>> UN WATCH...
U.N. Will Probe Its Oil for Food Program
Phil Brennan
Tuesday, Mar. 16, 2004
"Mother's-milky though it sounds, the oil-for-food program has enough graft, mismanagement, and Saddam strengthening patronage to turn one permanently against both oil and food.
A real critique could occupy volumes -- and does, in fact, occupy much of an exhaustive analysis, titled "Sources of Revenue for Saddam and Sons," recently issued by the Washington-based Coalition for International Justice, a group that monitors human-rights abuses around the world.
So wrote Tish Durkin way back in the October 7, 2002 National Journal in a blistering critique of the U.N.'s graft-ridden oil for food program supposed to provide aid for Iraq's people devastated by the U.N. embargo.
Nobody paid much attention then, but new revelations are now proving there was much more to the story than the facts she presented in her article in which she complained that nobody was minding the store.
"Through regular but vague accounting practices, the members of the Security Council are kept apprised of how much money has been earned through the program, and how much has been allocated to each sector," she wrote.
"But they do not know how much has been spent, or on what. Incredibly, the oil-for-food program has never been audited. Yes: one madman, 10 agencies, 15 independently self-interested Security Council members, more than 50 billion smackers, zero audits," she added.
It now develops that instead of providing help for innocent Iraqi's, the Oil for Food program became a gigantic multi-billion slush fund which Saddam Hussein, Durkin's "madman" used to reward his supporters abroad, including, it is now alleged, the program's top U.N. executive.
It is now clear that Saddam Hussein bribed his way around the world, buying the support of presidents, ministers, legislators, political parties and Christian churches, documents published in Iraq show.
In a report on March 1, 2004, "U.N. Oil-for-Food Scam: Time for Hearings," the Heritage Foundation's Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., and James Phillips cited a New York Times story which reported, "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."
Confirming Suspicions
According to Heritage, "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."
Just how Saddam Hussein abused the United Nation's oil-for-food program is becoming clear with the release by the Iraqi Governing Council charging that the program was systematically looted by Saddam.
"In effect the program," Heritage noted, was little more than "an open bazaar of payoffs, favoritism and kickbacks. The seriousness of these charges warrants investigation by the U.S. Congress and an independent, Security Council-appointed commission."
And "Monday Morning," a Lebanese magazine summed up the emerging scandal when they reported that Iraq's suppliers included Russian factories, Arab trade brokers, European manufacturers and state-owned companies in China and the Middle East. It estimated that Saddam Hussein's government would have collected as much as 2.3 billion dollars of the 32.6 billion dollars' worth of contracts it signed since mid-2000, when the kickback system began.
The system was in operation at the same time when Saddam's government and its supporters were complaining that U.N. sanctions against Iraq were causing starvation and misery among its people, the paper indicated.
"Everybody was feeding off the carcass of what was Iraq", Ali Allawi, a former World Bank official who is now interim Iraqi trade minister, told the Times.
U.N. officials told the newspaper they were unaware of the systematic skimming of oil-for-food revenues, saying they were focused on running aid programs and assuring food deliveries.
Not surprisingly, Benon Sevan, director of the U.N. Office of Iraq Programs, declined to be interviewed about the oil-for-food program.
In written responses to questions sent by e-mail, his office said he learned of the kickback scheme from the occupation authority only after the end of major combat operations in Iraq last year.
After refusing demands that it investigate its Oil For food program the United Nations has now given into international pressure and says it will look into the scandal ridden operation run by one of its top officials who himself has been implicated in the alleged corruption surrounding it.
U.N. Caves In
According to Britain's Telegraph newspaper, the U.N. caved in and agreed to an investigation on the heels of charges by Iraq's governing council that U.N. officials were involved in what amounted to a bribery set-up by Saddam, which apparently granted proceeds from the sale of million of barrels of oil to friendly politicians, officials and businessmen around the world.
The Iraqis have hired KPMG an accounting firm and an international law firm, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, to investigate claims that huge sums of money meant to buy food and medicine for ordinary Iraqis - were diverted through oil "vouchers" to line pockets abroad, the Daily Telegraph reported.
"It will not come as a surprise if the Oil-for-Food Program turns out to have been one of the world's most disgraceful scams, and an example of inadequate control, responsibility and transparency, providing an opportune vehicle for Saddam Hussein to operate under the U.N. aegis to continue his reign of terror and oppression," wrote Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British businessman in a March 3 letter to Kofi Annan, the U.N. Secretary General.
The U.N., he charged, appeared to have "failed in its responsibility" to the Iraqi people and to the international community.
Among those implicated in the scandal was Benon Sevan, the Assistant Secretary General - director of Oil-for-Food since 1996. Sevan is on vacation until the end of April, when he is due to retire from the United Nations Secretariat, a U.N. spokesman told the Telegraph.
Sevan's name is among those cited in documents allegedly recovered from Baghdad's Oil Ministry that are at the heart of the investigation launched by the Iraqi Governing Council.
In Receipt of Oil Vouchers
In January, an Iraqi newspaper published a list of 270 individuals and organizations which allegedly received oil vouchers up to 1999. It is not known if the documents on which the list was based are authentic.
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 Sevan, who has denied any wrongdoing and said he was only following orders when running the program.
Hankes-Drielsma first alerted Annan to the potential scandal last December and asked him to instigate an "independent commission." In a letter dated December 5, he wrote of his belief that "serious transgressions have taken place" and urged the U.N. to start an inquiry to "take the moral high ground and the initiative in demonstrating to the world that those guilty will be brought to account."
He launched the governing council probe after Annan offered no response to the documents from the Oil Ministry. KPMG accountants and the Freshfields law firm have been instructed to investigate a list of irregularities including:
U.N. approval of oil contracts to "non-end users" - middlemen who sold their stake on for a profit.
A standard 10 per cent addition to the value of oil invoices, which generated up to ?2.2 billion in illegal cash funds for Saddam.
A fee of two per cent, levied on all oil-for-food transactions to allow the U.N. to inspect all food and medical imports - which does not appear to have been effectively spent since food was rotten and medicines out of date.
The role of Middle Eastern banks, their auditing and their possible suspected connection to Saddam's secret service.
Hankes-Drielsma described three documents to the Telegraph on which he said Sevan's name appeared, and said: "Our report will clarify the details." One is headed, "Quantity of Oil Allocated and Given to Benon Sevan," and records 1.8 million barrels allocated to Mr. Sevan.
Sevan issued a denial in response to A Wall Street Journal Feb. 9 article. There is absolutely no substance to the allegations . . . that I had received oil or oil monies from the former Iraqi regime," he said through a spokesman.
"Those making the allegations should come forward and provide the necessary documentary evidence."
The Heritage report concluded that 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.
Call for Prosecutions
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.
Added the Wall Street Journal, "There is no doubt that the U.N. relief effort in Iraq has been a global scandal. A monstrous dictator was able to turn the Oil-for-Food program into a cash cow for himself and his inner circle, leaving Iraqis further deprived as he bought influence abroad and acquired the arms and munitions that coalition forces discovered when they invaded Iraq last spring."
This, by the way, is the same United Nations to which John Kerry and his Democrat friends want the U.S. to hand over control of our foreign policy.
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Russian nuclear warheads help power America
Sun 14 March, 2004 20:34
By Nigel Hunt
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Few Americans realise that uranium once intended to destroy their civilisation is now helping to keep it very much alive by powering televisions, microwaving dinners and chilling beer.
Uranium extracted from Russian nuclear warheads helps supply about 10 percent of U.S. electricity, according to USEC, which has charge of the "Megatons to Megawatts" project that has helped Russia reap profits from previously loss-making nuclear disarmament.
The Bethesda, Maryland-based company purchases uranium taken from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads under a 1993 U.S.-Russian nonproliferation agreement.
The treaty was designed to lower the risk of the Russian uranium falling into the wrong hands and posing a security risk. The highly enriched mineral from the warheads is diluted in Russia prior to shipment to the United States.
USEC then sells the uranium to operators of nuclear plants that supply about 20 percent of electricity in the United States.
The company is the world's leading supplier of uranium to nuclear power plants. The U.S. government created USEC in the early 1990s as part of its restructuring of its uranium enrichment operation. Privatisation was completed in 1998.
USEC sells the grade of uranium used in power plants, known as low enriched uranium, in both the United States and overseas. Sales of its Russian material are limited to the United States.
Chief Executive William Timbers said about half of the uranium used by U.S. nuclear plants currently comes from Russian warheads.
The programme is scheduled to run for 20 years. During the first decade, about 8,000 nuclear warheads were dismantled with the uranium extracted and used in U.S. power plants.
PROFITABLE DISARMAMENT
"It has transformed the prior loss-making process of nuclear disarmament into an economically effective one," Valeriy Govorukhin, Russia's deputy minister of atomic energy, said in an interview earlier this year.
"For Russia, this contract has not only contributed to an increase in international security, but has also been an important source for economic growth," he added.
USEC had 2003 revenue of $1.46 billion (810 million pounds). It reported a modest profit of $10.7 million last year, compared with a 2002 loss of $3.3 million, and its stock has been climbing during the last 12 months.
The company's shares were trading around $8.10 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, near the upper end of its 52-week range of $5.20 to $9.
Timbers said additional Russian uranium would probably be available when the programme is due to end, raising the possibility it could be extended.
Such a move would depend on the U.S. and Russian governments because the programme was signed at a presidential level.
With power plants' demand for this uranium roughly equal to the supply, the United States would have to return to a method of electricity generation that has been out of favour for more than 20 years to justify expanding the U.S.-Russian programme or developing similar ones.
"If there are to be more similar programmes with other countries, there needs to be an expansion of demand (for uranium)," Timbers said. "We need additional nuclear power plants."
SAFETY CONCERNS
Nuclear power fell out of favour partly due to safety concerns following an accident in 1979 at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.
Nearly 200,000 people fled their homes and local schools were temporarily closed after operator error resulted in parts of the core beginning to melt and traces of radioactive iodine were detected in nearby communities.
Massive cost overruns at the Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire contributed to the bankruptcy of utility Public Service Company of New Hampshire in 1988, further dampening enthusiasm for embarking on such projects.
Sentiment has begun to change, however, as the United States seeks ways to meet growing demand for electricity amid increasing environmental concerns about the greenhouse gases emitted by the leading source, coal-fired power plants.
Nuclear plants emit virtually no greenhouse gases.
"New ground is being broken, activity is going on," Timbers said, noting newer designs for nuclear power plants are simpler in design and had lower construction costs.
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recently pointed to the development of new "meltdown-proof and proliferation-resistant" nuclear plants as one of the keys to meeting the nation's growing demand for energy.
If the Bush administration's dream becomes a reality, then America's energy future could become increasingly dependent on a legacy from an era when their very existence appeared to be threatened -- massive stockpiles of Cold War nuclear weapons.
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What did Musharraf know?
Arnaud de Borchgrave
Saturday, March 6, 2004
Pakistan's nuclear hybrid - half Dr. Strangelove and half Dr. No - was arguably the world's most dangerous criminal. Abdul Qadeer Khan is the only proliferator of weapons of mass destruction the world has known since the advent of the atomic age in 1945.
Worse, he sold his country's nuclear secrets for profit to America's self-avowed enemies - North Korea, Iran and Libya. His motives were also hybrid - both greed and creed.
His Islamist fundamentalist ideology led him to believe it was within his power to make invincible America vincible. As the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, he was his country's most precious asset - and in the Pakistani pantheon of national heroes he was only a whisker below Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of the Pakistani state.
Yet President Pervez Musharraf pardoned the global criminal and allowed him to keep his ill-gotten gains, in return for which Mr. Khan went on national television and said - in English rather than Urdu, the national language - he was truly sorry and had acted strictly alone, unbeknownst to anyone else in the Pakistani government.
If Mr. Musharraf can pardon Mr. Khan, why can't he pardon Pakistan's two most important political leaders - Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, both former prime ministers - who are living in exile, and are still the recognized heads of Pakistan's two principal political parties?
Next to Mr. Khan's global nuclear Wal-Mart, the corruption charges against Mrs. Bhutto and Mr. Sharif are teensy-weensy. Both these leaders can testify that while they were in power at different times, military officials and scientists approached them seeking permission to export nuclear technology. Tired of being turned down, they went ahead anyway. Clearly, Mr. Khan was not acting on his own.
The only problem with the carefully rehearsed charade is that no one believed the story. Not Mr. Musharraf's I-had-no-idea disclaimer, nor Mr. Khan's act of contrition. So why did Mr. Musharraf agree to the giveaway show? The alternative - which would have been to tell the truth - would have been tantamount to scuttling the ship of state. Because it is inconceivable the all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency wasn't aware of Mr. Khan's six trips to the hermit communist kingdom of North Korea.
Mr. Khan was Pakistan's most precious national asset, and ISI and ranking military officers were in charge of protecting the man who owned the country's crown jewels and who could be kidnapped or gunned down at anytime. What is more than likely is that ISI knew about Mr. Khan's nuclear rackets but didn't tell Mr. Musharraf because of the Pakistani leader's close rapport with U.S. President Bush.
Mr. Musharraf claimed the first specific details of Mr. Khan's global operations came from U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, when they called on him last October.
But Mr. Khan begun spinning his worldwide web of nuclear skullduggery 18 years ago, at the height of the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, while the previous military dictator, Gen. Zia ul-Haq, was in power. His network of intermediaries stretched from Malaysia to Pakistan to Dubai, Istanbul, Tripoli and Casablanca and a small Swiss town, and employed nationals from Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.
It is becoming increasingly obvious Mr. Khan's clandestine activities paralleled closely the actions of several Pakistani governments. In 1984, for example, a partnership was concluded between Iran's Atomic Energy Organization and Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission. Also in 1984, Gnadi Mohammad Mragih, director of Iran's Nuclear Technology Center in Isfahan, visited Pakistan's super-secret Kahuta nuclear complex to meet with Mr. Khan.
In 1991, no less than three Iranian delegations came to Kahuta. An Iranian general who commanded the Iranian Revolutionary Guards led one of them. Again in 1991, the Pakistani chief of army staff went to Iran to sign a secret protocol on uranium enrichment technology.
Pakistan's nuclear ambitions are invariably portrayed as an answer to India's first nuclear test explosion in 1974. But the Maldon Institute reminds us their origin predates India's big bang. Pakistan's massive military defeat by Indian forces in 1971 was the energizer. This was when India rolled up East Pakistan and Bangladesh won its war of national liberation.
Following Pakistan's humiliation, Prime Minister Ali Bhutto (Benazir's father, who was executed by President Zia) vowed Pakistanis would "eat grass if necessary" to develop nuclear weapons. Mr. Bhutto asked Mr. Khan, an engineer by training, to return home from the Netherlands to head the program. He did so, armed with stolen Dutch plans for a uranium enrichment plant.
Since then, Mr. Khan has served seven successive governments that always gave him and his nuclear efforts top priority for funds and materials. At a conference of Islamic states in 1974, Mr. Bhutto announced Pakistan would produce an "Islamic bomb," which would be the foundation for Islamic countries to acquire strategic military capacities to counter other nuclear weapons powers.
Pakistani leaders denied time and again the country had a nuclear weapons program - until 1998, when Mr. Sharif declared Pakistan a nuclear power, punctuated with five nuclear bomb tests that followed five Indian bangs the week before.
It is inconceivable Mr. Khan, for three decades, could have indulged in such extensive nuclear proliferation without the knowledge and acquiescence of ISI and the military high command. Mr. Musharraf was army chief of staff prior to seizing the presidency in October 1999.
What did Mr. Musharraf know - and when did he know it - are the kind of lese-majeste questions Pakistani journalists who wish to stay healthy don't ask.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
>> SAY IT AINT SO...
Report: Saddam Harbored Terrorists Who Killed Americans
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/3/14/141831.shtml
Saddam Hussein supplied financial support, training and shelter for an array of deadly terrorist organizations right up until the onset of the Iraq war a year ago, including such notorious groups as Hamas, Ansar al-Islam, the Palestinian Liberation Front, the Abu Nidal Organization and the Arab Liberation Front, according to a comprehensive report released by the Hudson Institute.
Titled "Saddam's Philanthropy of Terror," the report details the role played by terrorists supported by Saddam's regime in an array of infamous attacks that have killed hundreds of American citizens both inside and outside the U.S. before and after the Sept. 11 attacks - including the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro, the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Palestinian Intifada.
Compiled by Deroy Murdock, a Senior Fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Fairfax, Va., and columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service, the report chronicles Saddam's support for:
Abdul Rahman Yasin, who was indicted for mixing the chemicals for the bomb used in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six New Yorkers and injured over 1,000. Yasin fled to Baghdad after the attack, where he was given sanctuary and lived for years afterward.
Khala Khadar al-Salahat, a top Palestinian deputy to Abu Nidal, who reportedly furnished Libyan agents with the Semtex explosive used to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988. The attack killed all 259 passengers, including 189 Americans. Al-Salahat was in Baghdad last April and was taken into custody by U.S. Marines.
Abu Nidal, whose terror organization is credited with dozens of attacks that killed over 400 people, including 10 Americans, and wounding 788 more. Nidal lived in Baghdad from 1999 till August 2002, when he was found shot to death in his state-supplied home.
Abu Abbas, who masterminded the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship, during which wheelchair-bound American Leon Klinghoffer was pushed over the side to his death. U.S. troops captured Abbas in Baghdad on April 14, 2003. He died in U.S. custody last week.
Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who ran an Ansar al-Islam terrorist training camp in northern Iraq and reportedly arranged the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan. Al Zarqawi is still at large.
Ramzi Yousef, who entered the U.S. on an Iraqi passport and was the architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as well as Operation Bojinka, a foiled plot to explode 12 U.S. airliners over the Pacific. Bojinka was later adopted by Yousef's cousin Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as the blueprint for the Sept. 11 attacks.
Arrested in Pakistan in 1995, Yousef is currently serving a triple life sentence in Colorado's Supermax federal lockup.
Mahmoud Besharat, the Palestinian businessman who traveled to Baghdad in March 2002 to collect funding from Saddam for the Palestinian Intifada. Besharat and others disbursed the funds in payments of $10,000 to $25,000 to West Bank families of terrorists who died trying to kill Israelis.
After Saddam announced his Intifada reward plan, 28 Palestinian homicide bombers killed 211 Israelis in attacks that also killed 12 Americans. A total of 1,209 people were injured.
For more details on Saddam Hussein's sponsorship of the terrorist networks that killed hundreds of innocent U.S. citizens, go to: http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/murdocksaddamarticle.pdf
Editor's note:
http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/murdocksaddamarticle.pdf
Saddam Hussein's
Philanthropy of Terror
International
Relations
Emergency workers treat one of the 1,042 individuals injured in the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing. This attack also
killed six people. Abdul Rahman Yasin (inset), indicted for mixing the chemicals in that bomb, fled to Baghdad after the attack and
lived there for years afterward.
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Many critics of the war in Iraq belittle claims of Saddam Hussein's ties to
terrorism. In fact, for years, he was militant Islam's Benefactor-in-Chief.
Deroy Murdock
"Inever believed in the link between Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and Islamist terrorism," former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright flatly declared in an October 21 essay published in Australia's Melbourne Herald Sun.i "Iraq was not a breeding ground for terrorism. Our invasion has made it one," said Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) on October 16. "We were told Iraq was attracting terrorists from al Qaeda. It was not."ii As President Bush continues to lead America's involvement in Iraq, he increasingly is being forced to confront those who dismiss Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorism and, thus, belittle a key rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Bush's critics wield a flimsy and disingenuous argument that nonetheless enjoys growing appeal among a largely hostile press corps. Hussein did not personally order the September 11 attacks, the fuzzy logic goes, hence he has no significant ties to terrorists, especially al Qaeda. Consequently, the Iraq war was launched under bogus assumptions, and, therefore, Bush should be defeated in November 2004. West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller, the Senate Intelligence Committee's ranking Democrat, exemplified this thinking recently when he told the Los Angeles Times that Iraq's alleged al Qaeda ties were "tenuous at best and not compelling."iii In a September 16 editorial, the L.A. Times slammed Vice President Dick Cheney for making "sweeping, unproven claims about Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorism." On August 7, former vice president Albert Gore stated flatly, "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin Laden at all."iv All of these claims about a lack of ties between Hussein and terrorists, however, are untrue, and it is important that debate on this vital issue be informed After running an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, Abu Musab al Zarqawi received medical care in Baghdad once the Taliban fell. He opened an Ansar al-Islam camp in northern Iraq and reportedly arranged the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan. Zarqawi is at large.
Abu Abbas masterminded the 1985 hijacking of the ocean liner Achille Lauro during which American retiree Leon Klinghoffer was murdered. U.S. troops captured Abbas in Baghdad last April 14. Iraqi Ramzi Yousef, architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, arrived in America on an Iraqi passport before fleeing after the attack on Pakistani papers.
Abu Nidal's terrorist gang killed 407 people, including 10 Americans, and wounded 788 more. He lived in Baghdad between 1999 and his mysterious shooting death in August 2002.
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by facts. The president and his national security team should devote entire speeches and publications--complete with names, documents, and visuals, including the faces of terrorists and their innocent victims--to remind Americans and the world that Baathist Iraq was a general store for terrorists, complete with cash, training, lodging, and medical attention.
Indeed, this magazine
article could serve as a model for the kinds of communications that the administration regularly should generate to set the record straight about Hussein and terrorism and reassert the reasons behind the Iraq mission. Such an effort to reinvigorate U.S. public diplomacy on Iraq should be easy. After all, the evidence of Hussein's cooperation with and support for global terrorists is abundant and increasing, to wit:
Saddam Hussein's Habitual Support for Terrorists Both supporters and opponents of Islamic terror have provided abundant evidence of Hussein's aid for a wide array of terrorists. Consider the following.
* Hussein paid bonuses of up to $25,000 to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers.
"President Saddam Hussein has recently told the head of the Palestinian political office, Faroq al Kaddoumi, his decision to raise the sum granted to each family of the martyrs of the Palestinian uprising to $25,000 instead of $10,000," Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, announced at a Baghdad meeting of Arab politicians and businessmen on March 11, 2002, Reuters reported two days later.v
Mahmoud Besharat, who the White House says disbursed these funds across the West Bank, gratefully said, "You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue."vi
Such largesse poured forth until the eve of the Iraq war. As Knight-Ridder's Carol Rosenberg reported from Gaza City last March 13: "In a graduation-style ceremony Wednesday, the families of 22 Palestinians killed fighting Israelis received checks for $10,000 or more, certificates of appreciation and a kiss on each cheek--compliments of Iraq's Saddam Hussein." She added: "The certificates declared the gift from President Saddam Hussein; the checks were cut at a Gaza branch of the Cairo-Amman bank." This festivity, attended by some 400 people and organized by the then-Baghdad-backed Arab Liberation Front, occurred March 12, just eight days before American-led troops crossed the Iraqi frontier.vii
Hussein's patronage of Palestinian terror proved fatally fruitful. Between the March 11, 2002, increase in cash incentives to $25,000 and the March 20, 2003, launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 28 homicide bombers injured 1,209 people and killed 223 more, including 12 Americans.viii
* According to the U.S. State Department's May 21, 2002, report on Patterns of Global Terrorism,ix the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), the Arab Liberation Front, Hamas, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization, and the Palestine Liberation Front all operated offices or bases in Hussein's Iraq. Hussein's hospitality toward these mass murderers directly violated United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which prohibited him from granting safe haven to or otherwise sponsoring terrorists.
* Key terrorists enjoyed Hussein's warmth, some so recently that Coalition forces subsequently found them alive and well and living in Iraq. Among them:
* U.S. Special Forces nabbed Abu Abbas last April 14 just outside Baghdad. Abbas masterminded the October 7-9, 1985, Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking in which Abbas's men shot passenger Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year old Manhattan retiree, then rolled him, wheelchair and all, into the Mediterranean. Abbas briefly was in Italian custody at the time, but was released that October 12 because he possessed an Iraqi diplomatic passport.
Since 2000, Abbas
September 11 hijackers Nawaz al-Hamzi (left) and Khalid al-Midhar (right) were on American Airlines Flight 77 when it slammed into the Pentagon and killed 216 people. The two terrorists reportedly met Iraqi VIP airport greeter Ahmad Hikmat Shakir in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, on January 5, 2000, whereupon he escorted them to a 9-11 planning summit with other al Qaeda members.
Khala Khadar al-Salahat, a top deputy to Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal,
reportedly furnished Libyan agents the bomb that demolished Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988. That attack killed all 259 on board and 11 on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland. Baghdad resident al Salahat surrendered to U.S. Marines last April. Delaware exchange student John Buonocore, age 20, was among those killed when the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) used guns and grenades to attack a TWA ticket counter at Rome's Leonardo Da Vinci airport in December 1986. The ANO maintained offices in Baghdad until U.S. troops liberated the Iraqi capital.
American Abigail Litle, the 14-year-old daughter of a Baptist minister, was killed by a Palestinian homicide bomber while riding a bus in Haifa, Israel, on March 5, 2003. Saddam Hussein paid bonuses of up to $25,000 to the families of terrorists who killed at least 223 people, including 11 other Americans.
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resided in Baghdad, still under Saddam
Hussein's protection.x
* Khala Khadr al Salahat, a member of the ANO, surrendered to the First Marine Division in Baghdad on April 18. As the Sunday Times of London reported on August 25, 2002, a Palestinian source said that al Salahat and Nidal had furnished Libyan agents the Semtex bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, killing 259 on board and 11 on the ground. The 189 Americans murdered on the sabotaged Boeing 747 included 35 Syracuse University students who had spent the fall semester in Scotland and were heading home for the holidays.xi
* Before fatally shooting himself in the head with four bullets on August 16, 2002, as straight-faced Baathist officials claimed, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal (born Sabri al Banna) had lived in Iraq since at least 1999. As the Associated Press's Sameer N. Yacoub reported on August 21, 2002, the Beirut office of the ANO said that he entered Iraq "with the full knowledge and preparations of the Iraqi authorities."xii Nidal's attacks in 20 countries killed 407 people and wounded 788 more, the U.S. State Department calculates. Among other atrocities, an ANO-planted bomb exploded on a TWA airliner as it flew from Israel to Greece on September 8, 1974. The jet was destroyed over the Ionian Sea, killing all 88 people on board.xiii
* Coalition troops have shut down at least three terrorist training camps in Iraq, including a base approximately 15 miles southeast of Baghdad, called Salman Pak.xiv Before the war, numerous Iraqi defectors had said that the camp featured a passenger jet on which terrorists sharpened their air piracy skills.xv
"There have been several confirmed sightings of Islamic fundamentalists from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Gulf states being trained in terror tactics at the Iraqi intelligence camp at Salman Pak," said Khidir Hamza, Iraq's former nuclearweapons chief, in sworn testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 31, 2002. "The training involved assassination, explosions, and hijacking."xvi "This camp is specialized in exporting terrorism to the whole world," former Iraqi army captain Sabah Khodada told PBS's Frontline TV program in an October 14, 2001 interview.xvii Khodada, who worked at Salman Pak, said, "Training includes hijacking and kidnapping of airplanes, trains, public buses, and planting explosives in cities . . . how to prepare for suicidal operations." Khodada added, "We saw people getting trained to hijack airplanes. . . . They are even trained how to use utensils for food, like forks and knives provided in the plane." A map of the camp that Khodada drew from memory for Frontline closely matches satellite photos of Salman Pak, further bolstering his credibility.xviii These facts clearly disprove the above-quoted statements by Senator Kennedy and the Los Angeles Times and similar claims made by others. The Bush administration could advance American interests by busing a few dozen foreign correspondents and their camera crews from the bar of Baghdad's Palestine Hotel to Salman Pak for a guided tour. Network news footage of that might open a few eyes.
Saddam Hussein's al Qaeda Connections
As for Hussein's supposedly imaginary ties to al Qaeda, consider these disturbing facts:
* The Philippine government expelled Hisham al Hussein, the second secretary at Iraq's Manila embassy, on February 13, 2003. Cell phone records indicate that the Iraqi diplomat had spoken with Abu Madja and Hamsiraji Sali, leaders of Abu Sayyaf, just before and just after their al Qaeda-allied Islamic militant group conducted an attack in Zamboanga City. Abu Sayyaf's nail-filled bomb exploded on October 2, 2002, injuring 23 individuals and killing two Filipinos and U.S. Special Forces Sergeant First Class Mark Wayne Jackson, age 40. As Dan Murphy wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last February 26, those phone records bolster Sali's claim in a November 2002 TV interview that the Iraqi diplomat had offered these Muslim extremists Baghdad's help with joint missions.xix
* The Weekly Standard's intrepid reporter Stephen F. Hayes noted in the magazine's July 11, 2003, issue that the official Babylon Daily Political Newspaper published Iraqi diplomat Hisham al Hussein was expelled from the Philippines last February after cellphone records showed he was in contact with leaders of Abu Sayyaf, an al Qaeda-allied terrorist group. An October 2002 Abu Sayyaf bomb injured 23 and killed three, including U.S. soldier Mark Wayne Jackson.
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by Hussein's eldest son, Uday, had revealed a terrorist connection in what it called a "List of Honor" published a few months earlier.xx The paper's November 14, 2002, edition gave the names and titles of 600 leading Iraqis and included the following passage: "Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence offi- cer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan." That name, Hayes wrote, "matches that of Iraq's then-ambassador to Islamabad."
Carter-appointed federal appeals judge Gilbert S. Merritt discovered this document in Baghdad while helping rebuild Iraq's legal system. He wrote in the June 25 issue of the Tennessean that two of his Iraqi colleagues remember secret police agents removing that embarrassing edition from newsstands and con- fiscating copies of it from private homes.xxi The paper was not published for the next 10 days. Judge Merritt theorized that the "impulsive and somewhat unbalanced" Uday may have showcased these dedicated Baathists to "make them more loyal and supportive of the regime" as war loomed.
* Abu Musab al Zarqawi, formerly the director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan, fled to Iraq after being injured as the Taliban fell. He received medical care and convalesced for two months in Baghdad. He then opened an Ansar al Islam terrorist training camp in northern Iraq and arranged the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan.
* Although Iraqi Ramzi Yousef, ringleader of the February 26, 1993, World Trade Center (WTC) bombing plot, fled the United States on Pakistani papers, he came to America on an Iraqi passport.
* As Richard Miniter, author of this year's bestseller Losing bin Laden, reported on September 25, 2003, on the Tech Central Station webpage, "U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, which shows Iraq gave [al Qaeda member] Mr. [Abdul Rahman] Yasin both a house and a monthly salary." The Indiana-born, Iraqi-reared Yasin had been charged in August 1993 for mixing the chemicals in the bomb that exploded beneath One World Trade Center, killing six and injuring 1,042 individuals.xxii Indicted by federal prosecutors as a conspirator in the WTC bomb plot, Yasin is on the FBI's Most- Wanted Terrorists list.xxiii ABC News confirmed, on July 27, 1994, that Yasin had returned to Baghdad, where he traveled freely and visited his father's home almost daily.xxiv
* Near Iraq's border with Syria last April 25, U.S. troops captured Farouk Hijazi, Hussein's former ambassador to Turkey and suspected liaison between Iraq and al Qaeda. Under interrogation, Stephen Hayes reports, Hijazi "admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994."xxv
* While sifting through the Mukhabarat's bombed ruins last April 26, the Toronto Star's Mitch Potter, the London Daily Telegraph's Inigo Gilmore, and their translator discovered a memo in the intelligence service's accounting department. Dated February 19, 1998, and marked "Top Secret and Urgent," the document said that the agency would pay "all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden, the Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The memo's three references to bin Laden were obscured crudely with correction fluid.xxvi These facts directly refute the claims of Senator Rockefeller and Secretary Albright mentioned at the top of this article. The ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda are clear and compelling. Saddam Hussein's Ties to the September 11
Conspiracy
Despite the White House's inexplicable insistence to the contrary, tantalizing clues suggest that Saddam Hussein's jaw might not have dropped to the floor when fireballs erupted from the Twin Towers two years ago.
* His Salman Pak terror camp taught terrorists how to hijack passenger jets with cutlery, as noted earlier.
* On January 5, 2000, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir--Terrorist Organizations Given Funds, Shelter, and/or Training by Saddam Hussein Organization Total Total Americans Americans killed wounded killed wounded
Abu Nidal Organization 407 788 10 58
Ansar al-Islam 114 16 1 --
Arab Liberation Front 4 6 -- --
Hamas 224 1,445 17 30
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) 44 327 -- 2
Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) 17 43 7 1
Palestine Liberation Front 1 42 1 --
Total 811 2,667 36 91
Sources:
U.S. Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, "1968 - 2003: Total
Persons Killed/Wounded--International and Accepted Incidents." Figures prepared for author
November 17, 2003.
Statistics on Ansar al-Islam:
Jonathan Landay, "Islamic militants kill senior Kurdish general." Knight-Ridder News Service, February 11, 2003.
Catherine Taylor, "Saddam and bin Laden help fanatics, say Kurds." The Times of London, March 28, 2002.
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an Iraqi VIP facilitator reportedly dispatched from Baghdad's embassy in Malaysia--greeted Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi at Kuala Lampur's airport, where he worked. He then escorted them to a local hotel, where these September 11 hijackers met with 9-11 conspirators Ramzi bin al Shibh and Tawfiz al Atash. Five days later, according to Stephen Hayes, Shakir disappeared. He was arrested in Qatar on September 17, 2001, six days after al Midhar and al Hamzi slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, killing 216 people. Soon after he was apprehended, authorities discovered documents on Shakir's person and in his apartment connecting him to the 1993 WTC bomb plot and "Operation Bojinka," al Qaeda's 1995 plan to blow up 12 jets simultaneously over the Pacific.xxvii
* Although the Bush administration has
expressed doubts, the Czech government stands by its claim that September 11 leader Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim al Ani, an Iraqi diplomat/intelligence agent. In a February 24 letter to James Beasley Jr., a Philadelphia lawyer who represents the families of two Twin Towers casualties, Czech UN Ambassador Hynek Kmonicek embraced an October 26, 2001, statement by Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross:
In this moment we can confirm, that during the next stay of Mr. Muhammad [sic] Atta in the Czech Republic, there was the contact with the official of the Iraqi intelligence, Mr. Al Ani, Ahmed Khalin Ibrahim Samir, who was on 22nd April 2001 expelled from the Czech Republic on the basis of activities which were not compatible with the diplomatic status."xxviii Al Ani was expelled two weeks after the suspected meeting with Atta for apparently hostile surveillance of Radio Free Europe's Prague headquarters. That building also happened to house America's anti-Baathist station, Radio Free Iraq. The Czech government continues to claim, in short, that the 9-11 mastermind Atta met with at least one Iraqi intelligence official in the months during which the attacks were orchestrated.
* A Clinton-appointed Manhattan federal judge, Harold Baer, ordered Hussein, his ousted regime, Osama bin Laden, and others to pay $104 million in damages to the families of George Eric Smith and Timothy Soulas (clients of Beasley, the aforementioned attorney), both of whom were killed in the Twin Towers along with 2,750 others. "I conclude that plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, `by evidence satisfactory to the court' that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda," Baer ruled. An airtight case? Perhaps not, but the court found that there was sufficient evidence to tie Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks and secure a May 7 federal judgment against him.xxix If one takes the time to connect these dots--as is the professional duty of journalists and politicians who address this matter--a clear portrait emerges of Saddam Hussein as a sugar daddy to global terrorists including al Qaeda and even the 9-11 conspirators. As Americans grow increasingly restless about Washington's continuing military presence in Iraq, to say nothing of what people think overseas, the administration ought to paint this picture. So why won't they?
Bush Administration Needs to Educate the World on Hussein and Terror
One Bush administration communications specialist told me that the government is bashful about all of this because these links are difficult to prove. And indeed they are. But prosecuting the informational battle in the War on Terrorism is not like prosecuting a Mafia don, which typically requires rock-solid exhibits such as wiretap intercepts, hidden-camera footage, DNA samples, and the testimony of deep-cover "Mob rats." On the contrary, it is important to emphasize, as strongly as possible, that the United States need not--and in fact should not--hold itself to courtroom standards of evidence except when appearing before domestic or international judges. The administration merely has to demonstrate its claims and refute those of its opponents, not convict Saddam Hussein before a jury of his peers. Moreover, those who argue that Hussein was no terror master do not hold themselves to such lofty standards of proof, as the examples noted earlier demonstrate. The appropriate standard of evidence, then, to be entirely fair to both sides in this controversy, is not that of a trial, but rather that of a hearing on whether a criminal suspect should be indicted. In this respect, the "prosecution" defi-nitely has a prima facie case that Hussein's Iraq indeed was a haven for terrorists until the moment U.S. troops invaded. Terrorist attacks, of course, are meant to be at least as shadowy as Cosa Nostra hit jobs. Although this makes Just 15 miles from Baghdad, Salman Pak served as a Baathist training facility for terrorists. According to numerous defectors, foreign Islamic militants at Salman Pak used an actual jet fuselage to learn how to hijack airliners using knives and forks from their in-flight meals.
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Notes
i Madeleine Albright, "How we tackled the wrong tiger." Melbourne Herald Sun, October 21, 2003, page 19.
ii Anne E. Kornblut, "Kennedy to assail Bush over Iraq war." Boston Globe online, October16, 2003,
iii Greg Miller, "No Proof Connects Iraq to 9/11, Bush says." Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2003, part 1, page 1.
iv CBS 2 homepage, "Gore Takes Aim At Bush: Former Veep Addresses New York Audience." August 7, 2003,
v Reuters, "Hussein vows cash for martyrs." March 12, 2002. Published in The Australian, March 13, 2002, page 9.
vi The White House, "Saddam Hussein's Support for International Terrorism."
vii Carol Rosenberg, "Families of slain Palestinians receive checks from Saddam." Knight-Ridder News Service, March 13, 2003. Published in Salt Lake City Tribune, March, 13, 2003.
viii Facts of Israel.com, "Chronology of Palestinian Homicide Bombings."
ix U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism. May 21, 2002,
x Saud Abu Ramadan, "Call for Abbas release, also extradition." United Press International, April 16, 2003.
xi Marie Colvin and Sonya Murad, "Executed." Sunday Times of London, August 25, 2002, page 13. See also: Republican Study Committee, "American Citizens Killed or Injured by Palestinian Terrorists: September 1993 - October 2003." October 17, 2003.
xii Sameer N. Yacoub, "Iraq claims terrorist leader committed suicide." August 21, 2002 Associated Press dispatch published in Portsmouth Herald, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, August 22, 2002,
xiii Associated Press, "Palestinian officials say Abu Nidal is dead." Posted on USAToday.com, week of August 19, 2002,
xiv Ravi Nessman, "Marines capture camp suspected as Iraqi training base for terrorists." Associated Press, April 6, 2003, 4:14 p.m. EST. Posted by St. Paul Pioneer Press on April 7, 2003,
xv Deroy Murdock, "The 9/11 Connection: What Salman Pak Could Reveal." National Review Online, April 3, 2003,
xvi Khidhir Hamza, "The Iraqi Threat." Statement before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, July 31, 2002,
xvii PBS online, "Gunning for Saddam: Should Saddam Hussein Be America's Next Target in the War on Terrorism?" November 8, 2001,
xviii Deroy Murdock, "At Salman Pak: Iraq's Terror Ties." National Review Online, April 7, 2003,
xix Stephen F. Hayes, "Saddam's al Qaeda Connection: The evidence mounts, but the administration says surprisingly little." The Weekly Standard, September 1, 2003, volume 008, issue 48,
xx Stephen F. Hayes, "The Al Qaeda Connection, cont.: More reason to suspect that bin Laden and Saddam may have been in league." The Daily Standard July 11, 2003,
xxi Gilbert S. Merritt, "Document Links Saddam, bin Laden." The Tennessean, June 25, 2003,
xxii Richard Miniter, "The Iraq-Al Qaeda Connections." Tech Central Station, September 25, 2003,
xxiii Federal Bureau of Investigation, profile of Abdul Rahman Yasin on FBI's Most-Wanted Terrorists list,
xxiv Sheila MacVicar, "`America's Most Wanted' - Fugitive Terrorists." ABC News' "Day One," July 27, 1994.
xxv Stephen F. Hayes, "The Al Qaeda Connection: Saddam's links to Osama were no secret." The Weekly Standard, May 12, 2003,
xxvi Inigo Gilmore, "The Proof that Saddam worked with bin Laden." London Daily Telegraph, April 27, 2003,
xxvii Stephen F. Hayes, "Dick Cheney Was Right: `We don't know' about Saddam and 9/11." The Weekly Standard, October 20, 2003,
xxviii Hynek Kmonicek, letter to James Beasley Jr., February 24, 2003. In author's possession. A scanned image of the letter is available on the Hudson Institute's website, www.hudson.org.
xxix CBS News, "Court Rules: Al Qaida, Iraq Linked." May 7, 2003,
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The ordeal of a N. Korean in Canada
By Jeff Jacoby, 3/4/2004
IF YOU HAVE ever started to emerge from one nightmare only to find yourself plunged into a new one, you will find the ordeal of Ri Song Dae frighteningly familiar.
ADVERTISEMENT
In August 2001, Ri entered Canada with his wife and their 6-year-old son, Chang Il. They were defectors from the monstrous dictatorship in North Korea and had come to Canada to seek asylum.
For 10 years, Ri had been a low-level trade functionary, periodically sent abroad to purchase foodstuffs. He had long known of the savage brutality of Kim Jong Il's regime, of course; no government official could fail to be aware of it. What finally prompted him to flee was seeing the horrible treatment meted out to escaped North Koreans who were caught and returned. According to human rights monitors, that treatment includes humiliation and torture, typically followed by slow starvation and slave labor in a prison camp -- or public execution.
Ri filed a formal claim for refugee status for himself and Chang Il four months after arriving in Canada, but by then his second nightmare had begun. His wife, browbeaten by her Japanese parents for her "betrayal," attempted to commit suicide, then agreed to leave her husband and son and return to North Korea. She was executed in April 2002. Ri's father was executed as well, in keeping with the North Korean policy of ruthlessly punishing not only "criminals," but also their parents and children.
On Sept. 12, 2003, more than two years after Ri's plea for asylum was filed, Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board issued its ruling. It was an Orwellian stunner.
Board member Bonnie Milliner ruled that Ri's young son was entitled to stay in Canada, since he would face severe persecution if he were returned to Pyongyang. But Ri's appeal for refugee protection was denied, even though Milliner agreed that "he would face execution on return to North Korea." Why would Canada send a man back to his certain death? Because, Milliner wrote, "there are serious reasons for considering that [Ri] has committed crimes against humanity by virtue of his longstanding membership in the Government of North Korea."
In other words, Ri was deemed complicit in crimes against humanity solely because he had held a government job. Milliner acknowledged that there was no evidence he had committed any atrocities at all. But he knew of the regime's savagery yet waited 10 years to defect. To the Immigration and Refugee Board, that added up to a case for sending him back to be killed.
If the board's decision were to stand, Ri would be sent off to die, and his 6-year-old would be an orphan. His prospects grew even bleaker on Feb. 20, when Milliner's ruling was upheld by Canada's citizenship and immigration ministry. Canadians express pride in their country's humanitarian values, but it has been hard to detect any of those values as this case has moved through the Canadian bureaucracy.
Fortunately, Ri has just received a last-minute reprieve. Yesterday afternoon, Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan granted him permission to stay in Canada indefinitely, since his life would be in danger if he were deported. Her decision effectively overrules the earlier decrees. Ri's long nightmare may at last be over.
But back in North Korea, there are no happy endings.
Media coverage of Kim Jong Il's government has been focused on its illegal nuclear weapons program and its proliferation of missile technology. But even more ghastly is the suffering it inflicts on its own people.
The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday on the use of political prisoners as chemical weapons guinea pigs. A senior North Korean chemist who escaped in 2002 described a testing chamber that was outfitted with a large window and a sound system so scientists could see and hear the victims' reactions when they were sprayed with the lethal poison.
"One man was scratching desperately," the defector testified. "He scratched his neck, his chest. . . . He was covered in blood. . . . I kept trying to look away. I knew how toxic these chemicals were in even small doses." It took, he said, three agonizing hours for each man to die.
When I wrote last month about North Korea's concentration camps and gas chambers, many readers wrote to ask: What can I do? The first and most important step is to learn more. Three excellent sources of information on North Korea are The Chosun Journal (www.chosunjournal.com), the Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (www.nkhumanrights.or.kr), and the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (www.hrnk.org). All three offer heartbreaking details about the horrors of Kim's tyranny as well as many options for further action. They should be the first stop for anyone for whom "never again" is not just an empty slogan.
Ri Song Dae and his little boy are safe, but 22 million of their countrymen remain trapped, at the mercy of the most evil government on earth. Learn what is happening to them. Cry out in protest. This is not a time for silence.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.
? Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
----------------------------------------------
So, Where Is Ms. Cho?
Give the people of North Korea a seat at the table.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, August 27, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
Today through Friday, the six-way talks with North Korea are due to take place in Beijing, and though I know I'm dreaming, here's the script I'd like to see:
Our lead negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, looks at the assembled crowd--at his Russian and Chinese and Japanese and Korean counterparts, from both North and South--and before saying a word about nuclear bombs, or security guarantees, or any more blackmail payoffs for Kim Jong Il of North Korea, before doing any of the things this gang might be expecting, Mr. Kelly leans forward to ask the following, vital question:
Where is Ms. Cho?
There is, perhaps, a puzzled silence. Then someone, maybe one of the Chinese hosts, who did after all suggest that America should come with issues ready to put on the table, asks, Who is Ms. Cho?
Mr. Kelly beckons mysteriously, and leads the entire parade, the Russians and Japanese and Koreans and Chinese, to a van waiting outside Beijing's Diaoyutai state guesthouse, where they are meeting. They drive to the Beijing Foreign Ministry, because it matters to see these places firsthand, and there they get out. And, standing in front of the Ministry, Mr. Kelly explains:
Ms. Cho is a North Korean escapee who came here, to this very spot, a year ago yesterday, Aug. 26, 2002, with six other North Koreans, all of them risking their lives in an attempt to ask the Chinese government for refugee status. They were following United Nations procedure to ask for asylum. Ms. Cho tried to give the Chinese authorities a document stating that she had left North Korea "in search of freedom," and if sent back "will certainly be executed in accordance with Article 47 of the DPRK penal code." She was very brave. She was 27 years old.
Cho Sung-hye and her companions were hoping the free world would hear their message, and help not only them, but hundreds of thousands of other people trying to flee North Korea. Instead, Chinese security agents arrested Ms. Cho and her companions on the spot. There has been no news of them since.
So, where is Ms. Cho?
In all likelihood, there is no more Ms. Cho, though she was real enough, in her checked shirt, with her long hair pulled back, when she posed for a snapshot in Beijing last summer, just before her failed bid for official refugee status. (You can see pictures of Ms. Cho and her companions here.) Certainly she has not surfaced in the free world. Most probably, the Chinese authorities, following routine procedure, sent Ms. Cho and her six fellow asylum-seekers back to North Korea, where the authorities, following routine procedure, either executed them or consigned them to labor camps that can amount to a slow and hideous death sentence, by starvation, if not by torture, beatings, exposure or disease.
But Ms. Cho, in her absence, ought to haunt that Beijing negotiating table this week. In approaching the Chinese Foreign Ministry last year, she offered herself up as a symbol of all North Koreans who might desire freedom, especially the 200,00-300,000 estimated to be hiding right now in China--where authorities have yet to grant a single one of them the refugee status they warrant.
These are not purely humanitarian concerns, though the North Korean government's policies of murdering and starving its own innocents ought at some point to be of interest even to diplomats discussing high matters of state. Beyond whatever happened to Ms. Cho, there are the estimated two million or so North Koreans dead of state-inflicted famine since the mid-1990s. (Though the North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong-il, attending the current talks, doubtless eats well.)
But whatever talks may now in reality take place, it would be of considerable value for our talkers to keep in mind--even beyond North Korea's huge, horrendous record of lies, and broken promises about its nuclear bomb program--that regimes which routinely betray, brutalize and butcher their own people are unlikely to deal in good faith with others. It is a rather different set of values they have signed onto.
The odd inversion of our official dealings with North Korea over the past decade or so is that we have brought to talks with North Korea's government our own civilized expectations that promises will be kept, and good faith will be returned in kind. Meanwhile, the free world has been treating the actual people of North Korea--the Ms. Chos--as pariahs, people to be shunned, sent back, ignored if it will help us strike another hollow deal with Kim Jong Il.
Among the governments whose negotiators are meeting around that Beijing table this week, there is not one that has offered true help for North Korea's refugees--many of whom might also be described as dissidents, defectors, the kind of people we need to be listening to, even asking for help, not sending back, or hushing up. China is shamefully guilty in its refusal to allow even safe transit for these people. Russia, with its pretensions to leadership in world affairs and vast empty spaces in the Russian Far East, could offer enormous help, but does nothing. Japan is at least trying to get some people out of North Korea, though Tokyo's first priority, understandably, is the recovery of Japanese kidnapped by the North Korean government.
America, erstwhile haven for the tempest-tossed, seems to have room for refugees from everyplace on earth--except North Korea. And though America serves as home to many a would-be-democratic-government in exile, there is no such North Korean presence here, no resistance movement. Nothing. Plenty of North Koreans have tried to escape the regime of Kim Jong Il. But, dear readers, have you ever met one? Or even seen one on television?
Instead, the free world looks to South Korea as the keeper of this important human trust--to offer a haven for North Koreans who value freedom. Usually, it is in such havens that exiles from tyrannies can form a base, get out the word about atrocities back home, offer insights into the vulnerabilities of tyrants and find ways to smuggle into the tyrannies some words of truth and hope.
But in today's South Korea, fat chance. This is the place where authorities have twice this past week roughed up German doctor Norbert Vollertsen, the single loudest voice trying for three years now to draw attention to the depravities of the North Korean government, the plight of the people still there, and the civilized world's utter abandonment of the refugees. There was some attention in the news last week to the efforts of Mr. Vollertsen and some of his activist colleagues to send solar-powered radios into North Korea, attached to balloons--which the South Korean authorities stopped them from doing. The prohibition and the beating of Mr. Vollertsen that accompanied it, underscore Mr. Vollertsen's message--which is not simply that conditions in North Korea rival the atrocities under Nazi Germany, and that some refugees are desperate enough to die trying to escape. It is also that the civilized world, South Korea at the forefront, simply does not want to see, hear, know, or help, and in ignoring the 22 million people of North Korea, while we parley with their jailers, we throw away our best hope of peacefully ending this nightmare.
In a phone conversation from Seoul last weekend, Mr. Vollertsen suggested to me that there should be not six-way but seven-way talks in Beijing this week, "Why are there no North Korean refugees participating?," he asked.
That's not how our diplomacy works right now, unfortunately. But the real issue in dealing with Pyongyang is not a matter of bribing Kim Jong Il to let us go on a scavenger hunt for plutonium in North Korea. It's a matter of finding the backbone, and the allies--especially among the North Koreans themselves--to get rid of Mr. Kim and his regime entirely. And that starts with the question:
Where is Ms. Cho?
Ms. Rosett is a columnist for OpinionJournal.com and The Wall Street Journal Europe. Her column appears alternate Wednesdays.
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