July 5, 2004

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.

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WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR JULY 5, 2004

1//The Telegraph, London--NEW IRAQ GOVERNMENT ACCUSES IRAN AND SYRIA OF BACKING INSURGENTS (Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister, told The Telegraph that the interim government had gathered intelligence detailing the support provided to insurgent groups by some neighbouring nations. Although he did not name the countries, senior Iraqi officials indicated that Iran and Syria were the worst offenders. The accusation that governments in Teheran and Damascus have been aiding the insurgents could create an immediate diplomatic crisis for the Baghdad administration that assumed power only last week...He even indicated that Iraq might not oppose attacks by American troops based in Iraq on neighbouring states if they were backing the insurgents.)

2//The Australian, Australia--OSAMA ACOLYTE ONLY JUST BEGUN (Washington’s increase last week of the bounty on the head of terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi from $US10 million ($14 million) to $US25 million – the same as for al-Qa'ida leader Osama bin Laden and principal strategist Zayman al-Zawahiri – shows just how pivotal this man has become in the terrorists' war on the West. There are several reasons why this is the case...Third, Zarqawi has built a European network that is likely to expand into North America. Tawhid al-Jihad is also increasingly directing networks previously controlled by al-Qa'ida. These diaspora networks, which traditionally engaged in propaganda, recruitment, fund raising and procurement, are mutating into attack networks.)

3//Gulf News, United Arab Emirates--US RELOCATING NON-ESSENTIAL STAFF, FAMILIES FROM BAHRAIN (Bahraini officials yesterday downplayed the warning issued by the United States urging its citizens to consider leaving the kingdom, as the Pentagon said it was "temporarily relocating" hundreds of non-essential members of the Navy's Fifth Fleet and their families to the US...He confirmed that 650 people would be leaving Bahrain shortly. They include non-essential personnel and the families of the servicemen and women. The decision by the Pentagon is the first mandatory order of nature in the region since the September 11 attacks, according to sources.)

4//The Scotsman, UK--‘BUSH WANTS TRIAL TO BE ANOTHER NUREMBERG’ (Nuremberg worked because the allied powers generally agreed on the shape of the legal process and because they had plenty of time to plan the trial. But, most importantly, it worked because Germany was a universally recognised pariah; she could not rely upon friends outside her borders to discredit the legal process. Thus, even though the trial was undoubtedly a case of justice by the victors, it did not seem that way at the time. It seemed instead a case of civilisation reasserting itself. The Bush administration wants Saddam’s trial to be another Nuremberg. And pigs might fly. All of the elements that made Nuremberg a success are absent today...No matter how tight the American grip on this trial, there’s a risk that it will turn into a Frankenstein’s monster. The most relevant precedent might not be Nuremberg, but rather a legal event closer to home. The trial of Slobodan Milosevic is currently midway through its third year.)

5//The Daily Star, Lebanon--DON’T BLAME THE ARABS: OIL FACES NEW THREATS BEYOND THE GULF (The United States' drive for energy security, one of the dominant elements in its tough-guy foreign policy, is running into trouble around the globe, making US control of Iraq's oil wealth ever more necessary. And that is sure to stir up more trouble, unsettling a market that has become volatile and unpredictable...In short, the world's main oil-producing regions are becoming political quagmires that threaten global supply, and this is likely to keep oil prices high for some considerable time no matter what happens in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Major convulsions in those countries, which seem unavoidable, will only worsen an already bad situation.)

RELATED: TEHRAN CLAIMS WORLD’S 2ND BIGGEST OIL RESERVES (Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh announced Saturday that new oil discoveries in the southwest of the country meant the Islamic Republic held the number-two position in world crude reserves.)

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1//The Telegraph, London Monday 5 July 2004
http://www.news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=...

NEW IRAQ GOVERNMENT ACCUSES IRAN AND SYRIA OF BACKING INSURGENTS
By Damien McElroy in Baghdad
(Filed: 04/07/2004)

The new Iraqi government will publish damning evidence this week linking foreign powers, including Iran and Syria, to the Muslim extremists and loyalists of the former regime who launched a bloody rebellion after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister, told The Telegraph that the interim government had gathered intelligence detailing the support provided to insurgent groups by some neighbouring nations.

Although he did not name the countries, senior Iraqi officials indicated that Iran and Syria were the worst offenders. The accusation that governments in Teheran and Damascus have been aiding the insurgents could create an immediate diplomatic crisis for the Baghdad administration that assumed power only last week.

Insurgents had benefited from financial support, logistical assistance and training from neighbouring government agencies, said Mr Zebari. Baghdad also believed that up to 10,000 foreign spies and undercover agents had infiltrated the country since last year's war.

He even indicated that Iraq might not oppose attacks by American troops based in Iraq on neighbouring states if they were backing the insurgents.

"Since we started to look at the security situation, we have seen how foreign governments have been helping terrorists," said Mr Zebari. "Why they are doing it we cannot say, but we know where the support is coming from. We have plans to put this before the public within days and it will have substantial impact."

He said it was important for the new government to prove that it was in the "driving seat" in defending Iraqi security, despite the probable diplomatic fallout from such a step. Some neighbouring countries, he said, had written off the new Iraq, branding the prime minister, Ayad Allawi, and his ministers as American and British stooges.

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2//The Australian, Australia July 05, 2004
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/sto...

OSAMA ACOLYTE ONLY JUST BEGUN
By Rohan Gunaratna

Washington’s increase last week of the bounty on the head of terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi from $US10 million ($14 million) to $US25 million – the same as for al-Qa'ida leader Osama bin Laden and principal strategist Zayman al-Zawahiri – shows just how pivotal this man has become in the terrorists' war on the West.

There are several reasons why this is the case.

First, Zarqawi has emerged as al-Qa'ida's de facto operational leader, replacing September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the organisation's former military committee head, who is now in US custody.

(SNIP)

Second, Zarqawi leads Tawhid al-Jihad, the most active terrorist and guerilla group in Iraq. Most of the recent suicide attacks in that country are organised by Tawhid al-Jihad and conducted by foreign mujaheddin. As long as Tawhid al-Jihad is active, stability and security cannot return to Iraq -- and despite sustained multinational efforts to target the group, it has strengthened in Iraq and expanded its operations to neighbouring countries and beyond.

Third, Zarqawi has built a European network that is likely to expand into North America. Tawhid al-Jihad is also increasingly directing networks previously controlled by al-Qa'ida. These diaspora networks, which traditionally engaged in propaganda, recruitment, fund raising and procurement, are mutating into attack networks.

(SNIP)

Zarqawi's network has been able to develop contacts with a few hundred individuals in a dozen European countries. And with the post-9/11 generation of Islamist terror networks being so exceptionally difficult to detect without high-quality intelligence, Tawhid al-Jihad and its associated groups have emerged as the biggest terrorist threat in Europe.

Fourth, Zarqawi is determined to conduct deadly mass attacks using both conventional and unconventional weapons. Zarqawi established a chemical training facility in the Pankishi Valley in Georgia, and trained cell members in Paris in December 2002 and in London in January 2003. Furthermore, the Khurmal chemical training facility in Iraq provided comparable training to several recruits post-September 11.

Had Jordanian police not broken up in April a Zarqawi-financed and orchestrated plot to detonate five bombs that would have released a cloud of poison gas in central Amman, more than 20,000 people could have died.

(MORE)

3//Gulf News, United Arab Emirates Sunday, July 4, 2004
http://www.gulf-news.com/

US RELOCATING NON-ESSENTIAL STAFF, FAMILIES FROM BAHRAIN
By Mazen Mahdi
Special to Gulf News

Manama: Bahraini officials yesterday downplayed the warning issued by the United States urging its citizens to consider leaving the kingdom, as the Pentagon said it was "temporarily relocating" hundreds of non-essential members of the Navy's Fifth Fleet and their families to the US.

The decision comes two days after the US State Department issued a statement warning of imminent attacks on US and other Western targets in Bahrain, citing "credible information."

"The Department has received information that extremists are planning attacks against US and other Western interests in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Credible information indicates that extremists remain at large and are planning attacks in Bahrain," the statement said.

(SNIP)

He confirmed that 650 people would be leaving Bahrain shortly. They include non-essential personnel and the families of the servicemen and women.

The decision by the Pentagon is the first mandatory order of nature in the region since the September 11 attacks, according to sources.

The British Embassy said that its 'high alert' previous travel advisory that was issued late last year remained unchanged.

Bahrain is home to the Fifth Fleet Central Command with 4,500 service members stationed here.

4//The Scotsman, UK Sun 4 July 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=766762004

‘BUSH WANTS TRIAL TO BE ANOTHER NUREMBERG’
Gerard DeGroot

"THE real criminal," said Saddam Hussein on the opening day of his trial, "is Bush." While that sort of outburst was fully expected, few observers credited the former dictator with astutely summarising a basic principle of international law. As Saddam realises, Bush is not on trial because he won the war. Justice, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder. No matter how carefully a war crimes trial is bathed in noble virtue, it remains difficult to remove the taint of a victor’s vengeance. Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, once argued that the bombing of Nagasaki was a war crime which went untried because the perpetrators won the war.

(SNIP)

Ever since Saddam’s capture, newspaper reports have been peppered with references to Nuremberg. But that trial was not the first example of post-war justice, nor is it perhaps the most relevant. Throughout history, wars have been followed by ritualised attempts to assert legal authority. Prosecution is the logical corollary of defeat in battle.

(SNIP)

As an example of justice, Nuremberg was deeply flawed. On the bench was a Soviet judge whose country matched, evil for evil, the venality of Hitler’s regime. During the trial, Admiral Doenitz rather astutely pointed out that the ‘crimes’ of which he was accused had also been committed by the allied naval hero Admiral Nimitz.

Nevertheless, as a process of closure, Nuremberg worked. While some acts of criminality (especially those on the allied side) were ignored, no innocent men were found guilty. Important points about culpability in war were established. In Germany the trial was an essential cathartic process crucial to post-war regeneration.

Nuremberg worked because the allied powers generally agreed on the shape of the legal process and because they had plenty of time to plan the trial. But, most importantly, it worked because Germany was a universally recognised pariah; she could not rely upon friends outside her borders to discredit the legal process.

Thus, even though the trial was undoubtedly a case of justice by the victors, it did not seem that way at the time. It seemed instead a case of civilisation reasserting itself.

The Bush administration wants Saddam’s trial to be another Nuremberg. And pigs might fly. All of the elements that made Nuremberg a success are absent today. There’s little agreement on the shape the legal process should take. The US, which has refused to ratify the 1998 Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court, has always preferred a trial by Iraqis. This means that those who now sit in judgment were once either Saddam’s enemies or his collaborators. Neither relationship bodes well for a smooth trial.

Saddam has lots of friends outside his borders, including the Al Jazeera television network. Muslims who acknowledge his evil do not all respect the authority of those prepared to pass judgment upon him. The US wants the trial to be an outward and visible sign of the new, independent Iraq, but it is difficult to demonstrate that point if the judges seem like American puppets.

No matter how tight the American grip on this trial, there’s a risk that it will turn into a Frankenstein’s monster. The most relevant precedent might not be Nuremberg, but rather a legal event closer to home. The trial of Slobodan Milosevic is currently midway through its third year. Nearly 300 witnesses have been called and 30,000 pages of documents have been presented. A verdict, however, remains elusive. Milosevic has used the trial to vandalise the edifice of Western justice, and, more worryingly, televised sessions have inspired a resurgence of militant nationalism in Serbia.

(SNIP)

At Nuremberg, the gulf between moral guilt and legal guilt did not prove an obstacle to justice because the legal authority of the prosecutors was widely accepted and the evil of the defendants was universally acknowledged. Unfortunately, war crimes trials have never since been so simple. Rather than a precedent, Nuremberg might prove an irrelevance.

5//The Daily Star, Lebanon Monday, July 05, 2004
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=3&article_id=5894

DON’T BLAME THE ARABS: OIL FACES NEW THREATS BEYOND THE GULF
By Ed Blanche

Ed Blanche, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, is a Beirut-based journalist who has covered Middle Eastern affairs for three decades. He is a regular contributor to THE DAILY STAR.

Special to The Daily Star

BEIRUT: The United States' drive for energy security, one of the dominant elements in its tough-guy foreign policy, is running into trouble around the globe, making US control of Iraq's oil wealth ever more necessary. And that is sure to stir up more trouble, unsettling a market that has become volatile and unpredictable.

In an effort to reduce dependence on Middle Eastern oil, the Americans have been encouraging the quest for new sources of oil and gas for some time, but this has often led oilmen into regions that were unstable, or are made so by their presence and the greed their product instills among the political elites. These days, the New York Times commented recently, "the discovery of oil is itself almost a guarantee of conflict."

In short, the world's main oil-producing regions are becoming political quagmires that threaten global supply, and this is likely to keep oil prices high for some considerable time no matter what happens in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Major convulsions in those countries, which seem unavoidable, will only worsen an already bad situation.

The violence in Iraq and Saudi Arabia has kept the concerns of oil-importing countries like the US focused on the Middle East. But in recent months there have been internal problems in key oil producers like Venezuela, Nigeria and Norway that have either reduced oil production or threaten to do so. None of this will bring any comfort to the Middle East.

With production by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries stretched and global oil demand expected to keep rising due to strong economic growth in industrialized countries and population giants China and India, a major disruption by a top producer such as Venezuela, the world's fifth largest exporter with the western hemisphere's largest reserves, could trigger a global crisis.

(SNIP)

The ruling elites in several of the Central Asian states sitting on these vast deposits of oil and gas are as totalitarian as the Soviets who were their masters until the collapse of communism nearly 15 years ago. Political upheaval could erupt in the not-too-distant future as these elites, enriched by the oil profits and courted by the US for their energy resources and their strategic military value, establish dynasties through which they will maintain their grip on power.

Islamic extremists fighting the Russians in nearby Chechnya could find the pipeline a tempting target. As it is, the Caspian region lacks investment and suffers serious export bottlenecks, so it cannot be counted on to compensate for any loss in production in Iraq, Saudi Arabia or anywhere else.

Georgia could also be a collision point between Russia and the US, which backed the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline as a way to cut into Moscow's traditional monopoly of Caspian energy resources. The Russians, alarmed at US encroachment into Central Asia, especially since Sept. 11, 2001, are now making determined efforts to recover their influence - along with access to Caspian oil and to military bases - in the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan. The Americans cannot afford to have Georgia plunged into turmoil again.

In recent weeks there have been coup attempts in Sao Tome, Equatorial Guinea, Chad and Mauritania in West Africa, a region which is expected within five years to be producing 15 percent of the United States' oil imports. The oilfields, mainly offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, can supply oil to the US East Coast far faster than the Gulf - 10 days against up to two months - which gives them added strategic value.

But the oil wealth that US and European oil companies are racing to develop in the region seems to be the cause of a chain reaction of unrest as political rivals squabble over the riches that are suddenly descending on these countries, some of the poorest in the world, and in several cases ruled by dictators just as brutal in their way as Saddam Hussein. These, too, are now supported by the US.

(SNIP)

... The union problems remain unresolved and more trouble probably lies ahead for Norway, the world's third biggest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and Russia. It pumps 200 million cubic meters of gas per day to continental Europe and Britain.

Russia, which now rivals Saudi Arabia as the world's top producer, can no longer pick up any slack in global output. Its crude oil exports have hit a ceiling after several years of growth and Moscow cannot raise shipments unless new pipelines are built.

US relations with Saudi Arabia and other key producers, such as Russia and Venezuela, have deteriorated and this growing antagonism will keep the issue of oil supplies on a knife-edge for months to come, possibly longer. With the Gulf facing growing turmoil and Asia's demand for oil increasing, prices are likely to be pushed back above $40 a barrel, despite recent dips.

RELATED:

The Daily Star, Monday July 05, 2004
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=3&article_id=5893

TEHRAN CLAIMS WORLD’S 2ND BIGGEST OIL RESERVES

4.9 million bpd capacity predicted by march 2005

Discoveries in Yadavaran field bring figure up to 132 billion barrels

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

TEHRAN: Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh announced Saturday that new oil discoveries in the southwest of the country meant the Islamic Republic held the number-two position in world crude reserves.

"We now have the second largest oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia," he told a news conference.

He said the Oil Ministry's new figure of 132 billion barrels of proven reserves, a jump of 17 billion barrels from before, came from discoveries in the Kushk and Hosseinieh oilfields - now classed as one single field and renamed Yadavaran - in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.

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