Vast weapons cache seized in Colombia
Colombian police seized eight tons of explosives and chemicals used
to make cocaine from right-wing paramilitary groups, in what was feared
to be a new blow to the precarious peace process, authorities said Aug.
4. The national police chief expressed concern that the outlawed militias
were stockpiling weapons even while the pursued peace talks with the
government.
In one of two separate operations, police discovered four tons of bomb-making
material early Aug. 4, including dynamite and ANFO - a mixture of ammonium
nitrate and fuel oil - during a raid on a paramilitary encampment in
the northern Sierra Nevada mountains. The explosives allegedly belonged
to Hernan Giraldo, a powerful militia commander who is currently holed
up in a rural safe haven in Colombia’s northwest that was granted
by the government last month to a dozen warlords for the duration of
peace negotiations.
In a separate raid late Aug. 3, four tons of chemicals used to process
cocaine and two small planes suspected of being used to ferry drugs
were found at another suspected paramilitary camp and adjoining airstrip
near the Sierra Nevada.
The paramilitaries, believed to now number some 13,000 fighters, were
created in the 1980s by landowners to battle Marxist rebels. But they
quickly became a powerful cocaine-trafficking enterprise responsible
for countless massacres and other atrocities. (AP)
Egypt denies telling US of Iraqi WMD
Egypt on Aug. 2 denied remarks by retired US General Tommy Franks that
President Hosni Mubarak told him that Saddam Hussein had weapons of
mass destruction. “Such a claim is void of truth,” Egyptian
presidential spokesman Magad Abdel Fattah told the official Middle East
News Agency.
In an interview with Parade magazine Franks recalled that both Mubarak
and Jordan’s King Abdullah told him two months before the Iraq
war that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. In Jordan,
a Royal Palace official who refused to be identified said: “His
Majesty did not have information that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction.” In its Aug.1 edition, Parade quoted Franks —
who led the US-led war against Iraq — as saying that Mubarak told
him Saddam Hussein would use the weapons against American troops in
case of war.
“What happened was that Franks asked the president for an assessment
of reports on Iraq’s possession of WMDs, and the president simply
said that Egypt had been following the developments in Iraq, but it
could not confirm whether Iraq possessed any weapons of mass destruction
or whether these could be used against US forces in case of US military
interference in Iraq,” Abdel Fattah said.
(AP)
IMF says its policies crippled Argentina
The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) handling of the crisis
in Argentina three years ago almost certainly deepened a recession that
threw millions of Argentines into poverty and sparked political chaos
throughout the country, according to a report released July 29 by the
IMF’s internal audit unit.
By overlooking Argentina’s growing indebtedness in the 1990s, and
continuing to lend the country money when its debt burden had become
unsustainable, the fund significantly contributed to one of the most
devastating financial crises in history, the report concluded. The crisis
peaked when the Argentine government defaulted on nearly $100 billion
in debt to private creditors and had to abandon the “convertibility”
system that pegged the peso to the dollar at a one-to-one rate. The
ensuing crash led to an 11 percent decline in Argentine output in 2002,
sent the jobless rate soaring and toppled a series of presidents in
a country that the IMF had once hailed as a model of free-market reform
and development.
The report’s critique is exceptionally damning, showing how fund
officials overlooked vulnerabilities, ignored warnings from some staffers
and shrank from confronting the economic forces that brought Argentina
to its knees. (Washington Post)
Pakistan protests over US sting operation
Pakistan has protested to the United States over an FBI “sting
operation” involving a fake plot to kill Pakistan’s UN envoy.
Islamabad called the operation bizarre and mind-boggling. A spokesman
said that the operation had endangered the life of Munir Akram, Pakistan’s
permanent envoy to the United Nations.
The US government has arrested two men claiming they allegedly laundered
money for an undercover agent who wanted to use a missile to kill Akram.
Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan asked why the US authorities
had not picked an US “target” instead. He said that Pakistan
had spoken to the US embassy in Islamabad and that it hoped the US would
“realize its mistake and give instructions for rectifying this
faulty methodology”.
Earlier this month, two leaders of a mosque in Albany, New York, were
arrested by the US authorities who claim that they provided support
to terrorism after a sting operation. US authorities claimed that Yassin
Aref, the imam of the mosque, and Mohammed Hossain, the mosque’s
founder, allegedly laundered money for a man who they believed had purchased
a shoulder-fired missile to assassinate Akram. The man was working undercover
for the US government as part of a surveillance operation going back
a year. (BBC)
Bush administration rallies behind Uribe
The administration of President George W. Bush on Aug. 2 rallied behind
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in the face of allegations contained
in a 13-year-old Pentagon intelligence report that he was a “close
personal friend’’ of drug lord Pablo Escobar and had worked
for his Medellin drug cartel.
The document, which was released last weekend by the independent National
Security Archive (NSA) at George Washington University under the Freedom
of Information Act, consists of a list and brief profiles of 104 of
the “more important Colombian narco-terrorists contracted by the
Colombian narcotic cartels for security, transportation, distribution,
collection and enforcement of narcotics operations in both the US and
Colombia.” It also includes a warning at the top that not all of
the intelligence has been ‘’finally evaluated.”
Uribe is listed as number 82, just after Pablo Escobar, ‘’maximum
chief of the Medellin cartel’’, Yair Klein, a retired Israeli
Army colonel and mercenary who helped train cartel paramilitary forces,
and Berta Inez, described as a “direct collaborator with Escobar,’’
who was killed in a shoot-out with Colombian national police (backed
up by US intelligence and special forces -- in 1993. (IPS)
Evictions, riots, and squatting in Barcelona
On Aug. 4 — at about four in the morning — police evicted
l´Hamsa, one of the most popular and active squats in Barcelona.
A judge had given an order for the eviction three months before but
the police did not act until Aug. 4, possibly because they knew resistance
would be weaker in August.
A couple of hours later a demonstration being held, stopping traffic
in various points. A group went into La Pedrera (a house built by Gaudí,
which is a very touristic place) and handcuffed themselves to the staircase
and on the terrace displaying a banner against the eviction. In the
afternoon a demonstration took place with about 400 people. After the
demonstration some protesters fought with police and a couple of banks
were damaged.
On the morning of Aug. 7, l´Hamsa was re-squatted and currently
it still resists. Two more buildings have been squatted in Sabadell
and another one in Mataró — two towns near Barcelona. (infoshop.org)
50 killed in Yemen’s attempt to end rebellion
The Yemeni army launched a major offensive to quash a rebellion in the
northern mountains, and about 50 soldiers and rebels have been killed
in the two days of fighting, tribal elders and government officials
said Aug. 5. The army has deployed more than 2,000 troops, along with
tanks, helicopters, artillery, and fighter jets, against the supporters
of Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi. The rebels are holed up in the Jabal
Maraan mountains in an area about 125 miles northwest of the capital
San’a, the officials said.
Long-simmering tension between the government and al-Huthi erupted into
armed conflict on June 21 when security forces tried to arrest his supporters
in Sa’dah. Last month, President Ali Abdullah Saleh ordered military
operations suspended to give mediation a chance, but the fighting continued.
Tribal elders said on Aug. 5 that about 50 people had been killed and
dozens wounded since the offensive began on the night of Aug. 3. The
elders, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity, said most of
the casualties were soldiers. The onslaught came after the failure of
new efforts by mediators from the opposition, tribes and clergy to negotiate
the surrender of al-Huthi and his followers, according to witnesses.
(AP, Al Jazeera)
Two election workers killed in Afghanistan
Gunmen ambushed a convoy carrying election workers into a remote Taliban
stronghold, killing two of them, officials said Aug. 7, bringing to
a dozen the number of people slain so far while preparing for the landmark
presidential vote. At least 30 militants shot at the jeeps from the
joint Afghan-UN electoral body on Aug. 6 as they passed through Char
Cheno, a district of central Uruzgan province, Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan
told The Associated Press.
Khan said two members of the voter registration team were killed and
all four vehicles were destroyed by fire after being strafed with assault-rifle
and machine-gun fire. The United Nations identified the victims as Mohammed
Hashim, a training officer, and driver Mohammed Hussein. A third worker
was missing, it said. Khan said guards in the convoy returned fire before
the assailants retreated. One Taliban fighter was captured, he said.
Uruzgan and neighboring Zabul have been the scene of some of the worst
fighting in recent months, and attacks have increased as the nation
gears up for its first post-Taliban election on Oct. 9. Six American
soldiers were wounded, two of them seriously, in Zabul on Aug. 6 when
insurgents mounted attacks with a mortar and explosives, the US military
said. (AP)
