Australian government advisor fired over WMD media propaganda

An Australian Senior Defense advisor has been fired after refusing to write media briefings that supported claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Engineer and analyst Jane Errey was an adviser to former Chief Defense Scientist Dr. Ian Chessell and wrote briefings for Defense Minister Robert Hill. Her job gave her access to secret intelligence on Iraq’s weaponry from the Defense Intelligence Organization and the Office of National Assessments.

Errey claims that on the day before the Iraq war started, she was asked to write what she believed was embellished propaganda about Iraq’s capabilities.

The next day - Mar. 20 last year - she went on vacation rather than write what she claimed would have been a misleading briefing.

But she was fired, after more than nine years at her job, on “performance grounds.”

“Anything that I was doing with respect to the war was making me uncomfortable,” Errey said. “Then to have to brief the minister and fundamentally give him - even though I didn’t write it - lines of propaganda that I didn’t believe with respect to the war was beyond what I was prepared to do. I wouldn’t lie or mislead the public.” (Herald Sun)

Missing Colombian warlord dead

The missing leader of Colombia’s feared right-wing AUC paramilitaries was abducted and strangled to death by rivals, sources have reported.

Carlos Castano disappeared after a shootout at his ranch on April 16, and initial reports suggested that he had gone into hiding from former comrades. But a friend of Castano has told Reuters news agency the AUC leader was actually captured, tortured and killed.

Castano had been convicted of innumerable massacres and murders and was one of Colombia’s most feared men.

At the time of the attack, the AUC (United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia) was in talks with the government to demobilize its 13,000 heavily armed fighters.

It seems that elements within the AUC had feared Castano was about to cut a deal with the US, where he is wanted on charges of smuggling 17 tons of cocaine.

Reports state that the attack on his ranch appears to have been carried out by other right-wing paramilitaries also linked to the drug trade. (BBC)

UN approves new Haiti peace force

The United Nations Security Council has voted unanimously to establish a new 8,000+ member peacekeeping force for Haiti.

The new mission will consist of soldiers and police, who will go for an initial period of six months. It will take over from a contingent of US-led foreign troops sent after the ousting of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide in February.

The UN force, including more than 1,600 police, is to take over the task of stabilizing Haiti after June 1.

The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti - to be known as Minustah - will have a wide-ranging mandate. Its tasks will include maintaining law and order, aiding the government to demobilize armed groups, and protecting civilians from violence.

It will also help the transitional government restructure the police and organize elections at the earliest possible date - expected to be some time in 2005. (BBC)

Venezuela spurns IMF

Venezuela was recovering from an economic recession without the help of the International Monetary Fund(IMF), its finance minister said Apr. 25, adding that it shows that Latin American governments need not follow IMF policy recommendations. In a statement sent to Reuters, Tobias Nobrega rejected an IMF report last week that said oil-reliant Venezuela needed to take urgent measures to restore fiscal stability and to reduce its vulnerability to a possible fall in oil prices.

The minister had said Apr. 23 that Venezuela’s economy is headed for 9 percent to 10 percent growth this year as it rebounds from a recession caused by two years of political conflict over the rule of left-wing President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of the IMF.

“Venezuela is overcoming its financial difficulties independently of the IMF and it is doing this by applying the opposite of what is recommended by the well-known but limited IMF recipes,” Nobrega said in the statement. Venezuela is a member of the 184-nation Fund, but does not have a stand-by loan program.

His comments reflected harsh past criticism of the IMF by Chavez, who has pilloried the fund as a tool of imperialism and blamed it for Latin America’s economic problems.

Nobrega said urgent corrections were needed in the IMF’s own theories and policies, which he said were limited and fragmentary in their focus and were one of the main causes of political instability in Latin America. An IMF mission will visit Venezuela next month for routine talks and Nobrega said the government is ready to debate policies. (Reuters)

Iran court orders US to pay $600 million

An Iranian court has ruled the United States should pay $600 million in compensation for supplying ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons, the official IRNA news agency reports.

IRNA said the money in the case, brought by Iranian war veterans and disabled, should be paid to survivors of attacks on the town of Sardasht, which borders Iraq.

Iraqi gas attacks killed thousands of Iranians and Iraqi Kurds in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands died on both sides and Iran has thousands disabled by chemical arms.

No further details were available and Iranian officials were unavailable for any immediate comment.

“The court has ordered the American government to pay the money for furnishing Saddam with chemical weapons to attack Iran,” IRNA reported.

The United States and Iran have been at odds since 1979 when more than 50 Americans were held hostage by Iranian student militants at the US Embassy in Tehran for 444 days after the Islamic revolution.

The verdict was submitted to the Swiss Embassy which has covered US interests in Iran since Washington cut ties with Tehran in 1980. (Reuters)

Fumigations continue in Colombia

Despite two 2003 Colombian court rulings which suspended US-sponsored Plan Colombia’s aerial fumigation of coca and poppy crops until environmental and human impact studies could be carried out, Colombia continues to spray Monsanto’s Roundup-Ultra on fields and US officials continue to maintain silence on the issue.

The most recent ruling came on June 13, 2003, when Colombia’s Administrative Tribunal of Cundinamarca, the second highest court in the country, responded to a class action lawsuit brought by concerned citizens arguing that Plan Colombian spraying violates Colombian citizens’ right to a healthy environment. The court agreed and ordered the immediate suspension of all narco-crop fumigation nationwide. The verdict supplemented two earlier court decisions ordering the suspension of spraying on indigenous land and compliance with the Environmental Management Plan put in place for Plan Colombia fumigation.

However, Columbian president Uribe, on the day after the court order, announced that he would continue the spraying as long as he was in office.

Among those with vested interests beyond the Colombian and US governments are Texas’ Bell Helicopter Textron – which provides Huey helicopters used to move troops and supplies, and Connecticut’s Sikorsky Helicopter, which supplies Blackhawk choppers used to protect spray planes, as well as Monsanto, which provides the Round-up Ultra used in the spraying. DynCorp, of Reston, VA, is the most vested of all: As the State Department’s primary outsourcing company in Colombia it has a roughly $600 million dollar contract to actually do the spraying and maintain the spray planes and helicopters utilized in the fumigation operation. Each of those companies maintains high-level lobbying firms in Washington. (Narco News Bulletin)

Security meeting on Haiti canceled

The leaders of the 15- nation Caribbean Community (CARICOM) rejected US pressures to accept the presence of a representative of the Washington- backed interim government in Haiti at a regional security meeting with the United States.

Therefore, the Bush Administration decided not to attend and as a result, the gathering was called off, CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington said Tuesday. The 15-nation group has backed exiled former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide’s claim he was forced from power and have refused to recognize the interim government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.

Carrington agrees that security is very important to all of Caribbean nations but he thinks that the very first thing that is of importance is the nature and regard for their community and they cannot compromise on that principle. CARICOM leaders have said they will not recognize the interim Haitian government until at least July, when a summit is planned to discuss the issue. (Prensa Latina, Havana)

Spanish bombing suspects ‘were informants’

The Spanish interior ministry says it is investigating reports that two suspects in the Mar. 11 Madrid train bombings were police informants.

The move came after Spain’s El Mundo newspaper said Moroccan Rafa Zuher and Spaniard Jose Emilio Suarez had been in contact with police before the attacks.

The men are suspected of providing dynamite for the attacks, which killed 191 people and injured more than 2,000. Suarez, a former miner, was arrested a week after the attacks and is the only Spanish-born suspect in custody.

According to El Mundo, he was an informant for the National Police, providing information about trafficking in weapons, drugs and explosives.

The paper said Zuher, who was arrested later in March, had passed on information to the Civil Guards in Madrid about low-level drug deals involving hashish and ecstasy.

El Mundo, citing security sources for its report, said Zuher was believed to be the link between Suarez, who allegedly supplied the explosives, and the cell that carried out the attacks.

After the report was published, the Spanish interior ministry issued a statement saying it had ordered an investigation. The ministry said that if necessary, the results of the inquiry would be handed over to a judge. (BBC)