AUGUST 2004

A better and safer place.........Tony Blair justifying the Iraq war in his response to the Butler report
"... what I saw was infinitely more disturbing: a nation whose government rules only its capital, a country about which we fantasise at our peril."   R.Fisk.

Robert Fisk In Najaf

20 July 2004 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp

For mile after mile south of Baghdad yesterday, the story was the same: empty police posts, abandoned Iraqi army and police checkpoints and a litter of burnt-out American fuel tankers and rocket-smashed police vehicles down the main highway to Hillah and Najaf. It was Afghanistan Mk2.

Iraqi government officials and Western diplomats tell journalists to avoid driving out of Baghdad; now I understand why. It is dangerous. But my own fearful journey far down Highway 8 - scene of the murder of at least 15 Westerners - proved that the US-appointed Iraqi government controls little of the land south of the capital. Only in the Sunni Muslim town of Mahmoudiya - where a car bomb exploded outside an Iraqi military recruiting centre last week - did I see Iraqi policemen.

They were in a convoy of 11 battered white pick-ups, pointing Kalashnikovs at the crowds around them, driving on to the wrong side of the road when they became tangled in a traffic jam, screaming at motorists to clear their path at rifle point. This was not a frightened American column - this was Iraq's own new blue-uniformed police force, rifles also directed at the windows of homes and shops and at the crowd of Iraqis which surged around them. In Iskanderia, I saw two gunmen near the road. I don't know why they bothered to stand there. The police had already left their post a few metres away.

Yes, it is a shameful reflection on our invasion of Iraq - let us solemnly remember "weapons of mass destruction" - but it is, above all, a tragedy for the Iraqis. They endured the repulsive Saddam. They endured our shameful UN sanctions. They endured our invasion. And now they must endure the anarchy we call freedom.

In Baghdad, of course, it was the usual story yesterday; a suicide bomber killing 15 Iraqis and wounding another 62 when he blew up his fuel tanker bomb next to a police station (pictured above), and an Iraqi defence ministry official murdered outside his home. And true to the Alice-in-Wonderland world of the new Iraqi government, 43 new Iraqi ambassadors were appointed around the world. But who did they represent? Iraq? Or just Baghdad?

After the city of Hillah, I came across the police and a scattering of new Iraqi army soldiers. At Kufa, they insisted on escorting my car into the holy city of Najaf. But miles from the city centre, they turned round and told me that under the terms of the ceasefire with Muqtada Sadr's "Mehdi Army", they could drive no further. They were right. Sadr's militia - which the US army promised to "destroy" last April - guards the old city, the main roads to the mosque and the entrance to the great Shrine of the Imam Ali.

Indeed, deep inside this wondrous and golden tiled contribution to Islamic architecture - in an air-conditioned office heavy with Chinese pots and Iranian carpets - I found the man who helped draw up the map for the US military to retreat after they abandoned their siege of Sadr's forces.

"The Americans gave us a map and asked us which roads they could patrol," Sadr's right-hand man, the turbaned Sheikh Ali Smaisin, told me in the Najaf shrine yesterday. "I sat with the other members of the 'Beit Shia' (the Shia House, which combines a numberf local political groups, including the Dawa party) and we set out the roads on which the Americans would be permitted to make their patrols. This map was then returned to the American side and they accepted our choices for roads they could control."

I was not surprised. US forces are under so many daily guerrilla attacks that they cannot move by daylight along Highway 8 or, indeed, west of Baghdad through Falujah or Ramadi. Across Iraq, their helicopters can fly no higher than 100 metres for fear of rocket attack. Save for a solitary A1M1 Abrams tank on a motorway bridge in the Baghdad suburbs, I saw only one other US vehicle on the road yesterday: a solitary Humvee driving along a patrol road in Najaf agreed by the Mehdi Army. Three faraway Apache helicopters were hedge-hopping their way towards the Euphrates

That the "muqawama" - the resistance - controls so many hundreds of square miles around Baghdad should be no great surprise. The new US-appointed government has neither the police nor the soldiers to retake the land. They announce martial laws and telephone tapping and bans on demonstrations and a new intelligence service -- but have neither the manpower nor the ability to turn these institutions into anything more than propaganda dreams for foreign journalists and a population that desperately craves security.

Even the ceasefire agreement set out between the Americans and the Mehdi Army is astonishing in its breadth. According to Sheikh Smaisin, it allowed the police to return to their checkpoints outside the city and the abandonment of official buildings by members of the Mehdi Army. I found the police back in control of their station at Kufa, a large American tank shell-hole through the wall as a reminder of the recent fighting. Article Three states that no one can be arrested or captured, Article Four that there should be no public carrying of weapons - the Mehdi Army certainly appeared to be abiding by this clause yesterday. Articles Five and Six say that "occupation forces" - the Americans - must remain in their bases except for small patrol routes which they can use to reach these fortifications.

Astonishingly, the final clause - still under debate when the Americans "transferred" power on 28 June - calls for the withdrawal of all legal charges against Muqtada Sadr for the murder of Sayed Abdul-Majid al-Khoi last year. When revealed by the occupation authorities more than six months after they had been secretly drawn up, the second most senior US officer in Iraq said that as a result of the accusations, his forces would "kill or capture" Sadr.

But it was Sadr's men who courteously greeted me at their checkpoint in Najaf yesterday and took me to speak to Sheikh Smaisin at the Imam Ali shrine. He complained that US troops had several times broken the ceasefire. "Two weeks ago, two of their Humvees turned up outside Sadr's home and the soldiers began questioning people. We told our forces not to open fire and we complained and then these soldiers were withdrawn."

Sadr's forces - "a public current", Sheikh Smaisin calls them with unexpected discretion - supposedly suffered less than a hundred casualties in the US attack; the Americans say they killed 400 of them.

Smaisin has little time for such statistics. "What we see in the occupation is American force with a British brain," he says. "This is just the same as the British occupation of Basra in 1914 and Baghdad in 1917. Our movement cannot be overcome because we are patriotic and Islamic, just like the forces opposing the occupation in the Sunni areas of Iraq. The westerners want to set up a sectarian government but we don't accept this. Now they have an insurrection from Fao in the south to Kirkuk in the north. Shia and Sunni are together. And any government that is not elected in free and honest elections - well, there's a problem there."

So much, then, for the Allawi government, even if the Shia insurrection is a shadow of the Sunni version. But the evidence of my journey yesterday - through the southern Sunni cities which long ago rejected American rule, to the holiest Shia city where its own militia controls the shrines and the square miles around them - suggested that Mr Allawi controls a capital without a country.

It took two weeks to arrange my trip, and I travelled with a Muslim cleric in my car who urged me to read my Arabic newspaper whenever urchins approached to urge my driver to buy window sponges. They would run their sponges over the windows of the car and stare inside, looking - so we believed - for foreigners. They were spotters. And they didn't see me.

But what I saw was infinitely more disturbing: a nation whose government rules only its capital, a about which we fantasise at our peril.

Robert Fisk©All Rights Reserved

.ISRAEL ASK EU TO FIGHT SANCTIONS !!!

Jerusalem - Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's office said on Monday he was seeking European Union support in fighting a Palestinian attempt to secure United Nations sanctions if Israel refuses to accept a world court ruling that its West Bank security barrier is illegal.

A foreign ministry statement said Shalom called EU foreign and security policy chief Javier Solana and said the EU's position in the forthcoming General Assembly vote would be an indicator of the Europeans' ability to take a balanced stance on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

"Shalom asked Solana to use his influence to ensure that the EU oppose the Palestinian efforts," the statement said. "Their conversation was part of a wider campaign by the foreign ministry to prevent the UN General Assembly from approving a draft Palestinian resolution on the security fence."

In Brussels, however, Solana echoed the ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague when he spoke to reporters before setting out on a Middle East tour.

"Israel has the right to construct defensive walls in their own territory, but it does not have the same right to do it in other territories," he said.

Israel says the barrier is needed to keep out suicide bombers and gunmen, who have killed hundreds during four years of conflict.

Solana starts his five-day visit on Tuesday with talks in Amman with Jordan's King Abdullah II. He attends a meeting of regional foreign ministers in Cairo on Wednesday and winds up in Israel Thursday and Friday for meetings with Shalom, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and opposition leader Shimon Peres.

The 191-member United Nations is considering a draft General Assembly resolution demanding that Israel comply with the court's opinion.

The Palestinian UN observer, Nasser al-Kidwa, on Friday presented the request to the General Assembly to reinforce the ICJ advisory opinion that the Israeli fence violates international law by encroaching on Palestinian land, and must be dismantled, and compensation paid to Palestinians harmed by its construction.
An assembly vote, like the court opinion, is not legally binding. Only the Security Council can impose sanctions, but the United States - Israel's closest ally - would almost certainly use its veto power to block any such resolution.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered construction of the barrier to continue despite the ruling. Israel refuses to recognise the ICJ decision, saying it has no authority to deal with the issue.

However, Israeli Justice Minister Joseph Lapid was quoted on Monday as saying Israel risked international isolation if it defied the ICJ and world opinion.

"The Hague court, groups like Amnesty, and UN committees, act as a kind of global high court that, while they do not have to be liked, cannot be ignored," Lapid told the Haaretz daily, adding that Israel's behaviour in the West Bank and Gaza Strip could lead it to become an international outcast.

"If we don't respect human rights in the territories, we'll be putting ourselves in the situation in which South Africa found itself," Lapid said.

The Palestinian draft under consideration at the UN says that if Israel does not comply with the court, the General Assembly would reconvene "to consider further actions to bring to an end the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall."

The General Assembly asked the world court in December for an opinion on the legality of the barrier, a 680km complex of high concrete walls, razor-wire fences, trenches and watch towers.

Much of the completed portion is close to Israel's pre-1967 border, but some of it dips into the West Bank. Palestinians say the current route of the wall amounts to a land grab. - Sapa-AP

• This article was originally published on July 19, 2004

Lapid: Israel on verge of becoming intERNATIONAL pariah
Justice Minister Yosef Lapid warned Sunday that Israel is on the verge of becoming an international pariah and urged the government not to ignore the International Court of Justice.

"The Hague court, groups like Amnesty, and United Nations committees, act as a kind of global high court that, while they do not have to be liked, cannot be ignored," said Lapid.

International bodies, who are running out of patience for Israel's occupation of the territories, have put Israel under a legal blockade, Lapid said.

"If we don't respect human rights in the territories, we'll be putting ourselves in the situation in which South Africa found itself," Lapid said.

"People here don't understand that, when Israel ensures that laws and humanitarian criteria are maintained in the territories, it is looking after its own best interests."

The first signs of Israel and its citizens being ostracized are already visible, Lapid said, citing the academic world as an example.

"In the end, there may even be economic sanctions, Israeli goods may be rejected and we may even be banned from European sporting competitions," Lapid said.

Only strict adherence to the rule of law and High Court of Justice rulings will minimize the damage to Israel, Lapid said.

A diluted resolution
Intensive talks Sunday between the UN ambassadors of European Union member states and the world body's Palestinian observer, Nasser al-Kidwa, may result in a diluted version of a UN General Assembly resolution on the separation fence.

Al-Kidwa is intent on obtaining European approval for the resolution, according to diplomats and commentators, and is expected to eventually back down from demands for the inclusion of several operative elements included in the original draft resolution he distributed last week, which aroused fierce European opposition.

The Israeli UN mission is leading a diplomatic effort to convince the ambassadors from European Union member states to abstain. The deputy head of the UN mission, Ariyeh Mekel, told Haaretz on Sunday that, as Israel worked to explain its position with regard to the resolution, it will be emphasizing the paradox that, while law and order are sharply deteriorating in the Gaza Strip, the UN General Assembly is voting on a resolution in which the PLO is preaching to the international community to preserve law and order.

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French Jews and French Government Denounce Sharon's Call For French Jews To Immigrate To Israel

France Denounces Vehemently Sharon’s Call For French Jews To Immigrate To Israel

GAZA, July 19, 2004 (IPC+Agencies)--

France denounced strongly the Israeli Prime Minister call for French Jews to immigrate immediately to Israel because of the so-called anti-Semitism acts.

During his meeting with the representatives of the American- Jewish organizations Sharon addressed them saying: “I would like to call all the Jews around the world to come to Israel but the matter is very important for the French Jews who have to move as early as possible.”

The spokesperson of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry described Sharon’s remarks as extremely unacceptable, viewing them as intervention in France’s interior affairs.

The spokesperson said that Sharon’s’ spells about the anti-Semitic acts the Jews might be exposed to are untrue.

On the other hand, French Jewish high profile figures condemned Sharon’s call for the French Jews.

The Jewish -French Association said in a statement that the association asserted that the Israeli premier has no right to speak on behalf of the French Jews and he ignored a fact that they are French citizens.

Speaking to the French TV last night, Mr. Theoklin, a leader of the French –Jewish Association, said “we are the sons of the Jewish community in France and we have never authorized Sharon to speak on our behalf , in particular, if his speech was true.”

France, with a population of more than 60 million people, has an estimated 600,000 Jews