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News, 24-31/8/02 (3) NO FLY ZONES * Iraq Says 8 Killed, 9 Hurt in Attack on South * Iraq Says One Hurt in Western Air Strike on South * Allied airstrikes reportedly wreck key Iraqi surveillance site in south * Iraq says U.S. attacks civilian airport * Allied raid destroys Iraqi spying base * Allies Bomb Iraqi Military Site * America's undeclared war against Iraq NEW WORLD ORDER * Britain to back US on war crimes court * US immigration assurances end Iraqis' protest * Record number of refugees removed IRAQI OPPOSITION * Iraqi exiles recruit rebel force in London * Suspects Held in Iraq [Berlin] Embassy Grab * Exiles recruited as US steps up war of words * Iraqi opposition wants U.S. protection UK OPINION * Hawks in the dovecot * Doing nothing about Saddam is not an option * Blair faces defeat on Iraq * UK could push for Saddam inspections deadline, Straw * Former ministers back Dalyell on Iraq * Opinion: I believe that our pivotal moment has now come * Blair Could Lose Leadership over Iraq - Healey NO FLY ZONES http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59816-2002Aug25.html * IRAQ SAYS 8 KILLED, 9 HURT IN ATTACK ON SOUTH Washington Post, 25th August BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. and British jets bombed targets in southern Iraq on Sunday, killing eight people and wounding nine others, an Iraqi military spokesman said. Britain said U.S. or British planes attacked an Iraqi radar site. "At 8:55 a.m. local time (11:55 a.m. EDT) today U.S. and British planes ... flew 35 sorties using air bases in Kuwait," the Iraqi military spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency. "The enemy attacked civilian and service installations in Basra province, killing eight people and wounding nine others," the spokesman said. Basra is 343 miles south of Baghdad. Iraq's ground air-defenses fired at the planes and they left for their bases in Kuwait, the spokesman added. In London, a British Ministry of Defense spokesman said U.S. or British planes attacked an Iraqi radar site after they were "threatened." He insisted the United States and Britain tried to minimize casualties. "There was a response to being threatened today," the spokesman said. "Coalition aircraft did strike at a radar site near Basra," he added without specifying whether British or U.S. aircraft were involved -- or both. [.....] http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20020826_347.html * IRAQ SAYS ONE HURT IN WESTERN AIR STRIKE ON SOUTH ABC News, 26th August BAGHDAD (Reuters): Iraq said U.S. and British warplanes attacked civilian targets in the south of the country Monday for the second consecutive day, wounding a civilian and damaging his house. "At 0735 local time (11:35 p.m. EDT Sunday) today, hostile American and British planes flying from bases in Kuwait violated our airspaces, carrying out 59 sorties," an Iraqi military spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency. "The enemy attacked al Btera area in Meisan province, inflicting damage on the house of the citizen Ahmed Minshid al- Jamali and wounding his daughter, Asia," the spokesman said. Iraq's ground air-defenses fired at the planes, the spokesman added. Meisan province is 183 miles south of Baghdad. [.....] http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/international/ap_cairo08272002.htm * ALLIED AIRSTRIKES REPORTEDLY WRECK KEY IRAQI SURVEILLANCE SITE IN SOUTH Boston Herald, from Associated Press, 27th August CAIRO, Egypt - A U.S.-British air raid in southern Iraq this weekend destroyed a major military surveillance site that monitors American troops in the Persian Gulf, witnesses said Tuesday. The Iraqi military said the allied warplanes on Sunday bombed areas in Basra province, 330 miles south of Baghdad, killing eight civilians and wounding nine others. The U.S. Central Command in Florida said coalition aircraft used precision-guided weapons to strike two air defense radar systems near Basra "in response to recent Iraqi hostile acts against coalition aircraft monitoring the southern no-fly zone." U.S. officials said they had no information about a surveillance unit at the site. The witnesses, Iraqis who said they were at the scene and were reached by telephone in neighboring Jordan on Tuesday, said one of the installations hit in Sunday's raids was the main headquarters of the army intelligence in southern Iraq that held a huge military surveillance unit. Many Iraqis travel frequently to Jordan, which has strong trade and political ties with Iraq. The site in Ashar, south of Basra, was hit by four missiles, which destroyed most of its buildings and left its equipment in shambles, a witness said on condition of anonymity. He said he saw huge fire and black columns billowing from the buildings shortly after powerful explosions, which echoed in Basra, a major port city on the strategic Shatt Al Arab waterway. Another witness said on condition of anonymity that troops and militia of the ruling Baath Party immediately cordoned off the area while ambulances and fire engines rushed inside the tightly guarded complex. An Iraqi dissident in Amman, the Jordanian capital, said the site was recently equipped with advanced surveillance gear used to spy on U.S bases in the Persian Gulf and especially in Kuwait, where the United States is believed to have some 10,000 troops posted. The dissident, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, was not among the witnesses. The Iraqi report didn't provide any details about the raids or the casualties. U.S. officials have said they have no way of confirming or denying Iraqi claims of causalities but that coalition aircraft "never target civilian populations or infrastructure and go to painstaking lengths to avoid injury to civilians and damage to civilian facilities." The attacks came as Washington weighs options to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Iraqi opposition leaders say they are discussing their role in any bid to oust Saddam. U.S. and British warplanes monitoring "no fly" zones over southern and northern Iraq regularly attack Iraqi military facilities. The zones were established shortly after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Kurdish and Shiite Muslim groups. Iraq, which considers the zones violations of its sovereignty, frequently tries to shoot down allied planes. The patrols give coalition pilots intelligence and practical experience that could be helpful should the United States decide to go to war against Saddam. U.S. officials said four bombs were dropped in Sunday's attack near Basra, and they struck a radar facility used to guide anti-aircraft defense guns as well as a "support building." The most common target of the periodic U.S. airstrikes in northern and southern Iraq are air defense radars and either anti-aircraft artillery emplacements or surface-to-air missile launchers. There was another U.S. strike in the southern "no fly" zone on Tuesday. This time it was near the city of Nukhayb, in southwestern Iraq. Details were sketchy, but U.S. Central Command said the strike was in response to "recent Iraqi hostile acts" against U.S. and British air patrols. It said an Iraqi air defense command and control facility was targeted. U.S. officials said a separate American airstrike was carried out Tuesday against an air defense radar in northern Iraq, near the city of Mosul. A U.S. European Command statement said U.S. and British aircraft had been illuminated by the radar and responded by firing on the site. It said the strike aircraft departed the area safely, but no other details were provided. http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=61671 * IRAQ SAYS U.S. ATTACKS CIVILIAN AIRPORT Gulf News, from Reuters, 28th August U.S. warplanes struck targets in Iraqi "no-fly" zones yesterday, with Washington saying they attacked air defence positions but Baghdad saying a civilian airport was one of the places hit. The U.S. military, citing repeated Iraqi attempts to shoot down U.S. and British warplanes, said its jets attacked a radar site in northern Iraq and an air defence command facility in southern Iraq, in its sixth and seventh raids within a week. But the official Iraqi News Agency said U.S. and British jets fired two bombs at Mosul civilian airport, 450 km (270 miles) north of Baghdad. "The aggression led to the destruction of windows in the passenger terminals and of the airport radar system," a Transport Ministry spokesman told the agency. An Iraqi military spokesman said Allied jets bombed civilian targets in the south of the country, but reported no casualties. Hundreds of such tit-for-tat exchanges have occurred since the 1991 Gulf War, but they have increased sharply as speculation grows that President George W. Bush will order the U.S. military to invade Iraq and remove President Saddam Hussein. Washington accuses him of developing weapons of mass destruction, and on Monday U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said it was time to oust Saddam. According to the Pentagon, Tuesday's raids against air defences in the two zones were the sixth and seventh in just over a week with the total number reaching 32 this year. [.....] http://sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-te.iraq28aug28.story?coll=bal%2Dnati onworld%2Dheadlines * ALLIED RAID DESTROYS IRAQI SPYING BASE Baltimore Sun, from Associated Press, 28th August CAIRO, Egypt - A U.S.-British air raid in southern Iraq this weekend destroyed a major military surveillance site that monitors American troops in the Persian Gulf, witnesses said Tuesday. The Iraqi military said the allied warplanes bombed areas in Basra province, 330 miles south of Baghdad, killing eight civilians and wounding nine others on Sunday. The U.S. Central Command in Florida said coalition aircraft used precision-guided weapons to strike two air defense radar systems near Basra "in response to recent Iraqi hostile acts against coalition aircraft monitoring the southern no-fly zone." U.S. officials said they had no information about a surveillance unit at the site. The witnesses, Iraqis who said they were at the scene and were reached by telephone in neighboring Jordan yesterday, said one of the installations hit in Sunday's raids was the main headquarters of the army intelligence in southern Iraq that held a huge military surveillance unit. The site in Ashar, south of Basra, was hit by four missiles, which destroyed most of its buildings and left its equipment in shambles, a witness said on condition of anonymity. He said he saw a huge fire and black columns billowing from the buildings shortly after powerful explosions, which echoed in Basra, a major port city on the strategic Shatt Al Arab waterway. Another witness said on condition of anonymity that troops and militia of the ruling Baath Party immediately cordoned off the area while ambulances and fire engines rushed inside the tightly guarded complex. An Iraqi dissident in Amman, the Jordanian capital, said the site was recently equipped with advanced surveillance gear used to spy on U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf and especially in Kuwait, where the United States is believed to have some 10,000 troops posted. The Iraqi report didn't provide any details about the raids or the casualties. U.S. officials have said they have no way of confirming or denying Iraqi claims of causalities but said coalition aircraft "never target civilian populations or infrastructure and go to painstaking lengths to avoid injury to civilians and damage to civilian facilities." http://cgi.wn.com/?action=display&article=15427790&template=worldnews/search .txt&index=recent * ALLIES BOMB IRAQI MILITARY SITE The Associated Press, 30th August WASHINGTON (AP) ‹ U.S. and British airstrikes this week reportedly damaged one of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's spy centers and radar and missile sites in what has become a slow-burn air war over the decade-old no-fly zones. One defense analyst calls the bombings a "pinprick" effort with little deterrent value. But the Pentagon says they are at least slowing Saddam down ‹ hitting facilities used to attack coalition pilots patrolling the zones. "They don't stop him ... but they make it more difficult for him," said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan. For the sixth time in a week, coalition aircraft Friday bombed an Iraqi defense facility. U.S. Air Force F-15E strike aircraft fired several precision-guided weapons at a surface-to-air missile launcher site in the southern zone near Al Kut, 150 miles southeast of Baghdad, a senior U.S. official said. Less than twelve hours earlier, other F-15Es had struck a military radar site at the same municipality. Allied planes also attacked an Iraqi radar site last Friday, a surveillance center on Sunday and a command and control facility in the south and radar site in the north on Tuesday. The busy week's tally brought the number of strikes this year in the northern zone to 10 and in the southern zone to 24. They come as the Bush administration increases efforts to convince the world of the need to overthrow Saddam and Iraq wages a campaign to rally the world against such a move. But attacks and counterattacks in the no-fly zones have been going on since 1998. The number ebbs and flows, and the Pentagon says there is no particular increase now. A six-member congressional delegation expects to discuss a possible invasion of Iraq when they meet high-level Saudi officials Sunday, said Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., chairman of the Government Reform Committee. In a telephone interview from Riyadh, Burton said he favors having the United States consult with the United Nations before launching an attack, but go ahead if need be "even if the United Nations doesn't sign on." U.S. and British warplanes have been patrolling since shortly after the 1991 Gulf War to protect the Kurdish minority in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south ‹ groups that had unsuccessfully tried to revolt. Iraq considers the patrols a violation of its sovereignty and frequently shoots at them with anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles. In response, coalition pilots try to bomb Iraqi air defense systems. Though UN sanctions block Iraq from freely importing new major air defense weapons, it's steadily gotten better at confronting the allied flights, said analyst Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The pinprick response now taking place has little or no deterrent effect," he said in a recent report assessing Iraq's capabilities. Iraqis have gotten better at tracking planes by sight rather than turning on radar that will give away their positions and better at using decoys, urban cover and human shields, analysts and Pentagon officials said. And Iraq "has turned exaggerated claims about civilian casualties and collateral damage into a fine art," Cordesman said. "Iraq still has sufficient air defense assets so that it appears to 'win' every time another clash occurs, simply because of its ability to ride out the U.S.-U.K. military response and exploit new claims of collateral damage and civilian casualties." In early 2001, when Iraq's capabilities were improving too much for comfort, the allies sent two dozen attack planes in the biggest strike in two years. Though the Pentagon said it damaged Saddam's capabilities, they have said since that he has substantially rebuilt them. Pentagon officials decline to define the current state of his defenses. "The Iraqi air defense system is one of the toughest, most complex systems that we see in the world," Brig. Gen. John W. Rosa recently told a Pentagon press conference, refusing to be more specific. "They're constantly working to improve it." Still, Lapan said, it is in worse shape than it would be without the retaliatory strikes conducted an average of once a week. Witnesses said one installation hit Sunday was the main headquarters of army intelligence in southern Iraq. It held a huge military surveillance unit that monitored U.S. troops in Kuwait and other locations in the Persian Gulf. Lapan said he couldn't confirm that. The coalition targets parts of the air defense system ‹ such as radar, missile launchers, communications centers ‹ though they may be at facilities that also have other uses, he noted. Iraq's military said Sunday's strike in Basra province, 330 miles south of Baghdad, killed eight civilians and wounded nine others. The United States has said over the years that it is unable to confirm reports of casualties. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/31_08_02/art17.asp * AMERICA'S UNDECLARED WAR AGAINST IRAQ by Ed Blanche Daily Star, Lebanon, 31st August While George W. Bush mulls launching a major assault on Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein as part of his expanding "war against terrorism," US and British warplanes are regularly pounding Iraq's air-defense system, as they have been for several years as part of an undeclared war on the Baghdad regime that has lasted since the 1991 Gulf War. This slow-motion, low-intensity war, with little outside scrutiny and almost forgotten amid the unrelenting crises in the Middle East and Asia that have preoccupied the world in recent years, could well provide a cassus belli for the Bush administration as it moves toward regime change in Iraq. The US-British campaign, ostensibly to enforce "no-fly zones" over northern and southern Iraq that were declared by the Americans following the Gulf War, has intensified in recent weeks following a significant lull in Iraqi efforts to shoot down Allied aircraft in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Saddam refuses to recognize the no-fly zones - above the 36th parallel and below the 33rd - since they were imposed without specific United Nations Security Council authority. Amid the highly charged political debate surrounding US intentions toward Baghdad, the Americans have been careful not to attach any special significance to the Iraqi threats, which increased sharply in June. But remarks made at the time by British Defense Secretary Geoffrey Hoon following talks with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Brussels were quite illuminating. "We have to ensure that we can take appropriate action to deal with that threat," he said. "Certainly we both believe that Iraq will be a much better place, not only for the region and for its own people, if Saddam Hussein was no longer in Baghdad." Immediately after Sept. 11 there was quite a fall-off in the incidents over the no-fly zones. "The regime in Iraq seemed to get the message that military action would follow if they were not very, very careful. In more recent times there has been an increase in the number of attacks on aircraft. Clearly they're feeling a little more confident then they have been in the recent past and that's obviously a concern for our people." All told, the Iraqis have fired surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) or anti-aircraft guns at Allied aircraft on over 1,100 occasions since December 1998, when US and British forces conducted Operation Desert Fox, a four-day blitz of military targets with cruise missiles and air strikes following the withdrawal of UN arms inspection team from Iraq. Dozens of attack aircraft dropped more than 600 precision-guided bombs on about 100 targets, while nearly 400 cruise missiles were launched by US warships and aircraft. To be sure, the intensity of the air war over Iraq has fluctuated widely over the last few years. There have sometimes been lulls lasting two or three months in which Allied air patrols went unmolested. But in the current heated climate, Iraq's actions have to be viewed within the context of the Bush administration's clear determination to get rid of Saddam once and for all. Senior US defense officials, including some air force officers who in early 2002 recommended ending the Allied patrols, believe that enforcement of the no-fly zones, which cover two-thirds of Iraq, is now essential because the daily missions provide invaluable intelligence on Iraqi military movements and chip away at Saddam's air-defense system. That could have significant importance if, as seems likely, any US action will involve a major air assault in support of ground action. The Washington Post recently quoted on US officer in the region as saying that the patrols have provided intimate knowledge of the Iraqi military's operations, kept Saddam "in his box" and had bought extra "battle space" for the Allies. The aerial offensive, largely conducted by US forces with modest assistance from Britain's Royal Air Force, was planned as a protracted campaign of limited air action that gradually increased in scope and intensify, intended over time to contribute - in ways not altogether discernible - to Saddam's eventual downfall. The Americans say the campaign has been effective and in the sense of a large amount of ordnance delivered with considerable accuracy, that is probably true. But the relationship between that tactical success and the achievement of stated US political goals remained tenuous at best. For instance, one thing the campaign has not done is to detect where Saddam hides the weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration and its friends - Britain, in particular - allege that Baghdad continues to develop in violation of cease-fire agreements made after Iraq's defeat in 1991 and which have become the primary justification by the Bush administration for invading Iraq. Opportunities to escalate, as John F. Kennedy's national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, once famously observed, come along like streetcars. All that's required is patience. Saddam, unpredictable as he is, may yet provide the pretext for a more massive use of America's air power and high-tech arsenal against his regime. Shooting down a US aircraft - something the Iraqis have yet to achieve - could possibly be the trigger. In April, General Richard Myers, the US Air Force officer who chairs the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Iraqis had moved anti-aircraft missiles in the no-fly zones on a scale not seen in two or three years. Saddam has done this before - strengthening his air defenses in these areas, then withdrawing them - and it is not clear whether his latest moves are more sinister then previous deployments. But he appears to have improved his air defenses, which despite heavy losses during the Gulf War comprise an estimated 500 Soviet-era SAM launchers, some 2,000 anti-aircraft guns and possibly as many as 225 combat aircraft. The jets' operational capabilities are considered to have been seriously degraded because of UN sanctions. "The pattern appears to be that he challenges for a while. We whack him day after day in response, then he pulls back and goes down for a period and does nothing," one US official commented. "And then he comes back up and presents a new series of challenges." Since mid-April, the challenges have increased again, prompting renewed Allied air strikes after a two-month lull. According to the US Central Command, as of Aug. 25, there had been "more than 120 separate incidents of Iraqi surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery fire directed against coalition aircraft." So far this year, US and British aircraft based in Turkey and the Gulf have carried out 30 strikes against Iraq's air defenses. In the main, these have been command and control centers, missile radar installations and the like. However, according to Iraqi opposition sources, on Sunday Allied warplanes destroyed a key Iraqi intelligence and surveillance facility at Ashar, south of Basra, that monitors US military movements in the Gulf, particularly in Kuwait, a likely springboard for any US assault on Saddam. The Americans said the raids knocked out two Iraqi radar systems near Basra, the main city in southern Iraq and the military command center for the region, "in response to recent hostile Iraqi acts against coalition aircraft." Indeed, the Central Command said on Tuesday that 10 radar installations had been hit so far this year, effectively blinding much of Saddam's air-defense system. If the opposition reports are correct, this would indicate that the Americans, even within expanded rules of engagement that were introduced a couple of years ago that allow attacks on facilities other than those that challenge Allied air patrols, are now possibly picking off Iraqi installations that might detect a US military buildup in Kuwait and elsewhere. Diplomats in Baghdad report that there has been a sharp increase in the number of Allied sorties over southern Iraq since June. "They've multiplied by two or three times compared to previous months," one said. Allied aircraft have flown some 300,000 sorties over the last decade or so. That total includes support missions for the strike jets such as radar jamming, mid-air refueling and electronic surveillance. Saddam has posted a $5,000 reward to any unit that brings down an Allied aircraft. But so far, no warplane has yet been shot down, although the Iraqis claim to have shot down a couple of slow-moving unmanned surveillance aircraft in the last year. The US has admitted losing the aircraft but says they may have crashed because of technical failures. Still, loss no doubt provided at least a moral victory for the Iraqis in their lopsided battle with the technically superior Western forces. In one of its frequent shifts in tactics, the Iraqis fired a missile - probably a modified Soviet-era SA-2 or SA-3 - at a US spy plane flying at an altitude of 21,000 meters in July 2001. The warhead exploded some distance from the jet, concussing the pilot but failing to bring the aircraft down. Iraq claims that the Allies have expended more than 66,000 bombs or missiles since 1991, killing some 1,500 people and wounding as many more. The Americans won't quantify their ordnance use but say that the operations have severely disabled Saddam's air-defense system. In February 1999, the Pentagon claimed that 20-25 percent of Iraq's SAM systems had been destroyed. But the Iraqis keep repairing it and Rumsfeld acknowledged a year ago that they had "quantitatively and qualitatively improved" their air defenses, primarily by installing Chinese-supplied fiber-optic underground cables. These carry high-volume, high-speed data transmissions from early warning radars to the command posts that fire surface-to-air missiles at Allied aircraft, enhancing the system's capabilities. These cables are extremely difficult to target from the air, but on Feb. 16, 2001, in response to a step-up in Saddam's challenges following Bush's election and the installation of the fiber-optic cables, the Allies unleashed a series of air strikes around Baghdad - outside the southern no-fly zone - with 24 bombers hitting five command centers around the city. Within a few months, Rumsfeld admitted that the Iraqis had relaid the fiber-optic links. A further series of coordinated raids in the southern zone involving 50 US and British aircraft was mounted on Aug. 10, 2001. But the Iraqis have shown no sign of withdrawing their anti-aircraft units from the exclusion zones and there are indications that Saddam has managed to improve his air-defense system yet again, using some of the $6 billion the US General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has estimated that Baghdad gained from oil-smuggling and other sanctions-busting operations between 1997 and 2001. NEW WORLD ORDER http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c =StoryFT&cid=1028186162657&p=1012571727159 * BRITAIN TO BACK US ON WAR CRIMES COURT by Judy Dempsey in Elsinor, Denmark Financial Times, 30th August Britain will on Saturday become the first European Union country to support US attempts to forge bilateral accords over the new international criminal court. The British decision, to support US efforts to exempt American citizens from being handed over to the ICC, will deepen divisions among the 15 member states when EU foreign ministers meet today in the Danish seaside resort of Elsinor. Their talks will focus on the ICC, Iraq and the Middle East. The ministers will aim to get a sense of the difficulties in forging a united stance on all three issues. But European diplomats said the longer the EU delayed adopting a united stance over Washington's use of bilateral accords, the more likely it would be that the Bush administration would use the delays to press ahead with signing up countries. So far, of the 139 signatories to the ICC, Israel, Romania, East Timor and Tajikistan have signed bilateral agreements with the US, with several Nato candidate countries coming under pressure to do so. Diplomats said the prospect of any early consensus on either the ICC or Iraq looked bleak, with Britain and Germany taking strong, opposing views over both issues. Britain said it believed Washington's use of article 98(2) of the ICC's Rome Treaty was "not incompatible" with the statutes. The US is using this article to justify far-reaching exemptions that in practice would mean no American would be handed to the ICC. But Germany, France and Austria said their own legal experts disagreed with that view, going so far as to strongly support a recent legal opinion by the European Commission. The Commission argued that any ICC signatory that signed a bilateral accord with Washington was violating the treaty. Berlin, Paris and Vienna appear adamant that the bilateral agreements proposed by the US are not compatible with the ICC's statutes. Indeed, diplomats said it was difficult to see any room for compromise in accommodating Washington's new offensive against the ICC. But Denmark, which holds the EU's rotating presidency and whose right-wing government is anxious to head off another transatlantic rift, said it would seek a compromise "so as to ensure the effective establishment of the court". Several countries believe enough compromises have already been made. "We went very far in July by giving the US immunity from ICC prosecution for a year. How much more can we compromise?" said an EU diplomat. In July, the Bush administration had threatened at the United Nations to withdraw from all peacekeeping operations if it did not receive assurances that its personnel serving abroad would not be handed over by any ICC signatory to the court. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/31_08_02/art15.asp * US IMMIGRATION ASSURANCES END IRAQIS' PROTEST by Cilina Nasser Daily Star, Lebanon, 31st August Protesting Iraqi refugees ended a five-day hunger strike Friday after the US Embassy promised to expedite their immigration to the United States. "I am instilled with hope again," Hussein al-Taii, one of two refugees who met with US Ambassador Vincent Battle Friday at the embassy in Awkar, said in a telephone interview. Battle explained to Taii and fellow refugee Jassem al-Saad that "Sept. 11 has had an impact on all aspects of immigration, including refugee processing," a statement issued by the embassy said. The protesting refugees, who began a sit-in last week that transformed into a hunger strike on Monday, objected to their unresolved status, as they had received documents in the past from the UN High Commission for Refugees stating that the United States had accepted their resettlement. Battle told the two refugees, who were accompanied by UNHCR regional representative Mustafa Djemali, that "the United States was working to expedite the travel of refugees, and to determine how best to improve and streamline new procedures," said the statement. The ambassador added that because of new procedural requirements, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), a federal agency within the US Department of Justice that administers the nation's immigration laws, was currently examining the cases of previously approved refugee applicants in Lebanon. It was unclear if that meant that approved applicants could still be rejected. Battle, the statement said, "hoped those cases would be resolved in the coming weeks" and "expressed regret over the slow pace of refugee arrivals in the United States." The slow pace of the refugees' departure - whose exact number could not be determined but is believed be around 400 - to the United States and the Lebanese authorities' reluctance to acknowledge their refugee status as granted by the UNHCR has endangered the lives of some of the stranded. One such example is an Iraqi who received a document from the INS in April 2001, stating that "the immigration officer has determined that (his) case is tentatively approved pending post-interview procedures." But the 28-year-old Iraqi, who requested anonymity, had a car accident the following month and was admitted to hospital. The Lebanese police there arrested him after his recovery and transferred him to Roumieh Prison despite his pleas that he was a recognized refugee and despite the document he carried proving he was accepted for resettlement in the United States. He was supposed to travel on Sept. 4, 2001, but was never released. "Those following up my case should have coordinated with the Lebanese authorities to let me go," he told The Daily Star earlier this week, while he was staging a hunger strike at the UNHCR courtyard. In December 2001, the Lebanese authorities deported him, along with some 300 other refugees, to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he said. Buses carried them to the Syrian-Iraqi border, where they had to use motorboats to cross a river and arrive at Fish Khabur on the eastern bank of the Tigris River. Fish Khabur is under the control of Mustafa Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and the area is the KDP's only connection to Syria. Kurdish police and security officers, who are better known as Assayish, allowed the entry of some 50 Iraqi Kurds but said they could not absorb the large number of the other Iraqis, the young man said. The refugee recounted how he and his colleagues were forced into boats near the Saddam Dam area, which is about 30 kilometers northwest of Mosul. These boats had to cross the Tigris River to take them from the Kurdish-controlled Dahuk Governorate to Mosul, which is under the control of the Iraqi government. "I was in a small and slow boat with another six people, while other, bigger, boats carried 25 to 30," he said. After pleading with the boat's helmsman by saying that they would be executed, the refugees had to bribe him with all the money in their possession - more than $100 - in order to have him drop them in a safe area, but one which they could not recognize. They walked north for hours, hoping to reach the Kurdish-controlled territories. "Then the Kurdish police opened fire on us and I was shot in my leg," he said. "They thought we were militants trying to infiltrate their territory," he explained, adding that they allowed them in when they realized they were civilians. "I stayed in the hospital for four months but lost contact with the other six who were with me until then." The forced deportee then met with a UN representative, who gave him a card allowing him to move freely in the Kurdish-controlled territories, but it was only temporary. He called his friends in Lebanon and asked them to send him money so that he could pay smugglers to bring him back here. He returned last month. "I am not attached to the United States," he said. "I just want a solution. I can live in any country that would accept my resettlement." To avoid such life threatening circumstances, the refugees, who took part in the 10-day protest here, demanded in a statement earlier this week that the cards granted to refugees by the UNHCR be considered in "an official and legal capacity that is acknowledged by the (Lebanese) state." They also demanded the UNHCR "expedite the acceptance of applications submitted by the Iraqis Š and to reconsider previously rejected files, especially as there is no other choice for refugees except to be recognized by the UNHCR." The protesters also demanded that the UNHCR "expedite the submission of travel files to the states offering resettlement, allowing equal opportunities and without demonstrating preferences." http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=328998 * RECORD NUMBER OF REFUGEES REMOVED by Ian Burrell Home Affairs Correspondent Independent, 31st August Immigration officials have stepped up the removal of asylum-seekers to record levels but the number of people applying for refugee status in Britain continues to rise, according to government figures released yesterday. The Home Office said 3,120 people were removed from Britain in the second quarter of this year after lodging failed asylum claims, prompting fears from refugee support groups that the lives of some deportees were at risk. The number of removals is well short of the 30,000 a year promised by the Government, and the Immigration minister, Beverley Hughes, admitted yesterday that the target had been abandoned. The number of asylum-seekers coming to Britain between April and June rose to 20,400, an increase of 28 per cent on the same period last year and 4 per cent more than the number of applications for the previous three months. The increase was linked to a surge in applications from Iraq and the Czech Republic. Ms Hughes said that most claimants from the eastern European country were "found to be unfounded". But the Refugee Council said more than 50 per cent of total asylum-applicants were being allowed to stay in Britain. It noted that 43 per cent were accepted on first decision and that one quarter of applicants who appealed against refusal were also ultimately allowed to remain. The council's chief executive, Nick Hardwick, said: "You only need look at the top four nationalities Iraq, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Somalia of those seeking asylum in the last quarter to see that this increase proves that the majority of asylum-seekers are fleeing for their lives from harsh and oppressive regimes." IRAQI OPPOSITION http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-392646,00.html * IRAQI EXILES RECRUIT REBEL FORCE IN LONDON by Richard Beeston The Times, 24th August Exiled Iraqi generals launched a major recruiting drive yesterday to sign up volunteers to fight President Saddam Hussein, using London as the operations centre. In a move that could embarrass the Government as it tries to play down the prospects of a war against Baghdad, the Iraqi Military Council predicted that it would attract thousands to its cause. The group, led by 15 senior Iraqi dissident officers, will screen volunteers, then begin training those chosen. It hopes to form a force capable of serving alongside American forces in any campaign to overthrow Saddam. In an advertisement in yesterday's Arabic weekly al-Mutamar, a London-based Iraqi opposition newspaper, the group gave names and contact numbers for those seeking to join the rebels. Recruiting officers were listed in America, Australia and Scandinavia, but the main centre is London, which will be the clearing house for the majority of Iraqis living in the Middle East. The advertisement published an e-mail address, a fax number and telephone and mobile numbers. Major-General Tawfiq al-Yassiri, who formed the organisation after a meeting last month in London of scores of former senior officers, said his group had been inundated with messages of support from Iraqis. An effective Iraqi rebel force could be crucial to the success of any US-led campaign. General al-Yassiri, who was wounded in 1991 when he led a mutiny against Saddam, said that 1,580 Iraqi officers had defected from the Armed Forces, but still commanded loyalty in their old units. He said that as many as 200,000 Iraqis might join his ranks. "Iraqi troops will defect more easily if they are approached by their former comrades," he said. He has recently visited Iraq's neighbours and said that some countries were willing to allow the group to infiltrate fighters. Thousands of Kurdish guerrillas already operate inside northern Iraq and several thousand Shia Muslim fighters are in camps inside Iran. There has been speculation that, in the event of a US-led military operation, Iraqi rebel forces could operate from Turkey in the north and Kuwait in the south. General al-Yassiri said that he and other council members hoped to meet Pentagon officials to discuss military training and co-operation after the success of talks earlier this month between the Bush Administration and the six main Iraqi opposition groups. However, the increasingly military nature of the Iraqi opposition movement in London may cause alarm in Whitehall, just when Britain is trying to dampen speculation of a war against Baghdad. [.....] The Foreign Office said yesterday that it was unaware of the Iraqi Military Council's recruitment drive. A spokesman added that it would be up to the police to decide whether exiled Iraqis plotting to overthrow the regime were breaking British law. http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-asia/2002/aug/24/082407418.html * SUSPECTS HELD IN IRAQ [BERLIN] EMBASSY GRAB Las Vegas Sun, Associated Press, 24th August BERLIN: German police said Saturday they have detained two men suspected of links to five Iraqis who occupied their country's embassy in Berlin and took its two top diplomats there hostage. Hamburg police said they took both men into custody in the city Friday, but refused to give details. One suspect, an Iraqi businessman who has lived in Hamburg for 25 years, is thought to have sent faxes to news organizations during Tuesday's standoff claiming responsibility in the name of the Democratic Iraqi Opposition of Germany, the newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported. He also called police from his mobile phone to inform them of the hostage-taking, Der Spiegel said. In the faxes, the previously unknown dissident group said it sought the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "The idea was ours," Der Spiegel magazine quoted the businessman as saying, identifying him only as Abu Quasi A. The other suspect was detained in Hamburg after investigators found that four of the accused hostage-takers named him as a reference during interviews with German authorities on their asylum applications, the newspaper Die Welt reported. Police commandos stormed the embassy in a western Berlin neighborhood after a five-hour standoff Tuesday, freeing Iraq's acting ambassador, Shamil Mohammed, and his designated successor, Muaead Hussain. The two men were bound with tape and held at gunpoint by the assailants, who were armed with a loaded pistol, two tear gas guns, a hatchet and a stun gun. An Iraqi man and his German wife who had been at the embassy also were taken captive but almost immediately released, suffering from the effects of the tear gas. Five Iraqis were taken into custody. They had all applied for asylum over the past two years and were living at a hostel for asylum seekers outside Berlin. Four of the refugees told their interviewers they had been "suppressed" and briefly arrested in Iraq, though they also claimed to have relatives "in high positions" in Iraq, Die Welt reported, quoting from the asylum office's files. The Iraqis said they had been urged to flee abroad by "their organization, 'Enemies of Saddam,'" the report said. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/25/1030053011170.html * EXILES RECRUITED AS US STEPS UP WAR OF WORDS Sydney Morning Herald (from Los Angeles Times), 26th August Washington: The Bush Administration has drawn up plans to escalate the war of words against Iraq, with new campaigns to step up pressure on Baghdad and rally world opinion behind the United States drive to oust President Saddam Hussein. This week the State Department will begin mobilising Iraqis in North America, Europe and the Arab world, training them to appear on talk shows, write newspaper opinion pieces and give speeches on reasons to end Saddam's rule. "We're going to put them on the front line of winning the public hearts and minds," a State Department official said. "It's one thing for an American to get up and talk about regime change in Iraq; it's quite another thing when Iraqis do it." In contrast to other Middle Eastern groups, Iraqi exiles have not mobilised in most communities where they have settled, that is of increasingconcern to the US, which often appears to be going it alone with little support from the estimated 300,000 Iraqis in the US or the 4 million exiles worldwide. "Iraqi Americans have been invisible, which is a product of Saddam's oppression," said Azam al Wash, a geologist from Long Beach, California, who left Iraq in 1978 and who has been invited to training sessions starting tomorrow in Washington. "Iraqis have feared speaking out because of the harassment and intimidation of family and relatives back home." State Department officials said that after Labour Day, next Monday, they planned to be more visible in explaining US objectives in Iraq in public appearances and overseas media. "A decision was made this week by the Iraq public diplomacy group to do more," said one administration official, referring to a group that includes senior officials from the State Department, the Pentagon and the National Security Council. "There's a feeling that it's time to start moving the rhetoric forward." Muhannad Eshaiker, an Iraqi exile who will take part in the State Department's training, said: "We want to introduce new arguments in the media: Is Saddam a legitimate president? Do Iraqi people have the right to gain their freedom? Why isn't the opposition operating freely inside Iraq? And why can't the Iraqi people, for example, assemble and conduct public rallies inside Iraq if they're not happy with what the Government does? These are the questions that should determine what the United States does." The program would teach Iraqis how to "become shapers of public opinion" to counter Saddam's "propaganda machine", the State Department official said. http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020831-4276344.htm * IRAQI OPPOSITION WANTS U.S. PROTECTION by Eli J. Lake Washington Times (from UPI), 31st August Key Iraqi opposition leaders said yesterday they want to hold a conference in Iraq, protected by U.S. jets, to prove to the Iraqi people that the group is serious about toppling Saddam Hussein. "There is a preference to do this conference on Iraqi soil if certain security conditions are satisfied," Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, the official spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, told United Press International. Such a meeting would most likely be held in Northern Iraq, an area controlled by ethnic Kurds and protected by a U.S. no-fly zone. The leadership of the Kurdish parties within the Iraqi opposition will not agree to such a conference until and unless the United States guarantees the safety of the participants, other opposition officials said. In the past, Iraqi opposition figures have hinted that such a conference would be the ideal forum to announce an Iraqi government in exile. "I want the conference to be somewhere in Northern Iraq because this sends a clear signal to the people of Iraq under Saddam," author and prominent Iraqi exile Kanan Makiya said in an interview. Mr. Makiya will be participating next week in a State Department-sponsored conference in London on building democratic institutions for a post-Saddam administration in Baghdad. Mr. Makiya said a transition political document will emerge at the London conference and he hopes it will lay the foundation for forming a government in exile when the opposition hosts its conference at a later date. "Symbolically, a conference on Iraqi soil is very important because we plan to make crucial and historic decisions there on exactly what kind of transition we seek for Iraq," he said. The idea to host the conference inside territory controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan was broached earlier this month at a meeting of opposition leaders in Washington. No U.S. officials were present at the meeting. According to sources familiar with the discussions, some participants proposed hosting the conference just north of the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah, which is located beneath the no-fly zone patrolled by U.S. and British fighter jets. Another opposition leader, Mudhar Shawkat, said he had personally raised the proposal with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ryan Crocker. "I told him many in the opposition want to host this conference on Iraqi soil," Mr. Shawkat said. Mr. Crocker, according a State Department official, did not respond at the time. The groups that favor a conference in Iraq include the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the major Kurdish parties; the Iraqi National Accord, a CIA-funded opposition group; the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an Iran-supported organization; the Constitutional Monarchy Movement; and the Iraqi National Congress, the U.S.-funded umbrella group that has included all five of the groups in the past. One senior Kurdish official said his leadership would need the firmest security guarantees before agreeing to such a conference. "Most of the Iraqi opposition groups are willing to have this conference in a free Iraq," this official said. "But understandably for them to be able to host this, they need the firmest security guarantees possible from the United States." Opposition leaders fear Saddam will try to kill them all if they choose to meet in Iraq. UK OPINION http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,780386,00.html * HAWKS IN THE DOVECOTE by Christopher Hitchens The Observer, 25th August It's important to beware of arguments that depend upon the mantra 'the enemy of my enemy', and it's likewise important to be immune to charges of keeping bad company. In the days of Vorster and Botha I didn't mind in the least working with Stalinists in the anti-apartheid movement (anyway, it's better to have them where you can see them), and when it came to helping imprisoned dissenters in Czechoslovakia I couldn't care less that Roger Scruton thought it was a good cause as well. If you pay too much attention to the shortcomings of your allies, or if you worry about being lumped together with dubious or unpopular types, you are in effect having your thinking done for you. I must say, however, that Henry Kissinger has never let me down, as a person to consult before making up my own mind. Stepping lightly over his one-man rolling war-crime wave, extending from Bangladesh through Indochina to Chile and East Timor, I pause to notice that he was the man who persuaded President Ford not to invite Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the White House. He was the chief defender in the West of the right of the Chinese Communists to massacre their own students in the centre of Beijing. He made himself conspicuous on the American Right by being one of the few to argue that Slobodan Milosevic should be left alone. A week or so ago I wondered when he was going to pronounce on the impending confrontation with Iraq. And I bet right. He is against it. So is his former colleague, and partner in the dread firm of Kissinger Associates, General Brent Scowcroft. The general is known to be a ventriloquist, or rather dummy, for George Bush Senior, who is now widely reported as being in the dove-camp, or dovecote. (This incidentally demolishes one facile argument, or taunt, about George W. picking a fight with Saddam Hussein as part of some Corsican conception of family honour.) Those who don't want a 'regime change' in Iraq now include the Saudi royal family, the Turkish army, the more prominent conservative spokesmen in Congress and the Kissinger hawks. General Sharon, at least in his public pronouncements, appears to be against it as well. And somebody with a good contact among the Joint Chiefs of Staff seems to be leaking pessimistic or pacifistic material at a furious rate. Those who like to think of themselves as anti-war or anti-imperialist might wonder what there is left for them to say: all the war-loving imperialist hyenas are barking for peace at the top of their leathery old lungs. It would be knee-jerkish to conclude merely on this evidence that there might be a respectable radical case for eliminating Saddam Hussein. But it's certainly worth examining the motives of the anti-war establishment. The Saudis do not want an Americanised Iraq because it might favour the Shia Muslim majority, which in turn might favour Iran, and they also know that with Iraqi oil back on stream their own near-monopoly position - the profits of which have been used to finance bin Ladenism worldwide - would be much diminished. The Turks are hostile to the idea because it would almost inevitably extend the area of Iraqi Kurdistan that is currently ruled by its own inhabitants, who abut the restive Kurdish zone of Turkey. A sizeable chunk of the American military and business elite is peacenik as well, either because it fears damage to its polished and expensive arsenal or because it fears the disruption of Opec and the corresponding loss of business and revenue. Jordan's operetta monarchy thinks that it might fall if Iraq is attacked and - even though this collapse might give an opportunity for cleansing the West Bank in the confusion - the Israeli hard-liners are sceptical also. Shall we just say that the anti-war position is the respectable status quo one? That's interesting in itself. Who would be the beneficiaries of an intervention, always supposing it went well and Saddam's vaunted army fought no better than it did the last time? Only the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples. Well, from the Kissinger-Saudi-Turkish viewpoint, and from the vantage of the Dallas boardroom, where is the fun in that? The consequences might be - if we employ the revealing word of choice among the conservatives - 'destabilising'. I have spent a good deal of time over the past year in conversation with the Iraqi opposition factions and the Kurdish forces, who have misgivings of their own about the Bush strategy. They have been used as cannon-fodder in the past, sometimes for operations that were called off at the last minute. They are well aware that from the empire's point of view, the ideal government in Iraq is a centralised Sunni Muslim military regime, though one preferably not run by a homicidal megalomaniac. They know that the United States is perfectly capable of intervening in Iraq's internal affairs, as it did when it supported Saddam's invasion of Iran, or when it provided him with weapons and diplomatic cover during his genocide in Kurdistan in the 1980s. I have been in Halabja, the town that was annihilated with Iraqi chemical weapons, and I have read the Pentagon report that with a straight face blamed the attack on the Iranians. (Those Washington interventions did not arouse the moral ire of the usual anti-war forces.) What the Iraqi and Kurdish democrats would like is American aid for and endorsement of their own efforts to replace the regime. And what they fear is what I also fear - a heavy-handed US attack which results in an Iraqi puppet government that is designed to placate the Saudis and the Turks. That, it seems to me, is where a principled critique of the war-planning might begin. But it's depressing to see the status quo Left preferring to parrot the arguments of pacifist realpolitik. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,780700,00.html * DOING NOTHING ABOUT SADDAM IS NOT AN OPTION by David Clark The Guardian, 26th August Margaret Beckett's views may not hold much sway with the Pentagon, but her comments yesterday confirmed that August has been a very bad month for hawks, who have held the initiative in the war on terrorism since the collapse of the Taliban last year. The case for moving on to an invasion of Iraq is in danger of being lost before it has even been made. It is one thing to be abandoned by a few flaky Europeans, or even to discover that New Labour is getting cold feet. It is altogether more ominous to find domestic support dropping and senior Republicans breaking ranks to oppose the slide to war. They have no one to blame but themselves. At no point have they come close to articulating either a convincing rationale for invasion or a viable military strategy for achieving it. Suggestions that Iraq sponsored September 11 or that it poses a direct threat to the US lack credibility. Saddam Hussein is an old-fashioned practitioner of state power. The nihilism of Osama bin Laden is almost as alien to his strategic outlook as it is to ours. Saddam is undoubtedly seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction, but he will be dead of old age before Iraq acquires ballistic missiles capable of reaching the American homeland. Nor will it do to argue that Iraq should be invaded because it has a nuclear weapons programme and stands in systematic violation of international law - not at a time when Israel, also guilty on both counts, continues to enjoy American patronage. One doesn't need to accept moral equivalence to see the double standards. The military options being touted by the hawks do little more to inspire confidence in their leadership. The suggestion that Saddam could be swiftly dispatched by an expeditionary force of 60,000 airmobile troops does scant justice to the scale of the task. A regime change will involve a fight to the death. Saddam will not make the mistake he made in 1991, and the Taliban made 10 years later, of concentrating his troops on open ground, exposing them to the full force of US air power. He will seek to draw his opponents into a messy urban war in the hope of inflicting casualties at a level that would prove unacceptable to the American people. It is little wonder that senior American generals have started to voice their unease at what is being contemplated. Tony Blair would be well advised to think long and hard before putting British troops under the command of civilian ideologues whose understanding of military affairs appears to be gleaned from reading a few Tom Clancy novels. The political and military risks of a ground invasion may be disproportionate to the nature of the current threat, but there is an equally dangerous fallacy that has gained ground in recent weeks. It is the assumption, latent in much of the anti-war commentary of the British left, that the notion of an Iraqi problem is nothing more than a figment of George Bush's imagination. Many of these voices seem to regard Saddam as a sort of Middle Eastern version of Fidel Castro: an authoritarian, but essentially harmless figure, to be admired, in a sneaking sort of way, for his ability to tweak Uncle Sam's nose. This view took its most egregious form in George Galloway's recent eulogy about Saddam's supposedly Churchillian qualities. It is a travesty of the real picture. There was a time when the British left was clear about the nature of the Iraqi regime and the moral obligation to take action against it. In the aftermath of the Halabja massacre, when Saddam murdered 5,000 Kurdish civilians with mustard gas, Jeremy Corbyn MP spoke for most of us when he denounced the regime as "fascist" and demanded the imposition of comprehensive sanctions; "no trade, no aid and no deals while the present repression continues against people in Iraq". Nowadays he signs motions denouncing those very same sanctions as an act of genocide against the Iraqi people. The reason for this switch is hardly a mystery. It happened almost as soon as the Americans realised that Iraq was a threat to their interests. Many on the left delight in reminding the Americans of their complicity in Saddam's rise to power, but it is utter hypocrisy on the part of those who have done little more than mirror the cynical meanderings of western policy. Statements condemning Iraqi atrocities - a feature of every serious leftwing gathering in the days when Saddam was seen as a western stooge - are dismissed as propaganda now that they fall from the lips of White House spokesmen. But nothing has changed. Our conviction that the people of Iraq and the surrounding region were being menaced by a uniquely aggressive and brutal dictatorship didn't cease to be true just because Washington came to the same conclusion. Those disinclined to accept the word of Condoleezza Rice or Jack Straw should consult the Amnesty International website: "Victims of torture in Iraq are subjected to a wide range of forms of torture, including the gouging out of eyes. Some have been sexually abused and others have had objects, including broken bottles, forced into their anus." Nor can there be any doubts about Saddam's wider ambitions. Since the early 1970s he has pursued the same objective with a singularity of purpose: to achieve a decisive military advantage and a position of regional dominance through the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. In defiance of the Gulf war ceasefire, he has gone to extraordinary lengths to preserve residual capabilities in chemical and biological weapons, nuclear research and ballistic missiles, all of which have been detailed by a UN panel of experts. He has done so for only one reason: so that he can resume weapons production when the opportunity arises and use them to intimidate his neighbours once again. There are no easy options for dealing with the threat that Saddam represents. He can either be contained or deposed, and there are unavoidable costs in both. It scarcely matters whether the suffering of the Iraqi people has been caused by UN sanctions or deliberately orchestrated by Saddam in order to blackmail the international community into giving him a free hand. Containment has a human cost either way. Those who have argued that it is unacceptably high have a moral obligation to say which of the alternatives they prefer: to get rid of Saddam or allow him to continue unhindered. There is no shortage of strong arguments for doubting the advisability of a military adventure to change the government of Iraq, but denying that there is a problem that needs to be dealt with is not among them. The anti-war movement would be altogether more effective if it acknowledged some of these uncomfortable dilemmas and dropped the easy sloganising of the past. David Clark is a former Foreign Office special adviser http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,781650,00.html * BLAIR FACES DEFEAT ON IRAQ by Alan Travis and Nicholas Watt The Guardian, 28th August The results of the August Guardian/ICM survey published today show that a majority of Labour voters - 52% - now say that Mr Blair should not support American policy on Iraq. The findings show that far from winning the war of persuasion among the government's own voters, the credibility gap over Iraq has grown from three points to 17 points since the Guardian/ICM poll asked about military action over Iraq in March. The change in public opinion is likely to fuel defeats over the government's support for an attack on Iraq at both the TUC congress in a fortnight's time and at the Labour party conference next month, leaving Mr Blair facing one of the most difficult political eruptions within Labour since he came to power in 1997. In March the issue was much more finely balanced with 46% of Labour voters against military action and 43% in favour. Now opinion has hardened with opposition among Labour supporters rising to 52% and support dropping eight points to 35%. [.....] The ICM poll shows that among all voters a clear majority - 52% - say that Mr Bush's policy towards Iraq is on the wrong lines and the same proportion - 52% - say that Tony Blair should not support American policy on Iraq. The finding is all the more stark in that a year ago in the wake of the September 11 attacks more than 76% of British voters told ICM that they thought the US president was doing a good job. Only one in five voters - 21% - say that they believe both that Mr Bush's Iraqi policy is right and Mr Blair should support him. Only 4% say the Americans are wrong but should be supported anyway. Among Conservative voters disapproval is almost as strong with nearly half - 49% - saying that Mr Bush is "on the wrong lines" when it comes to Iraq. Only a third of Tory voters support an attack on Iraq, which may explain why party grandees such as Lord Hurd and John Gummer have started to express opposition. Liberal Democrat voters are the most hostile, with 66% opposed to American policy. The Liberal Democrats are the only party which continues to make progress in the polls. This month's voting intentions put Labour on 41% (down one); the Conservatives on 32% (down one); Liberal Democrats 21% (up one) and others on six (up two). Labour's lead remains at nine points with Iain Duncan Smith going into the party conference season with the Tory share of the vote unchanged at 32% since last year's general election. · ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,003 adults over 18 by telephone between August 23-25, 2002. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/020828/4/d8etr.html * UK COULD PUSH FOR SADDAM INSPECTIONS DEADLINE, STRAW Yahoo.com, 29th August The Foreign Secretary says Britain may push for a deadline to be imposed on Saddam Hussein to re-admit UN weapons inspectors. Jack Straw says Ministers are prepared to consider a call by the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee to propose a deadline. The suggestion comes as British officials have sought to play down suggestions of a rift with the US over military action against Iraq. Hawks in the Washington administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, have been pressing the call for action to topple Saddam Hussein before he can acquire nuclear weapons. Britain, in contrast, has argued that the threat of military action could be lifted if the weapons inspectors were allowed back in. Mr Straw, in his official response to the Foreign Affairs Committee's report on the war against terrorism, also emphasises the need to tackle Iraq's arsenal of chemical and biological. He acknowledges that Iraq will be a "better place" without its leader but stopped short of advocating a policy of "regime change" in Baghdad. He stated: "The Government's policy is to secure full implementation of the Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq. "It is also the Government's view that Iraq would be a better place without Saddam Hussein. "As the Prime Minister has made clear, we are determined to deal with the threat posed by Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction." http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=955712002 * FORMER MINISTERS BACK DALYELL ON IRAQ The Scotsman, 28th August TWO former government ministers today joined Linlithgow MP Tam Dalyell in warning Tony Blair of a massive row at the Labour Conference over US plans to attack Iraq. Tony Lloyd and Doug Henderson, both former foreign office ministers, said the case for military action to topple Saddam Hussein had not even begun to be made. They spoke out as a new poll indicated that more than half Labour party supporters oppose war against Iraq. Linlithgow MP Mr Dalyell predicted a "volcanic row" on the issue when Labour meets in Blackpool next month and demanded the recall of the Westminster parliament if there was to be any action against the Baghdad regime. [.....] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-398505,00.html * OPINION: I BELIEVE THAT OUR PIVOTAL MOMENT HAS NOW COME by Charles Kennedy The Times, 30th August On any sane, rational, basis the regime of President Saddam Hussein is as despicable as it is despotic. We all agree that the events of September 11 sent the worst shock tremors through all of us who live in hope of a decently ordered world. But, so far, no concrete evidence has been produced linking him to that terrible event. Yet we are steadily drifting towards a process where British troops may be engaged in military action to bring about his downfall. How? Why? The emotional arguments are persuasive. Is Saddam a thoroughly bad person? Undoubtedly. Would the world be a better, safer, place if his baleful presence was removed from the calculation? Yes. But does that give George W. Bush or Tony Blair the right under international law to effect regime-change in Iraq? Without something definitive which shows that Saddam was connected to September 11, or which shows that he poses an immediate threat to the security and safety of our allies or ourselves, I find it increasingly hard to countenance a pre-emptive strike against Baghdad. Let's consider the impact such action would have from a regional perspective. There is no doubt that Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere have been radicalised by current US policy towards Saddam. Nearly every country in the region has given warnings of the destabilising consequences of an attack on Iraq. Advocates of military action must make the case that intervention would increase regional and global security, not erode it. Would the Kurds in the north of Iraq use change in Baghdad as an opportunity to declare an independent Kurdistan? In the present political climate in Turkey, how would Ankara react? Would Iran stand quietly by? Would a dismembered Iraq add to or subtract from stability? No one advocating the invasion of Iraq has yet shown how bombing or an invasion would achieve a better state of peace in the region. Yet if there is to be military action against Saddam and we in Britain are going to be involved, we must first have some credible answers. Then there is the so-called Western perspective. Just imagine if our country had experienced the trauma of September 11. We have experienced terrorism, of course, but not on that scale of barbarism. In such circumstances, there would be a widespread insistence that the government of the day should act; and any government, given such public concern, would have to respond. But it would have to do so in a measured, considered fashion within the bounds of international law. Those, surely, must be the parameters for the Blair Government in dealing with the current situation. Which returns us to first principles. The present Iraqi regime is horrifying; the Iraqi people are not. I shared a student flat with an Iraqi who was studying engineering at Glasgow University. More than 20 years ago he would tell me of his fear of saying anything critical about his country. One wonders what has become of him today. Do you bomb good people like that? Since the end of the Gulf War we have followed a strategy of containment and deterrence. To alter that in favour of military action requires compelling evidence that our objectives in the region would be better served by a change of policy. Saddam is not a direct threat to our immediate national security, but as a permanent member of the UN, Britain does have an obligation to enforce resolutions when requested to do so by the Security Council. Britain has a duty to ensure that the role of the Security Council in international peace is not undermined. We need the evidence, and we need it under UN auspices. The first priority must be to get the weapons inspectors back into Iraq. As a Liberal Democrat I subscribe to the internationalist approach, however difficult an ideal it is to achieve. That means action in Iraq must be grounded in international law. On March 24, Jack Straw was asked on Breakfast with Frost whether under existing UN resolutions we had "a mandate to invade Iraq". He responded by saying: "We don't have a mandate to invade Iraq now, no." If action in Iraq is deemed necessary for the defence of international security, the UN, as the mandated guardian of global peace and security, must be consulted in the appropriate way. However, the Government must also consider the role of Parliament. I happen not to be one of those who subscribe to the view that parliamentary democracy as we know it is finished. The words of that distinguished lobby correspondent, Norman Shrapnel, speak volumes here ‹ "too much silence is far more ominous than too much noise". The opportunity for the Commons to debate and decide on any course of action against Saddam ‹- subject to the security of British forces ‹ must not be bypassed. Last July I asked Tony Blair at Prime Minister's Questions to confirm that any further commitment of British forces in Iraq should be subject to an affirmative and supportive vote in the Commons. The Prime Minister did not accept this. It is axiomatic that military action should never be undertaken without clear political objectives that are achievable. The current sanctions policy and no-fly zones are designed to contain the Iraqi regime and limit its ability to develop weapons, threaten its neighbours, or destabilise the region. We need clear and compelling evidence that these objectives are no longer being achieved, or that the Iraqi regime is disrupting attempts to gather such evidence That case is not yet proven. Since September 11 much has been made of Britain's role as a "pivotal power" with the ability to act as a restraint on the United States. Unwavering loyalty has brought much criticism and little public achievement. I would argue that Britain's pivotal moment has come. http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=5135186 * BLAIR COULD LOSE LEADERSHIP OVER IRAQ - HEALEY by John Deane, Chief Political Correspondent, PA News Scotsman, 30th August Supporting an American attack on Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the face of fierce opposition in Britain could cost Tony Blair the leadership of the Labour Party, Lord Healey warned tonight. Lord Healey, a former deputy leader of the Labour Party, added to the pressure over Iraq being directed at the Prime Minister by predicting that backing US President George Bush in an attack on Baghdad could be so unpopular with the party and the public that Mr Blair might not survive. "I don't think he could survive overwhelming public and party opposition to British support for an American attack. And I think if we didn't support an attack it is very unlikely Bush would carry it out," Lord Healey told BBC 2's Newsnight. Lord Healey was not alone in urging caution on Mr Blair. Michael Cashman, the former Eastenders actor who is now a Labour MEP, told the programme that Mr Blair would split the party by backing an attack. Mr Cashman said: "If there is military action I believe it will be cataclysmic for the Government, cataclysmic for the party and cataclysmic for the country. It will split us right down the middle." _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk