[1] India dragging Pakistan into sectarianism

 

More than 39 people killed and over 200 injured on September 1, 2010 when three suicide bombers blew themselves up in Shia march in Lahore and in another incident on the same day gunmen opened fire at a procession in Pakistan’s commercial capital Karachi wounding seven. The first blast was of low intensity explosive device, went off near the Karbala Gamay Shah Imambargah or prayer ground after 6.45 pm where thousands of Shia Muslims had gathered to observe the Yaum-e-Ali. The other suicide bombers struck the nearby Bhatti Chowk area at about 7.15 pm. Since couple of months terrorists activities like blasts, target killing, robberies and kidnapping are remained on ‘peek in the country. Reportedly, a head of one of the suicide bombers has been recovered.

It is mentionable here that both sites are located close to the Data Darbar shrine that was targeted by suicide attackers in July 2010. In that attack, over 100 individuals were killed and many injured. In March this year terrorists targeted Ahmedi mosque. Many innocents’ people have been killed. Any how, these blasts have linkage because of their likely aim of division of the society through sectarianism. The current wave of terrorism is giving very clear cut indication of involvement of Indian intelligence agency “RAW’. Generally in the month of Ramadan Muslims do stop all kind of war in respect of holy month. It is further added that Pakistan is facing the worst kind of catastrophe (flood) of her history. The whole government machinery, armed forces and general masses are fully involved in relief and settlement operations of flood affected areas.

So, at this time of juncture Israel has the desire to hit lonely nuclear Muslim state since country machinery could be is terribly busy to fight with the natural disaster. The conspicuous increase in volatility has been noticed since after ‘Mumbai attack”. India has started all out proxy war against Pakistan and interested her to drag in sectarianism too. In this connection, she never let any chance and event to malign Pakistan in some terrorist activated. Reportedly, Indo-Israel Intelligence Agency “Triple III” has planned to carry out two terrorists’ acts for the month of September–October 2010 at the time of Common Wealth Games, CWG 2010. The operation would be against the participants of team members of Common wealth countries. The operations’ dates are coincided with the period when Israel would be under tremendous pressure of international community as about 60-100 ships were likely to be present close to Gaza besides a large number of road transport /Vehicles from across the Globe to break the siege of Gaza through land and sea routes in September-October 2010.The timing of this attack would be decided by Israel as and when it felt that International pressure on Gaza was crossing a predetermined level/ threshold. Any such terror activity in India especially during or before the CWG-2010 would lead to finger pointing towards Pakistan.

Thus, collaboration of RAW and Mossad is really a potent threat to regional peace. Tripal -III Intelligence agency for fomenting terrorism is using criminal elements of FATA and remote areas of Pakistan. Indian Interior minister P Chidambaram and chief of Army Staff repeatedly threaten Pakistan. In a ceremony held on March 12, 2010 Indian home minister alleged Pakistan for their domestic ongoing violence and militancy. He said that any act of terrorism from Pakistani territory against India will be taken as not be tolerant in future. In fact the purpose of such types of statements political and military leadership is to justify Indian covert and open sabotage activities against Pakistan. The said agency is supporting and funding well trained terrorists those pick their targets carefully. Some months back they killed number of Pakistani soldiers and masses in FATA and Swat.

On March 13, 2010, two suicidal bombers walked up to Pakistan military vehicles and exploded themselves in densely populated area RA Bazar of Lahore cantt. In the same month of 2010 March 8, 2010 Pakistani Intelligence Agency’s “sub-office” in Model Town Lahore was rocked at the time of a suicide attack. Thus the blasts of September 2010 would be taken as the continuity of Indo-Israel militancy against Pakistan. In this connection, President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani and Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani condemned the Lahore blasts. They expressed condolences with the families of those who lost their lives in the dastardly terrorist act. The President said the Government and people are determined to defeat terrorism and such gruesome acts cannot deter the national spirit is ready to defeat terrorists. It is also mentionable here that last year five attacks from 15 October 2009 to 3 March 2010 were launched in Lahore.

Lt Col Zaheerul Hassan (R)

[2] Clues of Lahore terrorists’ attacks lead to India

 

CCPO Lahore Aslam Tareen said that clues found at site of suicide and terrorists attacks at the mourning procession in Lahore lead to neighboring country India and Police has been carrying investigations in the right direction and the soon the responsible elements would be disclosed.

Talking to media after attending a ceremony regarding to dispatch 37 trucks of relief goods to flood affected areas here on Friday at Traffic Wardens Line, LOS Thoker Niaz Baig, he said that Police have been carrying investigations over suicide attacks at the mourning procession in Gam-e-Shah (Lahore) and soon the involved elements would be exposed.

He also informed the media that police during preliminary investigations have found clues that indicate involvement of foreign elements in the terrorist attacks at Lahore, however detailed investigations would be accomplished soon.

CCPO Lahore also said that peace situation in the provincial capital has been under control after the terrorists attacks in the city.

Earlier addressing the ceremony Capital City Police Officer (CCPO), Muhammad Aslam Tareen has said that Lahore Police have voluntarily collected rupees one crore as flood relief fund for flood victims, which is over and above two day’s salary deduction announced by Punjab government. CCPO said that it is the foremost duty of every segment of the society, including police, to work for the welfare and rehabilitation of flood affected brethrens. He said that Lahore Police will continue to work for the betterment of flood affected families in future as well.

DIG Operations Rao Sardar Ali, SP Traffic Headquarters Capton ® Sohail Chaudhary and other senior police officers of Lahore Police were also present on this occasion. CCPO Lahore and SSP Operations Traffic, Syed Ahmed Mobeen said that Lahore Police have contributed one crore, which is over and above two day’s salary, announced by the Punjab Government. He said that all ranks of Lahore Police have voluntarily collected amount of more than one crore at the following rates: CCPO 20 thousand, DIGs 10 thousand each, SSPs eight thousand each, SPs six thousand each, DSPs 4 thousand each, Inspectors 1500 each, Wardens/SIs 1000 each, ASIs 500 each, Head Constables 300 each whereas constables 200 each. He said that cash donation have also been received from Civil Society and the Police Officers of UN Mission Sudan.

CCPO said that donation of relief goods have also been received from various organizations who have entrusted Lahore Police and contributed in shape of relief goods to us including: Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Madina Sugar Mills, Faisalabad, Traders of Moon Market Lahore, Karman Wala Flour Mills, Okara (Tariq Wali). He said that in consultation with the office of Inspector General of Police Punjab’s flood relief Commissioner and DPO’s, following affected areas were identified in D.G. Khan 11 Trucks: Moza Biat Chan Wala, Union council More Jangi, Ghaus Pur, Muzafar Garh 11 Trucks: Tehsil Musafar Garh, Tehsil Mehr Pur, Rohlan Wali Tehsil Jatoi, Head bikini, Moza Khan Gharh, Tehsil Alipur, Rajan Pur 11 Trucks: Kotla Mughaln, Kot Mithan, Muhammad Pur Dewan, Kotla Androon, besides above mentioned places, any other area identified by the concerned District Police Officers will also be entertained.

Muhammad Aslam Tareen and SSP Operations Traffic said that in 2nd phase Lahore Police will establish nine relief camps where general public and civil society can contribute anything for flood victims including: Alama Iqbal Town Division; Moon Market, City Division; Azadi Chowk, Cantt Division; Sadar Round About, Model Town Division; Liverty Market Parking Area, Civil Lines Division; China Chowk, Saddar Division; Niaz Baig Chowk, in front of Qurban line entrance, Jail Road, In front of District Police Lines, Qila Gujjar Singh, in front of LOS Traffic Police Lines. He said that the items collected will be dispatched to different areas after consultation with office of Inspector General of Police Punjab, and the flood relief Commissioner.

Short URL: http://www.daily.pk/?p=21316

 [3] Quetta Attack: The Responsibility Of Jundullah, Afghanistan And The Organizers – Was Quetta Rally Necessary?

 

A suicide attacker targeted the Al-Quds rally today in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Balochistan province. Fifty Pakistanis are dead and the figure could rise in the next few hours because the injured are in excess of 100.

It is highly irresponsible on the part of the organizers of the rally — and the government officials that gave it the green signal — to endanger the lives of Pakistani citizens only two days after twin attacks that targeted public events. In pure security terms, this is a serious lack of judgment on the part of the organizers. The Pakistani government must proceed with criminal charges against the organizers who, in their callousness, put politics before the lives of our citizens at a time when we face foreign-backed terror. The relevant government officials who licensed the procession should be questioned about the sources of their assessment that it was safe to hold huge rallies in these times.

This Al-Quds Day rally was organized by Pakistani Shia organizations that support Iran’s call for Al-Quds Day to be held on the last Friday of Ramadan. But by no means is this a Shia religious event. A majority of Pakistanis support al-Quds Day, regardless of religious affiliations. I personally fully support Tehran’s courageous stance on Al-Quds, the holy city under Israeli occupation. It’s also important to remember that the Al-Quds Day is a political event launched by the government of Iran. It is not a religious event.

Inside Pakistan, the organizers of the rally should have put the safety and security of Pakistani citizens ahead of everything else. A smaller, symbolic public event could have been arranged instead of a large one. The crime of the organizers is especially compounded by the knowledge of what happened in Karachi and Lahore two days earlier.

Unfortunately, Saudi- and Iranian-backed proxy sectarian groups have endangered the lives of Pakistanis for years and put foreign interests before Pakistani national interests. These groups must and should be banned.

It is also important to avoid playing into the hands of the terrorists who did this. Everyone knows we have sectarian groups in the country. But is every attack on one group the work of the opposite group?

Not necessarily.

In other words, Pakistan’s indigenous sectarian groups have been weakened over the years and their foreign support, from Saudi Arabia, Iran or elsewhere, has been considerably curtailed. What is happening is that their remnants are being reorganized by someone else on the Afghan border, arming them and financing them and providing them a new safe haven.

So there is a bigger chance of the recent attacks being the work of the terror-export enterprise that hides in Afghanistan and has been targeting Pakistan since 2005. The first evidence of this is the fact that the attacks have been claimed by a terror group based on the Afghan border.

With an attack on a minority worship place of the Ahmedis earlier in the day in Mardan preceding the Quetta attack by a few hours, it is clear this is not a sectarian issue but an organized campaign by Pakistan’s regional enemies. And surely they will find supporters inside Pakistan. Apart from the existing sectarian groups, it is easy to recruit and brainwash poor young Pakistani teenagers, convince them to wear explosive belts and blow themselves up anywhere.

And it’s not just Pakistan. Iran has seen attacks on Shia mosques by elements claiming to be Sunnis. But there are no Sunni sectarian groups in Iran. The terrorists who have been attacking Iranian targets are based in US-controlled Afghanistan claiming to represent Sunnis. The attacks in Quetta today and in Karachi and Lahore on Wednesday share the same origin as the attacks in Iran: they are masterminded by terrorists who hide on the border with Afghanistan and have links to foreign intelligence agencies based there. We know that Indians have shown a lot of interest in these groups and established contacts with elements linked to them.

Let us also remember there are external powers in our neighborhood that have an interest in perpetuating chaos in the region. We’ve seen how uneasy United States officials and commentators became when the whole focus in Pakistan turned to the floods and the humanitarian disaster and no one was talking about Washington’s terror war. That’s when at least one US media outlet spun into action and contacted terror ‘spokespersons’ on the Afghan border and solicited statements that can best be described as spreading panic during a national emergency.

It is important that non-religious and non-essential public events in Pakistan — political and religious — be curtailed under these circumstances, regardless of sect and politics. If the government and the army can call off parades on days of national significance, including our Independence Day, then unnecessary public congregations can be curtailed as well.

Patriotic Pakistanis, Shias and Sunnis, must step forward and show courage in telling our emotional religious figures that saving the lives of Pakistanis is more important for the time being, especially when none of these public events and processions have any religious sanction.

Pakistani religious figures that refuse to do this and hide behind weak religious pretexts must be charged with endangering the lives of Pakistani citizens.

Ahmed Quraishi

Short URL: http://www.daily.pk/?p=21424

Soon after the United States military and intelligence landed in Afghanistan, the region has seen a succession of well-armed and financed ‘iinsurgencies, from Iran to Pakistni Balochistan, to TTP, to the sectarian mess in northern Pakistan all the way to the border with China.

• TODAY’S SUICIDE BOMBING IN QUETTA, PAKISTAN LEAVES A TRAIL TO TEL AVIV
• Junudullah, TTP get support from Washington, Tel Aviv and New Delhi, PKK used to be sponsored by Israel
• Is US military and CIA using air strips in Pakistan’s Balochistan to transport Afghan heroin?

Pakistan is important. For years, the “CIA” and other intelligence organizations have been in Balochistan sneaking in and out of Iran blowing things up. How much of that is CIA and how much is Mossad, nobody knows for sure. This is another terrorist organization, called the “Jundullah.” Like the PKK in Turkey and the Tehrik-i-Taliban, the terrorist group making life in Pakistan a living hell, the Jundullah get all the money, weapons, training, transportation and maybe more, much more, they need to fight covert wars against the targets of Tel Aviv.

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
Friday, 3 September 2010.
VeteransToday.com
WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

QUETTA, Pakistan-Today, 43 Pakistanis were killed in a terror attack, killed for supporting Palestinians in Gaza. The signs had been there, the Wikileaks attempt to put responsibility for the Taliban on Veterans Today editor General Hamid Gul. This was debunked in a heartbeat. This attack was vicious and clearly the work of Israel. This was a terror attack meant as a message to the people of the world telling them that if they rally in support of those imprisoned in Gaza, they will be murdered.

Is it a gift for the Jewish people of Israel, another revenge attack, seemingly in response to the shooting of 4 Israeli Jews in Hebron, an attack curiously timed to disrupt peace talks between Jewish and Muslim Palestinians in Washington?

This is far from the first time Israel has been caught. The PKK, the Kurdish terrorist group, communists, who have been attacking Turkey from their mountain “caves” in Iraq for over 40 years have long been trained, funded and even recruited by Israel’s Mossad. Now the partnership between India and Israel, helped along, not only by the CIA, the Kazrai brothers “corporation” and MI -6 is becoming difficult to ignore.

With continual terror attacks a daily part of life in Pakistan, several in Lahore this week, there is no ignoring the real culprits. Nearly every contracting firm the United States uses in not only Afghanistan but Pakistan as well is filled to the brim with Israeli operatives. Working with them is the massive CIA assisted drug cartel and its worldwide network of private airlines for shipping heroin and cash and a dozen nations that take part.

All of this is only window dressing for the real show. In 2003, Israel got America to destroy Iraq, well, and itself also. Iraq was suicide for America. It wasn’t until 2007 that America had discovered its own corpse.

The war in Afghanistan is destroying not only that country but Pakistan as well.

Pakistan is important. For years, the “CIA” and other intelligence organizations have been in Balochistan sneaking in and out of Iran blowing things up. How much of that is CIA and how much is Mossad, nobody knows for sure. This is another terrorist organization, called the “Jundallah.” Like the PKK in Turkey and the Tehrik-i-Taliban, the terrorist group making life in Pakistan a living hell, the Jundallah get all the money, weapons, training, transportation and maybe more, much more, they need to fight covert wars against the targets of Tel Aviv.

Baluchistan also has several small airports where heroin can be loaded and flown out. American contracting firms control those facilities and have for years. Narcotics are delivered there from Afghanistan and leave on aircraft meant to supply America’s “black ops” against, well, whoever it is that Israel is angry at.

For Americans, the real question, if Israel is funding terrorist organizations attacking, not only Iran but America’s NATO partner Turkey and longtime ally Pakistan, facts long in evidence everywhere but in the American press, are there also terrorist attacks against American forces and America itself being planned? Have any been carried out and if so, how many?

Does Israel gain when America marches to war against her perceived enemies?

What was obvious today is that the terror attack in Pakistan had nothing to do with Afghan Taliban of any kind. It had only one goal, to punish the people of Pakistan for supporting the Palestinian cause and supporting a two-state solution during the current peace initiative sponsored by President Obama. We know Israel goes after anyone who stands up for Palestine but killing dozens of civilians at a rally in Quetta, Baluchistan is an escalation, even for Israel.

Perhaps the worst part of it is that nobody will say a word about this. Pakistan is broke, even by American standards. They survive off American foreign aid, money they continue to receive as long as they never say a word about Israel of publicly attribute the wave of terrorism they have been subjected to where the real blame belongs. I have seen the head of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the current Director General of the ISI, hint at Osama bin Laden being dead. I have interviewed him about it personally.

I was sworn to keep the discussion private and confidential. I will keep my word.

Pakistan is being held hostage. Mrs. Clinton continually chastises them about failing to find long dead Osama bin Laden, the imaginary planner of 9/11. Former ISI Director General Hamid Gul, now retired and known for his outspoken honesty, places the blame for 9/11 exactly where it belongs, where he placed on the day it happened. With the Israeli lobby in control of Washington and Washington’s money in control of Pakistan, this won’t be the last terror attack.

The next time anyone anywhere tries to aid Palestinians or to get the truth about Israel’s apartheid policies and ethnic cleansing past the corporate controlled press, expect another suicide bombing. Look at the way the press handled Israeli murder and piracy with the Freedom Flotilla? Less than 5% of Americans know that Israel was caught back in 1967 knowingly attacking an American ship, the USS Liberty. It wasn’t the first Israeli terror attack on Americans and there have been dozens since. You will never read a word about them.

With another 9/11 anniversary coming up, Palestine peace talks going on and Israel doing everything in its power to force America to attack Iran, security forces throughout the United States are on high alert for Islamic terrorists.

Everyone ‘in the know” understand that the warning is really for Israeli terrorists. Will the United States Air Force be there if needed, unlike during 9/11? Will terrorists all show up with fresh student visas courtesy of the State Department like during 9/11?

Are we past the time when America is willing to look the other way when a thousand strange coincidences bring about that “perfect storm,” exactly when and where needed, a “storm” to eclipse 9/11 in horror, enough to send a war weary people, long lied to, no longer trusting their government, down the road to war for Israel again?

Four dead Israelis in Hebron was a clue. The 43 dead in Quetta is another. The imaginary Amsterdam hijackers were meant to be one also. More will come with each day, more clues, more planted news stories, more staging, more preparing the minds to expect what so many of us know is coming.

Who do you think recruits terror cells? Who has been doing it forever? Who can travel freely, use passports of any nation and has endless money? You think there really is an Al Qaeda?

Why does everything Al Quade do only help Israel?

Is Al Qaeda another Mossad front?

Mr. Duff is Senior Editor at VeteransToday.com, a website focused on American military veterans. This is an extracted version of the original column published at VeteransToday.com

Source: http://www.ahmedquraishi.com/2010/09/04/is-israel-running-the-pakistani-taliban/

 

*****

The acquisition of veto power by the organization’s five most powerful member states, for all practical purposes, reduced the 184 non-veto members into a mere polyglot body of impotence, called General Assembly.

Muslim Countries Must Rethink United Nations 6/18/2010 - Opinion Political - Article Ref: IV1006-4199 Number of comments: 2 Opinion Summary: Agree:0  Disagree:0  Neutral:2 By: Abdul-Majid Jaffry Iviews* -   The United Nations, after the United States had spurned the League of Nations, was forged mainly out of President Roosevelt’s idea of "Four Policemen" - the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and China - to police the postwar world. Later, on Churchill’s suggestion France was brought in as "Fifth Policeman". The Big Five made up the Security Council with the right to veto on all issues that come before it. The power to veto was considered essential for there could be no "peace" in the postwar world if the Big Five did not agree. The acquisition of veto power by the organization’s five most powerful member states, for all practical purposes, reduced the 184 non-veto members into a mere polyglot body of impotence, called General Assembly.  The United Nations Security Council, a totally undemocratic body, is composed of a privileged group of five countries with colonial and imperial past. Czarist Russia was known as the "prison house of nations" as it brutally and autocratically ruled over many peoples, including Georgians, Azerbaijanis and Turkic peoples. Imperialist China, through invasion and occupation, brought Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Manchuria and Taiwan under its jurisdiction. France and Great Britain exploited and ruled over many colonies all over the world. U.S. may not have occupied colonies in the manner of France and Britain, but it rules the world, like empires of the past, with its most extensive system of military bases. Stalin’s declaration shortly after the war, that "no peaceful international order is possible" between the communists and the capitalist-imperial world, and Churchill’s famous "iron curtain" speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri set off the cold war. For the next four decades exchange of nasty barbs and fiery words between the diplomats of east and West characterized the world forum. The U.N., during the East versus West conflict, was powerless to bend any of the two superpowers or their client states to its will. Soviet invasion of Hungary and Afghanistan; American invasion of Vietnam, and recently Iraq; India’s (an erstwhile Soviet client state) seizure of Portuguese enclave of Goa, Israel’s (an American client state) flagrant violation of every U.N. resolution, are just a few blaring example of the United Nations’ inability to contain the members of the Veto Club or their client states.  The Security Council effectively serves the five economically and militarily powerful nations to dictate and perpetuate the dominance over the less powerful countries, fomenting serious global crises. The power of veto did much, as intended, to ensure that general memberships would never unpleasantly surprise the "Big Brothers" by a show of unity and tenacity that would bind them to the lofty principles of the U.N. charter. With the fall of the Berlin wall, the most conspicuous of all symbols of the cold war, in November 1989, comes the end of the East-West conflict. The death of the cold war resurrected the age old West’s animosity towards Arabs and Muslims. Islam replaced communism as the principal adversary of Western liberal democracy. The hostility that was, to some degree, calmed by the presence of the big bear of communism resuscitated into a screeching storm of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim invective. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the unipolarization of the world, a new crusade against Islam and the "Islamic peril" is being wagged on all fronts: news media, academia, State Department, NSC, and the U.N. Security Council. The repressive measures of boycott, sanctions, and embargo, are reserved exclusively for Muslim Nations. The United States and the Great Britain employ the U.N. to impose their ideas on the rest of the world. They found it convenient to declare nations that have not caved in to their pressures "totalitarian" or "rogue states."  After the bitter experience of the Vietnam War United states came to realize that a unilateral international action is increasingly likely to be condemned abroad and unpopular at home. A military operation under the U.N. flag, rather than the Stars and Stripes, would internationally legitimize the action. Thus, U.N. has been reduced to a law enforcement agency of the U.S. State Department. It has won U.N. not the respect, but the contempt. It lost its credibility and became irrelevant, particularly in the Muslim world.  In a just and civilized community, crimes of like nature elicit like punishment regardless of the perpetrator. United Nations, under the tutelage of Western power, is free of any such moral restraint. If we look at United Nations’ retributive actions we would find an invariable pattern of categorical prejudice against Muslim countries.  In 1988, an American airliner was sabotaged over Lockerbie Scotland; blame went to Libya. Gadhafi’s refusal to hand over the two alleged suspects in the bombing, on the terms dictated by a country whose only justification is its power, brought the U.N. wrath. A few years later, on some other trumped up charge, American warplanes bombed Gadhafi’s residence killing his infant daughter. Compare the U.N. treatment of Lockerbie incident with the American downing of an Iranian airliner in the same year, during the tension in the Persian Gulf, killing more than 300 passengers. U.N. slapped Libya with sanctions, and adopted a complete silence on American downing of Iranian civilian airliner. The silence speaks volume about U.N. dealing fairly and equally with all concerned.  On 2 August 1990, the United Nations Security Council imposed economic sanctions on Iraq in response to its invasion of Kuwait. The U.N. trade embargo prohibited the import or export of goods or capital into or from Iraq. As a result of the U.N. imposed sanctions, according to former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, about 10,000 Iraqis died each month. In a letter to U.N. Mr. Clark stated, "The history of this violent century does not reveal a more deadly, cruel, inhumane and degrading torture of the whole population of an entire nation inflicted by foreign power for so long a period of time. That a deed is done in the name of the United Nations Security Council demonstrates its cowardly surrender to the will of the United States…" The U.N. Children’s Fund estimated that 4,500 Iraqi children perished every month - one every ten minutes - as a direct result of American led U.N. sanctions. In May 1995, then U.S. representative in the U.N., Madeleine Albright, cheerfully vetoed a Security Council resolution that called on Israel to reverse its decision to expropriate land in East Jerusalem. Ms. Albright is reported saying: "by injecting Council into this issue, this resolution would merely compound the problem." Contrast Ms. Albright’s above statement with what she said when asked about the mass killing of the Iraqi children as a result of the Security Council’s resolution, she unabashedly said that 500,000 dead Iraqi children were "worth it to enforce the resolutions."  Iraq’s illegal occupation of Kuwait was not any more criminal than the Indian oppression of Kashmir or Israel’s occupation of Palestine, Syrian territory or Southern Lebanon. If Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait called for the U.N. Sanctions then, in all fairness, India and Israel should have also been subjected to the same punishment for they were guilty of the same crime. With the U.S. backing in the U.N. Security Council, Israel never faced the U.N. embargo for provocating the international will and making mockery of the Security Council resolutions. Using its veto power, the United States has stymied every effort to restrain Israeli violence and violation of international laws. Today, the Security Council, by imposing sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program, once again, proved that it’s not a neutral and an objective body, but a highly politicized and blatantly discriminatory forum where members of the veto club protect themselves and their client states against the U.N. retribution, or block actions for political gains. United Nations in its discriminatory double standard singled out Iran for its nuclear program while completely ignoring any sanction against Israel for its stockpiles of nuclear weapons. The United States and Great Britain will never allow the Israeli nuclear program to U.N. scrutiny; Israel will never face the U.N.’s reprisal for violating more than 60 Security Council resolutions, thanks to the U.S. veto.  Security Council’s bulldoggish manner in implementing resolutions against Muslim countries, and at the same time completely ignoring the other equally valid resolutions against Israel and India, shows its fixed state of mind - consistent discrimination against one set of people - Muslims. Muslim countries must rethink the United Nations. ******  Abdul-Majid Jaffry is a retired aerospace engineer and a freelance columnist.

*****

Muslim states push for UN action on ‘Islamophobia’

 

 

At the top of the list of Israel’s defenders is the United States of America. To defend Israel it has gone to the ridiculous length of blaming the victims on Mavi Marmara. Again, there is nothing new in this kind of US behavior.

A Call to the American People 6/8/2010 - Opinion Political - Article Ref: IV1006-4190 Number of comments: 1 Opinion Summary: Agree:0  Disagree:0  Neutral:1 By: A K M Mohiuddin Iviews* -  Demo against the assault on Freedom Flotilla in the front of the white house, on June 1, 2010 The compassionate and courageous souls on board the Freedom Flotilla bound for besieged Gaza have earned the love and respect of people all over the world. The tragically fallen ones have left us deeply grieving. Those who supported the attempt to break the cruel and illegal Israeli blockade also deserve our praise and gratitude. The Prime Minister of Turkey clearly stands out with his head high among the world’s leaders. By a sudden stroke of destiny, the name of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Turkey has become very dear to the hearts of most people in the world. But what of Israel? Israel has once again demonstrated to the world that nothing is too mean or low for it. There is nothing new or surprising in Israel’s behavior. It can sink to any level in its cruelty, inhumanity and depravity toward the Palestinians and any of their sympathizers. Anyone whose memory is not terribly weak or whose mind is not totally biased will admit this. To write a proper account of Israel’s diabolic nature would require a Shakespeare or a Joseph Conrad. Yet the saddest thing is that so many illusions have been held about Israel by so many for so long. It is astonishing that there are still people and states around to defend this arrogant and criminal state. Among these the most outstanding is the US. At the top of the list of Israel’s defenders is the United States of America. To defend Israel it has gone to the ridiculous length of blaming the victims on Mavi Marmara. Again, there is nothing new in this kind of US behavior. Since the time of President Truman, who badly needed Jewish money for his campaign fund, Israel has enjoyed unconditional and unlimited American support of every kind. The only exception was President Eisenhower during Israel’s Suez Crisis in 1956. Other than that all Israel’s barbarities against the Palestinians have been in partnership with the US. With American material and political support and protection Israel has gotten away with all its crimes. Assured of US protection, Israel has become bolder and bolder and now feels that it can defy all laws, norms and common decency. Without the US, Israel is nothing. So the question is: who is to blame more, Israel or the United States? There is little joy in pointing the finger of blame, however, and nothing good comes of it. What the world really needs is an awakening of our hearts and open acceptance of everyone’s common humanity. I speak out here not to blame, but to lament the atrophy of humanity in an important segment of mankind. At the same time, each of us can try to preserve our own humanity, like those men and women of diverse nationalities who gathered in the Freedom Flotilla, risking everything. It baffles the understanding how such nice, friendly people like the Americans can be so biased against the Palestinians and so insensitive to their suffering and humiliation. I speak not about American political leaders, most of whom are known to be dependent on Jewish money to run their expensive election campaigns. But in a democracy the citizens have a responsibility to carefully watch their leaders and see what they are doing. If ordinary citizens evade this responsibility, they will share the guilt of their elected leaders. It is time they ask themselves whether they are doing their duty. Another baffling thing is that so many of the best universities of the world are in America, and yet so few voices are heard speaking out for justice and humanity. One is also tempted to ask what happens to the hearts and souls of those who come out of these prestigious institutions and fill the different organs of public and private institutions. Why is it that Americans are so ill-informed of what is going on in the world? Why is it that accuracy and fairness, which are supposed to be the hallmarks of American journalism, are so noticeably absent from US media reports and commentaries? Have these reputed centers of education really done their work? Have these places made their goal only producing efficient functionaries, forsaking all other ideals of nourishing and nurturing humanity in those who come to them to benefit their lives? If the answer is yes, what a loss to humanity! The time has come for the world’s most powerful country to re-examine its own soul. That will be good for it and good for the rest of the world. But whether their leaders will be courageous enough to do so looks doubtful, at least at the moment. Their leaders are mired in folly, imprisoned in their own ego. Will the American people also remain indifferent? It’s hard to say, but if they woke up and realized how the world yearns for their help in pursuit of justice and peace, it would be a great day for the whole world. For this to happen they have to listen to the voice of their own humanity, refuse to accept the lies and the half-truths offered by their leaders and their media and find out the truth for what it is. The Vietnam war finally stopped the way it did almost exclusively because ordinary American citizens came to recognize the truth and were roused to speak out. Even now, the world has much faith in the goodness of the American people.  People of the United States, you have the ability to do much good, but we also fear that you have an equally great ability to do harm by your indifference or silence. Make your choice. Your leaders need to be led: step forward to lead them to all that is just and humane. ***** A. K. M. Mohiuddin is a retired university professor of English literature living in Bangladesh. He can be reached at this address: akmm45 [at] yahoo [dot] com

Turkish Prime Minister’s Speech on Israeli Attack on Aid Flotilla
6/5/2010 - Opinion Political Social - Article Ref: IV1006-4187
Number of comments:
Opinion Summary: Agree:  Disagree:  Neutral:
By: Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Iviews* - 

Today I do not only want to speak to my dear people but to all of humanity. 

I want to call to the conscience and hearts and minds of the whole of humanity, I would like to share courageously my feelings. 

Yesterday, in the darkest moment of the night two bloody attacks occurred. 

The first of them was the terrorist attack against our military troop at the Iskenderun Naval Base. In this malicious, vicious attack six of our soldiers died, and they have become martyrs. Seven of our soldiers have been injured. 

The second, at dawn in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, the heart of humanity has taken one of her heaviest wounds in history. The aid ships, from the humanitarian heart, these flowing aid ships have been hindered with guns, by violence, despotism.

They, who with mercy, compassion and humaneness, loaded onto these ships, they could not reach their place of destination, they were wreaked in carnage. 

Yesterday, beginning in the morning hours, armed elements of the Israeli Army stopped humanitarian aid being brought to the Gazan people, from more than 32 countries, with 600 people inside carried by the Free Gaza Flotilla, in international waters, in an absolutely illegal way did they attack, spilling the blood of innocent humans. 

At this violent attack, resulting in casualties and persons being wounded, the humanitarian aid ships were seized and sequestered. This inhuman attack against those women, young people, religious functionaries that the ship was carrying, I do one more time strongly, severely condemn. 

I have declared in Chile. Here I do stress it one more time. The bloody massacre of Israel, brought against the ships bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza is a massacre deserving of any kind of curse and condemnation. This is openly an attack against international law, against the heart of humanity, against world peace, I say against the heart of humanity, for, on those ships were people from all nations, all religions. People alone and they only were bringing humanitarian aid to those under blockade, embargo, to the people in Gaza. The ships, before they left openly declared to the entire world their cargo, their intention, their mission. As witness to this openly humanitarian aid from the world and our country 60 journalists have entered the ships as well. In international waters, in open sea, this armed attack against 600 people and 6 ships which were carrying aid to oppressed people, poor people, to starved people, to people whose homes were destroyed - this was openly an attack against the basic philosophy of the United Nations.

The ships which set sail, be it from Turkey be it from other countries, were completely stocked to carry out the humanitarian purpose, having aid material. They were, according to international traffic rules, strictly controlled. At the same time on the ships were no other passengers than civilians and aid volunteers. The ships were flying white flags. Despite all those conditions the ships were subject to an armed attack.

As you know we were during that time on our Latin America program. Due to this abhorrent terrorist attack which occurred in Hatay and Israel’s illegal attack against aid ships, we had to cut our work sort in Chile and return to our country. From the very first moment we had been watching the events closely. We have taken the necessary steps, together with our friends in Turkey. Yesterday morning at 6:30, deputy Bulent Arync, together with related ministers and administration representatives, organized an evaluation meeting in which we have considered the issue in all its dimensions. Our Foreign Ministry, our intelligence units, related establishments and armed forces have been monitoring the issue very closely. 

Our Minister of Foreign Affairs and our Minister of Defense, talking on the phone with Israel’s Minister of Defense, forcefully put forth our reaction and sensitivities. And I, together with my ministers, evaluating the events during the entire night, have been continuously in contact with Turkey. On the other hand I have established contacts with the international community and for now this process continues. In this framework, I have put on the table everything necessary to do in all the dimensions of this situation. I urgently I did the steps necessary. The Republic of Turkey is using all possibilities, every chance made available by international law and diplomacy. And Turkey will keep using it. In this framework, Turkey’s ambassador to Tel Aviv has been called back. Three joint military operations which were on the agenda have been cancelled. Our Minister of Foreign Affairs went to New York and The UN Security Council has been called for an urgent meeting and it was ensured that there would be an urgent, extraordinary meeting. The UN Security Council has made a statement condemning Israel. It has been pointed out in the statement the need to open an investigation, to set free immediately the civilians and the injured. The matches of our youth football team have been cancelled. NATO’s Council has been called for an extraordinary meeting. Furthermore, the Organization of Islamic Conference, the Arab League, European Union and all related establishments have been contacted, international institutions have been called to duty. The Organization of Islamic Conference will hold a meeting on Monday. 

Primarily, the safety and security of the convoy and our citizens in the convoy has to be ensured. Necessities to ensure the treatment of the injured are being taken care of. Israel has said: "Let us send the injured to you." We have replied that we have the will and power to take our injured ourselves, and we have refused this offer. Two military ambulance aircrafts have taken off to bring our injured back. And now, they shall be taking our injured, and then returning to this destination. With civil aircraft the Ministry of Health is about to arrive there. To the Israeli Ambassador, who was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, a call was made to demand the immediate return of the citizens of the Turkish Republic, and setting the captured ships free. 

Further, all efforts to attend to the treatment of the injured, bringing them to Turkey, have been made and in our country all measures have been taken. Israel, hindering the international community’s access to information from the first moment of the incident, now must inform the world public opinion in a truthful way, and must not refrain from international cooperation. Israel must understand the seriousness of the situation and must stop committing actions such as this that are wrong. Israel’s attitude at this stage is being watched by the world’s people, the public opinion is forming its views. Those who are affiliated with the effort are in touch and are coordinating with the countries whose citizens are in the flotilla. 

The ships fly the flags of Turkey, Greece and the Comore Islands, there are people from 32 countries involved. I expect those countries, too, to show the necessary reaction and sensitivity. Thus I once again express that Israel must immediately lift the inhuman embargo against Gaza. [15 seconds applause]. Israel must not hinder that the humanitarian aid reaches its destination

Dear comrades, as you know do we prosecute together with Spain the Alliance of Civilizations’ work. Our goal and mission is to reinforce the conviction that different religions, different civilizations and cultures can live in peace and tolerance together. It is a struggle so that instead of hatred and animosity, love will dominate.

Regrettably I must say, the incidents which occurred yesterday, in terms of humanity’s collective civilization and culture have been a black mark. In terms of history of humanity this has been recorded as a major shame. Attacking humanitarian aid ships with arms, to massacre innocent people, treating civilians as terrorists is in terms of humanity a great defeat. A despicably cowardly and vicious act of presumption that is recklessness and dauntless. [20 seconds applause].

We know, war as well as peace has its laws. In war you do not attack children, in war you do not attack women, old people, in war you do not attack civilians or religious functionaries, in war you do not attack those who are hoisting the white flag, health and rescue personnel; not in wartime, but in peace time, those who do these things not only violate the law, at the same time they trample humanity under their feet, they abandon humanity. 

Despots, gangsters even pirates have specific sensitiveness, follow some specific morals. Those who do not follow any morality or ethics, those who do not act with any sensitivity, to call them such names would even be a compliment to them. Israel has, by attacking a ship with volunteers from 32 countries, in fact defied the world. World peace has been deeply wounded. This brazen, irresponsible, reckless government that recognizes no law and tramples on any kind of humanitarian virtue, this attack of the Israeli government by all means - but by all means, must be punished.

A government, having made lying its state policy and does not blush on account of the crime it commits, instead of expecting them to open an investigation, the international community must investigate this incident in all its dimensions and must give the legal response.

The State of Turkey won’t be satisfied only by watching this. Turkey is not an adolescent, rootless state. It is in no way a tribal State! No one should attempt to play around with this nation, to test the patience of Turkey. As precious as Turkey’s partnership is, so harsh will be her hostility. 

Losing Turkey’s friendship and partnership is a price itself to pay. We have always been in a historical friendship and collaboration with the Israeli and Jewish people. I do so believe, those Israeli people who watched this bloody attack in tears, who strongly criticize it, do understand very well that this incident does not befit human dignity, is a great mistake, how a heavy hit strike it has been to the friendship of both countries.

The issue is not a matter between Turkey and Israel. The issue is Israel’s present lawlessness, and recognizing the present government’s inhuman practices, using violence, spilling blood, showing approaches that threaten peace. 

Turkey has always been, in the Middle East, on the side of peace. She has contributed to regional stability and security. In the recent past, for Israel’s relations with Palestine, Syria and Lebanon to be normalized, the country contributing was also Turkey. Israel now is showing attitudes, taking the most important peace defender in the region, and opposing her. Israel from now on, must give up the carelessness it shows in explaining the injustice being practiced with their justifications about security, criticism that they call anti-semitism. 

There is an understanding where violence is its policy, Israel sees that it is licit for itself to oppress, tyrannize, maltreat and she does not hesitate to shed blood. There is no longer any way for the illegal actions of Israel to be covered, to be misinterpreted intentionally, to be ignored. The time has come for the International community to say: STOP!

It is Israel who does not recognize over 100 UN Security Council resolutions against her. So, the United Nations cannot be content with the condemnation decision it has taken last night. 

I just talked to the General Secretary of the United Nations. He is also coming to New York. And this evening at 8 o’clock Mr. Obama said he would, I will also talk to him. I declare here that I will share precisely these issues with them.

Israel’s aggressive manner doubtlessly takes its source from the power they get from elsewhere. At this point, as Turkey our precision is obvious. And I talked yesterday from Chile with one of United Nations Security Council permanent members, Mrs. Merkel. I spoke with others today. I talked to England’s new Prime Minister, he called as well, I am also going to talk to him, I called him earlier and we talked, today we will discuss this again. And with the others we will also talk.

We cannot leave Israel with what they have done, alone. We cannot say to the Israeli government, all you do will go to your advantage. Everything has a price. And this government will have to pay for this.

For this kind of comprehension that does not show respect for human life, that they find it impossible to esteem any right and law, we cannot have a peaceful attitude, my comrades.

It is impossible to support a comprehension that does not esteem and respect the human and human rights. 

A State considering the security of its own people cannot achieve this by obtaining the hate and hostility of the whole world with their actions.

An administration that does not esteem others as humans except its own people cannot have a concern called peace.

Israel has been destroying her defense shields one by one, losing one by one her alliance points, isolating herself. The Israeli administration, generating grudges and hatred in the Middle East, is setting dynamite off in regional peace, as an instability is spreading, Pandora’s Box comes out like iodine. 

The international community must immediately take action.

I also want to call to the Israeli people from here. We have always been against anti-semitism. We have raised our voice against the injustice against the Jewish people. We have contributed so that the Israeli people can live in peace and security in the Middle East. Now, as the Israeli people it is your turn to show the same sensitive attitude, the same humane attitude, to say, "Stop these cruelties being done." 

The policy of violence shown by the coalition of the government, violating any kind of right and law, is totally putting Israel’s interests aside. Is clearly putting your peace and security at risk. Due to the aggressive attitude of your government, the State of Israel assumes a piracy position, engaging in banditry. 

Those reckless administrators, thinking that they, with lies, deceit, shedding blood, aggressiveness, piracy, using state terrorism, the massacre of innocent people do govern a State. But those reckless politicians primarily do evil to Israel and the Israeli people.

Before all else you must say stop to this situation. By the way, I thank the Turkish Jewish Community, putting in words their right and sincere reaction to the event. Our Jewish citizens have, as members of the Turkish people, defended, and continue to defend the right position of Turkey to the utmost. 

Looking with hatred upon our Jewish citizens or being in any other different manner by anyone is not acceptable, it cannot be and should never be.

Dear brothers, sisters, today is a new day. Today is a new beginning, a birth. Nothing will be like before, this is clearly apparent. An aggressive State which openly murders, massacres, cannot explain itself to humanity without regretting, without being held to account for it, cannot stand in the face of the international community. 

Those ships were all ships of mercy. And their cargo was the heart of humanity.

72 miles far from their own waters, entirely in open sea and international waters, Israel carried out an operation on a ship, a civil ship, not a military ship, one is not allowed even do this at all. To make an operation on a civil ship, even the capture of the passengers is itself a crime. Attacking innocent people with arms, to shed blood, and to massacre is clearly state terrorism. They deny, they say that they were shot at. We are sick of your lies, we are sick. Be honest, honest, be honest. 

The captured ships, together with the staff and volunteers immediately must be released. With the volunteers (activists) and Members of the European Parliament, 60 journalists, with his mother on board, the one year old infant Kaan, who was released, on the ships, no one has the right to show those ships as if they had any other intention, purpose, mission than to deliver humanitarian aid. This attack has one more time clearly proved the inhuman oppression and cruelty Israel for years has been using regarding Palestine and Gaza. 

I have said it once before. The Israeli administrators, whom we told into their face how well they know to murder, have one more time shown the world how good they indeed are in massacre. A comprehension, handcuffing even heavily wounded innocent people they have shot at. Hey! Can there be an explanation for his? Lying on the stretcher, wounded, you even handcuff him! Can that be explained with human rights, with universal values? It is no longer possible to tell the world how much those were shown humanity. 

All people of the earth condemn this clear cruelty, I know this. But it is not enough anymore to only condemn, we have to obtain results.

All people on earth who want justice on earth, one day not power but justice will dominate, you should know that, I want this. 

Turkey will use all opportunities that international law allows. At this course we will move together with the international community. I want all humanity to attract attention to this issue. With her blood-shedding policy Israel cannot legitimate this illegal, this bloody murder with any excuse, she cannot explain it. 

Israel, with no excuse, no reason can wash the blood on her hands. The issue, case created by the bloody attack in the Mediterranean Sea, is not the problem between two countries but the problem of the entire world. I believe that no country considering humane values and virtues, no international institution will just watch a murder of these dimensions.

From now on, whoever shuts their eyes to the bloody attacks of Israel, whoever ignores them, should know, they are accomplices of these murders. It has been understood that the matter is not a matter of defending against terrorism, that the matter is not struggle against terrorism, but that the matter is an effort of a massacre towards a city, towards all people of a city, in order to completely exterminate them, has one more time been proven with this last incident that occurred.

You throw bombs on these people, you try phosphorous bombs on these people, you bomb hospitals, you bomb mosques, you attack schools, you bomb playgrounds, you even aim at the UN Office, as if this illegality was not enough, you also cut off all kinds of needs of those people. 

And after all of this, you won’t withhold the aid volunteers who try to deliver to these people medicine, food, construction materials, to feel your inhuman savagery.

Anyone, everyone can condone, tolerate this illegality. I openly say, stressing it, insidiously can support it, but Israel should not make the mistake of comparing Turkey with others. Such a mistake will have a very high price.

Israel, who shot a bullet on innocence and mercy, has chosen with this murder in the open sea, solitariness against the whole world. Has chosen to be isolated.

I say it one more time. If everyone keeps silent, if all shut their eyes, if all turn their backs; we, as Turkey, we won’t turn our back to Palestine, to the Palestinian people, to Gaza. We won’t shut our eyes! We won’t cease crying for Palestine!!!

My dear brothers and sisters, our nation has to be firm. Our people must have dignity worthy of Turkey. We will take it into our hearts. The wounds of our wounded we will all together heal.

We are aware with satisfaction that all around in Turkey our people with a great sensitiveness are watching the issue closely, they are showing their democratic reactions lawfully.

To say it, this is appropriate for our people. I believe that all our citizens will keep their steadfastness, and move in dignity and common sense. Everyone should know and be sure, the love and friendship ships flowing down from the heart of humanity will pass one day all hindrance, barricades and reach their destination. To those who stand behind this inhuman, this inhuman and illegal operation;

As much as you stand behind illegality, we stand behind laws. 

As much as you stand behind the bloody operation, aggressiveness, behind terror, as much do we stand behind justice.

As much as you stand against civilians, against the oppressed in Gaza, Palestine as much stand we next to, behind civilians, innocent people, the Palestinian people, the people in Gaza. 

We have been honored having this status through history, we are proud of it, and also from now on we will continue to act and move with the mission our history, civilization and State tradition has given us. 

(Translated and transcribed from Turkish by Guzin Bilgi for www.palestinethinktank.com and Gulagnik Translators - www.gulaknick.wordpress.com. English editing by Mary Rizzo.)

*****

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is Turkey’s Prime Minister from the AKP party.
 

 

US blames everyone but Israel 6/2/2010 - Political - Article Ref: OL1006-4185 Number of comments: 2 Opinion Summary: Agree:1  Disagree:1  Neutral:0 By: Paul Rosenberg Open Left* -   When bin Laden conceived of making war with America it was absurd on multiple levels, not least of which was that so few Muslim’s cared about his obsession with US bases in Saudi Arabia. It took a really long time for him to catch onto the Israeli oppression of Palestinians as a cause he could exploit. In spring of 2002, the Arab League offered a way out, but Bush was too obsessed with framing Iraq for an invasion to pay any attention. When Obama finally took over in 2009, there was some hope that he might understand the nature of the conflict he had inherited–particularly when he put George Mitchell in charge of the most intractable part.  But that was the only hopeful sign, aside from the Cairo speech, and now after sinking deeper and deeper into the morass of repeating past follies, this has to be the last straw. Glenn Greenwald gets it right:  The formal statement submitted to the U.N. by the U.S. Ambassador today rather clearly seeks to blame everyone — from Hamas to those attempting to deliver the aid — for what happened: everyone, that is, except for the party which actually did the illegal seizing of the ship and the killing (Israel):  As I stated in the Chamber in December 2008, when we were confronted by a similar situation, mechanisms exist for the transfer of humanitarian assistance to Gaza by member states and groups that want to do so. These non-provocative and non-confrontational mechanisms should be the ones used for the benefit of all those in Gaza. Direct delivery by sea is neither appropriate nor responsible, and certainly not effective, under the circumstances. . . . We will continue to engage the Israelis on a daily basis to expand the scope and type of goods allowed into Gaza to address the full range of the population’s humanitarian and recovery needs. Hamas’ interference with international assistance shipments and the work of nongovernmental organizations complicates efforts in Gaza. Its continued arms smuggling and commitment to terrorism undermines security and prosperity for Palestinians and Israelis alike.    Given that the Israelis refuse to allow anything other than the most minimal "necessities" to enter Gaza, I’d love to know what "non-provocative and non-confrontational mechanisms" exist to deliver humanitarian assistance? And it’s extraordinary that we refuse to condemn a blockade that, as classic "collective punishment," is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, and even refuse to condemn today’s violent seizure of ships in international water.  It’s hard to imagine how we–or Israel–could do anything more self-destructive than this. But I’m sure we’ll dozens of more ways of making this even worse in the next few days. How can your average Muslim anywhere in the region not think that US is at war with Islam? Of course it’s not true. But it might as well be with this latest mega-installment in the annals of fighting fire with gasoline.   Paul Rosenberg writes for the Open Left

http://english.daralhayat.com/Spec/03-2008/Article-20080315-b21c6152-c0a8-10ed-017c-432456a7c2cc/story.html

US Ambassador to Baghdad Tells Al-Hayat The Story of Her Famous Meeting With Late Iraqi President

Randa Takieddine     Al-Hayat     - 15-16/03/08//

Al Hayat:  When Saddam Hussein asked you to meet with him, didn’t you suspect something was getting prepared since he never met with ambassadors?
April Glaspie:  He met occasionally with ambassadors; I had met him once before he brought over a group of ambassadors. I had not met with him singly, for he never even accepted credentials himself, so he did not receive any new ambassador presenting his credentials.  As for my meeting with him, a week before he invaded Kuwait in 1990, the foreign ministry called me.  I assumed they called me to tell me to come to talk in the Foreign Ministry to Nizar Hamdoun who was deputy to Tarek Aziz and possibly talk to Tarek himself.  They just asked me to come without telling me who I was to meet.  Then once I arrived to the Foreign Ministry they put me in a car I had never seen with a driver I have never met. They told him to take me somewhere and I wanted to know before where I was heading to in this car. They said you are going to the Presidency.  On my way I still did not think I was going see Saddam, I thought somebody else because he did not call anybody to meet with.  When I realized that it was he that I was going to see, I thought that it was not impossible that the very strong warnings that had been given to the Iraqis by me through Nizar Hamdoun and also and specially to the Iraqi ambassador in Washington by our Deputy Assistant Secretary might not have been reported to him because everybody was so terrified of him.  So I said it was a good opportunity for me to repeat my instructions which were do not invade Kuwait, keep your hands off this country. When the Iraqi ambassador to Washington was summoned by the State Department, he was told not to invade Kuwait and was urged to inform Bagdad of this instruction immediately. Everybody in the Arab world was concerned, knowing the man is unpredictable.  So as soon as this meeting in Washington was finished the one with   the Iraqi ambassador I repeated them to Nizar Hamdoun in Bagdad and told him my President( Georges Bush)  is very concerned that your President be informed immediately about the warning not to invade Kuwait . Of course, it was then useless to ask to see Saddam because he always said no. You could not see anybody in Bagdad. Michel Aflaq lived in Bagdad but no foreigner was permitted to call on him even though in Iraqi protocol at the time you would be interested to know he outranked the President of the Republic.
Al Hayat:  When you saw Saddam what was your conversation with him? Were you aware of the Iraqi troops massing along the border with Kuwait?  Did the satellite monitor that?
A.G:  Not only satellites but everybody in Iraq could see troops going to the south, trains for instance, we did not know exactly the number but we saw enough to understand as well as the Kuwaitis and everybody became deeply concerned. So Yes we all knew he was preparing for this. We had a visit from the Arab League Secretary General, an Egyptian envoy, many Arab envoys some of them came quietly; we did not know of them, everybody was concerned.
Al Hayat: Was He alone when he summoned you and you saw him?
A.G:  No Tarek Aziz was there and two or three of his aides to take notes.
Al Hayat: Did he start talking directly to you?
A.G: Not quite direct, he started by telling me how very badly behaved the Kuwaitis were, referring also on the meetings in Jeddah that were held he was saying that they are unreasonable and blaming them.  His whole accusation of the Kuwaitis made me concerned that the next thing he was going to say was going to take us backward 20 years when a previous Iraqi President said that Kuwait was a part of the southern wilayat of Iraq.  It came to my mind that he was going to say so. So, although he had much more to say when he paused, I delivered my message.
Al Hayat:  Bagdad then gave a version of your meeting with him saying you told him that the US government does not interfere in border disputes bewteen two Arab countries which he took as a green light form the Americans to attack Kuwait.
A.G:  This version was invented by Tarek Aziz.  After all Tarek was a master of words as a previous Minister of Information and editor of a newspaper.  Obviously I did not give Saddam any such idea that we would not interfere in a border dispute what I did tell him was he must not interfere in Kuwait or anywhere else. Then we were interrupted and he  got up politely; somebody came in and he said excuse me I have an important phone call.  So we all sat there and waited for him to come back.. He came back and told us Egyptian President Husni Mubarak called him and said that he told Mobarak not to worry, that there will be no problem and that he will deal with it without making problems; that it will be ok. Then I said to him I take great pleasure telling my President you have assured me that there will be no problem and that was basically it.
Al Hayat:  Did you tell him you were going on vacation?
A.G:  He already knew of course I was going. For any foreign diplomat to leave Bagdad you had to inform the Foreign Ministry to get permission for Arab and foreign diplomats. When the Jordanian ambassador to Bagdad wanted to drive home he had to take permission from the Ministry.  Saddam knew I was leaving and I was fully planning not to leave when all this concentration of troops started.
Al Hayat:  What made you change and leave on vacation?
A.G:  Foolish! I thought if he told me and told Mobarak and I Made sure he told mobarak what he said to us, I checked with our ambassador in Cairo on this, I thought he would not be foolish enough to do it the day he told the most powerful person in the Arab world and the Western world that he was not going to do it.  I Thought I could take my mother who was ill at home and turn around and come back within five days. When saying good bye to  Saddam, he said something I cannot remember precisely but it was something like you can go now, relax and have a nice vacation but you must tell your President about the problems the Kuwaitis are making.
I might add that Tarek Aziz was responsible for very cleverly advising Saddam when I got out of town, because the British ambassador and the Russian ambassador had already departed on vacation so there were no senior diplomats of a major power in Bagdad. It was interesting that we all were out of Iraq when he invaded Kuwait.
Al Hayat:  Some sources in the State Department had mentioned that you had not received instruction and guidance from your government or from Secretary of State James Baker then?
A.G:  No, that is not true.  I received instruction that I carried out.  I would say that the meeting in Washington of the Iraqi ambassador at the State   Department was a week before I left and my instructions came from that meeting.  I went to the Foreign Ministry I think five times and repeated the instruction not to do anything against Kuwait.  About leaving I had asked a few weeks before if Icould leave, then when the situation became very threatening I thought as Saddam said to me and to President Mubarak that there would be no war that it would be a good chance to take my mother who was ill home and to consult with the Secretary of State and we had an important congressional visitor due to arrive and I thought I would be back in Bagdad within five days in time to be with this congressional visitor in the hope that Saddam would see him and he then could say it is not just the US government asking you not to invade Kuwait but also Congress, the American people were against him attacking Kuwait.
Al Hayat:  But Saddam terrified people when you were with him in this meeting were you very diplomatic or harsh with him?
A.G:  I was the representative of the President of the United States.  Of course I was not afraid of Saddam Hussein. What I was afraid of was that he would do a very serious mistake and miscalculate as he did; the determination of a great many people in the world not to let him take Kuwait. I think he misunderstood a lot of Arabs, he had for an instance an idea that the Saudis would allow staging areas in their country and Gulf States as well; and I certainly think he misunderstood the backbone of the American government.  Somebody had said to me once that they heard him talk about how Vietnam had weakened the resolution of the American people and the American government; he thought that we did not have the guts to do anything. The other thing about him was that he was unbelievably ignorant altghough certainly not a stupid man.  He designed that Baas uniform to look like a military uniform; we know that he never spent one minute fighting, he was never in an army, he knew nothing about armies. But just like the shah the more power he got the more he thought he knew. He suddenly became Iraqi expert on military supplies, on agrarian reform, on culture, on everything, when you get somebody with that state of mind who also thinks l’etat c’est moi, you are dealing with a very dangerous parameter.
Al Hayat: Was he totally autistic or you think he misread what you told him?

A.G:  It is just what i said.  I think he listened, he never got as stupid not to listen even briefly but he thought he knew that I was talking through my head, that my government did not have any guts, that we would not fight and certainly not for that little tale of desert that was Kuwait for him.
Al Hayat: Did you have the impression that for him what he claimed oil theft by Kuwait was the issue?  Or he was just megalomaniac?
A.G:  Yes he was megalomaniac.
Al Hayat:  Was he really backed by some Arab allies like King Hussein of Jordan as rumours spread?
A.G:  No never, King Hussein knew this is too dangerous; you are dealing with a megalomaniac who may go after you next. I think his whole political career derived from overcoming the humiliation of his past .He came from nowhere, he was a selfmade man , he understood the power of the pen .When you went to the so called museum of revolution in Bagdad you might have thought you would see Saddam’s shirt but you would see the typewriter he used to persuade those who followed him. He grew up at a time when Iraqis believed understandably they were worthy of the leadership of the Arab world just as Egyptians are , decades when we heard about unity; ,unity and even the Baas split and he was there.  Nobody paying attention to him at all except those people whose lives he ruled. He must have known a good deal of the ideology of the Baas when he was younger.  So it was not the party and what Michel Aflaq wanted, it was his own sense of becoming the leader of the Arab world, after all in his own thinking, I who stood against the ancient enemy and beat them back (his war with Iran) the pillar of "Al Ourouba" he used to say during his war with Iran.
Al Hayat:  Did he tell you after that famous meeting "go on vacation, don’t worry, I will not attack"?
A.G:  Yes he said go and please while you are there tell your president not to worry but it is a serious situation here. So I said I am going but I’ll be right back.
Al Hayat: Why all this blame from Baker and Washington on you, was it not unfair to you?
A.G:  President Bush was superb, he asked me to go and see him, it must be difficult for Presidents of countries who have too many things to think of to have been able to do so much thinking  and having a conversation with him on the Middle East made me think like I was talking to any important personality I could think of in the Middle East.  He was extremely thoughtful, extremely knowledgeable, extremely worried as he should have been. But it is over. Nobody wants to take the blame. I am quite happy to take the blame. Perhaps i was not able to make saddam believe that we would do what we said we would do but  in all honesty i don t think anybody in the world could have persuaded him .And don t forget that eventhough i persuaded some people around him that we meant what we said,who would dare tell him that his political calculations about  the arab world and the western world were incorrect ,that his military calculations were absolutely correct and his calculations about the state of his own country were wrong because the shiites were not as frightened of him as he thought they were .
Al Hayat:  What instructions Washington wanted you to do and they believed you did not implement?
A.G:  Absolutely nothing that i did not implement everything is written down, we had all these meetings in the foreign ministry before i saw Saddam, they knew I have done what i was told to do.
Al Hayat: But was there a mistake somewhere from somebody? Why this judgment of you as if something went wrong?
A.G:  I think because everybody thought we had some breathing space. President Mubarak made a statement saying he had spoken to saddam and that nohing will happen, so I think we all were wrong every single one of us was wrong. I am not Arab, but I would point out that even the Arabs were wrong.  Everybody relaxed a little bit and thought he would not do it right away, particularly Arab officials working behind the scenes, in my personal opinion, looking back whatever saadoun hamadi reported to Saddam after that jeddah meeting must have made him decide he was not going to let this little country in his view kuwait interfere anymore with what was due to him and to Iraq.  Don’t forget that he was very fond of saying and started to believe that in standing up against Iran he has saved those little countries down there and they owed him money and respect, this is how he was thinking in my opinion.
Al Hayat:  Did he tell you that?
A.G:  No but this is what I think.
Al Hayat: What about the Kuwaiti leadership, what was happening then did you talk to them?
A.G:  What more could they have done?  I lived in Kuwait and extremely fond of this country and its people entreprising hard headed commercial people, Beirutis should understand above all the Kuwaitis who are smart business people and lived in the shadow of the big brother at the time and that is not fun. At the time, they have done their very very best to maintain their own sovereignty and fend off this wolf who wanted to get them.
Al Hayat:  Do you think saddam s invasion of Kuwait was the beginning of the end for him?
A.G:  It certainly rained him in but it did awake a more active resentment in Karbala and Najaf amongst the Shiites because at the end of the Iraq/ Iran war remember what happened , but he had always shown he could stamp on descent effectively and he was doing it again.  A very distinguished Iraqi Sunni professor at Bagdad University who was tortured by Saddam but got out of Iraq years before the war once said to me something which is perfectly obvious, but sometimes we tend to forget very obvious things.  He said there is only one thing in the world that would make the general Sunni population ever get behind Saddam, because for every reason that we know they have been terrorized by him and that is if they though there was a real possibility of the Shiites taking control in Bagdad.  That is perfectly obvious but for a diplomat it is important to remember.
Al Hayat:  But the Shiites in the war were not with Iran, they backed Saddam?
A.G:  They did not seem to be but he had to always worry that they would be that is why he stepped on them even harder.
Al Hayat:  Since you left what did you think of what happened in Iraq?  What did you think of the trial of Saddam and the killing of Oudei and Qusai?
A.G:  Well, you know past is past either we learn from it or we don’t, but the British had an extraordinary weapon, the Gatlin gun and they could not quell Iraq 100 years old but in the end they could not do it.  We tried to do it.  What happened to Saddam was obviously an Iraqi decision.  I certainly think it must have been a difficult one, as long as he was alive he must have been perceived by many Iraqis likely to reappear and they would have been afraid of him obviously to make a martyr is the other side of the argument.  I cannot pass my judgment it is an Iraqi issue not an American one.
Al Hayat:  But what did you think of the trial and developments?
A.G:  I don t know, all I read is the newspapers I simply cannot comment on trial.
Al Hayat:  Do you think that the American war in Iraq was a good thing?
A.G:  As I said, the British with extraordinary technology of their time tried very hard, spoke more Arabic than the current coalition forces, were working within their old former mandate, they had all the maps they knew every place in Iraq from north to south and they could not do it. I think that the reasons that they could not do it are there for anybody to read and the same difficulties have emerged now.  And as I said the only thing to get the Sunnis to pull together behind Takrit with Saddam gone is the fear that they were going to be ruled by the Shiites, which is obvious to us all.

Al Hayat:  Do you think Iraq will be for a long time under occupation?  Will it be possible for any new US President to withdraw from Iraq?

A.G:  I suppose all kinds of things are possible and most of them are probably unwise but to me, there is only one thing that needs to happen and that is creative, active courageous diplomacy.  And I think there has to be from the West there has to be really deeper understanding than I have seen of the profundity of the animosities in Iraq, it is very easy to make speeches saying the Kurds are very different from the Arabs and the Shiites Arabs are very different from the Sunnis, it is a very profound and complex ancient difficulty, that has to be understood much better.  I was once reprimanded for saying that I truly believe that despite things that were said at the time that there were a new axis of crisis it was not Palestine.

Al-Hayat:  Who reprimanded you?

A.G:  My boss, I truly believe that if there is only one key to get things going positively in the Middle East remains Palestine because it affects the whole area.  Again some people in the west do not understand how profoundly it affects the whole area , not only neighbors but the very fact this extreme Islam is a new kind of colonialism that wants to impose upon the Arab world an idea  which does not leave free to the Arab people the ability to find their own way with tolerance and respect of everybody else . So, if something could get going on the Israeli Arab side, people like Oussama Ben Laden would be unable simply to snap their fingers and say we must go blow Arab civilians in the name of Palestine because the Palestinians would not want it anymore, to say nothing of the stability that would creep north to your country and in the Arab world.  I think we need a very courageous diplomacy, we need people to lead, we need the kind of meeting that the Baker Hamilton committee suggested, but not one meeting, you need to go meet for example one senior Iranian and talk to him, we need everybody drawn in not excluding the Turks to deal with this issue of Iraq not excluding the Israeli Arab problem.  I have been impressed by very courageous knowledgeable voices amongst the Palestinians and certainly among the Israelis, we need these people to step forward.  During my whole world in the Arab world wherever I went slogans "Wouhda Hurriya Ishtirakiya" and to me even more now that then it is the Hurriya that seems to me in every sense of the word was and should me the most important.  After Suez the Egyptians rejoiced not just because the colonialists were defeated but they felt they have gained the freedom to develop themselves, their State.  After Suez the Americans were heroes because anti colonialists but also because this thirst for Hurriya the most important for them, of course not the way Oussama Ben Laden wishes us to develop because there has to be tolerance and respect or you’ll never have political settlement and no stability for future generation.

Al Hayat:  Going back to Iraq and Kuwait how big was the issue of oil in Saddam’s war?

A.G:  I can only speculate, I do not think it was oil per say, the importance of oil wells as much as finance. His thinking was we Iraqis bleed for you, we had hundreds and hundreds and thousand s of casualties with the war on Iran and you did not fight with us, we did this for you, for the whole world, you must help us we need more money .

Al Hayat:  There is still a question that you did not answer clearly, why did the state department blame you?

A.G:  The President did not, the press spokesman did not blame me, my colleagues did not blame me, and so if one man blamed me you have to ask him. Perhaps if I were to blame he was not to be blamed I suppose.

Al Hayat:  But James Baker’s blame on you was so unfair that people ask the questions?

A.G:  President Kennedy told us life is unfair. I do not know the man, I have never even met him before the war, I have never met Baker in my life before the war, the first time I ever talked to him is when President Bush asked me to go over and see him and Baker was at that meeting, that was the first time I ever met him.

AL Hayat:  When you met him how was it?

A.G:  I don t know I was talking to the President.  It was the President’s meeting.  I saw him a few times later. The meeting with the President was very satisfactory.
 
Al Hayat:  Baker did not make any comment during meeting?

A.G:  I cannot remember, during this meeting Colin Powel was there, the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff that was before the American attack to get him out of Kuwait.

Al Hayat: Why did you see the President?
 
A.G:  The President wanted to discuss what to do in Iraq; he invited his staff and asked me also to be in.

Al Hayat:  The President then did not invite you to the meeting to reprimand you.

A.G:  Absolutely not, he said now what we do.

Al Hayat:  So he did not reprimand you?

A.G: Quite  the contrary.
 
Al Hayat:  Did he read your cables on Iraq?

A.G:  I assume he read summaries of them, in our government cables from overseas are summarized every morning for the president.
 
Al Hayat:  When President Bush was discussing what to do now in Kuwait,
Were you an encouraging voice for him to attack and get Saddam out of Kuwait?

A.G:  I am not going to discuss what I said to the President but obviously we all thought the Iraqis must get out of Kuwait immediately. We talked about what could be done.

Al Hayat: You knew President Hafez Assad, what about his personality compared to that of Saddam whom he hated?

A.G:  I served in Bagdad as of 1988, from 85 to 88 I was in Washington; I was responsible in the State Department for Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.  I left Damascus in 1985 where I was number two in the US embassy with Bill Eagleton and before it was Ambassador Paganelli.  I used to work with a lot of Lebanese in Damascus.  I spent my whole time looking across the border at the chaos that was in Lebanon. That is how I know Walid Joumblat and Marwan Hamade, I was living in Damascus and I used to see them there.

Al Hayat: When did you start your mission in Iraq?

A.G:  In 1988 I Left Washington to Bagdad.

Al Hayat:  Between 85 and 88 you were doing a mission in Lebanon?

A.G:  Between 85 and 88 I was shuttling between Abdel Halim Khaddam and Beirut where Amin Gemayel was President.

Al Hayat:  How did you find Khaddam when negotiating with him?

A.G:  He was a very difficult man to know, he had quite a mask, I could only judge him by what we knew about his history.  Do you remember when he pushed the Maronites so hard that we had an Intifada.  I was going back and forth trying to do what our Algerian friend Lakhdar Ibrahimi, wonderful diplomat achieved in Taef, but people were asking me to do things that I thought were impossible.  Khaddam was a very tough negotiator, getting him to compromise on any issue took a very long time.  We started from a very difficult position such as suggestion that I write a constitution for Lebanon and my answer was  I could not write a Constitution for my own country, I am not going to write a Constitution for Lebanon, I have never heard something as ridiculous in my life and said that what the Lebanese must do if they wished to have a written Constitution.  So you started from very strong positions and of course what we ended up doing trying to put heads of agreement, general ideas that could be negotiated and I remember at some point Khaddam telling me:  You sell that to Amin Gemayel.  I said to him, look, Amin Gemayel has to be the judge of whether or not he can sell that to his own people and said to him I think you made that mistake once, Khaddam said yes, occasionally he could be quite amusing.  So it was a classic negotiation what Kofi Anan is doing in Nairobi, trying to get two parties profoundly distrusting each other to compromise.
 
Al Hayat:  What did you think of Amin Gemayel at the time?

A.G:  I think he was a serious negotiator; he was concerned about his country, absolutely.  I never felt he was promoting himself, he had advisors whose judgment I assumed he trusted or they would not have been his advisors like Ghassan Tueini, useful to be listened to.  Amin Gemayel  was trying to do the very best he could for his country knowing that any serious change in the Constitution for example the commander of the army was going to be very difficult to sell to the community or if  you were going to change the powers of Prime Minister and give him more of the powers of the President these principles were very difficult at the time for the  community concerned to give up.

Al Hayat: Had you met then Michel Aoun?

A.G:  I had never met him, I had no desire to meet him, I did not think Michel Aoun was the person for me to be speaking to, people in Lebanon were represented by their Prime Minister and their President and those were the two people I met with.

Al Hayat:  But Amin Gemayel appointed him prime minister.

A.G:  I left not long before Taef Lakhdar Ibrahimi took over, he did extremely well, he got them all to come to Taef with the great assistance of the Saudis and he got it done.

AL Hayat: Were you aware at that time of Rafic Hariri’s Role?

A.G:  Rafic Hariri was of course in and out of Damascus very often and he always called on my ambassador, and I was always there.  He was behind the scenes, he wanted to help, it was his country too, I am sure he felt that he had obvious assets he could bring, his connections around the Arab world, but the trick was to find some kind of a political concept which was acceptable to all the Lebanese and which all of us thought could do the job. We were working towards Taef without knowing that we were going towards Taef.  And a lot of work was done.

Al Hayat:  Did you feel that the Syrian leadership hated Hariri then?

A.G: I have no idea, he came in and out to Damascus and never asked him who he was seeing and he never volunteered it.  One of the reasons also he would come there was also to talk to the Lebanese.

Al Hayat: Have you ever met Samir Geagea?

A.G:  No, I never met him, of course when I was in Lebanon I met people but when I was in Damascus and left to Washington and asked to help and I was shuttling between Damascus and Beirut; it was  proper only to meet with the President and Prime Minister.

Al Hayat:  Everybody thought at that time that the US administration handed over Lebanon to Syria.

A.G:  Quite the opposite, the Americans had stepped aside for a very long time; we had done nothing during the long civil war.
 
Al Hayat:  When Syria invaded again Lebanon?

A.G:  I don t know, you asked me about the time I was there, we got permission to see what we could do, to see if there is some kind of arrangement that could be made between Syria and Lebanon that would help. Sitting in Damascus, I thought that we’d better hurry up.  Let me tell you an interesting story, one of my pals in Damascus was called up for his reserve duty in the military, for his sixth or eighth week of duty he was sent to the Bekaa (He was Christian) and when he came back I saw him at a dinner party he told me can we speak alone a bit?  He told me you people better do something, he said what is happening in the Bekaa is frightening to me and my friends who were there.  We did not realize that the Iranians were basically setting up a department of social services in the Bekaa as of 1984, if you were sick or old they took care of the people in the Bekaa, from that time. The Iranian embassy was next to the British embassy in Damascus, suddenly the Iranians sent the ambassador who was crippled and minister of dirty tricks in Teheran, the joke was that he’d opened his own letter bomb by mistake, and after he arrived we used to see all these cars with Lebanese plates like Nasrallah and others, he was really creating Hezbollah out there under our noses, we could see it. I remember at a State dinner that President Hafez Assad had for Greek Prime Minister, the Pakistani ambassador was very amusing, he came up to me and said there is somebody I’d like you to meet, he took me by the arm and turned me round and I am face to face with the Iranian ambassador who stepped back and turned around and backed away, he felt I was unclean.

Al Hayat:  Did President Hafez Assad talk to you about Lebanon?

A.G:  President Assad did not talk to me; I was number two in the embassy.  I met him so many times I was with my ambassador or with a Senator or Secretary of State.

Al Hayat: How was his thinking about Lebanon was it that Lebanon is a province of Syria?

A.G:  Hafez Assad was so smart in many ways I remember him once saying: "Do no think I am foolish enough to believe that I can create an air force (I think he chose air force because it would be the part of military he knew most since he came from it) that can compete with the Israelis within a generation.  Why?  Because it is not sophisticated fast planes that made good air forces, it is pilots who had the advantage of having a splendid education from the time they were children.  Not just brief technical education, he was right wasn’t he?  But I wish I could have asked him a question I never understood by doing  the Iranians the favor of allowing them to export their revolution to Lebanon from the Iranian embassy in Damascus, it seemed to me and to anybody who was watching that what was going on in the Bekaa and in the South the weaponry that must have been going in, the independence of a  group of people that in the end would be very difficult to control and which you could not control by cutting off their grenade because they had already so many buried that they could fight for years, seemed to me a very dangerous thing for Syria , it was an Islamic revolution and remember what happened to Syria when the "Ikhwan" tried to take over in the North . I could never understand why he could be so certain that this could not turn around and bite Syria on the heel because he cannot control Hezbollah.

Al Hayat: Was he convinced that Lebanon is part of Syria or he needed Lebanon for his agenda in the region?

A.G:  He was much too clever to give us such an insight. He would never say this.  It would be the kind of thing Saddam and Iraqis would say about Kuwait that it was part of Iraq historically.  Assad was much too subtle to say or imply anything like that.

AL Hayat; But he refused embassies between both countries?

A.G:  Absolutely, but I just don’t know what he thought.  If you were very old fashioned you could argue about whether or not he believed in Baas ideology, if he did there should not be any Syrian embassy anywhere.

Al Hayat: How would you compare Saddam and his people and aides to Hafez Assad and his aides?

A.G:  Completely different, everybody around President Assad respected his power.  Assad was much too subtle and smart to want people to say yes to him all the time.

Al Hayat:  What about the "Moukhabarat" system in both countries? How do you compare?

A.G:  A little more subtle in Damascus.  For example my life as a diplomat in Syria was as free as it would have been in Beirut, no doubt people were watching us and knew where we were but no Syrian would think twice about inviting me to their house; I was surrounded by people who had been to AUB.In  Bagdad, no Iraqi was allowed to invite a foreign diplomat to his house.  And if a foreign including Arab diplomat wanted to invite any Iraqi, any, to their house you had to make a formal request to the Foreign Ministry including the invitation card and the Foreign Ministry would decide any invitation card  would be sent.  I never entered an Iraqi house except once and that was for a cultural event.

Al Hayat: You attended meetings as number two with Assad and with Saddam two Baas leaders who hated each other  what would you say of both?

A.G:  Assad was the Eastern Mediterranean, a Levantine; he could be extremely charming which is interesting coming from a very disadvantaged background as he was in every way.  He had a great deal of self confidence, he was charming, he could have been a Beirut hostess, he could be genuinely amusing, he always spoke Arabic although I knew from his pilot training he must know some English.  We once had Senator Tower visiting him in his office. There was President Assad and Senator Tower and me only in his office; Senator Tower smoked, there was a big bowl of cigarettes and the Senator ran out of cigarettes.  Assad pushed the bowl towards him and they were all Syrian cigarettes and of course the Senator did not know, so Assad said suddenly in English a very complex sentence with lots of subordinate clauses:  "I am sorry I do not have any American or English cigarettes which I know you would have preferred".  Had I known you smoke I certainly would have, and my jaw dropped so surprised I was although I was supposed to keep a straight face, he looked at me and laughed out loud and said in Arabic: "Senator she dropped her pencil so I shocked her".  He really laughed and we did as well.  Saddam when you were with him there was this huge tension in the air because everybody in the room from his own staff was afraid of him and I never heard him make a joke but if he would have, everybody would have laughed.  It was a completely different aura.  In Iraq, it was much more frightening for example:  It never occurred to me for example if I were in the North of Syria that I should avoid getting out of my car to buy some plums.  The Syrians could not care less.  I did that in Kurdistan once, it was very foolish of me because we all knew that you could not talk to any Iraqi, they got taken away and interrogated but I was in a little Kurdish village.
I put my head out of the window of my car and asked if there was any honey because Kurds are very famous for their white honey.  He said no there isn’t, I drove away and I looked back.  They were following me with a car.
                                                                                                            
Al Hayat: After Irak what did you do?
 
A.G:  I went to University of California to teach one year and then ambassador Ed Perkins to the UN in New York asked for me; which was very nice of him.  There was a big conference on the environment.  Then Madeleine Albright became Secretary of State and she asked that I be replaced.  I never met her before I don t know the reason, she never told me.  She was the new ambassador in New York and I went back to Washington and I was asked by the African Bureau if I would work with them because they were concerned about Sudan at the time.  I must say that was very interesting that was long before Darfur.  We were trying to put north and south together.  So I did some work on that between Washington and New York.  Then I was asked to run the  office of Southern African Affairs a year before elections that brought Mandela in South Africa, the year before first democratic in Mozambique and a year before peace treaty in Angola , so there was three big issues to deal with. They were all done.  I went briefly to Somalia, it was really awful, the UN sent a Turkish general to run  the military and an American to run the civilian side, I went for two to three months to help him. It was a very sad scene.

Al Hayat:  And now what are you doing?

A.G:  Completely retired.

Al Hayat:  I heard rumors about an American publisher who asked you to write a book on Iraq and you refused and they blackmailed you and they paid you money for a book and you refused.

A.G:  No publisher has ever spoken to me about a book whatsoever or asked me to write a book or advanced money or never had I asked a publisher if he would publish a book.

Al Hayat:  Nobody asked you to speak about your experience with Saddam even in the press?

A.G:  Nobody asked me to write a book, nobody asked me to write an article of any kind about anything in the United States.  You are the only person I have talked to; in the US they were writing books, they wanted to interview me for their books.

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