The following is an archived copy of a message sent to a Discussion List run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
Views expressed in this archived message are those of the author, not of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
[Main archive index/search] [List information] [Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq Homepage]
News, 09-16/04/03 (7) IRAQI COLLABORATION * Thanks, but it's now up to us: waiting exiles * Exiles held after London embassy stormed and Saddam portraits destroyed * Iraq's Man Who Would Be King: Recalling Ahmed Chalabi * INC leader not to attend opposition meeting * Stifling Democracy State stacks an important Iraq meeting with opponents of the INC * Gadget jumps language barrier * Chalabi Says He Won't Take Political Role * Shia group to boycott US-sponsored meeting * Iraqi Politician Chalabi Returns to Baghdad * Democracy stirs in Abraham's shadow THEIR MASTERS' VOICE * Blair and Bush broadcast: full text * US moves 21,000lb superbomb to Gulf * Bush-Blair speeches fail to reach Iraqis IRAQI COLLABORATION http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/09/1049567743013.html * THANKS, BUT IT'S NOW UP TO US: WAITING EXILES by Peter Fray Sydney Morning Herald, 9th April Three weeks have proved an aeon in the age of modern warfare - and for regime change - but for Iraq's exiled opposition parties it is not long enough to forget who their true friends are. Debate about the United Nations' postwar role is largely ignoring the fact that many of the leading Iraqis who will soon take control of their country do not want the UN to run the show or even play a "vital role", as the US President, George Bush, and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, have put it. What is important for the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the umbrella group for Iraq's exiled opposition, is not whether the French and the Germans gain a warm feeling - and some cold comfort legitimacy for opposing the war - by having the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan waltz around Baghdad in a few weeks' time. What they want is an end to the war, the restoration of law and order and an interim authority that leads to government of Iraq by Iraqis as soon as politically possible. Coalition forces are delivering the first two wishes faster than many thought possible, and moving quickly to establish the mechanism for an interim authority under retired US Army general Jay Garner. Where, then, does the UN fit in? Delivering the humanitarian aid, but possibly not much more. For the Iraqi opposition, freedom from Saddam Hussein has been achieved despite the UN, not because of it. Having failed to endorse the war, why should the UN expect to organise the peace, they argue. "I don't want an executive power for the UN," said Latif Rashid, an executive member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a key opposition group. "Our experience with the UN hasn't been positive." An INC leader, Riyad Al Yawer, said that in the lead-up to the war the UN had "lost the spirit". It had blown the opportunity to play its role in overthrowing Saddam, and proved how irrelevant it had become as a force for geopolitical change. Once law and order were restored by the coalition, Mr Al Yawer asked, why did the Iraqi people need the UN to give it lessons to run a country? "The UN is not that great an organisation to play a political role." Most Iraqi opposition parties accept much needs to be done to deliver workable government, but say that Iraq is neither a failed or a new state. It is not a Kosovo or an Afghanistan; there is an educated middle class able to manage the country and an existing infrastructure to be managed, depending on the extent of the war damage. The Iraqis are grateful to coalition forces for inevitably ridding them of Saddam, but also do not want them to stay there once the job is over. "Without American help we could not have got rid of the regime," Mr Al Yawer said. "But we hope that the reparation period will be as short as possible." Exactly how the US intends to move from restoring law and order to establishing an interim authority, then delivering free elections remains unclear. The Iraqi opposition, which is due to meet in Nasiriyah on Saturday, wants to gain effective local control of the interim authority as soon as possible, but the US will want to a huge say in the future shape of Iraq. As for the UN, it might well be left whistling Dixie. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,933355,00.html * EXILES HELD AFTER LONDON EMBASSY STORMED AND SADDAM PORTRAITS DESTROYED by Jeevan Vasagar The Guardian, 10th April Iraqi exiles in London yesterday stormed the building that had in effect been Iraq's embassy in the UK in recent years and ripped down portraits of Saddam Hussein. More than 20 protesters smashed glass panels in the main doors to break into the Iraqi section of the Jordanian embassy - the last visible symbol of Saddam in Britain since diplomatic ties were severed in 1991. They raced through the empty building hunting down and destroying portraits of the dictator. A poster-sized black and white photo of Saddam with his eyes torn out hung in the front window last night. Police sealed off the building and arrested 24 protesters on suspicion of causing criminal damage. "We came here to express our feelings," said Moula Hamed, 27, a student, who escaped arrest. "This is the day we have been waiting for." Diplomatic ties were broken at the start of the last Gulf war. An Iraqi government representative had been working from the Jordanian embassy until he was expelled at the end of last month. Across Britain, other Iraqi expatriates were celebrating peacefully yesterday. In Zara Mohammad's south London flat the phone rang for the fourth time in an hour, and she switched from English to quick, joyous Arabic as she answered it. She kept repeating one phrase: "al-Hamdullilah, al-Hamdullilah [praise God, praise God]". Mrs Mohammad, 44, a Kurd and Shia Muslim, plans to return to Iraq to search for her four brothers who were jailed by Saddam. The youngest, Zohair, was barely 14. She said: "I will go back to investigate if they are still alive or not." Her husband Salah added: "Even if they survived, their lives have been ruined, "Now people will want revenge." His wife agreed: "I think there is going to be more blood in Iraq." Another exile, medical student Sama Hadad, 22, said: "I am very, very happy. I never thought I'd see the day. I'm going back to see my family for the first time and to help in any way I can, helping with humanitarian aid. "I want to help rebuild the health care system, because it will be non-existent." Not all Iraqi exiles were celebrating. Many Iraqis have marched against the war, and one exile, Ghada Razuki, 40, is a key organiser with the Stop the War coalition. "I am particularly upset that they bombed my country. What I would say to the Iraqi exiles, who are joyful that Iraqi people have been killed, is this: if they think that Iraq when it is occupied by George Bush and Tony Blair is going to be a fantastic place, they only have to look at the histories of places that have been occupied," she said. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0315/fahim.php * IRAQ'S MAN WHO WOULD BE KING: RECALLING AHMED CHALABI by Kareem Fahim Village Voice, 9th - 15th April [.....] ' ... it is precisely this business experience, and Chalabi's indictment in 1992 for embezzlement and fraud (among other charges), that worry many in the Jordanian financial community who have had dealings with him. The details of this story are of, course, in dispute, with Chalabi saying charges brought against him in the wake of his Petra Bank's collapse in 1989 were "political," and were due in part to his opposition to Saddam Hussein, who Chalabi says put pressure on Jordan's King Hussein to close Petra Bank and indict him and his associates. But Jordanians willing to talk about the scandal, like Mohammed Said Nabulsi, who, as former head of Jordan's Central Bank, had to clean up Chalabi's financial mess, say it was a mess purely of Chalabi's making. At best, these men say, he was grossly negligent, at a tremendous cost not only to the Jordanian economy, but to thousands of shareholders in Petra Bank, and at worst, in the words of Nabulsi, he "was a crook who absolutely cooked the books to hide his crimes." A spokesman for Chalabi could not be reached by press time. "I knew Chalabi socially, and usually saw him at some third person's dinner parties," says Jordan's former deputy prime minister, Jawad Al-Anani. Al-Anani frequently refers to Chalabi as a kind of genius, a man who would pepper political dinner talk with discussions of mathematical principles. In a phone interview with the Voice, Al-Anani's recollections of the scandal fall somewhere between the strong opinions held by Chalabi's enemies and supporters, and he seems unconvinced that Chalabi is the crook many here in Jordan have made him out to be. Despite this, he says, at the time Chalabi was running the bank, the two didn't really get along. "He was a political animal, a man who would try and influence government policy in ways that were sometimes . . . immature," says Al-Anani. Chalabi was so well connected, says Fahad Al-Fanak, a columnist for the Jordanian daily Al-Ra'i, that he finds Chalabi's claims to have been the victim of a political conspiracy hard to swallow. "If politics was at work in this case," he says, "it only worked in Chalabi's favor." In 1988, Jordan was in the midst of a severe financial crisis, running chronic budget deficits and defaulting on its external loans. The value of the dinar had plunged, and as a result, banks in Jordan were asked to deposit 30 percent of their foreign exchange holdings with the Central Bank. Of all the banks in Jordan, according to Nabulsi, only Chalabi's Petra Bank was unable to comply. "So Chalabi tried to buy dollars to cover himself, running around feverishly to meet the demand for foreign exchange," says Al-Anani. "He used to sell dollars in the market in a show of bravado." A new government came to power in 1989, and by then, Petra Bank's difficulties were totally exposed. The bank was closed, and though the depositors were paid off, several thousand shareholders lost millions. Chalabi fled the country, allegedly in the trunk of a friend's car. "I can't tell you how much he embezzled, he and his brothers," says Nabulsi. "It was not a mistake. He doesn't make mistakes." Nabulsi admits that investigations into the bank's finances, and Chalabi's improprieties, were never able to determine how much, if any, he stole, and how much he simply lost. Nonetheless, the damage to Jordan was done. "The impact was much, much greater than the Enron case," says Nabulsi. Half a billion dollars was lost, some 10 percent, he says, of Jordan's gross national product at the time. To the charges that the case against Chalabi was political, Nabulsi says simply, "It is like Enron telling the government that Bush was out to get them." The Petra Bank scandal is not the only black mark on Chalabi's résumé. In January of last year, the State Department suspended funding to the INC, citing "financial management and internal control weaknesses." While the move may highlight State's discomfort with Chalabi's group, it is hardly an isolated accusation. Laith Kubba, a former INC spokesperson, told the Financial Times in December that in the early 1990s, when the group was receiving up to $325,000 a month from the CIA, there was "zero transparency about the INC's finances." Some have suggested that if the Jordanian government hadn't closed down Petra Bank, Ahmed Chalabi would perhaps have been able to make good on the bank's losses, that he simply had many pots cooking at once, and that the government's intervention screwed up his grand design. Jawad Al-Anani isn't sure. "I distinguish between a criminal act and bad judgment," he says. "I found that he was ambitious. He built a huge structure, a stalagmite configuration of companies, if you will. I was inclined to believe he did not have a sinister plan to cause the economy to collapse. "Still," he continues, "the whole thing left people in deep financial trouble. The man was plowing in other people's lands, and no one was stopping him." Al-Anani believes that if the rumors that Chalabi will be assisting with Iraq's finances are true, it's not necessarily terrible news. "If he has a good team, people who are concerned with the nitty-gritty, he'll be alright," he says. "He's a strategist, and he has a good mind, but he is bad with the nitty-gritty." Nabulsi thinks this view is generous. "Listen, it's not my problem anymore," he says. "I think he won't be able to walk in the Iraqi street," says the former Central Bank chief. "Iraqis know about him. They know everything." Al-Fanak agrees. "Responsible people know about him, but I think the Americans deserve him. It's good for everyone to see the thief representing American foreign policy." http://english.aljazeera.net/topics/article.asp?cu_no=1&item_no=2559&version =1&template_id=263&parent_id=258 * INC LEADER NOT TO ATTEND OPPOSITION MEETING aljazeera.net, 14th April Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress said on 13 April that he will not be attending a US sponsored meeting of opposition members later this week. Instead, he will be sending a representative to the Nasiryah venue to take part in the meeting. "I will send a representative to this meeting. This meeting is called by the US to give their vision of the interim Iraqi authority. It will be a one-day meeting. And the US will present its vision, and there will be a statement after the meeting," he said. On Friday, the United States said it would bring together the first in a series of meetings to decide on a new administration for Iraq. The State Department also added that the US would chair the meetings of once-exiled Iraqi opposition members and a variety of opposition groups from within Iraq. As the key Iraqi player in any US interim administration, Chalabi's decision to stay away will surprise many observers and could be a response to criticism he has attracted that he is Washington's puppet. Alternatively it may be that the INC leader is demonstrating his displeasure at recent US soundings that it is in Iraq for the long haul. Chalabi told CNN that the priority of Iraq right now is the restoration of law and order, and the dismantling of the Baath party organisation. "We need to stop the disorder and the looting and this can be done by deploying Free Iraqi Forces in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities," he said. He later added, "we need to go forward with the de-Baathification programme, and we need to restore basic services and public services." Chalabi, who claims to have over 1,200 members of the Free Iraqi forces now in the south, north and centre of the country, is a controversial figure. [.....] NO URL (sent through list) * STIFLING DEMOCRACY STATE STACKS AN IMPORTANT IRAQ MEETING WITH OPPONENTS OF THE INC by Joel Mowbray National Review Online, 14th April When Iraqi opposition figures - well, they're no longer "opposition"- -meet in Nasiriyah tomorrow with top U.S. officials, the leader of the umbrella organization of pro-democracy groups, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), won 't be there - but two of his biggest detractors will be. And that has many inside and outside the administration scratching their heads. Representing the U.S. at the meeting will be General Jay Garner, head of the U.S. post-war operations, and then a pair of officials from each the State Department, National Security Council (NSC), and Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). Each group offered up two people, but NSC's people, U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalizad and Regis Matlock, are joined at the hip with State's, tipping the balance in Foggy Bottom's favor. Making matters worse, in addition to sending pro-Saudi diplomats Ryan Crocker and David Pearce, State has decided to "bend" the rules and send a third person. That third wheel is none other than Yael Lempert, who was cited in internal State documents - reported last week in the Wall Street Journal - as explicitly trying to "shut down" the INC. That Journal editorial, which several administration officials say has sent Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on a "witch hunt" to find the leak, quoted the minutes of a May 17, 2002 meeting where Lempert took the highly unethical approach of getting Office of Inspector General (OIG) auditors to - although she didn't exactly use these words - falsify their audit of the INC. "During the meeting, Ms. Lempert stated that NEA would appreciate any assistance the OIG could provide with NEA's desire to 'shut down the INC.'" The "NEA" in question is the Near Eastern Affairs bureau, which often acts as the unofficial lobby for the House of Saud and is home to both Crocker and Pearce. And given that this transpired after President Bush had made it unequivocally clear that he supported the INC, Lempert was openly flouting the wishes of the leader of the free world. But since Lempert was merely carrying out the orders of NEA - and apparently Armitage himself - she is being rewarded, not punished. On the other side of the meeting is someone who shares Lempert's hatred of the pro democracy INC and has recently partnered with a man openly backed by the House of Saud - all while on the payroll of the U.S. taxpayer. By day, Laith Kubba is a project manager for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a taxpayer-funded organization that provides grants - at least ostensibly - to groups that help further the cause of democracy. By night, however, Kubba is angling for a leadership role in the post-Saddam Iraq, forming the Iraqi National Group as an alternative to the INC earlier this year. But when his group wasn't gaining enough traction, Kubba - ever the opportunist - decided to join forces with Adnan Pachachi, the octogenarian former foreign minister who has two main supporters: the U.S. State Department and the House of Saud. A Sunni Arab, Pachachi is seen as the figure most likely to lend "stability" to Iraq - and as the best bet to edge out the INC's leader, Ahmad Chalabi. Kubba has already used the U.S. taxpayer funds he controls to damage the INC, as well as burnish himself. The first grant he issued to an Iraq-based group was to the inappropriately named Iraqi Institute for Democracy. IID is based in the Kurdish-controlled north and has conducted several polls that purport to show that Chalabi and the INC have little support in the region. Aside from the polling, IID officials openly badmouth the INC in the press, doing everything they can to play into State's strategy of de- legitimizing Chalabi and the INC. And when IID isn't busy beating up on the INC, it promotes Kubba to officials in Washington. Several months ago, IID President Hussein Sinjari lobbied administration officials on Kubba for President of a post-Saddam Iraq, apparently not fazed by the apparent - or actual - impropriety of lobbying on behalf of the man who issued grants to his organization. There is no indication Kubba pressured or even suggested Sinjari do this, but it was still done by someone on the receiving end of a Kubba- administered grant. When some inside the administration pointed out that Kubba's U.S. taxpayer-funded job may prove a conflict-of interest with his role in Iraqi politics - particularly since some Iraqis in that movement might like NED grants he controls - Khalizad may have budged somewhat. According to one administration official, Kubba was asked to take a one-week leave-of-absence to attend the meeting - nothing more, such as resigning. But even more troubling than the ethical red flags should be Kubba's past. He was a member of the Dawa Party - responsible for the 1983 bombing of the embassy in Kuwait that killed six and injured dozens - until 1988, and according to several informed sources, he remains an Islamist to this day. Even if someone wanted to discount his past Dawa Party affiliation, Kubba has been on the wrong side of things up until the present. Although he claims to be a founding member of the INC, he did not support the legislation that initiated U.S. funding of the organization. According to the New York Sun, Kubba opposed the Iraqi Liberation Act in 1998. He has not changed much since. In 2000, he opposed sanctions against Iraq as "morally unacceptable." And at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations meeting in early March, Kubba voiced opposition to the war. So why are Lempert and Kubba - who openly flouted and publicly opposed the President, respectively - attending this important meeting? Some in the administration believe that it is a power play by State and Khalizad. With Garner running the meeting, State and Khalizad may be trying to exert maximum influence with strength-in- numbers. "They're trying to suck in all the bad guys [from NEA] and get them to dominate the place. They are trying to single-handedly undo the President's policy," notes an administration official. If State has its way and hijacks the rebuilding of the Iraqi government, it would indeed be a victory for the folks at Foggy Bottom. But it would be a terrible blow to the President's vision of real democracy in the country - and the Iraqi people would likely be robbed of fully realizing their own dreams of freedom. Joel Mowbray is an NRO contributor and a Townhall.com columnist. http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030414-25526524.htm * GADGET JUMPS LANGUAGE BARRIER by Joyce Howard Price Washington Times, 14th April About 200 American and British military personnel in Iraq are communicating with the locals using a hand-held device into which soldiers speak English phrases to have them sounded out in either Arabic or Kurdish. "It really helps calm a population when they can hear commands, questions, or information in their own language. ... Unfortunately, interpreters are in short supply," said Sheri Cranford, assistant to the vice president of VoxTec in Annapolis, the company that has developed the new communications system. The device, called a Phraselator, is designed to help compensate for a shortage of linguists, and it already has proven its worth, Mrs. Cranford said. "It's been used to locate caches of weapons and to identify places where troops are hiding," she said in a telephone interview. VoxTec is a division of Marine Acoustics, a Rhode Island-based military contractor. "We received funding to develop this device from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency right after 9/11, but it was being worked on well before then," Mrs. Cranford said. She said the device has been used by Americans in Afghanistan for about a year to reach residents there in four different languages. VoxTec's vice president, Ace Sarich, a Vietnam veteran and former Navy SEAL, was in Kuwait last month, training Special Forces and other soldiers, Marine units, medics and civil affairs personnel how to use the $2,000 device, which fits in the hand and weighs about a pound. A soldier, doctor or someone else who needs to communicate with one or more Iraqis pushes a button on the machine and delivers his order, question or comment in English. Most questions require only a "yes" or "no" answer. Examples, Mrs. Cranford said, could be as follows: "Are you thirsty?"; "Point to where you hurt"; "Take a deep breath in and out"; "Your child will get better soon"; "Bring your child back here tomorrow"; or "Water will be delivered tomorrow." The Phraselator uses speech-recognition technology called Dynaspeak, developed by SRI International. This technology recognizes phrases phonetically and then emits the equivalent pre-recorded phrase in Arabic, Kurdish or another foreign language. For those who fear there might not be an appropriate Arabic match for their English statement, Mrs. Cranford said, "we load 500 to 1,000 phrases [into the machine]. A 64 megabite flash card can hold 30,000 phrases." In addition, while Mr. Sarich was in Kuwait training the Americans and Britons in use of Phraselator, he taught them how to add more phrases and their translations into the database as needed. Mrs. Cranford pointed out that some commonly used phrases already have been recorded in 40 languages. She said the Phraselator is particularly beneficial as both its voice and audio are strong. She said that makes it useful in harsh weather, such as the sandstorms that recently engulfed U.S. troops in Iraq. Kevin S. Hendzel, spokesman for the American Translators Association, said it's important to recognize that the Phraselator is "not a translation device ... but a phrase matcher." "It's not perfect. ... Voice-recognition technology has its limits," he said. "It's limited by how carefully and clearly people speak into the device, so the phrases are recognized phonetically," Mr. Hendzel added. He held that what the U.S. military "really needs is a corps of real interpreters." Devices such as the Phraselator, Mr. Hendzel said, are a "last-ditch solution when there are no interpreters or multilingual people around, and there are messages you must convey to people who speak a foreign language." "This takes you from zero [communication] to 5 or 10 percent communication," he said. Mr. Hendzel said he believes it is better that the Phraselator uses prerecorded phrases, rather than translation software. The latter, he said, "has a lot of mistakes." Mrs. Cranford said VoxTec will be coming out with a "commercial version" of the Phraselator later this year. Both emergency relief organizations and law-enforcement agencies are expressing interest, she said. "Anyone who has to deal with a large number of non-English-speaking people will find it useful," she said. http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=25212 * CHALABI SAYS HE WON'T TAKE POLITICAL ROLE Arab News (Saudi Arabia), 15th April PARIS, 15 April 2003 ‹ Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader Ahmad Chalabi, the man tipped to be Iraq's next leader, said in an interview published here yesterday that he would not seek political office in any future government. "I want to participate in the rebuilding of civil society, which has been completely destroyed and corrupted," Chalabi told Le Monde, in an interview published in today's edition of the newspaper. When asked if he intended to play a political role in postwar Iraq, he replied: "Absolutely not. I am not a candidate for any post." Chalabi lashed out at France and Germany for refusing to back the use of force against Iraq within the UN Security Council, saying they had "de facto supported Saddam Hussein and his regime." The Iraqi opposition leader said the United Nations, Paris and Berlin could not play any role in the postwar reconstruction of Iraq, saying: "Iraq was the biggest political experiment for the UN and it failed." Speaking to Le Monde by telephone from the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriyah, he said that France and Germany were poorly viewed by Iraqis "from a moral perspective", adding: "The Iraqis would never accept them." Amid skepticism about US plans for rebuilding Iraq, the 57-year-old Chalabi ‹ who has lived in exile most of his life ‹ has backing from only parts of the US administration and remains an unknown quantity for most Iraqis. He told Le Monde that the United States "should stay (in Iraq) for two years, but not to govern. The people are thrilled to have been liberated by the Americans, but want to govern themselves." [.....] http://www.dawn.com/2003/04/15/int3.htm * SHIA GROUP TO BOYCOTT US-SPONSORED MEETING Dawn, 15th April TEHRAN, April 14, AFP: Iraq's main Shia opposition group said on Monday it would boycott a US-sponsored meeting of Iraqi organizations in Iraq on Tuesday to map out the political future of the country. A spokesman for the Iranian-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which draws its support from Shias, said the meeting in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya would be of not benefit to Iraqi people. "We are not going to attend the Nassiriya meeting because it is not to the benefit of the Iraqi nation," Abdelaziz Hakim, a SCIRI leader, said at a news conference. "From the beginning, independence has been our manifesto. We don't accept a US umbrella or anybody else's. The Iraq nation refuses any dependency," he said. The Nassiriya meeting will be overseen by retired US General Jay Garner, head of a transitional administration charged with running Iraq. Around 60 Iraqis are expected to attend, including representatives of Shia and Sunni groups, Kurds and the former monarchy, overthrown in 1958. However, a SCIRI spokesman, Mohsen Hakim, said later that, as far as he knew, most other groups were not taking part or were just planning to send low-level representation. He said the meeting should pick up from where one held in London in December left off, when around 330 delegates representing six groups agreed a political blueprint for the country's future. "We have to have some clear and specific structure to go by," he said. "It is not correct to start from scratch. We have to continue the same process started in London and that has to be the basis. This meeting starting from zero will not solve any problems." [.....] http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=focusIraqNews&storyID=2581039 * IRAQI POLITICIAN CHALABI RETURNS TO BAGHDAD by Edmund Blair Reuters, 16th April BAGHDAD: Pro-American Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi returned to the capital Baghdad on Wednesday on his first visit to the city since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, an adviser said. "Our plans are to establish ourselves here, to set up an office and begin the work toward reconstructing democracy and civil society in Iraq," said Zaab Sethna, who traveled with Chalabi in the motorcade from the southern town of Nassiriya. "His first plan is to go see his old home and then start building democracy in Iraq," added Sethna, speaking by satellite telephone. Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, was the first major exile politician to reach Baghdad since the collapse of the government of Saddam Hussein last week. Sethna said Chalabi would soon start meeting Iraqis including community leaders, religious leaders and businessmen. He said Chalabi would coordinate his activities with Jay Garner, the retired U.S. general leading the drive to rebuild Iraq, and the U.S. authorities. Asked how long Chalabi would stay in Iraq, Sethna said: "What he has said is 'I have come home to stay'." An INC statement issued in London said Chalabi and the leaders of four other political groups would meet in Baghdad as soon as practical as the Iraqi Leadership Council. The council of five, which could be expanded to include Iraqis who lived under Saddam, is relatively independent of the United States and includes the main Shi'ite Muslim group, which refuses to cooperate with U.S. forces. An INC source said the Baghdad meeting would be complementary to the consultation process which began in Nassiriya on Tuesday under U.S. chairmanship. But a major difference is the participation of the Shi'ite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which appears to have a wide following in the Shi'ite south. The members are Chalabi, SCIRI representative Abdelaziz Hakim, Ayad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord and the heads of two Kurdish groups -- Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani. The U.S. military flew Chalabi to Nassiriya 10 days ago, giving him a head start over other exiles trying to establish a power base among the Shi'ite population of the south after years of Baathist repression under Saddam. But asked if he intended to play a political role in Iraq, he was quoted as telling French daily Le Monde earlier this week: "Absolutely not. I am not a candidate for any post." Chalabi was brought up in the house which is now the Indian embassy in the north Baghdad district of Aadhamiya. After leaving Iraq in 1958 he has lived abroad, mostly in Lebanon, Jordan and Britain. Sethna said Chalabi had no immediate plans to reclaim the building, which was appropriated by the government after the 1958 revolution. "Many Iraqis will make property claims and there has to be an orderly process," he added. The INC said Chalabi, a Shi'ite from a prominent family, received a warm welcome in Nassiriya. But other reports suggest that SCIRI, which is close to Iran and wary of the United States, may have a broader following among the southerners. When the United States held the Nassiriya meeting to work out how Iraq should be ruled, thousands of Shi'ites marched through the town chanting "No to America, No to Saddam." INC officials have said Iran has allowed Iraqis in exile to cross the border from the east with weapons to take control of areas where U.S. forces are thin on the ground. Abdelaziz Hakim, who is deputy head of SCIRI, ended 23 years in exile in Iran and went to the southeastern town of Kut on Wednesday to a rapturous welcome, his son said. Analysts say the political future of Iraq depends to a large extent on the battle for the hearts and minds of the Shi'ites, who make up more than half of the population. Around 120 Iraqi exile fighters from Chalabi's group, trained by U.S. special forces and armed with AK-47s, drove into Baghdad on Wednesday to a low-key welcome. The U.S. military flew some 700 of the Free Iraqi Forces fighters to Nassiriya with Chalabi on April 6 and INC official Nabil Moussawi said some have also deployed in Mosul, where the INC is trying to restore law and order with U.S. forces. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/16/1050172654717.html * DEMOCRACY STIRS IN ABRAHAM'S SHADOW Sydney Morning Herald, from Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, 17th April Exile leaders, tribal sheiks, ethnic Kurds and Shiite clerics - many of them rivals and mutually suspicious - gathered in a tent near the birthplace of Abraham yesterday to make the first tentative steps towards a democratic government in Iraq. The meeting, under heavy security at Tallil Air Base in Ur, in the presence of American, British and Polish diplomats, formally launched an ambitious US-led plan to remake a country devastated by the US-led war, economic sanctions and repression. It ended after about six hours with a 13-point statement in favour of democracy, the elimination of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, and an agreement to convene again in 10 days. "A free and democratic Iraq will begin today," said Jay Garner, the defence contractor and retired three-star general chosen by the Bush Administration to run an interim government. "What better place than the birthplace of civilisation could you have for the beginning of a free Iraq?" he said, as he opened the conference. But US optimism did not paper over the differences in open view. In a country riven by religious, ideological and ethnic divisions, yesterday's gathering of 70 Iraqi notables underscored the tensions between Iraqis who stayed and suffered and those who lived in exile, many of whom are being promoted by the US as possible leaders. The main organisation representing Iraq's majority Shiite population, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, boycotted the meeting because of opposition to the US interim government. Another who did not show was Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the exiled Iraqi National Congress and a darling of the Pentagon, which last week flew him to Nasiriyah. Chalabi sent a delegate, Entifad Qanbar, the group's representative in Washington. "This meeting is not to select leadership spots, and I don't see any leadership spots on offer," said a Chalabi adviser, Zaab Sethna, downplaying his leader's absence. "The key is to have some sort of structure in place and ready to go. The meeting is only the first in a series." US officials issued invitations to the groups which attended, but each organisation picked its own representatives. Iraqis who did not have invitations were not allowed to attend. Not far away, in the city of Nasiriyah on the Euphrates River, thousands of Shiite Iraqis, gave expression to their new-found freedom. As they chanted "No, No Saddam, No, No United States" and "Iraq for the Iraqis", they marched to show their displeasure with the heavily US flavour of the planned interim government. Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush's envoy to the meeting, said the US had no intention of ruling Iraq. "We want you to establish your own democratic system based on Iraqi traditions and values," he claimed. Sheik Ayad Jamal al Din, a Shiite religious leader from Nasiriyah, urged separation of the mosque and the state. But Nassar Hussein Musawi, a secondary school teacher who said he was persecuted under the Saddam regime, said: "Those who would like to separate religion from the state are simply dreaming." The plan: The 13-point statement issued by US Central Command war headquarters after the first meeting of Iraqi opposition groups, including political and religious leaders. 1. Iraq must be democratic. 2. The future government should not be based on communal identity. 3. A future government should be organised as a democratic federal system, but on the basis of countrywide consultation. 4. The rule of law must be paramount. 5. Iraq must be built on respect for diversity, including respect for the role of women. 6. The meeting discussed the role of religion. 7. The meeting discussed the principle that Iraqis must choose their leaders - not have them imposed from outside. 8. Political violence must be rejected, and Iraqis must immediately organise themselves for the task of reconstruction at local and national levels. 9. Iraqis and the coalition must work together to tackle the immediate issues of restoring security and basic services. 10. The Ba'ath party must be dissolved and its effects on society eliminated. 11. There should be an open dialogue with all national political groups to bring them into the process. 12. The meeting condemns the looting and the destruction of documents. 13.The Iraqi participation in the Nasiriyah meeting voted that there should be another meeting in 10 days at a venue to be determined, with additional Iraqi participants, to discuss procedures for developing an Iraqi interim authority. THEIR MASTERS' VOICE http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2937229.stm * BLAIR AND BUSH BROADCAST: FULL TEXT BBC, 10th April Here is the full text of the statements by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush, broadcast on Iraq's new "Towards Freedom" television station. PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR: I am glad to be able to speak to you today, and to tell you that Saddam Hussein's regime is collapsing; that the years of brutality, oppression and fear are coming to an end; that a new and better future beckons for the people of Iraq. We did not want this war. But in refusing to give up his Weapons of Mass Destruction, Saddam gave us no choice but to act. Now the war has begun, it will be seen through to the end. We will continue to do all we can to avoid civilian casualties. Our enemy is Saddam and his regime; not the Iraqi people. Our forces are friends and liberators of the Iraqi people, not your conquerors. They will not stay a day longer than is necessary. I know that some of you feared a repeat of 1991, when you thought Saddam's rule was being ended, but he stayed, and you suffered. That will not happen this time. This regime will be gone. And then, we will work with you to build the peaceful, prosperous Iraq that you want, and you deserve. This Iraq will not be run by Britain, or by the US, or by the UN. It will be run by you, the people of Iraq. Our aim is to help alleviate immediate humanitarian suffering, and to move as soon as possible to an interim authority run by Iraqis. This will pave the way for a truly representative Iraqi Government, which represents human rights and the rule of law and spends Iraq's wealth not on palaces and WMD, but on you and the services you need. Saddam Hussein and his regime plundered your nation's wealth. While many of you live in poverty, they have lived lives of luxury. He became one of the richest men in the world; his money stolen from you, the Iraqi people. The money from Iraqi oil will be yours; to be used to build prosperity for you and your families. I know too from my meetings with Iraqi exiles who live in Britain that you are an inventive, creative people. You should be free to travel, free to have access to independent media, free to express your views, free to develop your culture. My experience of people the world over is that we all want to be able to live our lives in peace and security; we all want to give our families the chance of a decent life. For years, that chance has been denied to you. Millions of your countrymen and women have been forced to leave. Many thousands have been murdered, tortured, brutalised by the regime. We want to give you the chance to rebuild your country; to rebuild your lives; to give your families a chance of a better future. It is in the spirit of friendship and goodwill that we now offer our help. PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: This is George W Bush, the President of the United States. At this moment, the regime of Saddam Hussein is being removed from power, and a long era of fear and cruelty is ending. American and coalition forces are now operating inside Baghdad - and we will not stop until Saddam's corrupt gang is gone. The government of Iraq, and the future of your country, will soon belong to you. The goals of our coalition are clear and limited. We will end a brutal regime, whose aggression and weapons of mass destruction make it a unique threat to the world. Coalition forces will help maintain law and order, so that Iraqis can live in security. We will respect your great religious traditions, whose principles of equality and compassion are essential to Iraq's future. We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the rights of all citizens. And then our military forces will leave. Iraq will go forward as a unified, independent and sovereign nation that has regained a respected place in the world. The United States and its coalition partners respect the people of Iraq. We are taking unprecedented measures to spare the lives of innocent Iraqi citizens, and are beginning to deliver food, water and medicine to those in need. Our only enemy is Saddam's brutal regime - and that regime is your enemy as well. In the new era that is coming to Iraq, your country will no longer be held captive to the will of a cruel dictator. You will be free to build a better life, instead of building more palaces for Saddam and his sons, free to pursue economic prosperity without the hardship of economic sanctions, free to travel and speak your mind, free to join in the political affairs of Iraq. And all the people who make up your country - Kurds, Shi'a, Turkomans, Sunnis, and others - will be free of the terrible persecution that so many have endured. The nightmare that Saddam Hussein has brought to your nation will soon be over. You are a good and gifted people - the heirs of a great civilisation that contributes to all humanity. You deserve better than tyranny and corruption and torture chambers. You deserve to live as free people. And I assure every citizen of Iraq: your nation will soon be free. Thank you. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,934307,00.html * US MOVES 21,000LB SUPERBOMB TO GULF by Stuart Millar The Guardian, 11th April The US has moved its most powerful conventional weapon to the Gulf, Pentagon officials said yesterday, a development apparently designed to send a clear message to Iraqi forces dug in around Saddam Hussein's stronghold of Tikrit that they will be obliterated if they stage a last stand. As coalition commanders turned their attention to northern Iraq, where the last decisive battles of the war are likely to be fought, they ratcheted up the psychological pressure by revealing that a single 21,000lb massive ordnance air blast (Moab) bomb has been moved to an undisclosed forward air base in the region. "I can confirm the Moab is now in theatre," a Pentagon official told CNN. "But I can't comment on whether there are any plans to use it." The huge weapon, nicknamed the "mother of all bombs", is the largest non-nuclear munition in the world. Its principal use is to terrify enemy forces into submission by its presence alone. Last month, shortly before the war began, the US released video footage of a Moab test drop at Eglin air force base in Florida. The images of the huge blast and the resulting mushroom cloud were made public to persuade Iraqi forces to give up. But the deployment of the Moab may also indicate that the US believes that bunkers containing chemical or biological agents remain under Iraqi control, or even that there is a threat of non-conventional weapons being used as elite forces loyal to Saddam put up a final fight. The Moab was designed to hit deeply buried targets before detonating with such a powerful blast that any bio-chemical agents would be vaporised. The size of a large family saloon car, it is so big that it cannot be dropped from a conventional bomber. Instead it is dropped by parachute from a C-130 transport plane before being guided via satellite to the target. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/11/1049567823969.html * BUSH-BLAIR SPEECHES FAIL TO REACH IRAQIS Sydney Morning Herald, from AFP, 11th April The US and British leaders promised Iraqis that they alone would govern their destiny and their country once the allies' troops have ended Saddam Hussein's "nightmare" regime. But power outages and the collapse of Baghdad's television channels meant that the Iraqi population did not see the messages recorded by US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "Our military forces will leave. Iraq will go forward as a unified, independent and sovereign nation that has regained a respected place in the world," said Mr Bush. "This Iraq will not be run by Britain, or by the United States, or by the United Nations. It will be run by you, the people of Iraq," said Mr Blair, Mr Bush's closest ally in the military campaign. The two messages were recorded on Tuesday as the leaders met in Belfast and were to have been broadcast on an Iraqi state television frequency from a specially equipped US Air Force plane flying over Iraq. The message was to launch a coalition-run television service, Towards Freedom, that is to broadcast five hours a day. But power supplies have been cut in Baghdad and the three television stations, including the main state-run channel, have not broadcast for several days after coalition warplanes targeted telecommunications centres. _______________________________________________ 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