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ePolitix.com - Profile: Kenneth Clarke
Kenneth Clarke has risen from the political dead to mount what must be his third and final bid for the Tory leadership.
Dubbed a 'big beast' who could mount the strongest challenge to Gordon Brown at the next election, Clarke has attempted to shake-off his pro-European credentials as he makes a play to succeed Michael Howard.
A popular and robust figure, Clarke built a strong reputation throughout the 1980s and 1990s as a competent, at times hard-line, minister.
Clarke's reputation as a beer-swilling, jazz-loving, hush puppy-wearing, cigar-smoking bird-watcher plays well with voters who see him as a politician in the 'bloke next door' mould.
But his past support for the European single currency and his links to British American Tobacco could prove to be major stumbling blocks to his challenge.
Support
Last defeated by Iain Duncan Smith after the 2001 election, Clarke had all but given up the hope of leading his party.
But the prospect of going head-to-head with Brown, and the looming change in the Tory leadership election rules, have been enough to coax Clarke back to the frontline.
While he has lost several key supporters to the camps of both David Cameron and David Davis, he still enjoys the support of senior Conservatives including Ann Widdecombe and Tim Yeo.
John Bercow, now seen as one of the most ardent Tory modernisers, has also pledged his support to the former chancellor.
One of just a handful of MPs to serve as a minister every day of the last 18 years of Conservative government, he held several top jobs including health secretary, education secretary and home secretary, finally becoming chancellor under John Major.
He introduced an internal market in the NHS and took on the teaching unions at the then Department of Education and Science.
As chancellor he bequeathed a strong economic legacy to his Labour successor - the man he would surely face at the next general election.
Left-winger?
The MP for Rushcliffe is often dubbed a 'left-winger' by his critics.
In reality, however, Clarke's time at the Home Office and as health secretary reveal a politician with a firm grip and strong centre-right credentials.
A populist at heart, the single biggest obstacle to Clarke securing the Tory crown is his uncompromising pro-European views.
Clarke was a staunch advocate of the single currency - only this week renouncing the issue as dead in his political lifetime.
A contestant in the 1997 leadership election, Clarke angered some supporters with his unsuccessful 11th hour "dream ticket" deal with John Redwood.
The bid, dubbed "desperate" by some, played badly with members of the Tory Reform Group who refused to forgive Redwood for his challenge to John Major in 1995.
Double defeat
A second bid for the leadership foundered after Clarke was defeated by Duncan Smith in an election among rank-and-file Tories, having topped the poll of MPs.
But the likely return of the franchise to MPs alone has brought him back into the game.
Talk of a dream ticket this time around with Cameron was dismissed by his rival.
Since being defeated by Duncan Smith, Clarke used his time out of the political limelight to pursue lucrative business interests, working for British American Tobacco among others.
He has consistently refused offers of other frontbench jobs, claiming he is only interested in being prime minister.
For Clarke this will be his final bite of the cherry. Success would deliver the Tory leadership to a candidate known to worry Labour's top dogs - possibly paving the way for a pensioner in Number 10.
Defeat would finally bring an end to one of most colourful frontline political careers of the modern era.
August 31, 2005 at 03:37 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
(Filed: 30/08/2005)
Commentary by Phillip Sherwell, of The Telegraph, from Washington.
It is 25 years since the birth of the Solidarity movement. With Iraq in political turmoil, the US administration is turning to post-communist Europe for inspiration
Dan Fried was a young desk officer at the State Department in Washington in August 1980 when a Polish electrician with a droopy walrus moustache climbed the walls of the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk to join the striking workers inside. Lech Walesa’s act of defiance was to mark the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire.
Not that anybody imagined at the time that emergence of the Solidarity trade union was any real threat to the monolithic communist bloc. Fried remembers well the comfy consensus that a divided Europe was a stable Europe and that talk of spreading democracy received little more than lip service in Western capitals.
A quarter of a century later, as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, he is joining the celebrations in Gdansk marking the 25th anniversary of the creation of Solidarity. Walesa is there as well naturally, alongside the Polish president Alexander Kwasniewski, a former communist who is now one of President George W Bush’s closest European allies.
All very interesting as a historical reminder of those not-so-long ago days – though sometimes it feels like another age - when Europe seemed irrevocably split by the Iron Curtain and dictatorship was a way of life for half the Continent. But is it any more than that? Very much so, Fried told me before his trip.
For a plethora of senior State Department officials who cut their diplomatic teeth in Eastern Europe – including of course Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, a Russia expert – the experience of watching a transition to democracy that contemporary wisdom held to be impossible has shaped their world view.
So even as Iraq’s squabbling ethnic factions wrangle over the country’s proposed new constitution, to the delight of the told-you-so sceptics who have long predicted disaster for America’s ambitious goal of advancing democracy in the Middle East, Fried and friends are taking a very different view from Foggy Bottom (the Washington district that is home to the State Department).
“I’m proud to go there, not simply to commemorate a great democratic success of the past, but also because the lessons of Solidarity and what it taught us about freedom in the world is not confined to Eastern Europe. What was seen as impossible suddenly appeared inevitable,” he explains.
“Democracy has succeeded in countries of all the world’s great religions and on all the world’s inhabited continents. And if democracy can succeed anywhere in theory, it can succeed everywhere, also in theory. That does not mean it will, but it does mean that it can. And it does mean, most importantly, that there can be no principled reason why democracy cannot apply to one country or another country.”
Fried is of course not suggesting that the success of Solidarity means that freedom will inevitably reign in Iraq and the broader Middle East. Islamic terrorists and communist totalitarians are very different animals. “But it does mean that the old argument that certain countries are civilisationally ill-disposed to democracy is demonstrably false,” he insists.
Now, cynics would say there is a self-serving element to all of this. With American casualties in Iraq heading relentlessly towards the 2,000 mark, the political situation in Baghdad turmoil, US commanders giving confusingly mixed signals on plans for troop withdrawals and the outspoken mother of a dead soldier setting up an anti-war peace camp on the doorstep of Mr Bush’s Texas ranch, the Administration certainly needs to find solace where it can. And this week’s Gdansk celebrations clearly offer that.
But this is not just about Iraq. America’s ally Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian leader, is about to hold his country’s first multi-party presidential elections. Lebanon is all-but free of its long-term Syrian shackles. The former Soviet republics of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgizstan have dumped autocratic leaders.
Against that backdrop, maybe Washington is not being so naïve in hoping that events in a port on the Baltic 25 years ago have a resonance now for people living by the Tigris and Euphrates.
At the State Department, Fried is the part of the Rice revolution (he followed her there from the National Security Council in the White House where he held a similar portfolio). In the first term, Rice’s predecessor Colin Powell struck an often forlorn figure, regularly losing out in DC turf wars to the Pentagon and Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Condoleezza Rice
Russia expert: Condoleezza Rice
In barely six months in the job, Rice has reclaimed ownership of US foreign policy, thanks to her closeness to the president. In one of the most tangible results of this, she has been free to maintain a hectic travel schedule, while Powell often felt obliged to remain in Washington to try to defend his patch.
It has been a marked turnaround. Even among seasoned career diplomats who take changes in administration in their stride, there is a new spring in their step. “We’ll always be suspect because we’re foreign service men rather than political appointments, but it’s kinda nice not to be seen as the enemy anymore,” one high-ranking State Department official recently confided to me at a Washington steak house with evident relief.
Bush’s complete trust in his Secretary of State has also allowed her to pursue the sort of diplomatic initiatives that were off-limits to Powell.
For example, Christopher Hill, another veteran of eastern Europe and now the US delegate to the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme, has been allowed to hold one-to-one meetings with his Pyongyang counterparts – something that was off-limits during Powell’s tenure when the White House thought that agreeing to them would be seen as a sign of weakness.
Just as significant have been the personnel changes at the Pentagon, from where US foreign policy was effectively run during the first term in combination with Cheney’s office.
Although Donald Rumsfeld remains as Defence Secretary, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and number three Doug Feith have both moved on (to head the World Bank and spend more time with his family, respectively). The two men’s replacements are notably less ideologically-driven than their predecessors.
The result is that the confrontational first term style diplomacy – most notably with the likes of France and Germany over the Iraq war – has been replaced by more subtle, if ultimately no less determined, approach (with admittedly the marked exception of appointing John Bolton as the take-no-prisoners ambassador to the United Nations).
So although Mr Fried identified a greater support in Europe for pushing for democratic reform in the Middle East – singling out French president Jacques Chirac’s backing for the so-called Cedar revolution in Lebanon - he declined to declare this a victory for Washington over its former transatlantic critics.
Tellingly, when I referred to Mr Rumsfeld’s description of Old and New Europe (in which “Old” was a distinctly pejorative term for western European critics of the war), the Assistant Secretary said with a twinkle in his eye: “We don’t look at the debate in terms of Old and New Europe? How very first term.”
And how very second term that from their Foggy Bottom redoubt, State Department officials can now laugh off first term Pentagon doctrines in an on-the-record briefing.
August 31, 2005 at 08:30 AM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Telegraph | Expat | EU to set down rules for expelling extremists
By David Rennie in Brussels and Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
(Filed: 31/08/2005)
Britain is facing a clash with Brussels over EU plans to grant sweeping rights to foreigners ordered to leave - whether failed asylum seekers or Islamic extremists facing deportation.
The Home Office is expected this week to begin proceedings aimed at removing foreign nationals who fall foul of a new list of "unacceptable behaviours" that give backing to terrorists.
At the same time, however, the European Commission is preparing to publish a new directive that will effectively bar EU states from sending people back to countries where they could face persecution or torture.
It will also limit the length of time people can be detained pending their deportation.
Proposals to be unveiled tomorrow will set out rules for returning illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers to their home countries.
They are part of a common asylum policy for the EU that Britain has strongly supported in the past but which may conflict with plans outlined by Tony Blair and Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, following the London terrorist attacks.
The new "returns directive" would include the right to be detained for no more than a year after a court had ordered removal - a provision that could trigger chaos in Britain, where lengthy appeals have seen some individuals remain in detention for years.
EU sources said they were keen to end the situation where failed asylum seekers and other foreign nation als found themselves in limbo, for prolonged periods.
The directive would give every unwanted foreign national an explicit right to appeal their removal, separate from any appeals involving their original asylum application, or refugee status.
In addition, all those ordered removed would be allowed to ask a judge to suspend or stay their deportation pending appeal.
The directive also gives judges the right to refuse to grant such a stay, meaning expelled imams or other extremists could find themselves contemplating the progress of an appeal from a foreign jail cell.
The commission proposal explicitly cites the European Convention of Human Rights as a yardstick against which appeals must be judged, by national courts. That would oblige judges to consider whether someone being returned to a home country with poor human rights might face "torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment", which are all banned by Article 3 of the convention.
Britain is a signatory to the convention, which is not an EU treaty and predates the UK's membership of the EEC or EU. For the moment, the Government insists that its plans to remove dangerous extremists back to home countries with a history of alleged torture can be squared with international law, as long as the UK secures diplomatic pledges from such nations that the suspects will not be tortured or mistreated on their return.
However, Mr Blair has vowed to amend Britain's human rights legislation if it proves a stumbling block to the removal of suspected terrorists or dangerous radicals.
Britain has three months to decide whether to "opt in" to the proposed law. Brussels sources said the proposals contained several inducements, including a new right for a single member state to ban someone from re-entering the entire EU of 25 nations for up to five years, on grounds of national security.
If Britain did opt-in, it would then have to transpose the directive into British law.
Whitehall sources indicated a range of serious concerns, notably about clauses setting strict limits on the detention of those told to leave.
Officials noted that the Prime Minister had called for a shift in the balance of inflows and outflows, so that more failed asylum seekers are removed from the country than arrive every month. Although potential deportees from Britain already have the right of appeal and to stay in the country while it is heard - though they may be detained - Mr Blair has suggested this right could be removed or restricted on national security grounds.
However, his options would be closed off if minimum guarantees are enshrined in the proposed new directive and senior Tories last night called on the Government to make clear they would not adopt the measure.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005
August 31, 2005 at 08:26 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Egypt bloggers spearhead anti-Mubarak dissent - Yahoo! UK & Ireland News
CAIRO (AFP) - Baheyya is Egyptian, pillories President Hosni Mubarak and heaps scorn on his regime daily. But this fiery dissident who says aloud what others don't dare to think has no face: Baheyya is a blog.
In an Egyptian presidential campaign that has failed to generate much enthusiasm, one of the hottest debates is taking place online in the country's burgeoning political blogosphere.
"In every normal election, people have their eyes trained on the result: who wins, who loses, and how things will change. In this election, however, we all know Hosni Mubarak is going to 'win' barring some miraculous deus ex machina," writes Baheyya (http://baheyya.blogspot.com/).
She comments on a quaint picture of the "new Mubarak" sharing afternoon tea with a peasant woman in the Nile Delta during a carefully choreographed stop of his campaign last week.
"Mubarak and his handlers sordid efforts to negate 24 years of his well-known aloofness and indifference to ordinary Egyptians have surpassed all decency," she says.
Her identity is shrouded in mystery and the subject of much speculation among the blogging community but her diatribes have earned a cult albeit restricted following.
In a country where most major newspapers are state-owned or affiliated to a party, the Internet is offering an unprecedented freedom and platform for an increasingly bold opposition to the regime.
On a blog calling itself "The wordmonger", 36-year-old artist and blogger Abdo indulges in a satirical ode to "Mubarak, Prince of the believers", a title which usually refers to the Prophet Mohammed.
"God must love him so much: the more we curse him, the longer his reign lasts," he remarks.
Another Egyptian blogger explains he is posting his comments "so that future generations cannot accuse us of having remained silent when there was a need to speak out."
Accustomed to an autocratic regime that has severely restricted freedom of expression in the past, many Egyptians in the street are still keeping a lid on their exasperation, but bloggers are now letting off steam on the Internet.
"Wanderer of the big wide open" heckles his president directly: "Who are you Hosni? Are you not an Egyptian like all other Egyptians? Are you of holy ancestry?"
"What if he just vanished in the haze," he fantasises. "Imagine if the same face you've seen for 24 years on television screens and newspaper front pages suddenly disappeared.."
"Manal and Alaa" is a more militant blog written in both Arabic and English which lashes out at the regime's repression of opposition demonstrations by what they brand the state's "terrorist karate units".
Manal Hassan and Alaa Abdel Fattah, both aged 23, are among the few bloggers who accept to reveal their identity.
"This corrupt regime has reached its sell-by date and its stench has become unbearable," says Alaa, a young activist with a thick mane of long curly black hair and whose blog serves a bulletin board for announcing rallies and protests.
The year 2005 has seen anti-Mubarak street protests which were unimaginable even a year ago, but most of the country's 300-odd political bloggers are anonymous.
"They disguise their identities and it gives them a platform to say things they can't say in public," explains Joshua Stacker, a Cairo-based American political researcher.
"If the state wanted to go after them they could, but it's only the elite who reads them," he adds.
Mohammed, who runs a blog entitled "From Cairo With Love", is equally realistic on the impact of Internet dissent.
"What I don't believe, is that blogs and the Internet will reform the Arab world and make the people rise up. I think it could be used as a tool for better connection and dissemination of information," he says.
Amid a climate of heavy suspicion over the transparency of the upcoming poll, many bloggers see themselves as election monitors. "We are not players, we are observers," says Alaa Abdel Fattah.
August 30, 2005 at 01:29 PM in Middle East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
ePolitix.com - Straw questions Iraq terror link
Jack Straw has questioned the link between Britain's participation in the invasion of Iraq and the terrorist attacks on London in July.
The foreign secretary said there was "no guarantee whatsoever" that the UK would not have been a target for terrorists if it had not taken part in the war.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Straw conceded that some Muslims' perceptions of British foreign policy may have been used as a tool for recruiting people to extremist organisations.
He was asked about a letter sent in May last year by top Foreign Office official Michael Jay to Cabinet secretary Sir Andrew Turnbull warning that British foreign policy in the Middle East was "a key driver" for recruitment to extremist Muslim groups.
But Straw said he would "wholly refute" the idea that, if this country had not invaded Iraq, it would not have been a terrorist target.
"Would we have been safer had we not taken the military action in Iraq?" he asked.
"Now, no one can say for certain but it is my judgment that, because we were in any event a target, and so was the rest of the world, for this extremist terrorism well before Iraq, that there is no guarantee whatsoever that we would have been safer had we not taken military action in Iraq."
Iraqi constitution
A nationwide referendum on Iraq's new constitution is due to take place in October in the face of opposition from Sunni Arabs.
Prime minister Tony Blair and President Bush have urged Iraqis to unite behind the blueprint.
Straw said that wrangling over such arrangements was not unusual.
"Constitutional processes, trying to bring these together, always produce arguments," he said.
"If you certainly look at the history of the United States, if you look indeed across the water into Northern Ireland, where we are in a sense involved in a constitutional process, you see where you have people, opposed communities, trying to come together, the process is difficult."
Straw insisted on the importance of the UN's role in the process, despite international disagreement over military action.
"Every right-thinking person across the world and all responsible members of the United Nations take the view that it's in their interests and in the interests of international peace and security to have a constitutional process that produces a stable, peaceful and democratic Iraq," he said.
"It is a UN-backed, and in many ways led, process, not a unilateral US-UK process."
Asked whether the policy followed after the invasion had produced the right kind of atmosphere for negotiating a constitution, he admitted that some mistakes had been made.
"We didn't get everything right, and I don't think anybody could have got everything right in the circumstances immediately after the military action, and one of the things we didn't predict was the speed with which the Saddam regime would collapse," he said.
He added that decisions taken were "overwhelmingly more right than wrong" but admitted that the extent of violence in Iraq was not entirely due to to the way in which the country was governed under Saddam.
August 30, 2005 at 12:25 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Denmark Tries to Act Against Terrorism as Mood in Europe Shifts
Law Raises Concerns of Civil Libertarians
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 29, 2005; Page A09
COPENHAGEN -- Said Mansour, a slightly built man with a bushy beard, believes Muslims have a right to kill Americans in Iraq because, he said, "This is war; it's not a picnic."
So, he explained in an interview last week, he had no qualms about downloading and burning CDs of Internet videos depicting beheadings in Iraq and speeches by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the terrorist mastermind behind much of the Iraqi insurgency.
Now, Danish police intend to make Mansour, 45, a Moroccan-born Danish citizen, the first person ever charged under an anti-terrorism law enacted in 2002 that forbids instigation of terrorism or offering advice to terrorists. Police sources said Mansour would probably be charged for distributing CDs that contained the inflammatory jihadist speeches and gruesome images.
The law contains curbs on free speech that are remarkable in a country famous for tolerating all points of view. It illustrates how democracies across Europe are adopting tougher measures in an era of rising extremist violence, despite protests that civil liberties are being sacrificed in the process.
The 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people, and the London bombings last month, which killed 56 people, including the four bombers, have added new urgency to the issue.
"We have to look at reality," said Rikke Hvilshoj, Denmark's minister of refugee, immigration and integration affairs, noting that some have abused Denmark's free speech guarantees to encourage violence and killing. "The day we don't have freedom of speech, the fundamentalists have won," she said. "On the other hand, we can't be naive."
Experts said the debate about how to balance anti-terrorism protections with individual freedoms is at the top of the agenda for European nations. The issue is particularly acute in Denmark, Italy and Poland -- which have troops in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led military coalition and fear they could be the next target -- and in Spain, following the train attacks there.
"The mood has shifted in Europe more toward security than it was before the London bombings," said Daniel Keohane, senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform in London. "The Europeans have always been very nervous about infringing on civil liberties. But when you experience terrorism, it changes your views."
France, with Europe's largest Muslim community -- 6 million people -- has just announced plans to strengthen its anti-terror laws, already among Europe's strongest. Britain now plans to ban or deport those who incite terrorism, close bookshops or places of worship used by radical groups and criminalize speech that "foments, justifies or glorifies" terrorism.
Human rights groups and Muslim civic leaders called those measures too broad.
"What may be seen as a glorification of terrorism by one person might be seen as an explanation of the causes of terrorism by another person," said Azzam Tamimi, a senior leader of the Muslim Association of Britain.
Some political activists here said their government was trampling free speech guarantees contained in the Danish constitution.
"They have crossed the line," said Naser Khader, 42, a Syrian-born member of Parliament who has been a vocal critic of Muslim extremists. "The society must be open and free. If you close it and make a lot of restrictions, the terrorists get what they want."
But a recent survey found that 80 percent of Danes supported the new laws to battle terrorism and control immigration. In Britain, 73 percent of people polled by the Guardian newspaper in mid-August said that they were willing to give up some civil liberties to improve security.
Said Mansour, 45, a Moroccan-born Danish citizen, could become the first person charged under a new law that forbids instigation of terrorism or offering advice to terrorists.
Said Mansour, 45, a Moroccan-born Danish citizen, could become the first person charged under a new law that forbids instigation of terrorism or offering advice to terrorists. (By Kevin Sullivan -- The Washington Post)
"The terror is getting closer," said Morten Messerschmidt, a member of Parliament from the strongly anti-immigration Danish People's Party. "First it was D.C. and New York, then Madrid and now London. Who's next? There's no doubt we are in a potential threat situation, and that scares people."
Messerschmidt said curbing free speech was "very tough and emotional to do in England or Denmark or any other country that respects freedom, but it's out of necessity." He said a terror attack in Denmark was inevitable. "You'd have to live in a fantasy world to think it won't happen here."
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen ordered a review of national laws governing security and civil liberties immediately after the London bombings. "We must not have a police state and a surveillance society," he said in a recent radio broadcast. "But we must not be overindulgent either."
Many European countries have long had laws banning racist hate speech, an outgrowth of their experiences with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. But analysts said Denmark's new speech law, part of a package of anti-terror laws enacted in the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was at the forefront of tougher European laws. The law banning instigation of terrorism carries a penalty of up to six years in prison.
Denmark's anti-terror laws also ban financing of radical groups and give police new powers to electronically eavesdrop on suspected radicals. Danish intelligence officers have also increased what Hans Jorgen Bonnichsen, commander of the Danish Security Intelligence Service, called "preventive talks" with potential radicals.
In an interview, Bonnichsen said his officers conduct close surveillance of suspected radicals and occasionally let them know they are being watched in order to disrupt their activities. He said intelligence officers work closely with Danish universities to monitor foreign-born students and watch for suspicious activity.
"Three years ago, people thought it was terrifying what Denmark was doing," said Hvilshoj, the immigration affairs minister. But with the shifting mood in Europe, she said, "that has changed. People are looking at Denmark differently."
In Denmark, as in much of Europe, fears of terrorism are often intertwined with concerns about immigration, particularly the immigration of Muslims. There are about 15 million Muslims living in the 25 countries of the European Union. Roughly 200,000 of Denmark's 5.4 million people are Muslim.
Rasmussen's right-leaning government was elected in November 2001, riding a wave of popular anger about rising immigration. Nearly overnight, the government reversed Denmark's generous immigration policies, tightening requirements for asylum-seekers and for foreign residents trying to bring in spouses.
Many Muslims in Demark see racist motives in the government's policies.
"The Danes have a fear of disappearing into the bigger European ocean," said Ahmed Abu Laban, one of Denmark's most prominent imams. "They have made immigrants pay the price. Muslims have become the scapegoat. They think we will undermine their culture and their values."
But police officials said racism had nothing to do with their plan to charge Mansour under the instigation law.
Mansour, who arrived for an interview in long Muslim robes and sandals, insisted on praying before speaking to a journalist.
He said he had come to Denmark in 1983 to join a sister who lived here. He married a Danish woman the next year; they now have four children who attend public schools. His wife is a public school teacher, but Mansour said he was unemployed and collected a monthly government welfare benefit of about $1,800.
Mansour described leading an active life in Danish Muslim circles, distributing audio recordings and videotapes of peaceful Islamic songs and stories. He denied being a violent radical, although he said he was "happy" about the Sept. 11 attacks and admitted he maintained relationships with well-known radicals from other countries.
He said he had been close friends with Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the cleric who was convicted in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. He said Abdel Rahman stayed at his house twice on visits to Denmark.
Mansour also said he was in contact with two men whom authorities have described as aiding or inspiring the Sept. 11 attacks. One was Abu Qatada, a radical Muslim cleric who was convicted in Jordan of several bomb attacks; tapes of his speeches were found in the German apartment used by several Sept. 11 attackers. The other was Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, a Syrian accused in Spain of giving money and support to the Sept. 11 attackers.
Mansour said he was aware that the police intend to bring charges against him. But he said that knowing people who had been convicted of crimes was not illegal and that passing out material downloaded from the Internet shouldn't be, either.
"Everybody can do it," he said, asserting that Danish officials are "just trying to show the Americans they are against terrorism. They don't have anybody, so they are using me."
August 29, 2005 at 10:02 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Sunnis Won't Defeat Charter, Iraqi Vice President Asserts
Dissenters Urged to Focus on Election Instead of Referendum
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Salih Saif Aldin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 30, 2005; Page A14
BAGHDAD, Aug. 29 -- Iraq's Sunni Arabs are unlikely to muster the votes needed to defeat the country's new draft constitution in an October referendum, Vice President Ghazi Yawar, the highest-ranking Sunni Arab in the transitional government, said Monday, as hundreds of Sunnis rallied against the charter for a second week.
Sunni Arabs should look ahead instead to parliamentary elections in December and concentrate on winning enough seats to change the way the constitution is implemented, Yawar said.
"In the street there is too much tension, too much bitterness, and I think many people will push for a negative vote," Yawar, a tribal leader from the north who was president in Iraq's previous government, told a small group of Western reporters in his gilt villa inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.
But "I think it will be extremely hard to defeat," Yawar said. "That's why I think we have to aim at the next elections. . . . Whoever feels grievance now has to work harder in order to be in the next" government.
Yawar spoke the day after Iraq's Shiite- and Kurdish-led government and the United States announced completion of the draft constitution, sending it to a national vote by Oct. 15. Sunni Arab negotiators on the constitution committee refused to endorse it and stood by glumly Sunday as Shiite and Kurdish leaders beamed at a celebratory ceremony.
Yawar is the first prominent Sunni leader to at least stop short of publicly condemning the charter. U.S., Shiite and Kurdish officials have insisted that some Sunni leaders support the draft but suggest those leaders have remained quiet for fear of becoming targets of extremists' anger.
The charter's backers got a further small boost Monday when the leading Sunni bloc, the Iraqi Islamic Party, said it would work for changes in the draft and encourage public review of it, rather than flatly rejecting it.
The constitution's provision for creation of federal states under a weak central government has angered members of the traditionally nationalistic Sunni Arab minority, who say it will lead to the breakup of Iraq.
The Sunnis object most strongly to a proposal by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite religious party that has a leading role in the coalition government. The proposal, raised by Supreme Council leader Abdul Aziz Hakim this month, called for formation of what would be an oil-rich, predominantly Shiite federal region in the south made up of half of Iraq's 18 provinces.
While the controversy over federalism has spurred more Iraqi Sunnis to join the political process than at any time since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the foreign-led Sunni insurgent group headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi has threatened to kill any Sunni who votes on the charter.
The insurgent threats and government delays in opening registration centers in the Sunni-populated west likely would mean only one province, Anbar, could muster the votes needed to reject the constitution, Yawar said Monday. Two-thirds of voters in at least three provinces must reject the draft charter for it to fail.
Rejection of the draft proposal would mean Iraqis would have to elect another transitional government to try again to write a constitution. Yawar, like some Shiites and Kurds, said another weak transitional government would only open the way for more political violence.
While Shiites and Kurds have clear leaders, neither Yawar nor any other Sunni Arab official commands a dominant bloc.
Iraq's disaffected, disempowered Sunni Arabs have vowed not to repeat their boycott of January's elections, which brought the current Shiite- and Kurdish-led government to power.
On Monday, hundreds on Sunni Arabs marched in Saddam Hussein's home area of Tikrit, some carrying pictures of the toppled leader. Others clutched posters with slogans declaring, "No to the Zionist-American-Iranian constitution!" according to news agencies.
In the heavily Sunni western city of Ramadi, Anbar's provincial capital, hundreds rallied to demand the government open more voter-registration centers. With a Sept. 1 deadline looming to register, only 19 of the 28 centers in Anbar have opened, although the national election commission said Monday that it would extend registration there until Sept. 7.
Ali Omran, a 41-year-old demonstrator in Ramadi, said people in his village had to drive more than two hours through U.S. military checkpoints to sign their names to voter rolls. "We consider this a conspiracy," Omran said. "They want to strangle us by not allowing us to participate in the referendum, to make it easy for the Kurds and the Shiites to run their draft of the constitution."
"My family will take part in the referendum even if we have to spend the night in the street by the voting center," said another demonstrator, Mariam Mohammed, a 32-year-old university instructor.
In Baghdad, Reuters demanded the U.S. military release one of its Iraqi cameraman wounded in the same shooting that killed a soundman working for the news agency on Sunday in west Baghdad. Iraqi police said U.S. soldiers shot the journalists, according to Reuters.
The agency quoted a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Robert Whetstone, as saying U.S. forces were still investigating.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi leader of Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq promised a series of attacks timed to the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in October. The leader, Abu Qudama, said a current lull in bombings was only "the calm before the storm."
Special correspondent Omar Fekeiki contributed to this report.
August 29, 2005 at 10:01 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Telegraph | News | Freedom is priceless, Walesa tells Poland
By Matthew Day in Warsaw
(Filed: 30/08/2005)
Lech Walesa celebrated the 25th anniversary of the birth of the Solidarity trade union yesterday by telling Poles that "freedom is priceless".
The union, which he helped to found, would go down in history for uniting the nation in one of its darkest hours, the electrician and Nobel prize winner said.
His speech to parliament was part of a series of events commemorating Solidarity's birth and its role in destroying communism and tearing down the Iron Curtain.
Recognisable as ever by his walrus moustache, he said: "We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless."
A strike he led at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk in August 1980 triggered a wave of national protest at Poland's communist regime and widespread food shortages.
Confronted by growing unrest, the government was forced to recognise Solidarity, which then became the eastern bloc's first free union.
It was outlawed under martial law in 1981 but returned to the forefront of national life and helped to topple the communists in 1989, a year of revolutions across the east. Mr Walesa, now 61, went on to be Polish president between 1990 and 1995.
"The role of Solidarity in the downfall of communism was enormous because it showed the world that workers do not like communism," said Richard Pipes, the US historian and adviser to the late president Ronald Reagan.
In fact, for many Poles, the events set in motion a quarter of a century ago only reached their conclusion last year when Poland joined the European Union.
The celebrations will culminate tomorrow with a Mass and concert outside the shipyard gates. John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, will represent Britain, but Russia has reportedly failed to respond to its invitation.
However, despite efforts to recapture the spirit of 1980, events have been overshadowed by acrimony between Solidarity's old leaders.
Andrzej Gwiazda, its former vice-president, accused Mr Walesa of betraying its principles and has boycotted the celebrations.
Typically abrasive in his reply, Mr Walesa poured scorn on his critics. "Ask these people what they have done in the past 25 years," he said. "What have they participated in? It's a pity that they did not help in building a new reality in Poland."
Other veterans feel that Mr Walesa turned his back on the union's principles when Poland's shift to capitalism led to rising inequality and unemployment.
"We fought for free trade unions and our main ideal was to help people," said Henryka Krzywonos, one of the original strike's leaders. "But now the system does not provide enough for people to live in dignity."
Critics on the Right accuse Mr Walesa of being a communist pawn acting on orders to prevent a "real" anti-communist revolution.
But yesterday the man himself dismissed such conspiracy theories. "In front of God, I declare that there was no manipulation," he said.
The rifts in Solidarity have also hastened its demise. Membership has slumped to 700,000 and it will not contest parliamentary elections next month, the first time it has missed out since 1989.
At the same time, and as a testimony to the power the Solidarity name still wields, many of the parties that are fielding candidates are jostling to portray themselves as its heirs.
Even a party comprised of communists has laid claim to Solidarity's social agenda, arguing that more should be done to combat poverty.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
August 29, 2005 at 09:59 PM in Russia | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Opinion - William Rees-Mogg Times Online
William Rees-Mogg
Tory MPs rarely make a sensible decision — and now they might make their biggest mistake yet
NONE IN THE North East; none in Bristol; one in Scotland; one in West and South Yorkshire; one in Merseyside and Manchester; two in Birmingham; three in Wales; 17 women: that is the current state of the Conservative Party in Parliament. The 198 Conservative MPs have given their reaction to these miserable figures. They have decided to take the vote for the leadership away from the members of their party. To whom do they want to give it? To themselves.
In her article in the latest Spectator, Theresa May has commented that “it is the view of the majority of Conservative MPs that they know best, and they would deny everyone but MPs any substantive say whatsoever in the election of our next leader”.
She then asks the key question: “If we aren’t willing to listen to and trust our own membership in the election of our leader, then how can voters believe that we will listen to them when it comes to understanding their problems and finding the right solutions?”
Theresa May is a significant figure. She has been a Shadow minister, as well as chairman of the party. Because she was a woman, she was probably over-promoted in terms of experience early in her career. There has been plenty of jealousy from other Conservatives in the Commons. But at the past election she defeated a very determined Liberal Democrat attack on her constituency. She is the senior woman in the Conservative leadership group. She certainly defends the interests of women in the Tory party. Her ideal solution for the leadership choice and for constituency nominations would be primaries among Conservative supporters on the US model.
The Conservative Party won more than 40 per cent of the women’s vote in all the elections from 1979 to 1992, and won all those elections. It won only 32 per cent of the women’s vote in 2005. Unless the Tories can regain their support among women voters, they have no prospect of winning an overall majority in any future general election. No women; no victories.
Under the existing system of electing the leader, the MPs choose two nominees, and the members of the local associations take the final decision between them. The only time this system actually operated, in 2001, the MPs nominated Kenneth Clarke, who was ahead in votes, and Iain Duncan Smith, who was just ahead of the obvious candidate, Michael Portillo.
The problem was a simple one. Kenneth Clarke and Michael Portillo had strong personality and leadership skills; Iain Duncan Smith did not — though he had other good qualities. Mr Clarke holds views on Europe that go against the majority of the party; Mr Duncan Smith is a Eurosceptic and Mr Portillo a moderate Eurosceptic. The MPs should have nominated Mr Portillo, who was acceptable in terms of European policy and charismatic in personality. For mixed reasons, including personal interest and jealousy, they nominated two unacceptable candidates. The MPs were to blame; the members of associations did their best with the choice they were given, and put policy first.
In the 2001 leadership election, approximately 120,000 women voted. If the Conservative MPs’ proposals are adopted, that number will fall to 17. The party in Parliament is predominantly male, middle-aged and elected from suburban and rural seats in southern England. They are an absurdly unrepresentative body, in terms of gender and of the national electorate.
Since 1965 MPs have chosen Ted Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, William Hague and Michael Howard as leaders of the Conservative Party. Apart from Margaret Thatcher’s three successive victories, these leaders have won two general elections and lost six. The MPs sacked Margaret Thatcher, their only real winner. For 40 years the MPs have had their way, and it has usually proved to be a mistake.
Fortunately this July’s vote of the Conservative MPs has no force under the Conservative constitution. On September 27 there will be an attempt to change the democratic constitution which was introduced under William Hague. To make any change in that constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the leaders of the voluntary party, who mainly consist of the association chairmen, and a two-thirds vote of Conservative MPs. Those chairmen and MPs who think it important to do what they are told by their betters will vote for the rule change. Those who do not think it possible to win the next election if the party repudiates women, Scots, Welsh, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Sheffield and most of the North, can block this anti-democratic proposal by voting against it. There would then have to be a full democratic vote for the new leader.
If the Conservative Party gets so frightened of democracy that it repudiates the only strongly democratic element in its constitution, that will prove to many people that it is incapable of reform.
If the party has any real attraction to the public, it is when it stands for the rights of the individual against the overweening power of the State. That is the basis on which Lord Strathclyde has led the Conservative Opposition in the House of Lords; in the late Parliament, that was more effective and more consistent than the leadership in the Commons. It proved to be good politics, opening alliances of principle with the Lib Dems, independents and Labour rebels.
There is still life in a modernising Conservatism, based on these principles of liberty and on Conservative workers and councillors — now the largest group of councillors in England. There is life in the Conservative Party of ordinary men and — notably — women. There is no life — no future — in a Conservative Party that cannot look beyond a small group of MPs who represent only a localised fragment of the people of Britain. On September 27 both the party chairmen and the MPs must vote “no” if they want their party to survive. That is their duty.
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August 29, 2005 at 08:08 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Opinion - William Rees-Mogg Times Online
William Rees-Mogg
THE GERMAN ELECTION is on September 18; the British Conservative Party will vote on September 27 on a proposed constitutional amendment that might decide who is to be the next leader. The two events could be connected. If Angela Merkel, the Christian Democratic Union leader, becomes Chancellor, she will have won as a free-market reformer. If she loses, German voters will have repudiated radical reform.
She has even adopted Paul Kirchhof’s flat tax proposal. Hundreds of tax allowances and multiple tax bands would be replaced by a flat levy of 20 or 25 per cent. “Instead of needing 12 Saturdays to fill out a tax return, the new system would need just 10 minutes,” said Professor Kirchhof. “I want to give voters back their freedom by letting them decide what to do with their money.” This is Gladstonian finance; he wants to let money “fructify in the pockets of the people”.
At present most people assume that the Conservative Party will meekly agree to return the choice of leader from the membership to the parliamentary party. This is what Michael Howard, the present leader, has proposed; it is supported by the mysterious, and largely unrepresentative, board of the Conservative Party. The effect would be to reduce the leadership electorate from 250,000- 300,000 party members to 198 MPs. Trust the professionals; do not trust the people.
There would be no votes from the big cities, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle or Sheffield. There would be one vote from Scotland and three from Wales. Women would have 17 votes. That the board supports this shows its lack of political judgment; that it should be proposed by the leader and the parliamentary party suggests that too many of them are are not real democrats, or even good politicians. The Conservative Party needs mass support; this is the way to alienate the public.
Fortunately, amendments to the Conservative Party’s constitution require a two thirds majority of the MPs and a separate two thirds majority of the constituency chairmen and local association officials. It is not certain that either group will produce the majority needed.
There has, however, been a widespread expectation that the party, which has a traditional respect for authority, would do what it was told. The leadership debate, so far, has been conducted on the assumption that it would be an insider’s debate, that the MPs would decide. As a result there has hardly been any debate at all.
The Conservatives have only once had a democratic leadership election. That was in 2001, when the membership chose Iain Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke by a substantial majority. Mr Duncan Smith won the public debate, despite being by far the less impressive speaker. The members decided that they agreed with his Eurosceptic views, and disagreed with Mr Clarke’s Euro-enthusiasm.
In a leadership contest, whatever the system of election, the Conservative Party almost always chooses the candidate who is seen as right of centre inside the party. In the past 50 years, only Edward Heath won the leadership as the left-of-centre candidate. Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Thatcher, Major, Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard were all regarded as right of centre when they were chosen. This is still the pattern now, both inside the parliamentary party and, probably, in the membership. If so, the choice of system will not necessarily decide the outcome, but it will decide whether the new leader has the authority of a democratic vote, and it will shape the character of the debate.
At present, the majority of MPs belong to the moderate Right. In a parliamentary vote, one could expect David Davis to win against David Cameron or Mr Clarke. If there is no real debate, only cautious sparring, this is what will probably happen. I still doubt whether Mr Clarke will stand: Europe, tobacco and age all tell against him. I would regard Liam Fox as the probable reserve leader of the centre Right. David Cameron, however, is a serious candidate. Someone else may emerge, but has not yet done so.
The common assumption is that Mr Davis is stronger among the membership than among the MPs. If so, that means that he is stronger in the country, an important factor in itself. A democratic election by the whole membership would produce a democratic debate, which has not been happening so far. Both Mr Davis and Mr Cameron have been engaging in image politics; their speeches are not bad, but they glide away from the more difficult issues. They do not want to lose support by saying anything that will upset people.
This is where Angela Merkel comes in. If she wins, there will be new hope for conservative politics throughout Europe. But she will pose a difficult question for all conservative contenders in Europe. Are they prepared to tackle social expenditure and taxation? These big issues have defeated the Blair-Brown Administration. Of course, if Frau Merkel fails, every other European conservative will be running for cover, but we shall know that well before September 27.
So long as they only have to debate before their parliamentary colleagues, I would not expect any of the leading candidates to take a view on the flat tax issue — it is far too easily misrepresented as another kind of poll tax. Mr Davis would prefer to remain the great unifier; Mr Cameron would prefer to remain the socially responsible moderniser. In a genuine national debate, I believe that they would be forced to define their positions — that is one of the advantages of democracy.
Perhaps we have reached this paradoxical position: it is the modernisers who have been afraid of the membership (they have sometimes seemed afraid of modernisation itself), yet it would now take a real national debate to give the modernisers a chance.
August 29, 2005 at 07:19 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Opinion - William Rees-Mogg Times Online
William Rees-Mogg
MAURICE Cowling, who died last week, was one of the most brilliant Cambridge dons of his generation, but like other brilliant dons he was a swan with a gammy wing. Again and again in his career, particularly in his early attempts at journalism, he was appointed to an enviable post, only to lose it prematurely. The Times, under Sir William Haley, fired him as a foreign leader writer; so did Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express; he resigned from The Spectator.
Yet he had 25 golden years as a fellow of Peterhouse, from 1963 to 1988; his teaching in those years had a significant influence on the intellectual development of the Conservative Party.
He was a great teacher and influenced a whole generation of politically minded Cambridge historians, of whom the most influential, in his turn, was Michael Portillo, who was to become the Young Pretender of the Tory party. Even today the former Portillistas, who may be thought of as Cowling’s intellectual grandchildren, have become some of the ablest of the younger generation of Conservative MPs. If there are still any ideas in the modern Conservative party, they have some Cowling genes in them.
I had the good fortune to see him in action, teaching undergraduates. In the late 1970s he invited me to Peterhouse to speak to his group of college historians. I have no recollection of the subject matter, though I think the occasion occurred in that very interesting period when Margaret Thatcher was leading the Conservative Opposition. There was then a real ferment of ideas. Maurice was impressive, challenging, analytical, amusing, paradoxical, at home with his students. I remember thinking how lucky his Peterhouse students were; with his lightness of touch, he was expanding their political and historical consciousness.
Yet even then I thought that there was a central paradox in his teaching that could not be reconciled. His great gift was to bring political ideas to life, to explain them so that good second-class students of Peterhouse, let alone the high-flyers, could see them as vivid and significant. Yet his central doctrine was that political philosophies are mere rhetoric, designed to advance the politician or his party towards power. He was a brilliant exponent of political philosophies, but he did not believe that they were real.
After the meeting we chatted for half an hour in his rooms. He made some more than usually extreme statements. I replied that he must know that what he was saying was not true; he was saying it to provoke. He seemed to be pleased, as though that were a compliment. I imagine that his impish delight in extreme propositions rubbed off on some of his students.
Maurice would certainly have appreciated the irony that he died at the beginning of a Conservative leadership contest in which political philosophy is not playing a prominent part. The only Conservative political theorist to whom I have seen any reference is Benjamin Disraeli, a bogus and inconsistent political theorist even by Maurice’s standards. Disraeli has only got into the current debate because some potential candidates refer to themselves as “one nation” Conservatives; the reference is taken from his middle period novel, Sybil, where one of the characters says portentously: “I was told that the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations.” Note the capital letters.
Disraeli had difficulty with political philosophy. Writing in the 19th century, he looked around for respectable political ancestors. In the previous two centuries, the Tory party, from which the Conservative Party descends, were the party of the King and the Church of England — “Church and King” was its motto. The Tories existed to defend these interests, a task they performed with extraordinary incompetence. They lost the first civil war in the 1640s and the second in 1688.
They went out of office when Queen Anne died in 1714 and remained in opposition until George ll died in 1760. When they got back in to office, they lost America under the prime ministership of Lord North. In Disraeli’s time it was more obvious than it is now that the first 140 years of the Tory Party, from the 1640s to the 1780s, were an unmitigated disaster.
Lacking a convincing political ancestry, Disraeli fixed on Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, who lived from 1678 to 1751; he was the friend of Pope and Swift, a gifted but unpleasant man who was consistently outwitted by the Whig Prime Minister, Robert Walpole. He wrote The Idea of a Patriot King, which was read to George lll by his foolish mother, the widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Bolingbroke was a genuine intellectual, with the leisure of being out of office, but his Patriot King is not required reading in the modern Conservative Party. It is a fair bet that none of the leadership candidates, save David Willetts, has ever bothered to open it.
Thus Maurice Cowling may seem to be proved right by Disraeli’s example. He certainly thought that all political philosophy was a sham, either the musings of men without power, or the self-seeking rhetoric of politicians seeking power. But I believe that Maurice was mistaken. There is more to it than that. Ideas are the decisive force in all politics, whether they are bad ideas or good ones. The New Deal idea made Franklin Roosevelt. The half-baked racial Darwinism of Hitler took him to power, though it was intellectually contemptible.
There are even more ideas in the present Conservative leadership contest than may appear, but they desperately need better definition. “Modernisation” is the cry of one group, but what does modernisation mean in practice? Is there any candidate who would not claim to be a moderniser? How would a new Conservative Party balance the values of liberty and equality? Now that Ken Clarke has dropped the euro and the European constitution, how far would he still go in European integration? A fog of evasion hangs over this philosophical battlefield. It is a pity Maurice is no longer available to disperse it.
August 29, 2005 at 07:17 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Egyptian Security Forces Search for Militants in Sinai - New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 28, 2005
Filed at 5:58 p.m. ET
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Army sappers joined a 5,000-strong security force Sunday in a sweep through the Sinai, as authorities stepped up their search for militants behind recent bombings of tourist centers on the rugged peninsula.
Security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the operation was still underway, said at least two army units responsible for clearing mines and one border-guard unit had joined the hunt, which entered its second week Sunday.
The force was focused on Halal mountain, a 5,900-foot peak near the Israeli border that is full of caves and deep ravines.
The security force suffered a major blow on Thursday, when a police major general and a lieutenant colonel were killed in a land mine explosion. Those killed were believed to be the highest ranking police officers to die in a conflict since Egypt put down a violent Islamist insurgency in the mid-1990s.
Police have said they believe some of the suspects holed up in the rugged mountain area are linked to the triple July 23 attacks in the southern Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheik that killed at least 64 people, as well as the Oct. 7 bombings of two Egyptian resorts near the Israeli border that killed more than 30 people.
On Sunday, masked gunmen in a vehicle opened fire at a security checkpoint near Halal but no one was hurt. The gunmen fled into the mountains.
Since the sweep began, more than 700 Egyptians have been detained with many subsequently released. It is not known if any charges have been filed. An additional 15 people were arrested on Sunday.
Two pro-government newspapers, al-Ahram and al-Akhbar, reported Sunday that the explosive material in the mines was similar to that used in the July and October bombings. They cited forensic reports as saying the explosives were imported.
One security official has said that a key suspect believed to have harbored militants linked to the October attack -- Salem Khadr el-Shenoub -- was thought to be among militants hiding in the area.
Sinai's mountains and desert plains have long been a haven for criminals, fugitives and Bedouin tribesmen involved in smuggling and drug trafficking. Israel also complains that weapons smugglers used the region to smuggle weapons to Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.
August 29, 2005 at 03:30 PM in Middle East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Focus: Atishoo, Atishoo, we all fall down? - Sunday Times - Times Online
Focus: A deadly bird flu, lethal to some animals, is spreading towards Britain. How serious is the threat to humans and what can be done to counter it? Jonathan Calvert, Sarah-Kate Templeton and Will Iredale report
It is the drug of the moment and Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, has ordered 100,000 courses of it. Several British companies are believed to be building stockpiles. Some individuals are said to be paying three times the retail price trying to buy illicit supplies through overseas websites.
The drug is Tamiflu, a prescription antiviral medicine thought to be the only protection available against a potential doomsday virus winging its way towards Britain.
Earlier this month a deadly bird flu, which has been spreading out from Asia, reached Russia. Yesterday a suspected case was reported in Finland, but the exact strain is not yet clear.
The H5N1 virus has killed tens of millions of animals, particularly chickens in Asia, but also other species. So far the strain has infected very few humans — only about 120 — but in those it has attacked it has been highly lethal. Half of them died.
The fear is that H5N1, like all flu viruses, will continue mutating and could turn into a strain that infects humans and passes from one person to another as easily as the common cold.
“If we do get human-to- human transmission, millions will die,” said Dr Nigel Higson, chairman of the primary care virology group.
“With huge numbers of people using air travel, it will move round the world very quickly. A large proportion of people in Africa would die. In western countries where we will hopefully have an avian flu vaccine and antivirals, 25% of the population will be infected and the death rate will be between 3% and 10% of the population. The fatalities will not just be the sick and elderly.”
Experts believe such a pandemic could cause a catastrophe on the scale of the 1918 Spanish flu that killed 50m people in 18 months.
Last month the Department of Health invited manufacturers to tender for a contract to develop and supply a vaccine against the strain. It is also spending up to £100m buying 14.6m courses of Tamiflu — an indication of how seriously it is taking the threat.
There is one big unknown: whether the virus can or will become transmissible between humans. Scientists have little evidence that it can do so at present and nobody knows whether it will be able to do so in the future.
“Although we expect this virus to become a pandemic we have no proof as yet that it will happen,” said Higson.
“To have a pandemic we have got to have a new virus.”
FLU is one of the most mutable viruses in the world, constantly shuffling its array of genes into new forms. The type known as H5N1 is thought to have originated in ducks from the Guangdong province of China in the late 1990s and drew particular attention because it proved devastating in poultry.
Almost every chicken that contracted H5N1 was dead within 48 hours. In 1997 the first human cases emerged during an outbreak on poultry farms in Hong Kong. Eighteen people suffered respiratory infections and six died.
Although more than 1.5m chickens were slaughtered in Hong Kong in an attempt to eradicate the virus, it managed to survive elsewhere — some animals can carry it without dying — and came back even stronger than before.
In January 2003 a tougher “Z” strain emerged in Thailand and Vietnam, capable of killing rats and later pigs. It also killed 45 tigers that were fed raw chicken in Thai zoos; more than 100 others had to be destroyed after becoming infected. National authorities ordered the slaughter of more than 120m chickens as the strain spread to Cambodia, China, Indonesia and Malaysia. This summer more than 120,000 poultry in six regions of western Siberia were destroyed after the discovery of H5N1.
Wild species — in particular bar-headed geese — were found to be infected in Siberia and Mongolia, which witnessed the mass deaths of birds around Lake Erhel in its Huvsgel province.
Several experts feared that the outbreaks had brought the virus within range of Europe through the flightpaths of migrating birds.
In Holland — where a similar avian flu outbreak five years ago led to 30m chickens being culled — officials last week compelled farmers to bring all their poultry indoors.
John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary’s School of Medicine in London, called on Britain to take similar precautions and Bob McCracken, president of the British Veterinary Association, warned that migrating birds would “inevitably” carry bird flu to the UK at some stage.
However, Debbie Reynolds, the government’s chief veterinary officer, was more cautious after discussing the threat with European Union experts last week; she said the risk of the virus reaching Britain was “remote or low”.
Nevertheless, wildlife is being monitored around the country for any sign of avian flu. If it does arrive it could could easily spread across a range of wild birds — waterfowl are particularly vulnerable — and other animals.
Nor is it simply a problem for the countryside: many migrating birds land at wetlands near cities, such as Barnes, west London, and Martin Mere near Liverpool. Domestic cats that eat H5N1- infected birds could catch the virus, as has proved to be the case in Thailand.
So far studies of the virus’s human victims have concluded that they mostly contracted H5N1 through close contact with diseased or dead birds. The virus is found in both the faeces and raw meat. Most infections have occurred during the slaughter and defeathering of poultry for cooking. It is common in Asia to buy a live chicken at the market and take it home to eat.
Over the past year health officials in Thailand and Vietnam have also investigated three cases that could be the first evidence of transmission between humans.
In each case the victims had cared for an infected family member and then developed the virus several days later. Health officials have not ruled out the possibility that the virus was transmitted by a shared meal or some other exposure in the home.
If there is any human-to- human infection it is extremely limited at present and it is notable that previous H5-type flu viruses have not generally been transmissible between humans.
However, all three global influenza pandemics in the past 100 years have been linked to strains of bird flu that adapted to humans. While scientists emphasise that this risk is always present, they are particularly concerned now because the H5N1 virus is so lethal.
Victims suffer coughing, headaches, fever, dizziness, diarrhoea and internal bleeding. The autopsy of one child who died from the disease last year is reported to have shown that his lungs had been “torn apart” as his natural defences tried to fight the virus.
Professor Neil Ferguson, an expert in flu epidemics from Imperial College London, said: “This particular bird flu variety generates more severe diseases in humans than most bird flu varieties. It would be more like the 1918 type of pandemic than the 1957 or 1968 pandemics . . . that is potentially a very severe event.”
There is also a belief among some experts that pandemics are cyclical and the next is overdue. Forecasting of such catastrophes, however, is an imprecise science. A mutation turning the virus into a form more infective to humans could happen anywhere in the world — or the virus might become less lethal or, indeed, it might not happen at all.
Health officials have cried wolf about flu before and been wrong. When a soldier suddenly died from swine flu in the US in 1976, experts feared an epidemic, predicting that 1m Americans might perish.
President Gerald Ford ordered a mass vaccination of Americans despite the doubts of drug companies over being able to produce enough vaccine swiftly and safely. The flu epidemic never materialised and the US government paid $90m to claimants who suffered serious side effects from the vaccine.
IN judging how to react there are other factors to consider, too, principally the practical limits on protecting yourself. At present there is no licensed vaccination against H5NI and there is not likely to be one in the near future.
Three weeks ago the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in America reported initial success in trials on a vaccine developed by Sanofi Pasteur, the pharmaceutical company. But the vaccine has yet to receive regulatory approval, which could take months.
It would also take years to produce enough vaccine to immunise the whole of Britain, and by then the virus strain could have changed out of recognition.
Marie-José Quentin-Millet, head of research at Sanofi Pasteur, describes its new vaccine as merely a “dress rehearsal” to build scientific knowledge so that it can be adapted if and when a strain of the virus more infective to humans emerges.
In reality, it is likely that a flu epidemic could be months old by the time anyone gets a vaccination. Even if a suitable vaccine could be produced, few doses would reach the general public. A report by the Department of Health says: “International demand for vaccine will be high. Vaccine will have to be distributed equitably and administered to predetermined priority groups first, according to nationally agreed recommendations.”
The priority groups set out in the report are frontline health workers followed by vital services such as police officers, firemen, the army and undertakers. Most of the population are very unlikely to be offered a vaccine. Given these limitations, the health department has chosen to make its block purchase of Tamiflu. Made by Roche, the drug can be used to protect against contracting the virus or to alleviate the symptoms of those already infected. The full order of 14.6m doses ordered by the health department will not be delivered until March 2007. At present the government has a stockpile of 900,000 doses and they would be offered first to the priority groups. For this reason several organisations are trying to acquire their own stocks, including the London mayor’s office, which spent more than £1m buying antivirals to protect key workers in the capital. Doctors advise strongly against individuals hoarding drugs. “If individuals stock up with pre-orders, the medication will not be there for those who need it when there is an outbreak,” Higson said. There is another problem, too: many of the people who have been infected by bird flu were given Tamiflu, yet they still died. So in the absence of medication, what else could you do if there were an outbreak? According to the contingency plan people would be advised to avoid public transport, crowds, long queues and anywhere else they might encounter carriers of the virus. Most effective, it seems, will be to stay at home and wait until the outbreak is over.
Additional reporting: Nicci Smith, Brussels
August 28, 2005 at 11:16 AM in Flu pandemic watch | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
TheStar.com - Avian-flu pandemic 'inevitable'
DAVID BROWN
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Robert Webster is watching his long-held hunch about the origin of pandemic influenza play out before his eyes. It would be thrilling if it were not so terrifying.
Four decades ago, Webster was a young microbiologist from New Zealand on a brief sojourn in London.
While he was there, he performed an experiment showing that the "Asian flu" microbe that had swept the globe in 1957 bore an unmistakable resemblance to strains of virus carried by certain birds in the years before.
Webster's observation was a surprise — and a troubling one, suggesting an origin of the unusually virulent strains of influenza virus that appear two or three times each century.
His hunch, that at least some of these pandemic strains were hybrids of bird and human flu viruses, was correct.
Since then, Webster has become arguably the world's most important eye on animal influenza viruses.
These days, he is deeply worried about what he's seeing.
Strains of an influenza virus known as A/H5N1 (the first letter denoting influenza A, an adaptable virus widespread in the animal world) have been spreading in wild and domestic birds across Asia since 1996. In recent weeks, the virus has struck Siberia and Kazakhstan.
Since late 2003, about 100 million domesticated birds — mostly chickens and ducks — either have died of the virus or have been killed to keep the viruses from spreading. But what worries Webster and other experts is that in 112 confirmed cases since 2003, at least 50 people infected with the H5N1 "bird flu" have died — yielding a fatality rate that outstrips any human flu epidemic on record, including the epochal Spanish flu of 1918 and 1919 that killed at least 50 million people.
Webster's insight about the origins of pandemic flu led to an unavoidable conclusion: If scientists had any hope of preventing a pandemic, they had to keep watch on influenza in many species, not just humans.
At 73, Webster heads a team of four principal investigators and a dozen graduate students at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, where the New Zealand native has worked since 1968.
The lab has chambers for handling high-risk pathogens and uses nearly 3,000 fertile chicken eggs a week for growing influenza viruses.
Elsewhere on the St. Jude campus is a small plant licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make experimental vaccines. The "seed strain" of virus used to make an H5N1 vaccine now in human trials in the United States was made at St. Jude.
Since 1997, Webster also has spent three months a year as a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong. That gets him closer to the historical breeding ground of new flu strains: China.
With H5N1 steadily gaining momentum this year, he has returned to Asia twice since his Hong Kong stint ended in March. One trip was to brief prime ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations about what they can to do to stanch the spread of H5N1.
The World Health Organization "will help in the initial outbreak," he says he told them.
"But if it breaks through, guys, you're on your own."
Webster thinks an avian-flu pandemic "is just inevitable. One of these is just going to blow."
For nearly 30 years, he and his colleagues have annually sampled wild ducks in the birds' nesting grounds in Alberta, looking for new flu strains. Since 1985, they have also sampled the feces of more than 5,000 migrating shorebirds along Delaware Bay.
H5N1 strains with slightly different traits have appeared several times in East Asia since the first one emerged in southern China in 1996. Last fall, while analyzing a strain circulating after an outbreak in Hong Kong in 2002, one of Webster's researchers, Diane Hulse, made an unusually important observation.
Many ducks experimentally infected with the virus didn't die, even though the strain was highly lethal to chickens.
But one of the duck viruses was highly lethal to ferrets, the animal whose susceptibility mirrors that of people. This meant that killing infected chickens wasn't going to be enough to stop the spread of the microbe. Ducks could serve as a permanent reservoir of H5N1 virus.
The discovery by Hulse and Webster led in part to an extreme program Thailand mounted last November. About 70,000 investigators went into every village in the country looking for sick ducks and sampling the feces of healthy-looking ones. Flocks carrying H5N1 influenza virus were killed.
The strategy appears to have worked. Last year, Thailand had 12 human deaths from H5N1 flu. So far this year, it has had none.
Stretching out before Webster and public health experts is a long list of chores the world must complete if it is to abort the bird-to-man transfer of disease he long ago proved could happen.
Last month, two teams of scientists based in China, one assisted by Webster, proved H5N1 is now circulating in several species of migratory birds capable of carrying the virus to India, Australia and Central Asia.
A task equal in importance to charting the spread of H5N1 is developing and distributing a good duck vaccine for the billions of those birds in East Asia.
Those countries, which collectively are the likely ground zero of pandemic flu, also need to improve their disease surveillance. In particular, they need to develop laboratories capable of safely isolating and testing influenza viruses.
And while they are doing that, they — and the rest of the world, Webster believes — would be well advised to draw up a plan to limit human movement and distribute vaccine and antiviral drugs should a pandemic flu strain emerge despite the efforts to prevent it.
It's a long list with an uncertain deadline, and it's enough to keep Robert Webster at work.
Washington Post
August 28, 2005 at 10:45 AM in Flu pandemic watch | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Militaryphotos.net :: View topic - Caught in the act : the ASIS raid
Caught in the act : the ASIS raid (ASIS = Australian Secret Intelligence Service)
Published in:
Wayward governance : illegality and its control in the public sector / P N Grabosky
Canberra : Australian Institute of Criminology, 1989
ISBN 0 642 14605 5
(Australian studies in law, crime and justice series); pp. 129-142
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/lcj/wayward/ch8t.html
At about 8 pm on Wednesday, 30 November 1983, the Manager of the Sheraton Hotel in Melbourne was alerted by a guest to a disturbance on the 10th floor. The Manager entered a lift and upon reaching the 10th floor, he was accosted by a stranger who said 'Come with me, you're not going to get hurt, but come with me.' The Manager retreated back into the lift, the stranger followed and pressed the appropriate button to return to the lobby. The two scuffled while descending. The stranger's repeated insistence that 'nobody would be hurt' was not entirely reassuring. When the lift reached the lobby, the Manager ran out and called for his staff to ring the police. The stranger retreated to the 10th floor.
Shortly thereafter another lift reached the ground floor. A group of hotel employees were gathered near the door of the lift, and the Manager equipped himself with a nightstick - a 30 cm metal rod covered with heavy duty red tape - which was normally kept behind the reception desk. As the lift door opened, a group of men stepped out. Some were wearing masks, some were carrying weapons, ranging from Browning 9 mm automatic pistols to the formidable Heckler and Koch submachine gun. The intruders moved through the lobby into the kitchen, menacing the kitchen staff on the way, and departed in two getaway cars waiting outside a kitchen exit.
One of the cars was stopped by officers of the Victoria Police a short distance from the hotel and its occupants were taken into custody. When other police officers arrived at the hotel, they encountered a bystander, who rather strangely claimed that he could explain everything that had happened, and that he was willing to pay for any damages incurred. Hotel staff may have assumed that they were the victims of an armed robbery; in fact they were unwilling parties to an incident culminating a year of acute embarrassment for the new Hawke Labor government. The episode in question turned out to have been a resoundingly unsuccessful training exercise by officers of the super-secret Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).
ASIS, unknown to most Australians prior to its having been thrust, reluctantly, into the public spotlight, is Australia's equivalent of the United States' CIA and Britain's MI6. Although its primary function was the collection of foreign intelligence, it was also required, as a result of decisions taken by the Fraser government and continued by their successors, to maintain a 'covert action capability'. While the precise contours of this minor role remain secret, it appears that such a function involved paramilitary activities - for example, the rescue of hostages (Wright 1989).
To this end, a small group of part-time agents were recruited and brought together for periodic training exercises. The ill-fated visit to the Sheraton Hotel was for the purpose of rescuing a 'hostage' being held in a room by two 'foreign intelligence officers of a major power'. In an effort to make training activities as realistic as possible, it was decided to conduct the exercise in a public place, without notifying hotel staff, local police or bystanders. The trainees were equipped with weapons, albeit without live ammunition.
The episode caused considerable distress to a number of unwitting individuals. One member of the hotel staff at whom a submachine gun was pointed gave evidence to the Royal Commission that the experience was so traumatising he afterwards felt 'emotionally unstable', suffered from a 'lack of sleep' and experienced 'recurring headaches' (Australia 1984, p. 30). Moreover, the potential for physical harm to members of the public was substantial. As luck would have it, what could have resulted in tragedy came to be regarded by many members of the public as farce. In addition to the cost of their accommodation, the make-believe captors and their hostage incurred expenses of $70 for alcoholic beverages. Their hotel room door, moreover, had been smashed in with a sledgehammer.
It was apparent to Mr Justice Hope, the Royal Commissioner who was asked to inquire into the matter, that the ASIS blunder arose from serious lapses in planning and supervision of the training exercise. He fixed primary responsibility for these lapses on the ASIS officer (referred to anonymously as 'P/EM'), who was both in charge of the special operations covert action program and manager of the abortive training exercise. The most obvious deficiency was the failure to notify either the Victoria Police or the hotel manager of the exercise. The decisions were conscious ones.
In his testimony before the Royal Commission, the officer expressed concern that disclosure would compromise security of the ASIS special operations program.
The basic reason that crossed my mind when I dismissed the possibility of informing the police was that I was probably concerned about the security of the actual operation itself, not necessarily the Exercise, and was worried that informing the police might cause them to show some interest in our activities in Melbourne at that time and perhaps even identify some of the operatives. But I must say that I dismissed the possibility of informing the police fairly early in the piece and chose myself on this occasion not to inform them (quoted in Australia 1984, p. 26).
The officer also expressed his belief that hotel management and staff would not become aware of the exercise.
[I] didn't envisage that any of the hotel staff or any member of the public would be involved with the team and, in fact, the hotel staff would not even know the team were in the hotel (quoted in Australia 1984, p. 22).
The Royal Commissioner, noting that properly executed covert operations in the real world have contingency plans, faulted P/EM for failing to have any such plans for the Sheraton raid.
These failures in planning effectively meant that, once the final stages of the Exercise had commenced, the trainees were out of control. Nothing short of a specific order from an ASIS officer of P/EM's seniority at least, would have stopped the trainees from completing their assignment with single-minded determination - no matter what reservations any of them may have felt as to the propriety of their conduct (Australia 1984, p. 28).
The Royal Commissioner also called attention to what he perceived to be a lack of skills and experience appropriate to the leadership of such a raid.
I find it difficult to imagine that a real covert operation, similar in nature to the Exercise, would not require the presence of a leader with the experience, capacity and judgement which a military officer would have (Australia 1984, p. 21).
Whilst acknowledging the desirability of a certain amount of realism in training exercises, the Royal Commissioner contended that the degree of realism achieved in the Sheraton operation was excessive.
It simply was not necessary to break down a hotel door with a sledgehammer, to attempt to restrain the Hotel Manager, to carry weapons, and to display them to unwitting members of the public. The authenticity of the exercise would not have been compromised by a greater degree of simulation (Australia 1984, p. 24).
The Minister responsible for ASIS, Foreign Minister Bill Hayden, was absolved of responsibility for the agent's misconduct by the Royal Commissioner. Despite the argument by critics that security intelligence operations should be under strict ministerial control (Toohey 1983a), Mr Justice Hope concluded that Hayden had no duty to inquire into specific details of ASIS training programs, and the Acting Director General had no duty to inform him. 'Having given his general approval for the project ASIS had commenced, the Minister was entitled to believe that the Acting Director General would ensure that special operations activities were conducted legally, properly and safely' (Australia 1984, p. 18).
According to the Royal Commissioner, 'ASIS management recognised only belatedly the requirement for better supervision, closer direction and tighter control' of the covert action program (Australia 1984, p. 23). A decision was taken in early November 1983, to place the program under the control of a 'Directorate of Covert Action and Emergency Planning', scheduled to be established by 1 February 1984. In the interim, P/EM was denied the planning and administrative support which might have prevented breaches of the law arising from the Sheraton exercise.
Although P/EM bore primary responsibility for the planning and execution of the Sheraton raid, he failed to inform his immediate supervisor of the details of the operation, and to obtain his approval for the aspects which the exercise entailed. In giving brief outlines of the operation to the Acting Director General of ASIS and to the agency's Head of Emergency Planning, P/EM implied that the concealed handguns were to be carried and force was not to be used. Authorisation for the mission was granted on that basis.
The Royal Commissioner further criticised P/EM for not making it explicit to the trainees that force was not to be used in gaining entry to the hotel room, particularly as he had assured the Acting Director General that 'doors would not be bashed down' (Australia 1984, p. 37). The trainees thus assumed that the use of force, if necessary, had been authorised. P/EM moreover, was physically present when the trainees began their forced entry, and did not intervene.
P/EM failed to instruct the trainees regarding the use which they could make of the weapons which they were issued, and regarding their interaction with those members of the public with whom they might come in contact. The Royal Commissioner referred to the failure to instruct the trainees adequately as 'deplorable' (Australia 1984, p. 39).
The Acting Director General of ASIS, John Ryan, was faulted for having authorised a training operation to take place in public, in the Sheraton Hotel, involving the use of concealed weapons by trainees. The authorisation moreover, was given in ignorance of whether or not hotel management or the Victoria police were to be made aware of the exercise, or whether contingency plans had been prepared, or of what provisions for supervision had been considered.
The Acting Director General was criticised for not informing the Deputy Director General and the Assistant Director General of his interest in the exercise and of insisting that planning and implementation of the exercise occur through the normal lines of authority (Australia 1984, p. 43).
The immediate supervisor of P/EM was the Assistant Director General (Operations). He had, however, 'only the most general knowledge of the Exercise' (Australia 1984, p. 44). Whilst he apparently expected P/EM would keep him informed, he was criticised by the Royal Commissioner for taking insufficient steps to ensure that this was, in fact, the case. By virtue of the Acting Director General's passing involvement in the exercise, the Assistant Director General was less dedicated to the supervision of his subordinate than was necessary.
The Deputy Director General too came in for criticism for his lack of attentiveness to the covert action program and to the Sheraton raid. In the words of the Acting Director General, Mr Ryan:
[W]hen you run a Branch which includes a section which is engaged in an exercise, or when you run a Division that includes a Branch, that includes a section running an exercise, in my book you're expected to know what's going on (Australia 1984, p. 46).
The Royal Commissioner was more forgiving of the ASIS trainees. The team leader was criticised for not seeking clarification of the potentially illegal aspects of the exercise, and for seeking to restrain the hotel manager. Mr Justice Hope found that the trainees were entitled to assume that they were authorised to carry weapons, but not justified in brandishing them in the presence of members of the public.
In addressing specifically the Sheraton incident, Mr Justice Hope neglected to confront more general issues of accountability of such a traditionally secret agency. However, he may have dealt with these issues in the course of a secret report. But the precise managerial dynamics of just how an agency such as ASIS is mobilised to undertake a particular task, or prevented from engaging in other activities is a vexed issue. It has, for example, been alleged that 'ASIS officers have actually murdered people in Indonesia' (Toohey 1983a).
It has, moreover, been suggested that when the Whitlam government was in office, ASIS
was unaware of the help it was giving to the CIA by lending two officers to help in Chile at the time of the destabilisation project against the democratically elected Government of Salvadore [sic] Allende; (Toohey 1983a).
According to a previously secret document presented to the Fraser government, Mr Justice Hope himself acknowledged that espionage necessitates crime.
We should not allow the use of any euphemisms to cloud the central issue - that ASIS exists to conduct espionage against foreign countries and that to do it successfully ASIS must probably infringe the laws of those countries and certainly be prepared to do so (Toohey 1983b).
One of the getaway cars was apprehended by the Victoria Police a short distance from the Sheraton. in the car the police found one submachine gun, a sledgehammer, a jemmy, and four plastic masks, among other equipment.
The suspects declined to identify themselves on grounds of national security.
At the time of the Sheraton raid, Australian security and intelligence agencies were already the subject of a Royal Commission. This of course, had arisen out of the Combe-Ivanov affair in mid 1983 (Marr 1984). The Commissioner was approached informally on the day following the raid by the Foreign Minister to request that the circumstances of the raid be incorporated into the inquiry.
Mr Justice Hope began collecting evidence on 2 December. Formal hearings began on 12 December and concluded on 12 January 1984. The report was published the following month. Among the requests conveyed by the Prime Minister to the Royal Commissioner was that of exploring 'whether any breach of the law was committed by anyone carrying out or authorising the exercise' (correspondence: Hawke to Hope, 7 December 1983; Australia 1984, p. 76).
The Royal Commissioner remarked that it would be 'oppressive' for him to make specific findings about individuals' possible breaches of the criminal law of Victoria, and to present such findings to the federal government which would not be responsible for prosecution. Rather, His Honour specified those statutory provisions which seemed to apply. The list was embarrassing in its length.
Firearms Act 1958
Possessing a pistol without a licence s.22(l)
Carrying a loaded firearm s.29E(l)
Possession of a machine gun s.32(3)
Possession of a silencer s.34(l)
Crimes Act 1958
Common assault s.37
Burglary s.76(l)
Aggravated burglary (firearm in possession) s.77(l)
Possession of articles for use in the course of burglary s.91(l)
Wilful damage to property s.9
Intentional destruction of another's property s.197(l)
Possession of implement with the purpose of using it to destroy Property s.199
Aid, abet, counsel or procure the commission of an offence ss.323-4
Summary Offences Act 1966
Offensive or riotous behaviour in a public place s.17
Assault s.23
Assault in company s.24
Vagrancy Act 1966
Being found armed with an offensive weapon s.6(l)(e)
Possessing a disguise without lawful excuse s.6(l)(f)
Possessing housebreaking implements s.7(l)(g)
Being found within a building without lawful excuse s.7(l)(i)
Carrying a firearm with criminal intent s.8(a)
Motor Car Act 1958
Failure to provide a driver's licence or refusing to state name and address when requested to do so by a member of the police force s.29
Common Law
Common Assault
Affray
Conspiracy
The Royal Commissioner saw it as neither appropriate nor as part of his Terms of Reference to make findings or recommendations as to whether specific persons had committed any offence or whether they should be prosecuted.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs on behalf of the Commonwealth government submitted that as
the persons responsible for such breaches of state law as may have been committed in the course of or in relation to the exercise neither intended to commit such breaches as breaches nor committed such breaches for their own purposes but rather in accordance with the directions given to them by persons whom they reasonably believe to be authorised to give such directions, no good purpose would be served by the prosecution of the persons (quoted in Australia 1984, pp. 66-7).
Nevertheless, the Premier of Victoria, upon first learning of ASIS involvement in the raid, claimed that no-one in Victoria was above the law.
Nearly one year after the Sheraton raid, the High Court of Australia dismissed the pleas by the unfortunate ASIS agents that their identities not be disclosed to the Victorian authorities. The Court held that any contract between the agents and the Commonwealth government which forbade that any individual's name be divulged were under the circumstances unenforceable. The names of the agents were duly handed to the Victoria Police. For a while, it appeared that Victorian authorities might proceed, Indeed, state parliament had even passed special legislation to suppress the names of any defendants in proceedings arising from the raid, and to provide for court hearings to be held in camera. To allay concerns that the criminal justice system of Victoria was returning to the ethos of the Star Chamber, the special legislation was specifically limited to the Sheraton incident, and contained a sunset clause which provided for its cessation of operation after two years. But notwithstanding previous remarks to the contrary by Premier Cain that no-one in Victoria was 'above the law', there were to be no prosecutions. Public and private requests by the Commonwealth government not to proceed prevailed in the end. Officially, the Chief Commissioner of Police, on the advice of the state Director of Public Prosecutions, announced that matters would not proceed. It was maintained that as the suspects had worn masks, it was not possible to determine who had done precisely what, and that lack of evidence precluded the laying of specific charges.
There was, however, some justice for the victims of the raid. Shortly after the incident, hotel management initiated legal action on behalf of itself and its employees against the Commonwealth government. In an out of court settlement, Victorian Holdings, a subsidiary of Brick and Pipe Industries Ltd. and manager of the hotel at the time of the raid, received $259,000 in exemplary damages from the government (Australian Financial Review 30 October 1984, p. 81). Employees of the hotel received additional amounts which were not disclosed. It has been reported that the total settlement amounted to approximately $300,000 (The Age 22 March 1984).
The mechanisms of oversight and accountability for Australian security intelligence agencies which were inherited by the Hawke government when it came to power in March 1983 soon proved to be embarrassingly inadequate. Certainly, they were relatively modest compared to those safeguards which had been adopted over the previous decade in the United States and Canada. These sister English-speaking democracies had themselves suffered embarrassing scandals in the 1970s which provided the impetus for significant reforms.
In Canada, the findings of the McDonald Commission that the Security Service of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had engaged in warrantless entry and electronic surveillance, interceptions of mail, and other abuses led to the abolition of the RCMP security intelligence function and the creation of a new civilian security intelligence agency with a clear legislative mandate. Oversight is currently exercised by an independent Inspector General as well as by the Security Intelligence Review Committee, comprised of three privy counsellors appointed after consultation with the leader of the opposition and the leader of each party in the House of Commons (Rutan 1985).
In the United States, evidence of assassination programs overseas, of illegal entry and surveillance of American citizens at home, and of complicity in the Watergate affair on the part of the Central Intelligence Agency led to the creation of a variety of oversight mechanisms (Flanagan 1985). Both the US Senate and the House of Representatives established permanent bipartisan intelligence oversight committees by the end of the 1970s. In addition, Congress appropriates all funds for US intelligence agencies, thereby exercising a degree of fiscal oversight.
Each US intelligence agency has its own inspector-general. Executive oversight for intelligence activities is assisted by the Office of Management and Budget, and by the Intelligence Oversight Board, a panel of private citizens charged with monitoring, through the inspectors-general of the various agencies, the legality and propriety of intelligence activities.
The final report on Australia's Security and Intelligence Agencies was presented to the Commonwealth government in 1985. While much of it remains secret, the Prime Minister did reveal a number of the report's recommendations which pertained to ASIS. These included the recommendation that ASIS no longer have an 'attack function' and that its agents henceforth be forbidden to carry out 'special political action' in any foreign countries. It was also recommended that the use of weapons by ASIS agents be discontinued, and that the agency's existing supply of weapons and explosives be disposed of. On 22 May 1985, the Prime Minister announced in Parliament that these recommendations had been accepted by the government. Ostensibly, ASIS would thereafter stick to what it did best - the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence.
A representative of the Queensland government is reputed to have recommended that Australian intelligence agents be given special indemnity from prosecution for offences which they might commit during training exercises and operations (Kitney 1985). No such policy has been adopted, however. If the Sheraton case is any precedent, future offenders will be quietly diverted from the criminal process once media attention subsides.
The Prime Minister announced additional steps to improve the oversight and accountability of ASIS and related organisations. Henceforth, the Security Committee of Cabinet would meet regularly, and would develop clear guidelines and directions for security intelligence agencies. The Committee would be assisted by a full-time Secretariat in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. In addition, the Secretaries Committee on Intelligence and Security, comprised of permanent heads of relevant government departments, would be expanded to include the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department and of the Department of Special Minister of State.
Following a recommendation of the Hope Report, the government would also establish an Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The Inspector-General and a small supporting staff would perform an auditing function of security and intelligence agencies as recommended in the Australian Labor Party submission to the Hope Royal Commission. The Inspector-General would be approved to act at the request of the Attorney-General, in response to a complaint, on his or her own initiative.
The lack of strict ministerial scrutiny of ASIS activities which Mr Justice Hope found tolerable nevertheless remained troublesome to a majority of government members. While His Honour explicitly recommended against parliamentary oversight of security agencies by means of a bipartisan committee, the spotty record of the agencies in question, combined with a lingering suspicion on the part of many that the agencies were insufficiently accountable under existing arrangements, carried the day. The Leader of the Opposition referred to these additional safeguards as unnecessary, attributing them to 'left wing paranoia'. The fact that it was the government, and not the opposition, which faced the risk of embarrassment from any future indiscretions was not raised in response. Whether the new oversight structures and a narrower mandate for ASIS would succeed in preventing future malpractice by Australian intelligence agents is a question which may be answered in time.
References
* The Age 22 March 1984.
* Australia 1984, Royal Commission on Australia's Security and Intelligence Agencies: Report on the Sheraton Hotel Incident, Mr Justice Hope, Royal Commissioner, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra
* Australian Financial Review, 30 October 1984, p. 81.
* The Canberra Times, 14 January 1989, p. 1.
* ibid. 15 January, p. 17.
* ibid. 16 January, p. 1.
* Flanagan, S. 1985, 'Managing the Intelligence Community', International Security, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 58-95.
* Kitney, Geoff 1985, 'Sheraton Hotel Bungle May Cost ASIS its Covert Raiders', The National Times 1-7 March, p. 3.
* Marr, David 1984, The Ivanov Trail, Nelson, Melbourne.
* Rutan, G. 1985, 'The Canadian Security Intelligence Service: Squaring the Demands of National Security with Canadian Democracy', Conflict Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 17-30.
* Toohey, Brian 1983a, 'Who's in Charge, Bill?', The National Times 2-8 December, p. 2.
* ------------ 1983b, 'Secret Report: Judge Content for ASIS to Break the Law', The National Times 9-15 December, p. 4.
Additional reading
* Simpson, B. 1984, 'The Criminal Proceedings Act and the Sheraton Raid', Legal Service Bulletin, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 194-6.
August 28, 2005 at 12:09 AM in Espionage - general | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
From militaryphotos.net - an amazing account of real life there.
Exclusive: How the death squads came to Washash and turned Shi'ites and Sunnis against one another
By TIM MCGIRK/BAGHDAD
There was a time when Mohammad al-Obaidi didn't worry much about safety. As a barber in Baghdad's gritty working-class Washash neighborhood, al-Obaidi would spend his days styling hair--for Sunnis, Shi'ites, Christians, whoever showed up at his World of Haircuts barbershop. Evenings, he would slip off to play soccer with friends. These days, however, as Iraq plunges deeper into civil unrest, al-Obaidi, 27, a stout, personable man who sports a buzz cut, spends much of his time calculating how to stay alive, wondering whether the anonymous killers who now stalk the streets of Washash will come after him, perhaps at his shop or on the long road home.
Al-Obaidi was snipping away at a customer's hair last month when a text message beeped on his cell phone. CHANGE YOUR PROFESSION, it read, OR ELSE YOU'LL LOSE YOUR HEAD. At first, he thought it was a joke. He immediately called back the number, expecting that he would reach a friend. After all, al-Obaidi is a barber, not a cop or a U.S. hireling, and he wasn't aware that he had any enemies. But in the climate of fanaticism that now prevails in Baghdad, barbers are being singled out by Sunni extremists who say that cutting a man's beard violates Islam. "Do what we say," a stranger on the line told him, "or we'll kill you."
A murder spree has erupted in Washash, as in countless neighborhoods across Baghdad. Death squads, which tend to move in Opel sedans, are entering what once were tight-knit communities and killing ordinary citizens, apparently to stir up sectarian hatred. The goal: to incite a civil war that each side hopes will give its sect dominance over the other. In Baghdad, a city of more than 5 million, there were at least 880 violent deaths last month, according to Faiq Amin Bakr, director of the Baghdad central morgue. (In New York City, with a population of more than 8 million, the total number of homicides for all of 2004 was 571.) And the figure for Baghdad excludes those killed by car bombings and suicide attacks, which, if included, would add nearly 100 to the total. Most of the victims were felled by gunshots. Some were beheaded. Few of the murderers have been captured. "Nobody knows who is doing this killing," says Bakr. "It seems they're trying to destroy our society."
The U.S. military officials in charge of protecting Baghdad would be hard-pressed to locate Washash on a city map. That's because it's one of the few places in the city where insurgents aren't shooting at American soldiers; the U.S. patrols in their humvees tend to roll right past. But the violence in this neighborhood is an extension of the war the U.S. is waging against Iraqi insurgents. If the direct attacks on American troops are aimed at driving the U.S. out, the killings in Washash are a grim portent of the kind of chaos that may lie in Iraq's future, whether or not U.S. soldiers stay on in force. "If the U.S. troops leave, we will have a civil war," says a Sunni ex-army officer who prefers not to reveal his name. "It will go on until one sect wipes out the other."
The killings have dramatically increased in the past two months, Washash residents say. And the list of potential targets seems to include just about everyone. Those murdered in recent weeks include a house painter, a juice seller, an ice vendor, a blind cleric and an herbalist specializing in love potions. Despite the warnings he received, al-Obaidi hasn't quit cutting hair; he doesn't know how else to make a living. But he is taking what precautions he can. He now works only one day out of every three, and he keeps an eye open for those Opel sedans.
Despite the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime, Sunnis and Shi'ites in Iraq tended to live in relative harmony. Although the sectarian split occurred early in Islamic history and concerns a critical disagreement over who was the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad, members of the two groups often trace their roots to the same Arab tribes and frequently intermarry. Saddam, a Sunni, patronized his own kind, giving clansmen top jobs in the army, civil service and secret police, and when Shi'ites in southern Iraq revolted after the first Gulf War, in 1991, Saddam resolutely crushed them. In neighborhoods like Washash, however, there was little friction. Sunnis and Shi'ites played on the same sports teams and shared hubble-bubble pipes over domino games in cafés. "These two words--Sunni and Shi'ite--didn't exist for us," says Walid Ahmad al-Anei, a Sunni. "We were all Muslims."
But these days, as Walid learned to his horror, the division is all too real. Walid's brother Majid, a bean seller, was targeted two weeks ago as he left a mosque. First his assailants hit him with their car. Then, as he staggered to his feet and tried to escape over a wall, they shot him twice in the head and four times in the chest.
After Saddam fell, violence came quickly to Washash. The first wave of killings was straightforward, motivated by revenge against Saddam's thugs and informers. Few grieved for the victims. Then insurgents began to target anyone who worked with U.S. forces--as an interpreter, say, or a driver. To survive, those who stayed on the U.S. payroll learned to leave Washash before dawn and pretend they were commuting to jobs outside the city. By last December, the killings had taken on a sectarian slant. As more Sunni extremists poured in from abroad to join the insurgency, they tapped into latent anti-Shi'ite feelings among Iraq's Sunnis, prompting some to resort to violence. Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist who heads al-Qaeda's operations in Iraq, fanned the flames, denouncing Shi'ites as worse infidels than the Christian "crusaders," as he refers to the U.S. troops. Shi'ite groups like the Badr Corps, whose militias are apparently armed by Shi'ites in Iran, have responded with equal savagery against the Sunnis.
The revenge spiral is taking a dramatic toll. In December three Sunni brothers from Washash who belonged to the extremist, virulently anti-Shi'ite Salafi sect were gunned down just outside the neighborhood. The family sought retribution. On a subsequent evening, say witnesses, a mob of 15 gunmen, all relatives and friends of the three dead brothers, surrounded the house of popular Shi'ite clergyman Sheik Razzaq. A frail man in his 50s with a white skullcap and a ready smile, Razzaq had tried to stem the tide of sectarian hatred in the neighborhood, even accepting both Sunni and Shi'ite children into his Koran study classes. Sunni extremists found his message of tolerance threatening. "I was sitting with my wife and son and heard someone call out to me from the gate," recalls Razzaq. "As I walked to the door, my wife came up and put a woolen shawl on my shoulders. Next thing I knew, they fired at us through the door." Incredibly, Razzaq was untouched. But his wife Um Hussain lay dying, with 16 bullets in her body, and his son was left paralyzed from his wounds. After the shooting, the Sunni mob went to their mosque and announced over the minaret's loudspeaker, "Allah is great. We have killed the infidel." Razzaq shakes his head as he explains, "I'm a Shi'ite. My wife was a Sunni."
To this day, Razzaq doesn't know whether he was attacked solely out of revenge for the Salafi brothers' killing or his assassination had already been planned. Regardless, the killings then escalated. At least 33 people--Sunni and Shi'ite alike--have been killed in Washash this year, and the pace seems to be picking up. One of the latest victims was Shi'ite house painter Ali Jeri, whose death was especially painful to the neighborhood. Jeri was known as a kind and wise mediator who had many Sunni friends. Three gunmen pulled up in a car while he was painting and shot him in front of his child. Not long before that, Jeri had told his brother Ibrahim, "If I am killed because I am known as a religious man and a friend to many, so be it." That sentiment didn't resonate for long. In retaliation, seven Sunnis were murdered. Washash residents assume that Shi'ite militiamen did the killing.
These days Sunni and Shi'ite friends still sometimes sit together in the cafés, but the carefree ways of the past are gone. "Beneath our smiles, our hearts have closed," says a former army officer, a Sunni. "We no longer trust them, nor do they trust us." Residents believe the killers come from outside Washash, but they know there are informers within. Armed Shi'ite vigilantes patrol the streets, questioning strangers. Because Shi'ites are in the majority in Washash, the Sunnis tend to suffer more. Twenty-five Sunni men disappeared into police custody on Aug. 12, according to human-rights activists, who say the security forces are heavily infiltrated by the Shi'ite militia. No record exists of the arrests.
Gunmen in a car opened fire late last month on traffic police at a Washash crossroads. The men were chased down. One was shot dead, and three others were captured. They were Shi'ites but confessed to being hit men on the payroll of Ansar al-Sunnah, a Sunni rebel group. What's more, they revealed the names of several informers in Washash. As word of the capture began to circulate, families of the victims flocked to the police station, seeking the names of the assassins. One relative told TIME that police officers demanded a $500 bribe before giving out the informers' names, and in the spirit of revenge, the sum was gladly paid.
Regards,
Hist2004
August 27, 2005 at 06:48 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online
By Dominic Kennedy
The gun that killed a gangland figure has highlighted calls for international arms curb
BRITAIN’S gangland arms race took a frightening new twist with the discovery that an AK47 rifle made for special forces in Hungary had fallen into the hands of an underworld hit squad.
The Kalashnikov, which fired 26 armour-piercing bullets in three seconds during the 2003 killing of Dave King, a gangster, is the most powerful firearm yet used by hitmenin Britain. Ammunition recovered at the scene originated in the Bulgarian, Yugoslavian and Romanian militaries.
The journey made by the rifle — which passed through the hands of a notorious Belgian gunrunner — was uncovered by Oxfam as part of its campaign against the arms trade.
Three men were jailed this week following the