IRAQ SANCTIONS MONITOR Number 175 Friday, December 22, 2000 ______________________________________________________ IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR........In an effort to make the newsletter more useful to you - and to ensure that you do not receive unwanted ISMs - we will be transferring to a new delivery system over the next month. You will be invited to re-subscribe to ISM and you MUST respond to the message if you wish to continue to be sent the newsletter. If you do not respond, your name will be taken from the list of recipients. It's that simple. Have a wonderful Christmas and/or Eid _______________________________________________________ Christmas...Eid....The New Year.... IT'S FRESH FROM ITS INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE....... VHS copies of the film 'Big Ben to Baghdad', the epic account of last year's journey in a 37-year-old Routemaster bus from London to the capital of sanctions-engulfed Iraq. The 65-minute-film costs £9.99 from the Mariam Appeal, 13a Borough High Street, London+++++++++++++++++LATEST ______________________________________________________ NO COVER-UPS ON GULF WAR SYNDROME, PANEL SAYS >From CHICAGO TRIBUNE, December 21st, 2000 A presidential panel says the Pentagon worked "diligently" and didn't cover up anything in investigating Persian Gulf war syndrome, veterans' ailments still unexplained 10 years after the war. But the head of one veterans advocacy group called the conclusion "a whitewash." A 90-page report released Wednesday details 30 months of work by the board, ordered by President Clinton to oversee Pentagon investigations of illnesses reported by thousands of veterans of the 1991 war. One of the board's seven members, Dr. Vinh Cam, dissented in a three-page letter. An immunologist, Cam charged that the board, made up largely of retired military brass, lacked independence from the Pentagon office it was overseeing, the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illinois, or OSAGWI. She also said it had no authority to suggest that stress be studied further as a possible cause. "At times [the board] acted more like an extension of OSAGWI," Cam wrote. The investigating board concluded that the Defense Department has "worked diligently to fulfill the president's directive to `leave no stone unturned' in investigating possible causes" for illnesses, which include memory loss, nervous system disorders, headaches, joint pains and chronic fatigue. It also found the department "made no effort to deliberately withhold information," an allegation made by critics who believe the Pentagon is hiding data about Iraqi chemical warfare agents or other toxins to which veterans may have been exposed. "On the contrary, [the Pentagon] has made an extraordinary effort to publicize its findings through the publication of reports and newsletters, public outreach meetings, briefings to veterans," a Web site and so on, said the Presidential Special Oversight Board for Department of Defense Investigations of Gulf War Chemical and Biological Incidents. The board repeated the theme of all Pentagon findings so far: "To date, research has not validated any specific cause of these illnesses." It said research must continue. An estimated $300 million has been spent and scores of studies have looked into such possible culprits as Iraq's chemical and biological weapons, vaccinations of military personnel, oil well fires, anti-nerve agent tablets taken by troops, desert sand and stress. "It's a whitewash, exactly the kind of whitewash we were expecting," said Pat Eddington of the advocacy group National Gulf War Resource Center, criticizing what he called the board's "cozy relationship with the Pentagon." In a 1997 lawsuit pending in federal court, Eddington is seeking thousands of pages of Pentagon and CIA documents he says could contain information on Iraqi chemical and biological weapons and other information relating to troop health. Wednesday's report is the final one by the oversight board, which goes out of business this month. Officials have said that of the 700,000 troops who served in the Persian Gulf war, some 100,000 have registered with the Pentagon or Veterans Affairs Department for free exams to look into unexplained illnesses. The two agencies have said about 20,000 of those were found to be ill. ______________________________________________________ Baghdad gives green light to oil exports >From MIDDLE EAST ECONOMIC DIGEST, December 22nd, 2000 Iraq resumed oil exports on 13 December following a 12-day suspension of sales over a price dispute between Baghdad and the UN. Iraq stopped pumping crude oil at its two authorised outlets of Mina al-Bakr and Ceyhan in Turkey on 1 December after the UN refused to accept Iraq's proposed prices for December. These were pitched below the market price to enable Baghdad to impose a $0.50-a-barrel surcharge (MEED 15:12:00). The price dispute was settled on 8 December, but Iraq renewed demands that customers pay the extra tariff, albeit reduced to $0.40-a-barrel. Payment by lifters of Iraqi oil of the fee directly to a Baghdad- controlled account would contravene the UN's oil-for-food programme. The move is seen as one of the boldest attempts yet by the Iraqi authorities to regain some independence in its oil export revenues. Iraq's renewed exports began at Mina al-Bakr with the loading of a million barrels of Basra Light onto a tanker chartered to the Indian Oil Corporation. The Indian firm released a statement saying that it did not pay the surcharge. ______________________________________________________ Bush team's changing world. >From CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 22nd, 2000 If their past is prologue, then Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell and National Security Adviser-designate Condoleezza Rice have given us a good idea of the Bush administration's outlook on the world. General Powell, his memory seared by Vietnam, is famously averse to risking American troops. He was originally opposed to using troops to expel Iraq from Kuwait. He writes in his memoirs he nearly became ill when Madeleine Albright, then-ambassador to the UN, asked him, "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?" Ms. Rice, fresh from her academic and government experience, has developed an approach called "neorealism." She has written the Bush administration's foreign policy will "proceed from the firm ground of the national interest, not from the interests of an illusory international community." President-elect George W. Bush has already talked of pulling American troops out of the Balkans in a "division of labor" with the European community. But the past is not always a reliable predictor. The CIA's National Intelligence Council released this week a broad study by its own and outside experts of the kind of world America may be facing in the next 15 years - a world that is not easily defined in terms of big-power relationships. It is a world that globalization could divide into the haves and the have-nots. The frustrations of the have-nots could trigger the spread of organized crime and weapons of mass destruction. We could be facing an international terrorist coalition with access to chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons. We could be seeing a wave of migration by peoples driven by lack of opportunity and, for some 3 billion, even a lack of water. If this doomsday scenario is even partly realized, then a new foreign-policy lexicon will be needed. The line drawn by the Bush team between national and humanitarian interests may have to be reconsidered. Rice may have to rethink what she said when presented by President-elect Bush last Sunday: "It is a wonderful time for the United States in foreign policy because it's a time when markets and democracy are spreading...." The question posed by the Intelligence Council's report is: How do we deal with peoples seething with frustration because they are being left behind in this brave new world of globalization _____________________________________________________ Pressing Challenges Face Bush Team December 22nd, 2000 WASHINGTON (AP) _ Time waits for no one, not even the president-elect of the United States. After the jubilant backslapping and what-it-all-means punditry, the next administration has little time for the transition from campaign promises to earnest governance. When George W. Bush takes office in January, the new leader of the world's most powerful nation inherits a country at peace and still in a record-long economic expansion. The president-elect also will face immediately a daunting series of pressing problems that will include the Middle East, North Korea and Iraq if President Clinton can't pull off a foreign affairs miracle or two in his last month. This plus signs that an engineered ``soft landing'' economic slowdown might be a good deal harder than Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan expected. Bush's front-burner agenda is filling up rapidly. Clinton's sponsorship this week of Middle East negotiations might color how Bush responds to continuing Palestinian-Israeli violence. A Clinton trip to North Korea, still a possibility, could lead to talks to end that country's missile program just as Bush is entering the White House. Clinton's two-term investment in trying to broker peace in the Middle East, even through the waning days of his administration, will be a tough act to follow. ``It's going to be a new game,'' said Samuel Lewis, U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1977 to 1987, who believes Clinton if anything has been too involved. Bush not only will grapple with an extraordinary rise in anti-American sentiment in that region but also a renewed threat from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the man who plagued the administration of Bush's father and sparked the Persian Gulf War, said Geoffrey Kemp, a former top Middle East aide to President Reagan.``Saddam is getting stronger every day,'' Kemp said. World-shaking events cannot always be predicted, of course, and Bush might be tested by adversaries the likes of expatriate suspected Saudi terror kingpin Osama bin Laden. He also faces questions on whether to keep troops in the Balkan countries, how to respond to tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and what can be done about Iran's nuclear potential. One of the biggest must-do issues facing Bush at noon Jan. 20 will be preparation of a budget within weeks of taking office. By law, the deadline for presenting Congress a new budget to consider for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 is the first Monday in February, Feb. 5. What to do with federal surpluses _ one of the hottest topics on the presidential campaign trail _ is the big question on Capitol Hill. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $4.6 trillion surplus from 2001 through 2010. Of that, $2.4 trillion is from Social Security, which both parties agree should be set aside for debt reduction and Social Security. The remaining $2.2 trillion is the battleground between Republicans' tax relief and Democrats' programs. Many GOP leaders say it would be a mistake for Bush to attempt an immediate push for his entire 10-year, $1.3 trillion tax cut plan, given the 50-50 party split in the incoming Senate and the difficulty under any circumstances of maneuvering tax bills through Congress. While the economy is humming along _ with unemployment at a three-decade low of 3.9 percent and most economists believing the expansion will not dip all the way into recession _ threats on the horizon include a stock market that has been volatile and a huge run-up in energy prices that could get worse if the winter is particularly cold. On taking office Bush could face an immediate energy crisis and be forced to decide whether to tap the new home heating oil reserve set up in the Northeast if supplies tighten. If oil supplies remain tight, another immediate challenge might be how to persuade OPEC to boost production. Bush will have an immediate opportunity to remake the Federal Reserve and have a major impact the nation's interest rate policies and bank regulation. While Chairman Greenspan's term runs until June 2004, three other seats on the Fed's seven-member board are open. During the first half of 2001, the next secretary of defense will create the administration's Pentagon blueprint, stepping at once into a top-to-bottom review of military priorities required by Congress every four years. ``You have a defense strategy that is too ambitious for the kind of resources we have to put into defense,'' said Andrew Krepinevich, director of the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. ``This is going to put a lot of hard choices on the table very early for the administration.'' _____________________________________________________ Japan to allow firms to join in Iraqi oil-for-food programme Text of report in English by Japanese news agency Kyodo Tokyo, 22 December: Japan decided Friday [22 December] to take part in the UN humanitarian programme which allows Iraq to sell oil to meet its people's basic needs, while maintaining economic sanctions against Iraq, Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said. The decision will enable Japanese businesses to take part in the UN oil-for-food programme, which they have not been able to do up to now because of the strict enforcement of the government sanctions, ministry officials said. Japanese companies have reportedly been disadvantaged in doing business with Iraq, compared with some US and European firms that have been able to expand business there through their governments' participation in the UN programme. The UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Iraq in August 1990, but implemented the oil-for-food programme in December 1996 to help alleviate food shortages, lack of medicines and deterioration of essential social services, while maintaining the sanctions. Japan imposed its economic sanctions on Iraq in August 1990 in the wake of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, ahead of the Persian Gulf War in January 1991. _______________________________________________________ Chinese plane heads for Iraq on sanctions-busting mission BEIJING, Dec 22 (AFP) - A Chinese government delegation left here for Baghdad on an Air China plane on Friday carrying a load of humanitarian aid, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. The official delegation is led by Ismail Amat, who holds the rank of state councillor, and includes officials from the foreign ministry, health ministry and ministry of foreign trade and economic cooperation, it added. The delegation is to spend three days in Baghdad at the invitation of the Iraqi government. The flight follows a visit to China last month by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, who received reassurances from President Jiang Zemin of China's opposition to UN sanctions on Iraq. Dozens of flights have landed in Baghdad since its airport reopened in August despite an air embargo which forms part of UN sanctions imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. tel: +44 (0)20 7403 5200 fax: +44 (0)20 7403 3823 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: www.mariamappeal.com
