[casi] News, 6-13/7/02 (1)

[Peter Brooke <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

News, 6-13/7/02 (1)

CRIMINAL CONSPIRACIES

*   UK to send 30,000 to help oust Saddam
*  Bush to use 'all tools' for ousting Saddam
*  Barak warns Iraq, Iran next targets in terror war
*  US questions Iraq offer on MIA

NEW WORLD ORDER CRIMES

*  US shelves a study on Iraq ravish
*  In the Killing Fields
*  U.S. argues need for doing it alone

CRIMES OF THE TIMES

*  US seeks ways to try Saddam for war crimes
*  Put a war with Iraq in the diary for January
*  Iraq building up deadly arsenal, say defectors
*  Allies remain lukewarm
*  Iraqi sites for bio-war revealed by defector



CRIMINAL CONSPIRACIES

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2002%2F07%2F07%2Fni
raq07.xml

*   UK TO SEND 30,000 TO HELP OUST SADDAM
by Sean Rayment,
Sunday Telegraph, 7th July

Britain is preparing to join America in a full-scale invasion of Iraq to
oust Saddam Hussein from power early next year.

The British armed forces are to commit at least 30,000 troops from all three
services to an overwhelming air, land and sea campaign commanded by the US.
In the past six months British troops' commitments in Kosovo, Macedonia,
Bosnia and Sierra Leone have all been reduced in preparation for the attack.

It is understood that President Bush has accepted that the US will not be
able to replicate the size or make-up of the allied coalition that invaded
Iraq in 1991 and is relying on Britain for moral and military support.

American military chiefs believe that the mission to remove Saddam can be
achieved with a force of about 250,000 troops, aided by an uprising of Iraqi
dissidents inside the country.

The Telegraph has been told by a senior Ministry of Defence official that
Britain will contribute a division of 20,000 men composed of armoured and
infantry brigades to fight alongside the US. The force would also be
supported by up to 50 combat jets, an aircraft carrier group composed of
frigates, destroyers and a submarine from the Royal Navy.

The early spring is regarded as the "next best option" for an attack because
the weather is still cool enough to conduct military operations in the Iraqi
desert. It also allows both the British and Americans to build up forces and
munitions depleted by the war in Afghanistan.

A senior MoD official said: "Troops have been pulled back from the Balkans
and Afghanistan in preparation for a spring attack against Iraq. The Army
would contribute a division, similar to what we contributed in the Gulf War.

"There would be casualties but soldiers join the Army to take part in
military operations not to sit on their beds in barracks. I believe that the
fighting would be relatively straightforward until we got to Baghdad. That's
when it could get messy."

Tony Blair and George Bush are known to have discussed in detail how Iraq
should be governed once Saddam's Ba'ath regime has been toppled. The
preferred option is to allow the Iraqi people to decide for themselves in a
referendum.

The British and US governments are concerned that any attack would meet with
international opposition. The Telegraph, however, understands that Britain
has "ample classified evidence" that proves Saddam has manufactured and
stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.

An MoD official said: "Justifying any attack would not be a problem because
the evidence exists that he has weapons of mass destruction. It will not be
made public yet because it would compromise the means by which it was
acquired."


http://www.dawn.com/2002/07/10/top18.htm

*  BUSH TO USE 'ALL TOOLS' FOR OUSTING SADDAM
Dawn, 10th July, 28 Rabi-us-Saani 1423

WASHINGTON, July 9: US President George Bush vowed on Monday to use "all
tools" at his disposal to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but declined
to say whether that goal would be achieved by the end of his first term.

Speaking at a news briefing, he said the world would be a safer place once
Saddam had been overthrown and said he was personally engaged in "all
aspects" of planning to achieve that goal.

"It's a stated policy of this government to have regime change. And it
hasn't changed. And we'll use all tools at our disposal to do so," Bush
said. But the US leader declined to answer the question of whether regime
change in Iraq will be a reality before the end of his first term, in late
January 2005, saying: "It's hypothetical."

The Bush administration has repeatedly threatened to topple Saddam's
government, which it accuses of developing weapons of mass destruction.

The New York Times said on Friday that a top secret US military document
outlines a massive, three-pronged attack on Iraq by land, sea and air with
as many as 250,000 troops and hundreds of warplanes.

Bush, clearly unhappy at the report, which he attributed to some low-level
official "flexing some knowhow muscle", said that people "shouldn't
speculate about the desire of the government to have a regime change". But
he also indicated that there is no urgency to act and that while the
military option is one of a number being considered, there are "different
ways to do it". "But in my remarks to the American people, I remind them I'm
a patient person," he said.

"But I do firmly believe that the world will be safer and more peaceful if
there's a regime change in that government." Bush highlighted his personal
engagement in the planning for Saddam's ouster. "I am involved. I mean, I'm
involved in the military plan, diplomatic planning, financial planning - all
aspects of - reviewing all the tools at my disposal," he said.

EU SEEKS PROOF: European Union countries will not consider military
intervention against Iraq until they see proof that Baghdad is producing
weapons of mass destruction, Italian Defence Minister Antonio Martino said
on Tuesday.

"It has become evident from the meetings I have had with European colleagues
that if the United States were to decide to take action in Iraq, European
countries would not take part unless it were already proven clearly and
unequivocally that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction," he
said.-AFP



http://www.iranmania.com/news/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=11092&NewsKin
d=CurrentAffairs&ArchiveNews=Yes

*  BARAK WARNS IRAQ, IRAN NEXT TARGETS IN TERROR WAR
IranMania, 12th July

SOFIA, July 11 (AFP) - Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak warned
Thursday that Iran would join Iraq as the next targets in the US-led war on
terror.

"The next step is to be Iraq and then even Iran," Barak said during an
anti-terror conference in Bulgaria.

The war's "first chapter" in Afghanistan "is coming to be resolved," he
said, adding that "the success of this operation serves as a signal to all
the terrorist leaders in the world and hosting regimes about the price that
they will pay."

He reiterated remarks made by US President George W. Bush that "it's going
to be a long fight, not for several months but many years."

"We have to win the first world war of 21 century and we will," the former
Labor prime minister said.

"It's not going to be a simple war," he warned. "It's going to be a
marathon."

Barak arrived in Sofia on Wednesday, when he met with Foreign Minister
Solomon Passi and President Georgi Purvanov.

Barak was pushed out of office by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon after
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected a peace deal proposed by Barak and
then president Bill Clinton at Camp David in July 1999, sparking off renewed
Palestinian unrest in Israel.


http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/193/nation/US_questions_Iraq_offer_on_MIA+
.shtml

*  US QUESTIONS IRAQ OFFER ON MIA
by Robert Burns
Boston Globe (from Associated Press), 12th July

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is rejecting Iraq's offer of a meeting
in Baghdad to discuss the fate of a missing Gulf War pilot, Captain Scott
Speicher. Instead, the administration will ask Iraq whether it has any new
information on Speicher, officials said yesterday.

The State Department plans to send a diplomatic note through the
International Committee of the Red Cross asking whether the Iraqi government
can offer new details about Speicher, who was shot down over central Iraq in
his Navy F-18 fighter on Jan. 17, 1991, the opening night of the war.

Speicher initially was listed as killed in action with no body recovered.
But in January 2001, the Navy changed his status to missing in action,
reflecting an absence of evidence that he died in the shootdown. As missing
in action, Speicher was eligible for promotion, and last week his rank was
elevated from lieutenant commander to captain, Navy officials said
yesterday.

Iraq says Speicher was killed in the crash.

In a July 8 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld said he agreed with Powell's suggestion that a note be
delivered ''to confirm Iraq's intention to provide new information.''

''If and when Iraq responds to your note, we can decide whether to propose a
meeting in Geneva under the auspices of'' the Red Cross, Rumsfeld wrote.
Powell had written to Rumsfeld on June 29, proposing that the State
Department send the note.

''I completely agree that we need to explore every avenue to resolve this
case and that we should respond to the Iraqi offer,'' Rumsfeld wrote.

The Pentagon released copies of Rumsfeld's letter yesterday.

At the State Department, Powell told reporters yesterday, ''We are in touch
through various means'' with Iraq. ''We are anxious to follow every possible
lead with respect to the fate of Commander Speicher,'' he said.

Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Speicher was shot
down.

In March, Iraq offered to meet with US officials in Baghdad to discuss the
case. The offer was made in a letter sent via the Red Cross.

Some believe Speicher is being held prisoner in Iraq, although there is no
publicly available information to confirm that.

Iraq's March 19 letter said: ''Concerned authorities are ready to receive a
US team to visit Iraq and investigate the question in the company of both a
US media team for coverage and documentation purposes, under supervision of
the International Committee of the Red Cross, and with participation of Mr.
Scott Ritter.''

Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons
inspector in Iraq who has criticized US policy toward Iraq.

Speicher, then 33, of Jacksonville, Fla., was shot down by an Iraqi missile.


NEW WORLD ORDER CRIMES

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/188/nation/US_shelves_a_study_on_Iraq_abus
es+.shtml

*  US SHELVES A STUDY ON IRAQ ABUSES
by Anthony Shadid
Boston Globe, 7th July

WASHINGTON - US officials have shelved an authoritative report six months in
the making that investigates the purported role of President Saddam Hussein
of Iraq and other leaders in war crimes. The move has frustrated human
rights advocates seeking to set up an international tribunal.

US officials say the report, by the State Department, was made secret in
March to protect the identities of people they had interviewed. The report
is said to include new documentation and interviews with dozens of
witnesses.

Critics say the decision to classify and thus shelve the report highlights a
policy issue: The US government opposes the new International Criminal
Court, and is skeptical toward international tribunals for Rwanda and the
former Yugoslavia, and this stance all but rules out an international war
crimes trial concerning Iraq.

''The United States has brought all this information out, has all these
documents, has done all these interviews,'' but is ''not using them. It's
all stored for a later date,'' said Joost Hiltermann, who researched
allegations of Iraqi war crimes for Human Rights Watch in Washington, and
who was consulted by one of the two Defense Department lawyers who prepared
the report.

''They are prepared, they can bring war crimes charges against Saddam
Hussein, no question. When the time comes, they'll be ready. But for now,
they don't want to do that.''

The question of war crimes touches on some of the most contentious issues in
US policy: international justice, the scope of the antiterrorism campaign,
and President Bush's declared aim of overthrowing Hussein.

While the Clinton administration publicly supported an international
tribunal for Iraqi leaders - with enthusiasm waxing and waning - the Bush
administration has said it prefers Hussein and other leaders to be tried in
a ''liberated Iraq'' by Iraqi courts.

That mirrors its opposition to the International Criminal Court, established
last week, and its call for shutting down by 2008 the tribunals on Rwanda
and Yugoslavia, which it says have been marred by mismanagement and abuse.
In the future, US officials say, war crimes trials in Iraq and elsewhere
should be handled by the countries' domestic courts.

''We continue to lay the groundwork to prepare for the day when we can
pursue accountability for these violations. But right now, the recognition
is that we'll only get so far,'' a senior US official said on condition of
anonymity. ''The immediate problem is bringing democracy back to Iraq,
bringing a responsible regime back, and bringing an environment that will
allow for accountability.''

The New York Times reported last week that the US military has moved farther
along with its plans for a military invasion of Iraq with attacks by air,
land, and sea that would require thousands of US troops. But the report said
such an assault is not imminent. Meanwhile, work continues on the war-crimes
issue.

The State Department plans to announce this week a working group of about 20
Iraqis and four international specialists to come up with proposals for what
it calls ''transitional justice'' in a post-Hussein Iraq.

The group is expected to look at questions of who would be granted amnesty,
prospects for a South Africa-style truth and reconciliation commission, and
how justice would be meted out to the government and its supporters.

The group will be the first in a series sketching out the framework for a
post-Hussein government.

The report commissioned by the State Department had raised expectations as
well.

It was carried out by two Defense Department lawyers, Christine Choi and
Misti Rawles, who wrapped up the work in early March.

They focused on two episodes: the Enfal campaign in 1988 in which human
rights advocates say Iraqi forces committed mass killings, disappearances,
and displacement that amounted to genocide against Kurds in northern Iraq;
and the uprisings after the 1991 Gulf War among Kurds in the north and the
Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq that the regime brutally suppressed, at the
cost, officials say, of perhaps tens of thousands of lives.

In particular, the lawyers focused on the chain of command in carrying out
orders - a key element in any war crimes trial.

''We weren't looking at what happened in Iraq, we wanted to see where the
finger of accusation pointed to,'' the senior official said. ''Let's see
who's in charge. If we're going to do this, we want to find out who bears
the greatest responsibility.''

The report, he said, ''clearly shows that persons in leadership, many people
in leadership, bear a responsibility.''

But it was classified in March, not so much for the substance of the report
but rather to protect the identity of the witnesses, the official said. The
State Department has no plans to share the findings ''anytime soon,'' even
as a declassified version, he said.

Advocates of a war crimes trial said they had understood that the report
would be used sooner. Charles Forest, chief executive for Indict, a group
that is investigating allegations of Iraqi war crimes and that provided
information for the report, said he had been told the findings would be
turned over to a UN-appointed commission of experts who would recommend
actions based on that report and other studies.

In May, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for an
international tribunal and the establishment of an Office of Inquiry that
would prepare the evidence for such a court.

''I'm disappointed it's not available,'' Forest said from the group's London
office.

Hiltermann suggested that the mixed signals reflected a longstanding
complaint by some human rights advocates that the United States has compiled
evidence more for propaganda value or to justify military action than for a
rigorous accounting of war crimes.

''I was frustrated with the handlers and the government,'' Hiltermann said.
''They sent these people. They did very important work, but the results are
unclear. Nothing is done with it. It sits there.''

Mike Amitay, executive director of the Washington Kurdish Institute, a
research and humanitarian group, said he, too, has been frustrated by the
lack of US-led effort in convening an international tribunal.

But, he acknowledged, the climate may be difficult now. Iraq remains a
highly politicized issue at the UN Security Council, with the United States
and Britain often lined up against the other permanent members. The debate
over the International Criminal Court also has made such a push unlikely.

''Given the reluctance of the United States to adhere to the new ICC and
other multilateral agreements, I think politically it would be very
difficult for the US to take a role in the war crimes issue,'' Amitay said.


http://www.newsday.com/features/books/ny
c2774595jul07.story?coll=ny%2Dbookreview%2Dheadlines

*  IN THE KILLING FIELDS
by John Leonard
Newsday, 7th July
Review of A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, by Samantha
Power. Basic, 610 pp., $30.

(John Leonard, a contributing editor to New York magazine and The Nation, is
the author of "Lonesome Rangers: Homeless Minds, Promised Lands, Fugitive
Cultures.")

Alexander Herzen, the gentleman-anarchist, once cautioned his bloodthirsty
buddy, Mikhail Bakunin: "We want to open men's eyes, not tear them out."
Samantha Power goes both ways. In one of her aspects - the journalist with
the law degree who reported on ethnic cleansing in the Balkans for The
Washington Post and then became executive director of the Carr Center for
Human Rights at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government - she insists
on our seeing the mass murders of the 20th century through her own wounded
eyes, as scholars, jurists and diplomats try to keep up with killers by
establishing courts and naming crimes. But in another aspect - angel of
wrath - she would invade Cambodia or Rwanda all by herself: "When innocent
life is being taken on such a scale and the United States has the power to
stop the killing at reasonable risk, it has a duty to act." She is so
furious at policymakers who turn their backs on that duty, who spin silky
extenuations out of their bowels like managed-health-care spiders, that she
would smoke or smite them where they bystand.

Warren Christopher, for instance, the former secretary of state who gave
Power the title for her book when he described Bosnia as "a problem from
hell" - and thus beyond mere mortal agency. During Christopher's twiddle,
the heretofore unheard of happened: Junior officers actually resigned from
the foreign service on principle. Nor was the president, at whose pleasure
Christopher served, such a bargain. Candidate Clinton may have rattled
sabers on the 1992 campaign trail, but President Bill let Serbs behave like
Hutus and Hutus behave like Serbs, until it cost him in the opinion polls.

If Clinton seems Power's least favorite president, she is not much kinder to
his predecessor, George H.W. Bush, on whose watch Yugoslavia disintegrated
in the first place while his secretary of state, James Baker, so colorfully
explained: "We don't have a dog in that fight." Or Ronald Reagan, who didn't
care if Saddam Hussein nerve-gassed Kurds in 1987 and 1988, so long as Iraq
continued to buy a million tons of American wheat a year. Or Gerald Ford and
Jimmy Carter, who were not about to go back to Southeast Asia no matter what
Pol Pot got up to, from 1975 to 1979, outside Phnom Penh. As negligent as
Franklin Roosevelt might have been about European Jewry during the Nazi
Holocaust, he had before him Woodrow Wilson's example of choosing to ignore
the very prototype of genocides to come - Turkey's massacre of a million
Armenians in 1915.

"It is the smell of oil and the color of money that corrodes our
principles," said the Republican senator from Maine, William Cohen, about
our coddling of Iraq in 1990. Cohen, along with William Proxmire, Bob Dole
and Claiborne Pell, is one of the few members of Congress to end up on
Power's list of valiant diplomats and journalists, troublemakers and
whistleblowers who tried to stop a slaughter. Besides reminding us in
searing detail just how it happened that 100,000 Kurds, 200,000 Bosnians,
800,000 Rwandans, 1 million Armenians, 2 million Cambodians and 6 million
Jews were exterminated while we slumbered, she also wants us to honor those
who couldn't sleep, as well as men like Raphael Lemkin, the refugee linguist
who coined the word "genocide" and devoted his entire adult life to helping
get a law against it into a treaty among nations.

Still, the behavior of presidents is what most infuriates her. From Dwight
Eisenhower on, they refused even to sign the 1948 treaty against genocide
till Reagan did so in 1988 to escape criticism for his visit to the Nazi
cemetery at Bitburg, Germany. Power is convinced, from hundreds of
interviews and thousands of pages, that each administration knew the
dreadful worst and didn't want to talk about it. That each, when it had to
say something in public, cited "national sovereignty" before blaming "both
sides," "civil war" and "ancient history" for what it called a "tragedy"
instead of an atrocity, a crime against humanity or, of course, a genocide.
That each, for domestic political reasons, chose to do nothing while
claiming that anything it might do would be "futile" or counterproductive.
"No U.S. president," she tells us, "has ever made genocide prevention a
priority, and no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his
indifference to its occurrence."

And she quotes the writer David Rieff's redefinition of the meaning of
"Never again" after his experience in Bosnia: "Never again would Germans
kill Jews in Europe in the 1940s."

As an anthology of horrors from the equal-opportunity 20th century -
Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews, in Europe, Asia, Africa and the
Middle East - "A Problem From Hell" has so much ground to cover that it only
nods in passing at Pakistan and Bangladesh, at Nigeria and Biafra, at
Indonesia and East Timor. As a pocket history of what might be called the
jurisprudence of the unthinkable - how to get to Nuremberg or The Hague - it
might have wondered why the United States is so adamantly opposed to the
very idea of an international criminal court. And as a fiery brief for our
intervention wherever there are killing fields, it ought at least to mention
American meddlings in Latin America and Southeast Asia that actually upped
the bloody ante.

But as an anguished reminder that state violence is still the leading cause
of sudden death all over the world, it is a much-needed corrective to our
generalized panic about terrorism. However confounded and twitchy we've
become, looking over our shoulders in fear of ambush by the lunatics of one
idea and the kamikazes of Kingdom Come, we should never forget the worst
thing about the century just passed: What we knew of war in 1900 was that 85
percent of its casualties would be warriors themselves - and only 15 percent
civilians. But according to the latest United Nations figures, by the end of
the 20th century, that ratio had pretty much reversed itself. More than 80
percent of the damage is collateral. Which, of course, is insane.


http://www.iht.com/articles/63799.html

*  U.S. ARGUES NEED FOR DOING IT ALONE
by James Dao
The New York Times, 8th July

WASHINGTON: If anyone in the United Nations still believed that the United
States sees itself as part of the family of nations, and not as its
patriarch, last week may have come as a rude awakening.

First, to the great dismay of its closest European allies, the Bush
administration threatened to block all UN peacekeeping missions as they come
up for renewal unless American peacekeepers were granted immunity from
prosecution by the International Criminal Court, which came into being last
Monday.

The allies responded with howls of outrage, accusing the United States of
trying to stand above international law and promoting double standards.

Then, reports surfaced in Washington that planning for a large-scale
invasion of Iraq had reached an advanced stage - even though most European
governments had cautioned against such an invasion and none of the nations
that would be expected to assist American troops as staging areas had been
formally consulted.

In fact, as last week's events point up, a double standard is precisely what
the Bush administration is pursuing. As the world's lone superpower, the
United States is increasingly the main guarantor of global security and
economic well-being, administration officials contend. To treat it like any
other country would defy reality, they say.

"The United States plays a role in the world unlike any other," Richard
Boucher, the State Department spokesman, told reporters last week in
explaining the administration's position on the criminal court. "Therefore
this affects us unlike any other nation."

To many foreign policy experts, that worldview is a natural outgrowth of
America's preeminent position in the post-Soviet world, which it dominates
militarily, economically and culturally. And while many of these scholars
fault the Bush administration for a brusque, even arrogant, brinkmanship at
the United Nations, far fewer blame it for trying to control the
international rules of the road. That, they say, is what all great powers
have done through the ages.

"You hear Europeans say Bush is a cowboy from Texas," said William
Wohlforth, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth. "But when the
Europeans were at the top of the international heap, they were hard-bitten
realists about using power, and it was the United States that was trying to
outlaw war."

In an article in the July issue of Foreign Affairs, Wohlforth and a
Dartmouth colleague, Stephen Brooks, argue that the United States' military
and economic dominance over the world is no longer even debatable.

They note that in 2003 the United States will spend more on the Pentagon,
about $400 billion, than the next 15 largest militaries combined. And its
economy is twice as large as its closest rival, Japan. No other nation in
history, they contend, has exerted so much military power over the land, sea
and air, while also dominating the global economy.

"Today," they write, "the United States has no rival in any critical
dimension of power."

That disparity, says Robert Kagan, a senior associate with the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace who lives in Brussels, Belgium, has caused
Europe and many other nations to depend increasingly on American power for
their security and prosperity. As a result, Kagan asserts, the United States
must remain free to use its power at will, lest the world fall prey to
lawlessness and brutality.

"The United States must sometimes play by the rules of a Hobbesian world,
even though in doing so it violates European norms," Kagan wrote in the
June-July edition of Policy Review. "And it must sometimes act unilaterally,
not out of a passion for unilateralism but, given a weak Europe that has
moved beyond power, because the United States has no choice but to act
unilaterally."

As Sept. 11 demonstrated, America's vast power also makes it a target of
resentment on many fronts - religious, economic, political and military.
Indeed, the Bush administration argued that the International Criminal Court
could be used to prosecute politically motivated cases against Americans.

"It's disingenuous to say America won't be a lightning rod, given our
position in the world," Kagan said in an interview. "French farmers are
angry at the United States, poor Egyptians are angry at the United States.
It's not Luxembourg that people will be aiming their grievances at."

There is a strong temptation on both sides of the Atlantic to view the
current fight over the criminal court as one more case of a conservative
Republican president trying to implement a policy of unilateralism. And to
be sure, Bush has built a track record of opposing international alliances,
including treaties to eliminate greenhouse gases, restrict anti-ballistic
missile systems, prohibit land mines and ban biological weapons testing.

But there is also a long historical tradition in the United States of
viewing alliances ("entangling alliances," Thomas Jefferson called them in
his inaugural address in 1801) with suspicion. And, Kagan contends, with the
exception of Woodrow Wilson's presidency and the post-Vietnam era, the
United States has tended to believe that power is necessary to advance the
American ideals of democracy and free markets to the world.

Still, if Bush's views on the International Criminal Court were not out of
the mainstream for an American president, his manner of opposing it might
have been counterproductive.

Past administrations tended to consult publicly with allies or work through
multinational organizations like the United Nations or the International
Monetary Fund, even if, behind the scenes, they used their power to get
their way.

President Bill Clinton, for example, also disliked the court on grounds
similar to the Bush administration's. But he signed the treaty on the
premise that it would be easier for the United States to change it as a
member of the court. He then declined to submit it to the Senate for
ratification. In May, the Bush administration invalidated Clinton's
signature.

Bush's more confrontational approach could alienate America's allies even as
Washington looks to them for help in the war on terrorism. For all its
power, the United States still needs the military bases, ports and
airfields, fuel supplies and overflight rights that only its allies can
provide. No invasion of Iraq would be possible without those things - and
angering its allies over the International Criminal Court will not help the
Bush administration get them, critics contend.


CRIMES OF THE TIMES

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-352828,00.html

*  US SEEKS WAYS TO TRY SADDAM FOR WAR CRIMES
by James Bone
The Times, 11th July

THE Bush Administration has been studying the possibility of establishing a
war crimes tribunal to prosecute President Saddam Hussein, but is now
considering an Iraqi trial in a "liberated" Iraq after Saddam is eventually
overthrown.

The transatlantic row over the International Criminal Court (ICC) has
complicated US plans. A State Department investigation of Saddam's
atrocities, intended to form the basis for an international prosecution of
Saddam and other Iraqi leaders, has been shelved as Washington studies a
possible Iraqi trial instead.

The confidential report, compiled by two judge advocate- generals on loan
from the Pentagon, focuses on the Anfal campaign that displaced Kurds in
1988 and the suppression of the uprisings by Kurds and Shia Muslims at the
end of the 1991 Gulf War.

Diplomats and rights activists say that the original goal of the
investigation was to bring about an international commission of inquiry by
the UN Security Council, leading to the indictment of Saddam while he was
still in power.

Apparently that plan has been abandoned as Washington is engaged in a
dispute with its allies over the ICC, whose jurisdiction it rejects. US
officials appear to fear that forming another countryspecific international
tribunal, similar to those trying war crimes in Rwanda and the former
Yugoslavia, would undermine opposition to the new global court. Iraq also
rejects the ICC's jurisdiction. The Administration is pursuing the
alternative approach of preparing for a trial of Saddam in a "liberated"
Iraq.

This week the State Department hosted about 20 exiled Iraqi jurists to
discuss "transitional justice" after the overthrow of Saddam as part of a
series of "Future of Iraq" meetings. The first of these was boycotted by two
key figures ‹ Salem Chalabi, a London-based lawyer whose uncle heads the
Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group, and Kanan Makiya, the author
of the study of Baathist repression, The Republic of Fear, which he wrote
under the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil.

But Charles Forrest, the head of Indict, a group devoted to securing the
indictment of Iraqi leaders, said that the participants had engaged in a
serious discussion, which included the possibility of trials of ousted Iraqi
leaders.

"The question is whether it would be better to do this under an Iraqi court
or would the Iraqis prefer a special tribunal," he said. "All of this
presupposes the Iraqi regime has been overthrown. What I heard was people
really grappling with these issues, which are going to require a lot of
discussion.

"Saddam himself, it's highly unlikely he will be in the dock like Milosevic.
But there are a lot of other people who need to be brought to justice."

Indict, which is chaired by Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP, is focusing on 27
Iraqis suspected of committing war crimes.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-351895,00.html

*  PUT A WAR WITH IRAQ IN THE DIARY FOR JANUARY
by Tim Hames
The Times, 10th July

Despite the political inconvenience Bernie Ebbers has caused in the past few
weeks, George W. Bush does not view the WorldCom boss as the main
megalomaniac he has to deal with.

The President yesterday called for tough laws and longer jail sentences for
those who distort corporate balance sheets, but fell short of saying that he
favoured any "regime change" on Wall Street or that "we will use all the
weapons at our disposal" to achieve one. There is no court in America which
could impose the sort of sentence on errant business executives that Mr Bush
intends to make mandatory for President Saddam Hussein.

The relative quiet in Washington in the six months since the President made
his "axis of evil" State of the Union address should not be mistaken for
inactivity. The Administration has made the decision to eject Saddam, almost
certainly in January and February next year, unless the Iraqi dictator has
been deposed by then, or the UN weapons inspectors have returned with the
cast-iron mandate to work at will.

And when that Iraqi operation starts, the repercussions will be
considerable, but paradoxical. The reaction in Western Europe will be more
genuinely hostile than that of those in charge of many Middle Eastern
nations. In a further twist, the prospect of a swift American military
triumph will again trigger far more concern in Berlin and Paris than Amman
or Cairo.

There are three reasons why an American intervention in Iraq is all but
booked. The first is the transformation in US foreign policy thinking in the
aftermath of September 11. The second is the conviction of the current White
House that the feeble policies pursued by Bill Clinton against Saddam
encouraged not only Iraq, but others, to believe that the United States was
weak and vulnerable. The third is that there is no other blueprint for
dealing with Baghdad that has the remotest shred of credibility.

The claim that a US military operation would succeed at speed is born not
out of arrogance but realism. A force of 250,000 men (or about half the
total deployed in the 1991 Gulf War) would have to be assembled, but it is a
matter of debate whether anything like that number would be needed in
practice. The chances of a coup being effected against Saddam, once it
became clear that the US was determined to act, or after the air war had
been initiated, are higher than often allowed for. If a formal invasion were
to take place, the prediction among pessimistic neutral professionals is
that Iraq would be conquered in eight weeks, and this assumes that the US
Army would face notable resistance.

Three factors make that assumption contestable. The first is that it is
fashionable either to underestimate the degree of popular loathing felt
towards Saddam or to dismiss it as inconsequential. But the majority of
Iraqis would consider Mr Bush their liberator.

The second is that Saddam's own repression and his determination that his
son Qusay will succeed him has upset the equilibrium between family clans
that is the essence of traditional Iraqi society. Almost every other section
of the elite has an incentive to prevent son following father.

The third element concerns the Iraqi Armed Forces. Saddam is not, despite
his enthusiasm for their garb, a career soldier. Qusay, although afflicted
with the very same bug for the dressing-up box, has weaker links still with
the military.

Although the army in Iraq has historically been reluctant to interfere in
domestic politics, Saddam's willingness to place personal cronies in top
slots regardless of efficiency, service record, or seniority has shifted the
argument. Once it is obvious that Washington is committed to the fight, the
best outcome, from the army's standpoint, would be to be shot of Saddam
quickly.

Other Middle Eastern rulers, long subject to the inconvenience of Saddam's
inconsistent habits and aware that what is coming will be the mother of all
walkovers, would adopt a pragmatic attitude. Ritual distaste may be
expressed in public, but private energy would be devoted to carving up the
spoils. The oil market, especially, would be transformed if a US approved
figure were established in Baghdad. It would be a change to match, and in
many ways cancel out, the fall of the Shah in Iran 23 years ago.

In Western Europe, though, an awesome demonstration of raw American power
would be taken rather differently. The crowds would not take to the streets
to hail the termination of the world's most dangerous weapons of mass
destruction project. The complaints would be of American "unilateralism" and
"hegemony". They would be amplified by the fact that in most EU countries
the Left is in opposition and unencumbered by any sense of diplomatic
responsibility. That a US invasion of Iraq might be popular with that
country's citizens would not stop it being condemned as "imperialism".

The same would be true, if perhaps at a slightly lower decible level, in
Britain. The Prime Minister will sense, accurately, that he has little
choice but to back Mr Bush in fairly robust terms and provide a modest
amount of military assistance. The Labour Party would revolt to some degree
and ministerial resignations would occur but, because Labour is in office,
the rebellion should be manageable. Tony Blair's preferred foreign policy
would, nonetheless, be shaken as he sought to reconcile his stance that
Britain's "destiny" lies in Europe with the prominence of the Anglo-American
alliance.

The Tories would hardly be in a position to exploit any public backlash that
takes place as their position on Iraq is, if anything, slightly to the right
of that held by Donald Rumsfeld. All of which leaves the possibility of one
last paradox. Namely, that the British politician who could be the
short-term winner from a one-sided battle between Mr Bush and Saddam is
Charles Kennedy.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-352924,00.html

*  IRAQ BUILDING UP DEADLY ARSENAL, SAY DEFECTORS
by Michael Evans, Defence Editor and Roland Watson
The Times, 11th July

SADDAM HUSSEIN has made important progress in developing weapons of mass
destruction capable of killing millions of people, senior Iraqi defectors
say. That suggests that the Iraqi leader is pressing ahead with all three
elements of his secret weapons project: nuclear, chemical and biological.

The analysis is based on material gained from officials who worked on the
programme and Intelligence on Iraqi agents trying to buy dual-use
components.

The nuclear threat should not be exaggerated. Before the launch of the
US-led offensive against Iraqi forces in Kuwait in 1991, Saddam was close to
developing a bomb. But today, with most of the nuclear infrastructure
destroyed, including uranium-enrichment plants, the Iraqi leader is a long
way from achieving his ambition to become a nuclear weapons power in the
region.

However, there have been sinister signs of clandestine procurement of
systems vital for producing bomb-grade fissile material. It is believed that
Iraq recently has acquired components for flow-forming machines, which are
used in the uranium-enrichment process. However, without the fissile
material removed by the International Atomic Energy Agency after the Gulf
War Saddam poses no real nuclear threat for the moment.

The production of biological agents such as anthrax, botulinum toxin and
ricin, can be carried out under cover of legitimate pharmaceutical plants
and small laboratories which remained intact after the Gulf War. Terence
Taylor, a UN weapons inspector in Iraq for four years up to 1997, said he
believed Saddams biological arsenal posed the greatest immediate threat.
Since 1998, when the UN inspectors withdrew, Iraq has failed to account for
17 tons of growth media used for culturing anthrax and other biological
agents.

"We dont know whats happened to it. Its expensive stuff and not the sort of
stuff you would lose," said Mr Taylor, president of the International
Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington. He said there were also 4,000
tons of chemicals which could be used in the manufacture of VX nerve gas
with no satisfactory explanation, and thousands of tons of chemical weapons
munitions.

There is also evidence of Iraq switching production back to biological
agents. Saddam has rebuilt part of the al-Daura vaccine plant, which was
destroyed by the UN weapons inspectors because it was directly used in the
production of biological agents.

Intelligence experts agree it is likely that Saddam has the capability of
producing militarily significant quantities of biological agents, and that
he also retained a viable chemical weapons stockpile.

Key to Iraqs ability to launch weapons of mass destruction is the state of
its ballistic missile programme. The ballistic missile facilities were
virtually destroyed in the Gulf War and by UN inspectors.

But there is intelligence evidence that Iraq may be co-operating with Syria
in trying to develop longer-range surface-to-surface missiles, based on the
Russian Scud system. Several Iraqi officers known to be ballistic-missile
experts have visited Damascus this year.

The Iraqi officers in Syria are believed to be training Syrian missile units
in the art of launching weapons. In return, the fear is that Syria will
provide parts for a new Iraqi extended-range missile.

Apart from defectors and the monitoring of Iraqs known smuggling routes for
dual-use components, not even Americas sophisticated technical
intelligence-gathering systems can uncover what Saddam is really up to.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-352827,00.html

*  ALLIES REMAIN LUKEWARM
by Roland Watson
The Times, 11th July

AMERICA'S allies in the War on Terror have been at best lukewarm and at
worst hostile to the prospect of a US invasion of Iraq, but that could all
change if President Saddam Hussein plays his hand badly and Washington is
able to execute his swift overthrow.

Russia, a traditional ally of Baghdad, has told the United States to keep
its distance. President Putin is expected to maintain firm opposition to the
idea of an American invasion, at least in public. However, US officials hope
that the promise of oil contracts with a successor regime, together with
access to the $8 billion that Russia is owed by Iraq, will earn Mr Putin's
tacit approval.

Japan has been careful not to draw a line against attacks against Baghdad.
When Mr Bush met Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister, in February, they
discussed the issue. Mr Koizumi said he believed that the President was
being "careful and cautious" on Iraq, but stopped short of voicing
opposition to action.

Since then US officials have asked Japan to be prepared to send Aegis
warships and anti submarine patrol aircraft to the Arabian Sea to stand in
for US forces, who would be moved closer to the action in the Gulf in the
event of an attack. Such a move may be unconstitutional, given Japan's tight
restrictions on the role of the military, but the very fact of the request
reveals that Washington believes that it can count on diplomatic support
from Japan.

China, which has far closer ties with Baghdad than the West, has said that
it does not support the extension of the War on Terror to Iraq. But Beijing
has also said that it hopes Iraq improves co-operation with the United
Nations and relations in the Gulf.

When Mr Bush visited Beijing in February President Jiang Zemin promised to
"step up consultation and co-operation" in the campaign against terrorism,
ducking questions about possible attacks on Iraq.

Beijing would be expected to criticise an American assault heavily if it
circumvented the UN, but its tone would depend on how Saddam had acted in
the preceding weeks and months. Analysts expect that the reaction would be
entirely pragmatic in the event of a quick outcome.

France has said that it would oppose military action without conclusive
proof of Baghdad's role in exporting terror, but it is one of the countries
best-placed to benefit commercially from a new regime. US officials hope
that its opposition may be tempered in the coming months.

Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, has expressed opposition to
unilateral US action, but his nation may be in different hands by the time
an assault is launched.

Whatever the international position now, US officials believe that
everything would look different if the Pentagon was able to prosecute a
quick and conclusive campaign. "If it's decisive and successful, everyone
will fall into line behind it. If it's not, they'll be against it," one
official said.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-353672,00.html

*  IRAQI SITES FOR BIO-WAR REVEALED BY DEFECTOR
by James Bone
The Times, 12th July

A DEFECTOR with first-hand knowledge of more than 30 secret biological
weapons laboratories inside Iraq has played a key role in hardening
Washington's policy towards Iraq.

Adnan Saeed al-Haideri, a civil engineer who maintained biological and
chemical ³clean rooms² for the Iraqi Government, is believed to be in a safe
house in the Washington area after being debriefed by the Defence
Intelligence Agency.

Mr al-Haideri, the managing director of the Al Fao construction firm who
escaped from Iraq last year, has given DIA officials details of secret
biological and chemical weapons work taking place in at least eight
locations. ³My feeling, and I have dealt with this for about 11 years, is
that he has been the most important and least talked about defector since
the Gulf War,² said Nabeel Musawi, who spent three weeks debriefing him in
Bangkok late last year.

³The things he was describing all fit together. The locations all fit
together,² said a former American weapons inspector in Iraq, who reviewed
some of the material he brought out. ³The guy was dead-on.²

Mr al-Haideri first became involved with Iraq's secret weapons programme in
1992 when he was invited to replace a German contractor doing work at Salman
Pak, a large complex on a bend in the Tigris River that originally was home
to Iraq's nuclear programme. He remained so until he was arrested in January
last year when the authorities discovered that he was an Iraqi Kurd. He
escaped Iraq after being freed, fearing that he was to be killed.

Mr al-Haideri went public with some allegations ‹ including the existence of
a secret biological laboratory underneath the Saddam Hussein hospital in
central Baghdad ‹ in an interview with The New York Times while in exile in
Bangkok in December. But he has since been moved to the United States where
not even his family in Australia can reach him.

Mr Musawi provided chilling new details of what Mr al-Haideri has told
American Intelligence about how Saddam outwitted United Nations weapons
inspectors and US surveillance efforts.

³His involvement was quite extensive after 1992,² Mr Musawi said. ³He was
involved in building or rebuilding labs all over the capital, particularly
on the southern side of the capital.

³The things they have to use in these clean rooms are so specific,² he said.
³The tiles are chemically treated and have to be imported from Germany.²

As well as the lab beneath the Saddam Hussein hospital, Mr al-Haideri
identified at least seven other locations where biological or chemical
weapons work was going on and said there were more than 30 clean rooms in
all.

Some of the clean rooms were in well known complexes, such as the Rawanya
presidential complex in Baghdad. Facilities at al-Taji, west of Baghdad, for
instance, were rebuilt after the withdrawal of UN inspectors in 1998. At
al-Misayad, which was extensively damaged in the Gulf War, only one building
out of 30 was rebuilt so that it seemed as though the site was derelict.

Other labs were built in new locations. One complex between Abu Ghraib and
Mahmodia, south of Baghdad, works only at night for security reasons so that
it appears to be unused. Another has been built in the Quraiyap residential
district of Baghdad.

Mr al-Haideri's company was instructed to build everything in duplicate, so
that there was always a fall-back location if one was damaged.

³For a biological programme, all you need is a sealed room four metres by
four metres,² Mr Musawi said.




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