No. 331

TIDES World Press Update

28 January 2003

http://www.carebridge.org/~tides

ARTICLES OF SIGNIFICANT IMPORT

27 January

Has America gone really mad?, THE DAWN (Karachi, Pakistan)

History has dealt the Islamic world a terrible hand. From the 13th century onward, the defining moments in the world of Islam were the Mongol invasions and the imperialist intrusion of the West and the advent of colonial dependency. It is significant how little the western approach to the Muslim world has changed during this period.Before embarking on his Egyptian expedition, Napoleon Bonaparte presented himself to the Islamic world as its greatest champion and a great admirer of the Holy Prophet. Today there is a striking similarity in President Bush's approach to the situation in Iraq and the rest of the Islamic world.

IRAQ'S AMBASSADOR DISMISSES STATEMENTS ABOUT BAGHDAD'S INTENTION TO BLOW UP ITS OIL WELLS IN CASE OF MILITARY STRIKE, RUSSIAN INFORMATION AGENCY NOVOSTI (Moscow, Russia)

/from RIA Novosti's Alexander Smotrov, Anna Bobina/ - Iraq's Ambassador to Moscow Abbas Khalaf has dismissed statements that Baghdad intends to blow up its oil wells in case of a US military strike against the country, the head of the Iraqi diplomatic corps said at a press-conference in Moscow Monday. According to him, that and other statements circulated by the United States, follow the political line of "blackmail and intimidation". Abbas Khalaf noted that such scenarios were published to raise a scare in the oil market and put psychological pressure to bear on various international institutions and countries. The diplomat pointed out that the United States used that tactics to gain a maximum of advantage of the psychological war.

US embassy staff told to return if war begins, THE DAWN (Karachi, Pakistan)

ISLAMABAD, Jan 26: The staff of the US embassy in Pakistan has been advised to return home in case the United States attacks Iraq, a reliable source told Dawn.
The embassy on Saturday received a fax from the US State Department which tells the staff to take precautionary measures because of possible reaction in Muslim countries in case of the US attack. The sources said diplomats were waiting for the final call for departure. However, an official of the embassy denied the possibility of repatriation of the staff. The official, requesting anonymity, told Dawn that the embassy had not received any fax in this regard.

U.S. Prepares to Use Nuclear Weapons in Iraq: Expert, TEHRAN TIMES (Tehran, Iran)

U.S., Russia hypocritical about biological weapons, JAKARTA POST (Jakarta, Indonesia)

On Nov. 25, 1969 in the midst of the war in Vietnam, President Richard Nixon, besieged by protests that he was a war monger, threw out a sop to public opinion. The U.S., he announced, had decided to renounce the possession and use of lethal and incapacitating biological weapons. He declared that the government would destroy its stockpile of biological weapons. "These important decisions", said Nixon, "have been taken as an initiative towards peace. Mankind already carries in its own hands too many of the seeds of its own destruction."

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Use of these articles does not reflect official endorsement. Reproduction for private use or gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. The opinions expressed in this document do not necessarily reflect the opinion of either the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense. Please send comments, feedback, suggestions and any requests for changes to the distribution list to TIDES@Carebridge.org. Current and back issues can be found at http://www.carebridge.org/~tides. Eric Rasmussen will take responsibility for any errors. Please contact EricRasmussen@carebridge.org.

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Original Subject	Has America gone really mad?
Original Date	2003-01-27 01:15:09
Original Sender	Dawn <dawn@mitap.sdsu.edu>

By Roedad Khan

History has dealt the Islamic world a terrible hand. From the 13th century onward, the defining moments in the world of Islam were the Mongol invasions and the imperialist intrusion of the West and the advent of colonial dependency. It is significant how little the western approach to the Muslim world has changed during this period.

Before embarking on his Egyptian expedition, Napoleon Bonaparte presented himself to the Islamic world as its greatest champion and a great admirer of the Holy Prophet. Today there is a striking similarity in President Bush's approach to the situation in Iraq and the rest of the Islamic world.

The modus operandi is the same. Praise Islam as a religion of peace and love but be war-like and destroy weak and defenceless Muslim countries if they refuse to toe the line. Praise the Holy Prophet but unleash the hounds of war against his followers, bomb innocent men, women and children, occupy their lands, change their governments by force of arms and replace them with client regimes.

The first blow to the Muslim world came in 1220 AD. "You have committed great sins", Genghis Khan, sole superpower and terror of the world in the 13th century, told the people of Bukhara. "If you ask me what proof I have for these words", he said. "I say it is because I am the Scourge of God". The next blow was in 1258 AD when Hulagu, the grandson of Genghis Khan, attacked one of the central pillars of Muslim ascendancy, the Caliphate itself. When the siege of Baghdad ended, 80,000 people came out of the great city. They were counted by the Mongols and then systematically killed. For six days and nights, the massacre continued.

The slaughter was so thorough and so appalling that its memory has never left the Arab minds. The sculls of the dead, as legend has it, were stacked in a pyramid as a grim reminder of Mongol savagery. The Caliph himself was rolled in a carpet, and then trampled to death by galloping horses. The date was February 20, 1258 AD. The fall of Baghdad plunged the Muslim world in a state of shock and terror from which it has not recovered till today. For the first time a significant part of the Islamic world was subjected to the domination of a non-Muslim power. Is history about to repeat itself?

The next expedition against the world of Islam was commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte. On June 22, 1798, he set out to conquer Egypt, a country he described "as the first theatre of civilization in the universe".

"Soldiers", Bonaparte proclaimed, "you are going to undertake a conquest, the effect of which, upon commerce and civilization, will be incalculable. The eyes of mankind are fixed upon you.

The Memluke Beys, who tyrannize over the unhappy inhabitants of the banks of the Nile, will no longer exist in a few days after our arrival. The people among whom you are going to live, are Mahometans: the first article of their faith is, 'there is no other god but God and Mahomet is his Prophet. Do not contradict them. Treat their Muftis and their Imams with respect'".

The snake, it is said, covers its prey with saliva before devouring it. After establishing his headquarter at Alexandria, Bonaparte issued the following proclamation in Arabic:

"In the name of God, gracious and merciful. There is no god but God; he has no son nor associate in his kingdom.

"Inhabitants of Egypt! When the Beys tell you the French are come to destroy your religion, believe them not: it is an absolute falsehood. Answer these deceivers, that they are only come to rescue the rights of the poor from the hands of their tyrants, and that the French adore the Supreme Being, and honour the Prophet and his Holy Quran".

"All men are equal in the eyes of God: understanding, ingenuity, and science, alone make a difference between them. As the Beys do not possess any of these qualities, they cannot be worthy to govern the country. Yet they are the only possessors of extensive tracts of lands, beautiful female slaves, excellent horses, and magnificent places! Have they, then, received an exclusive privilege from the Almighty? If so, let them produce it.

"But the Supreme Being, who is just and merciful towards all mankind, wills, that, in future, none of the inhabitants in Egypt shall be prevented from attaining to the first employments, and the highest honours. The administration, which shall be conducted by persons of intelligence, talents, and foresight, will be productive of happiness and security".

"The French are true Mussulmen! Not long since they marched to Rome, and overthrew the throne of the Pope who excited the Christians against the professors of the Mahometan religion. Our friendship shall be extended to those of the inhabitants of Egypt who shall join us, as also to those who shall remain in their dwellings, and observe a strict neutrality; and, when they have seen our conduct with their own eyes, hasten to submit to us; but the dreadful punishment of death awaits those who shall take up arms for the Beys, and against us: for them their shall be no deliverance, nor shall any trace of them remain".

Before launching the attack on Afghanistan, Bush visited the Islamic Centre in Washington DC and addressing the gathering, quoted from the Holy Quran: "In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule".

The 20th century began with western powers seeking to impose a new order on the Middle East, the heartland of Islam. The Middle East, as we know it today, emerged from decisions made by Allies during and after the First World War. Middle Eastern countries and their frontiers were created in the salons of Paris under the notorious 1916 Sykes-Picot treaty. Iraq and what we call Jordan are British fabrications, lines drawn on a map by British politicians after the First World War, while the boundaries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq were established by a British civil servant in 1922.

The frontiers between Muslims and Christians were drawn by France in Syria and by Russia on the borders of Armenia and Azerbaijan. At that time, the political landscape of the Middle East looked different from that of today. Israel, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia did not exist. Most of the Middle East still rested under the drowsy and negligent sway of the Ottoman Empire. The Middle East, a conglomerate of artificially created states, became what it is today because the European powers willed it so.

This is the darkest period in the history of Islam. Iraq faces the full might of the United States and is threatened with destruction. This, in spite of the fact that Baghdad presents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat but the economic imperatives of US growth. Iraq has 112 billion barrels of oil-deposits, or roughly 11 per cent of the world's proven supply. That is more oil than the resources of Europe and South America put together and more than Africa and the Asia-Pacific region combined. That oil has global strategic, political and economic significance.

The temptation to grab Iraq's oil must be irresistible. Iraq must suffer because it has oil and it has Israel as an enemy. What is worse, it is Muslim. North Korea has admitted it has nuclear capability but it is not threatened as Iraq is. If Saddam did not have oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart's content. Other leaders in the Islamic world do it everyday with the blessings of George W. Bush.

If Iraq is invaded and Saddam toppled, the lines drawn in the Middle East by old European imperial powers will be redrawn by the world's newest imperial power, the United States. The radical transformation of the Middle East being considered by the Bush administration will be the biggest political change since the notorious Sykes-Picot treaty in which victorious Britain and France carved up the Ottoman Empire.

Iraq with its vast oil resources will be placed under permanent US military rule. Afghanistan is no longer a sovereign, independent country. Pakistan has got temporary reprieve by succumbing to American pressure and extending 'unstinted cooperation' to the US in its war against terror in Afghanistan. All other governments in the Islamic world, deemed unfriendly to the US or Israel, will be replaced by pro-US and pro-Israel pliant governments.

There is a dry wind blowing throughout the Islamic world and the parched grasses wait for the spark. Once the match is lit, the blaze will spread like wildfire. The entire Islamic world will then find itself in the eye of the storm. The political system fabricated by Kitchener, Lloyd George and Churchill in 1922 will collapse like a house of cards and go up in flames. There should be no illusion about the sort of Islamic landscape that America is destined to find when it embarks on a war against Iraq. Nothing would convince the Muslim world that it would be a just war. It would be seen as an imperial reach into the Muslim world, a favour to Israel and a way for the United States to secure control over Iraq's oil.

"The United States has gone mad", wrote John Le Carre', expressing the sentiments of millions of people all over the world. "Americans entered one of the periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: Worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam war".

© The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2003

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Original Subject	IRAQ'S AMBASSADOR DISMISSES STATEMENTS ABOUT BAGHDAD'S INTENTION TO BLOW UP ITS OIL WELLS IN CASE OF MILITARY STRIKE
Original Date	2003-01-27 04:01:04
Original Sender	Russian Information Agency Novosti <rian@mitap.sdsu.edu>

Author: from RIA Novosti's Alexander Smotrov, Anna Bobina Dateline: MOSCOW KeyWords: * RUSSIA * IRAQ * AMBASSADOR * USA *

/from RIA Novosti's Alexander Smotrov, Anna Bobina/ - Iraq's Ambassador to Moscow Abbas Khalaf has dismissed statements that Baghdad intends to blow up its oil wells in case of a US military strike against the country, the head of the Iraqi diplomatic corps said at a press-conference in Moscow Monday.

According to him, that and other statements circulated by the United States, follow the political line of "blackmail and intimidation". Abbas Khalaf noted that such scenarios were published to raise a scare in the oil market and put psychological pressure to bear on various international institutions and countries. The diplomat pointed out that the United States used that tactics to gain a maximum of advantage of the psychological war.

Answering RIA Novosti's question, the Iraqi Ambassador stressed that Iraq was ready to defend itself in case of a military attack by the United States. "We will defend our country, our sovereignty and our dignity from the US aggression," Abbas Khalaf said.

Commenting on various scenarios of the planned military operation, the Ambassador reminded that in 1991 not only Great Britain, but virtually the whole world backed the United States. The anti-Iraqi coalition then included 32 countries. Nevertheless, the Ambassador noted, that operation failed.

"Technically, the United States is ready to strike immediately, but the key issue facing them is not the attack itself, but what will follow," the Iraqi top diplomat specified. At the same time, he said firmly that "Iraq was a hard nut that might cost the US its teeth." Abbas Khalaf avoided answering the question whether or not de jure Iraq intended to declare a war on the United States in case of a US military strike.

© 2001 RIA Novosti

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Original Subject	US embassy staff told to return if war begins
Original Date	2003-01-27 01:15:16
Original Sender	Dawn <dawn@mitap.sdsu.edu>

Author: By Our Staff Reporter Dateline: ISLAMABAD, Jan 26

ISLAMABAD, Jan 26: The staff of the US embassy in Pakistan has been advised to return home in case the United States attacks Iraq, a reliable source told Dawn.

The embassy on Saturday received a fax from the US State Department which tells the staff to take precautionary measures because of possible reaction in Muslim countries in case of the US attack.

The sources said diplomats were waiting for the final call for departure. However, an official of the embassy denied the possibility of repatriation of the staff. The official, requesting anonymity, told Dawn that the embassy had not received any fax in this regard.

An interior ministry spokesman expressed ignorance about the US advice to its diplomats. "We have not received any information about it. However, security has been tightened in the vicinity of the United States embassy," he said.

© The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2003

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Original Subject	U.S. Prepares to Use Nuclear Weapons in Iraq: Expert
Original Date	2003-01-27 03:03:26
Original Sender	Tehran Times <tehran_times@mitap.sdsu.edu>

WASHINGTON -- The United States is considering using nuclear weapons in a possible future war against Iraq to destroy underground command posts and stop Iraqi forces from using weapons of mass destruction, a top U.S. private military expert warned Saturday.

Citing multiple sources, William Arkin said plans for using nuclear weapons against Iraq are being fleshed out at the U.S. strategic command in Omaha, Nebraska; inside planning offices of the joint staff at the Pentagon and at an "undisclosed location" in Pennsylvania where U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney used to spend time during terrorism alerts. An administration official, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, would not confirm the report, but said that "As in all cases, the United States reserves the right to act in defense of itself and its allies by whatever means necessary." Defense Department spokesman Major Ted Wadsworth said the reported plan, whose existence he could not conform, was "something that policymakers have to talk about."

Washington has already warned Baghdad that any attempt on its part to resort to weapons of mass destruction might have the most severe consequences, a diplomatic phrase for nuclear strike.

In an article slated for publication in the Los Angeles Times Sunday, Arkin writes that nuclear weapons have always been part of the arsenal discussed by war planners.

"But the Bush administration's decision to actively plan for possible preemptive use of such weapons, especially as so-called bunker busters, against Iraq represents a significant lowering of the nuclear threshold," he points out.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed in December 2001 a classified nuclear posture review that opened the possibility for nuclear weapons to be used against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack.

According to Arkin, the review also called upon the military to develop plans to attack foreign weapons of mass destruction facilities, even if the enemy did not resort to them first.

This work is currently under way at the strategic command, which Arkin says has already prepared a "theater nuclear planning document" to be used by the administration of President George W.

Bush and the Central Command, which will be executing an invasion of Iraq if Bush opts for one.

As the Pentagon prepares for a possible military campaign in Iraq, the command, which used to deal exclusively with nuclear-related issues, saw its responsibilities expand, according to the expert.

Last month, Rumsfeld sent Bush a memorandum asking to place Stratcom commander Admiral James Ellis in charge of dealing with foreign weapons of mass destruction and Bush approved the request earlier this month, according to Arkin.

"On the surface, these new assignments give the command a broader set of tools to avoid nuclear escalation," writes the expert. "In reality, they open the door much wider to contemplating American use of nuclear weapons."

A former U.S. Army intelligence analyst, Arkin is no longer part of the U.S. military establishment. But he is known for his strong Pentagon connections and extensive knowledge of military issues.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Saturday said the United States had rallied a dozen allies to back an attack on Iraq, as Iraqi scientists continued to refuse to be questioned by UN inspectors.

"If the Security Council rallied behind the need for the use of force, lots of countries would fall under that resolution," Powell said ahead of a world economic forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

Powell insisted Washington had ample support for taking a hard line against Saddam Hussein. Declining to name the countries, Powell added: "We will not be alone, that's for sure. I could rattle off at least a dozen off memory and I think that there will be more."

Powell and Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul discussed in Davos the "need to prepare" for possible U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq, a Turkish spokesman.

But he added that Gul stressed to Powell the need for "international legitimacy" for any attack, meaning a green light from the United Nations.

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Original Subject	U.S., Russia hypocritical about biological weapons
Original Date	2003-01-27 01:11:04
Original Sender	Jakarta Post <jakarta_post@mitap.sdsu.edu>

Jonathan Power, Columnist, London

On Nov. 25, 1969 in the midst of the war in Vietnam, President Richard Nixon, besieged by protests that he was a war monger, threw out a sop to public opinion. The U.S., he announced, had decided to renounce the possession and use of lethal and incapacitating biological weapons. He declared that the government would destroy its stockpile of biological weapons. "These important decisions", said Nixon, "have been taken as an initiative towards peace. Mankind already carries in its own hands too many of the seeds of its own destruction."

Privately Nixon was convinced that they had little military utility for the U.S. whilst at the same time he feared that, if the big powers continued to depend on biological weapons, one day a "rogue" state might one day get its hands on the knowledge of how to make them and use them against American cities. Sending the message that the U.S. military considered them an ineffective tool might discourage other nations from trying to develop them.

This was the first time a major power had unilaterally announced an entire category of weapons of mass destruction and it catalyzed a quick response from the rest of the world. By 1972 the major powers had all signed up to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It seemed that mankind, for once, had taken a big step forward. But the truth was different- both the United States and the Soviet Union (and later Russia) cheated, violating the Convention in important ways.

The rot started on the American side because Nixon's original executive order delegated the follow up on his new policy to the Defense department, with no effective control or follow up by the White Houses own National Security Council. Almost immediately the CIA violated the president's promise, deciding to retain a secret cache of biological and toxin agents, including 100 grams of dried anthrax spores, 5.2 grams of saxitoxin (paralytic shell fish poison) and seed cultures of the causative agents of smallpox, tularemia and brucellosis. Only in 1975 did this come to light during Senate hearings. The cache was then destroyed, three years after the Convention had come into effect.

Also during the 1970s U.S. military intelligence used the double agents, Sgt. Joseph Cassidy and Dmitry Polyakov, to feed false information to the Soviet Union saying that the U.S. was maintaining a secret program to develop new biological weapons. The apparent point of this extraordinarily perverse exercise was to push the Soviets to squander their scarce resources on emulating the Americans, especially in areas the U.S. had already decided were unpromising for battlefield use.

Of course, Moscow then felt justified in breaking its own treaty commitment and in doing so achieved some remarkable breakthroughs in the use of anthrax and plague in wartime and also developed advanced delivery systems such as refrigerated warheads for intercontinental ballistic missiles- information that by now may have been passed on to "rogue" countries by unscrupulous or poverty stricken ex-Soviet scientists. Thus instead of "smothering the baby in the cradle", as the U.S. diplomat in charge of negotiating the Convention put it, the U.S. inadvertently paced the Soviet Union to make breakthroughs that then posed a major strategic threat to the U.S.

Although this was perhaps the worst of it, later the U.S. took advantages of ambiguity in the Convention's language that allowed signatories to purse research on biodefence. Until the late 1990s the U.S. was quite transparent about its programs, keeping all the reports unclassified. But then the Pentagon and the intelligence community, without informing Congress or the White House, started on some secret research including on a vaccine-resistant strain of anthrax.

Only investigative reporting by the New York Times, published in September 2001, blew the whistle. Also later that year the Baltimore Sun unearthed a U.S. army program to manufacture anthrax spores that could readily become airborne. Much informed opinion within the U.S. considered these programs in violation of the Convention.

But even if that was unclear the programs were large-scale and serious enough to convince many outsiders that the U.S. was pursuing offensive programs. Certainly if another country had carried out such research the U.S. would have been quick to condemn them.

Jonathan Tucker who runs the Chemical and Biological Weapons Non-proliferation program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, whose work has done much to bring this troubled history to light, argues that if the U.S. is to regain credibility it has to rapidly change gears. It needs a "reasonable level of transparency" with the White House being regularly briefed. State Department lawyers need to be told to keep an eye on the research so that it complies with the strict terms of the Convention. "Suspicion that the U.S. is secretly engaged in offensively orientated R & D could have a corrosive political effect and even promote the proliferation of biological weapons programs," he observes.

If indeed Saddam Hussein has developed biological weapons and he is one day arrested and arraigned before an international criminal tribunal it would be sad day for everyone if he could use as an argument in his defense: The Americans and the Russians did it and so did we.

All contents copyright © of The Jakarta Post.

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Original Subject	America 'ready to annihilate for oil'
Original Date	2003-01-27 03:01:37
Original Sender	Gulf Daily News <gulf_daily_news@mitap.sdsu.edu>

Section: World Dateline: BAGHDAD

Former UN official Denis Halliday last night warned that the US and Britain were ready to "annihilate" Iraqi society in order to control its oil wealth.

"The US and Britain are proceeding with plans to annihilate Iraqi society, a catastrophe that would be heightened by the threatened use of tactical nuclear weaponry," he said.

"Washington has informed us that the very security of America requires ever-increasing quantities of oil and the source of that oil can only be the Middle East," he said.

Halliday said that since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the US, "the relationship between Washington and Saudi Arabia has become fragile, therefore making that massive flow of cheap oil insecure."

"Iraq constitutes one very large reserve tank - a tank of some 120 billion barrels - and control of that tank has become paramount for the very survival of American economic superiority," he charged.

Halliday, an Irishman, was based in Baghdad between August 1997 and October 1998. He resigned in protest against continued UN sanctions against Iraq in place since its 1990 invasion of neighbouring Kuwait.

"The UN has cruelly damaged the social, economic and cultural rights of the Iraqi people under sanctions for over 12 years. We have allowed massive loss of life," he said.

Halliday, who was due to meet Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz and Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, said that his "impression" from talking to Iraqi officials is that they believed war "cannot be stopped." Forward this article to a Colleague, Associate or Friend

Copyright © 2002, Gulf Daily News -

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Original Subject	Why Bush is sunk without Europe
Original Date	2003-01-27 01:17:01
Original Sender	Dawn <dawn@mitap.sdsu.edu>

Author: By Will Hutton Dateline: LONDON

LONDON: When the stock market falls for a record 10 consecutive days, as it just has done, you take notice. Falls like these are usually the portent of something bad, even calamitous, ahead.

The worry is obvious; Bush's intentions on Iraq could have potentially disastrous economic repercussions.

The US's economic position is far too vulnerable to allow it to go to war without cast-iron multilateral support that could underpin it economically as well as diplomatically and militarily.

The multi-lateralism Bush scorns is, in truth, an economic necessity. America may be a superpower that spends more on defence than the next nine countries combined and is preparing to increase defence spending this year by an enormous $48 billion, equivalent to Britain's entire defence budget, but it is a strategic position built on economic sand.

On latest estimates, its net liabilities to the rest the world are more than $2.7 trillion, nearly 30 per cent of GDP, a scale of indebtedness associated with basket-case economies in Latin America.

Its industrial base is so uncompetitive that it consistently imports more than it exports; its current-account deficit, the gap between all its current foreign earnings and foreign spending, is now a stunning 5 per cent of GDP, continuing a trend that has lasted for more than 25 years and which is the cause of all that foreign debt. As a national community, it has virtually ceased to save so that government and individuals alike live on credit.

To finance the current-account deficit, a reflection of the lack of saving, the US relies on foreigners supplying it with the foreign currency it can't earn itself. The Old Europe that Donald Rumsfeld mocked last week has been helping to prop up the US economy, buying shares and bonds on Wall Street, taking over American companies and investing in real estate, compensating for the saving that the Americans aren't doing themselves.

But if foreigners got windy about the prospects for share and property prices and stopped buying, or began to withdraw some of the trillions they have invested in the US economy, then the dollar would collapse. Already, it has fallen nearly 10 per cent against the euro over the last six weeks, but that could just be the beginning. Economists at the Federal Reserve have estimated that the dollar needs to fall by 30 per cent to bring the flow of imports and exports into balance, but in today's markets such a fall doesn't happen gradually. It happens precipitately.

If America and Britain spurn a second UN Resolution and go to war with the active opposition of key members of the Security Council like France and Russia, be sure the flow of dollars into the US will slow down dramatically, and be sure there will be a stampede of foreigners trying to sell.

Shares on Wall Street that Bush is so anxious to prop up are still massively overvalued. Against this background, there could be a devastating sell-off, with all the depressing knock-on consequences for American consumer confidence and business investment.-Dawn/The Guardian News Service.

© The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2003

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Original Subject	All Liberal Democrats urged to join mass anti-war demonstration
Original Date	2003-01-27 12:07:21
Original Sender	Islamic Republic News Agency <irna@mitap.sdsu.edu>

Dateline: London, Jan 27, IRNA

London, Jan 27, IRNA -- The federal executive of the Liberal Democrats has called upon all members of Britain's third largest party to attend next month's mass peace march in London to show their opposition to a war against Iraq. Plans are for the Lib Dems to meet outside the Royal Festival Hall ahead of the start of the rally on February 15, when similar protests are being held across Europe. The executive said in a motion, obtained by IRNA, that it supported the line taken by the party's 53 MPs that there are no compeling arguments for a military action to be taken against Iraq at this time. Liberal Democrat members were then encouraged "to voice their concerns about the Iraq situation, in particular by participating in the `Stop the War' demonstration, it said. Britain's third largest party has found itself in the crucial position of taking the lead in being the mainstream dissident voice opposed to the war. Similar lines have been taken by Scottish and Welsh Nationalists as well as the Green Party, together with backbench MPs of the ruling Labour Party and the opposition Conservatives. While both Prime Minister Tony Blair and Conservative leader Ian Duncan Smith have argued for the UK to stand "shoulder-to-shoulder" with US President George W. Bush, Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy has maintained a consistent argument on the need for UN approval. HC/LS End

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Original Subject	Iran also to fingerprint Americans
Original Date	2003-01-27 03:02:11
Original Sender	Lahore Nation <lahore_nation@mitap.sdsu.edu>

Author: By Our Monitoring Desk

Iran has started taking fingerprints of the US nationals in a tit-for-tat move, reports Radio Tehran.

The Washington has also photographed and fingerprinted the Iranian nationals in the US. They were also asked to register with the immigration authorities.

“Iran has also begun to take fingerprints of the US nationals in response to move by Washington,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman while talking to newsmen in Tehran on Sunday.

He further said that now every person who will come from the US to Iran will be fingerprinted and that the decision will be enforced strictly.

To a question, the spokesman termed the recently-held meeting of Iraq's neighbouring countries in Turkey as positive and said that they stressed the need for the central role of the UN in order to resolve the Iraqi crisis.

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Original Subject	SADDAM AL QAEDA LINKS?
Original Date	2003-01-27 03:01:04
Original Sender	Gulf Daily News <gulf_daily_news@mitap.sdsu.edu>

Section: World Dateline: WASHINGTON

The US last night accused Saddam Hussein of having clear links with the Al Qaeda terror network.

Setting the stage for a tough State of the Union address tomorrow by President George W Bush, the White House warned that the use of nuclear arms against Iraq also could not be ruled out if Baghdad uses weapons of mass destruction.

Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card led the offensive ahead of key report to the Security Council by chief UN arms inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei today.

"The more we wait, the more chance there is for this dictator with clear ties to terrorist groups including Al Qaeda to pass a weapon, share technology or use these weapons again," Secretary of State Colin Powell told a sceptical Europe in his speech to the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos.

"The nexus of tyrants and terror, of terrorists and weapons of mass terror, is the greatest danger of our age," he warned, without offering evidence of the disputed link to Al Qaeda.

Powell also stepped up pressure on the Iraqi leader, saying he had "failed the test" with its weapons declaration to the UN and that the current situation "cannot be allowed to continue."

He said the US was prepared to take military action on its own if Iraq did not comply on its own.

Al Qaeda carried out the September 11 attacks on the US in 2001, and US officials have claimed since then that an "axis of evil" involving Iraq, Iran and North Korea have been trying to develop weapons of mass destruction and maintain ties with alleged terror groups.

But Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz later denied US accusations that Baghdad had links with the Al Qaeda network or is using terrorism to achieve its objectives.

"First of all, we don't have any relationship with terrorist groups," he told Britain's Channel Four TV.

"Al Qaeda and Taliban came to power in 1996 as a government of Afghanistan. We, the government of Iraq, did not recognise the government of Taliban," he said.

"We are a different political party, we are a different political system. We don't use terrorism as an instrument for our objectives..."

UN experts meanwhile carried out 10 more inspections yesterday and US and British fighter jets launched new raids in the southern no-fly zone in Iraq. Forward this article to a Colleague, Associate or Friend

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Original Subject	Switzerland Offers to Host Talks Between US and Iraq
Original Date	2003-01-27 05:01:57
Original Sender	People's Daily <peoples_daily@mitap.sdsu.edu>

Switzerland has offeredto host last-ditch talks between the United States and Iraq to avert the threat of war.

Swiss Foreign Minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, made the proposition during a meeting Saturday with the US secretary of state, Colin Powell.

During their half-hour meeting in the Swiss resort of Davos where the World Economic Forum's annual meeting is being held, Calmy-Rey urged Powell to be mindful of the humanitarian catastrophe that would follow any military action in Iraq.

"Everyone talks a great deal about oil and sanctions, but Switzerland is concerned above all with people," said Calmy-Rey. "I urged him to consider the consequences of a war."

The new Swiss Foreign Minister said Powell had assured her thatWashington would do everything in its power to avoid conflict. However, he did not comment on the Swiss offer to host talks.

According to a report by Swiss Radio International, in January 1991, Geneva hosted similar, and ultimately unsuccessful, talks between the US and Iraq in January 1991, shortly before the Gulf War.

Calmy-Rey said she had also taken the opportunity to reiterate the position of the Swiss government, stressing that all peaceful means to disarm Baghdad should be sought before resorting to armedconflict.

She added that military action would only be justified under a new United Nations resolution.

Powell, who is scheduled to make a speech on Sunday at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, earlier warned the international community not to retreat from its responsibility to disarm Iraq.

Powell, who is looking to drum up support in Davos, said the UShad the backing of at least a dozen nations should it decide to attack Iraq without a new UN resolution.

Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved

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Original Subject	US media failing in Middle East coverage
Original Date	2003-01-27 03:03:09
Original Sender	Jordan Times <jordan_times@mitap.sdsu.edu>

Author: By Ahmed Bouzid

IF THE United States were a country where the mainstream press had the collective character and professional jealousy to make its own independent judgement about news priorities, rather than by default safely defer to the daily briefings given by the State Department, the White House and the Department of Defence, the following Jan. 15, 2003, UPI story would have grabbed the headlines, or at least made the front pages: “Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries.”

As things stand, however, the story that Israel is planning to carry out assassinations right here, on US soil, has simply been treated as anything but that. As a nonstory. Also a story not worthy of the media's attention was the following news item from the Washington Post: “[Israel's] state attorney, Talia Sasson, had argued that [Arab Knesset member Azmi] Bishara and his political party, Balad, should be banned because they supported making Israel a state for all its citizens, which she said would contradict Israel's founding principle as a Jewish state.”

Is this the same Jewish state touted as the only democracy in the Middle East, as the only haven for the rule of law in a sea of anachronistic monarchies and thuggish regimes? And yet, not a word of indignation from otherwise moralising editorialists about an official statement from the Israeli government that openly declares that Israel is by definition not egalitarian and that anyone who would propose that it should be must be banned from participating in political life there.

We are now two years and four months into the second Intifada. During this time, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, and the United Nations, to name just the most visible human rights groups, have all reported in great detail, with striking consistency and first hand, about human rights violations suffered by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli army. And yet, the Associated Press, for instance, is still describing such human rights violations as if they were mere “allegations”, rather than established fact, or at least reported findings — as in the following from a Jan. 9, 2003, story: “Media reports also claimed the [Israeli] government was furious at Britain's decision to block exports of critical spare parts for Israel's Phantom fighter planes because of alleged human rights abuses by Israeli troops in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

Could it be that the AP reporter is simply not familiar with the findings of human rights groups? A very possible explanation, indeed, since some of their latest revelations have simply been ignored by the US mainstream media. For instance, little play has been given to a recent report from the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem that accused the Israeli army of engaging in the practice of using Palestinian civilians as human shields, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, as well as of rulings from the Israeli courts. In that report, “B'Tselem exposes a list of incidents in which the Israeli army violated a High Court of Justice injunction by using Palestinians as human shields. Little play has also been given to Amnesty International's Sept. 3, 2002, statement on the Israeli High Court of Justice's ruling “allowing the forcible transfer of two Palestinians from their home town of Nablus to the Gaza Strip on the grounds that they allegedly assisted their brother to commit attacks against Israelis”.

Amnesty went on to say: “Today's ruling effectively allows for a grave violation of one of the most basic principles of international human rights law — notably the right of any accused to a fair trial and to challenge any evidence used against them.” Such gross lapses in reporting could also explain why another AP reporter wrote the following on Jan. 5, 2003, the day two suicide bombers detonated in Tel Aviv: “The bombings also ended a period of relative calm. Previously the last bombing inside Israel was Nov. 21, when 11 bus passengers were killed in Jerusalem.” Perhaps the reporter who wrote that story was not aware that during this “period of relative calm”, B'Tselem released a report which revealed that over 80 per cent of Palestinians killed for “curfew violations” were children, many of them shot in the head, and that 70 per cent of those killed in the month of December were children, women and elderly. If he read his new item from the US mainstream media, indeed he would not know! And if a reporter on the ground is so uninformed, what are the chances that we, two continents away, can even begin to grasp the magnitude of what is really happening there?

The writer is president of Palestine Media Watch. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.

Monday, January 27, 2003

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