>> CONVERSATIONS WITH RNC?
http://www.moretothepoint.com/
The Presidential Primary Process
New York and California have more Democrats than any other states, but presidential hopefuls Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, Wesley Clark and Joe Lieberman never got a chance to ask for their votes. Today, in those and eight other so-called "Super Tuesday" states, millions of Democrats may be doing little more than ratifying the decisions of 120,000 caucus-goers last month in Iowa. If that prediction proves true, voters in Florida, Texas, New Jersey and Pennsylvania won't have any choice left at all. Has the early primary schedule created a bandwagon for front-runners that disenfranchise the bulk of the Party? Is "momentum" the best qualification for the November campaign? We hear from a political scientist, the Democratic National Committee, the National Association of Secretaries of State, and former Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Gary
Hart.
>> WAITING FOR CONGRESS?
The U.N.Scam: Time for Hearings
by Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., and James Phillips
WebMemo #438
March 1, 2004 | printer-friendly format |
In the ten months since the downfall of the Iraqi dictatorship, a clear picture has emerged of how Saddam Hussein abused the United Nation's oil-for-food program. The Iraqi Governing Council has begun to release critical information detailing how, in the words of The New York Times, "Saddam Hussein's government systematically extracted billions of dollars in kickbacks from companies doing business with Iraq, funneling most of the illicit funds through a network of foreign bank accounts in violation of United Nations sanctions." In effect the program was little more than "an open bazaar of payoffs, favoritism and kickbacks."[1] The seriousness of these charges warrants investigation by the U.S. Congress and an independent, Security Council-appointed commission.
Serious Allegations
The evidence emerging from Baghdad confirms the suspicions of the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), which had earlier estimated that the Iraqi regime generated several billion dollars in illicit earnings through surcharges and oil smuggling in the period between 1997 and 2001.
A mosaic of international corruption is also emerging in the patchwork of politicians and businesses across the world that benefited from the oil-for-food program and helped keep Saddam in power. The Iraqi Oil Ministry recently released a partial list of names of individuals and companies from across the world that received oil from Saddam Hussein's regime, allegedly at below-market prices. Unsurprisingly, French and Russian names dominate the list, with former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and the "director of the Russian President's office" listed as beneficiaries. The list also implicates U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Benon V. Sevan, executive director of the oil-for-food program, who has stringently denied any wrongdoing.[2]
History of the Oil-for-Food Program
The oil-for-food program was established by the United Nations Security Council through Security Council Resolution 986 in 1995 "as a temporary measure to provide for the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people" while economic sanctions remained in place. Of Iraq's population of 24 million, 60 percent were dependent on food shipments administered through oil-for-food.
Between 1996 and 2003, the program generated over $63 billion in revenues for the Iraqi regime. With little oversight from the U.N., the Iraqi dictatorship was able both to circumvent and to exploit the oil-for-food program. It is suspected of selling its oil at bargain basement prices that benefited numerous middlemen while overpaying for various imports, which allowed it to reward suppliers. The program was officially brought to an end in November 2003.[3]
Congressional Hearings
The charges being leveled against the United Nations over its handling of the oil-for-food program are of such a serious nature that they warrant congressional hearings by both the House and Senate. The hearings should investigate how Saddam Hussein was able to exploit a vast U.N.-operated sanctions program to enrich his family, influence foreign governments, and prop up his brutal regime. The hearings should investigate and expose the vast network of politicians and companies that helped keep Saddam Hussein in power. Congress should also examine the close ties between the Russian and French governments and the Iraqi regime, and how this influenced the international debate over Iraq.
A Security Council Commission of Inquiry
In addition to congressional hearings, as a key member of the U.N. Security Council, the United States should lead the way in calling for a wide-ranging and in-depth independent investigation into the way in which the U.N. handled the oil-for-food program.
The Commission should be appointed by the Security Council, but should be completely independent of the United Nations and made up of non-U.N. employees. Great care should be exercised by the United States and Great Britain to prevent such a Commission from being unduly influenced by other Security Council members who may have a vested interest in protecting their own officials.
Conclusions
The abuse of the oil-for-food program was the result of a staggering management failure on the part of the United Nations and has raised troubling questions about the credibility and competence of the world organization. Several conclusions can be drawn:
The oil-for-food debacle reinforces the need for sweeping reform of the United Nations bureaucracy and the need for an annual external audit if its accounts.
Senior U.N. bureaucrats with responsibility for running the oil-for-food program should be investigated and held accountable for their actions. In particular, the role played by Benon V. Sevan, executive director of the Office of Iraq Programs, should be carefully scrutinized. If the allegations against Mr. Sevan are true, he must be prosecuted.
Overall responsibility for the program's failure should lie with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who in effect turned a blind eye to one of the biggest financial scandals of modern times. The U.N.'s inability to successfully manage the oil-for-food program represents a spectacular failure of leadership on the part of Mr. Annan.
The mismanagement of the oil-for-food program raises serious doubts about the U.N.'s ability to manage future programs of a similar scale. The United Nations should never again be placed in charge of the administration of an international sanctions regime.
The links between Saddam Hussein's regime and leading European companies and politicians were extensive. The United States should call for those who violated the sanctions regime to be prosecuted by their governments.
The United States was right to exclude the U.N. from a key role in administering post-war Iraq - the U.N. was clearly incapable of performing such a function.
The Pentagon was right to bar companies from nations who had opposed regime change in Iraq, such as France and Russia, from bidding for U.S.-funded contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq. Russian and French companies in particular benefited from the exploitation of the oil-for-food program.
Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., is Fellow in Anglo-American Security Policy, and James Phillips is Research Fellow in Middle Eastern Affairs, in The Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute at The Heritage Foundation.
[1] See Susan Sachs, "Hussein's Regime Skimmed Billions From Aid Program," The New York Times, February 29, 2004.
[2] The names were published in January in the Arabic Iraqi newspaper Al Mada and subsequently reported on by Therese Raphael in her article "Saddam's Global Payroll," published in The Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2004.
[3] For further background on the Oil for Food program, see Claudia Rosett, "Oil, Food and a Whole Lot of Questions," The New York Times, April 18, 2003.
? 1995 - 2004 The Heritage Foundation
All Rights Reserved.
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Le scandale des ?coutes ? l'ONU rebondit
LEMONDE.FR | 27.02.04 | 08h41
Au lendemain des d?clarations de l'ancienne ministre britannique, Clare Short, qui a affirm? que des agents de son pays avaient effectu? des ?coutes dans les bureaux de Kofi Annan, un ancien chef des inspecteurs en d?sarmement, l'Australien Richard Butler, a assur? que ses conversations avaient ?t? ?cout?es par au moins quatre pays, dont la France.
Le jeune scandale des ?coutes de responsables des Nations unies a rebondi vendredi apr?s qu'un ancien chef des inspecteurs en d?sarmement, le diplomate australien Richard Butler, a d?clar? qu'au moins quatre pays, dont la France, avaient espionn? ses conversations alors qu'il menait de d?licates n?gociations pour tenter de d?sarmer l'Irak.
R?agissant aux d?clarations de Clare Short, ex-ministre britannique, qui a affirm? jeudi que des agents britanniques avaient effectu? des ?coutes dans les bureaux de Kofi Annan, secr?taire g?n?ral de l'ONU, M. Butler a d?clar? ?tre certain d'avoir lui aussi ?t? espionn? aux Nations unies. "Bien s?r, je l'ai ?t?, j'?tais parfaitement au courant de ?a, a-t-il d?clar? ? la radio ABC. Comment l'ai-je su ? Parce que les gens qui l'ont fait sont venus me voir et m'ont montr? les enregistrements faits d'autres personnes pour m'aider dans ma t?che pour d?sarmer l'Irak."
LA FRANCE ELLE AUSSI EN ACCUSATION
"Ils ont dit 'nous sommes juste ici pour vous aider' et ils n'ont jamais montr? aucun enregistrement me concernant", a d?clar? Richard Butler, pr?cisant qu'il avait ?t? espionn? par les Am?ricains, les Fran?ais, les Britanniques et les Russes.
"Je l'ai su par d'autres sources, j'?tais absolument persuad? que j'?tais espionn? par au moins quatre membres du Conseil de s?curit?", a-t-il ajout?.
Richard Butler, chef des inspecteurs en d?sarmement de l'ONU en Irak de 1997 ? 1999, a ?galement ?voqu? le fait que les diplomates allaient se mettre ? l'?cart pour que leurs conversations demeurent secr?tes, parce qu'ils estimaient que le si?ge de l'ONU ? New York ?tait truff? d'espions. "Si je voulais vraiment avoir une conversation sensible avec quelqu'un... j'en ?tais r?duit ? me rendre soit dans une caf?t?ria bruyante dans le sous-sol de l'ONU et de parler en murmurant, soit carr?ment d'aller marcher dans Central Park", a-t-il d?clar?.
Richard Butler a ?galement estim? que les accusations d'espionnage dans le bureau de Kofi Annan montraient ? quel point les relations internationales sont un jeu cynique. "Si les gens ordinaires savaient ? quel point ce jeu est malhonn?te, ils exprimeraient sans doute des protestations", a-t-il affirm?.
HANS BLIX AURAIT LUI AUSSI ?T? ?COUT?
La radio ABC a par ailleurs rapport? que des responsables des services secrets australiens avaient vu des transcriptions de conversations ? partir d'un t?l?phone mobile de Hans Blix, chef des inspecteurs en Irak avant la guerre, qui avaient ?t? fournies par les services de renseignement britanniques ou am?ricains. "A chaque fois qu'il (Hans Blix) arrivait en Irak, son t?l?phone ?tait mis sur ?coute et la transcription des enregistrements ?tait mise ? la disposition des Etats-Unis, de l'Australie, du Canada, de la Grande-Bretagne et aussi de la Nouvelle-Z?lande", a affirm?, un journaliste d'ABC, en citant des sources non identifi?es.
Le premier ministre australien, John Howard, a pour sa part refus? de commenter ces affirmations, arguant que sa politique ?tait de ne jamais confirmer ou infirmer des informations relatives aux services secrets.
Le secr?taire d'Etat am?ricain, Colin Powell, s'est lui aussi refus? jeudi ? commenter les accusations selon lesquelles la Grande-Bretagne aurait espionn? le secr?taire g?n?ral de l'ONU, Kofi Annan, avant la guerre en Irak. "Je n'ai rien ? dire au sujet des activit?s du Royaume-Uni. Nous ne parlons jamais de questions touchant au renseignement en public", s'est-il born? ? d?clarer ? la presse ? l'issue d'une rencontre avec le ministre bulgare des affaires ?trang?res, Solomon Passy.
CLARE SHORT PERSISTE ET SIGNE
L'ex-ministre britannique du d?veloppement international, Clare Short, a provoqu? jeudi 26 f?vrier un formidable scandale en affirmant que des agents britanniques avaient espionn? M. Annan.
Le secr?taire g?n?ral de l'ONU a r?agi avec prudence : il serait "d??u" si ces affirmations sont av?r?es, a indiqu? jeudi son porte-parole, Fred Eckhard, soulignant l'"ill?galit?" de tels actes.
Clare Short a d?menti jeudi soir que ses d?clarations fracassantes sur la mise sur ?coutes de Kofi Annan par les Britanniques avant la guerre en Irak mettent en danger la s?curit? nationale, comme l'a affirm? Tony Blair. "C'est l'itin?raire de ma conscience, a-t-elle expliqu? lors d'une interview ? la cha?ne Channel Four diffus?e en d?but de soir?e. Je ne dis pas que c'est un itin?raire parfait, mais c'est une (question de) conscience et ?a n'a rien ? voir avec la loi sur les secrets officiels et ?a n'a rien ? voir avec la s?curit? nationale."
Lors de sa conf?rence de presse mensuelle en milieu de journ?e, le premier ministre a qualifi? de "profond?ment irresponsables" les all?gations de Clare Short, qui "minent la s?curit? de ce pays" selon lui. "La s?curit? nationale britannique n'est pas en jeu lorsqu'on r?v?le que les coups de fil priv?s de Kofi Annan ont ?t? divulgu?s de fa?on incorrecte, et dire cela publiquement ne repr?sente un danger pour aucune personne travaillant dans les services de s?curit? britanniques", a r?pliqu? Mme Short sur Channel Four.
Mme Short avait d?missionn? en mai 2003 du gouvernement de Tony Blair pour protester contre l'intervention am?ricano-britannique en Irak sans le feu vert de l'ONU.
L'affaire tombe tr?s mal pour M. Blair, qui tente de se r?concilier avec une opinion publique plut?t hostile ? la guerre en mettant l'accent sur des th?mes de politique int?rieure.
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Avec AFPIsrael Gets a Taste of Friedman
Bibi is leading a charge for tax cuts, deregulation and economic liberty.
BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Monday, March 1, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
Addressing foreign journalists in a Knesset conference room last fall, Ehud Rassabi began his talk with the following statement: "I am a fan of Milton Friedman." As the parliamentarian went on to detail his plans to cut Israel's public sector, slash taxes, draw down entitlements and privatize state assets, several reporters looked around in confusion, wondering if they were still in the land of the kibbutz.
But it definitely was Israel, and even as the world has focused more attention on the Palestinian issue, it has overlooked a significant story. The land once labeled the "last remaining socialist state in Eastern Europe," has seen its governing coalition embark on what could be the most important economic reform in the country's history. The impetus for change has come via a popular mandate that helped propel reformers like Mr. Rassabi to the Knesset in the last elections. The will to see it through comes via Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, the firebrand former prime minister who surprised everyone a year ago in agreeing to become finance minister. The next few months will decide whether he and his fellow free-marketers have the political wherewithal to succeed.
This stab at transformation couldn't have come too soon. When Mr. Netanyahu took over, Israel was years into a steep recession. Tax revenues were in a free-fall even as the country handed over more money to welfare programs (with some 30% of its $70 billion budget going to transfer payments). The Bank of Israel, worried about inflation, had kept interest rates high, strangling an economy that the financial community was worried could collapse.
Even a year into Mr. Netanyahu's emergency economic reforms, GDP growth has remained anemic--just 1.3% in 2003. Some 10% of the work force is unemployed, despite the government employing one out of every three workers. And Israel's government expenditures total a startling 55% of GDP. U.S. expenditures, both federal and state, are less than one-third.
Economic turmoil isn't exactly new in Israel, but what has changed is the public's toleration of it. The country has seen a growing divide between private workers, who continue to float Israeli society on their overtaxed backs, and public-sector employees who earn many times the average Israeli salary. A fed-up middle class, weary of the inflation, layoffs, and a growing tax burden, has flowered into a movement that bears more than passing resemblance to the American tax revolt that preceded and carried through the Reagan era.
That movement found its feet in Israel's January 2003 elections. The party to which Mr. Rassabi belongs, Shinui (which stands for "Change"), had muddled along for years, a small player in Israeli politics. But this time Shinui's platforms of secularization (a reference to growing discontent with the country's ultra-Orthodox Jews who refuse to work, and live on entitlements) as well as a freer economy, hit home. Shinui went from seven Knesset seats to 15, making it the third largest party after Likud (40 seats) and Labor (19). It became part of Likud's governing coalition, where it has since been doggedly pushing its economic reform agenda.
And it found a powerful ally in Mr. Netanyahu. Bibi's appointment was originally met with skepticism; financial watchers worried he'd simply mind the economic store until he could launch another bid for prime minister. Instead, Mr. Netanyahu has tackled economic reform with the zeal and single-mindedness that has marked his career, drawing comparisons to New Zealand's Roger Douglas, the finance minister who liberated his own nation's economy in the 1980s.
Mr. Netanyahu's emergency economic plan spared no holy cows: It included cuts in government expenditures, welfare entitlements and public-sector jobs. It also sought to lower taxes and jump-start a stalled privatization program. While he's levered through a fair amount of reform already, now comes the hard question of whether he can break the backs of the country's most entrenched institutions.
In one corner, he's wrapped in a showdown with Israel's labor organization, Histadrut, and the leader of that massive body, Amir Peretz, makes U.S union bosses look cuddly. Histadrut's response to possible layoffs or wage cuts has been to do what it always does in the face of threats to its protected fiefdom: strike. While Histadrut strikes have not materialized to the huge degree promised, they have damaged Israel's fragile economy and already forced certain reform concessions.
Similarly, Mr. Netanyahu is facing off against monopolies that have dominated the economy for decades. The Israeli government owns almost all of the country's land, along with water, energy, telecommunications and natural resources. It also holds stakes in major banking institutions, a handful of which control financial markets and distort the allocation of credit.
Private industry is also besieged by monopolies, raising consumer prices by an average of 30%. Many of these organizations (run, again, by organized labor) have been pushing hard to delay Mr. Netanyahu's privatization plans.
There are positive signs that reforms are working. Mr. Netanyahu has managed to bring the top marginal tax rate in Israel down to below 50%. He's cut two consecutive budgets and is set to restrain spending increases to 1% a year in real terms in 2005 to 2010. He's also managed reductions in the public work-force and salaries. The Bank of Israel has in turn brought interest rates down, unleashing needed capital, and the economy is predicted to grow by 2.8% this year.
But there are also worrying signs that Mr. Netanyahu is losing momentum. He recently agreed to let the Knesset meddle with his budget, and bowed to a freeze in planned public-sector layoffs. His loud calls for privatization of key parts of the Israeli economy, such as the ports, have faded. Part of the problem is that his own party, under fire on the peace issue, has been increasingly reluctant to court criticism on the economy and has failed to give Mr. Netanyahu the backing he needs.
It might consider that a strong Israeli economy is vital not only to the country's security needs now, but also to underpin any future peace deal with economically disadvantaged Palestinians. Should Mr. Netanyahu gain his government's backing and see this fight through, he'll have arguably done as much for Israel as he did, or could do, as prime minister.
Ms. Strassel is a senior editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal.
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It's back to the Dark Ages on trade
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | It is Feb. 24 2005, and President John Kerry and his economic team -- Roger Altman and Alan Blinder from the U.S. Treasury and U.S. trade representative Clyde Prestowitz -- are busy converting the U.S. into a protectionist fortress.
- The North American Free Trade Agreement? Rewrite it to force Mexican wages upward.
- The World Trade Organization? Reconsider.
- Japan? Ralph Nader, special envoy, is just landing in Tokyo.
- And oh, that meeting with Pascal Lamy, the European Union's trade commissioner? Schedule it later.
This vision of a return to the Dark Ages of protectionism seems improbable, especially considering the sunny American scenario of just a few weeks ago. No protectionist presidential candidate cast his shadow across the election stage -- Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan were nowhere to be seen. The only two serious candidates who talked about protectionism were Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. And Iowa voters chucked them out early, a humiliation that seemed to underscore the anachronistic nature of the protectionist message.
In short, Americans generally seemed to have internalized the principal economic lesson of the 1990s: that the sort of global commerce symbolized by NAFTA is a good thing. Certainly, the U.S. transition to an international service economy has been difficult. Many citizens have lost jobs or know people who have. It is infuriating to see Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan thinking about hiring in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, when people are worrying about the death of manufacturing in Montgomery, Ala.
Nonetheless, most voters also know that U.S. unemployment dipped to historic lows in the decade following the signing of NAFTA; they know that even now, post-recession, unemployment is lower than the average of the past quarter-century. Finally, Americans know that more jobs will materialize eventually. For while outsourcing may "kill" some jobs, it also helps companies generate more profits, and those profits are reinvested -- eventually -- in jobs.
But something is changing to obscure this logic. This month Kerry and Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) have discovered that the loss of manufacturing jobs is unnerving voters and that calling for "job protection" -- precise meaning to be worked out later -- has enormous appeal.
Suddenly, the basic laws of economics no longer seem to apply. And without considering much the implications of their actions, the candidates are edging toward old anti-trade positions. Thus earlier this month, Edwards told an audience in Wisconsin that trade deals such as NAFTA were bad as they "drive down our wages and ship our jobs around the world." He also spoke repeatedly about "fair trade not free trade."
Kerry has been more circumspect; he, after all, supported NAFTA in the Senate, as well as China's entry to the WTO. And his economic guru, Blinder, spent his career repeating the formula, "increasing productivity and trade equals growth and jobs." Nonetheless, Kerry has also -- as James Hoffa of the Teamsters union recently put it -- "evolved" on trade. NAFTA, Kerry says, has to be reopened and rewritten. The Kerry campaign has also reminded voters that its agenda calls for a moratorium on new trade agreements until all old agreements are reviewed, and Kerry has said he wants to "bring back" jobs. What can that mean?
The Republicans have also done their part to put back the clock. This month saw a new low for the party, when Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, made the inquisitorial demand that Greg Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, deny his suggestion that outsourcing can increase American well-being.
Hastert, a wonderful man but, after all, a former wrestling coach, was forcing Mankiw, author of one of the best economic textbooks, to deny a basic law of economics. ("Recant, Galileo, admit that outsourcing always kills jobs!")
It is easy to argue that this retrograde shift doesn't matter. Bill Clinton also asked for NAFTA riders during his first presidential campaign. But by crusading so hard for American jobs, today's candidates are suggesting the problem is free markets. They thus make it virtually inevitable that they will have to deliver protectionism after the election -- even in areas where they do not intend such an outcome.
This spells trouble. Democrats these days generally like to portray themselves as multilateralist. But protectionism is inherently unilateralist. If you are interested in international co-operation at all, you can see that this is exactly the wrong moment to bash international trade.
The second problem is that by "protecting" jobs, the new administration is likely to kill them. Kerry's international tax plan will force companies to stay in the U.S. at the expense of profitability. This in turn will force them to lay off workers. His scapegoating of "Benedict Arnold chief executives" certainly won't inspire new companies to list on U.S. exchanges. As for Kerry's domestic tax increases, they represent the one kind of step that ensures lost jobs will not return: they reduce U.S. relative competitiveness.
The third problem is subtler: intellectual dishonesty. Congressmen of the 1990s saw first-hand what trade can do for growth. By ignoring that experience, Edwards and Kerry -- and Hastert even -- force Americans to ignore it along with them. In effect, these men are erasing history. You can't get more medieval than that.
Amity Shlaes
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Dingell: DoE letter 'bizarre'
By Jim Snyder
In a letter that Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) described as "bizarre," a top Department of Energy (DoE)official accused a Democratic Energy and Commerce Committee staffer of refusing to hand over documents related to allegations of misconduct at the Hanford, Wash., nuclear site until a critical newspaper article appeared.
Beverly Cook, the assistant secretary for environment, safety and health, wrote to Edith Holleman, a staffer on the committee: "I understand that you have been in possession of information relevant to this investigation and that a Departmental request for these documents would not be met until `a Washington Post' story on this subject runs."
The Feb. 25 letter did not detail what documents the department was seeking.
The letter noted that DoE has been investigating allegations of "supervisor misconduct, fraud, and medical records mismanagement" since September, including problems associated with the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation (HEHF), a private nonprofit clinic where sick workers are treated.
A lengthy story in Thursday's Washington Post detailed allegations of misconduct at Hanford, including at HEHF. The Post story quotes an e-mail from Energy Department official Alan Hopko as saying that contractors cleaning up the site "have an incentive to minimize the number of workdays lost" to employee injuries. Contractors get a bonus if they
meet an accelerated clean-up schedule.
The nonprofit watchdog group Government Accountability Project first disclosed allegations of misconduct.
A third of the 177 waste tanks at Hanford are leaking radioactive and toxins into the groundwater, according to the Post. The administration has put the clean-up on an accelerated schedule, reducing the projected date for completion from seven to three decades.
This week, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced that the investigation into Hanford's management had been expanded to include the Office of Independent Oversight.
"I am certain you appreciate the serious nature of the allegations lodged against HEHF and respectfully request that you reconsider your decision and provide this information to our investigators," Cook wrote
Holleman.
"I know you share the Department's commitment to ensuring the safety of its workforce."
The letter prompted a sharp retort from Dingell, who is the ranking member on the committee and has been a frequent critic of DoE's worker safety record.
"I am in possession of a bizarre letter dated February 25, 2004," Dingell wrote Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
Dingell did not agree to turn over the alleged documents, instead promising that his staff's independent investigation "will be made known in proper time and place."
"We are not anxious to abet the cover-up culture that has permeated DoE and its contractors for too long," he wrote.
He also questioned why DoE -- "with all of the investigatory resources available to it" -- couldn't get the documents in question.
"Please be advised that I have instructed Ms. Holleman not to respond to Ms. Cook's letter, and I ask that any further correspondence on this matter be directed to me," Dingell wrote.
? 2003 The Hill
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>> DEATH PENALTY EUROPE?
http://www.spiegel.de/archiv/dossiers/0,1518,287849,00.html
KINDERSCH?NDERPROZESS
Dutroux schl?ft auf der Anklagebank ein
W?hrend ganz Belgien auf den kleinen Gerichtssaal in Arlon blickte, machte der Hauptangeklagte Marc Dutroux ein Nickerchen. Der Kindersch?nder und mutma?liche M?rder von zwei M?dchen zeigte kein Interesse an der Auswahl der Geschworenen, die ?ber sein Schicksal entscheiden werden.
AP
Schlafender Dutroux: Keine taktisch wichtigen Dinge
Arlon - "Herr Dutroux schl?ft nachts sehr schlecht. Da ist es normal, dass er sich - wenn im Saal keine taktisch wichtigen Dinge passieren - ein wenig erholt", sagte der Anwalt des Mannes, dem die grausamsten Verbrechen in der belgischen Kriminalgeschichte vorgeworfen werden.
Marc Dutroux war bei der Auswahl von zw?lf Geschworenen und ihren Stellvertretern vor?bergehend in Schlaf gefallen. Den Kopf auf die Arme gebettet, lag er auf dem Tisch, was den Vorsitzenden Richter St?phane Goux veranlasste, Dutroux zur Ordnung zu rufen.
Am Mittag war die Wahl der Geschworenen beendet. Das Gericht in der Provinzhauptstadt Arlon ernannte je sechs M?nner und sechs Frauen, die am Ende der Beweisaufnahme ?ber Schuld oder Unschuld Dutrouxs und seiner Mitangeklagten entscheiden.
DPA
Dutroux, Polizist: Der verurteilte Kindersch?nder wollte sich nicht fotografieren lassen
F?r Aufregung sorgten neue Spekulationen ?ber einflussreiche Hinterm?nner. Der Fernsehsender VTM berichtete ?ber einen Brief von Dutroux, in dem dieser ein kriminelles Netzwerk mit Verbindungen zu Sicherheitsbeh?rden erw?hnt. Einer seiner Anw?lte, Ronny Baudewijn, sagte, die neuen Angaben seines Mandanten seien "nicht die beste Entscheidung" gewesen. Dem Fernsehsender zufolge soll der mitangeklagte Br?sseler Gesch?ftsmann Michel Nihoul als Kontaktperson zu den Hinterm?nnern gedient haben. Jan Fermon, Anwalt der Nebenklage, bezeichnete solche Theorien als "Beleidigung der Opfer".
Dutroux werden Mord an der 17 Jahre alten An und der 19-j?hrigen Eefje vorgeworfen, die im August 1995 verschleppt worden waren. Zudem soll er f?r die Entf?hrung, Freiheitsberaubung und Vergewaltigung der beiden M?dchen sowie der beiden achtj?hrigen Julie und Melissa sowie der zur Tatzeit 1996 zw?lfj?hrigen Sabine und der 14 Jahre alten Laetitia verantwortlich sein.
Die Morde an den M?dchen streitet Dutroux ab. Zugegeben hat er lediglich, seinen Komplizen Bernard Weinstein umgebracht zu haben. Sabine und Laetitia konnten lebend aus dem Haus Dutrouxs gerettet werden, Julie und Melissa wurden wie An und Eefje tot aufgefunden.
Da die Umst?nde des Todes der beiden Achtj?hrigen nie gekl?rt werden konnten, hat die Staatsanwaltschaft in diesen F?lle keine Klage erhoben - zum Entsetzen von Julies und Melissas Eltern, die dem Prozess daher fernbleiben.
Der Vater der ermordeten An, Paul Marchal, tritt in dem Verfahren als Nebenkl?ger auf, ebenso die Eltern der ermordeten Eefje.
Rechtsanwalt Jan Fermon, der das befreite Dutroux-Opfer Laetitia vertritt, formulierte die hohen Erwartungen an das Verfahren: "Laetitia erwartet Antworten auf das Wie und das Warum" ihrer Entf?hrung vor fast acht Jahren.
Mit Dutroux sitzen seine Exfrau Michelle Martin, sein Komplize Michel Lelievre und der Br?sseler Gesch?ftsmann Michel Nihoul auf der Anklagebank.
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Marc Dutroux se pose en victime d'un "syst?me mafieux"
LEMONDE.FR | 01.03.04 | 18h35
Il adopte ainsi la strat?gie d?fendue par ses avocats. Le proc?s de "l'ennemi public n?1" de la Belgique devrait durer au moins deux mois.
Marc Dutroux a affirm? lundi 1er mars, ? l'ouverture de son proc?s devant la cour d'assises d'Arlon en Belgique, qu'il ne constituait qu'un rouage d'un r?seau belge de p?dophilie, adoptant ainsi la strat?gie de d?fense annonc?e par ses avocats.
"Ce n'est pas parce que j'ai fait des conneries que je vais payer pour un syst?me mafieux dont je ne suis pas le moteur", avait d?j? d?clar? "l'ennemi public num?ro un" de Belgique, dans une d?claration diffus?e dimanche soir par la cha?ne de t?l?vision flamande VTM. Marc Dutroux, accus? d'une s?rie d'enl?vements, de viols et d'assassinats de fillettes, a ainsi relanc? une th?se ? laquelle croient beaucoup de Belges, sceptiques devant la th?orie du "pr?dateur isol?", mais qu'il n'a jamais utilis?e auparavant.
La premi?re journ?e du proc?s, qui s'est d?roul?e sans aucun incident notable ni v?ritable manifestation, a ?t? pour l'essentiel consacr?e ? la s?lection des douze jur?s, au terme de pr?s de cinq heures de proc?dure pour constituer le jury populaire charg? de juger Marc Dutroux et ses complices pr?sum?s. "Six hommes et six femmes, cela repr?sente exactement ce que nous attendions", s'est r?joui Me Georges-Henri Beauthier, avocat de Laetitia Delhez, l'une des jeunes filles enlev?es par Marc Dutroux et retrouv?e vivante dans sa propri?t? de Marcinelle, pr?s de Charleroi, en ao?t 1996.
Au total, 180 habitants de la province du Luxembourg belge, ?g?s de 30 ? 60 ans, avaient ?t? convoqu?s lundi matin par la justice pour constituer le jury. Plus de cent d'entre eux ont demand? ? en ?tre dispens?s, pour des raisons familiales ou professionnelles.
V?tu d'une veste sombre et portant une cravate sous un pull de laine, il est apparu tr?s calme lors de son entr?e dans le box prot?g? par une ?paisse vitre blind?e, comme les trois autres accus?s : son ?pouse Michelle Martin, son complice Michel Leli?vre et un quatri?me homme, Michel Nihoul.
"JE M'APPELLE MARC DUTROUX"
"Je m'appelle Marc Dutroux," a-t-il r?pondu d'une voix pos?e au pr?sident de la cour, St?phane Goux. Profession ? "Actuellement, je n'en ai pas". Domicile ? "La prison d'Arlon", a-t-il ajout? avant de plonger le nez dans ses papiers.
Quelques minutes plus tard, le pr?sident a signal? ? l'un de ses avocats que Dutroux, qui a ?t? plac? aux c?t?s de son ?pouse, semblait sommeiller dans son box.
Larmes aux yeux, les parents d'An et Eefje, deux jeunes filles dont les cadavres ont ?t? retrouv?s le 3 septembre 1996, ?taient pr?sents dans la salle de la cour d'assises. A l'inverse, les parents de deux autres victimes, Julie et Melissa, 8 ans au moment de leur enl?vement, ?taient absents de ce proc?s auquel ils ne croient pas.
Le proc?s entrera dans le vif du sujet mardi, avec la lecture de l'acte d'accusation, r?sum? de l'instruction criminelle la plus longue de l'histoire du pays, qui a dur? plus de sept ans, et d'un dossier de 440 000 pages. Quelque 500 t?moins seront appel?s ? la barre. Les audiences devraient durer au moins deux mois.
Avec AFP et Reuters
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India Nuclear Chief Tells AP Stores Safe
By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BOMBAY, India (AP) -
India's nuclear chief defended the country's atomic security, telling The Associated Press Monday that weapons secrets can't easily leak and that facilities are safe from terrorist threats.
"Our installations are very secure," said Anil Kakodkar, chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission. "There is a scare arising out of terrorism, but there need be no fear on that count here."
Since testing nuclear weapons in 1998, India has repeatedly said it is a responsible nuclear-armed state with laws preventing the illegal sale of information on nuclear arms and missiles.
A. Gopalakrishnan, a top nuclear engineer, also said he believed India's facilities were secure.
"I am 100 percent sure that there is no chance of anything going out of India," said Gopalakrishnan, chairman of India's nuclear regulatory board from 1993-96.
"In strong contrast to Pakistan, the Department of Atomic Energy tightly controls the material here, and no senior scientist or senior person can take out any material."
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said last week that India was increasing security measures in view of the transfer of nuclear knowledge from Pakistan to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
India and other countries fear the nuclear secrets sold by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father is the country's nuclear program, could fall into the hands of international terrorist groups.
At all of India's nuclear installations, electrified fencing and four barriers manned by armed guards protect critical areas, while high sensitivity detectors are installed along the gates, according to a top scientist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"We have been vigilant from the very beginning," said K.S. Parthasarthy, who retired in January after 16 years as the secretary of the Indian Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, which regulates India's 14 civilian nuclear installations.
There was speculation last week that India and Pakistan may be using the same black market network to supply their nuclear programs.
This came after a Washington court document showed that a South Africa-based Israeli businessman - facing felony charges of exporting nuclear bomb triggers to Pakistan - was also dealing with an Indian trader trying to buy material for Indian rocket facilities.
Atomic energy officials have said their dealings are aboveboard, and the Indian businessman told AP the material he sought was for the country's civilian space program and not for weapons.
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Going Soft on Iran
From the March 8, 2004 issue: The temptation of America's foreign policy "realists."
by Reuel Marc Gerecht
03/08/2004, Volume 009, Issue 25
ACCORDING TO THE NEWSPAPERS and the CIA, Iranian "hard-liners" dealt their country's reform movement and fledgling democracy a heavy, perhaps lethal, blow on February 20. With over 2,000 candidates "disqualified" before the parliamentary elections even took place, the ruling clerical elite ensured that the reformers, who've won office and national attention since the presidential election of Mohammad Khatami in May 1997, would no longer dominate the parliament, or Majles, which has become a forum for public discontent and frustration with the ruling mullahs. With a majority of seats in the next parliament, and already firmly in control of the country's internal security organizations and courts, the "hard-liners" will be able to fracture and silence, so the reporting goes, the political parties, newspapers, and organizations that left-wing clerics, like Khatami, had used to create a national movement for change.
According to many American "realists"--the school of foreign policy most often associated with such men as former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former diplomats James Baker, Richard Murphy, Thomas Pickering, and Richard Haass, and institutions like the Nixon Center and the Council on Foreign Relations--there may be a silver lining in the bad news. Iran's "hard-liners" may in fact be "pragmatic conservatives," to borrow a phrase often heard now in the colloquies of Washington's think tanks where the intellectual laborers of American realism are trying to devise a new strategy for Iran and the Greater Middle East. In the post-9/11 world, the fear of weapons of mass destruction in the wrong hands dominates public policy debates, and a growing number of American realists believe that Iran's "pragmatic mullahs"--in Persian translation, this means former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the major-domo of the clerical establishment, and Ali Khamenei, the "spiritual leader" of the country--are the men to cut a deal to halt Iran's WMD programs.
There is even a sense in certain quarters that we might actually be lucky that Khatami and the parliamentary reformers have been whipped. Rafsanjani and Khamenei may play a very rough game domestically--Hezbollah thugs beat dissidents, "rogue" intelligence agents knife and run down liberal intellectuals, the judiciary jails any dangerous political opposition figure too prominent to off, and the Council of Guardians preemptively disqualifies troublemakers from office--but externally they are, so the theory goes, responsible, rational actors who are principally motivated by geopolitics and economics (and, in the case of Rafsanjani, lucre). They are, in other words, real men, not distracted by all the leftist intellectual debates that consumed so many on the Khatami side of the political house.
It's worthwhile to remember that not that long ago prominent American realists made a different argument. In May 2001, just before President Khatami won his second term, Brent Scowcroft wrote in the Washington Post that we should unilaterally engage the Islamic Republic by lifting sanctions--specifically those targeted against the energy sector--even before talking about the clerical regime's fondness for terrorism, its development of nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction, or its unrelenting hostility to a peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians. According to Scowcroft, such a unilateral move was not to be viewed as "a sign of weakness in light of continued predations by an obnoxious and repressive regime." Such a charge would "miss the central point, which is that an active struggle is underway to determine the future course of Iran. The key is to speak to the people of Iran, not to their oppressors." Thus, for the Bush administration to give "a signal from the United States showing the desire for a better bilateral relationship might provide encouragement and impetus to reformers and the people who so eagerly seek change."
Of course, Scowcroft didn't explain how exactly an oil deal with Conoco or ExxonMobil would empower Iran's democratic forces.
(One wonders whether Scowcroft, who has been a paid consultant to U.S. energy companies, would have made this argument to the shah of Iran, or whether American oil executives have ever made this case to the energy-rich princes and dictators of the Middle East, post-Soviet Central Asia, or the Caucasus.) Neither he nor the other heavy hitters who cochaired a major review of U.S.-Iran policy in 2001 (former secretary of defense James Schlesinger and Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton) explained why Rafsanjani and Khamenei, two clerics who have excelled at machtpolitik, would not view unilateral American concessions as unilateral American concessions.
Needless to say, the realist case has evolved with events, and now it is time for the United States to engage "an obnoxious and repressive regime" since Iran's nuclear program, which is much more advanced than we'd guessed, gives us no choice.
Thomas Pickering, the perennial ambassador and former undersecretary of state for political affairs, has also underscored Iran's "capacity for making life uncomfortable and messy for the United States and its allies in Iraq" as a reason to seek a modus vivendi with Tehran's clerical overlords.
From the realists' perspective, the reformers had their day, they lost, and now America must deal with the facts on the ground. And, fortunately, Iran's rulers are corrupt divines who no longer believe in their hearts they have a mandate from heaven. First and foremost, they want to stay in power, within secure borders, unthreatened by the United States, Israel, or its neighbors, recognized as a legitimate regional power with accepted interests in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. If we let them be a member of the club, if we make Rafsanjani and Khamenei feel safe, in their own country and in others', then they might give up the bomb.
This realist American diplomacy would be complemented by the efforts of the British, French, and Germans--the "E.U. three" who are responsible for the European Union's Iranian relations. Simultaneously, the Europeans would suggest to Tehran that they might bring the Islamic Republic before the United Nations Security Council for censure for its nuclear prevarications.
And if the Iranians continue to misbehave, the Europeans would hint with increasing frankness the possibility of economic sanctions against Tehran--the type of sanctions that American realists want first to lift as a carrot to induce better clerical behavior.
Though not known for using economic sanctions as political tools--Paris just announced a $2 billion oil exploration deal with the Islamic Republic even though its diplomats and spooks have long known that the clerical regime has been blatantly lying to the International Atomic Energy Agency about its nuclear "research" program--the Europeans will, this time, so the theory goes, get serious. After all, they, too, dread the spread of nuclear weapons. They, too, view the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a cornerstone of the liberal internationalist order. Perhaps most of all, they wouldn't want George Bush untethered from adult European supervision, possibly inclined to bomb Iran to keep Rafsanjani and Khamenei from getting a nuclear weapon.
OF COURSE, none of the above makes much sense. Not the understanding of what happened in Iran on February 20. Not the realist position on the ruling clerical elite. Not the likelihood of effective joint action between the Americans and the Europeans.
What does make sense, however, is the coming realist assault on President Bush's post-9/11 foreign policy. The realist temptation in the American foreign-policy establishment is always powerful, principally because it is the path of least resistance and least action, and it dovetails nicely with the status-quo reflexes of the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the military brass at the Pentagon. Senator John Kerry appears to have embraced the realist cause.
But if the Bush administration opts for a variation of the realist approach to Iran--and fatigue from rebuilding Iraq certainly reinforces the administration's hitherto pronounced preference to avoid gaming out worst-case contingency plans for dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons programs or the clerical regime's "detention" of senior members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda--it will gut what is left of its post-9/11 "axis of evil" doctrine. It will effectively deny the primary transcendent lesson that President Bush has drawn from 9/11: that the Middle East is politically dysfunctional, that U.S.-backed tyranny in Muslim lands was an essential element in the development of the holy-warriorism of al Qaeda, and that the spread of democracy in the Muslim Middle East remains the only cure for the sacred terror of 9/11.
American realists want none of this. Even after 9/11, they don't really want to be involved in other people's "internal affairs." By nature, they hate Promethean missions. They don't like for America's transatlantic relations--and most realists are pretty devout transatlanticists--to be roiled by a terrorist threat so defined that it mandates a doctrine of preemption.
Ideological combat is always an ugly, unmanageable affair, which is why many realists tried so hard to read ideology out of the Cold War. If the Bush administration is serious about transforming the Muslim Middle East--and the jury is still out on whether it is--it will inevitably unsettle, if not alienate, every single "pro-American" king, emir, and dictator in the region.
The issue of weapons of mass destruction is thus an ideal wedge for the realist camp. If Libya can become, as the British Foreign Office is obviously hoping, the template for approaching the rulers of the Middle East--that is, if stopping WMD trumps spreading democracy--then the realists have an excellent chance of stifling the Bush administration's post-9/11 rhetoric. President Bush's pro-democracy speeches have been driving U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. They have been driving the efforts, feeble though they may be, by the rulers of the Middle East to open their political systems. The national dialogues of Saudi Arabia's Prince Abdullah are a direct result of President Bush's words and actions (the invasion of Iraq and the inevitable empowerment of Iraq's Shiites certainly encouraged Prince Abdullah to have his first dialogue about Saudi Arabia's oppressed Shiites, who happen to live on top of Saudi Arabia's oil in the Eastern Province). Silence those Reaganite speeches, and the foreign affairs bureaucracies will take over.
Then Bush II could start looking like Bush I a lot faster than Brent Scowcroft or Zbigniew Brzezinski has ever dreamed.
Because Iran's nuclear weapons program is so damnably hard to delay without preemptive American or Israeli airstrikes, and the Bush administration remains understandably loath to contemplate military action against another Middle Eastern state, the realists within the administration and without could lock the White House into exploring some kind of dialogue with Rafsanjani and Khamenei, who would, of course, approve of any American effort to lift unilaterally economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic. (They know, even if the realists do not, that these sanctions have seriously cramped Iran.)
There is a big hurdle coming up for those who want to believe (or to pretend to believe) that diplomacy offers a solution to Iran's WMD aspirations. The International Atomic Energy Agency must issue another report on Iran's compliance in June--the same time the Bush administration is supposed to release its Greater Middle East Initiative, which will show how serious the administration is about pushing democracy in a region where the leaders hate it. It has become obvious to all concerned that the Iranians have been willfully trying to deceive IAEA officials and the European diplomats who are responsible for maintaining the WMD dialogue with the clerical regime. European officials, including the French, don't bother even in private to deny Iran's nuclear weapons objectives, its continuing deceit, and the difficulty they are going to have in verifying Iranian compliance.
The clerical regime has yet to sign the more intrusive protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, despite its promise to do so. (The Europeans, of course, have not yet seriously threatened the clerics with any penalty for their failure to sign.)
Hassan Rohani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council--a long-time bastion of power for Rafsanjani--recently declared, in one of those delightful and not infrequent moments when Iranian hubris betrays the revolutionary clergy's bent for mendacity and deception, that the Iranian use of polonium, an element applicable in both power-generation and weapons, and P2 centrifuges, which are designed for enriching uranium, "is not the only research we are doing. . . . We have other projects which we have not declared to the IAEA and we see no need to do so." It is very likely that the Europeans, including the British, will be able to walk round Rohani's prevarications.
Anyone who has dealt with the Europeans involved in this process, particularly the French, knows that the odds of Paris agreeing to threaten Tehran with sanctions that would truly hurt--for example, an oil embargo--are virtually nil. In all probability, nuclear proliferation in Iran, or elsewhere, will not prove to be an issue where Western Europeans can collectively agree to use force. Ethically they are simply operating, as Robert Kagan has very politely pointed out, in a different realm. And as the Nixon Center's Geoffrey Kemp has remarked, "the Europeans have to play their part" for a realist foreign policy to be credible. However, the Bush administration is hoping to punt this problem down the road, at least until after the November elections. The Europeans will have at least one more chance to devise "imaginative diplomacy" to dismantle Iran's nuclear weapons program without threatening the use of force.
But the Europeans won't be the only ones working against the Americans who desperately want to find a "credible" diplomatic process for dealing with Iran's quest for nuclear arms. The Iranians are very unlikely to play the roles realists envision for them. Rafsanjani and Khamenei may well be "pragmatic" mullahs--I have certainly long argued that they are. But they have also been among the godfathers of Iranian terrorism. From Beirut to Buenos Aires to Paris to Berlin and to the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia, Rafsanjani and Khamenei put terrorism into the foreign policy lexicon of the Iranian clergy. When Iranian intelligence officials or their surrogates surveilled American diplomatic facilities and personnel around the world in the 1990s, it was on their orders. (Whatever these exercises were for, it is unlikely they were innocent in intent.)
These same gentlemen have, of course, always wanted to buy American. Conoco, ExxonMobil, Boeing, GE--it would be hard to find an American firm that Rafsanjani wouldn't welcome. It also beggars the imagination to believe that these two gentlemen don't control the fate of al Qaeda inside Iran. The Bush administration has chosen to play down the issue of al Qaeda in the Islamic Republic. The Pentagon and State Department remonstrated with the Iranians when they first realized that al Qaeda forces had fled into Iran after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan. News leaks about worrisome intercepts surfaced. And then the subject disappeared until official leaks again surfaced in 2003 suggesting that al Qaeda was in Iran and had possibly plotted from there attacks into Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Republic again returned to the back burner.
This was a serious mistake. Regardless of whether al Qaeda members in Iran were operationally involved in terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, these individuals are among the most wanted men in American history. We have never had worse enemies, yet we did nothing when Iran prevaricated about whether they were in the country when we clearly knew they were.
Remember, Rafsanjani and Khamenei are master chess players of power politics. If Americans don't rise in righteous indignation over the "detention" of possibly active al Qaeda members--and the key component of President Bush's Axis of Evil doctrine is that countries that harbor terrorists will be treated as terrorists--why shouldn't Rafsanjani and Khamenei, with their nuclear weapons, tempt America's wrath?
KHAMENEI and especially Rafsanjani have nurtured Iran's nuclear program from its infancy. More than anyone else, they are the will and mind behind this program. It is not unreasonable to conjecture that their very identity--who they are as leaders, clerics, and Muslims--is wrapped up in Iran's bomb program. And they are supposed to give it away to Americans, who don't threaten them over al Qaeda, and to Europeans, who keep offering the Iranians more time after the clergy has blatantly lied to them? If you were a "pragmatic" mullah who had beaten the shah, survived the American-aided legions of Saddam Hussein, and eaten alive your revolutionary colleagues-turned-enemies, would you be intimidated by such folks?
And the realists shouldn't count out the fallen clerical left in Iran. Neither the clerical left nor the vastly greater number of ordinary Iranians who are disgusted by the ruling clergy are likely to remain quiescent. They may not go into violent counterrevolution--the Iranians still remember the violence of the first revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, and many obviously hope that they can find some peaceful way to real democracy. But patience is not a well-known Iranian virtue.
Sooner not later, the discontent will boil forth. Rafsanjani and Khamenei know that many Iranians have more backbone than Khatami. Iranian prisons are full of such men. The Special Clerical Court, where the regime discreetly intimidates dissident mullahs, remains a busy place. The left-wing clergy were right to believe that they were riding an unstoppable democratic wave in Iranian history. They were wrong to think that their erstwhile brethren, who cling more tightly to the notion that the nation will go to hell without an indomitable clerical vanguard, would simply roll over when confronted with devastating election results.
But the die is now cast. The anti-climactic nonelection on February 20 at least confirmed that. The clerical opposition that has more fire in its belly--and the numerous disciples of Grand Ayatollah Hosein Ali Montazeri, Iran's premier dissident cleric, certainly appear to be made of sterner stuff than Khatami--won't make the same mistake twice. Neither will the students and other young Iranian men of the streets who've grown disgusted with the regime.
The ideas of constitutional government and democracy have been driving Iranian political thought for a hundred years.
Rafsanjani, if not Khamenei, is sufficiently educated to know that he is a product of this movement. More protests are inevitable. They will undoubtedly be enough to make it politically unacceptable, if not morally distasteful, for even the most true-blue American realist to deal with such "an obnoxious and repressive regime."
The realist vision of Iranian politics and U.S.-Iranian relations has zero chance of providing a solution to the WMD conundrum. The Bush administration needs to hang tough and be guided by the golden rule of Iranian clerical politics: Do unto them before they have a chance to do unto you. Give the Europeans a chance--several chances--to prove themselves serious. Let the French ruin the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And then decide whether you want Rafsanjani and Khamenei to have the bomb. In the end, only democracy in Iran will finally solve the nuclear and terrorist problems. Ditto for the rest of the Middle East.
Whether the Bush administration understands this come June is, of course, a different matter.
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.
? Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
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CONSTITUTIONAL DEALS
By AMIR TAHERI
March 2, 2004 -- AFTER months of heated debates, Iraq's interim leaders have approved a constitutional draft designed to close decades of tyranny. It will be put to nationwide debate ahead of elections for a constituent assembly that will write the final text of the nation's new constitution.
Until even a week ago, some believed that the Governing Council would be unable to agree on a text. The more pessimistic observers even predicted the council's disintegration. In the West, many Saddam nostalgics hoped the council would fail, thus "proving" that Iraqis can only live under a bloodthirsty despot.
The document is remarkable for a number of reasons. To start with, it is a patchwork of compromises in a region where give-and-take is regarded as a sign of political weakness if not outright dishonor.
In the macho world of Middle Eastern politics, the "strongman" imposes his will by force, giving even the mildest critic no quarter. In a game in which the winner takes all, the most that the losers can hope for is not to be put to the sword, thrown into prison or forced into exile. This is why, with the exception of Turkey, there has never been a genuine coalition government in any Muslim country.
The Iraqi success in agreeing to a draft is all the more meritorious because the compromises that had to be made concerned fundamental issues.
The most hotly debated was the place of Islam in a future Iraqi state. Some members, arguing that the new state should belong to all citizens, opposed any mention of Islam as the state religion. Others campaigned for an Islamic state in which non-Muslim Iraqis would, in effect, become second-class citizens in a system of apartheid based on faith.
The compromise: Islam is mentioned as the religion of the state but will not be used as a means of barring non-Muslim citizens from public office. Nor will the state interfere in personal religious matters, as is the case in many other Muslim countries, notably neighboring Iran.
Some radical secularists have already expressed disappointment at this compromise. In fact, giving the state a right of oversight on matters Islamic will prove good for Iraqi democracy. Under a totally secular system, Islam would be monopolized by the most radical elements that could use it as a political base from which to build a state within the state.
Consider two examples:
First, the shrines at Najaf, Karbala, Kazemiah and Samarra are bound to emerge as magnets for mass pilgrimage for the world's estimated 200 million Shi'ites. Linked with these shrines are thousands of endowments in the form of real estate, farms, industrial units and commercial businesses. Allowed to escape some form of state control, these could develop into a string of mini-empires controlled by the mullahs who could then be tempted into creating a parallel authority, thus weakening the democratic state. Under the compromise, the shrines and the businesses linked with them, worth billions of dollars, could be managed by a ministry in an atmosphere of transparency.
The second example concerns the way Islam is taught in the new democratic Iraq. If the state excludes itself from the process in the name of secularism, it will leave an important space open to groups with extremist ideologies. This has happened in Turkey and Pakistan in recent years, with private madrassas (Islamic schools) monopolizing the teaching of religion under the auspices of radical groups.
At a time when the European Union is leaning towards honoring its "Christian culture" in its proposed new constitution, no one should take the Iraqis to task for acknowledging the religious heritage of 95 percent of their people.
Linked to the issue of Islam as state religion was that of the role that sharia (Islamic law) might play in Iraq's legal system. Some on the Governing Council wanted it declared the sole source of legislation in the new Iraq. This was never a serious proposal but the opening gambit by several parties who used Islam as a weapon against the Ba'athist regime and its supposed socialist ideology.
Under the compromise, the sharia is mentioned as one source of Iraqi law. This is reasonable: There is much in the sharia that reflects centuries of customs, traditions and practices that do not contravene the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which Iraq was one of the first signatories.
The draft constitution offers yet another important compromise. It allows the two Kurdish enclaves of the north to retain the autonomy that they have enjoyed since 1991. The compromise was designed to avoid a battle between those who want a federal system, patterned on Germany, and those who believe that federalism is inapplicable to Iraq.
This writer supports the latter view. A federation comes into being when two or more existing states come together to form a single one. This is not applicable to Iraq which was put on the map as a unitary state from the start. There is also the need for a strong central authority to distribute the oil revenue and manage the nation's water resources.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to re-impose a highly centralized state. Those Kurds who have enjoyed autonomy for the past 13 years are unlikely to accept any system in which all key decisions are made in Baghdad.
There are aspects of the proposed draft with which it is hard to agree:
* Having both an executive president and a prime minister is a recipe for perpetual fights at the summit of the state. Things could become even more complicated: The draft envisages the appointment of two vice presidents, presumably to represent ethnic and religious minorities, thus encouraging communalism at the highest level.
* The new constitution cannot emphasize both the concept of "Iraqiness" (Uruqa) and encourage ethnic and/or religious sectarianism.
* The decision to impose quotas for women - 25 percent in the parliament and 40 percent in government departments - is not helpful. Added to the quotas for religious and ethnic minorities, these "reserved places for women" could complicate the task of forming an efficient administration with the help of the most qualified Iraqis.
Helping women secure a bigger role in the decision-making process could better be assured by political parties and, later, cabinet ministers, on an informal basis. The parties, for example, could include more women in their electoral lists. More women could also be appointed to key positions such as governorships of provinces, ambassadorships and the management of major state-owned corporations. There is no need for constitutional "charity," so to speak.
The Governing Council has already taken a much more important step towards removing discrimination against women by canceling the law on "identity and personal matters." That infamous law made women subservient to men, in many cases treating them as second-class citizens.
Overall, the Governing Council has come up with a credible draft. That success must be seen as further encouragement to those who believe that, given a chance, most Iraqis can learn the rules of democratic politics. And that, in turn, is a strong argument for holding free and fair elections as soon as possible.
E-mail: amirtaheri@benadorassociates.com
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Crisis Delayed
The Iraqi interim constitution could fail.
By Andrew Apostolou
BAGHDAD & SULAIMANI, IRAQ -- Iraqi politicians have been congratulating themselves on the interim constitution that they agreed on March 1, 2004. Adnan Pachache, a Sunni Arab representative on the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), called the transitional administrative law "an inspirational document which looks to the future." The initial coverage has been favorable, viewing the text as a series of sensible compromises, such as over the role of Islam in Iraqi politics and Kurdish autonomy. An arguably more accurate interpretation is that the carefully drafted document, with its often deliberately vague language, will struggle to survive the ambitions of Iraqi politicians. Not one of the Iraqi parties and factions has given up their sometimes-incompatible aims. Instead, they have simply agreed to delay the inevitable clash between them.
The compromise on the role of Islam is particularly unconvincing and could prove to be a time bomb. The provision on the role of religion is riddled with contradictions. Islam is "a source of legislation," but not the sole source. The document, however, is careful not to name other sources of legislation. Under the interim constitution, no law can be adopted which is inconsistent with the basic principles of Islam, which implies an Islamic veto on legislation. Yet the document goes on to say that no law can be adopted which contravenes democratic principles or civil rights, a counter veto to that handed to the Islamists. The contradiction may not be apparent to American diplomats who repeat the claim religion is not incompatible with democracy like a mantra, but the inconsistency is obvious to secular Iraqis, particularly women and the Iraqi Kurds.
One need look no further than the controversy over December 2003's IGC decree 137 which introduced sharia (Islamic religious law) in the place of secular family law to see how poorly democratic values are entrenched. Passed at a time when key secular members of the IGC were out of the country, and the chairman of the IGC was a Shia Islamist, decree 137 was denounced by the Kurds, women's groups, and some secular parties as undemocratic and discriminatory. Ambassador Bremer refused to sign decree 137, which meant that it could not be implemented.
Although decree 137 never had any force, the IGC bowed to pressure from women's groups in particular and symbolically repealed the decree on February 27, 2004. The reaction of some of the Shia Arab members of the IGC to the February 27, 2004 vote was troubling and revealing. Unhappy at losing the vote on decree 137, eight Shia members of the IGC walked out of the session when women's groups in the room cheered and shouted their pleasure at the vote. The eight Shia members did not just accept their defeat with ill grace. They then attempted to nullify their defeat through the interim constitution negotiations, a bid to put Islam on the statute books by every route available. The Shia Islamists and their allies are likely to continue with these tactics and can be expected to seek to undermine the current compromise text.
The provisions on oil revenues are similarly lacking in detail. In theory, oil revenues will be equitably distributed, but the recently closed U.N. Oil for Food program had a similar aim and failed dismally. The Kurds, always denied their proper share of Iraq's national wealth, are happy with the promise in the interim constitution that the future central government of Iraq has a duty to parcel out oil income in a fair manner. There is, however, nothing in this document that will prevent a future Iraq government from short changing the Kurds as had happened so often in the past. The best protection is for the regions, whether Kurdish or Shia Arab, to own and control the oil within their regional boundaries -- which Ambassador Bremer has consistently opposed.
Women have done poorly in the interim constitution. The aim is to give women 25 percent representation in the future national assembly, but the goal is not binding. The British government has taken the view that 25 percent should be the minimum. By contrast, Ambassador Bremer, understandably unwilling to pick more fights with the Islamists than was strictly necessary, has been keen to avoid any provision that smacked of quotas for women.
The most positive elements in the interim constitution, the clauses that could keep the interim constitution and Iraq together, relate to federalism. Kurdish autonomy, established in a federal region in all but name in 1992, has been accepted and validated. The agreement now extends the federal-style autonomy under which the Kurds have flourished to the rest of Iraq. Arab provinces can now join together as autonomous regions. Federalism could prevent a return to past abuses.
Concentrating power in the hands of a few politicians in a Baghdad based centralized state is what allowed men like Saddam Hussein to seize power so easily in Iraq. As importantly, federalism could thwart the Islamists, should they seize power in Baghdad, from imposing their views on the rest of the country.
The terrible irony is that Ambassador Bremer, fearing that Iraqi might break up, has consistently stressed a strong central state with only token federalism. The unitary state has been the disaster of Middle Eastern politics, creating the context within which tyranny can flourish. By distributing power away from the center, through giving the long-repressed Kurds and politically disenfranchised Shia Arabs in the provinces control over their own affairs, the interim constitution could give Iraqi democracy a sporting chance.
-- Andrew Apostolou is director of research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He is presently traveling in the Middle East.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/apostolou200403020835.asp
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Politics
More Kerry Hypocrisy: Offshore Corporations and Contributions
Posted Mar 1, 2004
Add this to the list of Sen. John Kerry's (D.-Mass.) hypocrisies: The Washington Post reports that on the stump the Democratic frontrunner often uses the term "Benedict Arnolds" to describe companies that send their operations overseas to avoid U.S. taxes. On the other hand, he has accepted fundraising assistance and campaign contributions from the top executives of such companies.
According to the Post, Kerry's presidential campaign has raked in $140,000 from employees of the firms. Citizen Works, a left-wing corporate watchdog, claims Kerry has received $119,285 from "the 25 Fortune 500 corporations with the most offshore tax-haven subsidiaries." He has taken $20,000 more, the Post reports, "directly from individuals at companies with mailing addresses offshore to avoid paying U.S. taxes, records show."
Moreover, "two of Kerry's biggest fundraisers, who together have raised more than $400,000 for the candidate, are top executives at investment firms that helped set up companies in the world's best-known offshore tax havens." The article points to Thomas Steyer and David Roux, each of whom has helped expatriate at least one American company.
Bush has taken more money than Kerry from such companies, the Post notes, but "the President has not made a major campaign issue out of clamping down on them."
"Kerry has come under attack from President Bush, as well as some Democrats," noted the paper, "for criticizing laws he voted for and lambasting special interests after accepting more money from paid lobbyists than any other senator over the past 15 years."
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Analysis: Crazy train of N. Korea nuke talks
By ED LANFRANCO
BEIJING, March 1 (UPI) -- Locomotives were one of the favorite metaphors used during the second round of the Six Party Talks aimed at eliminating North Korea's nuclear weapons programs that ended in Beijing over the weekend.
The slow pace of progress, even on reaching a basic consensus of what was accomplished during the diplomatic event, indicates that while all six nations remain on board and future discussions seem still on track, the train has not yet left the station.
A final joint communique between the United States, North Korea, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia could not be issued after three days of intense grinding negotiations. Talks ended on Feb. 28 with a face-saving chairman's statement.
At a press conference following the closing ceremony, Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi from host nation China downplayed his disappointment, saying, "There's not much difference between the two" as neither requires a binding signature.
Wang said that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea -- the DPRK, or North Korea -- suggested additional revisions at a point in the meeting that did not leave time for other countries to get approval from their respective governments.
The final document ending round two of talks on the Korean nuclear crisis consisted of seven points, three containing no substance that progress was made and four others offering a vague timetable for another plenum and what it hopes to accomplish.
The first and second points covered when and where the talks took place as well as who headed each delegation identifying individuals by name, position and country. The seventh point said all participants expressed appreciation to the Chinese side for staging two rounds of discussions.
Most of the third and fourth points tried to put a good spin on the lack of forward movement. The United States and North Korea both know the destination, but remain at loggerheads on how to get there. All parties agreed the latest round of talks were beneficial.
The main gist of the Six Party Talks was contained in the fifth and sixth points of the chairman's statement.
Point five said, "Parties expressed their willingness to coexist peacefully" then gave a vague route ahead to "take coordinated steps to address the nuclear issue and address the related concerns."
The sixth point was an agreement "in principle" to hold another round of talks in Beijing no later than the end of the second quarter of 2004. It included the establishment of a working group in preparation for the next plenary session.
Before Wang's press conference, several senior U.S. officials from the Bush administration held a background briefing Saturday afternoon, providing a look into the slow process of negotiations with North Korea, including the final document for the second round of talks.
One of the high-ranking officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, described to United Press International the situation heading into the last day of talks:
"We believed last night (Feb. 27) that there was a statement there that was signed on to by everyone except the U.S.A.; and the U.S.A. signed on to it about 12:30 am Beijing time. And then this morning, we found out well, everyone was almost in the same place, but the DPRK was asking for some changes."
"This train had just gone down the track a little too far," the senior American official told UPI.
The railroad metaphor was also used by the head of the DPRK delegation Kim Kye-gwan at a news conference early Saturday evening.
UPI asked Kim what the difference was between the chairman's statement and the version North Korea wanted.
"The relationship between the statement made by the chairman, and also with my briefing on the second round of talks, I think I should make clear that the chairman's statement today is based upon the agreement of the six nations," Kim stated.
In his opening statement Kim said, "We made ourselves and our position very clear that we can freeze our nuclear weapons program and we wanted to hear the corresponding measures from the U.S. side."
"We view that the freeze on our nuclear weapons program is a first step towards denuclearization. Perhaps I can compare this to a train: We want to reverse the course of the train; in order to do so, we have to stop it first."
The North Korean offer to freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for energy assistance and security assurances during the talks was endorsed by South Korea, China and Russia, but only received expressions of "understanding and support" from the United States and Japan.
Since the crisis began in October 2002, the United States has said negotiations must involve all of the countries in the region as well as a total elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons programs before aid and normalized relations with the DPRK are possible.
The American briefing described talks as "very successful in moving the agenda toward our goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of DPRK nuclear programs."
"CVID is now more on the table than ever. ... It is essentially accepted by all of the participants except DPRK," according to senior U.S. officials who added, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia are "on the same page with CVID; we think that is a pretty solid accomplishment."
Kim's description of the issue was blunt: "The U.S. side has repeated its lies again and again that they seek the so-called CVID of all the nuclear activities of the DPRK."
"The serious attitude of my delegation was not reciprocated by the U.S.; worse, we have confirmed the U.S. delegation does not have an attitude to resolve the nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations," he added.
Kim stated dissimilarities in attitude between the DPRK and U.S. delegations "demonstrate fundamental differences of positions in the two governments toward resolving the nuclear issue. Such differences also exist in the concept and approaches for issue resolution."
UPI also asked Kim if the DPRK would be willing to allow outside inspectors of its civilian or military nuclear programs, specifically mentioning China.
The head of the North Korean negotiating team said, "I think if you are to freeze a nuclear weapons program, the verification process will follow."
"As to who and when and how, are something that should be held at the forthcoming talks and I think you can have answers to that when the talks are going on at a certain point in the future," Kim added.
On the controversial issue of North Korea's highly enriched uranium program, senior U.S. officials said, "DPRK denials are there but seem only to result in a self-isolation; there is a broadening of recognition as assorted scraps of information from around the world get together."
In one exchange with the North Koreans on uranium, the American side said, "You know, we know, and third countries know; and the fact is that's what's out there."
When the DPRK asked for evidence, the U.S. team responded, "The reasons that countries go to enriched uranium programs is because it's much easier to conceal than plutonium weapons programs. ... If we were to tell you everything that we knew, it would make easier for you to conceal them."
The third round of the Six Party Talks may indicate whether this crazy train stops then backtracks as the North Koreans demand, or rolls forward to a comprehensive and verifiable denuclearized destination that the Americans insist upon.
Observers must content themselves for now with the knowledge that the slow pace of movement at least makes it harder for negotiations to derail.
Copyright 2004 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
Posted by maximpost
at 6:12 PM EST
