One more argument for UN
Fidel Castro Ruz, President of Cuba

WHILE I am working with the already famous Greenspan book, I read an article published by El País, a Spanish newspaper with a circulation of more than 500,000, according to reports; I would like to pass this on to the readers. It is signed by Ernesto Ekaizer, and it literally reads:
“Four weeks before the Iraq invasion which happened in the night of March 19 to 20, 2003, George W. Bush publicly sustained his demands of Saddam Hussein in the following terms: disarmament or war.   In private, Bush acknowledged that war was inevitable. In a long private conversation with the then Spanish president, José María Aznar, held on Saturday, February 22, 2003 at the Crawford Ranch in Texas , Bush made it clear that the moment had come to get rid of Saddam.  ‘We have two weeks. In two weeks our military will be ready.   We will be in Baghdad at the end of March’, he told Aznar.
“The moment has come to get rid of Saddam.
“As part of this plan, Bush had accepted, on January 31, 2003 —after an interview with the British Prime Minister Tony Blair— to make a last diplomatic manoeuvre: to introduce a second resolution to the United Nations Security Council. His objective: to clear the way legally for a unilateral war that the United States was getting ready to unleash with more than 200,000 soldiers who were in the region ready to attack.
“Bush was aware of Blair’s internal difficulties and he knew of Aznar’s.   Only seven days before that meeting at the Crawford Ranch, three million people were demonstrating in several Spanish cities against the imminent war. ‘We need your help with our public opinion’, Aznar asks. Bush explains to him the scope of the new resolution that he is going to present: ‘The resolution will be tailor made to help you. I don’t care about the content’. To this, Aznar replies: ‘That text would help us to be able to co-sponsor it and be its co-authors, and get many people to sponsor it’. Aznar, then, offers to give Bush European coverage, together with Blair.  Aznar’s dream of consolidating a relationship with the United States, following in the footsteps of the United Kingdom, was about to become reality.
“Aznar had travelled with his wife, Ana Botella, on February 20 to the United States making a stopover in Mexico to persuade President Vicente Fox –unsuccessfully– of the need to support Bush. On the 21 st, the couple, accompanied by the President’s assistants, arrived in Texas.  Aznar and his wife stayed at the ranch guest house.
 “In the meeting on the following day, Saturday, President Bush, his then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and Daniel Fried, the chief of European Affairs at the National Security Council, were present.   Aznar, on his side, was accompanied by his international policy advisor, Alberto Carnero and the Spanish Ambassador in Washington, Javier Rupérez.  As part of the meeting, Bush and Aznar had a four-way telephone conversation with the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Italian President Silvio Berlusconi.
 “Ambassador Rupérez translated from the English for Aznar and also from the Italian for Condoleezza Rice; another two interpreters did the same for Bush and his collaborators.   It was Rupérez who drafted the minutes of the conversation in a memorandum that has been kept secret until today.
“The conversation is impressive because of its direct, friendly and even menacing tone when, for example, they refer to the necessity of some countries like Mexico, Chile, Angola, Cameroon and Russia, members of the UN Security Council, voting for the new resolution as a show of friendship towards the United States or else they would have to suffer the consequences.
“They are cautioned about zero expectations for the work of the inspectors, whose chief, Hans Blix, had dismantled just one week earlier, on February 14, the arguments presented by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell at the Security Council on February 5, 2003, with ‘solid facts’ enthusiastically supported by the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ana Palacio. The same facts that Powell himself later described as a bunch of lies.
“The Blix Report
“According to Blix, Iraq was taking steps towards active cooperation in solving the pending issue of disarmament.   His tone had been less critical than that of his report of January 27, 2003.  ‘Since we arrived in Iraq three months ago we have made more than 400 inspections, with no advance warning at 300 sites.  Until now, the inspectors have found no prohibited weapons…If Iraq decides to cooperate even more closely, the period of disarmament by the inspections can still be short´, the chief inspector pointed out.
“The General Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed El Baradei released information on February 14 that there were still some technical issues left to clear up. But, he added, ‘now there are no more disarmament problems left to solve’.
According to him, absolutely no proof had been found that Iraq had been carrying out nuclear activities or activities related to nuclear energy, another clear lie about what Powell had stated about the Iraqi nuclear program.
“Both the first results of the inspections and the end of the United States preparations led Bush to set the beginning of the military operation towards the date of March 10, 2003. Later, nine days were added in order to get the second resolution. The process of moral persuasion in which Aznar and Palacios worked  by phone and in bilateral meetings did not succeed in pulling in more than four votes: those of the three promoters and Bulgaria. They needed 9 votes.
“The failure of this legal coverage for the imminent war led Bush, with Blair and Aznar, to agree to a summit meeting in the Azores on March 16, 2003, a place suggested by Aznar as an alternative to Bermuda for a reason he explained to Bush: ‘Just the name of these islands suggests an item of clothing that is not exactly the most appropriate for the seriousness of the moment in which we find ourselves’. There, on that March 16, Blair, Bush and Aznar decided to replace the United Nations Security Council. They usurped its functions to declare war on Iraq at their own risk. On the morning of March 17, the United Kingdom ambassador at the UN announced in New York the withdrawal of the second resolution.  A defeat in the voting would have complicated even further the race towards war”.

Burmese time bomb
Eric S Margolis

THE situation in Myanmar is tense and increasingly dangerous. If the mass street demonstrations across Myanmar seen in recent weeks are not suppressed by the powerful military and secret police, they could herald an extremely turbulent period for this strategic nation once known as Burma.
Military-ruled Myanmar bans most foreign journalists and the internet. This writer managed to slip into Myanmar three times. On the last, I was told the secret police were actually conducting bed checks in people’s homes in the capital to ensure no trouble-makers from the rebellious northern states were in town. On my second visit, I eluded the secret police and got to see the nation’s Noble prize-winning democratic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi in her home in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, where she has been under house arrest for 17 years.
The crisis in Myanmar seems a simple morality drama. The saintly Suu Kyi is held like a bird in a cage by a junta of brutal generals, who until recently called themselves by the truly Orwellian name of State Law and Order Council,’ or SLORC. In 1988, the junta’s soldiers crushed student demonstrations, killing 3,000. After Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory in 1990 elections, the generals annulled the voted and declared martial law.
This week President George Bush and other western nations called for even tighter sanctions against Burma’s junta and urged its replacement with democratic government. No one noted that Algeria’s US-backed military regime did precisely the same thing in 1991 when it annulled an electoral victory by Islamist parties and declared martial law, leading to civil war in which 150,000 have died.
Burma indeed is a nasty police state. Its generals have plundered resources and kept this magnificent nation in direst poverty. Myanmar is often called a jewel’ and unspoiled Asia of 1940’s. True enough. But that’s because the junta and its predecessor, the mad dictator and necromancer, General Ne Win, turned Burma into an isolated, hermit kingdom. But extreme caution is advised in dealing with Myanmar. If things go wrong there, it could turn into an Southeast Asian version of Iraq, Yugoslavia or Afghanistan.
Myanmar has been at war for 50 years with 17 ethnic rebel groups seeking secession from the former 14-state Union of Burma created by Imperial Britain, godfather of many of the world’s worst current problems.
Burmans, of Tibetan origins, form 68 per cent of the population of 57 million. But there are other important, well-defined, independence-minded ethnic groups: Shan, the largely Christian Karen, Kachin, Chin, Mon, Wa, and Rakhine, Anglo-Burmese, and Chinese. The largest, Shan, with their Shan State Army, are ethnically close to neighbouring Thailand, and in cahoots with the Thai military. Each major ethnic group has its own army and finances itself through smuggling timber, jewels, arms, and drugs.
The military juntas in Rangoon, and their 500,000 armed forces, know as Tatmadaw,’ battled these secessionists for decades until the current junta managed to establish uneasy ceasefires with the major rebel groups. If the junta were to be replaced by a democratic civilian government led by the gentle Suu Kyi, and military repression ended, it is highly likely Myanmar’s ethnic rebellions would quickly re-ignite. The only force holding shaky Myanmar together is the military and secret police.
Shan, Karen, Kachin, and Mon still demand their own independent nations. Burma’s powerful neighbours — India, China and Thailand — have their eye on this potentially resource-rich nation. China exercises strong influence over Myanmar and is building a naval base near Rangoon to give it direct access for the first time to the Andaman Sea and Indian Ocean. India sees rival China threatening its rebellion-plagued eastern hill states along the Burmese border, and is increasingly alarmed by Chinese naval ambitions in the Indian Ocean.
A new democratic government in Yangon-Rangoon that is not tough enough to deal with secessionist regions around its troubled periphery could see Burma falling into internal turmoil and also invite intervention by covetous neighbours. At worst, India and China could even clash head-on over control of strategic Burma, a threat identified in my book on Asian geopolitics and Indian-Chinese rivalry, War at the Top of the World.’ So the west should tread with great caution and patience in Burma, a complex nation it understands not at all. Too drastic action against the junta could unleash civil war and dangerous regional tensions. No one wants another Iraq in the heart of Southeast Asia.

—Khaleej Times



Polar ambitions
Jing Xiaolei

THIS is set to be an important year for China’s South Pole scientific research, as the country has set out to update its two research stations in the Antarctic and is making preparations to build a third. Renovations, which will cost more than 100 million yuan ($13 million), started on the Changcheng (Great Wall) Station early this August. The station was built in 1985 on King George Island. Renovation work is due to be completed by the end of the year, according to Qin Weijia, Deputy Director of the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC). Though the Changcheng Station underwent several expansions in 1986, 1992 and 1996, which brought its size to the current 4,200 square meters, facilities at the station have become outdated and some cement and steel structures have been eroded by underground water. “Some floors have cracked and crumbled, and become very dangerous,” Qin said. Renovation work will also begin on the Zhongshan Station next year, which was built in 1989 on the Larsemann Hills and covers an area of 2,700 square meters.
The renovated facilities will save energy and be more environment-friendly than the old ones, Qin said. They will include a 1,000-square-meter scientific research building and a waste and sewage treatment center to be constructed in the Changcheng Station. “The size of the station will be enlarged by 1,980 square meters after the renovation,” said Qin, adding that the expansion area will be even larger for the Zhongshan Station. After the update, the Changcheng Station will be able to provide good service as a scientific research center for 10 to 15 years, according to Zhang Zhanhai, Director of the PRIC. The renovation mission is just a small part of China’s research blueprint for Antarctic. In 2006, the Chinese Government allocated a total of 570 million yuan for major Antarctic research projects, of which 32 million was given to the IPY Chinese Project (IPY stands for the International Polar Year, an international event during which scientists carry out large-scale joint scientific activities), 150 million to the development of the Shanghai-based Polar Research Institute, 180 million to the renovations of the two existing Antarctic research stations and 200 million to the update of a polar expedition ship Xuelong (Snow Dragon). Third station Polar research has become a hot topic in the international scientific community and the peculiar geographic positions and unique natural environments of the poles provide ideal locations to study evolution and global climate changes. Hence China is stepping up its efforts to build a third Antarctic research station. The new research station will be built on Dome A, the highest icecap in the Antarctic, in 2009, “if nothing goes wrong,” Cui Xiangqun, Deputy Director of the Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy, said at a recent astronomy conference in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. The new station, named Duxia, will be the world’s first station on the highest point in the Antarctic. Chinese scientists are already receiving acclimatization training in Tibet to prepare them to land on Dome A, where temperatures are believed to reach 90 degrees centigrade below zero. It has long been considered an “unapproachable area.” Duxia, which translates as “spending summer,” will complement the research efforts of the Zhongshan and Changcheng stations, which are near the coast. “As the first inland station, Duxia is important for Chinese scientific research in the Antarctic,” Wu Jun, an official with the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administra-tion, said. In January 2005, a Chinese national Antarctic research expedition team traveled 1,228 km from Zhongshan Station to Dome A and located the highest point of the ice sheet. The polar expedition ship Xuelong will take an expedition team to Dome A this October when the ship’s renovation work comes to an end. Being China’s 24th Antarctic expedition since 1984, this year’s expedition will bear the task of making preparations for the construction of the country’s third South Pole research station Duxia, as well as conducting geological exploration, according to Zhang from the PRIC.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)