IN THIS MESSAGE: White House Feuding with CIA Over Guatemala Killings;
Globalism's Worst,Yet to Come; Fresh Proof of Operation Condor; Peace
Network to Address Globalization Founded
/* Written 9:03 PM Jun 14, 1999 by newsdesk in igc:ips.english */
/* ---------- "POLITICS: White House Feuding with" ---------- */
Copyright 1999 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
*** 14-Jun-99 ***
Title: POLITICS: White House Feuding with CIA Over Guatemala Killings
By Tim Shorrock
WASHINGTON, Jun 14 (IPS) - The administration of President Bill
Clinton is feuding with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) over
its alleged defiance of U.S. attempts to bring peace to Guatemala,
says former US State Department official Richard Nuccio.
Nuccio, the man who exposed the CIA's covert support for
Guatemalan death squads, said last week that tension between the
White House and the CIA also had complicated US and United Nations
attempts to identify war criminals in Yugoslavia.
He said the argument had resulted in the string of unprecedented
''leaks'' of highly classified intelligence documents that were
printed recently in right-wing publications here that were opposed
to Clinton's foreign policy toward China and Russia.
Nuccio is now a visiting scholar at Harvard University's
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
He spoke about ''the uses and abuses of intelligence'' at a
conference on U.S. defense strategy, sponsored by the New America
Foundation of Washington, D.C., and the Japan Policy Research
Institute of San Diego.
A CIA spokeswoman refused to speculate about the origin of the
leaked intelligence documents and said the CIA's Office of
Inspector General had previously concluded that the agency
''performed its mission in Guatemala in accord with legitimate
intelligence requirements set by the U.S. government.''
Not so, said Nuccio in his talk here. In 1997, the former college
professor was forced to leave his position as senior adviser to
the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs after
exposing links between the CIA and Guatemalan paramilitary groups
responsible for numerous atrocities during Guatemala's long civil
war.
Nuccio made his discovery while he was trying to broker a peace
agreement between the Guatemalan government and a leftist
resistance movement.
''The CIA systematically defied U.S. policy to end Guatemala's
civil war by refusing to end its ties with torturers in the
Guatemalan intelligence service,'' he said.
Yet the Clinton administration refused to confront the agency - a
failure of nerve that ''flows from the weak control of the White
House over the CIA and is based on the Democrats' vulnerability to
intelligence criticism.''
According to Nuccio, Clinton's senior advisers openly admitted
their vulnerability to criticism on security issues when they
refused to overrule a 1997 CIA decision to revoke Nuccio's high-
level security clearance.
''I was told: 'you're being screwed, but what can we do? This is
the CIA','' recalled Nuccio. ''That's something you would hear
only from Democrats. A Republican administration would never put
up with public dissent from the CIA.''
As a result of Clinton's reluctance to take on the CIA, Nuccio
said, the agency had become even more brazen in its opposition to
official policy.
In 1996, the State Department asked the CIA for help in
identifying war criminals in Bosnia but, according to Nuccio, the
CIA refused to go along because that would ''undermine its ability
to recruit'' agents and other sources of information.
That policy could come back to haunt the United States if a new
government in Serbia discovered that the CIA has placed war
criminals on its payroll, he said.
The most obvious example of CIA defiance, Nuccio said, was the
recently published book 'Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration
Undermined American Security.'
Written by Bill Gertz, national security correspondent of the
conservative 'Washington Times' newspaper, the book uses leaked
intelligence reports to argue that President Clinton's ''naive''
strategies of ''appeasement'' with China and Russia have
compromised U.S. interests and left the United States ''weaker
militarily as its enemies grow stronger and the world becomes more
dangerous.''
What was striking about 'Betrayal,' Nuccio said, was Gertz'
access to highly classified documents from the last three years,
including records of electronic surveillance that were among the
most closely held secrets of the intelligence community.
While leaks to the press were common in the nation's capital,
''the leaks to the 'Washington Times' are unprecedented in the
level of intelligence,'' he said. ''I would go to jail if I
discussed the contents of those kinds of documents with you.''
The leaks are also unusual because they flow directly from the
intelligence community and are ''pointed at attacking specific
White House policies,'' said Nuccio.
''The intelligence community is not supposed to have policies.
The CIA was created to develop analysis for policy-makers,'' he
declared.
The CIA spokeswoman denied that agency officials were selectively
leaking material to discredit the Clinton administration. ''It's
very unfortunate that someone is providing to Gertz classified
documents,'' she said. ''That is very damaging because it has
revealed our sources and methods.''
She noted that the leaked materials were not exclusively CIA
documents but included classified data from the Defense
Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency as well. ''If
we knew where these were being leaked from, we would prevent that
individual from leaking any further.''
Nuccio became a public figure in 1995 when he discovered the
identities of the CIA ''assets'' in Guatemala who had been
involved in the murders of Michael Devine, an American innkeeper,
and Efriam Bamaca, a Guatemalan resistance leader who was married
to a US citizen, Jennifer Harbury.
When the CIA refused to provide the names of her husband's
killers to Harbury (who had launched a hunger strike in protest)
Nuccio provided the information to Democratic Rep. (now Senator)
Robert Torricelli, of New Jersey. Torricelli subsequently leaked
the information to 'The New York Times'.
The media uproar forced the CIA to conduct an internal
investigation of its role in Guatemala, which led to the firing of
two former CIA station chiefs and official reprimands against
seven other CIA officials.
The revelations deeply angered the CIA, which stripped Nuccio of
his security clearance. The State Department restored Nuccio's
clearance, but that decision was overruled by the CIA. Nuccio
appealed to the White House, and CIA Director John Deutsche
appointed a panel that included Clinton attorney John Podesta to
hear Nuccio's case.
Nuccio recently filed a lawsuit to force the panel to restore his
security clearance but, when his attorneys filed a request with
the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act for records of the
White House panel, they were told that the request would have to
wait for other FOIA searches.
The CIA is notorious among government agencies for dragging its
feet on declassifying information and recently ''discovered'' that
its files on the agency's role in Iran had been destroyed.
(END/IPS/ts/mk/99)
Origin: Manila/POLITICS/
----
=============================================
* Written 9:03 PM Jun 15, 1999 by newsdesk in igc:ips.english */
/* ---------- "LABOUR: Unions Say Globalisation's" ---------- */
Copyright 1999 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
*** 15-Jun-99 ***
Title: LABOUR: Unions Say Globalisation's Worst is Yet to Come
By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jun 15 (IPS) - The world trade union movement fears that
globalisation and multi-national activities will create difficult
times for labour organisers in the next century.
While in the short term globalisation will undermine union
rights, ultimately ''we will win this battle,'' predicts Bill
Jordan, secretary general of the International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).
The confederation, which has 125 million members throughout the
world, believes globalisation only has just begun and ''it isn't
some five-minute fashion.''
Jordan made his predictions Monday while presenting the ICFTU's
annual report on union rights violations, which included the
assassination of 123 unionists in 1998, at a meeting in Geneva of
the International Labour .
If communism lasted 80 years, globalisation will endure in the
coming century because ''we're just in its early phases,'' Jordan
told a four-day international labour conference,that continues
until June 17.
The ICFTU report describes an intensification of pressures on
population and natural resources resulting from the competition of
multi-nationals.
''The multi-nationals already are telling countries desperate
for their investments that, if they want to receive investments
they have to liberalise their laws, and introduce flexibility,''
says Jordan.
The price of investment is the elimination of regulations that
protect workers from layoffs, what the transnationals call
''Draconian labour laws.''
The ICFTU's report on union rights violations mentions, in
addition to the 123 assassinations, that 1,650 union leaders were
attacked or injured in 1998. The number of job dismissals
resulting from union activity rose to 21,427 in the 119 countries
included in the study by the ICFTU which is based in Brussels.
The report's editor, Kathryn Hodder, of the ICFTU's Department
of Union Rights, again lists Latin America as the most dangerous
region, with a total of 108 assassinations of union leaders: 98
in Colombia, seven in Bolivia and three in Ecuador.
In 1997, the number of unionists murdered in Colombia had
reached 158.
The Colombian data should be taken in the context that it is
involved in the biggest drive for peace that the country has ever
seen - the government and armed forces claim to be working full
out to achieve peace, said Jordan.
The union report stated that the Colombian government was not
able to provide the International Labour Organisation (ILO) with
information on even one case of arrest, trial, or punishment of
anyone responsible for the assassinations of unionists since Nov.
1996.
The deaths of unionists in Bolivia and Ecuador occurred during
worker demonstrations to protest price increases, according to
the report.
In India, the state police of Haryana fired their weapons at a
group of workers taking part in a peaceful demonstration in front
of Pshupati Textile factory in Dharuhera, in the Rewari district.
Five textile union members were killed.
In Kenya there were numerous cases of attacks against unionists -
victims of police brutality during demonstrations. Violent
repression in the African country also reached teachers and
students who were beaten with sticks and clubs, according to the
report.
Four workers in Indonesia were hospitalised for injuries
incurred when the police tried to stop a demonstration in front of
the ILO headquarters protesting the layoffs of Aug. 1998.
Croatian workers were injured by riot police in Feb. 1998 as
they tried to break up a demonstration against deteriorating
social conditions.
The number of people arrested for participating in union
activities rose last year to 3,660 world-wide. Kazakhstan reported
the highest number in June when 200 workers were arrested all at
once for demanding three years of back pay.
The Kazakhstan government settled the matter by banning marches
and demonstrations, stated the ICFTU.
In South Korea, the government carried out massive arrests of
union members, a total of 488 in 1998, who were protesting the
loss of their jobs. (END/IPS/tra-so/pc/mj/ld/99)
Origin: ROMAWAS/LABOUR/
----
[c] 1999, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
All rights reserved
May not be reproduced, reprinted or posted to any system or
service outside of the APC networks, without specific
permission from IPS. This limitation includes distribution
via Usenet News, bulletin board systems, mailing lists,
print media and broadcast. For information about cross-
posting, send a message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. For
information about print or broadcast reproduction please
contact the IPS coordinator at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
====================================
/* Written 9:05 PM Jun 16, 1999 by newsdesk in igc:ips.english */
/* ---------- "RIGHTS-CHILE: Fresh Proof of 'Opera" ---------- */
Copyright 1999 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
*** 16-Jun-99 ***
Title: RIGHTS-CHILE: Fresh Proof of 'Operation Condor' Surfaces
By Gustavo Gonzalez
SANTIAGO, Jun 16 (IPS) - Fresh evidence of the existence of
'Operation Condor', the repressive network of the dictatorships
ruling much of South America in the 1970s, surfaced this week in
Chile.
The mayor of one of the poshest municipalities of Santiago,
retired colonel Cristian Labbe, admitted having belonged to the
notorious secret police of the de facto regime of Gen. Augusto
Pinochet (1973-90), following the publication of official
documents lending further credence to the existence of 'Operation
Condor'.
Labbe, the right-wing mayor of the Santiago municipality of
Providencia, told the Chilean daily 'La Hora' from his vacation
spot in the U.S. state of California Tuesday that he had
''indeed'' been a member of the 'Direccion de Inteligencia
Nacional' (DINA) as the head of Pinochet's escort.
The mayor's ties to the de facto regime's secret police were
revealed by classified official documents dating back to the time
of the military government, unearthed in the foreign ministry and
published in Tuesday's edition of the daily 'La Nacion', which
belongs to the state and follows the line of the government of the
moment.
The documents demonstrate that the head of DINA, now-retired
Gen. Manuel Contreras, created Operation Condor to coordinate
operations against the respective opponents - real or suspected -
of the military regimes ruling the nations of the Southern Cone of
the Americas in the 1970s and 1980s.
''The documents survived the destruction of files carried out
by the foreign ministry shortly after President Patricio Aylwin
took office'' in March 1990, stated 'La Nacion'.
Participation in Operation Condor by the security forces of
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay had long been
denounced by opponents of the military regimes, and substantiated
by the discovery of literally tonnes of documents and files in
Asuncion in 1992, when Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner was
toppled.
Legal proceedings are underway in Spain for crimes against
humanity committed by the dictatorships of Argentina (1976-83) and
Chile in the framework of Operation Condor.
The cases, concentrated in the hands of Judge Baltasar Garzon
since 1998, gave rise to the Oct 16 arrest of Pinochet in London,
where the ex-dictator is facing a trial - set to begin Sep 27 - to
decide on his possible extradition to Spain.
Twenty years ago, Chileans in exile revealed a letter with a
1976 dateline, signed by Contreras, inviting high-ranking officers
from nearby countries to the ''First Inter-American Meeting on
National Intelligence'' - which gave birth to Operation Condor.
Since October 1996, Contreras has been serving a seven-year
sentence for planning the 1976 assassination of former Chilean
foreign minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, committed by DINA
agents and anti-Castro Cuban exiles.
The minutes of the 1976 meeting are frequently mentioned in the
documents revealed Tuesday by 'La Nacion', which basically consist
of classified DINA letters to the foreign ministry seeking to
facilitate the movements of repressive agents from other
countries.
Among the documents figures a Dec 2, 1974 missive in which
Contreras requested a diplomatic passport for Labbe and other
members of the military as ''DINA personnel,'' for the purposes of
''an urgent mission in Peru.''
In his declarations to 'La Hora', Labbe maintained that the
documents published by 'La Nacion' did not ''demonstrate the
existence of Plan Condor,'' but were part of a ''campaign''
conducted by the governing centre-left coalition inspired by ''a
revanchist aim to polarise the country.''
The right-wing mayor added that the report by the state-owned
daily ''could even hurt national security,'' due to the
publication of ''secret documents'' referring to Peru, a country
bordering Chile.
Labbe, who served as deputy minister of the General Secretariat
of the Government toward the end of the dictatorship, was voted
mayor of Providencia, one of the richest municipalities of
Santiago, with the backing of the rightist Independent Democratic
Union party.
Labbe is a close friend of Pinochet, and has visited the former
de facto ruler twice in the rented mansion where he is under house
arrest in London. The retired colonel is also one of the most
active promoters of campaigns in favour of the ex-dictator.
After Pinochet's arrest, Labbe took reprisals in Providencia
against the consular seats of Great Britain and Spain and other
bodies with links to those two countries by withholding garbage
collection and meting out fines for supposed infringements of
municipal ordinances. (END/IPS/tra-so/ggr/dm/sw/99)
Origin: Montevideo/RIGHTS-CHILE/
----
[c] 1999, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
All rights reserved
May not be reproduced, reprinted or posted to any system or
service outside of the APC networks, without specific
permission from IPS. This limitation includes distribution
via Usenet News, bulletin board systems, mailing lists,
print media and broadcast. For information about cross-
posting, send a message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. For
information about print or broadcast reproduction please
contact the IPS coordinator at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
======================================
Media Release
For Immediate Release
June 25, 1999
INTERNATIONAL PEACE NETWORK FORMED TO ADDRESS GLOBALIZATION
(Vancouver) The relationship between globalization and disarmament will
be the focus of a new international organization formed at the Hague
Appeal for Peace civil society conference held in the Hague, the
Netherlands.
The International Network on Disarmament and Globalization (NDG) was
created at a special meeting on May 12th of peace activists, economists,
and researchers from ten countries. They identified the need to better
investigate how economic globalization and the rise of transnational
corporations are affecting efforts to promote peace and international
disarmament.
“Globalization has changed all of the rules,” said Steven Staples, a
Canadian activist and researcher from Vancouver. “Globalization is about
much more than international commerce in fact globalization is
fundamentally challenging international diplomacy, the role of
governments, and even democracy itself,” said Staples.
Corporate-driven international trade agreements and financial
institutions are limiting the ability of governments to govern on behalf
of their citizens. The creation of a single world economy is not
distributing wealth evenly, but instead is increasing the concentration
of wealth into the hands of a tiny minority of people. This inequality
is creating poverty and degrading the environment, setting the
conditions for conflict and even war.
At the same time, mega-mergers are creating powerful transnational
corporations that produce most of the world’s weapons and military
technology. These corporations lobby governments to divert greater
amounts of public treasuries to military spending. The largest of these
corporations include such aerospace and defence giants as Lockheed
Martin, Boeing/McDonnell Douglas, Raytheon, British Aerospace/Marconi,
Aerospatiale/Matra and DaimlerChrysler Aerospace.
“As globalization creates the conditions for war and provides the
weapons to wage it, activists working for peace and disarmament must
confront globalization,” said Staples.
The NDG will address the relationship between militarism and
globalization, and will begin by creating an e-mail network and
educational resources which will be available on the Internet to build a
body of knowledge for peace activists, economists and researchers.
(30)
Contact: Steven Staples, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
International Network on Disarmament and Globalization
405-825 Granville Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6Z 1K9 CANADA
tel: (604) 687-3223 fax: (604) 687-3277
