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Posted 8:30 AM by The Moderator

News: "Former diplomats' attack on Blair is off the Richter scale, says Cook
By Colin Brown Deputy Political Editor
28 April 2004
Robin Cook delivers a fresh and devastating blow to Tony Blair today by claiming that serving British ambassadors support the 52 former diplomats who criticised the Prime Minister over his policy on the Middle East.
The former foreign secretary's remarks will infuriate Mr Blair, whose leadership was the subject of open speculation among Labour MPs last night following the backlash among his cabinet allies over his U-turn on the EU referendum.
Mr Cook, writing in The Independent, says it is inconceivable that agreement on a common text could have been reached among the former diplomats 'without widespread sympathy for their views among the ambassadors who have replaced them'.
Underlining the unprecedented importance of their letter, Mr Cook adds: 'By the standards of diplomatic communiqués, their statement is off the Richter scale.'"

Posted 8:26 AM by The Moderator

U.S. Civilians Confront U.S. Military in Najaf, Iraq
Indymedia.org

NAJAF, IRAQ - April 23 - As numerous people from nonprofit organizations working in Iraq evacuated the country during the past week, an independent emergency delegation of U.S. civilians was preparing to enter the conflict-torn nation, traveling to the tense stand-off around Najaf, where the U.S. military recently deployed almost 3,000 troops for a looming assault to crush Shiite rebels there.

The Najaf Emergency Peace Team, "Peace Between Peoples", a handful of determined volunteers from several well-established peace/global justice/human rights and religious organizations, has now arrived in the area, to place themselves "nonviolently, symbolically and physically" between the U.S. armed forces massed nearby and the civilian population of the ancient holy city - in the way of any American military assault.

The delegation has received messages of encouragement from religious and community leaders in south-central Iraq, including an advisor to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. "We understand the dangers of our journey, but we are determined to try and contribute in our own small way to peace and justice for the people of Najaf and Iraq. Only when peacemakers are willing to shoulder some of the same risks that soldiers take in war, can we begin to move away from the cycle of violence that grips human society at the dawn of the 21st century," says the group's statement.

Meg Lumsdaine, Peter Lumsdaine, Mario Galvan, Trish Schuh, and Brian Buckley - of California, New York and Virginia, respectively - are now in south-central Iraq to carry out their peace mission.

Rev. Meg Lumsdaine is an ordained Lutheran pastor who has previously been involved in human rights delegations to Latin America and Iraq. Peter Lumsdaine is coordinator of the Military Globalization Analysis Project and organizer of the Najaf delegation. Mario Galvan, a high school teacher, is a national board member of Peace Action, with 100,000 members throughout the U.S., and a founding member of the Zapatista Solidarity Coalition. Trish Schuh co-founded the Military Families Support Network in 1990 and was involved in Military Families Speak Out. Brian Buckley is a carpenter and member of the Little Flower Catholic Worker community.

The Najaf emergency delegation can be contacted for interviews and more information by e-mail (mariogalvan44 (at) hotmail.com), as their peace witness and nonviolent challenge to the U.S. military assault plan unfolds in the days ahead.

Posted 8:20 AM by The Moderator

Doomed to failure in the Middle East
www.guardian.uk
A letter from 52 former senior British diplomats to Tony Blair

Tuesday April 27, 2004
The Guardian

Dear Prime Minister,
We the undersigned former British ambassadors, high commissioners, governors and senior international officials, including some who have long experience of the Middle East and others whose experience is elsewhere, have watched with deepening concern the policies which you have followed on the Arab-Israel problem and Iraq, in close cooperation with the United States. Following the press conference in Washington at which you and President Bush restated these policies, we feel the time has come to make our anxieties public, in the hope that they will be addressed in parliament and will lead to a fundamental reassessment.

The decision by the US, the EU, Russia and the UN to launch a "road map" for the settlement of the Israel/Palestine conflict raised hopes that the major powers would at last make a determined and collective effort to resolve a problem which, more than any other, has for decades poisoned relations between the west and the Islamic and Arab worlds. The legal and political principles on which such a settlement would be based were well established: President Clinton had grappled with the problem during his presidency; the ingredients needed for a settlement were well understood and informal agreements on several of them had already been achieved. But the hopes were ill-founded. Nothing effective has been done either to move the negotiations forward or to curb the violence. Britain and the other sponsors of the road map merely waited on American leadership, but waited in vain.

Worse was to come. After all those wasted months, the international community has now been confronted with the announcement by Ariel Sharon and President Bush of new policies which are one-sided and illegal and which will cost yet more Israeli and Palestinian blood. Our dismay at this backward step is heightened by the fact that you yourself seem to have endorsed it, abandoning the principles which for nearly four decades have guided international efforts to restore peace in the Holy Land and which have been the basis for such successes as those efforts have produced.

This abandonment of principle comes at a time when rightly or wrongly we are portrayed throughout the Arab and Muslim world as partners in an illegal and brutal occupation in Iraq.

The conduct of the war in Iraq has made it clear that there was no effective plan for the post-Saddam settlement. All those with experience of the area predicted that the occupation of Iraq by the coalition forces would meet serious and stubborn resistance, as has proved to be the case. To describe the resistance as led by terrorists, fanatics and foreigners is neither convincing nor helpful. Policy must take account of the nature and history of Iraq, the most complex country in the region. However much Iraqis may yearn for a democratic society, the belief that one could now be created by the coalition is naive. This is the view of virtually all independent specialists on the region, both in Britain and in America. We are glad to note that you and the president have welcomed the proposals outlined by Lakhdar Brahimi. We must be ready to provide what support he requests, and to give authority to the UN to work with the Iraqis themselves, including those who are now actively resisting the occupation, to clear up the mess.

The military actions of the coalition forces must be guided by political objectives and by the requirements of the Iraq theatre itself, not by criteria remote from them. It is not good enough to say that the use of force is a matter for local commanders. Heavy weapons unsuited to the task in hand, inflammatory language, the current confrontations in Najaf and Falluja, all these have built up rather than isolated the opposition. The Iraqis killed by coalition forces probably total 10-15,000 (it is a disgrace that the coalition forces themselves appear to have no estimate), and the number killed in the last month in Falluja alone is apparently several hundred including many civilian men, women and children. Phrases such as "We mourn each loss of life. We salute them, and their families for their bravery and their sacrifice," apparently referring only to those who have died on the coalition side, are not well judged to moderate the passions these killings arouse.

We share your view that the British government has an interest in working as closely as possible with the US on both these related issues, and in exerting real influence as a loyal ally. We believe that the need for such influence is now a matter of the highest urgency. If that is unacceptable or unwelcome there is no case for supporting policies which are doomed to failure.

Yours faithfully,

Sir Graham Boyce (ambassador to Egypt 1999-2001); Sir Terence Clark (ambassador to Iraq 1985-89); Francis Cornish (ambassador to Israel 1998-2001); Sir James Craig (ambassador to Saudi Arabia 1979-84); Ivor Lucas (ambassador to Syria 1982-84); Richard Muir (ambassador to Kuwait 1999-2002); Sir Crispin Tickell (British permanent representative to the UN 1987-90); Sir Harold (Hooky) Walker (ambassador to Iraq 1990-91), and 44 others

Posted 8:15 AM by The Moderator

News: "Rape, torture, and one million forced to flee as Sudan's crisis unfolds. Will we move to stop it?
By Declan Walsh Africa Correspondent
23 April 2004"

..On Monday, the Sudanese Humanitarian Affairs Minister, Ibrahim Hamid, led a rare media tour of selected towns in Darfur. He said the government would reconstruct areas hit by the fighting. "As you can see, the psychological effect of this ceasefire is tremendous and since Sunday there has been no violation of this ceasefire," he said in Nyala town.

Mr Hamid refused to comment on the government's refusal to issue a visa to Jan Egeland, the UN's chief humanitarian co-ordinator. Mr Egeland has described the violence against Africans in Darfur as "ethnic cleansing, but not genocide" and termed the situation "one of the most forgotten and neglected humanitarian crises".

In its conclusions, the UN report called for an international commission of inquiry to establish the scale of the crimes against humanity in Darfur, and the complicity of the Sudan government in the atrocities.

Posted 8:57 PM by The Moderator

CBC News:Israel's nuclear whistle-blower freed: "Israel's nuclear whistle-blower freed
Last Updated Wed, 21 Apr 2004 22:49:12
ASHKELON, ISRAEL - Nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu said he had suffered 'cruel and barbaric' treatment at the hands of Israel as he was freed on Wednesday after 18 years in prison.

A healthy-looking Vanunu, who spent 12 of those years in solitary confinement, appeared in a defiant mood, greeting supporters and detractors with 'V' signs as he walked out of prison in Ashkelon. Vanunu claimed the prison was a secret service facility.
Vanunu, who refused to speak in Hebrew, said his punishment had been intended to drive him insane, and that he would not have been so mistreated if he had not converted to Christianity from Judaism.
He said he was a 'symbol of the victory of the human spirit.' "

Posted 9:33 AM by The Moderator

Empire Notes
Before the Iraq war, at a meeting of the Arab League, Secretary General Amr Moussa famously said that a U.S. war on Iraq would “open the gates of hell.”

[Here is a new blog by a Bagdad correspondent]

In Iraq, those gates are yawning wider than they ever have before -- at least for the United States.

“Sunni and Shi’a are now one hand, together against the Americans,” a man on the street in the mostly Shi’a slum of Shuala on the west side of Baghdad told me, as we conversed in the shadow of a burnt-out American tank transporter. Those sentiments were echoed at the local headquarters of Moqtada al-Sadr’s organization, which had one day previously come under assault from U.S. forces.


And, indeed, everyone in the area agreed that when those forces were driven from Shuala, it was done by Sunni and Shi’a fighting together -- and by unorganized local inhabitants, not al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

Whether or not the resistance here grows to a scale that the United States cannot control -- and this is more in the hands of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani than of Paul Bremer or George Bush -- it is already clear that the events of the last ten days mark a critical turning point in the occupation of Iraq.