Western European News Digest
Will Cheney Be Indicted First in France, or in the U.S.?
French magistrate Renaud van Ruymbeke, a highly respected jurist, has notified that country's Ministry of Justice that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney could face indictment in connection with a bribery investigation involving the Halliburton oil services firm which Cheney headed from 1995 through 2000.
This comes while pressure is also building up against Cheney on a number of fronts in the U.S., as detailed in this week's EIW InDepth.
The French investigation involves the bidding for construction of a $6 billion gas-liquification factory in Nigeria, which was built for Shell Oil Company by Halliburton's KBR subsidiary, in partnership with the French oil services company Technip.
Judge van Ruymbeke is examining $180 million in secret commissions, which he believes were actually bribes paid to Nigerian officials and others. Van Ruymbeke is focussing on the "bagman" in the operation, London lawyer Jeffrey Tesler, who set up a company in Gibraltar through which the "commissions" were routed. Tessler has had a close relationship to Halliburton for 30 years.
Sources tell EIRNS that Cheney's own signature is to be found on some of the documents pertaining to the secret "commissions."
Neo-Con Book: Will To Win Ebbing in Washington
Frustrated neo-conconservatives Richard Perle and David Frum complain in their new book, An End to Evil, that "We sense the reversion to the bad old habits of complacency and denial" in the Bush Administration policy. The publication of this book now, emphasized Britain's Daily Telegraph on Dec. 31, shows that the neo-cons are not happy with the way things are going in Washington. The Telegraph, which supported the war on Iraq, wrote that Perle and Frum "give warning of a faltering of the "will to win" in Washington. In the battle for the President's ear, the manifesto represents an attempt by hawks to break out of the post-Iraq doldrums and strike back at what they see as a campaign of hostile leaking by their foes in such centers of caution as the State Department or among military top brass.
"It may be assumed that their instincts at least are shared by hawks inside the government, whose twin power bases are the Pentagon's civilian leadership and the office of the vice-president, Dick Cheney.
"Such officials prevailed over invading Afghanistan and Iraq, but have been seen as on the back foot since the autumn as their post-war visions of building a secular, free-market Iraq were scaled back in favor of compromise and a swift handover of power next June."
The book demands a blockade and possible war against North Korea, and that China throw out Kim Jong-il; regime change in Syria; and for the U.S. to, in essence, put France and Saudi Arabia on its enemies' list. But, as the Telegraph notes in its editorial, "In the current political climate, An End to Evil can be seen as something of a rearguard action."
Blair Caught Lying Again About Iraq
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Christmas message to British troops in Iraq claimed that there was "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories" in Iraq. He added the Iraq Survey Group had unearthed "compelling evidence" to show that Saddam Hussein had attempted to conceal weapons. In fact, David Kay, the head of the ISG resigned under a cloud of embarrassing evidence that there were no weapons of mass destruction.
When U.S. viceroy in Iraq, Paul Bremer, was asked about these comments by ITV's John Dimbleby(apparently before Bremer was told Blair was the speaker)Bremer said, "It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me. It sounds like somebody who doesn't agree with the policy, sets up a red herring, then knocks it down."
A spokeswoman at 10 Downing Street said Blair had been referring to material released earlier this year. Former Blair Cabinet Minister Clare Short, who resigned from Blair's cabinet over her opposition to the war, called on Blair to resign. "If you are going to start getting into deceit when you are going to war and risking human life, it has gone too far," she said.
Church of England Leaders Attack Blair on Iraq War
The Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Durham, respectively, ranked second and fourth, respectively, in the Church of England hierarchy, criticized Prime Minister Tony Blair in interviews published Dec. 29, 2003, one day after Blair made new false claims of hidden WMD labs in Iraq. The leading Church of England cleric, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is a long-standing critic of Blair's Iraq war.
In an exclusive interview with the London Times, Dr. David Hope, Archbishop of York, warned Blair and U.S. President Bush, that they should heed the Christian lesson of the Incarnation, that success is ultimately achieved through humility rather than worldly power. "There is a higher authority before whom one day we all have to give an account," Dr. Hope warned Blair. Blair has claimed he is "ready to meet my maker" and answer for those killed or wounded in the Iraq war.
Hope said the Hutton Inquiry into the July 2003 death of British WMD specialist Dr. David Kelly, would likely provoke a review of the whole Iraq policy, which raised questions of leadership and trust. The Hutton Inquiry's findings, are expected to be published this month.
Dr. Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, attacked Blair and Bush in an interview in the Dec. 30 Independent. "For Bush and Blair to go into Iraq together was like a bunch of white vigilantes going into Brixton to stop drug dealing. This is not to deny that there's a problem to be sorted, just that they are not credible people to do it."
Dr. Wright also said that the religious conservatives who surround George Bush espouse "a very strange distortion of Christianity" and the fact that "some of them stand to benefit financially from the reconstruction of Iraq" has made the whole enterprise even more suspect.
In addition, Wright sharply criticized Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, saying: "There must be better ways to achieve peace than the road taken by the government of Ariel Sharon."
"I agree with the millions of Jews around the world, and tens of thousands in Israel ... who grieve at what some Jews in Israel, led by Ariel Sharon, are doing." Wright added, "I'm not anti-Israel, but when I see what's been done to the Palestinians over the past 50 years, I say, 'Well I'm sorry, but if you put people behind barbed wire, keep them caged, take their land, despite international resolutions, and bulldoze their homes, you are asking for trouble.' "
German Experts Question U.S.-Alleged Terror Attacks
Regarding "U.S. intelligence reports" that the Al Ansar organization, based in northern Iraq, was planning attacks in Hamburg, Germany, experts from the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Frankfurter Alllgemeine Zeitung were quite skeptical.
Udo Ulfkotte, a terrorist expert, told the FAZ that the Al Ansar elements were "driven out of Iraq" by the U.S., which fought against them, and that some made it into Germany. "The Americans were furious," he said, that Germany had allowed them in, and that some were in the process of winning asylum. What is the connection?, he wondered. These are the enemies of the Americans. The Frederich Ebert Stiftung expert noted that if there were targetting in Europe, Britain, not Germany, would be the likely victim.
At the same time, while anti-terrorism authorities in Hamburg continued to investigate alleged threats that the German Army's hospital was at risk from suicide bombers, the threat as such has not been substantiated, nor have any explosives been detected.
The terror alert originated from "U.S. intelligence agencies," and the original recipients of the U.S. memorandum are the German Anti-Crime Agency (BKA) and the German foreign intelligence BND, who then alerted the Hamburg authorities. The alert indicated the terrorist organization Ansar al-Islam planned to attack the German Army hospital and the American Rhine-Main Air Base in Frankfurt, as well as other U.S. military installations in Germany.
Strangely, the air bases at Frankfurt and Ramstein stated they never received any specific terror alert from the U.S. The Hesse Interior Ministry, which is in charge of extra protection measures for the air base in Frankfurt (according to a special, post 9-11 U.S.-German agreement), has no evidence of a heightened threat. Furthermore, German Interior Minister Otto Schilly voiced his skepticism with Hamburg local police measures for the Army hospital.
EC President Unhurt by Mail Bomb
European Commission President Romano Prodi was unhurt by a mail bomb delivered at his home on Dec. 27. The bomb burned, but failed to explode, causing minor damage in his house. A previously unknown anarchist group claimed responsibility for the bomb, and two others that exploded near his house on Dec. 21. In a letter sent to the Italian daily La Repubblica, the group, calling itself the Informal Anarchic Federation, said it targeted Prodi because he is a representative of a repressive "new European order." Perhaps the new order they're complaining about is the Tremonti infrastructural development plan for Europe, put on the agenda by Italy's presidency of the European Union.
Explosive Materials Intercepted in Frankfurt, The Hague
In Frankfurt, Germany and The Hague, Netherlands, packages containing explosive materials were intercepted Dec. 29, two days after a booby-trapped parcel burst into flames at the home of the President of the European Commission, Italy's Romano Prodi, the New York Times reported Dec. 29.
In Frankfurt, workers in the mailroom of the European Central Bank handed over to local police a package postmarked Bologna, and addressed to the President of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, who was reportedly in his office at the time, but did not handle the parcel. Preliminary reports indicate the letter contained an explosive powder along with wires, indicating a homemade device.
In The Hague, employees at the European Union's law-enforcement coordination agency, Europol, were evacuated from their offices at 4 p.m., while police defused an explosive device sent to the director of the agency, Jurgen Storbeck. A member of the Dutch prosecutor's office, Astrid Rijsdorp, told media the object was a letter bomb about the size of a book. Officials declined to comment on whether there were any similarities in the incidents.
Dramatic Increase of Poverty in Germany Seen
In reviews of the year 2003, the association of non-state welfare organizations PWV warns of a new round of immiseration of large sections of low-income populations. For example, long-term jobless citizens will, under the changed legislation under the second installment of the Agenda 2010 policy, no longer receive normal (already low) unemployment subsidies, but only welfare payments. This will affect some 1 million Germans who have been without a job for more than 12 months. Welfare no longer grants a minimum living, the PWV says, because the last cost of living adjustment was made in 1992, which no longer corresponds to the situation today.
Furthermore, the chronically ill and welfare recipients will be under increased pressure, beginning next year, to accept any job, even part-time, or face cuts in welfare pay. The children of welfare recipients will suffer considerably: a half-million more children will be forced to live below official poverty levels, estimates PWV because 25% of the children in this category live in single-parent households, and these are facing pay cuts as of 2004.
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