Dr. Teresa Forcades reflects on the history, and gives scientific data, pertaining to A type flu. She also lists various irregularities pertaining to the A H1N1 influenza.

She explains the consequences of the declaration of a PANDEMIC by the WHO, The farreaching political implications of this declaration are examined.

Her proposal is to stay calm. She calls for the urgent activation of legal mechanisms and the participation of all citizens in this matter.

Big thanks to Marta Cobos (gripeArtificial), Marina, Paula Hernandez and Amalia, whose help made it possible to publish this version with English subtitles.

Sister Teresa Forcades has a doctorate in Public Health from the University of Barcelona with a specialization in Internal Medicine (State University of New York). She also has a Masters in Divinity from Harvard University and a doctorate from the Facultad de Teología de Catalunya. She is the author of Crimes and Abuses of the Pharmaceutical Industry (Cristianisme i Justícia, 2006), La Trinitat, avui (“The Trinity, Today”, Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2005), and La teologia feminista en la història (“Feminist Theology in History”, Fragmenta Editorial, 2007). She has been a Benedictine nun and a member of the community of Sant Benet de Montserrat since 1997 
 

Teresa Forcades Presentation On H1 N1 

[The text below is no a word by word transcript. It is the Dr. Forcades’  written summary, with supporting sources and footnotes. We suggest you view the video before reading the written summary, Global Research Editor] 

SOME THOUGHTS AND A PROPOSAL WITH REGARD TO ‘SWINE FLU’

September 16, 2009 (modified on October 11, 2009) Dr. Teresa Forcades i Vila, MD (ABIM 1995, 2005), PhD in public health (UB 2004)

This is a translation of the Catalan original version published on Dr. Forcades’ blog at www.catalunyareligio.cat 

1. RELEVANT SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION-

The first two reported cases of swine flu (virus A/HINI, strain S-OIV) were diagnosed in California (USA) on April 17, 2009 1.

 – The swine flu is not new because it is type A, neither is it new because it is of the subtype H1N1: the flu epidemic in 1918 was of the type A/H1N1 and since 1977 the virus A/H1N1 circulates during the flu season each year 2; the only novelty is the S- OIV strain. 3 .4

– One-third of people older than 60 seem to be immune to the virus of the swine flu 5.

– Since it began until 15 September, 2009, 137 people have died from this flu in Europe and 3,559 worldwide 6. One must remember that each year, in Europe alone, between 40,000 and 220,000 people die because of the flu 7.

– Recognised health specialists, among whom are Dr. Bernard Debré, (member of the French National Ethics committee) and Dr. Juan José Rodriguez Sendín (president of the Spanish Association of Medical Colleges) have publicly declared that the information obtained from the flu season in the southern hemisphere, shows that the swine flu has a lower mortality rate and complications rate than the annual flu 8.

2. IRREGULARITIES WHICH SHOULD BE EXPLAINED

– At the end of January, 2009, the Austrian subsidiary of the North American pharmaceutical company, Baxter, delivered 72 kilos of vaccine material to 16 laboratories in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovenia 9. A laboratory technician from the company, BioTest in the Czech Republic decided on his own to test the vaccines in ferrets.

Ferrets are being used since 1918 to study the influenza vaccines: all the vaccinated ferrets died. Then the material sent by Baxter was investigated to find out what it actually was and it was discovered that it contained live bird flu virus (virus A/H5N1) combined with live seasonal flu virus (virus A/H3N2).

If this contamination had not been discovered on time, the pandemic that without a real basis is being proclaimed by health authorities at the global (WHO) and at the local level, could now be a horrific reality. This combination of live viruses is potentially lethal because it combines a virus that has a 60% mortality rate and a low infectivity rate (the virus of the bird flu), with a virus that has a low mortality rate and a high infectivity rate (a seasonal flu virus) 10.

– On the 29 April, 2009, 12 days after the detection of the first cases of the swine flu, Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the WHO, declared that the level of alert because of the danger of pandemic was phase 5 (on a scale 1-6) and ordered all governments of the member states of the WHO to activate emergency plans and maximum health alert. A month and a half later, on June 11, 2009, Dr. Chan declared that the A/H1N1 S-OIV pandemic was a reality (phase 6) 11. How could she declare a pandemic if according to the scientific data exposed above, the swine flu is milder than the seasonal flu, and the A/H1N1 is not a new virus but only a new strain of a very well known virus that a subset of the population recognizes immunologically?

Declaring a pandemic was possible despite these circumstances because in early May, the WHO had changed its definition of what a pandemic is. Prior to May, 2009, the definition of pandemic took into account the severity of the disease, which is the most relevant aspect with regard to the clinical and the political handling of a pandemic. However, this requirement was eliminated from the definition in May, 2009 12. The change occurred shortly after the United States declared a state of “national health emergency” despite having only 20 people infected with the swine flu virus and no deaths whatsoever 13.

3. POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE DECLARATION OF PANDEMIC

– In the context of a pandemic, it is possible to require mandatory vaccination of a given segment of the people or even of the whole population 14. – What can happen to a person who decides not to accept the vaccination? As long as it has not been decreed that the vaccination is mandatory, he/she is free to do so: but if the vaccination is decreed mandatory, then the State has the obligation to enforce the law by imposing a fine or a term in prison (in the state of Massachusetts, the proposed fine in this case could be as high as 1,000 dollars for each day that goes without vaccination) 15.

– Taking this into account, one could reasonably conclude: if the vaccination is made mandatory, then I will just go along and get vaccinated; after all, the vaccine is more or less the same as that of the annual flu, so no big deal.

– It is necessary to know that there are three new features that make the swine flu vaccine different from the annual flu vaccine. The first novelty is that the majority of pharmaceutical companies are designing the vaccine in such a way that one injection will not be enough and each person will need to get two doses.

The WHO also recommends to receive the seasonal flu vaccine. As a result, whoever follows this year’s WHO recommendations exposes him or herself to be injected three times. This is something new which, theoretically, multiplies by three the possible toxicities. In practice, there is no way to know the long-term effects of this triple injection because it has never been done in this way before. The second novelty is that some of the companies making the swine flu vaccine have decided to use co-adjuvants which are far more potent than those contained in the seasonal flu vaccine. Co-adjuvants are substances added to a vaccine to booster the immune system: the swine flu vaccine from Glaxo-Smith-Kline, for example, contains ASO3 (a combination of squalene and polysorbate), a co-adjuvant able to increase ten times the immune response. The problem with this rationale is that no one can be sure that this artificial stimulus to the immune system will not provoke serious autoimmune diseases (like Guillain-Barré paralysis) 16.

The third novelty that distinguishes the swine flu vaccine from that of each year is that the manufacturing companies are demanding that the States sign agreements so that they will have impunity if the vaccines have more side effects than expected (e.g. the Guillain-Barré paralysis may affect 10 people in every million who are vaccinated with the annual flu vaccine): The USA has signed a document which frees the politicians and the pharmaceutical companies from all responsibilities associated with unexpected side effects of the swine flu vaccine 17.

SOME THOUGHTS

If the contamination of the vaccine material from Baxter had not been accidentally discovered, an extremely grave pandemic could be by now a shocking reality. The appalling lack of political and mass media reaction to what happened in February in the Czech laboratory it is inexplicable. What is even more inexplicable is the degree of irresponsibility demonstrated by the WHO, by governments and by the national health agencies in declaring a pandemic and promoting a maximum health alert without a real rational basis. It is irresponsible and inexplicable, in the extreme, that billions of Euros from public funds have been spent to manufacture millions of doses of vaccines against a non-existent danger, while there is not sufficient money to help the millions of people (more than 5 million in the US alone) who due to the current economic crisis have lost their job and their home.

As long as these facts remain unexplained, the risk that contaminated vaccines could be distributed this winter and the risk that legal measures could be adopted to mandate vaccination are very real. They should not be underestimated. If the swine flu continues to be as mild as it has been up to now, it does not make sense to expose oneself to the risk of a contaminated vaccine nor run the risk of suffering a Guillain-Barré partial paralysis. If the flu turns unexpectedly worse, as it has been predicted with no scientific basis by quite a few people in high office – among them the General Director of the WHO -, it would still make no sense to allow oneself to be vaccinated: a rise in mortality could mean only two things:

1. that the virus of the S-OIV strain which is circulating now has suffered a mutation;

2. that another virus (or other viruses) are now circulating. In both cases, the vaccine that is being currently prepared will be useless, and, considering what happened last February in the Baxter Pharmaceutical Company, it could even be the means of transmitting the disease.

A PROPOSAL

My proposal is clear: Along with staying calm, do take common sense precautions to avoid infection and avoid getting vaccinated I make a call to urgently activate the legal instruments and the necessary citizen participation to assure, in a rotund manner, that no one in our country will be forced to be vaccinated against his/her will, and that those who freely accept to be vaccinated will not be deprived of their right to claim grievance and be compensated (they or their family) if the vaccine causes them illness or death.

NOTES

1 Zimmer SM Burke, Historical Perspective: Emergence of Influenza A (HINI) viruses. NEJM, July 16, 2009. p. 279.

2 “The re-emergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source in the setting of the waning population immunity to HI and NI antigens”, Zimmer, Burke, ibid. p. 282.

3 Zimmer, Bunker, ibid. p. 279.

4 Doshi, Peter, Calibrated response to emerging infections. BMJ 2009: 399: b3471.

5 US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Serum cross-reactive antibody response to a novel influenza A (HINI) virus after vaccination with seasonal influenza vaccine. MMWR 2009: 58; 521- 4

6 Official Data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (www.ecdc.europa.eu)

7 Official Data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (www.ecdc.europa.eu)

8 Cf. Debré: Cette grippe n’est pas dangereuse. Le Journal du Dimanche, July 25, 2009. Cf. Rodríguez Sendín: Cordura frente el alarmismo en la prevención de la gripe A. La Razón, September 4, 2009.

9 Baxter denied that the contaminated product were to manufacture vaccines for human use and called it ‘experimental virus material’. Baxter failed to reveal for what use it was because doing so would give away proprietary information about Baxter’s production process. Cf. The Canadian Press: Baxter admits flu product contained live bird flu. February 27, 2009.

10 Cf. Virus mix-up by lab could have resulted in pandemic. The Times of India, science section, 6, March 2009.

11 http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2009

12 Cohen E. When a pandemic isn’t a pandemic. CNN, 4 May, ’09. http://edition,cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/05/04/swine.flu.pandemic/index.html

13 Doshi, Peter: Calibrated response to emerging infections. BMJ 2009; 339:b3471  

14 Falkiner, Keith. Get the rush flu jab or be jailed: Irish Star, Sunday 13 September, 2009. 15 Senate Bill n. 2028: An act relative to pandemic and disaster preparation and response in the Commonwealth. 4 August, ’09. Cf Moore, RT. Critics rage as state prepares for flu pandemic. 11 Sept. ’09. WBUR Boston.

16 Cf. Vaccination HINI: méfiance des infirmiéres. www.syndicat-infirmier.com/Vaccination-HINI- mefiance-des.htlm

17 Stobbe, Mark. Legal immunity set for swine flu vaccine makers. Associated press 17 July,’09.

The US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has just signed a decree granting vaccine makers total legal immunity from any lawsuits that result from any new “Swine Flu” vaccine. Moreover, the $7 billion US Government fast-track program to rush vaccines onto the market in time for the Autumn flu season is being done without even normal safety testing. Is there another agenda at work in the official WHO hysteria campaign to declare so-called H1N1 virus—which has yet to be rigorously scientifically isolated, characterized and photographed with an electron microscope—the scientifically accepted procedure—a global “pandemic” threat?

The current official panic campaign over alleged Swine Flu danger is rapidly taking on the dimensions of a George Orwell science fiction novel. The document signed by Sebelius grants immunity to those making a swine flu vaccine, under the provisions of a 2006 law for public health emergencies.

Not so sage SAGE

That is once the WHO in Geneva, on recommendation of the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group on Immunizations, declared H1N1 to be Phase 6 or Pandemic, automatic emergency health response programs could be activated even in countries such as Germany where reported outbreaks of even “suspected” H1N1 can be counted to date on the fingers of slightly more than one hand.  

The WHO’s SAGE is also worth scrutiny. Its Chairman since 2005 has been the UK Director of Immunization at the British Department of Health, Dr David Salisbury. In the 1980’s Salisbury reportedly drew major fire for backing a massive vaccination of children with a multiple MMR vaccine manufactured by the predecessor company of  GlaxoSmithKline. That vaccine was pulled off the market in Japan after significant numbers of children developed adverse reactions to the vaccine and the Japanese government was forced to pay significant compensation to the victims. In Sweden the MMR vaccine of GlaxoSmithKline was removed after scientists linked it to outbreaks of Crohn’s disease. Apparently that had little impact on WHO SAGE chairman Salisbury.

According to one independent UK investigator, Alan Golding, who obtained Freedom of Information documents on the case, in “1986 Trivirix, an MMR compound containing the Mumps Urabe strain AM-9, was introduced in Canada to replace MMR I. Concerns regarding the introduction of MMR in the UK are recorded in the minutes of the Joint Working Party of the British Paediatric Association and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) Liaison Group on June 26th of that year. Such concerns were soon to prove well grounded, as reports began to come in of an increased incidence of aseptic meningitis in vaccinated individuals. Ultimately, all MMR vaccines containing the Urabe strain of mumps were withdrawn in Canada in early 1988. This was before Urabe containing vaccines were licenced by the Department of Health for use in the UK…”

The report adds, “Smith-Kline—French, the pharmaceutical company who became Smith-Kline-Beecham and were involved in UK manufacture at that time, were concerned about these safety issues and were reluctant to obtain a UK license for their Urabe-containing vaccines. As a result of their ‘concern’ that children might be seriously damaged by one of their products, they requested that the UK government indemnify them against possible legal action that might be taken as a result of ‘losses’ associated with the vaccine, which by then was known to carry significant risk to health. The UK government, advised by Professor Salisbury and representatives from the Department of Health, in it’s enthusiasm to get a cheap MMR onto the market, agreed to this request.”

Today the same Dr Salisbury is advocating global proliferation of untested H1N1 vaccines, also manufactured by the same firm, now called GlaxoSmithKline.

The last phoney Swine Flu Disaster

The last time the US Government faced a new swine flu virus was in 1976. Thousands filed claims contending they suffered side effects from the shots. This time, the government has taken steps to prevent any possible legal remedy should thousands of US citizens suffer severe complications as a result of being given untested vaccines.

In 1976 President Gerald Ford, facing a difficult re-election campaign, was advised by the head of the CDC, David Sencer, to launch a mass national vaccination. As today with H1N1 Swine Flu, Sencer also used the scare of the alleged 1918 flu pandemic. Notably, some scientific researchers maintain that the deaths during the flu wave of 1918-1919, in the aftermath of the ghastly First World War, came not from any virus but from the governmental campaigns of mass vaccination against “Spanish Flu.” Interestingly, the Rockefeller University and Foundation was in the middle of that event as well.

Cases of what was then called swine flu were found in soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. in 1976, including one death. That death, whose true cause is in dispute as the soldier, sick with influenza was put on a forced march despite and fell dead, was used by Sencer to convince Ford to launch one of the most infamous public health fiascos in US history, forcing Sencer’s resignation  as CDC head. Federal officials vaccinated 40 million Americans during a national campaign. A pandemic never materialized, but thousands who got the shots filed injury claims, as they contracted a paralyzing condition called Guillain-Barre Syndrome or other side effects. At least 25 people died after receiving the vaccine died and 500 developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, an inflammation of the nervous system which can cause paralysis and be fatal. The US Government was forced to pay damages after vaccination victims made it a national scandal. In the end the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine proved far worse than the disease.

Sencer was fired in 1977 for the fiasco but by then the damage had already been done.

No Safety Test? Don’t worry, be happy…

The story gets worse. Now that the Obama Administration has signed a document of immunity from legal prosecution, the FDA in the United States and UK health authorities have decided to let Big Pharma put vaccine products onto the market before any tests of the possible harmful side effects of the vaccines are even known.

The first doses of swine flu vaccine will be given to the public before full data on its safety and effectiveness become available. The untested “pandemic” vaccines will be spread over two doses in a higher quantity, and one brand reportedly will contain a chemical additive, an adjuvant, to make it “go further,” dramatically potentially increasing the risk of side-effects.

Children will be among those first in line for the shots and  may get the vaccine more than a month before trial results are received.

In the UK the government’s National Health Service, NHS, has been ordered to plan for a worst-case scenario in which swine flu might cause 65,000 deaths over the coming winter, including several thousand deaths among children.

The British Government has placed advance orders for 132 million doses of vaccine with two manufacturers, GlaxoSmithKline and Baxter, who have licensed “in advance” three “core” vaccines in preparation for a pandemic, conveniently enough even though we are told by WHO and epidemiologists that we cannot prepare in advance for what could be a more ominous mutation of the currently very mild H1N1 problem.

Curiously enough, a full year before any reported case of the current alleged H1N1, the major pharmaceutical company, Baxter, filed for a patent for H1N1 vaccine: Baxter Vaccine Patent Application US 2009/0060950 A1. Their application states, “the composition or vaccine comprises more than one antigen…..such as influenza A and influenza B in particular selected from of one or more of the human H1N1, H2N2, H3N2, H5N1, H7N7, H1N2, H9N2, H7N2, H7N3, H10N7 subtypes, of the pig flu H1N1, H1N2, H3N1 and H3N2 subtypes, of the dog or horse flu H7N7, H3N8 subtypes or of the avian H5N1, H7N2, H1N7, H7N3, H13N6, H5N9, H11N6, H3N8, H9N2, H5N2, H4N8, H10N7, H2N2, H8N4, H14N5, H6N5, H12N5 subtypes.”

The application further states, “Suitable adjuvants can be selected from mineral gels, aluminium hydroxide, surface active substances, lysolecithin, pluronic polyols, polyanions or oil emulsions such as water in oil or oil in water, or a combination thereof. Of course the selection of the adjuvant depends on the intended use. E.g. toxicity may depend on the destined subject organism and can vary from no toxicity to high toxicity.”

With no legal liability, could it be that Baxter is preparing to sell hundreds of millions of doses containing highly toxic aluminium hydroxide as adjuvant? Perhaps it is time to demand that all leading officials of WHO, SAGE and CDC, the US Obama Administration, Cabinet officials and members of Congress who voted the $7 billion H1N1 emergency funds and who have gone along with the declaration of pharmaceutical company immunity from subsequent prosecution for damage from their products. The same should apply as well for other national health bodies demanding its citizens take the H1N1 vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline or Baxter to see if it is really safe.

And WHO stopped even tracking H1N1

Another indication that the world is being taken for colossal suckers in the entire WHO Swine Flu scare scenario, the WHO itself, the world body entrusted to monitor outbreaks of so-called pandemics or even epidemics worldwide, has just decided to stop tracking Swine Flu or H1N1 Influenza A as they prefer to name it now, so as not to offend Smithfield Foods and other industrialized pig CAFO producers.

The World Health Organization in a “briefing note” posted on their Web site posted the baffling notice that they would no longer track outbreaks of H1N1. The last WHO update, issued July 6, showed 94,512 confirmed cases in 122 countries, with 429 deaths. The WHO apparently claims that the numbers of laboratory-confirmed cases were actually meaningless.

The briefing note said countries would still be asked to report their first few confirmed cases. It also said countries should watch for clusters of fatalities, which could indicate the virus had mutated to a more lethal form. Other “signals to be vigilant for,” it said, were spikes in school absenteeism and surges in hospital visits. The Atlanta CDC has also agreed to the WHO count drop. Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, admits that the existing tests to confirm H1N1 Influenza A are not even certain, but rather hit-or-miss. “Bad measures can be worse than no measures at all,” he stated. So the WHO has decided to drop tests that anyway did not give a scientific picture of who had H1N1 or not, and as well they have decided to drop counting any test results or cases of H1n1 around the world with the comment that “we can assume almost all cases are H1N1 Swine Flu. This is science on which basis we are told to vaccinate our young? Whoah there…Not with our children. 

F. William Engdahl author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order.

In a blow to defense contracting giant, CACI International Inc., U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee ruled on March 18 that a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of torture victims held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq can proceed.

Denying CACI’s motion to dismiss the former prisoners’ claims, which allege multiple violations of U.S. law, including torture, war crimes and conspiracy, Judge Lee ruled that “[t]he fact that CACI’s business involves conducting interrogations on the government’s behalf is incidental; courts can and do entertain civil suits against government contractors for the manner in which they carry out government business. CACI conveniently ignores the long line of cases where private plaintiffs were allowed to bring tort actions for wartime injuries.” According to CCR:

The Court also rejected CACI’s effort to shield itself from accountability by invoking the political question doctrine. The Court found “the policy is clear: what happened at Abu Ghraib was wrong.” The Court reasoned “While it is true that the events at Abu Ghraib pose an embarrassment to this country, it is the misconduct alleged and not the litigation surrounding that misconduct that creates the embarrassment. This Court finds that the only potential for embarrassment would be if the Court declined to hear these claims on political questions grounds. Consequently, the Court holds that Plaintiffs’ claims pose no political question and are therefore justiciable.” (“Court Rules Abu Ghraib Torture Victims Can Sue Contractor CACI, According to Legal Team for Former Detainees,” Center for Constitutional Rights, Press Release, March 19, 2009)

According to CCR, CACI employees “not only participated in physical and mental abuse of the detainees, but also destroyed documents, videos and photographs; prevented the reporting of the torture and abuse to the International Committee of the Red Cross; hid detainees and other prisoners from the International Committee of the Red Cross; and misled non-conspiring military and government officials about the state of affairs at the Iraq prisons.”

Filed in January 2008 under the Alien Tort Statute, the suit originally included defense contracting giant L-3 Services (the former Titan Corporation) but were “dismissed without prejudice” last year. This means the plaintiff would be allowed to bring a new suit on the same claim.

While CACI believes “it is improper for the courts to allow lawsuits against either the government or contractors by aliens detained as enemies during wartime,” Washington Technology reported, the court shot down their argument.

The insider tech publication averred, “CACI sought immunity against the lawsuits and claimed that the actions of its contract interrogators at Abu Ghraib were beyond judicial review. But court martial and other testimony of the soldiers convicted of abuse linked CACI personnel to the abuse.”

The giant defense firm claimed in a 2008 book, “Our Good Name,” that after five years of numerous investigations no CACI employee or former employee has been charged with misconduct in connection with CACI’s interrogation work.

True enough as far as it goes, the Bush gang sought to cover their tracks by crafting a legal smokescreen meant to conceal state policies that can only be described as torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, indeed on a planetary scale, and engaged in a systematic cover-up meant to shield high administration officials from the consequences.

Despite a pledge to be a “change administration,” the Obama national security team has reprised many of the same policies of their predecessors. While the administration has issued orders requiring strict adherence to antitorture statutes, vowed to close the Guantánamo Bay Detention facility, has dropped the term “enemy combatant” from its lexicon and is considering to kick the phrase “global war on terror” to the curb, the substance of their policies retain many features of the previous regime in Washington.

Although a picture of systematic torture of “enemy combatants” has been slowly pried from the state, the ACLU revealed March 20, that the CIA “has a list of roughly 3,000 summaries, transcripts, reconstructions and memoranda relating to 92 interrogation videotapes that were destroyed by the agency. The CIA refused, however, to disclose the list to the public. The agency also refused to publicly disclose a list of witnesses who may have viewed the videotapes or retained custody of the videotapes before their destruction.”

The Agency disclosed earlier this month that it had destroyed 92 tapes of interrogations, allegedly depicting CIA officers subjecting suspects to extremely harsh interrogations methods. The Obama administration has backed the CIA stonewall. Will they now do the same for a well-connected corporation?

Between August 2003 through 2005, CACI provided up to 28 interrogators to the the U.S. military in Iraq. According to The Washington Post, CACI’s 2003 Iraq interrogation contract “was awarded in 1998, with the stated purpose of providing inventory control and other routine services to the U.S. Army.”

Yet in a slight of hand meant to conceal the byzantine nature of that contract, the outsourced agreement between CACI and the Army was administered by the Interior Department! One order issued in August 2003 was worth $19.9 million dollars for interrogation support. In December 2003, CACI landed a $21.8 million order for Army “counter intelligence missions at secure and fixed locations,” according to the Post.

One of those “secure and fixed locations” was the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Responding to the Court decision, CACI claims that the lawsuit is “without merit and designed to pursue a political agenda.”

How upholding the rule of law and the right of injured parties to seek justice in an American court “is based upon an undefined ‘conspiracy’ involving the Department of Defense and the military,” certainly begs the question. While dismissing the Court’s reasoning, the corporate news release states:

CACI is a strong and vital partner to the U.S. government in combating terrorist attacks and saving American lives. CACI’s technological advances and skilled workforce have played a key role in thwarting terrorism and defending our homeland. The men and women of this company make sacrifices every day to ensure Americans can go about their daily lives without having to worry about the next suicide bomber or aircraft attack on American soil. And they will continue to make these sacrifices for the good of their fellow Americans. (“CACI Responds to Court’s Decision in Iraq Lawsuit,” CACI International Inc., News Release, March 23, 2009)

One might reasonably inquire: how does the application of insidious torture techniques culled from the CIA’s infamous KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual or the Pentagon’s Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual-1983 compendium, or reverse-engineered Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) tactics “save American lives.”

Multiple reports by investigative journalists and human rights’ advocates have revealed these were precisely the methods employed at Abu Ghraib by CIA, military interrogators and outsourced contractors on detainees, many of whom had been brutalized over a period of years.

According to CCR’s synopsis of the case, Al Shimari v. CACI et al.: “Among the heinous acts to which the four Plaintiffs were subjected at the hands of the defendant and certain government co-conspirators were: electric shocks; repeated brutal beatings; sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; forced nudity; stress positions; sexual assault; mock executions; humiliation; hooding; isolated detention; and prolonged hanging from the limbs.”

Rather than the sadistic acts of “rogue elements” or a few “bad apples,” the systematic application of sensory deprivation techniques and other horrific methods designed to psychologically break down prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere are practices that evolved from the CIA’s torture playbook.

The more completely the place of confinement eliminates sensory stimuli, the more rapidly and deeply will the interrogatee be affected. Results produced only after weeks or months of imprisonment in an ordinary cell can be duplicated in hours or days in a cell which has no light (or weak artificial light which never varies), which is sound-proofed, in which odors are eliminated, etc. An environment still more subject to control, such as water-tank or iron lung, is even more effective. (Central Intelligence Agency, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrorgation, July 1963, p. 90)

The use of stress positions by interrogators to elicit compliance by “resistant subjects” was another technique employed at Abu Ghraib and across the planetary nexus of CIA “black sites.” In A Question of Torture, historian Alfred W. McCoy describes the phenomenon as “self-inflicted pain.” KUBARK theoreticians aver:

It has been plausibly suggested that, whereas pain inflicted on a person from outside himself may actually focus or intensify his will to resist, his resistance is likelier to be sapped by pain which he seems to inflict upon himself. “In the simple torture situation the contest is one between the individual and his tormentor (…. and he can frequently endure). When the individual is told to stand at attention for long periods, an intervening factor is introduced. The immediate source of pain is not the interrogator but the victim himself. The motivational strength of the individual is likely to exhaust itself in this internal encounter…. As long as the subject remains standing, he is attributing to his captor the power to do something worse to him, but there is actually no showdown of the ability of the interrogator to do so.” (KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation, p. 94)

In other words, though completely at the tender mercies of his or her captors it is the detainee and not the interrogator, who is responsible for inflicting pain and suffering. As McCoy points out, “Synthesizing the behavioral research done by contract academics, the manual spelled out a revolutionary two-phase form of torture that relied on sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain for an effect that, for the first time in the two millennia of this cruel science, was more psychological than physical.”

While CACI may protest that “none of the four Iraqi plaintiffs alleges any interaction with anyone affiliated with CACI,” on the contrary, CCR’s case summary states that,

All of the plaintiffs are innocent Iraqis who were ultimately released without ever being charged with a crime. They all continue to suffer from physical and mental injuries caused by the torture and other abuse. Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari was detained from 2003 until 2008, during which he was held at Abu Ghraib “hard site” for about two months. While he was there, CACI and its co-conspirators tortured him in various ways. He was subjected to electric shocks, deprived of food, threatened by dogs, and kept naked while forced to engage in physical activities to the point of exhaustion. Taha Yaseen Arraq Rashid was detained from 2003 until 2005, during which he was imprisoned at Abu Ghraib “hard site” for about three months. While detained there, CACI and its co-conspirators tortured Mr. Rashid by placing him in stress positions for extended periods of time, humiliating him, depriving him of oxygen, food, and water, shooting him in the head with a taser gun, and by beating him so severely that he suffered from broken limbs and vision loss. Mr. Rashid was forcibly subjected to sexual acts by a female as he was cuffed and shackled to cell bars. He was also forced to witness the rape of a female prisoner. Sa’ad Hamza Hantoosh Al-Zuba’e was imprisoned at Abu Ghraib from 2003 until 2004. CACI and its co-conspirators tortured him while he was detained there by subjecting him to extremely hot and cold water, beating his genitals with a stick, and detaining him in a solitary cell in conditions of sensory deprivation for almost a full year. Salah Hasan Nusaif Jasim Al-Ejaili was imprisoned at the Abu Ghraib “hard site” for approximately four months. While he was there, CACI and its co-conspirators stripped him and kept him naked, threatened him with dogs, deprived him of food, beat him, and kept him in a solitary cell in conditions of sensory deprivation. (Al Shimari v. CACI et al., Center for Constitutional Rights, updated March 19, 2009)

The veracity of CACI’s rejection of the charges were undercut by investigative journalist Mark Benjamin in 2006. Among the infamous torture photographs released by Salon, one shows CACI interrogator Daniel Johnson placing an Iraqi prisoner in an “unauthorized stress position.” Etaf Mheisen, a civilian translator with Titan Corp., was assisting Johnson during the interrogation. Army investigators concluded that there was “probable cause” that a crime had been committed, according to Salon. Corporal Charles Graner, convicted and imprisoned for his role in the scandal told Army investigators,

…that Johnson told him to inflict pain by squeezing pressure points on the same prisoner’s face and body and that he “roughed up” the prisoner at Johnson’s instigation. Frederick told the investigators that Johnson twice personally interfered with the prisoner’s breathing and that he copied him: “I would put my hand over his mouth and pinch his nose,” so the prisoner could not breathe. (Mark Benjamin, “No Justice for All,” Salon, April 14, 2006)

Despite these serious charges, CACI continues to be showered with multi-million dollar contracts by the federal government. Democracy Now! reported in 2008 that the corporation received a $60 million dollar contract “to provide technical assistance” to the U.S. Army and a five-year $12.5 million award to provide “management support” to the Department of Justice.

Washington Technology revealed that the firm earned some $1,105,765,855 from defense-related contracts across a wide array of federal agencies. The Arlington, VA firm derived only $231,706,298 in civilian revenue. CorpWatch’s Collaborative Research on Corporations (Crocodyl) reports:

CACI, founded in the early 1960s as California Analysis Center Inc., is almost entirely a Beltway Bandit–some 94 percent of its revenue is derived from contracts with the U.S. government. About two-thirds of that revenue comes from the Pentagon, but CACI also enjoys the patronage of the Departments of Homeland Security, State, Commerce, Justice and Transportation. At the end of its last fiscal year, CACI had a contract backlog worth some $6.4 billion. (Phil Mattera, “Company Profile: CACI International Inc.,” Crocodyl, September 14, 2008)

As retired U.S. Army Major General Antonio Taguba, forced out of the Army after uncovering widespread prisoner abuse in Iraq wrote in Broken Laws, Broken Lives,

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Whether the torture enablers were high government officials or corporations who have profited handsomely from America’s oxymoronic “war on terror,” it is a matter of justice and human decency that those who designed or perpetrated these criminal acts be brought to book.

In a blow to defense contracting giant, CACI International Inc., U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee ruled on March 18 that a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of torture victims held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq can proceed.

Denying CACI’s motion to dismiss the former prisoners’ claims, which allege multiple violations of U.S. law, including torture, war crimes and conspiracy, Judge Lee ruled that “[t]he fact that CACI’s business involves conducting interrogations on the government’s behalf is incidental; courts can and do entertain civil suits against government contractors for the manner in which they carry out government business. CACI conveniently ignores the long line of cases where private plaintiffs were allowed to bring tort actions for wartime injuries.” According to CCR:

The Court also rejected CACI’s effort to shield itself from accountability by invoking the political question doctrine. The Court found “the policy is clear: what happened at Abu Ghraib was wrong.” The Court reasoned “While it is true that the events at Abu Ghraib pose an embarrassment to this country, it is the misconduct alleged and not the litigation surrounding that misconduct that creates the embarrassment. This Court finds that the only potential for embarrassment would be if the Court declined to hear these claims on political questions grounds. Consequently, the Court holds that Plaintiffs’ claims pose no political question and are therefore justiciable.” (“Court Rules Abu Ghraib Torture Victims Can Sue Contractor CACI, According to Legal Team for Former Detainees,” Center for Constitutional Rights, Press Release, March 19, 2009)

According to CCR, CACI employees “not only participated in physical and mental abuse of the detainees, but also destroyed documents, videos and photographs; prevented the reporting of the torture and abuse to the International Committee of the Red Cross; hid detainees and other prisoners from the International Committee of the Red Cross; and misled non-conspiring military and government officials about the state of affairs at the Iraq prisons.”

Filed in January 2008 under the Alien Tort Statute, the suit originally included defense contracting giant L-3 Services (the former Titan Corporation) but were “dismissed without prejudice” last year. This means the plaintiff would be allowed to bring a new suit on the same claim.

While CACI believes “it is improper for the courts to allow lawsuits against either the government or contractors by aliens detained as enemies during wartime,” Washington Technology reported, the court shot down their argument.

The insider tech publication averred, “CACI sought immunity against the lawsuits and claimed that the actions of its contract interrogators at Abu Ghraib were beyond judicial review. But court martial and other testimony of the soldiers convicted of abuse linked CACI personnel to the abuse.”

The giant defense firm claimed in a 2008 book, “Our Good Name,” that after five years of numerous investigations no CACI employee or former employee has been charged with misconduct in connection with CACI’s interrogation work.

True enough as far as it goes, the Bush gang sought to cover their tracks by crafting a legal smokescreen meant to conceal state policies that can only be described as torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, indeed on a planetary scale, and engaged in a systematic cover-up meant to shield high administration officials from the consequences.

Despite a pledge to be a “change administration,” the Obama national security team has reprised many of the same policies of their predecessors. While the administration has issued orders requiring strict adherence to antitorture statutes, vowed to close the Guantánamo Bay Detention facility, has dropped the term “enemy combatant” from its lexicon and is considering to kick the phrase “global war on terror” to the curb, the substance of their policies retain many features of the previous regime in Washington.

Although a picture of systematic torture of “enemy combatants” has been slowly pried from the state, the ACLU revealed March 20, that the CIA “has a list of roughly 3,000 summaries, transcripts, reconstructions and memoranda relating to 92 interrogation videotapes that were destroyed by the agency. The CIA refused, however, to disclose the list to the public. The agency also refused to publicly disclose a list of witnesses who may have viewed the videotapes or retained custody of the videotapes before their destruction.”

The Agency disclosed earlier this month that it had destroyed 92 tapes of interrogations, allegedly depicting CIA officers subjecting suspects to extremely harsh interrogations methods. The Obama administration has backed the CIA stonewall. Will they now do the same for a well-connected corporation?

Between August 2003 through 2005, CACI provided up to 28 interrogators to the the U.S. military in Iraq. According to The Washington Post, CACI’s 2003 Iraq interrogation contract “was awarded in 1998, with the stated purpose of providing inventory control and other routine services to the U.S. Army.”

Yet in a slight of hand meant to conceal the byzantine nature of that contract, the outsourced agreement between CACI and the Army was administered by the Interior Department! One order issued in August 2003 was worth $19.9 million dollars for interrogation support. In December 2003, CACI landed a $21.8 million order for Army “counter intelligence missions at secure and fixed locations,” according to the Post.

One of those “secure and fixed locations” was the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Responding to the Court decision, CACI claims that the lawsuit is “without merit and designed to pursue a political agenda.”

How upholding the rule of law and the right of injured parties to seek justice in an American court “is based upon an undefined ‘conspiracy’ involving the Department of Defense and the military,” certainly begs the question. While dismissing the Court’s reasoning, the corporate news release states:

CACI is a strong and vital partner to the U.S. government in combating terrorist attacks and saving American lives. CACI’s technological advances and skilled workforce have played a key role in thwarting terrorism and defending our homeland. The men and women of this company make sacrifices every day to ensure Americans can go about their daily lives without having to worry about the next suicide bomber or aircraft attack on American soil. And they will continue to make these sacrifices for the good of their fellow Americans. (“CACI Responds to Court’s Decision in Iraq Lawsuit,” CACI International Inc., News Release, March 23, 2009)

One might reasonably inquire: how does the application of insidious torture techniques culled from the CIA’s infamous KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual or the Pentagon’s Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual-1983 compendium, or reverse-engineered Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) tactics “save American lives.”

Multiple reports by investigative journalists and human rights’ advocates have revealed these were precisely the methods employed at Abu Ghraib by CIA, military interrogators and outsourced contractors on detainees, many of whom had been brutalized over a period of years.

According to CCR’s synopsis of the case, Al Shimari v. CACI et al.: “Among the heinous acts to which the four Plaintiffs were subjected at the hands of the defendant and certain government co-conspirators were: electric shocks; repeated brutal beatings; sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; forced nudity; stress positions; sexual assault; mock executions; humiliation; hooding; isolated detention; and prolonged hanging from the limbs.”

Rather than the sadistic acts of “rogue elements” or a few “bad apples,” the systematic application of sensory deprivation techniques and other horrific methods designed to psychologically break down prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere are practices that evolved from the CIA’s torture playbook.

The more completely the place of confinement eliminates sensory stimuli, the more rapidly and deeply will the interrogatee be affected. Results produced only after weeks or months of imprisonment in an ordinary cell can be duplicated in hours or days in a cell which has no light (or weak artificial light which never varies), which is sound-proofed, in which odors are eliminated, etc. An environment still more subject to control, such as water-tank or iron lung, is even more effective. (Central Intelligence Agency, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrorgation, July 1963, p. 90)

The use of stress positions by interrogators to elicit compliance by “resistant subjects” was another technique employed at Abu Ghraib and across the planetary nexus of CIA “black sites.” In A Question of Torture, historian Alfred W. McCoy describes the phenomenon as “self-inflicted pain.” KUBARK theoreticians aver:

It has been plausibly suggested that, whereas pain inflicted on a person from outside himself may actually focus or intensify his will to resist, his resistance is likelier to be sapped by pain which he seems to inflict upon himself. “In the simple torture situation the contest is one between the individual and his tormentor (…. and he can frequently endure). When the individual is told to stand at attention for long periods, an intervening factor is introduced. The immediate source of pain is not the interrogator but the victim himself. The motivational strength of the individual is likely to exhaust itself in this internal encounter…. As long as the subject remains standing, he is attributing to his captor the power to do something worse to him, but there is actually no showdown of the ability of the interrogator to do so.” (KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation, p. 94)

In other words, though completely at the tender mercies of his or her captors it is the detainee and not the interrogator, who is responsible for inflicting pain and suffering. As McCoy points out, “Synthesizing the behavioral research done by contract academics, the manual spelled out a revolutionary two-phase form of torture that relied on sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain for an effect that, for the first time in the two millennia of this cruel science, was more psychological than physical.”

While CACI may protest that “none of the four Iraqi plaintiffs alleges any interaction with anyone affiliated with CACI,” on the contrary, CCR’s case summary states that,

All of the plaintiffs are innocent Iraqis who were ultimately released without ever being charged with a crime. They all continue to suffer from physical and mental injuries caused by the torture and other abuse. Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari was detained from 2003 until 2008, during which he was held at Abu Ghraib “hard site” for about two months. While he was there, CACI and its co-conspirators tortured him in various ways. He was subjected to electric shocks, deprived of food, threatened by dogs, and kept naked while forced to engage in physical activities to the point of exhaustion. Taha Yaseen Arraq Rashid was detained from 2003 until 2005, during which he was imprisoned at Abu Ghraib “hard site” for about three months. While detained there, CACI and its co-conspirators tortured Mr. Rashid by placing him in stress positions for extended periods of time, humiliating him, depriving him of oxygen, food, and water, shooting him in the head with a taser gun, and by beating him so severely that he suffered from broken limbs and vision loss. Mr. Rashid was forcibly subjected to sexual acts by a female as he was cuffed and shackled to cell bars. He was also forced to witness the rape of a female prisoner. Sa’ad Hamza Hantoosh Al-Zuba’e was imprisoned at Abu Ghraib from 2003 until 2004. CACI and its co-conspirators tortured him while he was detained there by subjecting him to extremely hot and cold water, beating his genitals with a stick, and detaining him in a solitary cell in conditions of sensory deprivation for almost a full year. Salah Hasan Nusaif Jasim Al-Ejaili was imprisoned at the Abu Ghraib “hard site” for approximately four months. While he was there, CACI and its co-conspirators stripped him and kept him naked, threatened him with dogs, deprived him of food, beat him, and kept him in a solitary cell in conditions of sensory deprivation. (Al Shimari v. CACI et al., Center for Constitutional Rights, updated March 19, 2009)

The veracity of CACI’s rejection of the charges were undercut by investigative journalist Mark Benjamin in 2006. Among the infamous torture photographs released by Salon, one shows CACI interrogator Daniel Johnson placing an Iraqi prisoner in an “unauthorized stress position.” Etaf Mheisen, a civilian translator with Titan Corp., was assisting Johnson during the interrogation. Army investigators concluded that there was “probable cause” that a crime had been committed, according to Salon. Corporal Charles Graner, convicted and imprisoned for his role in the scandal told Army investigators,

…that Johnson told him to inflict pain by squeezing pressure points on the same prisoner’s face and body and that he “roughed up” the prisoner at Johnson’s instigation. Frederick told the investigators that Johnson twice personally interfered with the prisoner’s breathing and that he copied him: “I would put my hand over his mouth and pinch his nose,” so the prisoner could not breathe. (Mark Benjamin, “No Justice for All,” Salon, April 14, 2006)

Despite these serious charges, CACI continues to be showered with multi-million dollar contracts by the federal government. Democracy Now! reported in 2008 that the corporation received a $60 million dollar contract “to provide technical assistance” to the U.S. Army and a five-year $12.5 million award to provide “management support” to the Department of Justice.

Washington Technology revealed that the firm earned some $1,105,765,855 from defense-related contracts across a wide array of federal agencies. The Arlington, VA firm derived only $231,706,298 in civilian revenue. CorpWatch’s Collaborative Research on Corporations (Crocodyl) reports:

CACI, founded in the early 1960s as California Analysis Center Inc., is almost entirely a Beltway Bandit–some 94 percent of its revenue is derived from contracts with the U.S. government. About two-thirds of that revenue comes from the Pentagon, but CACI also enjoys the patronage of the Departments of Homeland Security, State, Commerce, Justice and Transportation. At the end of its last fiscal year, CACI had a contract backlog worth some $6.4 billion. (Phil Mattera, “Company Profile: CACI International Inc.,” Crocodyl, September 14, 2008)

As retired U.S. Army Major General Antonio Taguba, forced out of the Army after uncovering widespread prisoner abuse in Iraq wrote in Broken Laws, Broken Lives,

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Whether the torture enablers were high government officials or corporations who have profited handsomely from America’s oxymoronic “war on terror,” it is a matter of justice and human decency that those who designed or perpetrated these criminal acts be brought to book.

Dans la nuit du 7 août, coïncidant avec la cérémonie d’ouverture des jeux olympiques de Beijing, le Président de Géorgie, Saakashvili, ordonnait d’attaquer militairement tous azimuts la capitale de l’Ossétie du Sud, Tskhinvali.

Les bombardements aériens et les attaques au sol visaient surtout des cibles civiles, notamment des zones résidentielles, des hôpitaux et l’université. La capitale provinciale de Tskhinvali a été détruite. Selon des sources russes et occidentales, environ 1.500 victimes civiles ont résulté des attaques. « Les bombardements aériens et l’artillerie ont laissé la capitale provinciale sans eau, nourriture, électricité et gaz. Les civils horrifiés se sont glissés hors des sous-sols dans les rues pendant que le combat se calmait, pour rechercher des provisions. » (AP, 9 août 2008). Selon les informations reçues, environ 34.000 civils d’Ossétie du Sud se sont enfuis vers la Russie. (Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake City, 10 août 10 2008)

L’importance et le timing de cette opération militaire doivent être soigneusement analysés. Ils ont des implications de grande envergure.

La Géorgie est un avant-poste des États-Unis et des forces de l’OTAN, aux frontières immédiates de la Fédération Russe et à proximité du théâtre de guerre du Moyen-Orient, en Asie Centrale. L’Ossétie du Sud est aussi au carrefour stratégique de l’itinéraire des pipelines pétrolier et gazier.

La Géorgie n’agit pas militairement sans l’assentiment de Washington. Le chef de l’État géorgien est un mandataire étasunien et la Géorgie est de fait un protectorat des États-Unis.

Qui est à l’origine de cet ordre du jour militaire ? Quels intérêts sert-il ? Quel est l’objectif de cette opération militaire ?

Il est évident que les attaques ont été soigneusement coordonnées par l’armée étasunienne et l’OTAN.

Moscou a accusé l’OTAN d’« encourager la Géorgie. » Le Ministre russe des Affaires Étrangères, Sergueï Lavrov, a souligné l’impact déstabilisateur de l’aide militaire « étrangère » à la Géorgie :

«Tout confirme nos nombreuses mises en garde adressées à la communauté internationale sur la nécessité de prêter attention à l’achat massif d’armes de la Géorgie durant plusieurs années. Maintenant, nous voyons comment sont utilisées ces armes et les troupes spéciales géorgiennes, formées par des spécialistes étrangers » a-t-il déclaré. (Moscou accuse l’OTAN d’avoir « encouragé la Géorgie » à attaquer l’Ossétie du Sud, Russia Today, 9 août 2008.)

Dmitri Rogozine, l’émissaire de Moscou à l’OTAN, a envoyé une note officielle aux représentants de tous les pays membres de l’OTAN :

«La Russie a déjà entamé des consultations avec les ambassadeurs des pays de l’OTAN et les délibérations avec les représentants militaires de l’OTAN seront tenues demain. Nous les dissuaderons de continuer à apporter de l’aide supplémentaire à Saakachvili.»

C’est une agression non dissimulée, accompagnée d’une guerre de propagande de masse.

(Voir Moscou accuse l’OTAN d’avoir « encouragé la Géorgie » à attaquer l’Ossétie du Sud, Russia Today, 9 août 2008)   

Selon Rogozine, la Géorgie avait initialement prévu de :

« Commencer une action militaire contre l’Abkhazie. Toutefois, « la région fortifiée abkhaze s’étant avérée imprenable par les formations armées géorgiennes, une autre tactique a donc été choisie, dirigée contre l’Ossétie du Sud » qui est plus accessible territorialement. L’émissaire n’a aucun doute sur le fait que Mikheil Saakashvili a convenu de ses actions avec les « parrains », « ceux avec qui il négocie l’adhésion de la Géorgie à l’OTAN. » (RIA Novosti, 8 août 2008)

Contrairement à ce qui a été transmis par les rapports médiatiques occidentaux, Moscou s’attendait aux attaques. Il était prévu qu’elles coïncident avec l’ouverture des jeux olympiques, surtout pour éviter la couverture médiatique en première page de l’opération militaire géorgienne.

Le 7 août, les forces russes étaient en état de préparation avancée. La contre-attaque a été rapidement menée.

Les parachutistes russes ont été envoyés de Russie, d’’Ivanovo, de Moscou et des divisions aéroportées de Pskov. Des tanks, des véhicules blindés et plusieurs milliers de fantassins se sont déployés. Les frappes aériennes russes ont surtout ciblé les installations militaires de Géorgie, notamment la base militaire de Gori.

L’attaque militaire géorgienne a été brisée par la grande démonstration de force des militaires russes.

Cette image de la télévision montre les véhicules militaires russes se déplaçant vers la capitale de l’Ossétie du Sud, Tskhinvali, le vendredi 8 août 2008. (AP/APTN)

Acte de provocation ?

Les militaires et les planificateurs du renseignement étasunien et de l’OTAN examinent invariablement divers « scénarios » pour proposer une opération militaire, c’est-à-dire, dans ce cas, une attaque géorgienne largement dirigée contre des cibles civiles, en vue d’occasionner des victimes civiles.

L’examen de scénarios est une pratique courante. Avec ses capacités militaires limitées, la victoire géorgienne et l’occupation de Tskhinvali étaient une impossibilité dès le départ. Et c’était connu et compris des planificateurs militaires étasuniens et de l’OTAN.

Une catastrophe humanitaire plutôt qu’une victoire militaire faisait partie intégrante du scénario. L’objectif était de détruire la capitale provinciale, tout en infligeant d’importantes pertes en vies humaines.

Si l’objectif était de rétablir le contrôle politique géorgien sur le gouvernement provincial, l’opération aurait été mise en œuvre selon une modalité très différente, avec des forces spéciales occupant les principaux bâtiments publics, les réseaux de communication et les institutions provinciales, plutôt que par un raid de bombardement tous azimuts sur les quartiers résidentiels, les hôpitaux, sans oublier l’université de Tskhinvali.

L’Université de Tskhinvali avant le bombardement

La réponse russe était tout à fait prévisible.

La Géorgie a été « encouragée » par l’OTAN et les États-Unis. Washington et le siège de l’OTAN à Bruxelles étaient tous deux extrêmement conscients de ce qui se passerait en cas de contre-attaque russe.

La question est : est-ce une provocation délibérée destinée à déclencher la réponse militaire des Russes, pour les aspirer dans une confrontation militaire élargie avec la Géorgie (et les forces alliées), qui pourrait dégénérer en guerre ?

La Géorgie a le troisième plus grand contingent dans les forces de la coalition en Irak, après les États-Unis et le Royaume-Uni, avec environ 2.000 hommes. Selon les informations reçues, les troupes géorgiennes en Irak sont en train d’être rapatriés sur des avions militaires étasuniens, pour combattre les forces russes. (Voir Debka.com, 10 août 2008.) 

Cette décision étasunienne, de rapatrier les troupes géorgiennes, suggère que Washington a l’intention d’aggraver le conflit, en se servant des troupes géorgiennes comme de la chair à canon contre un énorme déploiement de forces russe.

Les États-Unis, Israël et l’OTAN sont mêlés à la planification des attaques

À la mi-juillet, les troupes étasuniennes et géorgiennes ont tenu un exercice militaire commun dénommé « réponse immédiate » impliquant respectivement 1.200 Étasuniens et 800 Géorgiens.

Le 12 juillet, une annonce du Ministère géorgien de la Défense déclarait que les troupes étasuniennes et géorgiennes « s’entraînent durant trois semaines sur la base militaire de Vaziani » près de la capitale géorgienne, Tbilissi. (AP, 15 juillet 2008)    Ces exercices, qui se sont achevés à peine une semaine avant l’attaque du 7 août, étaient la répétition générale évidente d’une opération militaire qui, selon toute probabilité, avaient été planifiée en étroite coopération avec le Pentagone.

La guerre contre l’Ossétie du Sud n’était pas censée être gagnée afin de restaurer la souveraineté géorgienne sur l’Ossétie du Sud. Elle est destinée à déstabiliser la région tout en déclenchant un affrontement des États-Unis et de l’OTAN contre la Russie.

Le 12 juillet, coïncidant avec le début des jeux de guerre de la Géorgie et des États-Unis, le Ministère russe de la Défense a démarré ses propres manœuvres militaires dans la région du Nord Caucase. Le démenti habituel à la fois de Tbilissi et de Moscou fut que : les exercices militaires n’ont « rien à voir » avec la situation en Ossétie du Sud. (Ibid)

Ne nous faisons pas d’illusions. Il ne s’agit pas d’une guerre civile. Les attaques font partie intégrante d’une guerre plus large au Moyen-Orient et en Asie Centrale, qui incluent les préparatifs de guerre des États-Unis, d’Israël et de l’OTAN vis-à-vis de l’Iran.

Rôle des conseillers militaires israéliens

Bien que l’OTAN et les conseillers militaires étasuniens n’aient pas participé à l’opération militaire elle-même, ils ont participé activement à la planification et la logistique des attaques. Selon des sources israéliennes (Debka.com, 8 août 2008),    l’attaque terrestre du 7 août 2008 avec des chars et de l’artillerie, a été « aidée par les conseillers militaires israéliens. » Israël a aussi fourni à la Géorgie des véhicules aériens sans pilote Hermes-450 et Skylark, qui ont été utilisés dans les semaines précédant les attaques du 7 août.

La Géorgie a également acquis, selon un rapport dans le journal Rezonansi (6 août, en géorgien, traduction de la BBC) « quelques armes puissantes grâce à l’amélioration d’avions Su-25 et de systèmes d’artillerie en Israël. » Selon Haaretz (10 août 2008), les Israéliens sont actifs dans la fabrication militaire et le conseil en sécurité en Géorgie.

Les forces russes combattent désormais directement contre l’armée géorgienne, entraînée par les États-Unis et l’OTAN, et associée à des conseillers israéliens. Et l’aviation de guerre russe a attaqué dans la banlieue de Tbilissi l’usine d’avions militaires qui fabrique la version améliorée du jet de combat Su-25, avec l’appui technique d’Israël. (CTV.ca, 10 août 2008)

Lorsqu’on la regarde dans le contexte plus large de la guerre au Moyen-Orient, la crise en Ossétie du Sud pourrait conduire à l’escalade, notamment à la confrontation directe entre les forces  russes et l’OTAN. Si cela devait se produire, nous serions face à la crise la plus grave dans les relations entre les États-Unis et la Russie depuis la crise des missiles de Cuba en octobre 1962.

La Géorgie, un poste avancé des États-Unis et de l’OTAN

La Géorgie appartient à une alliance militaire de l’OTAN (GUAM), depuis avril 1999, au tout début de la guerre contre la Yougoslavie. Elle a aussi un accord de coopération militaire bilatérale avec les États-Unis. Ces accords militaires sous-jacents ont servi à protéger les intérêts pétroliers anglo-américains dans le bassin de la Mer Caspienne ainsi que les itinéraires des pipelines. Les États-Unis et l’OTAN sont présents militairement en Géorgie, et travaillent en étroite collaboration avec les forces armées géorgiennes. Depuis la signature de l’accord GUAM en 1999, la Géorgie a bénéficié d’une considérable aide militaire étasunienne.

Il y a tout juste quelques mois, en mi-mai, le Ministère russe de la Défense a accusé Washington, « affirmant que l’assistance militaire à la Géorgie des États-Unis, ainsi que de l’OTAN et des israéliens, déstabilisait la région. » (La Russie affirme que la Géorgie développe son armement, Wired News, 19 mai 2008).  

Selon le Ministère russe de la Défense :

« La Géorgie a reçu 206 chars, dont 175 unités ont été fournies par les États de l’OTAN, 186 véhicules blindés (126 de l’OTAN), 79 canons (67 de l’OTAN), 25 hélicoptères (12 de l’OTAN), 70 mortiers, dix systèmes de missiles sol-air, 8 avions sans pilote de facture israélienne, et d’autres armes. En outre, les pays de l’OTAN ont fourni quatre avions de combat à la Géorgie. Le Ministère russe de la Défense a dit qu’il était prévu de fournir à la Géorgie 145 véhicules blindés, 262 canons et mortiers, 14 avions de combat dont quatre chasseurs Mirazh-2000, 25 hélicoptères de combat, 15 avions étasuniens Black Hawk, 6 systèmes de missiles sol-air et autres armes. » (Agence de presse Interfax, Moscou, 7 août 2008.)

L’assistance des États-Unis, de l’Otan et d’Israël, en vertu des accords de coopération militaire, implique un flux constant de matériel militaire perfectionné ainsi que de la formation et des services de conseil.

Selon des sources militaires étasuniennes (du porte-parole des États-Unis en Europe), les États-Unis ont plus de 100 «  instructeurs militaires » en Géorgie. Un porte-parole du Pentagone, Bryan Whitman, a déclaré « qu’il n’est pas envisagé de redéployer les quelque 130 soldats étasuniens et contractants civils, qui, dit-il, sont stationnés dans les environs de Tbilissi. » (AFP, 9 août 2008). En fait, la présence militaire des États-Unis et de l’OTAN en Géorgie est à plus grande échelle que ce qui est reconnu dans les déclarations officielles. L’effectif du personnel de l’OTAN, agissant en Géorgie en qualité de formateur et de conseiller militaire, n’a pas été confirmé.

Bien que n’étant pas officiellement membre de l’OTAN, l’armée de Géorgie est totalement intégrée dans les procédures de l’OTAN. En 2005, le Président géorgien annonçait fièrement l’inauguration de la première base militaire, qui « répond parfaitement aux normes de l’OTAN. » Immédiatement après l’inauguration de la base de Senakskaya à l’ouest de la Géorgie, Tbilissi a annoncé l’ouverture d’une deuxième base militaire à Gori, qui elle aussi « se conformera à la réglementation de l’OTAN aussi bien en termes de besoins militaires que de conditions sociales. » ( Ria Novosti, 26 mai 2006).

La base de Gori a servi à former les troupes géorgiennes envoyées pour combattre sous commandement étasunien sur le théâtre de la guerre en Irak.

Il est intéressant de noter que, dans le cadre d’un accord entre Tbilissi et Moscou le 31 mars 2006, les deux bases militaires russes de Géorgie datant de l’ère soviétique, Akhalkalaki et Batoumi, ont été fermées. (Ibid.) Le retrait a commencé à Batoumi en mai de l’année dernière, 2007. Les dernières troupes russes ont quitté l’installation militaire de Batoumi en début juillet 2008, à peine une semaine avant le début des manœuvres de la Géorgie et des États-Unis et à peine un mois avant les attaques contre l’Ossétie du Sud.

La connexion israélienne

Israël fait maintenant partie de l’axe militaire anglo-américain, qui sert les intérêts des géants pétroliers occidentaux au Moyen-Orient et en Asie Centrale.

Israël est partenaire dans l’oléoduc Bakou-Tbilissi-Ceyhan (BTC) qui amène du pétrole et du gaz à l’Est de la Méditerranée. Plus de 20 pour cent du pétrole des Israéliens est importé de l’Azerbaïdjan, une grande partie transitant par le pipeline BTC. Dirigé par la British Petroleum, le pipeline BTC a radicalement changé la géopolitique en Méditerranée orientale et au Caucase :

«Le pipeline BTC a considérablement change le statut des pays de la région et cimenté une nouvelle alliance pro-occidentale. Ayant influé pour la construction de l’oléoduc vers la Méditerranée, Washington a pratiquement mis en place un nouveau bloc avec l’Azerbaïdjan, la Géorgie, la Turquie et Israël.» ( Komerzant, Moscou, 14 juillet 2006)

Bien que les rapports officiels déclarent que l’oléoduc BTC « achemine le pétrole vers le marché occidental », ce qui est rarement reconnu, c’est qu’une partie du pétrole de la Mer Caspienne serait directement convoyé vers Israël, en passant par la Géorgie. À cet égard, un projet de pipeline israélo-turc a aussi été envisagé, ce qui permettrait de relier Ceyhan au port israélien d’Ashkelon et de là, à travers le principal pipeline d’Israël, vers la Mer Rouge.

L’objectif d’Israël n’est pas seulement de prendre le pétrole de la mer Caspienne pour ses propres besoins de consommation, mais aussi de jouer un rôle clef dans la réexportation de ce pétrole vers les marchés asiatiques depuis le port d’Eilat à travers la Mer Rouge. Les implications stratégiques de ce réacheminement du pétrole de la mer Caspienne sont d’une grande portée. (Pour plus de détails, voir de Michel Chossudovsky, La guerre contre le Liban et la bataille pour le pétrole, Global Research, juillet 2006.)  
 

Ce qui est envisagé, c’est de relier le pipeline BTC au pipeline trans-israélien d’Eilat à Ashkelon, aussi connu sous le nom de Tipline d’Israël, depuis Ceyhan au port israélien d’Ashkelon. http://www.eapc.co.il/pipelines.html

«La Turquie et Israël sont en train de négocier la construction d’un projet de plusieurs millions de dollars sur l’énergie et l’eau, qui transportera de l’eau, de l’électricité, du gaz naturel et du pétrole à travers des pipelines vers Israël, avec renvoi du pétrole d’Israël vers l’Extrême-Orient.

La nouvelle proposition turco-israélienne en cours de discussion verrait le transfert d’eau, d’électricité, de gaz naturel et de pétrole vers Israël grâce à quatre pipelines sous-marins.»  http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1145961328841&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

            « Le pétrole de Bakou peut être transporté jusqu’à Ashkelon via ce nouveau pipeline et vers l’Inde et l’Extrême-Orient – via la Mer Rouge -.»

«Ceyhan et le port méditerranéen d’Ashkelon sont situés à seulement 400 km de distance. Le pétrole peut être transporté vers la ville en navires-citernes ou via un pipeline sous-marin  spécialement construit. Depuis Ashkelon le pétrole peut être convoyé à travers des pipelines qui existent déjà vers le port d’Eilat sur la Mer Rouge, et de là il peut être transporté vers l’Inde et d’autres pays asiatiques sur des navires-citernes. » (REGNUM)

Israël est susceptible à cet égard de jouer un rôle stratégique majeur dans la « protection » du transport en Méditerranée orientale et des corridors sortant de Ceyhan. Simultanément, Israël participe aussi à la canalisation de l’aide et de la formation militaire vers la Géorgie et l’Azerbaïdjan.

En 1999, un accord bilatéral de coopération militaire de grande portée a été passé entre Tbilissi et à Tel-Aviv, à peine un mois avant que l’OTAN parraine l’accord du GOUAM. Il a été signé à Tbilissi par le Président Chevardnadze et le Premier Ministre israélien de l’époque, Benyamin Netanyu. Ces divers accords de coopération militaire sont en fin de compte destinés à saper la présence de la Russie et son influence dans le Caucase et en Asie Centrale.

Dans une déclaration pour la forme, Tel-Aviv s’est engagé, suite à des discussions bilatérales avec Moscou, le 5 août 2008, à réduire son aide militaire à la Géorgie.

Réponse de la Russie

En réponse aux attaques, les forces conventionnelles russes sont intervenues avec des troupes au sol. Des chars et des véhicules blindés ont été envoyés. L’armée de l’air russe a aussi été impliquée dans une série de contre-attaques aériennes contre les positions militaires géorgiennes, en particulier contre la base militaire de Gori.

Les médias occidentaux ont décrit les Russes comme seuls responsables de la mort de civils, tout en reconnaissant en même temps (confirmé par la BBC) que la plupart des victimes dans la population civile étaient au début le résultat des attaques aériennes et au sol de la Géorgie.

Sur la base des sources russes et occidentales, le nombre des premiers morts en Ossétie du Sud est au moins de 1.400 (BBC), la plupart sont des civils. « Le chiffre des victimes géorgiennes va de 82 morts, dont 37 civils, à environ 130 morts . . .  Une frappe aérienne russe contre Gori, une ville géorgienne près de l’Ossétie du Sud, a laissé 60 morts, dont de nombreux civils, a dit un Géorgien. » (BBC, 9 août 2008). Les sources russes évaluent à 2.000 le nombre de victimes civiles en Ossétie du Sud.

Rappelant la guerre froide, un processus d’escalade et de confrontation se déroule entre la Russie et les États-Unis.

Sommes-nous face à un acte de provocation, en vue de déclencher un conflit plus large ? Soutenue par la propagande médiatique, l’alliance militaire occidentale a l’intention d’utiliser cet incident pour affronter la Russie, comme en témoignent les récentes déclarations de l’OTAN.

Lire l’article en anglais War in the Caucasus: Towards a Broader Russia-US Military Confrontation ?, 10 août 2008. 

Traduction de l’anglais: Pétrus Lombard. 

This week U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi concluded her visit to the Middle East in Damascus, Syria, to which President George W. Bush’s response was that her visit “sends mixed messages.” While Pelosi’s delegation to the region should be met with applause for refusing to participate in isolating Syria, her visit to Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria should be met with a great deal of caution.

Twice in the last month Pelosi delivered a speech — of more or less the same message — before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual policy conference and before the Israeli Knesset. In these speeches, she unequivocally stated: “When Israel is threatened, America’s interests in the region are threatened. America’s commitment to Israel’s security needs is unshakable.” Statements such as this have made Pelosi, along with her traveling companion Congressman Tom Lantos, one of the top ten recipients of AIPAC donations. She received a standing ovation for these sentiments in the Knesset where she linked the U.S. and Israel’s “common cause”: ” a safe and secure Israel living in peace with her neighbors.”

Perhaps Pelosi genuinely wants to secure peace in the region. If this were the case, however, we would have seen some indication of balance in her fact-finding mission. While in Israel, Pelosi discussed her visits with the families of Israeli soldiers taken last summer in Gaza and Lebanon, naming them and relaying stories about them. Not once was a Palestinian or Lebanese killed or wounded in Israel’s wars dignified with any such humanizing gesture. Instead Pelosi focused entirely on Hezbollah’s violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 for failing to disarm. Not once did she mention Israel’s almost daily violation of that same resolution with military jets invading Lebanese airspace or recent military incursions into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Moreover, she failed to mention Israel’s continued occupation of Shaaba Farms and Ghajar, which are also violations of 1701; nor did she engage with serious discussions of the occupation of the Golan Heights or the Palestinian Territories with leaders in the region.

If Pelosi, Lantos, and the other congressional leaders traveling in their delegation wanted to understand what peace means to all parties they could have spent their time in Lebanon meeting with victims of Israel’s war and she could have toured the areas of the country destroyed by Israel. She could have visited with Lebanese families affected by American-made cluster bombs. Such meetings could have helped Pelosi to respond to a report on her desk from the State Department, which states Israel may have violated legal agreements made with the U.S. in the 1970s when it dropped between 2.6 and 4 million American-made cluster munitions on Lebanon last summer in the last 72 hours of the war after the cease fire agreement had been brokered. The report explores Israel’s violation of the Arms Export Control Act, which stipulates that American-manufactured weapons must only be used in self-defense, in an open area against two or more invading armies, and never used against civilians.

As Speaker of the House it is Pelosi’s job (along with Senator Majority Leader Joseph Biden) to review this report and if the violations are corroborated, which evidence from organizations like Human Rights Watch already substantiated, Israel could be sanctioned. Indeed, in response to Israel’s use of American-made cluster bombs in Lebanon last summer, Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch reported, “we’ve never seen use of cluster munitions that was so extensive and dangerous to civilians … The issue is not whether Israel used the American cluster munitions lawfully, but what the US is going to do about it.” As Speaker, Pelosi can and should do something about it. After all, there is a precedent: Ronald Reagan imposed a six-year ban on the sale of munitions to Israel in 1982 after Congress investigated Israel’s use of cluster bombs against civilians.

For all the talk about “peace” before AIPAC and the Knesset, if Pelosi were actually invested in regional peace she could begin by holding Israel accountable for its violations of the Arms Export Control Act by sanctioning Israel. But this option seems rather unlikely given her congressional voting record. For instance, last summer she voted for her colleague Lantos’ resolution in Congress (HR 921), entitled “Condemning the recent attacks against the State of Israel, holding terrorists and their state-sponsors accountable for such attacks, supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, and for other purposes.” That bill, which overwhelmingly passed (410-8), led to “other purposes,” namely selling $120 million of oil to re-fuel Israel’s American-made fighter jets that bombed and killed civilians in Lebanon as well as an expedited delivery of 1,300 M26 artillery rockets for Israel to use in its war on Lebanon.

If Pelosi’s delegation to the Middle East is seriously interested in creating “peace” here, it should begin at home. She should respond to the report on her desk and make the decision to sanction Israel. Moreover, Pelosi and Lantos should both draft legislation that does not focus exclusively on Syria, Lebanon, and Iran for their weapons if only because the U.S. itself provides Israel with extensive military support and political cover. The burden should be shifted to Israel as the occupying power of Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. Further, Pelosi would do well to join her colleagues in the Senate who drafted the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2007 (S 594) and support the effort of forty other nations who have banned cluster munitions.

Dr. Marcy Newman is a Visiting Professor at the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut and a Fellow at the Initiative for Middle East Policy Dialogue.

Instead of building a diplomatic momentum on the political breakthrough mediated by their Saudi Arabian ally who succeeded in developing an Arab and Palestinian consensus on going along with the U.S.-steered Quartet efforts to revive the deadlocked peace process, the American diplomacy has turned their sponsored Palestinian – Israeli summit meeting in Jerusalem on Monday from a promising event into a missed opportunity, thus shaking off a burgeoning potential for a more coordinated regional U.S. – Arab front.
 
The trilateral meeting, which secretary of State Condoleezza Rice planned with President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to be a breakthrough in a six-year old Palestinian – Israeli impasse, began without an agreed upon agenda or at least with a last minute change of the originally perceived agenda, convened grudgingly as a face saving event and ended nonetheless a summit void of content after two hours of “informal” talks in a pointless “dialogue” of the deaf at the heavily-guarded David Citadel Hotel adjacent to Jerusalem’s Old City, where the Israeli “archaeological” excavations at Islam’s third holiest site of al-Aqsa Mosque compound are slowly but systemically bulldozing whatever national and spiritual symbols left for Palestinians to negotiate about.
 
Embarrassing U.S. friends and allies as important as Riyadh, Amman and Cairo, and further antagonizing influential regional players like Syria, who all weighed in heavily to conclude the Mecca deal in order to develop a unified Arab and Palestinian stance that easily could be discerned as distancing them away from Iranian influences, which is a key U.S.-Israeli endeavor, may not harm the U.S. historically-tested strategic alliances with Arabs, but it would certainly put off indefinitely whatever is left for peace-making in the region.
 
There was nothing new in the five points of agreement reported by Rice after the meeting. Commitment to the two-state vision of President George W. Bush, continued respect of the ceasefire, working together to implement the Quartet-drafted “Road Map,” honouring by the Palestinian government of the Quartet-adopted three conditions of renouncing violence, recognizing Israel and honouring previously signed accords with her, and agreeing to meet again, have all become obsolete non-starters in view of the U.S. and Israeli determination not to follow them up with working mechanisms and binding timetables in “formal negotiations” that end the crisis management of the futile “informal dialogues” of the past six years.
 
The disappointing outcome of the trilateral summit could be summed up in pointless open-ended promises: “The president and prime minister agreed they would meet together again soon” in a fourth encounter, Rice said while lonely briefing reporters without her summiteers and without taking any questions after the meeting, which concluded without an official statement, adding she in her turn “will be coming back” on her tenth trip to the Middle East since taking office, and reiterating an obsolete cliché: “All three of us affirmed our commitment to a two-state solution” and, probably drawing ironically on the lessons of history learned from the tragic, but successful, experience of the birth of the Israeli state, “agreed that a Palestinian state cannot be born of violence and terror” so as to avert similar tragedies !
 
Playing into the hands of the Israeli declared policy of “lowering the expectations” of Palestinians, Rice promoted the summit since her landing in Israel on Friday with a flow of skeptical and discouraging remarks. The “uncertainty” of the new Palestinian government, which her administration has ‘strong reservations” against, will “complicate” U.S. peace efforts, she said, thus creating the environment for conflicting Palestinian and Israeli expectations and contradictory differences over the agenda, which the Palestinians expected to include the final status issues and a “mechanism to move from words to deeds,” according to chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, but the Israelis ruled out any “deliberations” on those issues, especially Jerusalem, refugees and return to pre-1967 borders, according to Olmert.
 
Israel had every intention to derail any progress at the summit unless the Palestinian leaders subscribe to her plan for a long-term interim arrangement during which they should be satisfied with a transitional state without borders on 42 percent of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Israeli-besieged Gaza Strip, a plan that is rejected by a total Palestinian consensus conveyed on Monday to Rice because in the long run this plan will boil down to nothing more than giving Israel enough time to create more facts on the ground to render any Palestinian state, whether temporary or permanent, unviable, unsustainable and impossible.
 
Israel and her American strategic ally promoted Abbas as a partner first as an alternative for late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, but when he ascended to the helm of the national decision-making they qualified his partnership credentials by taking on Hamas; when Abbas concluded that was a recipe for civil war and insisted on dialogue with the Islamic movement he was accused of “dialogue with terror;” when he succeeded in convincing Hamas to join the political institutions of the Oslo accords in a democratic process they challenged his credentials because, according to them, the ensuing two-head Palestinian Authority compromised his representative competence and his ability to govern; after the Mecca deal they claimed his credentials as a peace partner were neutralized by his new partnership with Hamas and steered the Quartet to insist on their three preconditions as the prerequisite to legitimize him as a partner, and sent Rice to convey the message.
 
Evasive Diplomacy to Avoid Negotiations  
 
However, President Bush, torpedoed the success of her mission when he hours ahead of her arrival in the region ruled out, according to Olmert, any dealing by his administration with any new Palestinian government formed on the basis of the inter-Palestinian power-sharing deal, which the Saudis mediated and sponsored at the highest level in Mecca two weeks ago, while the Congress pre-empted her success by blocking a $86 million aid package promised for Abbas before the deal, thus dispatching Rice empty handed politically and financially and armed only with noncommittal and non-starter open-ended promises her administration failed to honor during more than six years in office. Rice is practically left without any initiative despite her face saving unconvincing promises.
 
Amid mounting Israeli and American threats of tightening the siege imposed on the Palestinian people, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its offshoot, the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian and Arab officials and observers are almost in consensus on interpreting the U.S. policy as premeditated and not a blunder, aimed at “aborting” the Abbas – Olmert summit, the new Palestinian unity government and coerce the newly unified Palestinian leadership into yielding to the Israeli-dictated preconditions by refusing the Mecca accord as the approach to lifting the siege, according to the leader of the Fatah parliamentary bloc, Azzam al-Ahmad.
 
By ruling out the Mecca accord as a non-starter the U.S. policy was also interpreted as an evasive diplomacy to avoid negotiations, whether bilateral or multilateral within the framework of an international conference proposed by the Palestinians, the League of Arab States and recently by Russian President Vladimir Putin during a Middle East tour, and supported by the pro-Mecca deal Turkish-chaired Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), because Israel is more a beneficiary of the besieged Palestinian status quo and the current Arab status quo overburdened with several crises than from negotiations and because the U.S. Administration sees it has more area for maneuvering in such an unstable environment than in a politically stable one.
 
The Israeli and U.S. framework condemns PLO’s partnership with Hamas, labelled by both as a “terrorist” group and persist on sowing discord among Palestinian parties so as not to give “legitimacy” to the Islamic movement. What’s wrong with giving legitimacy to Hamas? Wasn’t the legitimacy given to the PLO, which was also labelled by both strategic allies as “terrorist,” the organization’s guarantee to involve in political struggle in pursuit of its national goals? “They want Abbas to take actions that lead to a civil war — to protect past agreements that the Israelis have destroyed,” veteran peace advocate and member of the PLO Executive Committee, Yasser Abed Rabbo, told Reuters.
 
The U.S.-Israeli diplomacy is also steering against world consensus. Russia , a member of the Quartet is already saying the new Palestinian government should be dealt with, recognized, and legitimized. Although the Europeans and the United Nations, the other two members, are taking a cautious position, France, Germany and the Nordics of Denmark, Norway and Sweden also welcomed the Palestinian unity government deal. Aside from Israel the United States is lonely not forthcoming.
 
“Washington’s handling of Hamas is the latest in an impressive list of US policy mistakes in the Middle East . Rather than strengthening democratization processes across the region, the administration has weakened them. Rather than lessening hostility to America , the hostility is reaching unprecedented levels. Rather than furthering a peace process between Palestinians and Israelis, the US has rendered negotiations, let alone an agreement, almost impossible,” Omar Karmi wrote in Lebanon ’s The Daily Star on February 12.
 
When Riyadh stepped in out of national interest to skilfully contain some of the regional mess created by the U.S. blundering, not only in Iraq and Lebanon but also and more successfully in Palestine, where a unity government is underway thanks to the Mecca agreement, Washington still seems ungratefully determined to miss this opportunity to improve its image and help one of its most important regional allies avert the regional repercussions of her foreign policy failures in the Middle East, at a time when the United States needs Saudi Arabia for other regional efforts.
 
Palestinian Unity Pre-requisite for Peace
 
Mecca deal politically averted Palestinian infighting, which could have been only averted otherwise by directing the Palestinian fire against a common enemy, a tactic that the latest attack in Elat could have been the first salvo. Internal Palestinian calm is a prerequisite for calm across the still un-demarcated Israeli borders. Haim Malka, deputy director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, wrote in the Washington Post on February 13 urging the U.S. to support the unity government “not because it brings peace, but because it moves us significantly further toward stabilizing the conflict than a Palestinian civil war would … without a basic accommodation among Palestinians there is no chance for a renewed political process between Israelis and Palestinians.”
 
Similarly, Robert Malley, a senior aide to former U.S. President Bill Clinton on Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, concluded in an interview published by the Council on Foreign Relations on February 14: “Abbas could not have concluded a historic deal with Israel , entailing difficult compromises, without a prior intra-Palestinian agreement. He would have lacked the authority, legitimacy, and credibility to reach an agreement with Israel if he were simultaneously at war with a sizeable portion of the Palestinian people. The only way Israeli-Palestinian negotiations can proceed and conclude is in the context of a Fatah/Hamas national unity agreement, which brings stability to the Palestinian arena. All the rest is wishful—and dangerous—thinking.”
 
Only Palestinian national unity can sustain a viable peace process. Oslo accords could not have been launched on a divided Palestinian house; those accords were based on the Palestinian consensus on the two-state solution by the PLO National Council meeting in Algiers in 1988. That was exactly what the Mecca agreement achieved.
 
At least the U.S. and Israel should give a chance for the national unity government to prove its political credentials and not repeat their mistaken boycott of the former government, contrary to the repeated advice of their ostensibly trusted Palestinian partner Mahmoud Abbas; that government is now counterproductively, from their point of view, replaced by a stronger one supported by national unity, Arab, Islamic and almost a world consensus.
 
They could at least flash on a green light for the other Quartet three members to lift their siege and for the international banking system to channel in the Arab and Islamic-pledged financial aid, including the recent Saudi pledge in Mecca of $US1 billion, to the united Palestinian Authority to ease the poverty and deprivation caused by their imposed blockade, in a show of good will for a mutual trial period of grace during which they could maintain their own sanctions until their arguments prove either right or wrong.
 
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

La FIDH dénonce avec la plus grande fermeté la condamnation à mort par pendaison, prononcée aujourd’hui par le Haut tribunal pénal irakien, contre l’ancien dictateur Saddam Hussein, et aussi Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, ancien patron des renseignements, et Awad Ahmed al-Bandar ancien président du tribunal révolutionnaire.

La FIDH avait dénoncé les crimes pour lesquels ils étaient jugés : le meurtre de 148 chiites à Dujail et la destruction massive de propriétés, en représailles à une tentative d’assassinat contre l’ex dictateur en 1982.

La FIDH avait appelé au jugement de Saddam Hussein, et d’autres dignitaires irakiens, pour leur responsabilité présumée dans les crimes contre l’humanité perpétrés durant la dictature irakienne, et avait ainsi qualifié de « pas positif » dans la lutte contre l’impunité, l’ouverture de ce procès. Toutefois, la FIDH s’était inquiétée quant à la capacité du tribunal de garantir une procédure équitable aux accusés. Elle s’était prononcée en faveur de la mise en place d’un tribunal à composition mixte, dont la présence de juges et de personnels internationaux aurait dû garantir une justice équitable.

« Ce Tribunal irakien aurait du rendre une justice équitable et conforme aux standards internationaux bien reconnus. Il aurait ainsi pu contribuer au rétablissement de la justice en Irak. Il aurait dû révéler une vérité tant attendue par les victimes, sur les violations massives des droits de l’homme et la responsabilité effective des auteurs. Au lieu de cela, ce tribunal s’est caractérisé par les violations répétées du droit à un procès équitable.

Violant les normes protectrices des droits de l’Homme, ce tribunal a gravement failli à sa mission », déclare Sidiki Kaba, président de la FIDH. « Cette condamnation à mort sèmera plus de violences et de volonté de vengeances en Irak. Il s’agit surtout d’un règlement de compte, qui bafoue la dignité et le droit des victimes ».

La FIDH exprime une fois de plus son opposition à la peine de mort, en toute circonstance et en tout lieu. La FIDH rappelle que la peine de mort est fondamentalement contraire à la dignité de l’être humain proclamée par la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme et que son abolition est visée par plusieurs instruments internationaux notamment par le Protocole facultatif au Pacte international sur les droits civils et politiques. Son effet dissuasif n’a jamais été établi. La FIDH rappelle aucune juridiction pénale internationale contemporaine, y compris la Cour pénale internationale, n’autorise la peine capitale.

La peine de mort et la prison à vie donnent lieu à une procédure d’appel automatique. Si la peine de mort est confirmée, elle devra être appliquée dans les 30 jours.

Source : fidh.org

In a coordinated series of speeches this week, the top officials of the Bush administration have begun a public campaign to smear and intimidate opponents of the war in Iraq while laying the political groundwork for dragging the American people into a new and even more terrible war–this time against Iran.

Speeches by Vice President Dick Cheney at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska and by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at an American Legion convention in Utah sounded the themes initially, and were followed by an address by President Bush to the American Legion convention Thursday. Bush is scheduled to make four more speeches in this campaign, culminating in an address to the United Nations General Assembly September 19.

The American media has largely dismissed the speeches as a recycling of old arguments, dictated by White House concern that the November 7 mid-term elections will cost the Republican Party control of the House and possibly the Senate. There is no doubt a powerful whiff of desperation, even panic, in the unrestrained fearmongering of the administration. But there is more to it than short-term electoral tactics.

There is little reason to believe that the hysterical language and potted historical comparisons are really intended to shift the American people from their by now well-established opposition to the war in Iraq. If anything, the evident ludicrousness of the arguments and their bullying presentation will only alienate public opinion even further: who would entrust the lives of their sons and daughters to leaders who have so clearly lost their bearings?

The Bush administration is seeking, not to convince the American people, but to browbeat and intimidate them–to de-legitimize any critique of the Iraq war which goes beyond the Democratic Party’s quibbling over tactics and competence or challenges the fundamental premises of American imperialism’s effort to conquer and reorganize the Middle East.

In keeping with the Bush doctrine of preventive war, the current offensive against antiwar opinion serves the purpose of preemptively attacking all those who might oppose the next war on Bush’s calendar, a war against Iran, a country three times the size and population of Iraq, with a thousand-year history of resistance to foreign domination and occupation.

In that context, the rollout of a pro-war media campaign during the month of August has an ominous precedent. It was in August 2002 that Cheney delivered the first speech threatening war against Iraq to a similar venue: a veterans’ convention. Although the Bush administration went through the motions of a debate at the United Nations and in Congress, as well as the passage of resolutions demanding Iraq comply with US demands, Bush and Cheney had already decided to go to war with Iraq several months before Cheney’s speech.

The pattern is clear, and warning must be made: it is quite possible that the Bush administration has already made its decision for war with Iran. As Bush remarked during his speech to the American Legion, demanding Iran comply with US demands to scrap its nuclear energy program: “It is time for Iran to make its choice. We’ve made our choice.”

The Bush administration has been updating contingency plans for air strikes against Iran. According to an article in the August 10 issue of Rolling Stone magazine by James Bamford, an investigative journalist and author, Rumsfeld in November of 2003 “approved a plan known as CONPLAN-8022-02, which for the first time established a preemptive-strike capability against Iran. That was followed in 2004 by a top-secret ‘Interim Global Strike Alert Order’ that put the military on a state of readiness to launch an airborne and missile attack against Iran, should Bush issue the command.”

Grotesque historical falsification

The most noticeable new element in the speeches of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush is the attempt to make a direct amalgam between the various nationalist, Islamic and terrorist groups which are now in conflict with US foreign policy and 20th century fascism. This was spelled out most explicitly in Rumsfeld’s speech, which portrayed opponents of the current war in Iraq as the political and moral equivalents of Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister of the mid-1930s who advocated a policy of appeasement toward Hitler.

Such analogies rely on the abysmal lack of historical knowledge fostered by the US educational system, the mass media, and both major US political parties. Rumsfeld is standing reality on its head. German fascism was the regime of an imperialist state, the most powerful and industrially advanced country in Europe, with a ruling class that aspired to dominate the continent and ultimately the world. The Islamic jihadist elements originate in countries long historically oppressed by imperialism, first as colonies of Britain, France and other European powers, then as either clients or targets of the United States, the dominant imperialist power in the world.

The country that today most clearly exemplifies the foreign policy aims and methods of Nazi Germany is Bush’s United States. The hallmarks of the world crisis of the 1930s have indeed reemerged in 2006: rampant militarism, with powerful nations invading and occupying smaller and weaker ones; brazen defiance of international law by big powers that feel themselves able to use military force with impunity; the adoption of the method of the “Big Lie,” employing propaganda broadcast through the mass media to manipulate popular consciousness; the creation of a pervasive atmosphere of fear, to justify domestic repression and violence against minorities that are singled out for demonization; the use of state-engineered or manipulated provocations (the Reichstag Fire, 9/11) to stampede public opinion behind the use of dictatorial methods.

Despite all the differences in political methods and historical conditions, there is one overriding similarity between Hitler’s Germany and Bush’s America. In both cases, the capitalist ruling elite has entrusted power to a reckless and unstable regime whose goal is to upset the existing structure of international relations and reshape it to serve its own national purposes. Hitler’s “Drang nach Osten” (drive to the east) has its counterpart in Bush’s drive to the Middle East: what began as an invasion of Afghanistan, allegedly in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 has become an American effort to subdue the entire region, from the Mediterranean Coast to the furthest reaches of Central Asia, and assure American domination of its vast oil and gas resources.

That there is an element of madness in such a policy does not mean that Bush & Co. will not attempt to carry it out. Hitler’s policy was certainly mad, and deliberately plunged German imperialism into the two-front war which all previous German rulers had sought to avoid. Bush likewise spurns the counsel of the foreign policy mandarins, not only of previous Democratic presidents, but of his own father’s administration.

A mass of contradictions

The substance of Bush’s speech exposes the depths of intellectual degradation that characterize this administration. In considering its text even briefly, one must remark on the fact, not so much that Bush approved and delivered it, but that experienced speechwriters drafted it, and veteran political and foreign policy operatives reviewed it ahead of time as a declaration of policy by the president of the United States. Yet what emerged was a diatribe that was not only false, but obviously false, self-contradictory and absurd.

Take, for instance, the lumping together of all varieties of Muslim radicalism, Sunni and Shia, into what Bush called “a single movement, a worldwide network of radicals.” Yet in Baghdad, under US occupation, the Sunni and Shia forces are concentrating their fire on each other rather on the United States in an increasingly bloody civil war. Differences of history, geography and culture are all dissolved into the term “terrorism,” a concept which describes a specific tactic of violence, not an ideology, a tactic that has been employed by the US government much more than by its opponents.

Bush said that his war on terror is “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century,” pitting advocates of freedom and liberty against “the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest.” The last phrase would serve as an accurate description of the social and political base of the Bush administration itself, which rests on the support of fanatical Christian fundamentalists who demand, not just freedom to practice their religion–which they enjoy in abundance–but freedom to impose their medieval bigotry on everyone else in America.

Only a few days before Bush’s speech, the woman who played a central role in placing him in the White House in 2000, former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, made national headlines by denouncing the separation of church and state as a pernicious lie fomented by the enemies of Christianity. “God is the one who chooses our rulers,” she declared, in an interview during her campaign for the US Senate seat in Florida. “If you’re not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin. They can legislate sin. They can say that abortion is all right. They can vote to sustain gay marriage.”

Bush went on to claim that his foreign policy represented a “freedom agenda” for the establishment of democratic governments throughout the Middle East, conveniently ignoring that the strongest US allies in the region are the despotic regimes of Mubarak in Egypt, the Saudi ruling family and the various sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf.

“Governments accountable to the voters focus on building roads and schools, not weapons of mass destruction,” he said, although he did not discuss how that truism could be applied to the United States, builder of the largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction by far. Bush made this comment only two days after visiting hurricane-devastated New Orleans, the city which demonstrates that American democracy, that is, bourgeois democracy under the control of a financial oligarchy, is incapable of meeting the most basic social needs of the working people.

For sheer idiocy, it is hard to top the following paragraph from Bush’s speech, referring to the crisis in Lebanon. “I appreciate the troops pledged by France and Italy and other allies for this important international deployment. Together, we’re going to make it clear to the world that foreign forces and terrorists have no place in a free and democratic Lebanon.”

Foreign forces have no place in Lebanon, and this is to be shown by the deployment of a massive occupation force consisting of thousands of troops from … France and Italy!

There were a few moments of substance in Bush’s speech. The warning of impending action against Iran has already been quoted. There was also his reference to the stooge regime of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq, which Bush said the US would continue to support “as long as the new government continues to make the hard decisions necessary …” These are political code words, demanding that the Maliki government support and assist on a crackdown against the Shiite militia of Moqtada al-Sadr, even though his own majority in parliament depends on al-Sadr’s support.

Finally, Bush sought to justify his characterization of Iraq as the central battlefront in the war on terror by citing as his co-thinkers Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other Al Qaeda leaders. Al Qaeda has repeatedly declared that Iraq is the focal point of its current efforts–although there was no significant Al Qaeda presence in Iraq until the US invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein made that possible. It is significant, however, that Bush could not cite a single other authority for his claim that the US invasion of Iraq was a setback for the terrorist groups.

The response of the Democrats

Leading Democrats responded with professed outrage to Rumsfeld’s suggestion that they were guilty of appeasing terrorists. Senator Charles Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said, “We Democrats want to fight a very strong war on terror. No one has talked about appeasement.” Senator Edward Kennedy, a purported opponent of the war in Iraq, said, “His dire warnings of the cost of failure in Iraq do nothing to make success more likely.” Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid added, “Iraq is in crisis, our military is stretched thin, and terrorist groups and extremist regimes have been strengthened and emboldened across the Middle East and the world.”

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Minority Leader who seems likely to become Speaker of the House after the November elections, echoed the Democratic senators’ criticism that the war in Iraq has undermined US security interests worldwide. “The strain that the Iraq war has put on our military has crippled our ability to prosecute the war on terrorism and has dangerously limited our ability to respond to real challenges to our national security around the world,” she said.

Not one leading Democrat could state the simple truth that Bush’s “war on terrorism” is false from beginning to end. It has made use of the tragedy of September 11–whose connection to the secret operations of US intelligence agencies still remains to be seriously investigated–to justify an open-ended campaign of violence abroad and state repression at home, including the establishment of concentration camps at Guantanamo Bay and other locations.

The series of speeches by Bush and his top aides have thus had one salutary effect: they have compelled the Democratic Party to demonstrate once more its role as the second party of American imperialism, one equally committed to the predatory project in the Middle East, while quibbling over the tactics and methods of the Bush administration.

There is a danger that the war in the Middle East will escalate and extend to the entire Middle East – Central Asian region. 

The US, Israel and Turkey have formulated concrete war plans involving air raids on Iran’s nuclear sites. 

The use of tactical nuclear weapons is contemplated.  

The bombings of Lebanon by Israel are part of an integrated military agenda. These are not spontaneous bombing raids by Israel. They have Washington’s approval. .They could indeed be used as a pretext to trigger a much broader military operation. 

The G8 is meeting on the 17th of July. On the agenda is a draft UN security council resolution pertaining to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, which has been tacitly approved by Russia and China   This resolution, if adopted,  could open the way for punitive bombings on Iran, with the full support of America’s European allies. Israel is a part of the military coalition If these bombing raids were to be carried out, the entire region would flare up

It is therefore essential that citizens’ movements around the world act consistently to reverse and dismantle a military agenda which threatens the future of humanity 

Iranian president says Israeli attack on Syria to meet “strong response”

Text of report by Iranian radio on 14 July

In a telephone conversation last night, the Iranian and Syrian presidents condemned the Zionist regime’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza. They called on the Islamic nations to show their support for the Palestinian and Lebanese people.

Mr [Mahmud] Ahmadinezhad expressed grave concerns over the Zionist military’s attacks on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. He described the aggressions as the sign of weakness on the part the illegitimate regime. He said despite what the Zionist officials may think, such actions cannot save the regime.

Commenting on the recent Israeli threats against Syria, the president said that the regime’s ever increasing aggressive measures would be interpreted as an attack on the whole of the Islamic world, adding that it would meet with a strong response.

For his turn, the Syrian President Bashar al-Asad, said that by attacking Gaza, the Zionist regime had broken the one-year long ceasefire, and had created a new crisis. He added that the courageous, timely and decisive response by the Hezbollah had surprised and angered the leaders of the regime. Pointing out that many popular groups from various Islamic countries had expressed their willingness to fight the occupiers in the troubled areas, Mr Asad said that Israel would face a fierce response should it decide to commit another mistake and attack Syria. He added that Syria was not afraid of any threats.

Source: Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, in Persian 0430 gmt 14 Jul 06

The smouldering international confrontation over Iran’s nuclear programme flared into life last night after Russia and China agreed to back a US-led move to refer Tehran to the UN security council, a process that could lead to the imposition of punitive sanctions and a sharp escalation of the crisis.

Foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the security council -the US, Britain, France, Russia and China – plus Germany agreed to the referral at a meeting in Paris ahead of this weekend’s Group of Eight summit in St Petersburg.

“We have no choice but to return to the security council and continue the process suspended two months ago,” said Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French foreign minister. “The Iranians have given no indication at all that they are prepared to engage seriously on the substance of our proposals.”

The decision by the group of countries, known as the P5+1, followed inconclusive talks in Brussels on Tuesday between Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy tsar, and Ali Larijani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator and chairman of the country’s supreme national security council.

At the meeting Mr Larijani reiterated Iran’s previously stated position that it would not offer a formal response to a package of incentives proferred by the west until it was ready, and possibly not before August 22. Western countries had demanded an answer before the G8 summit, which is now likely to be dominated by the two nuclear-related disputes with Iran and North Korea.

“We should have more time, be patient, and try to negotiate,” Mr Larijani said after the Solana meeting. He added that Iran was still seeking clarifications and guarantees concerning some of the west’s proposals, and that its response would be formulated only after three parliamentary committees in Tehran had completed their assessment.

The western package, which is understood to include technological and economic incentives, is dependent on Iran agreeing to suspend all its uranium enrichment activities indefinitely. The US and other countries believe Iran is pursuing enrichment in order to gain the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons. Tehran flatly denies the charge, saying it wants nuclear technology solely for civil power generation purposes.

Iranian officials have warned in the past that referral to the security council could lead to a complete breakdown in talks with the west, a refusal of further cooperation with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, and even Iran’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Russia and China are opposed to the imposition of sanctions, saying such action may only exacerbate the situation. While their objections still stand, they appeared to have agreed at the Paris meeting to allow an initial UN resolution requiring Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. If Iran does not comply further measures, including sanctions or other punishment, will have to be the subject of a separate, possibly more contentious resolution.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said before the Paris meeting that Iran’s response to the western package had been “disappointing and incomplete” and that the US was not prepared to wait any longer.