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| March 22, 2004 |
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World Media Watch by Gloria R. Lalumia BUZZFLASH NOTE: WMW provides BuzzFlash readers foreign views and perspectives that are not usually available from the media here in the U.S. The presentation of these articles from these international publications is not an endorsement of their viewpoints. * * * WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR MARCH 22, 2004 1//Xinhuanet, China--INTERVIEW: IRAQI HUMAN RIGHTS OFFICIAL SAYS SADDAM TRIAL NOT FAR AWAY (When and how to try the now-jailed former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein? Iraqi deputy minister of human rights Ali Kabi told Xinhua during an interview this week that he did not expect the historical trial "to be delayed for a long time"..."Now the US has decided to send a group of lawyers to help Iraqis to prepare to try Saddam," he disclosed, adding that Iraq also had issued a law for Saddam trial, and "when the power is transferred to Iraqis, this will accelerate the efforts to try Saddam." ...He stressed that once the new Iraqi government is in place, the compensation to war and after-war violence victims will be one of the priorities. According to the human rights official, a list they received from the coalition authority showed that at present there are still around 10,000 Iraqis jailed by the US army, but "we believe the number should be higher than that for a simple reason: many families came to our ministry and complained that the coalition also detained their sons or relatives.") 2//The Observer/Guardian, UK-INVESTIGATION: THE
GLOBAL TERROR NETWORK--THE SECRET WAR (Some British
based militants committed to so-called Holy War
even claim that the British authorities in the
early 1990s offered passports in return for information
from fighters returning from the jihad against
the Russians. But Britain's unwritten contract
with Islamic extremists - which gave them a haven
in exchange for sparing Britain - has eroded in
recent years as Britain fell under US pressure
to round up Islamist militants. The Jihadi sources
reiterated this weekend that Britain remained ripe
for an al-Qaeda attack... According to intelligence
experts, the terrorists are operating in Europe
and Morocco, travelling on fake documents. Investigators
made a major breakthrough last week with the arrest
of Jamal Zougam, a suspected terrorist involved
in the Madrid atrocity who spent his childhood
in the casbah of Tangier.) 4//Kyodo News, Japan--LAST CORE UNIT OF JAPAN TROOPS LEAVES FOR IRAQ MISSION (The third and final group of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) core contingent left Chitose air base in Hokkaido on Sunday for Kuwait on a government aircraft, paving the way for full GSDF aid operations in Iraq. After undergoing training in Kuwait, the 120-strong team will be deployed in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah by the end of the month, completing the 550-member contingent tasked with supplying water, repairing local infrastructure and providing medical services.) 5//The Times of India, India--PAK'S OSAMA RUSE DUPED US (Pakistan hasn't yet delivered al-Qaeda No 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri to the United States in exchange for its recognition as a major ally, but the diplomatic bonanza will yield rich pickings, including arms and ammunition, in the coming days..."This could mean an expanded flow of US military hardware to Pakistan, putting us (again) on both sides of an arms race--this time a nuclear arms race as well as a conventional one," Cohen [Prof Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution] told TNN amid talk in the analysts' community that Washington had just thrown some fuel into the South Asian fire which had shown signs of dying out.) Related Story: POWELL TOOK US FOR A RIDE: INDIA (Two days after the US ambushed India with the decision to upgrade its military relations with Pakistan, the Vajpayee government has come out with an official statement expressing "disappointment at not having been warned in advance by US secretary of state Colin Powell when he was in Delhi on March 16".) * * * 1//Xinhuanet Sunday, Mar.21, 2004 INTERVIEW: IRAQI HUMAN RIGHTS OFFICIAL SAYS SADDAM TRIAL NOT FAR AWAY BAHGDAD, March 20 (Xinhuanet) -- When and how to try the now-jailed former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein? Iraqi deputy minister of human rights Ali Kabi told Xinhua during an interview this week that he did not expect the historical trial "to be delayed for a long time". Most of the Iraqi Governing Council members had declared that the trial should be in Iraq and by Iraqi judges because both the victims and evidences are in Iraq, Ali said. "Now the US has decided to send a group of lawyers to help Iraqis to prepare to try Saddam," he disclosed, adding that Iraq also had issued a law for Saddam trial, and "when the power is transferred to Iraqis, this will accelerate the efforts to try Saddam." (SNIP) "We think these graves have more than 300,000 bodies, most of whom were killed in the uprising in March 1991." The human rights official noted that some of the mass graves were dug before 1991 and some were created weeks before Saddam was toppled. "We will coordinate with other ministries to prevent people from digging these mass graves because they are evidence against Saddam regime," he claimed. As to the current security situation, Ali described Iraq as an "international battleground" because several extremist organizations had reportedly transferred their bases to the war-torn country. They could easily enter Iraq because the borders are porous, and they came to Iraq to take revenge against American troops and other Iraqi parties, he added. (SNIP) He stressed that once the new Iraqi government is in place, the compensation to war and after-war violence victims will be one of the priorities. "Because we don't have a sovereign government
now, no one gives compensation to the victims.
To calculate the victims and give them some compensation
will be the task of the interim government set
up by June 30," he said. He told Xinhua that they would open offices in the major prisons to listen to the complaints, and they will arrange Iraqi lawyers to meet the prisoners, especially those detained for a long time. "We know that many of the prisoners are detained because of false information," he said, noting that his ministry, the first one in Iraq's history, aims mainly at building the environment and a culture that will respect the human beings and prevent harming or insulting persons. "We will set up a survey center to learn the public opinion of Iraqi people, establish a national network to watch the human rights situation and open 120 offices all over Iraq to supervise various government offices to make sure they respect human rights," he said.
Investigation: The global terror network Mark Townsend in Tangier, John Hooper in Madrid, Greg Bearup in Peshawar, Paul Harris in Washington, Peter Beaumont in Baghdad, Antony Barnett, Martin Bright, Jason Burke and Nick Pelham in London (SNIP) Targets The terrain may be different, but war is also being waged this weekend on the streets of Europe and America. Ten days after suspected al-Qaeda terrorists struck at the heart of Madrid, killing almost 200 people and wounding 1,500 others, a secret battle is under way to prevent another atrocity, amid growing warnings that Britain's crackdown on terror suspects would lead to revenge attacks. Forget the idea of al-Qaeda as a coherent fighting group, or even a flag of convenience. Call it what you will - 'Islamist', 'Salafi' or 'Jihadi' - it hardly matters. According to some intelligence experts, they do not wish to be understood. For an increasing number of young Muslims, resistance to the western values is now a way of life. Most are not terrorists and those who are do not accept the term, because they believe they are fighting imperialism by western infidels. As the investigators continued yesterday trying to piece together details of the terror network in Europe, the reverberations from the Madrid blasts swept America and Britain. The terrorists had scored a spectacular victory, ousting the Spanish Prime Minister and a key ally over the war in Iraq. New security measures were being deployed to protect trains and tunnels from suicide bombers, and London announced a huge increase in the number of intelligence officers being deployed to hunt the enemy. They have one major problem: they are fighting a mindset, not an army, and nobody has yet patented a technique to read minds. 'At first we thought we were up against an organisation,' one western intelligence source told The Observer. ' Something with a definable body and head. In fact, the war on terror is being fought against an idea. That does not make it any easier.' Britain has traditionally welcomed dissidents from the Middle East. As a result, Britain became known as Londonistan or Beirut-on-Thames and, according to sources in the Islamist community, the intelligence services found it useful to monitor the activities of these individuals to build up a map of how the groups operated. Some British based militants committed to so-called Holy War even claim that the British authorities in the early 1990s offered passports in return for information from fighters returning from the jihad against the Russians. But Britain's unwritten contract with Islamic extremists - which gave them a haven in exchange for sparing Britain - has eroded in recent years as Britain fell under US pressure to round up Islamist militants. The Jihadi sources reiterated this weekend that Britain remained ripe for an al-Qaeda attack. 'It's open war,' said a veteran of the Afghan Jihad. 'Total war'. The attacks against British targets began with the Istanbul attacks on the British consulate and HSBC bank last year. 'Everything is seen as a legitimate target,' he said. The casbah According to intelligence experts, the terrorists are operating in Europe and Morocco, travelling on fake documents. Investigators made a major breakthrough last week with the arrest of Jamal Zougam, a suspected terrorist involved in the Madrid atrocity who spent his childhood in the casbah of Tangier. Morocco is the bridge between the Islamic world and the West. Zougam was born here on 5 October 1973 in a crumbling apartment in Rue Ben Aliyem, a working-class area of the old city. (MORE)
OFFICIAL: UK WOULD FAIL TO COPE WITH MAJOR TERROR
ATTACK Britain could not cope with a terrorist bombing on the scale of this month's atrocity in Madrid, the country's top emergency planners have admitted. It would be even less able to deal with the aftermath of the chemical, biological or nuclear attack predicted by ministers and the security services. Resources for emergency planning have declined in real terms since the destruction of the World Trade Center, according to those in charge. They say their staff lack vital equipment and training, that the Government keeps its plans secret from them and that the public has not been given enough information on how to react to an incident. Patrick Cunningham, the leader of Britain's 500 emergency planners, called the situation "unbelievable", and described the country as gripped by "a culture of complacency". Iain Hoult, their chairman in southern England, added: "We are very, very badly prepared." Prevention of a terrorist attack has also been overshadowed by another embarrassment for the Government. Britain's security services face censure for allowing a key suspect in the investigation into the Madrid bombings to disappear. Mohammed al-Garbuzi- believed to have been in close contact with Jamal Zougam, who is being held by the Spanish police in connection with the attacks that killed 202 people - fled his London home on Wednesday night, despite being well-known to MI5. (MORE)
LAST CORE UNIT OF JAPAN TROOPS LEAVES FOR IRAQ MISSION Sapporo, Kyodo-- The third and final group of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) core contingent left Chitose air base in Hokkaido on Sunday for Kuwait on a government aircraft, paving the way for full GSDF aid operations in Iraq. After undergoing training in Kuwait, the 120-strong team will be deployed in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah by the end of the month, completing the 550-member contingent tasked with supplying water, repairing local infrastructure and providing medical services. (SNIP) The GSDF troops in Samawah, led by Col. Koichiro Bansho, consist mainly of personnel from the 2nd Division, based in Asahikawa, Hokkaido. They will engage in operations there until early May before being replaced by troops mostly from the 11th Division, which is based in Sapporo, also Hokkaido. According to a media officer of the Ground Staff Office, the GSDF camp in the Samawah suburbs has been completed and is now equipped to meet the troops' washing and cooking requirements. The troops will continue to make the necessary improvements to their camp, given that they will be based there for a long time. The Air Self-Defense Force has deployed a contingent of roughly 200 troops in Kuwait and has begun airlifting relief goods and other supplies to Iraq using three C-130 cargo planes. A Maritime Self-Defense Force vessel escorted by a destroyer, meanwhile, transported vehicles and supplies for the GSDF troops earlier this month.
PAK'S OSAMA RUSE DUPED US (SNIP) Following its designation as a "major non-Nato ally" earlier this week, Pakistan is now eligible for purchase of excess defense articles and equipment the US may leave behind once it leaves the region. In fact, according to South Asia expert Prof Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution, the MNNA designation also allows a country to purchase depleted uranium and US reserve stockpiles. "This could mean an expanded flow of US military hardware to Pakistan, putting us (again) on both sides of an arms race--this time a nuclear arms race as well as a conventional one," Cohen told TNN amid talk in the analysts' community that Washington had just thrown some fuel into the South Asian fire which had shown signs of dying out. Related Story: The
Times of India Times News Network [ Saturday,
March 20, 2004 11:22:07 PM ] POWELL TOOK US FOR A RIDE: INDIA Siddharth Varadarajan NEW DELHI: Two days after the US ambushed India with the decision to upgrade its military relations with Pakistan, the Vajpayee government has come out with an official statement expressing "disappointment at not having been warned in advance by US secretary of state Colin Powell when he was in Delhi on March 16". "We have seen the statement made in Islamabad by the US secretary of state on March 18 on a prospective notification to the US Congress to designate Pakistan as a major non-Nato ally for the purposes of military-to-military relations," the official spokesperson of the external affairs ministry said on Saturday. As for the substantive part of Pakistan's impending MNNA status, the ministry said, "we are studying the details of this decision, which has significant implications for India-US relations. We are in touch with the US government in this regard." (MORE) | ||||||
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