to help overthrow a government,” Rep. Barbara Lee, D-CA, a CBC member and a member of the House International Relations Committee, told Powell on Feb. 11. “There is a violent coup d’etat in the making and it appears that the United States is aiding and abetting the attempt to violently topple the Aristide government,” the Congresswoman said.

Jesse Jackson also put out a damning statement on Feb. 16 similar to Waters’, in which he appealed “to the US to abandon its policy of aiding and abetting attempts to overthrow the Aristide government.

“When Aristide was re-elected in 2000, the Bush administration made clear its opposition,” stated Jackson. “The International Republican Institute aided his opponents, some of whom are connected to the gangs now terrorizing the country.”

US govt. backs Haitian opposition

The armed opposition are terrorists. The press often refers to them as “rebels” when in fact the leaders were responsible for thousands of deaths, rapes, beatings and other tortures during the 1991-1994 dictatorship. They are doing the same things now, bragging to the press about systematically hunting down democracy supporters and executing them. They have announced repeatedly since December their intention to attack any government supporter in areas they control, and they have kept their word. What is immediately ominous about the current crisis in Haiti is the prospect that leaders of these armed groups may play important roles in a post-Aristide order.

Such armed groups include the Tontons Macoutes, the gunmen who viciously supervised repression under both father and son Duvaliers’ dictatorships until 1986. They also include members of the disbanded Haitian army that held power for three years following the coup against President Aristide in 1991, and the Front for the Advancement of Progress of the Haitian People (FRAPH) death squads that mowed down the ranks of democratic civil society during that period, leaving over 5,000 dead and thousands more in exile.

According to a 1996 UN Human Rights Commission report, FRAPH had been supported by the CIA.

Under the military dictatorship, the narcotics trade was protected by the military junta, which in turn was supported by the CIA. The 1991 coup leaders including the FRAPH paramilitary commanders were on the CIA payroll.

The fact that the group in charge of Haiti policy today in the US State Department has been literally gunning for Aristide since before his initial election as a champion of democracy in 1990 has been left all but unmentioned by the press. Also forgotten is the fact that members of the armed groups who burned their way through Haiti’s cities these past few weeks include groups that, (according to myriad sources including sworn testimony before Congress by US officials, reporters, and reports of Haitian recipients of covert aid) were funneling drugs to the US while in the pay of US intelligence agents.

One of Aristide’s most outspoken antagonists, Roger Noriega, is now the Assistant Secretary for Western Hemispheric Affairs with direct responsibility for Haiti. As senior staff member for the Committee on Foreign Relations of the US Senate, and advisor to ex -NC Senator Jesse Helms and John Burton, Noriega was party to a three-year campaign to defame Aristide and prevent his return to power; all the while CIA-backed thugs left carnage in the streets daily in Port Au Prince. In his capacity in the State Department since 2003, and for two years before that as the US Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States (OAS), he has aggressively advertised his intention to oust Aristide a second time.

“Roger Noriega has been dedicated to ousting Aristide for many, many years, and now he’s in a singularly powerful position to accomplish it,” Robert White, a former US ambassador to El Salvador and Paraguay, had said a few days before Aristide was sent into exile.

Between 1994-2002, Washington funneled some $70 million to fund and organize an opposition to President Aristide. This opposition goes under the broad name of Democratic Platform, which is made of various elite-led opposition groups such as Democratic Convergence and The Group of 184.

Both Democratic Convergence and the G-184 have links to the National Liberation and Reconstruction Front (FLRN) headed by Guy Philippe, a former Haitian police chief who fled Haiti in October 2000 after authorities discovered him plotting a coup with a clique of other police chiefs who had all been trained by US Special Forces in Ecuador during the 1991-1994 coup. Since that time, the Haitian government has accused Philippe of master-minding deadly attacks on the Police Academy and the National Palace in July and December 2001, as well as hit-and-run raids against police stations on Haiti’s Central Plateau over the following two years. The FLRN is known to receive funding from the Haitian business community.

In Haiti, this “civil society opposition” is bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy which works hand in glove with the CIA.

G-184 leader Andy Apaid was in liaison with Secretary of State Colin Powell in the days prior to Aristide’s departure on Feb. 29. His umbrella organization of elite business organizations and religious NGOs, which is also supported by the International Republican Institute (IRI), receives sizable amounts of money from the European Union.

Apaid owns factories which produce textile products and assembles electronic products for a number of US firms including Sperry/Unisys, IBM, Remington and Honeywell. Apaid was a firm supporter of the 1991 military coup.

“I challenge the [US] Department of State to find out about this man (Apaid),” Maxine Waters told reporters on Capitol Hill on Feb. 11. “Why do we have someone in Haiti that holds an American passport, owning factories in Haiti, triggering a coup d’etat, and leading the so-called opposition to a democratically elected president?”

The FLRN rebels are extremely well equipped and trained forces and the Haitian people know who they are.

On Feb. 24, the US media reported that with their seizure of northwestern Port-de-Paix, the anti-Aristide paramilitaries suddenly controlled at least half the country.

Afterwards Aristide told a news conference, “Last night criminals, terrorists and killers went to the northwest of the country, Port-de-Paix, and there they burned public and private houses, killing innocent people.’’

Not much later, Cap-Haitien, a city of half a million inhabitants, was reported to have been taken by a force of just 200 men.

“The country is in my hands!” Philippe had announced Mar. 2 on the radio after announcing that he was chief of the Haitian military and police. Minutes later he said he would arrest the Prime Minister, Yvon Neptune.

Philippe, when asked by the BBC the day before if he expected his forces to be represented in the new government, he replied: “I don’t ‘expect’ it. I know that we will be part of it.”

Philippe has professed an admiration for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and earned a reputation for brutality as police chief of Cap Haitien.

Several of the paramilitary leaders now rampaging through Haiti are men who were at the forefront of the US-backed campaign of terror during the 1991-94 coup against Aristide. Among the paramilitary figures now leading the current insurrection is Louis Jodel Chamblain, the former number two man in the FRAPH paramilitary death squad. In 1993, Chamblain joined with Emmanuel “Toto” Constant to form FRAPH, which hunted down supporters of Aristide’s Lavalas Family party, torching entire neighborhoods, and was blamed for up to 5,000 deaths that occurred before a US-led occupation ended three years of military rule.

Chamblain was convicted in absentia for the murder of a prominent businessman and Aristide supporter, Antoine Izmery, who was dragged from a church, forced to kneel, and executed.

Chamblain recently crossed back into Haiti from exile in the Dominican Republic to lead paramilitary units.

In 1994 Constant had said that he was contacted by a US Military officer named Col. Patrick Collins, who served as defense attaché at the United States Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Constant said Collins pressed him to set up a group to “balance the Aristide movement” and do “intelligence” work against it. Constant admitted that, at the time, he was working with CIA operatives in Haiti. US government sources have confirmed the claims of Constant, that US intelligence officials encouraged him in his activities, and paid him a monthly salary. Constant is now residing freely in the US, living in Queens, NY.

On Mar. 3, as former police and military officers settled into the police headquarters in front of the National Palace, where US Marines patrolled just a few hundred feet away, members of the anti-government militia said they intended to return the old building to its previous function as army headquarters, revive the army, and enforce a curfew.

“This is one of the darker moments in Haiti’s history,” said Brian Concannon, who had successfully prosecuted Chamblain, in absentia for a 1994 massacre that killed dozens of people in Raboteau. “I’m extremely afraid for all people who have fought for democracy because they all could be killed.”

“We will liberate Haiti from the slavery of Aristide,” Chamblain told reporters last week.

“In Haiti, fighting dictatorship is what we do,” Philippe said.

Sources: Agence France-Presse, AHP News, Alternet, Associated Press, BBC, Boston Globe, Canadian Press, Chicago Sun Times, CNN, CounterPunch, Democracy Now!, FinalCall.com, Globalresearch.org, Green Left Weekly, Guardian (UK), HaitiProgres.com, Human Rights Watch, Independent (UK), Inter Press Service, Knight-Ridder, MADRE, Newsday, New York Times, OneWorld.net, Reuters

Aristide’s office: a brief history

In 1915, US marines occupied Haiti for 20 years to make sure that it would pay its debt to the US. After their withdrawal in 1934, the US installed Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier who was succeeded by his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. Baby Doc was eventually forced out of power in 1985 after massive protests against his notoriously corrupt and repressive regime.

In December 1990, Haiti’s first free election was held. The winning candidate, with two-thirds majority, was the populist priest Jean Bertrand Aristide, backed by a vigorous grassroots movement known as Lavalas. His election was based on a program that promoted social reform and a push to dismantle the bureaucracy that had developed under the Duvalier dictatorships.

Within seven months of his election, the old remnants of the dictatorship staged a military coup that forced Aristide into exile. No government on earth recognized the military junta, but as reknowned scholar Noam Chomsky noted: “Washington maintained close intelligence and military ties with the new rulers while undermining the embargo called by the Organization of American States, even authorizing illegal shipments of oil to the regime and its wealthy supporters.”

In July 1993, Aristide was made to sign the Governor’s Island Accord, a US-backed “peace accord” with the illegal military junta that had terrorized Haiti for three years. The Accord forbade Aristide from running for re-election once he was restored to power, and gave amnesty to the death-squad terrorists of the junta. The junta then refused to abide by the accord. In 1994, public pressure and fear of an influx of Haitian refugees led the Clinton Administration to reverse the coup d’etat and restore Aristide to power.

The Republican leadership strongly opposed the intervention. In 1995, when Republicans took control of Congress, they pushed to cancel US aid to Haiti and to finance the opposition by reallocating federal funds to Haitian non-governmental organizations opposed to Aristide.

Aristide finished his term, although conditions imposed on him as the cost of returning to power – such as an IMF-style “free market” reform of the economy – eroded some of his popularity. Aristide complied with some US demands, including a reduction of tariffs on US-grown rice that bankrupted thousands of Haitian farmers, and maintenance of a below-subsistence-level minimum wage.

But Aristide resisted privatizing state-owned resources, because of protests from his political base and because he was reluctant to relinquish control over these sources of wealth.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was re-elected president of Haiti in November 2000 with more than 90% of the vote. He was elected by people who approved his courageous dissolution, in 1995, of the armed forces that had overthrown his first administration. He was elected by people who supported his tentative efforts, made with virtually no resources or revenue, to invest in education and health. He was elected by people who shared his determination, in the face of crippling US opposition, to improve the conditions of the most poorly paid workers in the western hemisphere.

Marc Bazin, a former World Bank official backed by the White House, won only 14 percent of the votes. To the dismay of Washington, Aristide was president again. The US and international donors blocked financial aid, alleging the elections were “flawed.” Though an exhaustive and convincing report by the International Coalition of Independent Observers concluded that “fair and peaceful elections were held” in 2000, Aristide, in need of funds to implement his social plans for the country, was immobilized.

At the same time, the arming and funding of Aristide’s opposition — including the same paramilitary leaders who were at the forefront of the campaign of terror during the 1991-94 military junta — continued.

US and Britain accused of spying on UN

Compiled by Josh Ferguson

Mar. 2 (AGR)-- The controversy over illegal British and American intelligence gathering at the United Nations deepened recently with claims of espionage carried out against UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and two chiefs of Iraq arms inspection missions.

Former British cabinet minister Clare Short became aware that the British were spying on Annan, she said, because she regularly received accounts of his private conversations. She gave no indication of how Annan’s conversations were obtained.

Short, who resigned last year as minister for international development over her opposition to the invation of Iraq, made her comments on the BBC’s “Today” radio program on Feb. 26.

In another interview, Short said she was “troubled” by the spying and considered telling Annan about it.

“I thought about that a lot,” she told Britain’s Channel 4 News. “I thought about saying it to him and I had a dilemma about it.” Now, she said, “I decided to bring it into the public domain, and that’s what I’ve done.”

At UN headquarters in New York, Annan did not directly address the allegations. His spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said phone-tapping or any kind of electronic interference in confidential diplomatic discussions was illegal and, if it was occurring, Annan “would want this practice stopped.”

However, news that Annan, at the time trying to bridge a deep rift within the Security Council over whether the council should agree to authorize military action in Iraq, was targeted by electronic surveillance did not seem to surprise military and diplomatic experts in London. Eckhard said Annan has secure phones and faxes and that his offices and phones are routinely checked for bugs. But UN security officers will be intensifying their efforts to protect the secretary general, the spokesman said.

Short’s allegations of British spying came only one day before further claims made by former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, alleging that he and fellow UN inspector Richard Butler were said to have been subjected to routine bugging while they led teams searching for Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction.

In an interview published in The Guardian on Feb 28., Blix said he suspected his UN office and New York home had been bugged by the United States in the run-up to war. He said he had expected to be bugged by the Iraqis, but the possibility that he was spied on by someone “on the same side” was “disgusting.” Blix said his suspicions were aroused by repeated trouble with his telephone at his New York home. His fears worsened when a member of the US administration showed him photographs that could only have come from the UN weapons office. He met John Wolf, the US assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, two weeks before war started and was shown two pictures of Iraqi weapons. “He should not have had them. I asked him how he got them and he would not tell me and I said I resented that,” he said.

Blix said it was unlikely one of his staff had handed over the pictures and thought it might be that spies broke into a secure fax. In his reports to the UN, Blix, and his fellow inspection team leader, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had asked for more time to investigate Iraq’s arsenal, a plea rejected by Washington and London.

Reports say Blix’s mobile telephone was monitored every time he went to Iraq, and the transcripts were shared between the US, Britain and their allies, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation confirmed the fact that Australian intelligence had seen transcripts of mobile phone calls involving Butler’s successor, Hans Blix, which had come from either British or US intelligence.

Butler said he was actually shown transcripts of other bugged conversations. “Those who did it would come to me and show me the recordings that they made on others. ‘To try to help me to do my job in disarming Iraq’, they would say. ‘We’re just here to help you’,” Butler said.

But the former UN chief inspector maintained that it was not only Britain which was spying. He said, “I was utterly confident that in my attempts to have private conversations, trying to solve the problem of disarmament of Iraq, I was being listened to by the Americans, British, the French, and the Russians. They also had people on my staff reporting what I was trying to do privately. Do you think that was paranoia? Absolutely not. There was abundant evidence that we were being constantly monitored.”

Former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali confirmed the vulnerability of the organization to espionage. “From the first day I entered my office they said, ‘Beware, your office is bugged, your residence is bugged, and it is a tradition that the member states who have the technical capacity to bug will do it without any hesitation.’ That would involve members of the Security Council,” he said. “The perception is that you must know in advance that your office, your residence, your car, your phone is bugged.”

Meanwhile, demands grew for American and British authorities to confirm or deny the allegations.

Charles Kennedy, the leader of the British Liberal Democrat party, said Prime Minister Tony Blair should make a statement regarding the allegations. He will present a proposal next week demanding to know if there was an “eavesdropping operation,” and if so, how extensive it was.

However, at his regular monthly news conference, Blair chose only to call Short’s allegation “deeply irresponsible” and insisted that British intelligence agents were innocent. He deflected a barrage of questions about his former Cabinet minister’s remarks by defending the work of British secret services and saying that no prime minister is at liberty to discuss intelligence operations, “except to say that this country always acts in accordance with domestic and international law.”

The White House likewise refused to comment on whether the United States was involved in the spying.

“I don’t comment on national security matters such as intelligence,” White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said when asked whether Washington had eavesdropped on Annan’s conversations or encouraged other nations to do so.

Asked whether he was stopping short of a denial, McClellan said “I don’t think you should look at that either way. We do not discuss our intelligence matters.”

Appearing at the State Department, US Secretary of State Colin Powell also had nothing to say regarding the controversy, or whether alleged US spying at the United Nations extended into Annan’s offices.

“I have nothing to say with respect to the activities of the United Kingdom,” Powell said. “We never talk about intelligence matters of that nature in public.”

The US has a long-standing practice of spying at the United Nations by planting bugging devices, recruiting sources, and intercepting electronic communications, according to former intelligence officials familiar with such operations.

“The United Nations is a caldron of espionage activity,” said a former senior CIA official who had firsthand knowledge of such efforts. Other international bodies, including the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, also are routinely targeted.

The former official said US intelligence services probably would have to get White House approval before targeting a senior official such as Annan.

“I don’t think you’d have a blanket approval to do that kind of thing,” the former official said. “But if there’s a US national interest someone can articulate and defend, I don’t think there’s an administration I ever worked with that wouldn’t be supportive” of such an effort. He and others said the US was undoubtedly conducting a concerted intelligence-gathering effort during the run-up to the war in Iraq last year. And because diplomats at the United Nations in New York are not US citizens, restrictions on the domestic activities of the National Security Agency -- the $3.5 billion US organization in charge of eavesdropping and code-breaking -- would not necessarily apply.

Likewise, Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) needs a warrant from the British Home Secretary to tap the phones of British citizens, but it can do so abroad without such authorization.

The two agencies often work together to share information on each other’s domestic affairs while still abiding by restrictions against spying on their own citizens.

Sources: AP, AFP, Guardian, Independent (UK)

California grocery strike ends

Compiled by Seán Marquis

Mar. 1 (AGR)— The longest-running grocery strike in US history is over after Californian workers approved a new contract with major supermarket chains.

Almost 900 stores were affected by the strike and lock-out, which hit Kroger, Albertsons and Safeway, costing them more than $1 billion in lost sales.

Workers were striking over attempts by the chains to slash pay and health benefits.

Increased competition, the stores claimed, meant the benefits could not survive without contributions from workers.

After a two-day vote, 86 percent of grocery workers who cast ballots approved the contract negotiated by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, the union said in a statement Feb. 29.

The contract covers 70,000 workers, a majority of them employed by Albertsons Inc., Kroger Co. — which operates Ralphs stores — and Safeway Inc., which operates Vons and Pavilions. It requires employees to pay for health benefits for the first time and includes two one-time bonuses for hours already worked. The contract offers no raises.

Union leaders said they wanted to protect affordable health care, pensions and job security.

“These three goals were accomplished in the new agreement, indicating the workers’ struggle and sacrifice were worthwhile,” the statement read.

On the other hand new employees will receive lower benefits and wages under a new two-tier wage system.

The new contract separates current workers from those hired after Oct. 5, 2003 when the old contract expired. New employees would receive a lower wage rate, and it would take them longer to get raises, according to a union fact sheet given to workers.

The new contract also relegates new hires to a separate, “basic” health plan. Current employees won’t have to pay premiums in the first two years of the contract, but they could end up having to pay $5 a week for individual coverage or up to $15 a week for family coverage in the third year of the deal.

Under their previous contract, workers paid no premiums for health benefits and a $10 co-pay for doctor’s visits and prescriptions.

The supermarkets will contribute 35 percent toward staff pensions for new workers and 65 percent for veteran employees, down from their previous contribution of 100percent to company pension plans.

UFCW International President Doug Dority claimed this was “one of the most successful strikes in history.”

Many rank and file union members who said they voted to ratify the contract said they were eager to return to their jobs. Some said the offer was not much different from one they received from their employers in October — one that was rejected by the union.

Sunny Kim, 32, a service manager at Ralphs, said she was disappointed with the final results, even though she hadn’t seen the contract.

“Why did we go on strike? I lost a lot of money for nothing. I think the guys were misled,” Kim said.

Still, she said she felt “wonderful” about the opportunity to go back to work.

Union leaders ordered a strike against Vons and Pavilions chains on Oct. 11, 2003. Albertsons and Ralphs then locked out their employees. In all, about 59,000 workers were idled. Others continued working at other markets by special agreement while the contract was negotiated.

The 4 1/2-month dispute gained national attention because it was seen as a referendum on affordable employee health care.

“If the supermarket giants — profitable, growing, Fortune 50 mega-corporations — can launch an attack on health care benefits, then every employer is sure to follow,” Dority added. “They have sounded the alarm that the American health care system is ready to collapse.”

Sources: Associated Press, BBC, UFCW