0912-2002f

FOREIGN PRESS REVIEW (FPR) - ‘Relevant news, views, comments and analysis from all around the world’
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External link – Global Media on Sept 11 - ‘The Day The World Changed’ External link – International media debates Iraq The New York Review of Books - In Iraqi Kurdistan, by Tim Judah Reason - Fixing Foreign Policy - How the U.S. should wage the war on terror. The Split in the Saudi Royal Family By WILLIAM SAFIRE David Pryce-Jones - For centuries now, the West and its social order has challenged other civilizations. In the face of that challenge, China, Japan, India, adopted the science and the arts, even the music, which were both the cause and the effect of Western creativity. Leaders and thinkers in Muslim countries also tried to match the West. With the possible exception of Turkey, they proved unable to do so.		CNN - Sources: Hijackers' ex-landlord was FBI informant Financial Times A conservative view of Europe By Geoffrey Howe Chicago Tribune Arms inspectors should return unhindered By Scott Ritter New York Post THE WAR AHEAD By JOHN KEEGAN War Should Be Considered, But Only If All Other Remedies Fail By John F. Kerry, U.S. Senator Le Monde -  Etats-Unis : la force vaine, par Christian Delanghe Insight Magazine - Prior Knowledge of Sept. 11 Not Just Urban Legend		H3 New York Times - 3 Groups Already Squabbling Over Oil-Flush North Iraq Should Hussein Be Toppled Die Zeit – Das Türkenproblem Der Westen braucht die Türkei - etwa als Frontstaat gegen den Irak. Aber in die EU darf das muslimische Land niemals Cato Institute – “Assuming the Turks are on board for military action against Iraq (it's amazing what $5 billion can buy), the United States will then have Iran more or less boxed in on multiple sides from Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan” FT - Turkey rules out delay to November elections Election turmoil hits Turkish markets RFE/RL - Turkey: Ankara Says It Halted Gas Imports From Iran Turk Government Fractured, Markets Fear Poll Delay Dış Basında Türkiye
H4 New York Times Bush to Warn U.N.: Act on Iraq or U.S. Will The Split in the Saudi Royal Family By WILLIAM SAFIRE Imagining the Worst-Case Scenario in Iraq By MILTON VIORST Afghanistan's Faltering Reconstruction By JAMES DOBBINS Europe Pauses and Grieves, but Takes Issue With U.S. Editorial The Next Day Increased power to wiretap suspected spies and terrorists. Germany's Cautious Candidates Move to Gulf by Key Unit Could Set Staff for Iraq War History of Cheney Rumsfeld friendship		H5 Washington Post U.S. Forces in Tampa Plan Qatar Exercises Hoagland - The emerging Bush fall offensive is a mixture of high strategy and low politics. Silence About Secrecy By Mary McGrory Try Saddam for His Crimes President Faces Different Test This September Putin Warns Georgia to Root Out Chechen Rebels Within Its Borders or Face Attacks On Baghdad's Streets, Life With U.S. Threats 'Has Become Normal' Cabinet Resigns as Legislators Challenge Arafat		H6 Guardian Blair may be First Buddy, but it's time he faced the facts Everyone but the prime minister knows the US has trashed the rules Martin Kettle Bush issues challenge to UN Speech will reserve right to take Iraq action The now routine equation of Stalin and Hitler both distorts the past and limits the future
H7 The New York Review of Books - In Iraqi Kurdistan, by Tim Judah Reason - Fixing Foreign Policy - How the U.S. should wage the war on terror.		H8 Daily Star The reasons why Arabs and Muslims are mistrustful of Europe Arab Press Review Looking back on Sept. 11 and the backlash that followed Israeli Press Review - One year on, US-Israeli policies are ‘spreading despair, rather than hope’ Ha'aretz Ya'alon: U.S. wants Israel on sidelines in Iraq offensive Editorial A new chief, with a new agenda Jerusalem Post Netanyahu: Saddam told me he would not launch missiles at us in '98		H9 SlateTurning Bush Bush's evolving ideas about war, weakness, and women. By William Saletan From: Robert Wright Subject: Does Globalization Cause Terrorism or Cure It? This is the sixthand seventh in a nine-part series
H10 UPI - Iraqi Kurds give up idea of independence CNN - Sources: Hijackers' ex-landlord was FBI informant U.S. Fifth Fleet on highest alert; Navy warns oil tankers in Gulf Annan: World Must Act Together Against Terrorism		H11 International Herald Tribune - You don't 'educate,' you bargain When interests differ, by Robert Levine Stratfor  Sept. 11 Showed Chinks in U.S. Economic Armor		H12 Los Angeles Times Turning a Page in History Can a great power wounded learn to treat others more gently? By PICO IYER Bush's Speech
H13 Christian Science Monitor Iraq attack could alter world rules America, reconnect with the world By Helena Cobban Chicago Tribune Arms inspectors should return unhindered By Scott Ritter New York Post THE WAR AHEAD By JOHN KEEGAN War Should Be Considered, But Only If All Other Remedies Fail By John F. Kerry, U.S. Senator		H14 Financial Times A conservative view of Europe By Geoffrey Howe David Hale - US government's role in insuring against terrorism risk US foreign policies are eroding the public sphere		H15 National Review - There is no going back to Sept 10, by Victor David Hanson Pryce-Jones - For centuries now, the West and its social order has challenged other civilizations. In the face of that challenge, China, Japan, India, adopted the science and the arts, even the music, which were both the cause and the effect of Western creativity. Leaders and thinkers in Muslim countries also tried to match the West. With the possible exception of Turkey, they proved unable to do so. Insight Magazine Prior Knowledge of Sept. 11 Not Just Urban Legend
H16 The Times - Bush may have been saved from himself Anatole Kaletsky Key staff from US command move to Qatar Sceptical Congress still likely to support attack on Baghdad		H17 Daily Telegraph Before a shot had been fired, Colin Powell lost his battle Leader The Americans' president Arab press attacks American 'hostility'		H18 Independent Hamish McRae: Germany to abandon euroland? It may yet come down to that Rupert Cornwell: A nation torn between sorrow, patriotism and fear Blair must convince us that a war on Iraq would bring benefits to the Iraqi people and the region
H19 Le Monde Etats-Unis : la force vaine, par Christian Delanghe		H20 RFE/RL Middle East: Analysts Say Anti-American Sentiment At All-Time High Western Press Review: The 11 September Attacks And The Year Since, And Central Asian Economies		H21 Insight Magazine Prior Knowledge of Sept. 11 Not Just Urban Legend
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On Turkey
See also Turkey in Foreign Press by Basın Yayın, German Press on Turkey, French Press on Turkey

New York Times

3 Groups Already Squabbling Over Oil-Flush North Iraq Should Hussein Be Toppled

By CRAIG S. SMITH

NKARA, Turkey, Sept. 11 — While the Bush administration has yet to decide whether to attack Iraq, rival ethnic groups in the north of that country are already squabbling over the spoils of any future war.

Their focus is Kirkuk, a city with vast reserves of high-quality oil so close to the surface that in one area natural gas escaping from the ground has been on fire since antiquity. Iraq's Arabs control the city, but both ethnic Kurds and the Turkmen minority claim it as their own and all three groups want power over it and its oil if Saddam Hussein falls.

"We will have control of this city; that is what we are fighting for," said Mustafa Ziya, the Ankara representative of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, a coalition of 26 Turkmen groups vying for representation in a post-Hussein Iraqi government. They have the backing of Turkey, which has yet to voice support for American military action against Iraq but wants a finger in the Iraqi pie should the Bush administration make a successful move.

Yet, the Kurdish Democratic Party, the more powerful of two Kurdish groups that control northern Iraq, is determined to make Kirkuk the political capital and economic heart of a Kurdish federal state in a future Iraq. It has already drafted an Iraqi constitution outlining such a state with Kirkuk as its most important city.

"Kirkuk is a Kurdish city," said Safeen Dizayee, the K.D.P.'s representative in Ankara. "Even the Ottoman archives show that."

The brewing battle suggests that any fighting inside Iraq will not end with Mr. Hussein's ouster and that the United States may be drawn into mediating Iraqi factional disputes or risk unleashing a blood bath if it succeeds in unseating the current government.

The dispute also puts the Bush administration between rival groups on whom it would have to depend in any war. The United States is likely to use Turkish air bases to attack Iraq and is expected to ask for support from the northern Iraqi Kurds, whose forces number in the tens of thousands.

The Kirkuk dispute flared last week when the K.D.P.'s leader, Massoud Barzani, was quoted in a German newspaper as saying that he would "never allow Turks to take over even a millimeter of our soil," and that if Turkey invaded northern Iraq, his fighters would turn the territory into a "graveyard for Turkish soldiers."

Those comments, which Mr. Barzani has since said were "distorted" by the press, prompted the deputy speaker of the Turkish Parliament on Friday to suggest that Ankara declare an autonomous region in northern Iraq for the Turkmen minority, a Turkic people with historical ties to Turkey and who are Iraq's third-largest ethnic group. That region would include oil-rich Kirkuk.

Already, Turkey has threatened to intervene in northern Iraq if the Kurds there declare an independent state or attack the Turkmen minority in any battle for Kirkuk that might follow possible American action. Turkey has soldiers in northern Iraq, although the deputy governor in charge of the only land crossing between Turkey and Iraq has denied reports that the country had moved another 1,000 troops across the border in recent days.

Kirkuk lies at the southwestern edge of the Kurds' traditional homeland and was peopled by Turkmen groups during the Ottoman empire. The city was still under Ottoman control at the end of World War I, when the British seized it for its oil and later incorporated it into Iraq. The Kurds have long argued that it is their territory and want the economic power that it would give a Kurdish federal state.

The Kurds occupied Kirkuk after the 1991 Persian Gulf war, only to be routed by Iraqi troops a few days later in what became a devastating mass exodus of Kurds from the region until the United States and Britain gave them protection by creating a "no-flight zone" north of the 36th parallel. That zone does not cover Kirkuk, however, which has remained in Mr. Hussein's hands and is a principal source of his income today under the United Nations' food-for-oil program. The program allows the export of a limited amount of crude oil from Kirkuk and Iraq's other major oil-producing region, in the country's south.

In an attempt to change the ethnic makeup of the Kirkuk area, Mr. Hussein has settled Arabs in the city and pressured the Kurdish and Turkmen groups alike to change their legal ethnic identity to Arab or lose their right to own property or even to live in Kirkuk. The Arab majority will certainly try to retain control of the region if Mr. Hussein is removed.

Turkey, which produces little oil of its own, has its own economic interests at stake. A long line of Turkish tanker trucks cross the border daily on their way to Kirkuk to fill up with Iraqi oil, a technically illegal trade outside the United Nations oil-for-food program that is tolerated by the United States and its allies because of the damage the Turkish economy has suffered from the economic sanctions against Iraq.

Turkey also opposes Kurdish control of Kirkuk because that would strengthen Kurdish autonomy and, they say, encourage the estimated 20 million ethnic Kurds in Turkey to also demand autonomy. Turkey has fought a 15-year war with Kurdish separatists in the southeastern part of its country and many Turks remain convinced that the fast-growing Kurdish minority harbors a desire for a Kurdish state within Turkey or even an independent Kurdistan.

"A federal state in northern Iraq will be the first step on the way to an independent Kurdish state," said Umit Ozdag, chairman of the conservative Turkish policy institute, Asam. "And it will be impossible to establish a federal state divided on ethnic lines without blood."

Sevket Bulent Yahnici, an official with M.H.P., one of the parties in Turkey's governing coalition, put it more bluntly: "If the Kurds declare a separate state in northern Iraq, we will be forced to invade."

Cato Institute

The Cato Institute

WASHINGTON -- Is Iran Next on Washington's Hit List?

By Charles V. Peña

The major media are dominated by the debate over the United States taking military action against Iraq. Skeptics are more vocal. And the administration appears to have dug in and become more resolute in its goal of regime change. But lost in the rhetoric on both sides is an important question: What comes after Iraq?

President Bush has named North Korea, Iran, and Iraq as regimes that "constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." If the administration feels so strongly about the threat posed by Iraq, certainly the rest of the axis of evil can't be given a pass.

If toppling Saddam Hussein goes as quickly and easily as advocates of war against Iraq assume, then why not take on the rest of the axis of evil (not to mention the other dozen or so countries that the Pentagon says are engaged in weapons of mass destruction programs and represent a threat to the United States)? Clearly, Iran is a logical candidate.

From an objective perspective, Iran would appear to be more dangerous than Iraq. Iran's military is larger and probably in much better condition since Saddam's forces have been degraded as a result of the Gulf War and sanctions and embargoes. Indeed, Iran's defense expenditures are more than six times those of Iraq.

Like Iraq, Iran has Scud missiles. But Iran also has longer-range Shahab-3 missiles that could reach much of the Middle East and South Asia, as well as the Persian Gulf. Also like Iraq, Iran has both chemical and biological weapons. And Iran may be closer to developing a nuclear weapon than Iraq. Finally, a better case can be made about Iran supporting terrorism than Iraq.

Let's also not forget that it was the Iranians who took 52 Americans hostage after seizing the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979. Only after 444 days, a failed hostage rescue attempt, and releasing almost $8 billion in frozen Iranian assets were the hostages freed. If there are those in America who feel there is unfinished business and old scores to be settled with Iraq, the same can be said for Iran.

Assuming the Turks are on board for military action against Iraq (it's amazing what $5 billion can buy), the United States will then have Iran more or less boxed in on multiple sides from Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. With U.S. military forces already in the neighborhood and seemingly willing allies, it appears as though it would be a whole lot easier to go to Tehran next rather than taking on, say, Pyongyang.

It may be too late in the game to stop the administration juggernaut from taking military action against Iraq to remove Hussein from power. But it's not too late to question the overall wisdom of pre-emptive strikes and regime change beyond Iraq. An unprovoked war against Iraq sets a dangerous precedent and whets the appetites of war hawks for a larger crusade against Iran.

Recently, the administration has accused Iran of harboring top-level al Qaeda leaders. This is simply the culmination of increasingly hostile rhetoric designed to bolster the case for the administration to take action against Iran after Iraq.

It would be folly for the United States to wage another war against another Muslim nation after Afghanistan and Iraq. Such action would be interpreted as a war against Islam by the rest of the Muslim world. If anything, the United States needs to avoid turning the war on terrorism against al Qaeda into a larger holy war against Islam and the more than one billion Muslims around the world. Yet this seems to be the course the administration is steering by putting Iraq and Iran in its sights.

It's important to consider one other potential unintended consequence of the administration taking a hard line with Iran and having engaged in increasingly heated rhetoric against that country. The Iranian government might not support al Qaeda at present, but it could find a use for it under certain circumstances. If Iran is the next target after Iraq, then -- much as Hussein might have nothing to lose by using chemical or biological weapons if we attack Iraq -- perhaps the Iranian government would have nothing to lose by employing al Qaeda operatives to engage in terrorist acts against the America in response to U.S. military action.

There are always risks and consequences to U.S. actions. The United States ought to think twice about pursuing a policy of pre-emptive military action that might lead to even more terrorism and the creation of more enemies. That is especially pertinent when the job of taking down al Qaeda -- the group responsible for killing thousands of innocent people on Sept. 11 -- remains largely unfinished.

(Charles V. Peña is senior defense policy analyst at the Cato Institute.)

Financial Times

Turkey rules out delay to November elections

By Leyla Boulton in Ankara

Published: September 11 2002 18:15 | Last Updated: September 11 2002 18:15

Turkey's volatile financial markets closed sharply higher on Wednesday after leading politicians rejected suggestions that they would try to postpone early elections scheduled for November 3.

Bulent Ecevit, prime minister, sought to quash fears of a delay after Mesut Yilmaz, deputy prime minister and leader of the liberal Motherland party, was quoted as telling him that it was "necessary to cancel early elections".

Mr Yilmaz said he had been "misunderstood" by Mr Ecevit and reiterated that he believed elections should go ahead as planned.

Financial markets see a delay as increasing the risk of a new financial crisis by impairing the success of an economic rescue programme backed by a $16bn loan from the International Monetary Fund.

Although the economy bounced back 8.2 per cent in the second quarter after a 9.4 per cent contraction last year, an end to political uncertainty is necessary to ensure that unsustainably high interest rates fall quickly so Turkey can tame its large public sector debt.

Mr Yilmaz had rattled the markets when he threatened to pull out of the government and urged the National Action party, the senior coalition partner, to withdraw for challenging human rights reforms needed to join the European Union.

This was widely seen as a ploy by Mr Yilmaz to try to establish a new government to lead Turkey to elections at a later date.

Tansu Ciller, leader of the rival centre-right True Path party, who would have been a leading contender to join such a government, also ruled out a postponement.

Ahead of Wednesday afternoon's deadline for parties to submit their lists of parliamentary candidates, True Path also formed an electoral alliance with the smaller Democratic Turkey party.

A recent poll commissioned by Deutsche Bank puts the pro-Islamic Justice and Development party in the lead with 24.6 per cent, followed by the left-leaning People's Republican party with 14.3 per cent.

Election turmoil hits Turkish markets

By Leyla Boulton in Ankara

Published: September 11 2002 5:00 | Last Updated: September 11 2002 5:00

Speculation that Turkish politicians might yet try to call off early elections scheduled for November triggered a slump in the country's volatile financial markets on Tuesday.

Parties must submit their electoral lists by today and political commentators noted that most parties currently represented in parliament would prefer to postpone the polls for fear of losing seats.

Mesut Yilmaz, deputy prime minister responsible for Turkey's application to join the European Union, yesterday took the speculation to fever pitch when he threatened to pull out of the three-party government. He cited a decision by the National Action party (MHP), the coalition's ultra-nationalist wing, to apply to the constitutional court for the annulment of EU-mandated human rights reforms.

But even members of his own liberal Motherland party argued that Mr Yilmaz was above all concerned to avoid an early election for fear of falling below the 10 per cent qualification for entering parliament.

"This is a survival strategy," said Bulent Akarcali, a senior Motherland member. He reckoned that Mr Yilmaz hoped to form a government with other parties, excluding the MHP, to lead Turkey to elections to be held closer to their due date of April 2004.

Opinion polls suggest that only three or four parties - led by the Justice and Development (Ak) party, whose Islamist roots cause it to be viewed by suspicion by many Turks - are likely to squeeze into parliament. The runner-up is seen as the left-leaning Republican People's party, boosted by its recruitment last month of Kemal Dervis, the former economy minister who appeals to the educated middle classes and financial markets.

Unless today's electoral lists reveal last-minute alliances between parties, almost half a dozen other centre-right and centre-left parties are likely to split the mainstream vote without gaining seats in parliament.

A simple parliamentary majority is required to postpone early elections.

Today's deadline is likely to produce further opposition to elections from parliamentarians who find themselves excluded from electoral lists. A case in point is the MHP. Having triggered the early elections after Bulent Ecevit, prime minister, fell ill in May, the MHP discovered in a recent internal survey that most of its deputies would fail to be re-elected by grassroots supporters.

However, there is still strong pressure for the polls to go ahead from the country's president, influential armed forces, fragile financial markets as well as, according to a recent poll, 95 per cent of voters.

"Postponement would be a disaster," said Tolga Ediz, economist at Lehman Brothers. He argued that delay would only create more uncertainty for an economic rescue programme backed by the International Monetary Fund.

Ali Carkoglu, a political scientist, reckoned that elections would proceed as planned "because politicians know deep down that voters would make them pay for a postponement".

RFE/RL

Turkey: Ankara Says It Halted Gas Imports From Iran

By Michael Lelyveld

Turkey said this week that it stopped buying Iranian gas more than two months ago because of quality problems with the pipeline supplies. The dispute marks the latest trouble in a 25-year deal that promised Iran a gateway for exports to Europe, but it could also raise concerns for other countries that rely on contract pledges for big investments in pipelines.

Boston, 11 September 2002 (RFE/RL) -- After months of speculation, Turkey announced this week that it has halted gas imports from Iran, citing problems with the quality of the fuel. Speaking at a press conference in Ankara on 9 September, Turkish Energy Minister Zeki Cakan said, "We have stopped taking gas from Iran since 24 June because of problems with the composition of the gas."

According to a Reuters report, Cakan gave assurances that Turkey would soon have access to alternate supplies from Russia's underwater Blue Stream pipeline, which is due to start pumping across the Black Sea next month. Cakan said, "We will buy as much gas as we want in 2002 from Blue Stream." Turkey would renew the Iranian gas service when it meets contractual standards, the minister said.

In Tehran, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh denied that there was anything wrong with his country's gas, saying, "Iran is ready to dispatch international inspectors to test the gas quality."

Zanganeh blamed the interruption on Turkey's lagging demand due to its economic slump. He said Turkish gas officials had raised the issue repeatedly in talks before the cutoff, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported. He also hinted that Iran could seek penalties against Ankara for breaking its purchase pledges. Zanganeh said, "With respect to the take-or-pay clause in our contract, it does not seem that a cut of supply would be to the benefit of Turkey."

The dispute is the latest hitch in Iran's controversial 25-year export deal, which was originally valued at $20 billion when it was signed with Turkey in 1996. Gas started flowing last December after a long series of delays blamed on a host of causes including slow pipeline construction in Turkey, even slower economic growth, Iran's failure to finish a metering station, and U.S. opposition to the trade.

The biggest factor may be Turkey's economy, which has suffered the steepest slide since World War II in the past 16 months. But the stoppage may be less surprising than the efforts by both Turkey and Iran to keep a diplomatic silence about it for so long. Officials made no public comments on the problem when Turkish Foreign Minister Sukru Sina Gurel visited Tehran last week.

Instead several officials were left to make statements that they now may regret.

On 1 September, a member of Iran's Majlis and the Iran-Turkey Parliamentary Friendship Group, Mohammad Ali Kouzegar, denied "rumors" that Turkey would stop importing Iranian gas, saying, "There has never been a problem threatening the Iran-Turkey natural-gas deal." It now appears that Kouzegar's remark came more than two months after the trade had already stopped.

Other officials including President Mohammad Khatami, Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref and Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi praised the link to Turkey and the planned transfer of gas to Europe as a model of cooperation. All the time, the officials must have known that the gas trade had dried up. It now appears that the problem was a major topic of the bilateral talks.

Whether justified or not, Cakan's charge about quality may hardly encourage other countries to buy Iranian gas. Iran's earlier hopes for European transit and broader ties with Turkey are likely to have accounted for its diplomatic restraint.

Questions of quality may be hard to test, since Iran has no other export markets for its gas. But Cakan's claim may be clouded by a statement made in mid-July by Gokhan Bildaci, general director of the Turkish state pipeline company.

Bildaci said Botas had a right to reject sub-standard gas, although he appeared to deny a report by the Turkish daily "Radical" that there were quality problems with Iran's supplies. But according to Cakan's latest statement, the gas had already been shut off for three weeks because of the complaints. It is hard to see how both accounts could be right.

Although Turkey and Iran have kept quiet about their gas-trade figures, signs of trouble have been popping up for months.

In April, Bildaci told a conference that the country had bought 96 percent of the gas it was scheduled to take from Russia in the first three months of the year but only 50 to 60 percent of the set amount from Iran. At the time, Turkey had imported only 285 million cubic meters, compared with a commitment to buy 4 billion cubic meters of Iranian gas this year.

During Gurel's visit last week, officials also said that Turkey's imports from Iran dropped 9 percent in the first half of this year when gas sales should have produced a big boost in trade.

Turkey has repeatedly denied that it has overbought gas as a result of bad demand forecasting throughout the 1990s. But Botas has already lowered its forecasts three times this year. Cakan said on 9 September that the country had negotiated a reduction in purchases and prices from Russia so that it will only buy 2 billion cubic meters instead of 4 billion next year from Blue Stream. The concession may be bad news for Russia's Gazprom and Italy's ENI, which invested in the $2.5 billion project, although they may also have succeeded in outmaneuvering Iran.

It is unclear whether Cakan's disclosure was the result of Iran's refusal to make similar concessions. Other countries like Azerbaijan may see a chance to fill a void if the argument escalates, raising the chance that Iran will lose its opening to the Turkish market permanently. But the problem could also raise questions about the limits of take-or-pay obligations for all investors, particularly since Russia has also been persuaded to revisit its own contract terms.

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Reuters

Turk Government Fractured, Markets Fear Poll Delay

By REUTERS

Filed at 7:29 a.m. ET

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit accused a coalition partner Wednesday of stealthily seeking cancellation of November polls and warned him such a move could turn the country ``upside down.''

NATO ally Turkey is precariously poised with the prospect of U.S. armed action in neighboring Iraq haunting the economy and troubling government. Markets see the polls as vital to ensure stability and keep a $16 billion IMF crisis pact on track.

But conservative deputy premier Mesut Yilmaz shocked many on Tuesday by demanding the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) quit the three-party coalition over its moves to overturn rights reforms passed in pursuit of EU membership. Otherwise, he said, the government should give way to an interim administration.

Markets fear naked self-interest; that Yilmaz's dispute was at least partly engineered to stir upheaval and prompt moves to delay the polls. His Motherland Party is among many that may fail to win the 10 percent of votes needed to enter parliament and could conceivably benefit from a delay.

The president and powerful army say polls must now go ahead.

Yilmaz, while demanding a new government, has publicly stood by the November 3 election date. Ecevit told journalists Wednesday he was saying quite another thing in private.

``In my talk with Yilmaz yesterday he said it was necessary to cancel early elections. This was not reflected outside ... If elections are delayed the situation would be turned upside down. Changing the election date is full of problems,'' Ecevit said.

Minutes later, MHP leader Devlet Bahceli answered Yilmaz, an uneasy partner throughout the three-year-old coalition.

``No one withdraws from government on the urgings and calls of others,'' Bahceli said in remarks on live television. ``This government will be the one to take Turkey to elections.''

Tansu Ciller, head of the opposition True Path Party and focus of market rumors of an alternative coalition government, said she was ``definitely opposed to delaying elections.'' She also announced an electoral alliance with another conservative figure that might boost her election prospects.

Ciller's comments firmed the lira slightly, and boosted the Instanbul share index 1.5 percent at the start of afternoon trading.

``For now it looks like they want elections on November 3 but any surprise development could open the way for new shocks. So the dominant mood on the market is troubled,'' said Alper Tavukcu of Hak Securities in Istanbul.

Parliament, whose full term expires in April 2004, voted for early polls at the end of July amid rising coalition disputes. Cancellation would require only a simple majority, but this at the moment would not seem forthcoming.

It is also uncertain whether the 550-seat parliament would garner the 276 votes needed to fell Ecevit, even if Yilmaz took such a path. Forming a new government could prove still harder and any successor must be mindful of the fierce financial crisis unleashed on Turkey by political turmoil in February, 2001.

ARMY HAS WARNED AGAINST DELAY

If Motherland quit, Ecevit could remain in power at the head of a minority government with the MHP. Even if he lost a no-confidence vote, the president could ask Ecevit to remain in power until a new government was formed -- a process that could take Turkey very close to November 3.

Surveys suggest the one-year-old Justice and Development Party (AKP), viewed uneasily by the military for its Islamist roots, will emerge as the overwhelming victor. Only one mainstream party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), appears above the 10 percent waterline though many are still undecided.

The powerful military, which has made and broken governments in the last four decades and harbors something less than complete faith in politicians, has said postponing elections could pitch the country into chaos. The timing would be bad.

Washington has made clear it is considering military action to topple President Saddam Hussein and would look to Turkey to provide air bases and logistical support for its operations.

Fighting in northern Iraq could draw in Turkish troops that have been stationed there since the 1991 Gulf War left a Kurdish area effectively independent of Baghdad's rule.

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AP

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Dış Basında Türkiye (BYEGM)

İÇİNDEKİLER 

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FINANCIAL TIMES
KÜRT RAKİPLER IRAK'TA ORTAK BİR CEPHE ARAYIŞINDA

ANKARA, 10/09(BYE)--- Financial Times gazetesinin 10 Eylül 2002 tarihli sayısında Leyla Boulton imzasıyla ve yukarıdaki başlık altında bir yazı yer almıştır. İnternet’ten sağlanan yazının çevirisi şöyledir:

Kuzey Irak'ı kontrolleri altında tutan iki rakip Kürt grup, ABD'nin Irak Lideri Saddam Hüseyin'i devirmek için girişeceği olası bir harekat kapsamında ortak bir cephe oluşturmak amacıyla gelecek ay içinde ortak ulusal parlamento toplantısı düzenleme kararı aldı.

Ortak meclis, Kürdistan Demokratik Partisi (KDP) ile Kürdistan Yurtseverler Birliği'nin (KYB) birbirleri ile savaşmaya giriştiği ve iki ayrı özerk yönetim kurdukları 1994 yılından bu yana toplanmamıştı.

İki rakip Kürt grubun 1998 barış anlaşmasını uygulaması anlamına gelen bu anlaşma, farklı Iraklı muhalif grupları birleştirmeye çalışan ABD tarafından memnuniyetle karşılanacaktır.

KDP tarafından yapılan açıklamada, iki Kürt grubun "Irak'ın geleceği" için diğer Iraklı muhalif gruplarla ilişkilerini güçlendirme kararı aldığı bildirildi. Batılı yetkililer, KDP ve KYB liderlerinin, iki rakip yönetim arasındaki anlaşmazlıktan ve iki başlılıktan bir fayda görmemiş olan, kendi bölge halklarına da seslenme arzusunda olduğunu belirttiler.

Öte yandan iki rakip Kürt grup arasında varılan bu anlaşmanın, ABD'nin Irak'a karşı olası bir askeri harekatında desteği kritik olan NATO üyesi Türkiye'yi rahatsız etmesi bekleniyor.

Yerel medya dün Türk diplomatik kaynaklarının, "olası bir Kürt devletinin tohumları" olarak değerlendirdiği bölgesel meclisin, Ankara için her zaman bir endişe kaynağı olduğunu belirten açıklamalarına yer verdi.

Yetkililer, Türkiyeli Kürtler arasında ayrılıkçı hisleri kabartacak hareketlerden endişe ediyorlar.

Türkiye'nin içindeki ve dışındaki Kürtler bağımsız bir devlet istemediklerini söylüyor. Fakat son bir kaç aydır, KDP ve Türkiye'nin üç partili koalisyon hükümetinin aşırı milliyetçi kanadına mensup bakanlar arasında karşılıklı söz savaşı yapıldı.

Türkiye'deki KDP temsilcisi Safeen Dizayee dün yaptığı açıklamada, KDP yönetiminin, "gerilimi ortadan kaldırmak ve yanlış anlaşamalardan kaçınmak" amacıyla Türk Dışişleri Bakanlığı yetkilileri ile biraraya geldiğini belirtti.

PROFIL
ADİL SAVAŞ MI, SAKAT BARIŞ MI?

VİYANA, 10/09(BYE)--- Tirajı haftada 115 bin olan Profil dergisinin 10 Eylül 2002 tarihli sayısında, Michael Lingens imzasıyla ve yukarıdaki başlık altında yayımlanan yazının çevirisi şöyledir:

Dünya, ABD Başkanı Bush'un gerçekten de Irak'a harekat düzenleyip düzenlemeyeceği konusuyla çalkalanıyor. Zira dünyanın en önemli bölgelerinden birinin istikrarı söz konusu. Bir savaş halinde -geçici de olsa- petrol fiyatlarının tırmanmasının hesaba katılması gerekli. Bu tırmanma tam da konjonktürün dibe vurduğu bir ana rastgeliyor ve krizi körüklüyor, doğrudan mağdur olacaklar ise ayrı bir konu.

Yakın tarihte İngilizler ilk kez en yakın müttefik ABD'ye karşı şüpheci davranıyorlar. Blair, Saddam Hüseyin'in BM silah denetçilerini tekrar alıp almayacağının beklenmesini öneriyor. Bush ise, öncelikle iç politika olmak üzere birçok nedenle bu savaşı istiyor, bunun dışında bütün dünya Irak'a düzenlenecek bir askeri harekata karşı.

Bu çatışma Afganistan savaşından farklı olarak askeri açıdan çok daha sert ve zorlu olabilir. Yine Afganistan savaşından farklı olarak Bush'un siyasi bir ittifak kurma şansı yok. AB, bu olayı gerçi kınamaz, ama katılmaz da. Ruslar ve Çinliler veto etmeseler de, eleştirirler, Kuveyt de dahil olmak üzere önemli Arap ülkeleri harekatı reddettiklerini zaten açıkladılar.

Amerikalılar ise ne siyasi, ne de askeri ittifaka ihtiyaçları olmadığını açıkladılar. Onlar için önemli olan, Körfez Savaşı'nda Bağdat'a girilmesini engelleyen motifler. Saddam Hüseyin'den sonra gelecek rejim ülkeyi kaosa düşmekten koruyabilir mi? Zira, Saddam Hüseyin'in muhaliflerine yönelik tutumu ne kadar haklı olarak eleştirilirse eleştirilsin, Irak ağır ambargo altında bile bölgenin en organize, en iyi işleyen ülkelerinden birisi. Saddam Hüseyin'in Baas Partisi, köktenci Müslümanlara karşı belli bir bariyer oluşturuyor. Örneğin Iraklı kadınlara çok geniş eşitlikler tanındı, eğitim asla dini liderlere bırakılmadı. Irak'ta ayrımcılığa tabi tutulan, dönem dönem canice yöntemlerle engellenen Kürtler. Saddam Hüseyin'den sonra da kendi devletlerini talep edecekler ve böylece Türkiye'nin Kürt sorununu yoğun bir şekilde tırmandıracaklar.

Savaşta hayatını kaybedecek bir Saddam, fakir Arap kitlelerinin kahramanı olacak ve onların Amerika'ya olan öfkelerini derinleştirecek. Bunun dışında birçok ABD ordu mensubu bu savaşı bir gezinti olarak görmüyor.

Tüm bu argümanlara karşı, Bush da aynı ağırlıkta gerekçelere sahip. Saddam Hüseyin kuşkusuz ki zamanımızın en tehlikeli liderlerinden biri. İran ve Kuveyt'e saldırdı, kendi ülkesinde binlerce Kürdü zehirli gazla öldürdü. Kitle imha silahlarıyla da aynısını yapmaktan çekinmeyecektir. Saddam Hüseyin, Irak içinde insanlara saygısı olmayan bir despot. En küçük bir eleştiri, ölüm riski demek. Bu nedenle onun devrilmesini halkının kurtuluş olarak kutlayacağını, Afganistan'daki gibi, Amerikalıların safına geçeceğini, böylece de uzun olacağı düşünülen savaşın kısa sürebileceğini düşünmek olası. Kürtleri ilgilendiren her gelişme, onların Saddam tarafından sürekli tehdit altında olmasından daha iyidir. Böyle bir despotun gündemden tamamen düşürülmesi belki bir dizi risk içeriyor, ancak bu, bir kez daha harekete geçmesini beklemekten çok daha az riskli.

Amerikalılar, gelişmiş silah teknikleriyle yapılacak savaşta ölecek insan sayısının, Saddam'ın sıradaki saldırısında ölecek olanların sayısından çok daha düşük olacağını savunuyorlar. Hangi tercihin yapılabileceği ise çok zor.

KOMMERSANT
IRAK İLE SAVAŞ İÇİN HERŞEY HAZIR

MOSKOVA, 10/09(BYE)--- Tirajı 117 bin olan Kommersant gazetesinin 10 Eylül 2002 tarihli sayısında, Leonid Gankin imzasıyla ve yukarıdaki başlık altında yayımlanan yazının özet çevirisi şöyledir:

ABD Başkanı George Bush ile İngiltere Başbakanı Tony Blair arasında geçen hafta yapılan görüşmede, Irak'a ilişkin nihai plan onaylandı. Blair özellikle bu görüşme için ABD'ye gitti. İngiliz basınına göre 12 Eylül Perşembe günü Başkan Bush, ültimatom şeklinde Bağdat'tan, herhangi bir ön şart olmaksızın, ülkeye uluslararası silah denetçilerinin gelmelerine izin vermesini isteyecek. Saddam Hüseyin'e bunu düşünmesi için "üç ile dört hafta" tanınacak. Irak diktatörü bu süre içinde, denetçilerin ülkeye gelmelerini sağlamazsa ABD, Saddam'ı devirme operasyonuna başlayacak. Bu arada ABD ve İngiltere liderleri, perşembe günü çalışmalarına başlayacak olan BM Genel Kurulu'nun toplantısında dünya toplumunun Amerikan ültimatomunu destekleyeceğini ümit ediyorlar. Bush ve Blair böylece, BM'nin etkinliğini kanıtlamak için "son şansını" deneyeceğine inanıyorlar. Aksi halde Washington ve Londra, dünya toplumuna bakmaksızın hareket etmeye mecbur olacaklarmış...

Bu arada Orta Doğu'dan gelen haberlere göre, Irak'a saldırı hazırlığı devam ediyor. Bunun da ötesinde, Batılı askeri uzamanlar, fiiliyatta operasyonun başlamış olduğunu belirtiyorlar. Bir aydan beri Amerikan ve İngiliz savaş uçakları düzenli olarak Irak'ı bombalıyor. Son bombardımanlar Irak'ın hava ve hava savunma kumanda merkezlerini etkisiz hale getirdi.

Bazı gözlemciler, ABD ile İngiltere'nin kara operasyonunu tek başlarına gerçekleştiremeyeceklerini, bu nedenle yeni müttefik bulmadan askeri harekatın aktif aşamasının başlamayacağını düşünüyorlar. "Çöl Fırtınası" operasyonu zamanında ABD, geniş uluslararası koalisyona dayanarak muzaffer olabilmişti. Gerçekten şimdi ABD, böyle bir desteğe sahip değildir. Bu sefer Washington, küçük bir anti-Irak koalisyonuna dayanabilir. Böyle koalisyon artık kurulmuştur. Koalisyona, Saddam Hüseyin'in devirilmesiyle kar sağlayacaklarını ümit eden Orta Doğu ülkeleri giriyorlar.

İsrail'de çıkan Maariv gazetesinde dün yayımlanan bir haberde, İsrail Savunma Bakanı Binyamin Ben Eliezer'in "onlarca Amerikan askeri uzmanının bulunduğu" İsrail askeri üslerine, Amerikan silahının ve askeri malzemesinin ulaştırılmasını emrettiği bildirilmiştir. İlk teslimatlar önümüzdeki günlerde yapılacak.

Batılı istihbarat kurumlarından edinilen bilgiye göre ilk aşamada, askeri hareketa karşı çıkan Türkiye de gelecek operasyona faal olarak katılacak. Operasyona, Irak Kürtlerinden oluşan gruplar katılacaklar. Washington, onların harekata katılmasına karşılık olarak, Irak'ın kuzeyinde bir Kürt özerk idari birim oluşturmayı vadetti. Ankara ise bu adımın ülkenin güneydoğusunda Kürtlerin ayrılıkçı hareketine yol açacağından çekiniyordu. Fakat Amerikalılar, Türkler için inandırıcı bir gerekçe buldular: Savaşın bitiminden sonra Kuzey Irak'ta Kürt özerk idari biriminden başka, petrol kaynaklarının bol olduğu bölgelerde Türkmen özerk birimin de oluşturulacağını vadetti. Bu demek ki Türkiye, dostane bir Türk toplumu aracılığıyla petrol kaynaklarını kontrolüne alacak. Bazı bilgilere göre son zamanlarda Kuzey Irak'ta gizlice yığılan Amerikan ve Türk özel birlikleri, Kerkuk ve Musul'a 15 km. uzaklıkta bulunuyorlar. Bunlar Kürt ve Türkmen gruplarıyla birlikte, Irak topraklarının yüzde 15'ini kontrol ediyorlar.

Kuveyt, ABD'nin eliyle, 1990 saldırısı için Bağdat ile hesaplaşmak istiyor. Kuveyt-Irak sınırında, Basra'ya ve daha kuzeye atılım yapmaya hazır olan Amerikan zırhlı askeri grubu bulunuyor.

İsrail kaynaklı istihbarat bilgisine göre Amerikan kuvvetleri, Ürdün'de de yığınak yapmış bulunmaktadır. Operasyon başlayınca bunlar, Irak'ın batısındaki kara ve hava üslerini ele geçirmek için kullanılacak. Ürdün, Irak'daki şimdiki rejimin devirilmesinden sonra yeniden krallık rejiminin kurulacağını ümit ediyor. Bu demek ki, Irak'ta 1958 yılına kadar iktidarda bulunmuş Haşimi krallar ailesinden yeni kral tahta çıkacak. Şimdiki Ürdün Kralı da Haşimi ailesinden.

Bazı kaynaklardan edinilen bilgilere göre Suriye bile, ABD ile işbirliği yapmaya razı oldu. Amerikan askerleri Suriye-Irak sınırında, Irak birliklerinin hareketlerini izlemek amacıyla gizlice radar tesisleri kurmuşlar. Birçok aşırı örgütü barındıran Şam, Washington tarafından "şer ekseni" ülkeleri listesine alınacağından ve ABD'nin antiterör operasyonunun yeni bir hedefi olacağından sakınarak bu adımı atmak zorunda kaldı.

SANKEI SHIMBUN
İKİ KÜRT ÖRGÜTÜ ARASINDA ANLAŞMA... 4 EKİM'DE SADDAM HÜSEYİN SONRASI IRAK YÖNETİMİ GÖRÜŞÜLECEK

TOKYO 10/09(BYE)--- Tirajı günde 2 milyon 12 bin olan muhafazakar Sankei Shimbun gazetesinin 10 Eylül 2002 tarihli sayısında, Daisuke Murakami imzasıyla yukarıdaki başlık altında ve Kahire çıkışlı haberin çevirisi şöyledir:

Irak'ın kuzeyindeki Kürt özerk bölgesi Erbil'den gelen haberlere göre, Kürdistan Demokratik Partisi (KDP) lideri Barzani ile Kürdistan Yurtseverler Birliği (KYB) lideri Talabani, Kürtlerin bu iki büyük örgütü arasında yaklaşık beş yıldır süren silahlı çatışmayı 8 Eylül'de sona erdirdiler. 1995'ten bu yana işlevi durdurulan parlamentonun da 4 Ekim'de toplanmasını kararlaştırdılar.

ABD'nin olası Irak saldırısında önemli bir görev yerine getirmesi beklenen Irak'ın kuzey bölgesindeki Kürt örgütlerinden KDP'nin lideri Barzani, ABD'ye karşı temkinli bir tutum izliyordu ve ABD yönetiminin geçen ay Washington'da gerçekleştirdiği Irak yönetimi karşıtları toplantısına da katılmamıştı.

Irak yönetimi karşıtları, gelecek ay Amsterdam'da toplanmayı planlıyorlar. KDP ve KYB'nin anlaşmasının ardında ise, Irak saldırısının kaçınılmaz olduğu ve Kürtlerin birbirleriyle mücadeleyi sürdürmeleri halinde, Saddam Hüseyin sonrasındaki Irak'ta Kürtlerin söz hakkının zayıflayacağı düşüncesi bulunuyor. Gelişmeye, Barzani'nin ABD karşıtı bakış açısının yumuşadığı şeklinde de bakılıyor.

Birleşmeyi hedefleyen KDP ve KYB'nin anlaşmasından sonra, her iki örgüt tarafından belirlenen dörder kişi "kalan anlaşmazlıkları çözme" görüşmeleri yapacaklar. Her iki lider de, Saddam Hüseyin sonrası oluşacak Irak yönetimine geniş çaplı Kürt Özerk Yönetimi'ni kabul ettirmek ve federasyon sistemine geçmek için ABD'nin güvencesini almayı düşünüyor. Ancak, bunun gerçekleşmesi Kürt karşıtlarının ABD ile askeri işbirliğini nereye kadar götüreceklerine bağlı. ABD yönetiminin, Kürt sorunu yaşayan Türkiye'yi düşünerek, Irak'taki Kürt örgütlerinin taleplerine olumsuz yaklaşacağı tahmin ediliyor.

SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG
SEÇİMLERE İKİ AY KALA, TÜRKİYE'DE İSLAMCI PARTİ BAŞI ÇEKİYOR

BERLİN, 10/09(BYE)--- Tirajı günde 435 bin olan Süddeutsche Zeitung'un 10 Eylül 2002 tarihli sayısında, Christiane Schlötzer imzasıyla ve yukardaki başlık altında yayımlanan İstanbul çıkışlı yazının çevirisi şöyledir:

Türkiye'de 3 Kasım'da yapılacak Parlamento seçimlerinde, İslamcı muhafazakarlar ile sosyal demokratlar arasında sert bir ikili mücadele yaşanması bekleniyor. Ilımlı İslamcı AK Parti'nin lideri Tayyip Erdoğan, son kamuoyu yoklamalarına göre, diğer partilerle aralarındaki mesafeyi daha da arttırmış bulunuyor. Buna karşılık, orta-sol kesim çok sayıda partiye bölünmüş durumda. Erdoğan'ın seçime katılmasının mümkün olup olmadığı daha birkaç gün öncesine kadar tartışmalıydı. Ancak şimdi Diyarbakır Devlet Güvenlik Makemesi'nin bir dairesi, 48 yaşındaki siyasetçinin "nefrete tahrikten" aldığı hükümle ilgili adli sicil kaydının silinmesine karar verdi. Erdoğan 1997 yılında bir şiirden alıntı sözlerle, "minareler süngümüzdür" ifadesini kullanmıştı.

Erdoğan bu yüzden, ömür boyu siyaset yasağına neden olabilen ünlü 312'nci maddeden hüküm giymişti. Kısa bir süre önce düşünce özgürlüğünün liberalleştirilmesi kapsamında ceza yasasında yapılan değişiklik, adli sicilin silinmesini sağladı. Ancak konuyla ilgili son sözü, gelecek hafta başında kararını verecek olan Yüksek Seçim Kurulu söyleyecek.

Ancak Türk köşe yazarları, Erdoğan'ın Meclis'e giden yolunun artık engellenemeyeceği görüşündeler. Deutsche Bank adına yapılan ve birkaç gün önce açıklanan bir kamuoyu yoklamasına göre, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) oyların yüzde 24.6'sını alacak gibi gözüküyor. Yüzde 14.3 oyla ikinci sırada yer alan parti ise, Cumhuriyetin kurucusu Atatürk'ün döneminden bu yana varolan, Türkiye'nin en eski partisi Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP). Kamuoyu yoklamasına göre başka hiçbir parti, Meclis'e girmek için gerekli olan yüzde 10 barajını aşamıyor. Neredeyse iki yıldır süregelen ekonomik krizden sorumlu tutulan iktidardaki üç hükümet partisi ise cezalandırılacaklar. Son anket sonucuna göre, Başbakan Bülent Ecevit'in partisi DSP, sadece yüzde 1.1 oy alacak gibi gözükürken, büyük partiler arasında AB'ye karşı bir çizgide yürüyen tek parti konumundaki milliyetçi muhafazakar MHP de, yüzde 6.6 oy oranı ile kesin olarak kaybedenler arasında yer alacak. Seçmenlerin yaklaşık yüzde beşi ise henüz kararsız.

Yoğun ilgi gören AK Parti'nin yükselişi, ekonomik çevreler ve Türk askeri tarafından kuşkuyla izleniyor. Asker kendini, Türkiye'ye laik düzeni getiren Atatürk'ün mirasının geleneksel koruyucusu olarak görüyor. Erdoğan bir süreden beri, partisinin dine yönelmediğini ve Türkiye'nin Avrupa istikametindeki yolunu devam ettireceğini sürekli olarak vurguluyor. Washington, ABD'nin Irak'a yönelik harekatında mevcut hükümetten daha fazla direneceğini tahmin ettiği AK Parti ile şimdiden temasa geçmiş durumda. Erdoğan giderek yükselirken CHP, sol kanadı birleştirmeye çalışıyor. CHP lideri Deniz Baykal, bu şekilde Dışişleri eski Bakanı İsmail Cem'i kendi safhına çekmeye çalışıyor. Cem, büyük yankı uyandıran bir adım atarak, Ecevit'ten ayrılmış ve "Yeni Türkiye" partisini kurmuştu.

NEZAVISIMAYA
SEÇİMLER YAKLAŞIRKEN TÜRKİYE 'YENİLENİYOR'

MOSKOVA, 10/09(BYE)--- Tirajı 33 bin olan Nezavisimaya gazetesinin 10 Eylül 2002 tarihli sayısında, yukarıdaki başlık altında, tarih doktoru Boris Potshveriya imzasıyla yayımlanan haberin çevirisi şöyledir:

3 Kasım'da yapılacak olan erken genel seçimler yaklaşırken, Türkiye'de partiler arasındaki mücadele giderek kızışıyor. Önde gelen politikacılar yeni siyasi ittifaklar oluştururken, 1999 hatasını tekrarlamamaya çalışıyorlar. O tarihte Bülent Ecevit'in lideriğindeki DSP, Mesut Yılmaz liderliğindeki ANAP ve Devlet Bahçeli liderliğindeki MHP'den oluşan koalisyon hükümeti kurulmuştu. Ortanın solundaki DSP ve sağındaki ANAP ile aşırı sağcı MHP'yi birleştiren ittifak, iki buçuk yıl içinde ülkede tek siyasi rotayı bir türlü çizemedi.

Bu durum karşısında, eski Dışişleri Bakanı İsmail Cem başta olmak üzere Ecevit yanlılarının bir kısmı, Avrupa ile bütünleşme düşüncesini destekleyenlerin sayısını çoğaltmak amacıyla "Yeni Türkiye Partisi"ni kurdu. Zira, onların kanısına göre, zayıflamış olan DSP artık ortanın solu güçlerinin "öncüsü" rolünü oynayamıyor. Yeni Türkiye Partisi seçimlerden zaferle çıkmayı ve hükümet kurmak için milli güçleri birleştirmeyi ilk hedefi olarak beyan ediyor. Türkiye'nin krizi aşarak AB'ye üye olması için elverişli siyasi ve ekonomik şartların oluşturulması, bu partinin başlıca hedefi olarak ilan edilmiştir.

Türk basını, DSP ile YTP arasında rekabetin büyümesi halinde bundan, başta Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi olmak üzere İslamcıların kazançlı çıkacaklarını kaydediyor.

Siyasi partilerin çoğuna ve mali-sınai çevrelere göre, Türkiye'nin AB'ye girmesinden başka bir alternetif yoktur. Eski başbakanlardan Tansu Çiller ve ekonomiden sorumlu eski Devlet Bakanı Kemal Derviş de aynı görüşteler. AB'ye üyelik sayesinde yabancı ülkelerden sermayenin geleceğine, Türk Lirası'nın güçleneceğine ve ekonominin daha iyi olacağına inanılmaktadır.

Nitekim İslami yönelimli partiler ve Batı aleyhtarı milliyetçiler, hükümetin bu tür politikasına karşı çıkıyorlar. Örneğin MHP Başkanı Devlet Bahçeli, Türkiye'nin AB ile "yalnızca belirli şartlarda ve sınırlı derecede ekonomik işbirliği"ne razı. MHP'nin bugünkü Parlamento'da sandalyelerin çoğunluğuna sahip olup ülkenin siyasi hayatında kilit rollerden birini oynadığı unutulmamalı.

Ülke içindeki siyasi konumunu güçlendirmeye çalışan Ecevit, "Kıbrıs sorununu" azami derecede kullanmaya çalışıyor. Türkiye ve Yunanistan arasında Kıbrıs ile ilgili yıllarca süren ve hiç bir sonuç vermeyen mücadele, Türkiye'nin AB'ye kabul edilmesi konusunda ek güçlükler yaratacak. Ne var ki Başbakan bu konuda son derece sert bir tutum izliyor ve adanın Kıbrıs Cumhuriyeti ve dünya toplumunca tanınmayan Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti olmak üzere iki devlete bölünmesini önlemek için herhangi bir adım atılmasına gerek görmüyor. Ecevit geçenlerde yaptığı bir açıklamada, "dinleri ve dilleri farklı olan değişik iki halkın" sorununa Avrupa Birliği'nin karışmaması gereğini vurguladı. Ecevit için Kıbrıs öncelikle stratejik bir konudur.

Türkiye Başbakanı, Türkiye Parlamentosu'nca kabul edilen reform paketinin kabulünün AB'ye verilen büyük bir taviz olduğunu düşünerek, Kıbrıs sorununun ikinci plana çekilebileceğine inanıyor galiba.

LE FIGARO
KIBRIS... ANNAN, DENKTAŞ VE KLERİDİS'İ DÜN BİRARAYA GETİRDİ... DİYALOG PARİS'TE BAŞARISIZLIĞA UĞRADI

PARİS, 10/09(BYE)--- Tirajı günde 370 bin olan Le Figaro gazetesinin 7-8 Eylül 2002 tarihli sayısında, yukardaki başlık altında ve Luc de Barochez imzasıyla yayımlanan Paris çıkışlı yazının çevirisi şöyledir:

Paris'teki müzakereler sonuçsuz kaldı. Oysa Kıbrıslı liderler üzerindeki uluslararası baskı artıyor. Aralık ayında Kopenhag'ta gerçekleşecek ve 2004'te AB genişlemesine dahil olacak ülkelerin listesini belirleyecek Avrupa Zirvesine az zaman kaldı.

Sene sonundan önce gerçekleşecek Kıbrıs için bir anlaşma, birleşmiş bir adanın Avrupa Birliği'ne üye olmasını sağlar. Bu, herkesin işine gelir. Aksi takdirde, bolünmüş bir adayı kabul etme perspektifi, AB'ye saatli bomba yerleştirmekle aynı anlama gelir. Ancak Onbeşler'in başka seçeneği yok. Yunanistan, Afrodit adasını içermeyecek bir genişlemeye vetosunu koyacaktır.

Kofi Annan, acil bir şekilde bu engeli ortadan kaldırmaya bakıyor. BM Genel Sekreteri iki topluluğun liderleriyle fikir ayrılıklarını yeniden gözden geçirdi. Hiçbir ilerleme görmediyse de oldukça ümitli olduğunu ifade etti. "Ciddi fikir ayrılıkları olsa da, iki tarafın da başlıca isteklerini karşılayabilecek genel bir çözümün unsurları vardır" diye bir açıklama yaptı. Her halükarda diplomatlar, Ankara'ya yeni bir hükümet getirmesi beklenen 3 Kasım'daki genel seçimlerinden önce ilerleme beklemiyorlardı.

Yıllarca sadece aracılar vasıtasıyla konuşan iki topluluğun liderleri senenin başından beri satranç oyununu yüz yüze oynamayı kabul ettiler. Ancak BM'nin himayesi altında sürdürülen müzakereler geçtiğimiz 30 Haziran'da, kendilerine verilen ilk tarihe, ilerleme kaydedemeden geldiler. BM Güvenlik Konseyi, Kıbrıslı Türkleri, işi yokuşa sürmekle suçladı.

Müzakereler, Ada'nın birleşmesi çerçevesinde Kıbrıslı Türkler tarafından talep edilen neredeyse bağımsızlık konusuna takılıyor. 1974'teki Türk istilasından beri, sadece Ankara'nın tanıdığı "Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti"ni ilan ettikleri Ada'nın kuzey kesiminde yaşıyorlar. Ada'nın güneyinde yaşayan Kıbrıslı Rumlar uluslararası alanda tanınan tek hükümete sahipler. BM'nin mavi berelileri, ülkeyi 28 yıldan beri ikiye bölen sınır çizgisinde devriye geziyor.

Birleşme meselesi sadece AB'nin genişleme müzakerelerini değil, Türkiye'nin Avrupa'ya yaklaşma çabalarını da zehirliyor. Yunanistan'la birlikte Doğu Akdeniz'in stratejik dengesine bağlı olan Türkiye, bölünmüş Ada'nın AB'ye girmesini bir başarısızlık olarak görüyor. Halbuki birçok diplomat, birleşme anahtarının Ankara'da olduğunu düşünüyor. Türk yetkililer, Ada'nın birleşmesi yönünde kesin bir karar almazlarsa hiçbir ilerleme olamaz. Bununla birlikte, Kıbrıslı Türk lider Rauf Denktaş'ın statükoyu bırakması kendisine fazla bir kazanç sağlamayacaktır.

640.000 nüfusuyla çoğunlukta olan Kıbrıslı Rumlar, Ada'nın kontrolleri altında olacak merkezi bir hükümetin himayesi altında birleşmiş olmasını açık bir şekilde istiyorlar. Buna karşılık, sadece 90.000 nüfuslu -bunlardan 50.000'i göçmen ve 30.000'i Türk askeri- Kıbrıslı Türkler, biçimsel olarak konfederal bir bağı kabul etmeye hazır olsalar da, varlıklarının mümkün olduğu kadar bağımsız olmasını istiyorlar. Muhtemel bir çözümün ifadeleri yıllardır biliniyor. Eksik olan, bunu uygulamak için iki tarafın da siyasi iradeye sahip olması.

KATHIMERINI
AB SAVUNMASININ BAŞINA YUNANİSTAN GEÇTİ

ATİNA, 10/09(BYE)--- Tirajı günde 39 bin olan Kathimerini gazetesinin 10 Eylül 2002 tarihli sayısında, yukarıdaki başlık altında yayımlanan yorumun çevirisi şöyledir:

İki günlük resmi bir ziyaret için bugün Brüksel'e hareket eden Savunma Bakanı Yannos Papandoniou, ziyaret çerçevesinde Avrupa Parlamentosu Dış İlişkiler Komisyonu'nda yapacağı konuşmada, Yunanistan'ın AB savunmasının başında kalacağı süre içinde ağırlık vereceği konuların hangileri olacağını açıklayacak.

Yunanistan, 2003 yılı içinde, Avrupa ordusunun faaliyet gösterecek durumda olmasını istediğinden, her şeyden önce en kısa zamanda bu konunun kapanması için çaba harcayacaktır.

Bilindiği üzere, Avrupa ordusu konusunda Yunanistan ile Türkiye arasında yaşanan sürtüşme AB-NATO ilişkilerini de etkiliyor. Yunan Savunma Bakanı Yannos Papandoniou, Avrupa Parlamentosu'nda yapacağı konuşmada, 26 Ekim tarihinde Üsküp'ten ayrılacak olan NATO gücünün yerine Avrupa ordusunun asker gönderme olasılığına sahip olması için bir çözüm formülü uygulamayı planladığını söyleyecek.

Papandoniou, konuşmasında, Avrupa ordusunun teçhizat eksikliği sorununa çözüm bulmak amacıyla, kasım ayı ortalarında AB savunma bakanlarının olağanüstü bir toplantı yapmalarını önerecek ve AB-Rusya arasında güvenlik konularında ilişkilerin pekiştirilmesi gerektiğini vurgulayacak.

Savunma Bakanı Papandoniou, yarın akşam, Avrupa Parlamentosu Dış İlişkiler Komisyonu'ndaki Yunanlı yetkililerin onuruna düzenleyecekleri yemeğe katılacak

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New York Times

Bush to Warn U.N.: Act on Iraq or U.S. Will

By DAVID E. SANGER and JULIA PRESTON

resident Bush plans to challenge the United Nations today to enforce resolutions it has passed since 1991 requiring Iraq to "unconditionally accept" the destruction of its chemical and biological weapons and nuclear research facilities, according to administration officials. He will warn that if the United Nations fails to act, the United States will step in to force Iraqi compliance.

Putting muscle behind Mr. Bush's warning, the Pentagon announced that it was preparing to send 600 military staff members from its Central Command headquarters in Florida — which has responsibility for the Middle East — to the gulf state of Qatar in November. While the move will be characterized as a temporary exercise, it could well become permanent and will put a vanguard of American commanders, the core of a battle staff, on Saddam Hussein's doorstep. [Page B23.]

Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations will strike a markedly different tone from that of Mr. Bush, arguing in a pointed speech just before the president's that the United States must act through the United Nations to confront Iraq.

Mr. Annan's office took the unusual step of releasing his remarks last night to underscore his caution that there is "no substitute for the unique legitimacy provided by the United Nations." [Page B23.]

The fast-developing confrontation over Iraq hung over a a somber but restorative day of national mourning and commemoration.

Moving between the three sites of last year's terrorist attacks, Mr. Bush consoled survivors in Washington, fought back tears at the Pennsylvania crash site of United Flight 93, and spent two hours in the pit that was once the foundation of the World Trade Center, hugging the families of some of the thousands who died.

Tonight, emotionally drained from the somberness of the day, Mr. Bush spoke to the nation from Ellis Island, saying he had "no intention of ignoring or appeasing history's latest gang of fanatics."

"In the ruins of two towers, under a flag unfurled at the Pentagon, at the funerals of the lost, we have made a sacred promise to ourselves and to the world: We will not relent until justice is done, and our nation is secure. What our enemies have begun, we will finish," he said.

But his United Nations speech this morning is expected to move beyond commemoration to the next phase of his battle against terrorism — a phase in which he plans to turn his attention to what he is expected to term a "decade of defiance."

Heeding the call of allies that he must operate through the United Nations, aides familiar with the speech said Mr. Bush planned to put the onus on Mr. Hussein and the United Nations itself — and to portray the United States as a reluctant sheriff that will step in only as a last resort.

One senior administration official who has been giving advance warning of the message to governments around the world said Mr. Bush "won't set any deadlines," nor will he propose a specific course of action. But just as the president told Congress last Sept. 20 that he was not willing to wait very long for the Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden, the official said, "he's not willing to wait very long for Saddam to allow the destruction of his weapons."

Mr. Bush has been drafting and re-drafting the speech for weeks, searching for a balance between American support for the authority of the United Nations and an American warning that the organization's legitimacy is at stake.

According to officials who have reviewed the drafts or summarized them for foreign leaders, Mr. Bush will make it clear that he does not plan to allow the United Nations much time to enforce 16 resolutions that have been allowed to lapse.

"The message is pretty simple," the senior official said. "The U.N. is at a crossroads. We have plenty of resolutions about Iraq. Now we have to choose whether the U.N. exists to pass resolutions or make them stick."

Privately, administration officials are talking about starting up inspections in three to four weeks, after the president of France, Jacques Chirac, mentioned a three-week timetable in an interview with The New York Times.

Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, told a conference in Washington on Tuesday that Mr. Chirac's statements had been "noted" in the State Department because they indicated that European leaders were coalescing around the thought that Mr. Hussein's actions could no longer be tolerated.

Mr. Bush does not plan to talk about restarting inspections; his references in the speech focus on inspections Mr. Hussein has blocked, and on the forced withdrawal of United Nations inspectors three and a half years ago. But he leaves the door open to a final inspection effort — as long as it is intended to lead to the immediate dismantlement of all weapons of mass destruction.

His message, one aide said, will be that "the only thing he won't abide is inaction."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell previewed the speech today in meetings at the United Nations with the foreign ministers of Russia, China and Britain. He also met Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister of Germany, the ally most outspoken in opposing expanding the war to Iraq.

According to the text of his remarks, Mr. Annan, using carefully general terms, shares the misgivings of the Germans and others about the United States' acting on its own on Iraq.

Even for a major power, "choosing to follow or reject the multilateral path must not be a simple matter of political convenience," he says.

He adds that "when states decide to use force to deal with broader threats to international peace and security, there is no substitute for the unique legitimacy provided by the United Nations." The "primary criterion for putting an issue on the Council's agenda" should be "the existence of a grave threat to world peace," he says.

At one point Mr. Annan presents the issue in personal terms.

"I stand before you today as a multilateralist," he says early in his comments, "by precedent, by principle, by charter and by duty."

While the White House has kept tight control over Mr. Bush's speech — which was written partly by Karen Hughes, his former counselor, who was seen traveling with him today — the United Nations departed from custom in releasing the advance text.

Mr. Annan's aides said they feared that his comments would be lost as the focus turned today to Mr. Bush's efforts to rally support for a campaign against the Iraqi leader.

While implicitly cautioning the United States, Mr. Annan will also chastise Baghdad for defying United Nations resolutions. He will warn that if its violations continue, the Security Council will have to act to enforce them.

"The leadership of Iraq continues to defy" mandatory Security Council resolutions, Mr. Annan will say. He urges Iraq to comply and appeals to other nations to pressure Baghdad to accept the return of the weapons inspectors, calling this "an indispensable first step towards assuring the world that all Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been eliminated."

His aides say he regards the address as one of the most important he will make as secretary general. He will open the session and President Bush will follow 15 minutes later. Then 22 other government leaders are scheduled to address the General Assembly on the first day of its annual fall debate.

United Nations officials acknowledged that it was unusual for a secretary general to address himself in such clear counterpoint to a speech from an American president here. Mr. Annan's aides sent a copy of the text to President Bush today.

The secretary general's comments echo keenly felt frustrations at the United Nations that the Bush administration has gone its own way on global issues ranging from climate change to the international war crimes court.

But he warns, "If Iraq's defiance continues, the Security Council must face its responsibilities."

United Nations officials said Mr. Annan felt confident that his relations with Washington were warm enough that President Bush would not object to his speech. The president called Mr. Annan earlier this week to discuss Iraq, officials said.

However, Mr. Annan strongly hopes to avoid American-led military action against Iraq, which he fears could destabilize the Middle East, United Nations officials said.

In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair bowed to critics in his Labor Party and agreed to recall Parliament from its summer recess to debate his hard-line stance on Iraq. Parliament is not due back in session till Oct. 15, but Mr. Blair said today that he would schedule a special one-day debate during the week of Sept. 23. He did not, however, accede to his critics' request that there be a binding vote on the issue.

Mr. Blair's spokesman said Downing Street would have made public a long-promised dossier on Iraqi arms buildup by then. The release of the document has been delayed while the British government works out how to produce convincing evidence of the threat from Iraq without compromising sources.

Mr. Blair has been Mr. Bush's staunchest supporter in the campaign against Saddam Hussein. However, opinion surveys in Britain show that he faces opposition from majorities of the public at large, the trade union movement and the Labor members of Parliament.

On Tuesday, Mr. Blair faced down his critics at the Trades Union Congress in Blackpool, pledging that no military action would be taken without United Nations consideration and full debate in Parliament.

But, sticking to his tough line, he said, "Let it be clear there can be no more conditions, no more games, no more prevaricating, no more undermining of the U.N.'s authority." And he warned, "Let it be clear that should the will of United Nations be ignored, action will follow."

The Split in the Saudi Royal Family

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

ASHINGTON — Fifteen of the 19 suicide bombers who killed 3,000 Americans a year ago yesterday were Saudi citizens.

Their crime does not stain all 22 million Saudis, of whom two-thirds are under 19. But one conclusion cannot be escaped: The murderous fanatics were the product of an oil-besotted monarchy that has long been the prime sponsor of the radical Islamic spewing of hatred at all "infidels" — Christians and Jews, as well as the majority of Muslims who refuse to accept medieval Saudi Wahhabism.

In light of that monarchy's production of terrorists, and considering the refusal of Saudi intelligence to let the U.S. interrogate Al Qaeda prisoners it holds, we are entitled to ask the John Gunther question: "Who runs this place?" Who will hold the keys to the kingdom when the present king, Fahd — a stroke victim and totally out of it — dies? And when the two factions of the royal family clash, for whom should we root?

One faction is headed by Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto monarch today, backed by most of the Faisal branch of the royals; one Faisal is foreign minister. Abdullah, while no moderate, recognizes that Saudi girls will have to get some education, and I'm told he worries that the Palestinian dream of taking over Israel is dragging out a war that will one day trigger an internal Saudi explosion.

The opposition within the House of Saud is the Sudairi branch, headed by Prince Sultan, now the defense minister (and father of the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Prince Bandar, a k a "Mr. Smoothie"). Sultan has a brother in charge of internal security, has control of oil and gas production and is locked into both the influential bin Laden family and the radical Wahhabi imams. Sultan spells trouble.

The rivals are both past their prime: Abdullah is 79, Sultan only a few years younger. The betting is that when the ailing King Fahd, now 83, dies, the Sudairis will let Abdullah become king, stepping up as crown princes are supposed to — on condition that the Faisal branch agree to appoint Sultan to be Abdullah's crown prince and successor.

But Abdullah knows he won't be king for long and does not want to pave the way for Sultan and his ultra-conservative Wahhabi backers. (Office politics are complicated everywhere.)

Evidence of the rift between the competing factions came when Abdullah fired the chief of King Fahd's intelligence apparat, a hard-line member of the Faisal branch who had switched sides to support Sultan. That snatched a key power base from the Sudairis. Abdullah's new chief, Nawaf, is a malfunctioning functionary who is no threat to anybody, including Al Qaeda.

Sultan countered by squelching the female-education plan, and then empowering his man, Minister of Industry Hakim Yamani, to dominate the Supreme Petroleum and Mineral Affairs Council. (Suggested holdup slogan: "Yamani or ya life.")

Here's Abdullah's trump card: As soon as he becomes king, he'll doublecross the Sudairis, skip over Sultan and the rest of that aging generation of King Fahd's brothers and appoint one of Fahd's sons crown prince. That's Abdullah al-Aziz bin Fahd, nicknamed Uzuz (the dear one), son of King Fahd and his favorite wife, Jawhara, and a smart guy of about 60.

Such designation of Uzuz would be welcomed by non-princely Saudis. Their resentment has risen as their per capita income plummeted by more than half in the past decade, in sharp contrast with the boom in more democratic Bahrain. But it would infuriate Sultan and his terror-cleric allies and might well bring on civil war.

This dire prospect has some thinking of a compromise candidate. One of Sultan's brothers, Salman, governor of Riyadh, is secularist and adept at fooling Americans with a costly advertising and publicity push. Salman, whose late son was the owner of the Kentucky Derby winner, was behind the hiring of Qorvis Communications at $200,000 a month to get Americans to forget the 15 Saudis who led the Sept. 11 attack. He could continue spreading Wahhabi poison around the world behind a pro-Western facade.

The House of Saud is beset with dissension. Its nation is nobody's ally. The royal family can fight a civil war or undergo a revolution — or join the modern world.

•
Correction: Lincoln used the word "dedicate" six times at Gettysburg, not five as I wrote.

Imagining the Worst-Case Scenario in Iraq

By MILTON VIORST

ASHINGTON
Like most Americans, I've reflected this week on the personal impact of the tragedy of Sept. 11, recalling most vividly the trauma of emptiness I felt in the pit of my stomach as I watched the towers of the World Trade Center vanish from my television screen. The feeling still periodically recurs. In a flash, the inconceivable had become real, the horror of the unbelievable had become part of my and every American's existence.

During the cold war, the futurists who studied world conflict had devised a clever name for such an event: the "worst-case scenario." Implied in this phrase, however, was the sense that the event was unlikely to happen. Government and policy professionals hypothesized less severe outcomes, dismissing the doomsayers. But on Sept. 11 we all learned that even disasters can be of an unexpected magnitude. Forthrightness now demands that we gird not for some tepid end to our conflicts but for catastrophes hitherto unimaginable.

In preparing for a war against Iraq, President Bush urges us to overlook that lesson. Categorizing Saddam Hussein as "evil," he warns that the Iraqis have nuclear, chemical and biological weapons with which to attack us. Mr. Bush's concern is justified, though some responsible statesmen at home and abroad believe he overstates the danger. But in suggesting that our forces will dispose of Saddam Hussein in a war that is quick and painless, like the Persian Gulf war or the war in Afghanistan, the president is clearly choosing not to consider the worst-case scenario at all.

Mr. Bush asserts a new doctrine for America, the right of preemptive attack, to keep Saddam Hussein from using his weapons. Preemption, Mr. Bush tells us, is what the proposed war is all about. But the doctrine does not take Saddam Hussein's own efforts at pre-emption into account; it assumes that he will wait around for America to attack at its convenience.

Surely Saddam Hussein will not repeat the strategic mistake he made after swallowing Kuwait in 1990 when, in choosing not to invade Saudi Arabia, he allowed half a million allied troops to assemble over several months time for invasion. Saudi Arabia is hardly less vulnerable now. By moving into Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein would shift the battlefield far to the south, imposing on American forces a much heavier burden than just the capture of Baghdad. We should also recall that in the last war Saddam Hussein blew up almost all of Kuwait's oil wells; in the next he could blow up Saudi Arabian wells, with significant repercussions for the international economy.

That's one scenario. Another is that Saddam Hussein, prior to an American attack, goes after Israel with the chemical or biological weapons that Mr. Bush says Iraq possesses. Israel, if it survives, will retaliate, perhaps even with nuclear weapons. Such retaliation might indeed bring about the "regime change" Mr. Bush seeks, but it would not end the story.

Just over the horizon lies Pakistan, a Muslim country armed with nuclear weapons and permeated by extremists. Pervez Musharraf, its president, has joined America's war on terrorism but he is unlikely to survive politically should there be a nuclear attack by an American ally on Iraq's Muslims. Islamists, overthrowing him, would take control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal; lacking the ability to launch missiles that would reach Israel, they would turn on India, their more proximate enemy. A nuclear attack would set off global chaos.

Before Sept. 11, I probably would not have written the above lines. I have covered the Middle East conflict as a journalist for several decades, but I would have considered such scenarios fantasy, if not madness. Now they seem to me at least plausible.

The responsibility of America's leadership is to prevent the plausible from becoming reality. The cold war is a useful precedent. Saddam Hussein's power, and perhaps his evil too, pale next to that of Stalin. Yet even when we had clear military superiority over Stalin we chose not to attack him.

All our presidents, Republican and Democratic alike, accepted the principle of avoiding a war that might wreck the planet. Mr. Bush is the first to question this principle, and his resolve is bolstered by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom close their eyes to the potential ramifications of a war with Iraq.

  Iraq, as a highly centralized tyranny dedicated to its own preservation, is not that different from the old Soviet Union, and it is no coincidence that the same deterrence that restrained the Kremlin has kept Iraq in line for a decade. The Soviet Union's ultimate fall with barely a whimper vindicated America's patience, and in time Saddam Hussein too will vanish. Is not Sept. 11 a compelling reminder that the steadfast vigilance exercised by our leaders for a half-century of cold war is wiser than rushing toward a worst-case outcome?

Milton Viorst is author of the forthcoming "What Shall I Do With This People: Jews and the Fractious Politics of Judaism."

Afghanistan's Faltering Reconstruction

By JAMES DOBBINS

ANTA MONICA, Calif. — Despite the ouster of the Taliban from power last November, the hard struggle to bring stability to Afghanistan continues, as shown by the car bombing in Kabul last week that killed 30 people and the assassination attempt against President Hamid Karzai in Kandahar the same day.

In recent weeks, the Bush administration has publicly warned that reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan are lagging because not enough money is being delivered for that effort. The administration has called on European nations to provide more funds to help Afghanistan recover from war.

At the same time, aid organizations and European officials have indicated that reconstruction is lagging because there's not enough security, and they have urged the United States to do more to provide it. The attacks in Kabul and Kandahar are evidence that Afghan reconstruction is faltering for lack of both security and money.

Security in Afghanistan has been better than most people would have expected when Mr. Karzai took office last December. Last spring, the Afghans were able to hold hundreds of local assemblies throughout the country, and then to gather more than 1,000 delegates to a general assembly, a loya jirga, in order to elect a new government. Nearly all the political assemblies occurred peacefully and to a large extent democratically. This was a minor miracle.

But security remains tenuous. Terrorist incidents like those that occurred last week have been increasing. Power in Afghanistan is held by local military commanders, who have differing degrees of loyalty to the central government and whose ability to control subordinates is often limited.

American forces have provided personal security for Mr. Karzai and have also used their influence to tamp down large-scale conflict among the regional warlords. But small-scale violence remains prevalent enough to inhibit the resumption of normal economic activity, and such activity is central to Afghanistan's future. Humanitarian aid workers often risk their lives to help those in need, but the rebuilding of a society cannot depend on rescue workers. Reconstruction depends on the ability of engineers, bankers, shopkeepers, truck drivers and itinerant merchants to circulate freely throughout the country, not just in Kabul.

In a country as poor as Afghanistan, reconstruction also requires international investors, experts and technicians to travel into the countryside where the work of building schools, roads, waterworks and power plants has to be done. But these people are unlikely to want to travel to places where armed escorts are necessary. Although America and its allies are helping build an Afghan national army and police force that can one day provide the security needed for economic growth, the growth won't take place for years.

Last December, an international military peacekeeping force was deployed to Kabul, under British command, which has been largely successful. The Bush administration has recently dropped its opposition to expanding this force to other major regional centers. But the administration will need to become an active proponent of this expansion if it is to occur. In particular, other nations that may contribute troops will need assurances that they will receive American logistic and intelligence support.

Security measures must also be coupled with the delivery of more aid throughout the country. So far, American and European pledges of aid to Afghanistan remain modest by comparison with other recent efforts in post-conflict nation-building.

Kosovo, for example, has a population of about 2 million, while Afghanistan has a population of 23 million. But Kosovo received several times more American and European assistance per capita to recover from 13 weeks of conflict than Afghanistan has received to rebuild from 20 years of civil war. In Afghanistan, the United States has taken the lead in providing emergency food aid, but American funding for reconstruction has been quite limited. Since the installation of the Karzai government, for instance, the White House has asked Congress for only $250 million in additional aid dedicated to economic reconstruction.

That $250 million works out to a little more than $10 per Afghan — much less than what the previous administration sought and received in terms of per capita aid for the immediate post-conflict needs in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. Even when European and Japanese aid pledges for this year are added, and assuming this money is immediately made available, the assistance currently offered to Afghanistan is not commensurate with the need or the scale of similar efforts.

The recent increase in violence should cause neither the Afghans nor the international community to lose heart. Unlike Yugoslavia, which fell apart of its own internal ethnic conflicts, Afghanistan was largely pulled apart by its neighbors. Even today, Afghans accept the need to live together within a multiethnic, multilingual nation.

  Late last year, as the Taliban regime was driven from power, the United States successfully persuaded Russia, Pakistan, Iran and India — nations that have played meddlesome roles in Afghanistan's history — that a moderate and modernizing Afghanistan could make them all winners. All of these governments contributed to the installation of the Karzai regime. As long as they continue to support it, there is every reason to hope for continued consolidation of the new Afghan government's authority and legitimacy.

Afghanistan has already made tremendous progress over the past 10 months. Without substantially enhanced economic support and an expanded international security presence, however, these gains could easily be lost.

James Dobbins, director of RAND's Center for International Security and Defense Policy, was special envoy for Afghanistan in the Bush administration and special envoy for Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo in the Clinton administration.

Europe Pauses and Grieves, but Takes Issue With U.S.

By FRANK BRUNI

OME, Sept. 11 — Just after midnight, many of the taxi drivers in one company's fleet here turned off their meters and pulled to the side of the road, pausing for a minute to honor the dead of last Sept. 11.

Parisians did something grander. Into the sky above the City of Light, before dawn and again after dusk, they shone two vertical beams — twin towers — to symbolize what had been lost and what was still remembered.

So it went today throughout Europe and in places even farther from, and less closely connected to, the United States. Across the world, many people still mourned what happened on Sept. 11, and they still wanted Americans to know it.

But in addition to the memorial concerts and prayer services, the special exhibits and rueful political remarks, there was something else — something that had been pushed aside in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks but crept slowly back to center stage.

There was skepticism about the way the United States conducts itself abroad. There were questions about the direction the United States is taking and the degree to which allies are being consulted.

On this dark anniversary, the unfettered sympathy with which many foreigners reacted to last Sept. 11 gave way to a more complicated amalgam of emotions.

Just as the Democrats and Republicans who sang "God Bless America" together at the Capitol are back to bickering, people around the world are back to resenting the United States for its wealth and willfulness and accusing it of its own sins.

Foreigners still ached for the United States, but they also took issue with it. They still deplored the violence that was visited upon Americans, but they also wondered whether Americans bore some culpability.

"It is monstrous, horrible — I don't deny that," said Eveline Bureau, 50, of Paris. "But the Americans didn't do anything to avoid what happened on Sept. 11. They have put themselves in danger, and now they put us in danger."

Last year, a day after Sept. 11, a front-page editorial in the French newspaper Le Monde stated and restated the phrase, "We are all American." But on Tuesday, the same writer, Jean-Marie Colombani, in the same paper observed that "the solidarity reflex from one year ago has been drowned in a wave that leads one to believe that, in the world, we have all become anti-American."

That may overstate what has happened, which is in some ways a change in focus as much as a change of heart.

Twelve months of reflection on American policy in the Middle East and scrutiny into how the United States did or did not protect itself have yielded recriminations and resentments — many of them familiar, some more barbed than in the past, all permitted expression by the passing of a year's time.

They do not erase the respect and general affection that many foreigners feel toward the United States and showered on Americans today, as financial exchanges far and wide held moments of silence and as a "rolling Requiem," Mozart's Mass, was performed in successive intervals across the time zones, from New Zealand to Portugal.

But these feelings now compete once again with qualms about the United States that have been nourished anew by the Bush administration's increasingly tough talk of a military invasion of Iraq, which unsettles many foreigners.

"Anti-Americanism is back," said Lyudmila M. Alexeyeva, a noted human rights advocate in Moscow. "America is the strongest, richest and most successful country, and people here don't like that."

But Ms. Alexeyeva also seemed to speak for many Russians when she added that "Americans endured this suffering with honor." While a majority of Russians said in a recent poll that Americans deserved what happened to them, an even larger majority said they had a "good" or "very good" opinion of the United States.

Initially, the foreigners who lined up for hours to sign condolence books, laid flowers at American embassies and bowed their heads in collective silence were reacting viscerally to a sorrowful tragedy in the only way that made emotional sense.

The foreign leaders who said they stood without reservation beside the United States were making statements in a vacuum: it was not yet clear what standing beside the United States would mean.

That was no longer the case once the United States started waging war in Afghanistan; threatening to wage war in Iraq; restricting some civil liberties; more aggressively screening immigrants, and saying all the while that it would do what it felt was necessary, even if allies disagreed.

Those were concrete actions with measurable effects, and in India, news coverage of the anniversary of Sept. 11 has focused largely on people from that country who have been denied travel visas to the United States or treated as terrorist suspects there. One television channel promoted a report from New York on Tuesday about "why South Asians still say they're victims, a year after Sept. 11."

In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who at first professed "unconditional solidarity" with the United States, is now fighting for re-election and taking exception to the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

Mr. Schröder's position seems to tap into the apprehensions of Germans like Walter Straudenrauss, 37, who said the dialogue in his country has changed since the first weeks after the terrorist attacks.

"There is less sympathy and more rational political attitudes," Mr. Straudenrauss said. "There are many questions now, like where do we stand on Iraq and what it means to have one superpower in the world."

Concern about what many Europeans perceive as American unilateralism is nothing new: it flared over the Bush administration's repudiation of a treaty on global warming and its reluctance to endorse an international crime tribunal.

But that concern is no longer muted in the ways it was 12 or 11 or even 10 months ago. It is sometimes not muted at all. At the Venice Film Festival last week, one of the main events was the screening of a movie about Sept. 11 that included segments from 11 directors of different nationalities, several of whom were sharply critical of the United States.

Last week in Ottawa, at a performance of Verdi's Requiem to commemorate Sept. 11, pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the United States dropped atomic bombs there were projected above the stage.

Yet they were nonetheless paying homage in Ottawa, just as they did today in Berlin, where Mr. Schröder attended a candlelight religious service; in London, where 3,000 rose petals rained from the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in Paris, where President Jacques Chirac attended a memorial event at the residence of the American ambassador, Howard Leach.

"Today, France remembers," Mr. Chirac said. "France knows what it owes America. Today, French people are side by side wholeheartedly with the American people."

Many Europeans observed a minute of silence, making clear that a basic human sadness transcended any of their disagreements with Americans and that amity persisted, even when unanimity did not.

The evidence of that was everywhere. It was on a gondola that floated slowly down the Grand Canal in Venice with the sign: "For the victims and heroes of Sept. 11."

It was also on a poster at Rome's central train station, where many Italians left drawings for the anniversary. The poster showed a plane slicing through a skyscraper, coupled with these words: "I never loved you more, New York."

Editorial The Next Day

here are no more words, right now, for us to use about Sept. 11. The organizers of the ceremonies at ground zero understood that yesterday, when they structured the anniversary remembrance around the reading of the names of the victims rather than speeches. It was impossible for anyone who listened to avoid noticing the range of ethnicities and nationalities on that long, long list. That spoke more to the question of what America is, what it has to protect and carry forward, than anything else that happened yesterday.

President Bush ended the day at Ellis Island, where he gave a brief, nationally televised address between the Statue of Liberty and the still-strange sight of the Lower Manhattan skyline. But the most moving part of the president's performance was also virtually wordless. During the day's painful pilgrimage through the terrorist attack sites in Washington, Pennsylvania and New York, Mr. Bush seemed to be trying to heal the survivors' pain one person at a time. He patiently greeted children, signed autographs, hugged members of the victims' families. The president, who will be most responsible for leading the country toward a new way of thinking about what happened, suggested by example that the road begins with simple human contact.

At ground zero, speakers read from documents of the past like the Gettysburg Address, and it was easy to find new meaning in the words. At Gettysburg, the site of unimaginable carnage, Abraham Lincoln said that "the world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." He was wrong about the world's memory. And sometime in the future, when the nation faces some terrible new trial, people who feel they've been left speechless will look back on the things that happened over this long, wrenching but emotionally rich time and find that they speak to them in a new way.

A year is, in many cultures, the traditional time of mourning. The dead slip into a new relationship with the living. Sometimes they can be reimagined whole, not as people who were suddenly taken away but as people who lived well the time they were given. The Times Portraits of Grief series, which has perhaps been more embraced and commented upon than anything this paper has ever done, spoke to that need to see the men and women who died on Sept. 11 as unique individuals who had quirks and foibles and favorite foods and surprising hobbies.

And so we move on. The fact that we look toward the future, the fact that we have no more words, does not mean the memories have lost their power. We carry them with us, every day.

 Editorial

Justice in the Shadows

In a dark moment for the American legal system, a federal appeals court met behind closed doors earlier this week to hear the Justice Department argue for increased power to wiretap suspected spies and terrorists. The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, a special panel established to oversee such wiretaps, violated two cherished principles of American judicial process: it met in secret, and it allowed only one side in a controversy to be heard.

The three-member court was established, along with an 11-member lower court, by Congress in 1978. The idea was to create a separate judicial system that would ease the burden for law enforcement to wiretap, and engage in other investigative activities, in counterintelligence cases. But civil liberties groups note that until this case arose, the lower court had apparently not denied any of the more than 10,000 applications it received since its creation.

The lower court showed rare independence recently when it rebuked the F.B.I. for misleading it in more than 75 cases, in an attempt by the bureau to tear down the wall between counterintelligence cases and ordinary criminal cases. And it denied the Justice Department's request for authority to weaken the barrier between counterintelligence and criminal investigations. It was the appeal of that decision that caused the Court of Review to meet this week, for the first time in its history.

The Court of Review comprises three judges, chosen by Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the Supreme Court. All were appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan. These men have extraordinary power to decide how much leeway the government will be given to roll back civil liberties in order to fight terrorism. This is a question of critical importance to all Americans, and not one that should be decided in secret.

Members of the Senate, including the Judiciary Committee chairman, Patrick Leahy, have asked the court to release the arguments made by the Justice Department, and any decision it reaches. These documents can be abridged, so no sensitive information is compromised, but they must be released. And in the future the court should hold arguments in the open, and invite other interested parties to participate.

Democracy, a federal appeals court in Ohio noted last month, dies behind closed doors. The federal judiciary will have forgotten this important principle if it meets with its own doors closed.

Germany's Cautious Candidates

Germany's lackluster election campaign continues Europe's recent trend of blurring the difference between the major parties of the center-left and the center-right. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the Social Democratic incumbent, and Edmund Stoiber, his Christian Democratic challenger, have hewed as closely as possible to the uncontroversial center ground. Neither has offered any bold proposals for reviving Germany's sluggish economy, the No. 1 concern of most Germans, nor has there been much heated debate on other issues.

That's too bad. Germany needs to inject new life into its rigid labor markets, accelerate the economic transformation of the formerly Communist east and chart a more dynamic foreign policy course, especially in leading the European Union away from damaging agricultural subsidies. Its two major parties also need to reinforce their appeal, especially to the unemployed and discontented, or risk the rise of the kind of xenophobic populism that has taken root in neighboring countries.

In the years after 1945, Germany pioneered a distinctive form of capitalism built around broad social welfare programs and nationwide pay formulas. This emphasis on social security and consensus smoothed the way for establishing the first genuine democracy in German history. The costs of this system did not noticeably impair economic performance, with Germany taking its place as the world's third-largest economic power.

Over the last decade, however, serious problems have emerged. As Germany's once prosperous industrial Ruhr became a rust belt, along with much of eastern Germany, generous unemployment benefits discouraged workers from relocating for new jobs. Nationwide wage settlements that applied even to small non-unionized businesses hurt competitiveness and innovation. In addition, Germany has had to bear the enormous costs of reunification, subsidizing French farmers through the European Union's common agricultural policy and, more recently, trans-Atlantic recession.

Both candidates have shied away from radical labor market reform, although Mr. Stoiber has been more willing than his union-backed opponent to challenge nationwide pay scales. Mr. Schröder, for his part, has been more forthright about criticizing agricultural subsidies than Mr. Stoiber, whose party traditionally courts farmers. Mr. Schröder has scored points with voters by sharply criticizing Washington's war talk on Iraq while Mr. Stoiber has expressed more nuanced reservations.

Whoever wins on Sept. 22 — and the race is currently considered too close to call — German policies sadly appear headed toward stagnation. That's not what elections are supposed to be for.

Move to Gulf by Key Unit Could Set Staff for Iraq War

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITT

ASHINGTON, Sept. 11 — The United States Central Command is planning to send much of its staff to Qatar, in the Persian Gulf, in a move that Pentagon officials said would form the core of a battle staff that could run a war against Iraq.

About 600 officers under the command of Gen. Tommy R. Franks, about a quarter of his staff, will move to Qatar in November, military officials said. The purpose is to test the ability to deploy a headquarters rapidly in a crisis and to carry out a war game, the officials said.

But Pentagon officials said it was likely that the staff members would remain in the Persian Gulf after the exercise is complete and form the basis of a planning group for a military campaign against Iraq. General Franks is also planning to go to Qatar to take part in the exercise.

In essence, the American military is trying to put things in place so it has a running start in any campaign to oust Saddam Hussein.

The plans to move the battle staff follows repeated private entreaties by General Franks in recent months to shift his operations to the Persian Gulf region. Military officials said he had long been pushing to establish a forward command center.

President Bush convened a top-level meeting at the White House on Monday to discuss Iraq, and General Franks was there with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The Central Command headquarters is situated in Tampa, Fla., because Arab nations are uneasy about playing host to a major American command. But it is necessary to establish a forward command center to oversee a major military operation.

During the 1991 Persian Gulf war, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf established a forward headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. But relations with the Saudis are strained and they have made it clear that they would not welcome an expanded American presence. So the focus of interest has shifted to Qatar.

As a small nation in a volatile part of the world, Qatar has been willing to accept an expanded American presence even as the Saudis have become more resistant. The United States conducted air attacks from Qatar during its campaign to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan, but at that time the existence of the United States Air Force units there was considered a military secret.

Qatar did not officially decide to acknowledge the buildup of American forces until Vice President Dick Cheney visited Al Udeid Air Base there in March.

The United States is developing the base, establishing an air command center there. American war planes operate from the base, providing a backup in case the Saudis do not allow the American military to use one in Saudi Arabia.

The 15,000-foot runway at Al Udeid is the longest in the region. Still, new runways and parking ramps have been added. Hangers have been fortified to protect the American warplanes from bombing raids.

By moving much of General Franks's headquarters staff to the gulf, the United States will take an important step toward mounting a military campaign in Iraq.

Even the war game that the battle staff is scheduled to conduct, code-named Internal Look, is likely to be an important preparation. In 1990, shortly before Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Central Command conducted a war game that evaluated the ability to repel an attack by Iraq.

A spokesman for the Central Command said the United States had made no decisions beyond testing its ability to deploy a headquarters and conducting the war game. "It is a command-post exercise which will test our command, control and communications," the spokesman said.

There are other signs of war preparation. Army equipment that was stored in Al Udeid was put on a ship and moved to Kuwait as part of the exercise, but the army secretary, Thomas White, said that it was a logistics exercise and that the equipment was moved back.

Most of General Franks's subordinate commanders have already moved their headquarters to the region to help fight the war in Afghanistan and prepare for a potential war in Iraq, among other contingencies. The Army has forward headquarters in Kuwait, the Marines in Bahrain and the Air Force has a headquarters in Saudi Arabia. The Navy has long had a headquarters in Bahrain.

On the Job and at Home, Influential Hawks' 30-Year Friendship Evolves

By ELISABETH BUMILLERand ERIC SCHMITT

ASHINGTON, Sept. 10 — At a dinner this spring for former President Gerald R. Ford, Vice President Dick Cheney so artfully skewered his old boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, that the crowd got an instant glimpse into one of the closest and most important relationships in the nation's capital.

"So much has changed since I started out as an assistant to Don Rumsfeld," Mr. Cheney said, deadpan. "Today I look at Don and see the secretary of defense. He looks at me and sees — well, an assistant to Don Rumsfeld."

The crowd roared at a joke that summed up the three-decade friendship between the two superpowers of the Bush administration, who first worked closely together in 1969 in the Nixon administration, when Mr. Rumsfeld was director of the Office of Economic Opportunity and Mr. Cheney was his 28-year-old aide.

But what few people even in the capital understand is that each man also has a powerful deputy — Paul D. Wolfowitz for Mr. Rumsfeld and I. Lewis Libby for Mr. Cheney, who have known each other for 30 years in a parallel association and friendship that makes them closer to each other than to Mr. Bush, or to Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld.

These relationships, according to people who know all four men, are essential to understanding their current status as the most influential hawks in an already hawkish administration.

The events of Sept. 11 have made their bond even stronger, administration officials say, and their stands on crucial issues — from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to the International Criminal Court to the Middle East to Iraq — have often won out over the more cautious, more multilateralist camp led by as formidable a figure as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. The terrorist attacks made their arguments even more powerful with Mr. Bush, several senior administration officials said.

"They're very certain of their views," said Kenneth Adelman, a former Reagan administration official who knows all four men. "They're not the kind of agonizing, Hamlet-like figures."

Though the four have weaved in and out of government over seven administrations, this is the first time they have assembled under the same president. Their supporters say that their coming together is a fortuitous development in an administration that has made the campaign against terrorism its priority. But detractors describe the four as dangerous and arrogant interventionists.

The men have "a pervasive philosophy of `We have to do what we think is right,' " a Republican ally of Secretary Powell said. " `And when it comes out, the rest of the world will know it's right, too.' "

In a recent interview, Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledged how important his longtime relationship with Mr. Cheney and others in the administration was to doing his job.

"It helps enormously," he said. "If you're dealing with people who you know how they think and how they move and what they do and what they worry about and what they think is important, and you don't have to begin at the beginning every time you meet with them, it's a big help."

Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld, as well as their deputies, declined to be interviewed for this article.

Together, the group has pushed forward a muscular American foreign policy toward Iraq with preemption as its central thrust, and arguing that in a dangerous, post-cold-war world the United States must reserve the right to strike first.

The men believe that if the United States doesn't shape the world order, it will spin out of control, and as a group supported the "evil empire" beliefs of Ronald Reagan more than the internationalism of the first President Bush.

Of the four, Mr. Cheney is closest to Mr. Bush, and operates as the president's No. 1 foreign policy adviser. But Mr. Rumsfeld counseled Mr. Bush on national security issues during the 2000 campaign, especially the need for missile defenses to thwart threats from countries like North Korea and Iraq. Mr. Wolfowitz was also a top national security adviser during the campaign.

The core of the quartet is the relationship between Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld, who three times have found themselves in the same supervisor-subordinate role. Mr. Rumsfeld was not only Mr. Cheney's boss at the Office at Economic Opportunity, but also as director of the Cost of Living Council later in the Nixon administration. Mr. Rumsfeld was Mr. Cheney's boss again as White House chief of staff during the Ford administration.

Eventually, the two shared some of the same titles: congressman, White House chief of staff (Mr. Cheney took Mr. Rumsfeld's place under Mr. Ford) and secretary of defense.

Over the years, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney became close friends. Mr. Rumsfeld and his wife Joyce were guests at the 35th wedding anniversary celebration in Wyoming that Mr. Cheney and his wife Lynne had in the summer of 1999, and are frequent guests in each other's homes.

Mr. Wolfowitz and Mr. Libby have a similar close friendship that began in 1973 when Mr. Libby was a student in Mr. Wolfowitz's political science class at Yale. Mr. Libby then worked for Mr. Wolfowitz in the Reagan administration beginning when Mr. Wolfowitz ran the State Department's policy planning office.

Mr. Libby worked again for Mr. Wolfowitz at the Pentagon in the first Bush administration, when Mr. Wolfowitz was undersecretary for policy and Mr. Libby was his deputy.

The four men do not see each other socially as a formal group, colleagues say, but they are frequently together at meetings arguing their point of view. Still, they are not a single policy bloc, and play different roles in relation to each other.

Mr. Rumsfeld is the chief executive, the man who likes to be in charge and bark out orders. "Rumsfeld is a kind of typical lightweight wrestler," said one senior administration official. "His management style is always to be in your face, raising questions, playing for the advantage and to take someone down."

Mr. Wolfowitz is the strategic thinker with a strong moral streak who provides Mr. Rumsfeld with his intellectual underpinnings. "Paul is the big brain who's thinking about strategies, policies and geostrategic implications," said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota who knows Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Wolfowitz.

Mr. Cheney is the politician and synthesizer who relishes the process and worries about how to get from one place to another in the maze of Washington. "This is a vice president who's a prime minister, a senior counselor, a chief of staff, whatever he wants to be," said Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Mr. Libby, a lawyer known by his nickname, Scooter, is Mr. Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser. Once a speechwriter for former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Mr. Libby is adept at articulating and carrying out the vice president's ideas and troubleshooting for his boss. "Scooter always brings a trained lawyer's eye," said a senior administration official.

The four men met in ways both ordinary and unusual.

As a young graduate student on a fellowship in 1968, Mr. Cheney had a 30-minute job interview with Mr. Rumsfeld, then a Republican congressman from Illinois. The interview went badly, and Mr. Cheney went to work for another lawmaker. A long memorandum he later wrote on how to set up the White House Office of Economic Opportunity caught Mr. Rumsfeld's eye, and he hired Mr. Cheney as the new agency's Congressional liaison.

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Washington Post U.S. Forces in Tampa Plan Qatar Exercises
Troops to Test New Headquarters

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 12, 2002; Page A01

The U.S. military command responsible for operations in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf will send 600 personnel from its base in Tampa to a multibillion-dollar air base in Qatar in November to test a headquarters that could be used to oversee a war against Iraq, defense officials said yesterday.

Although officials billed the move as part of a one-week biennial exercise, they said it will be led by Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the chief of Central Command, and acknowledged that shifting at least some operations and personnel from Florida to Qatar on a permanent basis was under consideration.

The decision, which comes as the Bush administration is stepping up plans for a possible war aimed at toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, illustrates the emergence of Qatar as a key strategic U.S. ally in the Gulf. It comes in a period in which relations with Saudi Arabia, where the United States already has a modern military command center, have been under severe strain.

The headquarters will be established at Al Udeid Air Base near Doha, the capital of Qatar, where the U.S. military presence has been rapidly expanding in recent months. The base has a 15,000-foot runway, long enough for the heaviest U.S. cargo aircraft and bombers to take off fully loaded, and the Pentagon has begun construction of a sophisticated air operations center at the site that could supplant or replace an existing facility at Prince Sultan Air Base outside Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Since the war on terrorism began last fall, U.S. authorities have been installing computer monitors, communications gear, intelligence equipment and other assets at the base. In recent months, the number of U.S. warplanes and personnel at the base has swelled, with about 2,000 troops now populating a large military tent city in the desert, according to one official.

The November deployment to Qatar, which could involve an additional 400 support personnel, bringing the total number of U.S. forces involved to about 1,000, follows controversy regarding a decision by Franks and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to keep Central Command headquarters in Tampa during the war in Afghanistan.

Franks decided to remain in Tampa, defense officials said, because he and Rumsfeld thought a move would be disruptive during the opening stages of the war and believed that Saudi Arabia would have objected to stationing the headquarters at Prince Sultan.

But many Air Force and Army commanders involved in Afghanistan complained about the arrangement and indicated that they thought Franks should have moved to the region so the Central Command staff would have been in roughly the same time zone as military commanders in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Central Asian republics. They noted that an earlier Central Command leader, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, moved from Tampa to a headquarters in Riyadh shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. Schwarzkopf commanded the 1991 Persian Gulf War from the Riyadh headquarters.

The Central Command's announcement came as Qatar's foreign minister, Hamad Bin Jasim Thani, is in Washington meeting with administration officials and members of Congress. Hamad is scheduled to testify in closed session today before the House International Relations Committee and will meet with Pentagon officials on Friday.

Earlier this year, the Qataris made it clear that they would not place restrictions on the use of facilities by U.S. commanders prosecuting the war on terrorism, one senior defense official said.

While Saudi Arabia allowed the United States to use its operations center at Prince Sultan Air Base during the war in Afghanistan, relations between the two countries have frayed since last Sept. 11, when 15 of the 19 hijackers who committed the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington were of Saudi origin. Saudi Arabia has since expressed doubt about the administration's desire to take military action against Iraq, and Saudi officials have said privately they think it is unlikely that Saudi military facilities, including Prince Sultan, would be made available for an attack against Iraq. Publicly, they have challenged the administration's handling of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Defense officials and senior officers said no decision has been made on whether to leave the Central Command personnel in place in Qatar or to permanently move Franks to the base. Lt. Cmdr. Nick Balice, a Central Command spokesman, said only that Franks "travels frequently, and it's not unusual when an exercise is conducted for him to participate in the exercise."

A senior Pentagon official, however, said that stationing Franks in Qatar at some point after the exercise is a possibility.

In the event of war against Iraq, there is still no certainty that Franks would use Qatar as his regional headquarters, according to one general officer, who said military planners continue to hold open the possibility of running the war out of Saudi Arabia. "Using Qatar as a headquarters is still plan B," the officer said. "The preference is still to try to work with the Saudis rather than cut ties and leave."

One Republican House staff member said the exercise in Qatar takes on added importance with the Bush administration contemplating military action against Iraq. "If there's a war, they're going to have to send a headquarters element forward," the staffer said. "So they should exercise it -- it makes sense to me."

The staffer, who recently returned from the Middle East, said Qatar is becoming an increasingly important U.S. ally in the Gulf and could ultimately replace Saudi Arabia as the most important host for U.S. air operations, particularly now that the Air Force is constructing another Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base.

The Air Force completed work in the summer of 2001 on its first operations center in the region at Prince Sultan in Saudi Arabia but began replicating the massive computer center this year in Qatar. The move came as a hedge against an attack on the facility in Saudi Arabia or any attempt by Saudi authorities to deny the United States access to it, officials said.

"I think there are more American forces on the ground in Qatar than there are in Saudi Arabia -- if not, then it's close," the GOP aide said. "Qatar has a very small population, principally expatriates, and it's a little fragile. But so are a lot of other places around there. We really like them, as far as I can tell, and they seem to like us. And they're doing all the right things."

One Democratic staff member who follows military issues said he hoped the Central Command deployment to Qatar was not the first step toward moving the entire Central Command headquarters to the Gulf. "I don't think they'd be doing anything that provocative the day before [President] Bush addresses the United Nations, but you never know with this crowd," the staffer said.

In another development, a Marine official said the Marines plan later this month to send a specialized unit that detects nuclear, chemical and biological attacks to Kuwait. The move reflects the concern of military planners that the most vulnerable point of any campaign against Hussein would be the initial assembly of U.S. troops along Iraq's borders.

Staff writers Bradley Graham and Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.

Back and Forth With Bush

By Jim Hoagland

Thursday, September 12, 2002; Page A23

President Bush played the summer as prelude in minor key. He let others dominate the vacation season's often erratic discussion of his vow to remove Iraq's noxious dictator and destroy that country's weapons of mass destruction. But this week, Bush is back: His voice, style and substance now command the chances for success or for failure in the Iraq undertaking.

Bush's reentry into the debate, in emotion-laden speeches at home and the United Nations, was designed in part to underscore his full-steam-ahead determination to take on the political, diplomatic and military challenges of a strike on Iraq -- quickly, in that order and on his timetable and battlegrounds.

He is likely to press Congress for a resolution of support before the House and Senate recess for electioneering next month. Bush then plans to go to the U.N. Security Council to ask the world organization to live up to its long unfulfilled obligations to oversee the disarmament of Iraq. Preliminary work on the wording of a U.S. draft resolution began this week.

The emerging Bush fall offensive is a mixture of high strategy and low politics. It is designed to deal with a long-standing Iraqi threat that has become more urgent since Sept. 11, 2001 -- while putting Democrats on the patriotic hot seat in a close and vital election.

Nations get the leaders they deserve, it is said, and that may even be true. What is certain is that nations rise and fall on the choices and personalities of those leaders. Substitute others for George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein and the world would be at a different historical junction today. Leading the nation into war is not a task Bush could delegate even if he tried.

Nearly 20 months into his presidency, Bush has demonstrated an ability to tolerate evolving (i.e., messy) strategies and situations filled with inconsistencies that would unsettle more conventionally minded politicians. He does not resolve big strategic debates so much as push them forward to see what happens next.

A comfort zone for dichotomy should not be surprising in a man who has spent his life between West Texas and Kennebunkport, Maine, who saw his father evicted from both record-breaking heights of popularity and the White House, and who talks candidly about chasing the low life while he was at two of America's most exalted institutions of higher learning.

As president, Bush takes Colin Powell's suggestions about the form of what he should say on the Middle East while hewing closely to the substance offered to him by Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. It does not seem to enter Bush's mind to order his subordinates to shut up and walk single file behind him. Bush practices a form of coalition-building at home that inevitably creates confusion and unease abroad.

The administration may well follow a mix-and-match approach by seeking a Security Council enforcement resolution on Iraq (a victory for Powell on process) that will set the bar on inspections so high that Saddam Hussein will reject it outright (à la Cheney and Rumsfeld). Bush will also try to accommodate key allies on matters of form without letting his hands be tied on substance. At his Camp David meeting with Bush last weekend, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair won some input rights on the shaping of a U.S. draft resolution while work proceeds on a British draft as well.

France, Russia, Turkey and a few other nations are offering conditional invasion support or acquiescence in hopes of securing post-invasion roles in a liberated Iraq. Bush should explore reasonable trade-offs with them rather than pushing for Iraq to become a U.S.-only fiefdom. Consortiums spread risks better than coalitions.

The White House's top command is said to feel that Bush lost nothing by largely ceding the airwaves and op-ed pages of August to those who question the wisdom or morality of a U.S. attack on Iraq, because he and Cheney could quickly take over and redirect the debate. That is probably right. National security is a leadership issue. The public follows a president's lead as long as it has confidence in him personally.

But followers need a clear path along which to move, and Bush's unconventional leadership style is causing him trouble on that score. He must also overcome political and cultural antipathy at home and abroad that have more to do with him than with Iraq.

Bush came to the White House without a popular-vote majority and with controversy surrounding his competence and intelligence, and then saw Republicans lose control of the Senate. More important, his back-and-forth approach toward his divided national security team scares the wits out of many members of the foreign policy establishment, Republican and Democrat alike.

That part scares me some, too, to tell the truth. But you have to admire this president's instincts for doing the right thing on Iraq -- the world's most dangerous dictator must finally go -- and his audacity in not ducking this hard issue. He deserves an attentive and open-minded hearing from the nation, and from the world, for the case he has now begun to make. And Bush deserves the unified support of his national security team on Iraq, or the resignations that would make such support possible as the nation moves toward an expanded war.

Silence About Secrecy

By Mary McGrory

Thursday, September 12, 2002; Page A23

Franklin Pierce, whose name is a synonym for obscurity, was the only New Hampshire man to make it to the Oval Office. He was a calamity of a president and even worse as an ex-president. The only reason to give him a thought now is that he had one redeeming feature: a passion for the Constitution, learned at the knee of his father, a Revolutionary War veteran -- and that is a quality we could use now.

Pierce excoriated his successor, Abraham Lincoln, for suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War. At a Fourth of July celebration he declared that "the mere arbitrary will of the president takes the place of the Constitution." Pierce's attacks are detailed in "In the Memory House," a book by New Hampshire writer Howard Mansfield.

George Bush has not gone as far as Lincoln, yet. But a report from the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights tells us of the liberties he has taken with our civil liberties since the war on terrorism began. The report is depressing reading. Attorney General John Ashcroft led the charge to ring down the curtain of secrecy on the unfortunate immigrants who made the authorities suspicious. The roundups, isolation and secret hearings held on these cases are rather conspicuous constitutional violations, but Ashcroft is adamant and reproaches federal judges who protest.

Judge Robert G. Doumar, who is handling the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S.-born Saudi Arabian and alleged Taliban friend, conspicuously differed with Ashcroft about the latter's practice of describing detainees as "enemy combatants" and throwing them into military prisons, where they are held indefinitely and forbidden visits from lawyers or family. Judge Doumar, a Reagan appointee, jolted Justice by declaring that the whole process reminded him of the star chamber proceeding favored by absolute monarchs.

Another federal judge, Gladys Kessler, spoke sharply from the bench on the constitutional guarantees of open government. "The first priority of the judicial branch must be to ensure that our government always operates within the statutory and constitutional constraints which distinguish a democracy from a dictatorship."

Lawyers Committee Executive Director Michael Posner writes in a preface to the report that its purpose is "to encourage a more robust debate."

Editorial pages have taken note of the mass roundups and the black holes that so many detainees have been pushed into. The Post has taken particular note of Tony Oulai, a 35-year-old Catholic from the Ivory Coast, whom the FBI picked up because he was carrying a stun gun. The G-men misidentified him as an Arab Muslim, but rather than admit they had made a mistake they shuffled him through 12 prisons seeking judges susceptible to national security claims. Finally the FBI charged him with lying to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He was sentenced to deportation. It is one of those triumphs for small-mindedness that are so easy when secrecy prevails.

The Lawyers Committee report also makes the point that our practices are encouraging scoundrel governments everywhere to claim they are being harassed by terrorists, when in fact they are putting down richly deserved popular uprisings.

All this makes for somber reading at a moment when the president is trying to start a war with Iraq. Try as they have, the cakewalk corps that surrounds Bush cannot connect dots between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, who is still wanted dead or alive.

The president aims to ram a resolution through Congress to authorize war on Iraq before the election. Democrats are scared stiff. If they refuse, they will be accused of failing to recognize a crisis; if they go along, they will pass a new version of the Vietnam War's calamitous Gulf of Tonkin resolution. They have hardly said a word about curtailment of civil liberties. They don't dare open their mouths and say to a popular president, "Are you crazy? Isn't one war enough for you? Couldn't you just pretend to be evenhanded with the Israeli-Palestine question? Loathing of Arafat and affection for Sharon isn't exactly a policy. And if you tried to be fair, you would lower the world's temperature by 50 percent."

Democrats put curbs on their own free speech. It's because they are in a position where, as Franklin Pierce said, "the president himself announces to us that it is treasonable to speak or to write otherwise than as he may prescribe." Things will only get worse unless people speak out.

Try Him for His Crimes

By David J. Scheffer

Thursday, September 12, 2002; Page A23

The debate on Iraq overlooks the totality of Saddam Hussein's atrocities and how that record can help build an international coalition to end his rule over Iraq.

For two decades, top Iraqi officials have committed massive crimes and atrocities -- genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. This list includes far more than the common refrain that Hussein and his associates gassed their own people, particularly at Halabja in 1988.

The criminal record includes other serious war crimes during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s; the genocidal Anfal campaign against Iraqi Kurds in 1987 and 1988; the invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990; the violent suppression of the 1991 uprising that led to 30,000 or more mostly civilian deaths; the draining of the southern marshes during the 1990s, which ethnically cleansed Hussein's southern flank of thousands of Iraqi Shiites; more ethnic cleansing of the non-Arab population of Kirkuk and other northern Iraqi areas; and the summary executions of thousands of political opponents.

Following the invasion of Kuwait, Iraqi authorities killed more than 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians, held foreign diplomats hostage, unleashed environmental crimes on a colossal scale, looted Kuwaiti property, rained missiles down on Israeli civilians and committed war crimes against American soldiers. The fate of more than 600 missing Kuwaiti citizens remains unknown.

All these crimes have been impressively recorded by the United Nations, the American, Kuwaiti, British, Iranian and other governments, and nongovernmental groups such as Human Rights Watch and the Iraqi opposition's INDICT organization, which has received financial and political support from Washington for years.

Throughout the Clinton administration, I waged an often lonely campaign to compile the criminal record against the Iraqi regime and to seek indictments of Iraqi officials. By the end of 2000 our investigative team had amassed millions of pages of documents, resurrected an extensive archive of evidence prepared by U.S. Army lawyers and investigators during the Gulf War, interviewed key witnesses, and published a report and released aerial photography demonstrating Iraqi crimes against humanity.

Yet no Iraqi official (at least 10 are of extreme interest) has ever been indicted for some of the worst crimes of the 20th century. My efforts to obtain U.N. Security Council approval for an ad hoc international criminal tribunal encountered one obstacle after another in foreign capitals, in New York and even within the Clinton administration. The usual excuse was that a tribunal would jeopardize either the United Nations' inspections regime or its sanctions regime. We needed Hussein's cooperation, which a criminal indictment might discourage.

Now the stakes are much higher. While President Bush speaks of Hussein as an "evil man" and tries to convince Congress and the rest of the world that the Iraqi threat -- weapons of mass destruction, ties to international terrorism -- merits military intervention and a regime change, his publicly stated case seems oddly weak. How evil is Hussein compared with other tyrants? Without a return of U.N. inspectors to verify (as best they can) the state of Iraq's weapons production, what proof is there to compel such drastic and potentially catastrophic action? How serious is any terrorist connection?

We know from the ad hoc criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and now for Sierra Leone, that indictments of alleged war criminals who lead tyrannical and genocidal regimes can destroy their political careers, isolate them internationally, end their regimes and even achieve justice. Whether or not the Security Council authorizes use of force against Iraq if credible inspections collapse, the United States should build an anti-Hussein coalition through old-fashioned law enforcement.

The time has come for a Security Council resolution establishing an international criminal tribunal to investigate and prosecute the Iraqi leadership. Such a tribunal would confirm the evil character of the Iraqi regime. Its indictees would be subject to arrest. And its creation could pave the way for later U.N.-authorized military action to neutralize any weapons and terrorism threats and to bring about regime change with international support.

With so much evidence readily available to a U.N. prosecutor, preparation of indictments could be speedily accomplished. It would be difficult for Russia or China or any other Security Council member to argue against a tribunal if the alternative were an American rush to war.

In the meantime, an indictment process would discourage commercial deals that embolden the Iraqi regime and would compel contracting governments and companies to stall their implementation until new, unindicted officials rule Iraq free of U.N. sanctions.

The time for offering Saddam Hussein incentives is over. He and his colleagues deserve to be indicted, and the U.N. Security Council must disarm Iraq. At the end of the day, both justice and international security must prevail.

The writer is senior vice president of the U.N. Association of the USA and former U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues.

President Faces Different Test This September

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 12, 2002; Page A01

President Bush's advisers described yesterday's events, in understated terms, as a time of solemn remembrance for the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. But it was clear as Bush made his way from the Pentagon to Pennsylvania and finally to New York that this Sept. 11 marked another pivot point in his presidency.

The president never explicitly mentioned Iraq yesterday, but it was inevitably part of the backdrop as he prepared for his speech today to the United Nations. There he will challenge the world community to confront Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and as he begins to make his public case against the Iraqi leader, he will face a series of questions that will once again test his capacity for leadership.

Administration officials clearly understand the challenge. "The president rallied the nation a year ago, but they were ready to be moved," one administration official said. "They're ready to listen to him [about Iraq] and they're favorably disposed, but the deal hasn't been closed yet. The president still has to make a case and it's a complex case."

When he addressed the nation from the Oval Office a year ago, what doubts existed in the minds of shaken Americans had far more to do with an untested president than the necessity to retaliate against the terrorists responsible for the attacks that left nearly 3,000 people dead. Bush's performance in the wake of the attacks overcame many of those doubts, strengthening his hand for the next phases of the war on terrorism.

But if he enjoys stronger personal support, it was also evident as he spoke to the nation yesterday from the Pentagon and later from Ellis Island that many Americans and many of America's allies have questions and some doubts about the president's newest mission.

They want to know more about the immediacy of the threat from Hussein, about why Bush has chosen this time to force a confrontation that could lead to military action and about the kind of commitment this may entail. Some also question whether the strengths exhibited in the weeks after Sept. 11 will be as effective as he tries to bring along reluctant allies and others.

The answers may begin to come today. Last night, there were only indirect references amid restatements of the president's and the country's resolve. "We will not allow any terrorist or tyrant to threaten civilization with weapons of mass murder," Bush said. "Now and in the future, Americans will live as free people, not in fear, and never at the mercy of any foreign plot or power."

Americans saw a different president yesterday than the one who a year ago was confronted by the worst terrorist attacks in history. Physically, of course, he was much grayer, but he also projected a confidence that was not on display in those first horrific hours of the crisis.

He began that September day in Florida, and as he flew from Air Force base to Air Force base for security reasons before finally returning to Washington, his absence was conspicuous. But he quickly put those questions to rest as he rallied the country and delivered two memorable speeches, one from Washington National Cathedral and the other from the House chamber in the Capitol.

"He deserves a tremendous amount of credit for the way he's handled the president's job of communicator-in-chief," said Larry Berman, director of the University of California's Washington program and author of several books on presidential decision-making. "Clearly the message he's communicating to the people is resonating with them."

Now he must do it all over again and Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), a hawk on the question of dealing with Iraq, argued that a more difficult job of salesmanship now faces the president.

"A year ago he was responding to a national tragedy," Bayh said. "There was tremendous natural momentum to do something. Now he's asking people to anticipate future threats and prevent them. Prevention is always going to be a harder sell than a response."

Bush is a simplifier by nature, and he demonstrated the value of providing a clarity of purpose a year ago when he outlined the first phase of a war on terrorism. But a Democrat who gives Bush high marks for how he handled things last year said he worried that Iraq presents Bush with a challenge "that doesn't play to all his strengths."

"His strength is right and wrong and making the right decision and moving on," said this Democrat. "This is much more operational. He has to design a case for a campaign, has got to go to the Congress and work this through. He's got to go to the UN and he's got to make a set of operational decisions about how we face off against Saddam."

A senior administration official vigorously challenged assertions that Bush's strengths as a leader may be less suited to making the case against Hussein and following through with the decisions that could lead to military action there. "He is capable of subtlety, nuance; he's patient, he never loses sight of the end goal," this official said. "The road may curve or rise and fall, but he'll end up in the same place."

The official also said Bush will be aided by the public support he has built over the past year. "People know where he's coming from," he said. "They have heightened respect for him, know he's a strong leader, that he has clarity, and when he says something, people know he means it."

Still, there are potential problems ahead as Bush seeks to build domestic and international support. The "Bush doctrine" that the president outlined on the night of the attacks -- that the United States would make no distinction between terrorists and those who harbor them -- drew almost universal support around the world. But his enunciation of a new doctrine of "preemption" that he outlined in a speech at West Point in June -- moving first to take out threats of weapons of mass destruction -- has drawn a far less positive reaction, particularly elsewhere in the world.

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and someone who has advocated vigorously for confronting Hussein sooner rather than later, applauded Bush for embracing a war against terrorism in the broadest sense after Sept. 11 and making it the single focus of his presidency.

"Both intellectually and emotionally, he reacted to Sept. 11 by accepting the challenge but also by taking it as a new moment not just for his presidency but for American foreign policy and American goals in the 21st century," he said. "That wasn't inevitable."

But that expansive view of America's role and mission in the post-9/11 world has plenty of skeptics and some outright critics. They will be looking for a more consistent argument from the administration, backed up by harder evidence than the administration has offered to date, about why this is the moment to go against Iraq.

How much Bush has changed in a year remains a matter of debate, but at least one thing is obvious. A year ago he was forced by circumstance to lead the country into war. Now it could be a war of his own choosing. That is quite a different proposition and reflects the distance Bush has traveled since that first plane hit the World Trade Center 366 days ago.

Putin Warns Georgia to Root Out Chechen Rebels Within Its Borders or Face Attacks

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

OSCOW, Sept. 11 — President Vladimir V. Putin threatened today to order military strikes in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, saying that Russia had a right to defend itself from what he called terrorist attacks launched from Georgian territory.

In a statement that sounded like an ultimatum, Mr. Putin sharply criticized Georgia for failing to root out hundreds of insurgents from the Russian republic of Chechnya and warned that if Georgia did not do more, Russia would conduct raids in Georgia to crush the fighters' strongholds.

Mr. Putin's warning today — on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — was by far the harshest and most ominous of a series of Russian warnings to Georgia this summer over Chechen rebels based in Georgia.

Mr. Putin, who was shown on Russian television reading sternly from note cards at a meeting of his security aides during a Black Sea vacation in Sochi, echoed President Bush's remarks a year ago about moving strongly against terrorists and against countries that harbor them — in this case, Georgia.

"One of the causes complicating the efficient struggle against terrorism," Mr. Putin said, "is that in some parts of the world there are still territorial enclaves that are beyond the control of national governments, which for different reasons cannot or do not want to resist the terrorist threat."

Mr. Putin announced that he had ordered military commanders to consider strikes against "reliably known bases of the terrorists" along the rugged border between Georgia and Chechnya.

Chechen fighters are particularly present in the Pankisi Gorge, northeast of Georgia's capital, Tbilisi. Russian aircraft have crossed into Georgia at least five times this summer, launching strikes three times and, in one case on Aug. 23, killing a Georgian civilian near the gorge.

Mr. Putin's warning appeared to stun Georgian officials. Last month, under pressure from Russia, Georgia's president, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, ordered 1,000 police officers and security troops into the Pankisi Gorge to establish order over a region that had largely been outside the government's control.

"What is surprising is the fact that the Russian president's statement came at a moment when the Georgian authorities are taking concrete action to restore order in the Pankisi Gorge," an adviser to Mr. Shevardnadze, Levan Alexidze, told the Interfax news agency in Tbilisi.

In more conciliatory remarks later, however, Mr. Shevardnadze said he believed that Mr. Putin would still give Georgia a chance to demonstrate its ability to impose order over Georgian territory. "This statement does not mean that Russia is planning to attack Georgia and start a war," he said after a hasty meeting with his advisers tonight.

Mr. Putin, however, outlined a stark case for military action. He cited Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which gives nations the right to self-defense, as well as the resolution adopted after last year's terrorist attack that called on all nations to crack down on international terrorism.

He made his remarks hours after telephoning President Bush just after midnight today — still Sept. 10 in Washington — to once again express sympathy and support on the anniversary of the attack. Later today, Mr. Putin's office released a statement calling the United States and Russia essential allies in the fight against terrorism.

"Our common goal is to eradicate any forms of support for and connivance with terrorism on the part of sovereign states and public organizations," he said in the statement.

The deterioration of relations between Russia and Georgia has already ensnared the United States, which this year began a $64 million program to train and equip Georgia's Army to undertake exactly the sort of operations that Russia has accused Georgia of resisting. Russian military action would put the Bush administration in the uncomfortable middle between two countries it considers allies.

After the bombing on Aug. 23, the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, rebuked Russia, saying the United States "strongly supports Georgia's independence and territorial integrity."

In recent weeks Russia has repeatedly called on Georgia to mount joint operations in Pankisi and elsewhere, but Mr. Shevardnadze's government has rebuffed the requests, saying Georgia could accomplish the task itself.

American officials have said that Pankisi has served as a base for dozens of Islamic militants, as well as hundreds of Chechen fighters intermingled with some 4,000 Chechen refugees who fled Russia's second war in Chechnya in 1999.

Georgian forces have arrested a handful of militants since the operations in Pankisi began, but Russian officials say the operation — which was signaled in advance — simply shifted Chechen fighters to other parts of Georgia, near the border with Chechnya.

Mr. Putin said Georgia was harboring not only Chechen rebels, but also those responsible for three apartment bombings — two in Moscow and one in Volgodonsk, in southern Russia — that killed more than 300 people in 1999.

Russian officials said this week that a suspect in those bombings, Achimez Gochiyayev, was hiding in Georgia. Georgian officials denied that, noting that Georgia had previously extradited another suspect in the bombings, Adam Dekkushev, once presented with evidence.

Mr. Putin also called on Georgia to extradite 13 Chechen rebels detained on the border on Aug. 3 and 5. The fighters were part of a group of 60 who clashed with Russian forces in the Kerigo Gorge in Chechnya at the end of July, a battle that led to the latest tensions. Russia said the fighters had crossed into Chechnya from Georgia, though the fighters denied that.

"Russia has been firmly observing its international obligations, treats the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states with respect," Mr. Putin said. "However, this demands the same attitude towards ourselves."

On Baghdad's Streets, Life With U.S. Threats 'Has Become Normal'

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 12, 2002; Page A18

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 11 -- In January 1991, fearing the impending Persian Gulf War and the prospect of U.S. bombs falling on Iraq's capital, Saad Mohssan packed his mother and three young siblings into the family car and drove them to a relative's house 60 miles south of Baghdad.

"We were very scared," said Mohssan, 28, a smartly dressed restaurant manager. "We didn't know what war with the Americans would be like."

But with new talk that armed conflict might descend on this sweltering city, Mohssan said he has no plans for another flight. Now married and the father of a 2-year-old son, he said he and his family intend to ride out a U.S. attack -- if it occurs -- in their home.

"We are no longer afraid," he said today during a break from serving lunch patrons. "We have been living with American threats since 1991. For us, this has become normal."

Mohssan's attitude, a fusion of confidence and resignation, can be easily found among Baghdad's 5 million residents as their leader, President Saddam Hussein, prepares for yet another confrontation with United States. Washington accuses Iraq of developing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; Iraq denies the allegation.

During a walk today down Al-Rasheed Street, the city's main commercial thoroughfare, about 20 ordinary residents were interviewed, with an Iraqi government official acting as interpreter, as is standard procedure for foreign journalists working here. Not one of the people interviewed talked of making special preparations to deal with a military strike.

"So, America says it wants to attack," Abdul Karim Shaker, 62, a retired teacher of Arabic, said with a sigh as he squeezed next to five friends in a popular teahouse in central Baghdad. "This is not new. American aggression is part of life."

Questions about stocking up on food and water were dismissed with chortles by several people. The merchants doing the most brisk business today, it seemed, were stationers, selling notebooks and other supplies to children starting the school year.

Although Iraq's refusal to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors has sparked concern in many world capitals, there is no palpable sense of crisis here. The city's boulevards and the bridges that traverse the now-stagnant Tigris River are packed with honking cars. Markets bustle with activity, as do restaurants and cafes, where amid the clatter of plates and the smoke from water pipes, the conversation is often about things other than the prospect of war.

On a lengthy drive through Baghdad today, there was no sign of soldiers -- only the usual contingent of traffic cops. No antiaircraft guns, artillery or other weapons were to be seen, though Western military analysts outside Iraq have said that such equipment almost certainly would be concealed until fighting begins.

There is no evidence, either, that Iraq is moving equipment out of factories it deems valuable, according to diplomats and other observers. For now, military preparations have been evident only on state-run television. Among the recent fare: footage of a unit of young boys called "Saddam's Cubs" drilling at a training camp.

Many of the people interviewed today brushed off the possibility of war as U.S. propaganda. They voiced optimism that opposition from Russia, China and U.S. allies in the Arab world ultimately will force the Bush administration to back down. Newspapers here have been filled with statements from world leaders opposing unilateral U.S. military action and stories about the diplomatic efforts of Iraqi government ministers.

"America has threatened to attack so many times," said Jabber Abbas, a shopkeeper who deals in imitation cologne. "We don't believe it will happen."

History doesn't entirely support that confidence. There was the Gulf War assault, and in 1998, the United States and Britain staged four days of airstrikes on Iraq, saying it was failing to cooperate with weapons inspectors.

In addition, the United States regularly fires on Iraqi air defense installations while patrolling the "no fly" zones created in the north and south after the Gulf War ended in 1991. The patrols, designed to keep Iraq's air force away from Kurdish and Shiite areas of the country, often draw Iraqi antiaircraft fire and radar tracking, to which they respond with strikes.

Though on the surface Baghdad can seem a prosperous place, Iraq's economy as a whole is in deep trouble, with U.N. trade sanctions and the government's spending priorities both helping to keep things depressed. These woes may be preventing ordinary people from preparing for war, diplomats and U.N. officials said.

More than 80 percent of Iraqis depend on monthly food rations from the government, paid for by a U.N. program that allows Iraq to sell oil for humanitarian needs. "They're only getting a month's supply of food at a time," a U.N. official said. "Even if they wanted to stock up in case of a war, they couldn't."

Many foreigners living here appear as unfazed as their Iraqi neighbors. Although the Philippine Foreign Ministry ordered the evacuation of 118 Filipinos from Iraq today, there continues to be a steady flow of Westerners and Arab traders into the country. On Monday's flight to Baghdad from the Jordanian capital, Amman, every seat was occupied, many by businessmen coming for weeks-long trips.

The only tangible impact of the tensions, according to many people here, has been a steep drop in the value of the currency, the dinar. In August, it took 1,500 to buy a dollar. Now it takes 2,000, raising the price of imported goods. "Even the cheap medicines are becoming too expensive for us," said Atta Ahmed, a retired teacher who receives an 8,000-dinar pension every month. "Why can't the United States just leave us alone?"

Although all who were interviewed said they would oppose a U.S. invasion, some articulated more passion than others in joining the fight. And a few veered from the government line by suggesting that Hussein should allow the weapons inspectors to return, to spare the country another war. "Iraq should invite them back, but only at the very last minute," said Alaa Haddad, a book distributor. "If they come, there will be no reason for America to attack."

None of those interviewed voiced any desire to see Hussein's government toppled by U.S. forces.

But upon seeing a foreigner, one book vendor appeared to choose to get an opinion across in a subtle way. He pointed to a line from a play he was reading, Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar."

"I was born free as Caesar. So were you," the passage read.

"That is a very interesting line," the vendor said in halting English. "Very interesting."

Cabinet Resigns as Legislators Challenge Arafat
Some Palestinians Welcome Move as Start of Reform

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 12, 2002; Page A14

JERUSALEM, Sept. 11 -- Yasser Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority, accepted the resignation of his cabinet today rather than face a no-confidence vote from legislators in the stiffest internal challenge yet to his leadership.

The Palestinian Legislative Council, which often has been at odds with Arafat, was only minutes away from a showdown vote against Arafat's cabinet when the Palestinian leader sent word that the entire 21-member body had resigned.

"We have started the reform," said Salah Tamari, a member of Arafat's Fatah movement and a legislator from Bethlehem. "This is a positive step toward the division of authority and the rule of law."

The impassioned day-long debate in the legislative branch underscored growing rifts in the Palestinian Authority as its leader faces increasing international pressure to step aside and mounting unrest within Palestinian society. The cabinet's resignation under pressure also represented the legislative branch's boldest confrontation with the Palestinian leader, according to lawmakers and analysts.

"Arafat hasn't been subjected to this degree of accountability before," said George Giacaman, general director of the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy, located in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "This is an important precedent. Their main message is that they're seeking reform and they will not be willing to simply rubber-stamp any cabinet."

Many legislators denounced the cabinet, saying some members had been accused of corruption in an investigative report issued by lawmakers four years ago, which they said Arafat had largely ignored.

"We need a new era to combat corruption and introduce transparency," said Abbas Zaki of Hebron, a member of the Legislative Council and the central committee of Fatah.

Arafat today also set presidential and legislative elections for Jan. 20. Israel and the United States have argued that the elections should be delayed until key security, economic and political reforms have been implemented. Otherwise, officials from the two countries argue, legitimate opponents would likely have little or no chance to win against Arafat.

Israeli officials were quick to label today's actions by the Palestinian Legislative Council and Arafat's cabinet as largely cosmetic.

"The problem is its culture, its structure, its ideology," Uzi Landau, Israel's minister for public security, said in an interview. "Unless there is a total change in the genetic code, the DNA of the Palestinian Authority, the changes taking place now -- if they do take place -- will be of a technical nature."

The physically and politically divided Legislative Council convened this week in Ramallah in one of the few sessions held since the Palestinian uprising against Israel's occupation of parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip began nearly two years ago. Legislators from the Gaza Strip, who did not travel to Ramallah because Israel had branded 13 of them "terrorists" and refused to let them attend, communicated via videophones. Three screens were set up in the legislative chamber.

Early this morning, Arafat summoned Fatah legislators to his bomb-shattered compound in Ramallah in an effort to head off a no-confidence vote against the entire cabinet by putting only the five newest members up for a vote. In setting elections for Jan. 20, Arafat appeared to be trying to demonstrate that his sitting cabinet is only a temporary body.

But by the time the Fatah lawmakers arrived at the legislative chamber in the Education Department building, many had dropped their support of Arafat's proposal, according to several members present.

At midafternoon, when the speaker announced the cabinet's resignation, the chamber broke into applause.

"The Palestinian Legislative Council has proven itself and used its cards properly," Ahmad Batsh, a Fatah legislator, said after the session.

Even some cabinet members described their resignation as a part of the democratization of the Palestinian government.

"I hope today will be viewed as a landmark in Palestinian people's history," said Saeb Erekat, Arafat's minister of local government until this afternoon. "The Palestinian people have chosen democracy, accountability and transparency."

Researcher Samuel Sockol in Ramallah contributed to this report.

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Christian Science Monitor

Iraq attack could alter world rules

Bush takes his case for 'regime change' to the UN General Assembly.

By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

PARIS - When President Bush addresses the UN General Assembly Thursday, pressing his case against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, he will be asking the world to alter the founding principles of the post-World War II international order.

Advocating preemptive military action against Baghdad before it uses its alleged chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, Mr. Bush is challenging United Nations rules on sovereignty and the acceptable use of force that have underpinned global relations for three generations.

To the Bush administration, this is a matter of adapting to a new danger. But this argument will likely alarm the vast majority of UN members listening to the US leader. They know that their best chance of restraining Bush is to meet him partway, by threatening to use force on their own terms against Iraq – if Mr. Hussein does not cooperate with UN weapons inspectors – as suggested this week by French President Jacques Chirac.

Bush faces a difficult task in bridging the gap that currently separates him from almost every other world leader over how to deal with the Iraqi government.

Washington has openly set "regime change" as its goal, claiming that Mr. Hussein is amassing weapons of mass destruction for use against America and its allies and that he must be deposed before he gets a chance to use them.

"Time is not on America's side," presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer warned recently.

The closest that any US ally has come to supporting Bush's position is British Prime Minister Tony Blair's warning Tuesday that "action will follow" if Iraq ignores demands to allow arms inspectors back into the country.

Most European governments are expected to back the sort of proposal that French President Jacques Chirac made earlier this week, for a two-stage UN procedure. Under a first resolution Iraq would be given three weeks to allow inspectors in without conditions, and if it refused, a second Security Council resolution would be passed on whether or not to use military force.

It is not clear, however, that such a plan will satisfy Washington, where officials are afraid that Hussein might accept inspectors but then prevaricate and withhold cooperation, rendering their work of dubious value.

International support?

Bush has been working hard to win international support for a military strike against Iraq. He has telephoned or met with many world leaders in recent days, starting with the rulers of Washington's partners on the UN Security Council, Russia, China, Britain, and France. And his speech Thursday to the UN is expected to be a keystone of his campaign to explain US fears and intentions.

But the administration seems increasingly ready to act alone against Baghdad if it cannot convince the rest of the world that Iraq poses a clear and present danger to its neighbors and to others.

Militarily, the US could certainly do so. But unilateral action could cause a diplomatic earthquake that would topple several pillars holding up the edifice of international stability.

By attacking Iraq without UN endorsement, Washington would be arrogating to itself the right to decide what constitutes a threat to world peace, and what to do about it. That would be a significant break from international norms.

As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan underscored Wednesday, only the UN Security Council could provide "the unique legitimacy that one needs to be able to act" against threats to international peace.

If the US goes it alone, that "neo-imperial vision," argues Georgetown professor John Ikenberry in the current edition of Foreign Affairs magazine, "could transform today's world order in a way that the end of the cold war ... did not."

Of course, the concept of national sovereignty has been changing since the end of the cold war, with governments and their agents less and less able to act with impunity: NATO justified as "humanitarian intervention" its bombing campaign against Serbia to force an end to repression in Kosovo, for example.

"Simply put, sovereignty does not grant governments a blank check to do whatever they like within their own borders," State Department director of policy planning Richard Haass argued recently. And since Sept. 11, he added, "countries affected by states that abet, support, or harbor international terrorists ... have the right to take action to protect their citizens."

'With us or against us'?

The Bush administration has taken this concept – used to justify the attack on Afghanistan – a good deal further in recent months.

Deterrence and containment – the doctrines used to keep the peace during the cold war – are worthless against terrorists prepared to sacrifice themselves, the president argued last June at West Point.

"We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge," he said. "Our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives."

Many US allies would agree with the strategic thinking behind this approach to a new terrorist threat, but they are fearful of international anarchy should the US act alone.

Nothing would keep other countries from deciding that a threat to their national security justified a preemptive armed strike, President Chirac said this week, citing India and Pakistan, or China in its dispute with Taiwan as possible examples.

World not on board

In the case of Iraq, the world's worries were best summed up Monday by Canadian Deputy Prime Minister John Manley. "As for going in and changing the regime, as opposed to going in and ensuring that there are no weapons of mass destruction, we haven't signed on to that," he said.

US and British diplomats at the UN are preparing to draft a Security Council resolution – possibly with French help – demanding that Iraq cooperate with arms inspectors as it agreed to do under the terms of its surrender at the end of the Gulf War in 1991. Inspectors withdrew in 1998 on the eve of a US and British bombing campaign in Iraq, and have not been allowed back in since. But only in recent weeks has their four-year absence become a matter of serious international concern.

America, reconnect with the world

By Helena Cobban

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. - Last September, I grieved. In April, I visited lower Manhattan, where floodlights boosted towers of light that magically seemed to touch the skies.

What a year this has been – By for America and for the rest of the world. Immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, Americans had to learn, or relearn, some basic lessons about the nature of the world, lessons about human vulnerability and interdependence, and about the importance of our values to who we are.

During the somber days and weeks that followed last year's horrifying attacks, most Americans – in New York City, in Washington, in Pennsylvania, and in communities throughout the land – seemed to connect almost instinctively with those truths. People looked after each other. Messages of condolence and support streamed in from around the world, and Americans took heart from those acts of friendship. President Bush showed inspired leadership by stressing that the terrorists had attacked the fabric of civilized life, and by pulling together a truly global coalition to confront them.

Now, too many of those lessons seem in danger of being lost. A few weeks ago Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld started arguing that the United States has the right to initiate a war against Iraq – and to do so alone, if need be.

These arguments met with a tsunami of opposition from allies, and considerable criticism at home. So the administration backtracked. President Bush agreed to consult with Congress before launching a new war against Iraq, and to seek a resolution from the UN that could act as an ultimatum against President Saddam Hussein.

With the big speeches Bush has made this week, he has taken some small steps toward this broader approach. But he and his Cabinet members still claim they don't need any formal declaration of war from Congress before they launch operations against Iraq. And they warn, too, that they would not feel constrained from starting this war by anything that the UN might achieve in the meantime, including resuming weapons inspections in Iraq.

This president's unilateralism is very different from the approach pursued by the first President Bush 12 years ago, in the buildup to Operation Desert Storm. After Mr. Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the first President Bush went almost immediately to the UN Security Council, winning a resolution that confirmed that Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait were illegal and should be reversed. After several mediation attempts failed, the president won a further UN resolution warning Hussein to leave Iraq by Jan. 15 or else.

In early January 1991, many in Congress remained wary of war. But three days before the UN deadline, Congress passed a resolution authorizing use of the military "to drive Iraqi forces out of occupied Kuwait to gain compliance with the UN resolutions." Bush and his advisers had leveraged the global legitimacy their plans had won into the domestic mandate they rightly felt they needed before launching Desert Storm.

The current President Bush seems to have turned away from such diplomatic-political subtlety, and from the focus on global coalition-maintenance that marked his father's statesmanship. Why? Did he not appreciate the value of the broad global coalition that backed his military campaign against the Taliban? Why does he seem so close to following the reckless, unilateralist policies that Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld apparently favor?

Meanwhile, another kind of American unilateralism is already threatening to undermine the fragile political gains in Afghanistan. This is the unilateralism of the tight purse and the blinkered vision. The Afghan allies that Washington had won to its cause last fall were attracted, in the main, by the promise of a new era of security and development in their long-troubled land. Believing in that vision, they agreed to act forcefully against the Taliban, and to help uproot Al Qaeda from their land. American officials made visionary promises that this time round they would not turn their backs on Afghanistan after victory.

The US would not have had to underwrite the rebuilding of Afghanistan on its own. It had a broad coalition ready to help. But this vital reconstruction effort required American leadership just as much as the military effort did.

So far, Washington's commitment to spearheading the real social and political rehabilitation of Afghanistan has fallen far short. Afghans still face a chronic lack of public security. Now the administration wants to shift attention – and massive spending – to preparations for a foolhardy new venture in Iraq.

It is not too late to reverse course. Many international statesmen stand ready to help explore the kinds of initiatives that can ease worries about Hussein's weapons programs, and deescalate tensions. There are measures short of war that can and must be tried – with Iraq, as with North Korea.

Nor is it too late to do better by Afghanistan, either. What it takes in both cases is a reconnection with the deep lesson of last Sept. 11: American interdependency with the rest of the world.

• Helena Cobban is the author of five books on international issues.

Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune
September 10, 2002

Cheney's Warped Perspective On The Need To Attack Iraq

Arms inspectors should return unhindered

By Scott Ritter

It was a tour de force in terms of storytelling--the vice president of the United States speaking before an enthralled audience at the Veterans for Foreign Wars national convention last month in Nashville. Vice President Dick Cheney took full advantage of his bully pulpit to reinforce the case for war against Iraq, which hinged on Saddam Hussein's alleged continued possession of weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, all outlawed since 1991 by a United Nations Security Council resolution).

"The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents," Cheney told the audience. "And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago."

On what basis did Cheney substantiate his assertion?

"We've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors," he grimly noted, "including Saddam's own son-in-law, who was subsequently murdered at Saddam's direction."

And so the tale began. "During the spring of 1995, the weapons inspectors were actually on the verge of declaring that Hussein's programs to develop chemical weapons and longer-range ballistic missiles had been fully accounted for and shut down," Cheney told the veterans. "Then Saddam's son-in-law [Hussein Kamal] suddenly defected and began sharing information. Within days the inspectors were led to an Iraqi chicken farm. Hidden there were boxes of documents and lots of evidence regarding Iraq's most secret weapons programs."

All of this would be valid, if it were only true. I have spoken with the CIA and British intelligence officials who debriefed Hussein Kamal after his defection and reviewed the complete transcript of UNSCOM's own session with Saddam's prodigal son-in-law.

Contrary to the myth propagated by Cheney, there were no "smoking gun" revelations made by Hussein Kamal regarding hidden Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Throughout his interview with UNSCOM, a UN special commission, Hussein Kamal reiterated his main point--that nothing was left. "All chemical weapons were destroyed," he said. "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons--biological, chemical, missile, nuclear--were destroyed. There is not a single missile left ... they [Iraq] had kept blueprints and molds for production, but all the missiles were destroyed."

Everything Hussein Kamal said about Iraq's undeclared weapons programs was confirmed, in parallel, through the ongoing analysis by UNSCOM experts of the chicken farm documentation alluded to by Cheney.

There was nothing unique, nothing that differed from the documentary evidence. The bottom line from this high-profile defector--there was nothing left, that all proscribed weapons and their programs had been eliminated, and that the worst fears of a retained Iraqi capability--a nuclear device, for instance--were without substance.

Up until the Cheney's speech, the Bush administration had been vague about its objections to the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq.

However, in speaking of the defection of Hussein Kamal, Cheney revealed some of the thinking behind the rhetoric, and in doing so exposed fundamental flaws in the factual basis supporting the reasoning of the White House. The vice president's speech was intended to help solidify the case for war against Iraq. But if the evidence cited is representative of the level of knowledge possessed by those promoting regime change in Iraq, then it is high time we as a nation demand a halt to this rush toward war.

Unfortunately, as far as the Bush administration is concerned, it seems that when it comes to Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, truth is more often than not the first casualty. Consider Cheney's emphasis during his speech that " ... we often learned more as the result of defections than we learned from the inspection regime itself."

I would ask Cheney to review the transcript of the debriefing of Hussein's son-in-law, and heed carefully the words he spoke to the weapons inspectors that day in August 1995. "You should not underestimate yourself." Hussein Kamal said. "You are very effective in Iraq."

Inspectors were very effective in Iraq, and would be again if given a chance to carry out their tasks. Some in the Bush administration are waking up to this fact. "The president has been clear that he believes weapons inspectors should return," Secretary of State Colin Powell said recently. "And so, as a first step, let's see what the inspectors find. Send them back in."

That, Mr. Vice President, is advise worth heeding.

Scott Ritter is the former UN weapons inspector in Iraq and the author of "Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem-- Once and For All."

New York Post

THE WAR AHEAD

By JOHN KEEGAN

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September 11, 2002 -- WHAT does the future hold for the war on terror?

Clausewitz, the great military philosopher, taught that war is the continuation of politics by other means. This thought has dominated warmaking between states for two centuries. Now, as Henry Kissinger has pointed out in the aftermath of 9/11, the idea does not seem so profound any longer.

How can a state usefully mobilize force against an enemy who is not a state and does not practice politics in any recognizable form? How can military power be used to alter the policies of an opponent whose demands are not negotiable in political terms?

The United States government is currently fighting the war on terror on two fronts. The first front, which is not a geographical one, is the war against al Qaeda and all its works. The second, which does have a physical focus, is the threatened war against Iraq. How are the wars going?

AGAINST al Qaeda, it is difficult to say. The United States and its allies undoubtedly achieved a great victory at the very outset, by eliminating the terror base in Afghanistan. The brief Afghan war destroyed the camps where terrorists were trained, put the training teams to flight and dispersed the best-organized and most experienced al Qaeda fighting units.

The campaign is all the more to be applauded because of the doubts expressed about the possibility of success before it was launched by fainthearts both in America and Europe.

Subsequent success is more difficult to chart. By the Pentagon's own estimation, al Qaeda still controls many millions of dollars in disguised bank accounts, and has operations in some 60 countries, many in the Islamic world but also in Europe and the Americas. It is not fully under surveillance and so retains the ability to prepare and mount surprise attacks at times and places of its own choosing.

More attacks may be expected. The Western world abounds with targets in its cities and infrastructure. It is impossible to protect them all. Only by successfully going over to the offensive can the risk be diminished.

HENCE President Bush's determination to overthrow Saddam's regime in Iraq. Although no link had been proven between Saddam and the Islamic terrorist network, that is probably better explained by the care he has taken to avoid providing the evidence than by its absence.

Saddam is deeply anti-Western, if only because it is the western States, particularly America, which frustrate his ambition to become a regional warlord and leader of the Arab Middle East. He has undoubtedly financed terror in the past, finances and supports the Palestinian suicide bombers and covertly endorses terrorism as an anti-Western program.

Moreover, if allowed to proceed to the development of nuclear weapons, Iraq could be enabled to support terrorism with impunity. Hence the urgency of the Bush program to overthrow the Saddam regime while the opportunity still exists.

Once the Iraqi nuclear program is complete, invasion of the country will become perhaps impossible and certainly very difficult and fraught with terrible risk. Saddam would then possess the means to devastate any sort of ground force launched against him, either from land bases or by an amphibious operation in the Gulf.

He already possesses the necessary rocket launchers, crude and relatively short-range as they are. He only needs the warheads, which he may soon possess.

THOSE stark facts make Western opposition to the president's anti-Saddam policy difficult to understand. Those who argue that new United Nations approval for an attack is necessary or that a pre-emptive offensive would be an offense in international law are living in the past.

Anti-Americanism is now so entrenched in the United Nations, both in the Security Council (where a single veto can negate a resolution for military action) and in the General Assembly (with its 180 member states, non-Western by a large minority), that reference to the United Nations is a certain recipe for delay, probably until it is too late.

PRE-EMPTION may technically infringe international law. The international law we have, however, was made before the danger poised by the acquisition of nuclear weapons by small, irresponsible and aggressive states was understood.

The necessity for pre-emption has been seen by foreign-policy realists ever since it was recognized that the Cold War was coming to an end. During the Cold War, the opposed interests of the two superpowers paradoxically ensured that small states could not behave irresponsibly. All belonged necessarily to one bloc or the other and were kept in order either by the United States or the Soviet Union, between which for safety's sake all had to choose.

It is only since the Soviet Union collapsed that its ex-satellites have had the freedom to pursue independent foreign policies. Most, sensibly, have chosen to behave moderately.

A few have not.

In almost every case, that of Libya and Iraq in particular, it is because local power passed to leaders who overestimate their importance and nurture ambitions to dominate the regions in which they live. Opposition by external forces, particularly the United States, drives them to seek underhanded means of getting their way.

IN the circumstances, it seems incomprehensible that sensible Westerners can possibly doubt the need to prevent Saddam acquiring nuclear weapons. Those in the United States who oppose military action seem motivated by short-term fears, particularly that action might make things worse. Those in Europe who oppose it reveal an old-fashioned anti-Americanism.

In Britain, where a solid minority supports President Bush, his most vocal opponents are often former members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, who, at the height of the Cold War, wanted the United Kingdom to give up its nuclear weapons as a gesture to promote general disarmament. It is paradoxical that they now, in effect, support Saddam's efforts to become a nuclear warlord in his own right.

British opinion, if properly directed, would probably swing back behind the president. The majority of the British are still strongly pro-American, and the older generation, in particular, continues to remember with gratitude the arrival of the G.I.s to save the country from Hitler.

On Sept. 3, Prime Minister Tony Blair at last began making the case forcefully. President Bush and other senior U.S. officials are doing likewise.

It seems likely that Congress and the American public will be convinced. The time is passed for disagreement about matters of detail. No American can really doubt that there is a present danger.

WORDS of caution may seem wise at the moment. How will they sound when Saddam has the bomb? It will be too late then for the opponents of action now to say that they meant well. Saddam does not mean well at all.

Meanwhile, the hidden apparatchiks of the Terror War are laying their plans and keeping their powder dry.

John Keegan was for many years senior lecturer in military history at the Royal Military Acadamy, Sandhurst. His books include "The Face of Battle," "A History of Warfare" and "The Mask of Command."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

War Should Be Considered, But Only If All Other Remedies Fail

By John F. Kerry, U.S. Senator

WASHINGTON -- It may well be that the United States will go to war with Iraq. But if so, it should be because we have to -- not because we want to.

For the American people to accept the legitimacy of this conflict and give their consent to it, the Bush administration must first present detailed evidence of the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and then prove that all other avenues of protecting our nation's security interests have been exhausted.

Exhaustion of remedies is critical to winning the consent of a civilized people in the decision to go to war. And consent, as we have learned before, is essential to carrying out the mission.

President Bush's overdue statement last week that he would consult Congress is a beginning, but the administration's strategy remains adrift.

Regime change in Iraq is a worthy goal. But regime change by itself is not a justification for going to war. Absent a Qaida connection, overthrowing Saddam Hussein -- the ultimate weapons-inspection enforcement mechanism -- should be the last step, not the first.

Those who think that the inspection process is merely a waste of time should be reminded that legitimacy in the conduct of war, among our people and our allies, is not a waste, but an essential foundation of success.

If we are to put American lives at risk in a foreign war, Bush must be able to say to this nation that we had no choice, that this was the only way we could eliminate a threat we could not afford to tolerate.

In the end there may be no choice, but so far, rather than making the case for the legitimacy of an Iraq war, the administration has complicated its own case and compromised America's credibility by casting about in an unfocused, overly public internal debate in the search for a rationale for war.

By beginning its public discourse with talk of invasion and regime change, the administration has diminished its most legitimate justification of war -- that in the post-Sept. 11 world, the unrestrained threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam is unacceptable and that his refusal to allow in inspectors is in blatant violation of the 1991 U.N. cease-fire agreement that left him in power.

The administration's hasty war talk makes it much more difficult to manage our relations with other Arab governments, let alone the Arab street. It has made it possible for other Arab regimes to shift their focus to the implications of war for themselves rather than keep the focus where it belongs -- on the danger posed by Saddam and his deadly arsenal.

Indeed, the administration seems to have elevated Saddam in the eyes of his neighbors to a level he would never have achieved on his own.

There is, of course, no question about our capacity to win militarily, and perhaps to win easily. There is also no question that Saddam continues to pursue weapons of mass destruction, and his success can threaten both our interests in the region and our security at home.

But knowing ahead of time that our military intervention will remove him from power, and that we will then inherit all or much of the burden for building a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, is all the more reason to insist on a process that invites support from the region and from our allies for that far tougher mission of ensuring a future democratic government after the war.

The question is not whether we should care if Saddam remains openly scornful of international standards of behavior that he agreed to live up to. The question is how we secure our rights with respect to that agreement and the legitimacy it establishes for the actions we may have to take.

We are at a strange moment in history when an American administration has to be persuaded of the virtue of utilizing the procedures of international law and community -- institutions American presidents from across the ideological spectrum have insisted on as essential to global security.

For the sake of our country, the legitimacy of our cause and our ultimate success in Iraq, the administration must seek advice and approval from Congress, laying out the evidence and making the case.

Then, in concert with our allies, it must seek full enforcement of the existing cease-fire agreement from the U.N. Security Council. We should at the same time offer a clear ultimatum to Iraq before the world: Accept rigorous inspections without negotiation or compromise.

Some in the administration actually seem to fear that such an ultimatum might frighten Saddam into cooperating. If Saddam is unwilling to bend to the international community's already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act.

But until we have properly laid the groundwork and proved to our fellow citizens and our allies that we really have no other choice, we are not yet at the moment of unilateral decision-making in going to war against Iraq.

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Los Angeles Times Turning a Page in History
Can a great power wounded learn to treat others more gently?

By PICO IYER
Pico Iyer is the author, most recently, of "The Global Soul" (Vintage, 2001) and, coming this winter, "Abandon," a novel about California, Islam and the dialogue between them.

September 11 2002

America is still, a year later, shaking a little on its foundations, but its sense of itself and its pride in the traditions it upholds seem more strongly defined (and sometimes more narrowly so) than ever before in my lifetime. Nothing, alas, so concentrates the mind as a head-on assault.

Yet even as this sense of "us" seems to intensify--all those flags murmuring, "You can't destroy us. We stand tall and firm"--so too, inevitably, does a sense of "them." As a grateful immigrant who has long found this nation to be the most accommodating of places (and ideas), I worry that the John Wayne stance it's projecting outside its borders is taking it further away from a world that it needs desperately to get closer to.

In recent months I have traveled across Bolivia, Vietnam, Tibet, Peru, India and many other places, and everywhere I go I come away with the same impression: It's not Islam that's on trial worldwide, but the USA.

The United States is the cynosure of every eye, the country that every other looks to with a mix of admiration, resentment and envy. Radical Islam is in most places just a muttering in the corner.

A year ago, of course, we saw a great outpouring of sympathy around the world for what Americans were going through (and, among more hardened types, a sense that the world's great protected superpower was at last experiencing what is a daily fact of life for most humans). But with every passing month it feels as if the U.S. is growing more isolated, to the point where now it seems in many places just as it seemed to me in Yemen, six weeks before Sept. 11: another planet.

It's in the nature of an empire, of course, to be unpopular--the Russians were nobody's favorite in the 1980s (least of all, I found, among their supposed comrades in Cuba and Vietnam); the Raj, burnished in such golden hues on PBS, seldom seemed so benign when it was a center of world power.

In the case of the U.S., inevitably, the image is complicated because the youngest kid on the global block happens to be the strongest. This is hardly a consoling state of affairs for those older hands who believe that power comes only with experience and the truth lies in a distant past that the young can't even remember.

Many people abroad seem to feel that U.S. leaders are much less sophisticated and worldly than the leaders of much smaller places, while the American people (whom everyone seems to like) are less interested, at times, in learning about the world than in changing it. Certainly the world knows more about us than we know about it.

And when, in Hong Kong this spring, I saw a sign scrawled near the Star Ferry terminal, in Tagalog and English, saying "U.S., Go Home!" and in La Paz saw a similar message scribbled across an elegant colonial building ("U.S., Out of Afghanistan!"), what I really felt I was seeing was the same message I've been seeing for as long as I've been traveling: "America, leave us alone!" A sentiment complicated by the fact that it is often accompanied by a cry, just as urgent, of "America, take us in!"

In the year since the attacks on the U.S., people here have learned to live with a much keener sense of frailty and fallibility and a much sharper understanding that we need to learn more about a world that is larger than our notions of it. With American dreams come responsibilities.

Yet in the rest of the world, the U.S., everyone's favorite scapegoat, remains more a target of skepticism than ever before; when everything goes wrong, after all, people blame the person on top. For many around the world, I suspect, the shock of the attacks is gradually being eroded by the image of Washington's response, which allows them to say: "They're doing what they always do. Taking their frustrations out on the poor."

Today is the first day when Sept. 11 no longer has to signify a particular traumatic incident; it can refer now to a new day, Sept. 11, 2002. The United States will always be, to some extent, imprisoned by its power. But if it can show the world that it can be humble and ready to change, some good may yet come of all it has suffered. Perhaps the best thing we can learn from older nations--Vietnam, say, or Japan--is that the most useful response to loss is to start looking beyond our wounds and toward how we can avoid hurting others, and getting hurt, again.

Bush's Speech

From Associated Press

Text of President Bush's address to the nation on Wednesday:

Good evening.

A long year has passed since enemies attacked our country. We have seen the images so many times they are seared on our souls, and remembering the horror, reliving the anguish, reimagining the terror, is hard— and painful.

For those who lost loved ones, it has been a year of sorrow, of empty places, of newborn children who will never know their fathers here on earth. For members of our military, it has been a year of sacrifice, and service far from home. For all Americans, it has been a year of adjustment— of coming to terms with the difficult knowledge that our nation has determined enemies, and that we are not invulnerable to their attacks.

Yet in the events that have challenged us, we have also seen the character that will deliver us. We have seen the greatness of America in airline passengers who defied their hijackers and ran a plane into the ground to spare the lives of others. We have seen the greatness of America in rescuers who rushed up flights of stairs toward peril. And we continue to see the greatness of America in the care and compassion our citizens show to each other.

September 11th, 2001, will always be a fixed point in the life of America. The loss of so many lives left us to examine our own. Each of us was reminded that we are here only for a time, and these counted days should be filled with things that last and matter: love for our families, love for our neighbors, and for our country; gratitude for life and to the giver of life. We resolved a year ago to honor every last person lost. We owe them remembrance, and we owe them more. We owe them, and their children, and our own, the most enduring monument we can build: A world of liberty and security made possible by the way America leads, and by the way Americans lead our lives.

The attack on our nation was also an attack on the ideals that make us a nation. Our deepest national conviction is that every life is precious, because every life is the gift of a creator who intended us to live in liberty and equality. More than anything else, this separates us from the enemy we fight. We value every life; our enemies value none— not even the innocent; not even their own. And we seek the freedom and opportunity that give meaning and value to life. There is a line in our time, and in every time, between those who believe that all men are created equal, and those who believe that some men, and women, and children, are expendable in the pursuit of power. There is a line in our time, and in every time, between the defenders of human liberty, and those who seek to master the minds and souls of others. Our generation has now heard history's call, and we will answer it.

America has entered a great struggle that tests our strength, and even more our resolve. Our nation is patient and steadfast. We continue to pursue the terrorists in cities, and camps, and caves across the earth. We are joined by a great coalition of nations to rid the world of terror. And we will not allow any terrorist or tyrant to threaten civilization with weapons of mass murder. Now and in the future, Americans will live as free people, not in fear, and never at the mercy of any foreign plot or power.

This nation has defeated tyrants and liberated death camps, raised this lamp of liberty to every captive land. We have no intention of ignoring or appeasing history's latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power. They are discovering, as others before them, the resolve of a great country and a great democracy. In the ruins of two towers, under a flag unfurled at the Pentagon, at the funerals of the lost, we have made a sacred promise, to ourselves and to the world: We will not relent until justice is done and our nation is secure. What our enemies have begun, we will finish.

I believe there is a reason that history has matched this nation with this time. America strives to be tolerant and just. We respect the faith of Islam, even as we fight those whose actions defile that faith. We fight, not to impose our will, but to defend ourselves and extend the blessings of freedom.

We cannot know all that lies ahead. Yet we do know that God has placed us together in this moment, to grieve together, to stand together, to serve each other and our country. And the duty we have been given— defending America and our freedom— is also a privilege we share.

We are prepared for this journey. And our prayer tonight is that God will see us through, and keep us worthy.

Tomorrow is September the 12th. A milestone is passed, and a mission goes on. Be confident. Our country is strong. And our cause is even larger than our country. Ours is the cause of human dignity: freedom guided by conscience, and guarded by peace. This ideal of America is the hope of all mankind. That hope drew millions to this harbor. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it.

May God bless America.

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International Herald Tribune

You don't 'educate,' you bargain
	Robert A. Levine International Herald Tribune

When interests differ

LOS ANGELES A just held State Department conference was intended, according to the department's spokesman, "to explore various manifestations and roots of anti-Americanism around the world," as part of an effort to "publicize the true nature of our efforts." The aim, according to news reports, is to educate people on American policies and traditions.

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It is unlikely to help much.

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The premise is that if anti-Americans at least within allied states were properly educated on "the true nature of our efforts," they would realize that their interests and ideologies are the same as America's. But U.S. interests and ideologies really do differ from those of NATO partners who are expressing discomfort or worse about what they see as America's trend toward unilateralism in general and a military attack on Iraq in particular. That is not to say that America's interests and ideologies are wrong, just that they differ from those of allies with whom it still agrees on many basics. Such differences are legitimate. They call not for "education" but for a hard bargaining process leading to subordination of interests and points of ideology without surrendering them.

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That worked during the Cold War. European governments, for example, disagreed with U.S. nuclear doctrine, and Washington was dissatisfied with European NATO's contributions to conventional defense, but a workable military posture was built. This is the way collective bargaining between labor unions and companies operates, but the analogy also points up the post-Cold War problem in trans-Atlantic bargaining. Labor negotiations are frequently argued in public on the basis of principles - wage increases for standards of living, profits for growth - but they are almost always settled in private on the basis of power. So, too, in international affairs. But the power balance in NATO has changed. Partner negotiations worked well during the Cold War. The arms debate among differing schools of thought was remarkably similar to the current debate. Many of the young debaters then have become old warhorses now without changing their views very much.

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American policy stressed/stresses the conflict with the enemy - Communism then, terrorism now. Although the consensus on means stopped well short of risking nuclear war, "hawks," well represented in all administrations from Truman through Reagan, argued that the risks were low and could be minimized by tough military postures. American "doves" and most Europeans worried/worry more about war risks and less about the enemy.

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Bargaining power within NATO balanced nicely in the earlier period. The United States needed its European partners because it did not want to face the Soviet Union alone. Europe needed the United States to keep the Russians out. The military posture bargain was struck without sacrifice of important interests and without full agreement on points of ideology.

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But power has become unbalanced. America has little need for the military and political support of a weak and disunited Europe in the actual and potential hotbeds of terrorism. For the first time since 1941, the hawks' dream of America acting alone, in its own interests and those of worldwide democracy and liberal capitalism, unhampered by effete Old World qualms, is thought to be within reach.

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Perhaps so. The hawks' honest assertion that bargains are based on bargaining power at least is refreshing as compared with "Let's educate them to show them that we are right." But the United States had better be very sure about its power vis-à-vis Europe - and the rest of the world - before it moves irretrievably to unilateralism.

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Three questions need consideration:

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Europe may be militarily irrelevant, but can the same be said of Middle Eastern states? Can the United States discard all allies other than Israel?

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In the crucial realm of economics and trade, Europe does have bargaining power equal to that of America, because the European Union is in fact a single unit. How will this affect U.S. military/political unilateralism?

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Thirdly, American hawks are confident that the United States does not need Europe now, but what about 10 or 20 years from now, if the alliances have been ruptured?

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Perhaps there are easy answers to these questions. In any case they are real questions, not dependent on the patronizing assumption that what America has to do is instruct the rest of the world in understanding their interests as well as Americans do.

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The writer is an economist, defense analyst, former official in the U.S. executive and legislative branches and author of "The Arms Debate" (1963) and "Still the Arms Debate" (1990). He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

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UPI

Iraqi Kurds give up idea of independence

By Hussain Hindawi
From the International Desk
Published 9/11/2002 6:02 PM
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LONDON, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Iraqi Kurds appear to have abandoned the idea of establishing a Kurdish state in northern Iraq in the post Saddam era, and are opting to preserve the unity of the country they share with the Arabs and other peoples.

This shift in what was a long-established Kurdish policy has emerged as the dominant theme in recent speeches by leaders of the main Kurdish groups, Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

At the root of the switch were political realism and the Kurds' own best interests.

As a result non-Kurdish Iraqi opposition groups appeared more ready to accept the Kurdish wish for a federal Iraq consisting of largely self-ruling Kurdish and Arab areas.

Iraq's unity was dangerously undermined after the 1991 Gulf War when, in the north, the Kurds rose against Saddam Hussein and for a brief period seized control of Iraqi Kurdistan from the central government in Baghdad.

Following a similar rising by Shia Muslim Arabs in the south, 14 of Iraq's 19 provinces were briefly lost to Saddam before he repressed both risings.

Part of Iraqi Kurdistan remained out of Saddam's hands, protected by American and British air patrols. It was partitioned between the PUK, with Sulaimaniya as its capital, and the KDP, based in Arbil.

Talabani and Barzani seemed to be in agreement on consolidating the Kurdish position of not taking about independence.

Talabani said in a recent interview with United Press International in London that there was no salvation for Iraq except by ending the dictatorship and establishing a federal democratic regime that would respect the rights of all parties in Iraq.

The Kurds calls for maintaining the territorial integrity of Iraq and giving up the idea of independence is also realistically in keeping with Washington's rejection of the establishment of a Kurdish state, not to mention the opposition of neighboring Turkey, Iran and Syria to such an idea.

It was Washington's 'no' to the partition of Iraq that settled the debate within the Iraqi Kurdish nationalist movement over independence.

But Washington has also promised the Kurds protection from assaults coming from Baghdad. Barzani has called on Washington to guarantee security for the Kurds, insisting the guarantees should be public. He said the Kurds will not accept anything secret in this regard

The PUK and KDP leaders seek roles in a post-Saddam Iraq as not merely leaders of the Kurdish minority. Both have long political experience, are widely respected and have been successful in running their respective areas over the past decade.

Asked if the Kurdish alliance with the Shiite opposition groups was meant to target the Sunni Arabs, historically the dominant political group in Iraq, Talabani said he was himself a Sunni and that such talk originated in the Baghdad regime.

Talabani stressed that for him "Iraq is a country for all and there is no difference among Iraqis based on race, religion or sect." He also denied allegations that the Kurds, under U.S. and British protection, were in no hurry to depose Saddam. To the contrary, he said, the Iraqi Kurds were well aware that a great number of their fellows are still under the control of the central government.

Barzani also has said repeatedly the Kurds are both part of Iraq and the wider Kurdish region that lies in adjacent areas of Turkey, Iran and Syria.

"It is wrong to believe that federation is an attempt to partition Iraq, " Barzani said, "when on the contrary it will consolidate national unity, guarantee the just rights of the Kurdish people and put an end to internal conflicts."

Both Kurdish leaders believe that the solution to Iraq's problems lies in changing the Iraqi regime into a democratic one, forming a coalition government and electing a parliament through free and honest elections with representation for all ethnic groups.

But both leaders have repeatedly warned they are not ready to take part in any operation to change the Iraqi regime unless they know what kind of government is to follow. They want the guaranteed establishment of a federal and democratic regime in which the Kurds, as a major element in the mosaic of Iraqi society, can play an important part.

While population figures are uncertain, observers estimate that the Kurds make up about 4 million out of Iraq's estimated 23 million people.

"If the alternative is another dictator, the first to be harmed will be the Kurdish people who would have wasted all they have achieved in the past years," said Talabani.

The Kurds fear being abandoned by Washington should it fail in its attempt to depose Saddam. They also fear that the U.S. administration might leave them at the mercy of a new government in Baghdad inclined to destroy their autonomy and repeat the slaughter of the 1980s when tens of thousands of Kurds died in Saddam's Anfal campaign.

The Kurds also remember that Washington let them down when they rose against Saddam in 1991 after President George Bush senior called on the Iraqis to rise and overthrow Saddam.

And they remember how in March 1975, after having been egged on by Washington to fight Baghdad as part of U.S. support for Iran in a dispute with Iraq, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger cut off aid to them over night, enabling the Iraqi army to takes its revenge.

A KDP proposal for drawing up a post-Saddam federal constitution has been widely criticized by the Iraqi opposition, rejected by Turkey and received with caution in Washington.

Such a constitutional initiative increases fears in Turkey and Iraq's other neighbors of an independent Iraqi Kurdish entity emerging. Any such entity, Ankara fears, will prompt its own restive Kurdish population, estimated at 12 million, to demand similar conditions for itself.

Turkish officials have accused the Iraqi Kurds of using a U.S. war on Saddam as cover for setting up an independent state.

So the Iraqi Kurdish leaders are obliged to constantly assure their neighbors that their goal is not to have their own independent state, something that Turkey has declared would be a cause for war.

CNN

Sources: Hijackers' ex-landlord was FBI informant

From Dana Bash, Kelli Arena and David Ensor
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) --A former landlord of two of the September 11 hijackers was an FBI informant at the time, knowledgeable sources confirm to CNN.

The two hijackers, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, lived in San Diego in the fall of 2000 and were taken in by a Muslim man after he met them at a local Islamic center. The landlord had been an informant for the FBI, supplying information about the Islamic terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

The revelation, first reported by Newsweek, focuses renewed attention on possible mistakes made by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence prior to September 11. Newsweek reported that the FBI informant lived in close quarters with the two future hijackers.

"The FBI concedes that a San Diego case agent appears to have been at least aware that Saudi visitors were renting rooms in the informant's house," Newsweek reported.

Some members of the congressional committee investigating the intelligence failures and the September 11 attacks knew about the relationship between the landlord and the FBI, and the point will probably come up when the panel holds public hearings, expected later this month.

U.S. intelligence officials said that in January of 2000, when Almidhar and Alhazmi attended a meeting of known terrorists in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that fact was communicated by the CIA to the FBI. Yet it was not until August 23, 2001, that the CIA warned the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to watch for the two men, and that they might try to enter the United States.

By that time, Almidhar and Alhazmi had been in the U.S. for more than 11 months.

The FBI contends the agency was never told about the two men before August 23 and says it can find no record of any such communication between CIA and FBI to show the information might have been overlooked. The FBI has maintained that position in its dealings with congressional investigators and has asked the CIA to document, if possible, having sent word earlier.

The San Diego landlord, reached by CNN on Monday, has refused comment.

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U.S. Fifth Fleet on highest alert; Navy warns oil tankers in Gulf

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

ABU DHABI — The U.S. Fifth Fleet was placed on the highest state of alert as the U.S. Navy warned yesterday that Al Qaida is targeting oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.

The navy said Al Qaida has planned attacks against oil tankers in and around the Persian Gulf from which 25 percent of the world's oil supply stems. This includes the Red Sea, according to Middle East Newsline.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, with some 4,000 military personnel, was placed on "Threat Condition Delta," the highest alert set by the U.S. military. The rest of the U.S. military was placed at "Threat Condition Charlie," the second-highest level on a four-tier scale of alert.

"Shipmasters should exercise extreme caution when transiting strategic choke points such as the Strait of Hormuz or Bab-el-Mandeb, or sailing in traditional high-threat areas such as along the Horn of Africa and other confined waters," the U.S. Navy statement said.

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"Coalition forces are alert to the potential threat and are currently on patrol in the Arabian Gulf, Red Sea and Gulf of Oman."

The navy office warned ships to exercise what it termed extreme caution in the Gulf, particularly through the narrow Straits of Hormuz. It was said to have been the first such U.S. naval warning to shippers of threats in the Gulf since the Al Qaida suicide attacks on New York and Washington last year.

"According to unconfirmed reports circulating within the regional shipping community, the Al Qaida terrorist group has planned attacks against oil tankers transiting the Arabian Gulf and Horn of Africa areas," the U.S. Navy's Maritime Liaison Office in Bahrain said in a statement on Tuesday.

In addition, the State Department closed the U.S. embassies of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates and cancelled a Sept. 11 memorial in Qatar. The embassies are scheduled to reopen on Thursday.

[The U.S. Fox news network reported late Tuesday that the U.S. Central Command will start moving its headquarters to Qatar on Thursday. The command, which did not confirm the report, is located in Tampa, Fla.] In Washington, U.S. officials said the intelligence community has obtained information that several nationals from Middle East countries are preparing suicide attacks against U.S. interests in the region. They said the attacks could also target major infrastructure in the United States.

The new intelligence, officials said, has raised the level of alert in the United States. Officials said the United States was placed under Orange alert, the second highest in the five-tier alert system established by the federal government.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said the most likely targets by the Middle East group are "the transportation and energy sectors and facilities or gatherings that would be recognized worldwide as symbols of American power or security." He said these include U.S. military facilities, embassies and national monuments.

"At this time," Ashcroft said, "most intelligence focuses on possible attacks on U.S. interests overseas."

Israel Radio reported on Wednesday that an Israeli pilot unwittingly helped train Hani Hanjour in a flight over Washington. Hanjour was one of the Al Qaida suicide hijackers and flew with the pilot over Washington three weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The Israeli pilot was interrogated by the FBI after the Al Qaida suicide attacks and was found not have any links with the hijackings.

Annan: World Must Act Together Against Terrorism

Wed Sep 11,11:38 AM ET

By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The world must act together against terrorism or put at risk everything the United Nations ( news - web sites) stands for, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan ( news - web sites) said on Wednesday, a year after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"There could be no greater affront to the spirit and purpose of the United Nations than the terrorist attacks of September 11," he told a solemn ceremony marking the anniversary, held in a garden at U.N. headquarters.

"Everything that we work for -- peace, development, health, freedom -- is damaged by this horror. Everything that we believe in -- respect for human life, justice, tolerance, pluralism and democracy -- is threatened by it. It must be defeated -- and it must be defeated by the world acting as one," he said.

Annan later was to address a special meeting of senior officials of the Security Council's 15 member-nations, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell ( news - web sites).

That meeting was to culminate in the adoption of a statement praising New York's determination "not to give in to terrorism" and vowing to "remain steadfast against the threat that endangers all that has been achieved (by the United Nations) and all that remains to be achieved."

"The world saw terrorists use civilian aircraft for mass murder. They struck at the ideals embodied in the Charter of the United Nations. The attacks challenged each member to rise to the task of defeating terrorism," a draft of the statement said.

Last year's hijack attack on the World Trade Center, only a few miles south of U.N. headquarters, fell just hours before the planned opening of the U.N. General Assembly's 56th annual session.

The session was promptly canceled and the compound -- home to the 190-nation assembly -- was evacuated shortly after the attacks and again the next day after officials received unidentified security threats.

Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden ( news - web sites), blamed by Washington for masterminding the Sept. 11 carnage, later singled out the United Nations in a videotaped message, blaming the world body for the 1948 creation of Israel and for pressuring Muslim Indonesia to give up largely Roman Catholic East Timor ( news - web sites).

Bin Laden in the tape called Annan a "criminal" and branded Muslims who cooperated with the world body as "infidels."

The U.N. compound was sealed off by New York police for months after the attacks, with sand-filled dump trucks blocking every access road to fend off car bombings.

Even today, trucks are barred from driving by the compound, although police enforcement of the dictum is not apparent.

Annan reminded U.N. staff that citizens of more than 90 nations lost their lives in the attacks on the World Trade Center in which about 2,800 people died.

He said the ceremony demonstrated that the world body, like its New York home, was not an isolated enclave.

"Today we come together as a world community because we were attacked as a world community," he said. "May the memory of those who perished on September 11th serve to inspire a better, more just, more peaceful world for all."

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Slate

Turning Bush
Bush's evolving ideas about war, weakness, and women.
By William Saletan
Posted Wednesday, September 11, 2002, at 10:32 AM PT

Click here to read William Saletan's analysis of President Bush's Sept. 11 televised address from Ellis Island.

Today, President Bush is delivering several speeches about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and their implications. In an op-ed in this morning's New York Times, Bush revisits familiar themes, but he also indicates important short-term changes in his thinking and long-term changes in the thinking of American conservatives. Here are a few.

1. Multilateralism. In the debate over Iraq, Bush has been hammered for trampling or ignoring the concerns of American allies. The message seems to be sinking in. He speaks of "building good relations among the world's great powers" and "gathering broad international coalitions to increase the pressure for peace. America needs partners to preserve the peace, and we will work with every nation that shares this noble goal." This is a significant revision of the unilateralist doctrine, enunciated a year ago by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that "the mission determines the coalition." Bush is still saying that the goal determines the coalition, but the goal is framed vaguely, in terms of peace. The exact nature of missions to achieve that goal is now implicitly open to negotiation, since Bush "needs partners."

2. Pre-emption. Through most of the Iraq debate, Bush's rationale for military action has remained fuzzy. Gradually, his doctrine is becoming clearer, and so are its implications. In his op-ed, he says the world must confront "regimes that support terror, seek chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and build ballistic missiles." The third criterion is new and important: It might limit the doctrine of pre-emption to states that can threaten not just their neighbors but countries beyond their own regions, possibly including the United States. Implicitly, it raises the question of whether we're prepared to confront North Korea in the same way Bush proposes to confront Iraq. Before going to war, it's important to know that your government is sincere about its stated reasons. It's equally important to know what you're in for if you follow through on those principles elsewhere.

Bush also shortcuts his administration's previous arguments that if Iraq gets nuclear weapons, it might use them to attack or blackmail the United States. "We must deny terrorists and their allies the destructive means to match their hatred," he writes. On this view, Bush doesn't have to debate what Saddam Hussein would do with nukes. Iraq's mere possession of such weapons is unacceptable. Of course, in that case, so is North Korea's.

3. Order. Previous wars pitted nations against each other. Bush essentially says that whole framework is passé. "The world's great powers stand on the same side of a divide—united by common dangers of terrorist violence and chaos," he writes. He speaks of "a choice between lawful change and chaotic violence." He praises China and singles out Russia as "an important partner in the war on terror." Some of this is just diplomatic suck-up in advance of whatever votes on Iraq may be necessary in the United Nations Security Council. But thinking of nations as natural allies simply because of their ability to maintain order inevitably limits our willingness to criticize nations that maintain order at the price of human rights.

One of the most interesting themes in Bush's essay is his emphasis on the perils not of aggression but of weakness. "Weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose a great danger to the peace of the world," he notes. Later, he warns of "weak governments that are unable to enforce order or patrol their borders." A foreign policy driven by fear of power vacuums is certain to reduce American pressure for individual freedom in other lands.

4. Values. Recent presidents of both parties have justified American intervention abroad in terms of promoting civil liberties and equal justice. Bush commits his foreign policy to those two ideas but also to several others that should warm the hearts of Republicans: private property, the rule of law, and "limits on the power of the state." He puts a conservative twist on idealistic interventionism.

At the same time, Bush commits his party to sexual equality as a cardinal value of foreign policy. He lists "respect for women" alongside his other guiding principles, and in a remarkable pairing, he declares that "the deliberate murder of innocent civilians and the oppression of women are everywhere and always wrong." This isn't the first time a conservative president has championed the rights of women, but it is the first time these rights have been elevated to such prominence. If Bush thinks Saddam is a handful, wait till he has to take on Phyllis Schlafly.

From: Robert Wright
Subject: Does Globalization Cause Terrorism or Cure It?
Updated Wednesday, September 11, 2002, at 7:42 AM PT

This is the sixth in a nine-part series on how America should fight the war against terrorism.

Our unfolding prescription for a war on terrorism would seem to go with the flow of history. To encourage the democratization of Arab and other mainly Muslim nations is to ride in the slipstream of technological evolution, which at the moment has anti-autocrat tendencies. And steering nations toward economic modernization is largely a matter of tearing down trade barriers and letting capitalism do what it naturally does. The ongoing globalization of technology and commerce, it would seem, amounts to an autopilot anti-terrorism machine. Sounds almost too good to be true.

It is! Unfortunately, there's Proposition No. 7: Globalization, though a large part of the solution, is also a large part of the problem.

As Bernard Lewis and others have pointed out, the modern world—featuring alcohol, satellite-beamed pornography, lapel-wearing alpha females—is an offense to traditional Islamic values. And globalization sticks modernization in the face of Muslims, whether they like it or not. Mohamed Atta didn't have to go to Germany to see Hollywood movies or the Western skyscrapers that, in his view, scarred the landscape of Islamic architecture.

This clash of cultures, by itself, needn't be a huge problem. Sure, the encroachment of modern values on traditional culture will create friction, including resentment and even disgust. But we've all felt resentment and disgust, yet few of us have killed people. Had it not been for Atta's other issues, his economic and political frustrations, he probably wouldn't have either. Right before his final radicalizing phase in Germany—when he apparently decided to go train with al-Qaida—he spent a few months in Egypt, where he failed to find a job and bridled at the government's oppression of fundamentalist groups. He even saw a link between the two. His own sympathy for such groups, he felt, would keep him from getting hired by an Egyptian firm.

In short: If people everywhere had economic opportunity and political freedom, the clash of cultures that globalization brings would more often be endured without explosion. So, maybe globalization, to the extent that it's part of the problem, is self-solving. By moving the world toward market economies and democracy, eroding the kinds of frustrations that pushed Atta over the edge, it defangs itself.

This, too, sounds too good to be true—and it, too, is. There are two main reasons.

First, in developing countries globalization can, in the short run, create economic frustrations very much like those that afflicted Atta. When traditional economies modernize, people's skills become obsolete. Low-tech farmers can't compete with modern conglomerates, shopkeepers lose business to chain stores, and both can wind up looking for work.

The work is usually there, but it may be a disorientingly different kind of work. The journalist Robert Kaplan has described some workplaces in the developing world as "polluted, grimy factory encampments" where migrants, freed from the norms of the rural village, are "assaulted by the temptations of the pseudo-Western city—luxury cars, night clubs, gangs, pornographic movies."

Encouragingly, America underwent a similar transition a century ago and lived to tell about it. Back then, young men and women moved en masse from farms and small towns to cities, where they sometimes found dehumanizing workplaces, new corruptions and temptations, and few traditional moral tethers. (See, e.g., The Jungle and Sister Carrie.) But by World War II, Americans had largely equilibrated. They built stable urban neighborhoods and found new forms of community in social clubs and civic groups. And new legislation improved working conditions and empowered workers.

Still, it was a wild ride, featuring enough working-class discontent for genuine revolutionaries to briefly gain a foothold. Today parts of the developing world are taking an even wilder ride, going straight from pre-industrial agrarian lifestyles into the modern, globalized world, covering in decades a jump that the West took centuries to make. With traditional routes to status and community being rapidly redefined, there is bound to be some virulent discontent generated somewhere.

The second reason that globalization isn't an autopilot anti-terrorism machine takes us back to Propositions 1 and 2, and the fact that big-time terrorist threats could increasingly come from somewhere other than the Muslim world. Like Montana, say. Globalization alienates some Americans and Europeans, especially rural and working-class people who feel victimized by foreign or immigrant labor or by job-killing workplace automation.

The sociologist Michael Kimmel has noted parallels between the frustrations of the American far right and those of Atta and other hijackers. American neo-Nazis and white supremacists feel "downward mobility and economic uncertainty" and are "emasculated by big money and big government." Three years before bombing Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh wrote a letter to a newspaper blaming the American government for killing the American dream, leaving people scrounging to pay their bills. McVeigh, who had already given up on the private sector as his ticket to status (he dropped out of business college), still dreamed of being an elite soldier, but he would soon flunk out of Green Berets camp. The rest is history. Like Atta, he felt that his economy and his government had betrayed him.

In addition to the American far right, whose grievances are loosely tied to modernization and globalization, there are left-wing groups that cite globalization as an explicit grievance: environmentalists, labor activists, and so on. Most of these people are sane and safe, but almost every movement has a lunatic fringe, so antagonizing them further is not a recommended feature of an anti-terrorism strategy, given the increasingly lethal expression of discontent that technology will make possible.

In sum, we have a fact that is widely recognized but not generally linked to the war on terrorism, namely Proposition No. 8: Globalization has doubly bad short-term side effects, bringing transitional alienation to both developing and developed nations.

These transitional problems have no true cure; there's a reason they call wrenching change wrenching change. But there is one thing that could at least dampen some of the alienation in both the developed and developing worlds. Namely, Policy Prescription No. 8: To blunt some of globalization's sharper edges, carry political governance beyond the level of the nation-state, to the transnational level.

This approach to handling the turmoil of a modernizing and expanding economy has a good track record. A century ago in America, with industrialization roiling society and economic activity moving from the regional to the national level, progressive political leaders decided to regulate it at that level, with federal laws on interstate commerce—notably ones ensuring the safety of food and drugs—and, eventually, laws that empowered labor unions and brought dignity to the workplace. Among the benefits was convincing consumers that modernization was a good thing and blunting the appeal of Marxist revolution to workers.

Of course, one thing that made national laws feasible was the existence of a national government. When it comes to governing globalization, there's no comparable entity. Still, the governance of globalization is possible, and in fact it is already starting to happen.

Some of it isn't governance in a traditional sense. International nongovernmental organizations—such as the International Labor Rights Fund and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights—have negotiated with Nike, L.L. Bean, and Liz Claiborne over wages, workweeks, and child labor in their overseas clothing factories. The companies agree to the resulting codes so that their clothes can sport labels attesting to humane working conditions.

Governance in a more traditional sense—featuring actual governmental bodies—is also possible at the international level but so far is pretty skeletal. Western labor unions would like to use the leverage of the World Trade Organization to upgrade foreign working conditions—whether with child labor laws or workplace safety standards or a guaranteed right to bargain collectively, or whatever. So far they've been foiled, but there's no reason in principle that the WTO can't address labor issues and even the transnational environmental issues that concern anti-globalization activists, thus evolving from a right-wing form of governance toward the center. (The Clinton administration set a small precedent by signing a bilateral deal with Jordan that was the first American trade pact to meaningfully address labor standards.)

In favoring better working conditions abroad, American union leaders aren't being altruistic; they just have a competitive interest in raising foreign production costs. In fact, if they were massively successful, they'd price many foreign workers out of the labor market. But political reality—the clout that corporations carry in trade policy around the world—will preclude that degree of success; foreign production costs would at most grow modestly and incrementally. So, many more foreign workers would be helped than hurt by the improvement in working conditions—just as a slight increase in America's minimum wage helps many workers while harming a few (the ones who don't get hired as a result of the higher labor costs).

That many workers in the developed and developing worlds share an interest in elevating developing-world labor standards is promising. It means that the lobbying of transnational governance could someday draw foreign workers, including many Muslims, into international labor coalitions that would give them salutarily friendly contact with Western peers. And higher labor standards abroad—including safer, more humane workplaces—would have the separate virtue of making the face of globalization more appealing, less alienating, in the developing world.

The influence of global governance on Westerners would also be salutary. Letting American labor and environmental activists exert meaningful influence on globalization will help keep them from demonizing it. If those scruffy leaders of anti-globalization demonstrations could be put in suits and turned into lobbyists, that would be a major advance. But they can't be transnational lobbyists unless there's transnational policymaking to lobby.

In the early 20^th century, when America started regulating its economy at the national level, free-market purists complained that this would slow the wheels of commerce. And it presumably did—but it also helped keep society calm and intact. Today, free-trade purists will similarly complain that even modest transnational regulation would slow the wheels of commerce. And it presumably would—but it, too, would have a stabilizing effect. (Free-trade purists who have read this series so far might add that even slightly slowing the inherently unsettling transition to stable modernity would seem to violate Prescription 1: Take your bitter medicine early. But when taking the medicine more slowly makes it less bitter, that's another matter, and that may be the case here.)

Besides, it's pretty much inevitable that some workers and environmentalists in the developed world will find some way to slow globalization down. In the worst case they would do it violently; people on the fringes of the labor and environmental movements would engage in trade-sabotaging terrorism. Alternatively, they would do it the way it has often been done in the past: by pushing for unilateral trade barriers. Preferable to both scenarios is letting them channel their energies into transnational governance. By participating in global politics, acting in concert with peers across cultural borders, they form some of the sinews that will make a true clash of civilizations less likely. 

Full-bodied global economic governance—such as adding meaningful regulatory dimensions to the World Trade Organization—may strike some as far-fetched and in any event unconnected to the hear-and-now threat of terrorism. But if this series has one overriding theme, it's that any good war-on-terrorism strategy has to be long-term, creative, and multi-faceted. The threats that could exist in 20 or 30 years are of a magnitude that today would strike many as unimaginable or at least highly unlikely. If some of the solutions I'm proposing seem unlikely, that may be appropriate.

And, anyway, lots of seemingly unlikely things have become real in the course of a few decades. Three decades ago it seemed highly unlikely that France and Germany would at the turn of the millennium share a single currency, not to mention a fairly dense fabric of common regulation. And three decades before that it was hard to imagine a time when war between France and Germany wouldn't be a live possibility. But it's all happened. International commerce on a continental scale—mini-globalization—has drawn implacable foes into a web of common interest, and the web has been sealed by transnational governance.

But enough inspiration! In the next installment we'll get into another dark side of globalization.

---

From: Robert Wright
Subject: The Mindless Altruism of Unilateralism
Posted Wednesday, September 11, 2002, at 7:42 AM PT

This is the seventh in a nine-part series on how America should fight the war on terrorism.

Why do so many Middle Eastern Muslims aim their dislike at America, when only 50 years ago Britain and France were the preferred targets? The standard foreign-policy explanations—American support for the Shah of Iran, for Israel, for current Arab authoritarians, and so on—have merit. But there is something bigger going on, too. Namely, Proposition No. 9: We are seeing, and will continue to see, the globalization of resentment. Thanks to television and other technologies, the world has become a small town, even a neighborhood, and America is by far the richest kid in it. Do you remember how you felt about the richest kid in your neighborhood?

There's a chance that you liked him or her. It is not the ineluctable fate of rich kids to be resented by everyone. However, it is their fate to be resented pretty widely unless they comport themselves with careful attention to their inherent resentability. Here America is failing—and failure could really start to chafe as popularity, thanks to technological evolution, becomes more and more essential to national security.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush said something that, post-9/11, sounds prescient. He said the world's most powerful nation ran the risk of being seen as arrogant; he pledged that under his leadership America would become "a humble nation." Yet since he took office, America's reputation for arrogance—painstakingly built up over decades by countless American politicians, tourists, and crybaby tennis stars—has only grown. "Today," Michael Hirsh wrote recently in Foreign Affairs, "Washington's main message to the world seems to be, Take dictation."

Hence Policy Prescription No. 9: Honor President Bush's pledge—make America a humble nation. Sometimes this will just be a matter of rhetorical fine-tuning. It would be nice if Bush started fewer sentences about the future behavior of other nations with "I expect ..." and more with "It is America's hope ..." But for the most part, convincing the world of American humility will be a meatier endeavor. It will mean actually taking into account the views and interests of other nations, just as we expect other nations to take ours into account; it will mean providing cooperation as well as seeking it.  

The technical term for this, of course, is "multilateralism," and to urge the Bush administration toward it isn't exactly to stake out virgin op-ed turf. Bush has been scolded for unilateralism on issues ranging from global warming (rejecting the Kyoto Protocol) to war crimes (rejecting the International Criminal Court) to war (seeming to disdain U.N. authorization of an Iraq invasion). But the standard op-ed arguments undersell multilateralism's virtues.

The routinely cited virtue is that if America cooperates with other nations, and takes their views seriously, they'll be more likely to do the many things America asks in its war on terrorism, such as surveillance or extradition or freezing dubious funds; unilateralism, in contrast, will eventually leave America stranded, needing friends and having none. But this argument, while valid, overlooks a second problem with Bush's unilateralism, and a subtle but deep contradiction in his foreign policy.

Bush typically justifies his coolness toward international agreements in terms of strict national interest. America, he says, would bear a disproportionate share of the burdens of these agreements; European and other nations would get off cheap and thus be, as economists say, "free riders." This is in some cases true. Even Bill Clinton, liberal multilateralist, couldn't reach a final agreement with Europe over how the costs of the Kyoto Protocol would be distributed. The free rider issue pervades multilateral negotiations, and any responsible president should worry about it.

But Bush's repeated failure to even suggest alternatives to the high-minded treaties he rejects has the perverse effect of letting Europe be a free rider in a larger sense; he is exacerbating a long-standing American image problem that ultimately works to Europe's benefit. Increasingly, in the iconography of globalization, America is the robber baron and Europe the conscientious reformer; or America is the bully and Europe the kind constable. So, Europe, though fully enjoying the benefits of globalization, incurs less than its share of the wrath that globalization (rightly or wrongly) arouses. When the French farmer and anti-globalization activist José Bové is looking for a building to vandalize, he chooses a McDonald's. If his disciples someday inflict destruction on a larger scale, expect them to stick with the same nationality, unless America's image undergoes the kind of make-over that the Bush administration is emphatically not engineering.

Of course, anti-globalization activists and radical environmentalists are not the terrorism threat du jour. But, as we've seen, they could be someday, as could any other group intensely disenchanted with the modern world. Besides, even when hatred and resentment of America don't turn into terrorism, they still complicate the war against it, to the extent that they influence the policies of foreign governments whose cooperation America needs. And across the globe, mass opinion influences policy more and more powerfully, thanks largely to the democratizing or at least pluralizing effect of information technologies. (Obviously, America shouldn't swallow a slew of dopey left-wing policies just to be popular. But in the case of global warming, as well as such hot-button issues as the export of hormone-treated beef and genetically modified foods, the current American positions could use at least some revising, even by the lights of mainstream economic theory.)

And, anyway, if this particular image problem—America as globalization's id, Europe as its superego—sounds only speculatively connected to the war on terrorism, there's another realm in which Bush's unilateralism has let Europe play free rider, a realm with undeniable relevance to the war on terrorism. Namely: the war on terrorism. Intent on freedom of action, the Bush team often eschews meaningful alliance in the military part of this war and so winds up sealing America's status as most hated nation in the Islamic world.

Bush's idea of a judicious division of labor is that America drops almost all the bombs on Afghanistan—inevitably doing some "collateral damage"—and then, after the war,  British troops come in and hand out most of the free food. America is Gen. Sherman, and England is Clara Barton. Similarly, the Bush administration feels that the United States—on its own, if necessary—should invade Iraq to help free the world of the threat of weapons of mass destruction. That's generous, since doing so makes the United States more likely to be the target of any such weapons that nonetheless find their way into the hands of terrorists.

Hence Policy Prescription No. 10: Share the blame. Invite allies to participate more fully in the conspicuous application of violence. Let their planes drop more bombs. And whenever possible, get formal multilateral approval for military action. If we must invade Iraq, let's at least try to provide Al Jazeera with some videotape of the French ambassador to the United Nation voting to authorize the invasion. 

Administration Iraq hawks might laugh at this prospect: the French voting to back an  invasion of Iraq? But if President Bush had taken advantage of the moral and political capital America possessed right after 9/11, he almost surely could have gotten the Security Council to authorize an Iraq attack with at least some degree of explicitness. To be sure, the attack would have been authorized to proceed only in the event that Iraq continued to rebuff U.N. weapons inspections. But let's face it: As much as many Bush advisers would like to skip an inspections ultimatum and just cut to the regime change, invading Iraq won't in any event be politically doable if Saddam Hussein unconditionally readmits U.N. inspectors. So, Bush might as well, all along, have cast his war plans as being on behalf of the U.N.-mandated weapons inspections, and thus on behalf of international law. Instead, by insisting on regime change regardless of the regime's future behavior, and casting the war as part of a new doctrine of pre-emptive invasion, Bush has cast America as an international outlaw.

This sort of public-relations blunder is not what you'd expect from a man who promised to give America a worldwide reputation for humility. It's what you'd expect from someone who hasn't truly grasped how the growing importance of world opinion has recast the logic of international cooperation.

Admittedly, with Iraq Bush does face a dicey version of the free rider problem: The free riders don't acknowledge that they're free riders; European nations don't believe—or at least don't admit to believing—that they'll benefit from a war against Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein is indeed as clear a threat to the whole world as the Bush administration claims, then this predicament arguably reflects a failure of pedagogy and world leadership on Bush's part. (Besides, there may be ways of educating free riders even at this late date.)

Of course, we're assuming here that the administration's public position is its private one—that it honestly believes that Saddam Hussein is a threat to Europeans and Americans alike. The administration may in truth have a different view: that Europe is right to see the risks of inaction as low because Europe isn't a likely target of large-scale terrorist attacks, anyway; it's Americans who will die if Saddam doesn't.   

In this view, war in Iraq wouldn't entail a free rider problem; America would be invading Iraq single-handedly because America is terrorist enemy No. 1. But in that event, the logic behind war is a little circular. After all, the reason America is terrorist enemy No. 1 is that we keep doing things like invade Iraq. And even when we proceed in a more ostensibly multilateral fashion, we insist on doing all the conspicuous heavy lifting ourselves. According to standard accounts, it was because Osama Bin Laden saw American troops in Saudi Arabia after the Persian Gulf War—not French troops, not British troops—that he became obsessed with America and wound up destroying the World Trade Center.

This circular logic has a rough parallel in the case of the International Criminal Court. The administration fears the ICC because it thinks that the court would become a channel for worldwide anti-Americanism—that ICC prosecutors would unfairly single out Americans for prosecution. Yet one major source of this anti-Americanism is that America keeps refusing to do things like join the International Criminal Court.

The administration also has a more specific fear about the ICC: that past American officials could be prosecuted for such adventures as supporting the 1973 Chilean coup that ushered in the era of Augusto Pinochet. But here, too, the logic is broadly circular: We fear joining a multilateral legal system because in the past we've followed extralegal (a polite term for illegal) unilateral policies.

At some point we have to break the vicious circle and quit citing our past unilateralism, or its consequences, as the reason for avoiding future multilateralism. Because the globalization of resentment, combined with the growing downside of unpopularity, means that, more and more, we're going to have to use multilateral institutions to diffuse wrath. Allies have many uses, and one of them is to absorb their share of shrapnel.

Suppose, for example, that we do ever find Osama Bin Laden alive. Presumably he'll be tried in an American court. Where else would the Bush administration have him tried—in the International Criminal Court? But, actually, an ICC trial would better serve American interests. First of all, Bin Laden's residual band of supporters would then have more trouble convincing potential recruits that his conviction had been an American miscarriage of justice. Second, the security nightmare accompanying the trial—complete with the quite real threat of high-casualty terrorism—would be The Hague's problem, not New York's.

And why shouldn't it be? If indeed the war on terrorism is in the long run a campaign on behalf of global civilization—and it is—why should America shoulder all the burden? This seems like a reasonable question, but there's no hard evidence that it's ever occurred to anyone in the Bush administration.

The irony is that this administration prides itself on its cool rationality (an attitude especially evident in the three most influential players on the Bush foreign-policy team—Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz). The Bushies dismiss multilateralism as a feel-good policy favored by large-hearted, woolly-minded liberals, people who would be out of their depth at a Rand Corporation game-theory seminar. Yet it's the Bushies who are the inept game theorists. They're failing to defend America against the parasitism of free riders. George W. Bush hasn't made America humble, but he has certainly made it a gracious host—in the biological sense of the word.

American press review (previous day)

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International press review

9/11 + 365
By June Thomas
Posted Wednesday, September 11, 2002, at 7:52 PM PT

The amount of coverage devoted to the first anniversary of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is overwhelming, but much of it boils down to the following questions:

What does 9/11 represent? Canada's Globe and Mail declared it "the real end of the 1990s, an optimistic decade that began with the demise of the Cold War." Spain's El Mundo agreed, calling the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "the last event of the 20^th century and the beginning of an era whose edges are still blurred." An op-ed in the Jerusalem Post noted, "The one overriding lesson of September 11 … for all those who look to America as the rock of the free world, is simply: 'It can happen there.' And that makes living in the 21^st century, especially for those of us in Israel, a far tougher proposition than any of us ever imagined."

Did any good come out of Sept. 11? South Africa's Star found some benefits: "Americans now know where Afghanistan is, have a better understanding of Islam and recognise the urgent need, for instance, to settle the Israeli/Palestinian conflict." El País of Madrid praised the "general [post-9/11] movement to delegitimize terrorists," which has helped in Spain's fight against the Basque separatist group ETA.

How was President Bush's response to the attacks? Britain's Guardian characterized him as a "weak, second-rate president with no mandate and less nous" and concluded, "Perhaps only Mr Bush could have made September 11 even worse than it actually was." For the Globe and Mail, the president "quickly displayed qualities of leadership that many didn't think he had."

Was the war against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan justified? An op-ed in the Independent conceded that although many civilians died in the Afghanistan conflict, "nowhere near as many as some predicted, and probably nowhere near as many as would have perished had the invasion of Afghanistan never happened." The Tehran Times presented a more negative spin:

[I]nstead of cultivating … international cooperation, the U.S. opted for the opposite direction and embarked on a prolonged military campaign in Afghanistan, which so far has claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians. And as if this hasn't been enough, it is contemplating an attack on Iraq, which would dwarf the miseries that have been brought on the Afghans.

For the Times of London, the essential question is "whether or not the world is safer now than it was on September 10, 2001 and, if so, whether the strategy adopted by George W. Bush and his Administration contributed to that outcome. The answer, with little ambiguity on careful reflection, is affirmative on both counts." True, Afghanistan has not been "transformed into Sweden" but Afghans' quality of life has improved and the authorities "are less of a menace to their own citizens and the outside world" than was the case on Sept. 10, 2001.

Is President Bush's plan to remove Saddam Hussein from power justified? The Financial Times reminded, "[T]he world must never forget that it was America that was attacked on September 11 2001, that it was mostly Americans who were slaughtered and that America has the right and duty to protect itself from those who would do it harm," but most papers oppose unilateral intervention. The Daily Mirror's front page Wednesday was dominated by a shot of the inferno at the base of the World Trade Center emblazoned with the words "How many more flames are we about to fan?" and Hong Kong's South China Morning Post chided the Bush administration: "[T]heir approach to tackling the hatred and anger directed at the US is to use threats and military force. They misguidedly believe that the best way to fight violence is with more violence." In Kenya, the Daily Nation said that after losing more than 200 people when the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi was bombed in 1998, the country "appreciate[d] more than  most the importance of the war against terror." Still, the editorial added, "we cannot blindly support a campaign that seems to have no rhyme or reason. … Terrorism will not be defeated through terrorism." According to the Berliner Zeitung, the United States "has given up the fight against terrorism … and is just as helpless against terrorism as it is against drugs and arms smuggling." Instead, the administration prefers to pursue more conventional—and familiar—combat in Iraq. (German translation courtesy of BBC Monitoring.)

Does the media treat all victims equally? The Independent's Robert Fisk fretted about the "double standards" being demonstrated in the commemorations:

Today, 11 September, our newspapers and our television screens are filled with the baleful images of those two towers and their biblical descent. We will remember and honour the thousands who died. But in just five days' time, Palestinians will remember their September massacre of 1982. Will a single candle be lit for them in the West? Will there be a single memorial service? Will a single American newspaper dare to recall this atrocity? Will a single British newspaper commemorate the 20th anniversary of these mass killings of 1,700 innocents? Do I even need to give the answer?

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Guardian Blair may be First Buddy, but it's time he faced the facts

Everyone but the prime minister knows the US has trashed the rules

Martin Kettle
Thursday September 12, 2002
The Guardian

No one who has ever seriously believed in any cause finds it easy to criticise that same cause in public. The doubter's life can be hard, lonely and insecure. Conscience makes cowards of good people, around whom the habit of loyalty coils like a snake, difficult to shake off. In the battle between the heart and the head there is never an easy winner.

Tony Blair's belief in the importance of the US is a classic example of the perils of an undifferentiated loyalty. His own current problems need to be understood with that in mind. Some of his judgments over Iraq make sense, but are not necessarily excused by the fact that Blair is engaged in a struggle with realities which threaten one of his most enduring instincts.

Blair has long held the view that British domestic politics take place downstream from the US. He thinks Bill Clinton's election in 1992, and still more his re-election in 1996, were essential preconditions for Labour's own victory a few months later in 1997. He thought that the presence of a Democratic president in the White House made Labour appear to be cutting with the grain of history, not against it.

By the same yardstick, Blair saw George Bush's election in November 2000 as a more serious challenge to Labour than most people realise. It was one of the main reasons why he was so determined to be the first foreign visitor to Bush in early 2001. By getting to the president's shoulder at Camp David, Blair aimed to squash any pre-election attempt by William Hague to position the Conservatives as the party in touch with the new America. He is just as determined to prevent Iain Duncan Smith doing the same thing now.

Since 1997, Blair's belief in the importance of America has of course widened from domestic to international politics. He seems gradually to have formulated an approach to foreign policy which sees the US as the essential nation in the settlement of global and regional issues, and which identifies the Anglo-American relationship as the necessary catalyst ensuring American global engagement rather than isolationism.

Just how much he really believes in the mystique of the so-called "special relationship" is a hard call, especially given the more overwhelming evidence that Blair thinks of himself as a European. But he certainly acts the part of First Buddy with conviction.

No one who heard Blair speak at a White House dinner with Clinton in 1998 would be in much doubt where his heart as well as his head lay. That evening Blair quoted the biblical remarks of Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt's emissary to Churchill, at a wartime dinner in London: "Whither thou goest I will go, and whither thou lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Even to the end."

Nearly two years into the Bush administration's term, it is easy to forget that Blair sometimes had to struggle to secure US international engagement under Clinton too, and over committing US forces in Kosovo in particular. But any problems which Blair encountered with Clinton are as nothing beside those he has faced with his successor. As Frances Fitzgerald writes in a compelling essay in the current issue of the New York Review of Books: "The Bush administration has clearly broken with the internationalist premises that have been accepted by every other administration since World War Two, with the exception of Reagan's first."

As Fitzgerald points out, George Bush has rarely defined the goals of his administration's foreign policy. In public, he has talked mainly in vague, general terms. Depending on his audience, as in his adjoining article today, there is more or less mention of allies. But in most Bush speeches, the world is a place of threats against which US-defined solutions offer the greatest security. It was summed up in Bush's election campaign comment about threats to America: "We're not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there."

One result is that no one, including America's allies and perhaps including Bush himself, has a very clear idea of the kind of world that Bush would really like to see beyond US shores. Perhaps he will rectify that omission when he addresses the UN today in New York. But the other result is that Bush's subordinates, led by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, have repeatedly set the agenda in a series of steps which amount to a wholesale repudiation of any theory based on collective action and alliances.

The extreme version of this approach is summed up by the number three man at the State Department, John Bolton, who once proclaimed: "There is no such thing as the UN. There is an international community that can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that is the US, when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along."

A parallel approach has recently allowed the Pentagon, which has systematically opposed, abrogated and binned a series of international treaties, to abandon its long-standing "threat-based strategy" in favour of a "capabilities-based approach". According to Defence Secretary Rumsfeld this means that America needs to build up its defences on land, sea, air and space "to defend our nation against the unknown". As Fitzgerald points out: "For the overall defence budget, a 'capabilities-based approach' means simply that the Pentagon can ask for whatever it wants without having to justify its requests by the existence of even a potential enemy."

This is the reality which constantly subverts Blair's attempts to portray the Bush administration as a willing partner in the new moral order that the prime minister advocated at Brighton last year. He was at it again this week, claiming to the TUC that in today's world "internationalism is practical statesmanship". Everywhere but in Washington, it should be added.

It is hard not to feel some sympathy with Blair's predicament. He believes in the right things. He is trying to exert an influence that needs to be exerted in pursuit of a good strategy that would make the world a safer and better place. Yet for all his efforts he gets only grief, in Washington and at home.

He gets grief because there is a profound disjunction between what he wants to believe about this administration and what is in fact the case. But this administration has trashed the rules that Blair wants to play by. Rather than face that reality head on, he pretends, in public at least, that it does not exist. It's the mistake that other loyalists in other causes have made down the years. Like them, Blair faces a choice between heart and head, and between loyalty and truth. Like them, he risks allowing excess loyalty and insufficient clarity to make the wrong call.

< A HREF="mailto:martin.kettle@guardian.co.uk">martin.kettle@guardian.co.uk

Bush issues challenge to UN

Speech will reserve right to take Iraq action

Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday September 12, 2002
The Guardian

President Bush will face a decisive moment of his presidency today as he attempts to persuade the United Nations to back him in taking what he described as the "first great struggle of a new century" into Iraq.

In his speech to the UN general assembly, Mr Bush will use yesterday's anniversary of the September 11 attacks as a launching pad for his campaign against Iraq, buoyed up by a national wave of grief and defiance from memorial services across the country.

Administration officials said the landmark speech would throw down the gauntlet to the UN, challenging it to en force its resolutions on disarming Iraq or stand aside while the US dealt with the issue militarily. They said the US would seek a single, toughly worded security council resolution that would authorise military action if Iraq refused comprehensive and intrusive inspections.

But the president's case against Iraq suffered a blow yesterday, when leading Democrats and some Republicans in Congress declared themselves unconvinced by intelligence briefings aimed at portraying Iraq as an imminent threat, saying they had been told "nothing new".

However, while there may be UN support for a new resolution on inspections, there is little enthusiasm for endorsing an invasion.

In a speech to be delivered to the general assembly today, the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, will appeal to the US not to take action without a security council mandate.

Mr Annan will argue: "For any one state - large or small - choosing to follow or reject the multilateral path must not be a simple matter of political convenience. It has consequences far beyond the immediate context."

Acts of self-defence are justifiable under the UN charter, the secretary-general will say "But beyond that, when states decide to use force to deal with broader threats to international peace and security, there is no substitute for the unique legitimacy provided by the United Nations."

However, in words likely to be welcomed by Washington, Mr Annan insisted that if all efforts to impose inspections fail, "the security council must face its responsibilities", a clear reference to the prospect of military enforcement.

Nelson Mandela added his voice to the international opposition to US unilateral action, saying it posed a threat to world peace.

He said he had tried unsuccessfully to make his point directly to the US president and had to settle for a telephone conversation with the president's father, the former President Bush.

"We are really appalled by any country, whether a superpower or a small country, that goes outside the UN and attacks independent countries," Mr Mandela, the former South African president, said.

"What they are saying is introducing chaos in international affairs, and we condemn that in the strongest terms."

However, the US continued its war preparations yesterday, when defence officials said that the headquarters of US Central Command, which would coordinate an assault on Iraq were being moved from Florida to Qatar, where the Pentagon is constructing a formidable military base.

The Central Command chief, General Tommy Franks held a three-hour meeting yesterday with the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the joint chiefs of staff immediately after a ceremony to honour the Pentagon victims of the September 11 attacks.

The president toured the three sites of last year's attacks yesterday, starting at a ceremony alongside the rebuilt west face of the Pentagon.

US embassies were closed across Asia after the CIA reported that there was a credible threat from al-Qaida.

Britain also closed embassies and consulates in nine countries in the Middle East, the Far East and Africa in what a Foreign Office spokesman called "a precautionary measure".

After the Pentagon memorial service, Mr Bush flew north to lay a wreath at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where one of the hijacked airliners, United Airlines flight 93, was forced down by passengers and crew. He finished the day in New York, where he was due to address the nation from Ellis Island with the Statue of Liberty behind him.

"What happened to our nation on a September day set in motion the first great struggle of a new century. The enemies who struck are determined and resourceful," he told troops, construction workers and victims' families at the Pentagon. "But they will be stopped."

In a commentary, published in the New York Times yesterday, the president presented a softer side of US power, which focused on foreign aid and promotion of democracy abroad. But he also referred to the threat of rogue regimes armed with weapons of mass destruction.

"On this issue, the consequences of inaction could be catastrophic. We must deny terrorists and their allies the destructive means to match their hatred," the president wrote.

The battle for history

The now routine equation of Stalin and Hitler both distorts the past and limits the future

Seumas Milne
Thursday September 12, 2002
The Guardian

It would be easy to dismiss the controversy over the latest Martin Amis offering as little more than a salon tiff among self-referential literati. His book, Koba the Dread, follows a well-trodden political path. An excoriation of Lenin, Stalin and communism in general (interlaced with long-simmering spats with his once communist father Kingsley and radical friend Christopher Hitchens), it is intended to be a savage indictment of the left for its supposed inability to acknowledge the crimes committed in its name. Strong on phrasemaking, the book is painfully short on sources or social and historical context. The temptation might be to see it as simply a sign that the one-time enfant terrible of the London literary scene was reliving his father's descent into middle-aged blimpishness.

That would be a mistake. Amis's book is in reality only the latest contribution to the rewriting of history that began in the dying days of the Soviet Union and has intensified since its collapse. It has become almost received wisdom to bracket Stalin and Hitler as twin monsters of the past century - Mao and Pol Pot are sometimes thrown in as an afterthought - and commonplace to equate communism and fascism as the two greatest evils of an unprecedentedly sanguinary era. In some versions, communism is even held to be the more vile and bloodier wickedness. The impact of this cold war victors' version of the past has been to relativise the unique crimes of Nazism, bury those of colonialism and feed the idea that any attempt at radical social change will always lead to suffering, killing and failure.

This profoundly ideological account has long since turned into a sort of gruesome numbers game. The bizarre distortions it produces were on show last week during a television interview with Amis, when the BBC presenter Gavin Esler remarked in passing that Stalin was "responsible for at least three times as many deaths" as Hitler - a truly breathtaking throwaway line. Esler was presumably comparing Amis's own figure of 20 million Stalin victims (borrowed from the cold war historian Robert Conquest) with the 6 million Jews murdered by Hitler in the Holocaust. But of course Hitler took a great many more lives than 6 million: over 11 million are estimated to have died in the Nazi camps alone and he might reasonably be held responsible for the vast majority of the 50 million killed in the second world war, including more than 20 million Soviet dead.

But in the distorted prism of the new history, they are somehow lost from the equation. At the same time, the number of victims of Stalin's terror has been progressively inflated over recent years to the point where, in the wildest guesstimates, a third of the entire Soviet population is assumed to have been killed in the years leading up to the country's victory over Nazi Germany. The numbers remain a focus of huge academic controversy, partly because most of them are famine deaths which can only be extrapolated from unreliable demographic data. But the fact is that the opening of formerly secret Soviet archives has led many historians - such as the Americans J Arch Getty and Robert Thurston - to scale down sharply earlier cold war estimates of executions and gulag populations under Stalin. The figures are still horrific. For example, 799,455 people were recorded as having been executed between 1921 and 1953, and the labour camp population reached 2.5 million (most convicted for non-political offences) at its peak after the war. But these are a very long way from the kind of numbers relied on by Amis and his mentors.

For all their insistence on moral equivalence, Amis and even Conquest say they nevertheless "feel" the Holocaust was worse than Soviet repression. But the differences aren't just a matter of feelings. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka, no extermination camps built to murder people in their millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most bloody and destructive war in human history - in fact, it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine (something that eluded its tsarist predecessors). Part of the Soviet tragedy was that that victory was probably only possible because the country had undergone a forced industrial revolution in little more than a decade, in the very process of which the greatest crimes were committed. The achievements and failures of Soviet history cannot in any case be reduced to the Stalin period, any more than the role of communists - from the anti-fascist resistance to the campaigns for colonial freedom - can be defined simply by their relationship to the USSR.

Perhaps most grotesque in this postmodern calculus of political repression is the moral blindness displayed towards the record of colonialism. For most of the last century, vast swathes of the planet remained under direct imperial European rule, enforced with the most brutal violence by states that liked to see themselves as democracies. But somehow that is not included as the third leg of 20th-century tyranny, along with Nazism and communism. There is a much-lauded Black Book of Communism, but no such comprehensive indictment of the colonial record.

Consider a few examples. Up to 10 million Congolese are estimated to have died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early 1900s. Up to a million Algerians are estimated to have died in the war for independence from France in the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout the 20th-century British empire, the authorities gassed, bombed and massacred indigenous populations from Sudan to Iraq, Sierra Leone to Palestine, India to Malaya. And while Martin Amis worries that few remember the names of Soviet labour camps, who now commemorates the name of the Andaman islands penal colony, where 80,000 Indian political prisoners were routinely tortured and experimented on by British army doctors, or the huge Hola internment camp in Kenya where prisoners were beaten to death in the 1950s?

If Lenin and Stalin are regarded as having killed those who died of hunger in the famines of the 1920s and 1930s, then Churchill is certainly responsible for the 4 million deaths in the avoidable Bengal famine of 1943 - and earlier British governments are even more guilty of the still larger famines in late 19th and early 20th-century India, which claimed as many as 30 million victims under a punitive free market regime. And of course, in the post-colonial era, millions have been killed by US and other western forces or their surro gates in wars, interventions and coups from Vietnam to central America, Indonesia to southern Africa.

There is no major 20th-century political tradition without blood on its hands. But the battle over history is never really about the past - it's about the future. When Amis accuses the Bolsheviks of waging "war against human nature", he is making the classic conservative objection to radical social change. Those who write colonial barbarity out of 20th-century history want to legitimise the new liberal imperialism, just as those who demonise past attempts to build an alternative to capitalist society are determined to prove that there is none. The problem for the left now is not so much that it has failed to face up to its own history, but that it has become paralysed by the burden of it.

s.milne@guardian.co.uk

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The Times

Bush may have been saved from himself
Anatole Kaletsky

September 7 was a day that changed the world. No, that was not a misprint. Moved as we should all be by the anniversary of last year’s terrorist outrage, the geopolitical consequences of September 11 could be equalled or even exceeded by the effects of last Saturday’s agreement at Camp David between Tony Blair and George W. Bush: that America would seek the authority of the United Nations before attacking Iraq.

Cynics will scoff at almost every word in the sentence I have just written. It is surely just Downing Street spin to ascribe to the British Prime Minister any significant influence over America’s strategy in the Middle East. It is even more naive to use the word “agreement” for the policy that emerged from Camp David, since Mr Blair had committed himself in advance to support whatever the President might do or say.

Worst of all is that last weasel phrase I used: “America would seek the authority of the United Nations before attacking Iraq.” Doesn’t this clearly imply that Iraq will be attacked, come what may? Aren’t Mr Bush and Mr Blair using the UN process as a figleaf, to find some spurious legitimacy for a decision to go to war which has already been made? All these objections may well be true. Yet I still insist that America’s decision to go through the UN process — assuming that Mr Bush reaffirms it in his speech to the General Assembly today — will turn out to be an event of historic importance with beneficial implications for America, the Middle East and the world — not least, the global economy and financial markets.

I also insist that Mr Blair’s apparent role in persuading Mr Bush to work within the UN system was a triumph of global statesmanship of which the Prime Minister can be justifiably proud. Even if Mr Blair was only a supporting actor in the battle between hawks and doves, between unilateralists and internationalists in the Bush White House, his influence at Camp David was enough to justify all his pretensions to global leadership, all his mawkish rhetoric and all the kowtowing to America which many British commentators, myself included, have ridiculed in the past 12 months. To put it more bluntly: I owe Mr Blair an apology, as do many of the other cynics in Britain’s chattering classes.

Having got all that off my chest, let me explain why the world really could be changed by America’s decision to work through the UN to deal with President Saddam Hussein.

Let’s start with the narrowest but most dramatic issue. Will there be a war? Conventional wisdom maintains that a war in Iraq is inevitable, since Mr Bush will insist on a UN ultimatum so clear and specific that Saddam could not possibly comply. In my view, the opposite is true.

The clearer the UN demands and deadlines, the greater the probability that Saddam will decide to give up his weapons without a fight. Mr Bush’s decision to go through the UN means that the US is no longer insisting on “regime change” in Iraq as its main objective. Instead, America will now presumably insist on a UN resolution which goes well beyond mere inspections and authorises military action to enforce the 1991 ceasefire agreement between the UN and Iraq. This said that “Iraq shall unconditionally accept the destruction, removal or rendering harmless under international inspection”.

Such a resolution, provided it contains a clear-cut deadline for military action, could force and permit Saddam to do a deal. Iraq would have to give up all its weapons and open its borders permanently to military inspections. In effect, it would have to accept a long-term occupation by international forces under informal US control.

In exchange, Saddam could hope to continue enjoying the nonmilitary trappings of power, at least for the time being. If he played his cards right (especially in relation to Israel and the oil market), he might even hope to rehabilitate himself in Washington’s eyes and become one of America’s tolerable tyrants, another Mubarak or Musharraf, maybe even a latter-day King Saud.

My hunch is that some such peaceful compromise is now the most likely outcome of the US-Iraq confrontation. But let us suppose that Saddam refuses to meet a UN ultimatum, either because he believes it to be a bluff, or simply because he is mad. Then, a war in Iraq would be inevitable, but it would be a very different war from the one that seemed probable as recently as a week ago. A war to enforce a UN ultimatum would be totally different from a unilateral US attack on Iraq in two crucial ways.

First, it would be won quickly, with the smallest possible number of casualties and minimal economic costs. Secondly, it would be a war that made the world a safer, more stable place, by reinforcing the concept of international law and the power of the UN system to enforce it. Neither of these desirable characteristics would apply to a freelance operation against Iraq by America, with or without British support.

A UN-backed war would be much more likely to succeed, and to do so quickly, than a unilateral US operation, because it would provide the justification for Iraq’s neighbours to act as staging posts for thousands of GIs.

Of course, the US hawks have always claimed that they need no regional allies because they could defeat Iraq with paratroops and use Marine landings, and this might well be true. But it would be much safer and better for all concerned if this claim was never tested. Moreover, a quick Iraqi surrender would become infinitely more likely if America were known to have the option of launching a full-scale invasion with hundreds of thousands of ground troops from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait.

All this now looks conceivable, given America’s sudden willingness to use the UN process — and given the reciprocal understanding in Moscow, Beijing and Paris that America may accept the UN Security Council as a serious institution of world governance, provided it becomes a serious institution instead of a grandstand for diplomatic games.

This brings me to the political, moral and economic benefits of a multilateral approach which seemed to find favour at Camp David after the arrogance and unilateralism of Mr Bush’s first two years in power.

When Mr Bush proclaimed his new doctrine of “pre-emptive” wars against states in the “Axis of Evil” that might one day support “terror”, the world was justifiably horrified. It is often argued that Mr Bush’s offence was to challenge the ban on unprovoked — or “preventive” — aggression against sovereign states, a principle which has been the foundation of international law since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. But was this the real worry? The Washington hawks surely had a point when they noted that Europe has not been a model of peaceful coexistence since 1648.

The cause for alarm was not America’s rejection of the principle of national sovereignty. Sovereignty is constantly infringed in the modern world in a myriad different ways. What was really worrying about the axis of evil doctrine was Mr Bush’s claim that he, and he alone, had the right to decide which states were the evil outlaws and to punish them whenever he saw fit.

The axis of evil doctrine threatened to do irreparable damage to something far more important than the peace of Westphalia — the outline of a genuine legal framework to settle issues of war and peace, created after the Second World War around the checks and balances. This system was far from perfect but it has helped to avert global wars for the past 57 years. It is the only basis for a legal system that the world has got — and there has been an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen and improve it since the end of the Cold War.

Mr Bush branded Saddam as an outlaw — and rightly so. But he seemed also to push America away from the law-abiding community of nations. The axis of evil doctrine scoffed at the concept of international law and arrogated to America the right to be legislator, judge, jury, prosecutor and policeman in every future international confrontation.

It was Churchill, reputed to be George W. Bush’s favourite non-American politician, who said that “jaw-jaw is always better than war-war”. It was the American founding fathers who said that the purpose of writing a new constitution for the fledgeling United States of America was to create “a government of laws, not men”. Is it possible that Mr Bush

Key staff from US command move to Qatar
By Michael Evans

THE US command headquarters for any war against Iraq is intensifying its preparations by moving key staff to the new airbase complex in Qatar.

Senior American military sources say that staff and equipment from US Central Command, based in Tampa, Florida, will start the move tomorrow. It will be the latest and most significant sign of American preparations for war.

Central Command announced last night that a large element of the headquarters staff would be moving from Tampa to Qatar for an exercise in November and that some of the 600 staff who would be going may stay there permanently.

The decision was made by General Tommy Franks, Commander of US Central Command, who will take part in the three-week deployment.

Al-Udeid base, 20 miles from Doha, the Qatari capital, has been preparing for months for the arrival of an expanded US military presence to form a dedicated forward command centre for air operations.

General Franks has been masterminding the coalition campaign in Afghanistan from Florida, but compared with any Iraq operation there are relatively few — only 8,000 — US troops in Afghanistan. The expected attack on Iraq is likely to involve at least 60,000, and possibly 250,000 men. That would make it imperative for General Franks to operate from a forward base in the Gulf.

Britain is represented at the Tampa HQ by a senior officer and a staff of about 50. The present British officer acting as chief military liaison with General Franks and his staff is Major-General David Wilson, of the Royal Marines.

The British team will have been playing a part in General Franks’s battle plans for Iraq because of Tony Blair’s pledge to provide British troops for an attack if President Bush resolves to use force to overthrow President Saddam Hussein.

However, the British Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood, northwest London, said yesterday that there were no plans for General Wilson and his staff to move from Tampa to the Gulf.

Al-Udeid has the longest runway in the Gulf at 15,000ft. It has been developed at a cost of up to

$400 million (£260 million) to provide an alternative headquarters to the Prince Sultan airbase at al-Kharj, near Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia that the Americans used as their combined air operations centre in the 1991 Gulf War.

The Saudi Government has barred the Americans from making use of the base for any new offensive action against Iraq.

Foreign Editor's Briefing: September 12, 2002
By Bronwen Maddox

Sceptical Congress still likely to support attack on Baghdad

IS CONGRESS the shadow over President Bush’s landmark address today to the United Nations? As Bush tries to persuade the UN that Saddam Hussein should be overthrown, he knows that Congress, if not quite as hostile, is still waiting to be converted.

On Tuesday, as America was preparing to immerse itself in a day of remembrance, leaders of the Democrat-controlled Senate wrote to Bush expressing scepticism about his case for an attack. On the face of it, this might seem a provocative gesture, telling the Commander-in-Chief that he should not try to transfer the force of the country’s mourning to a new theatre of war.

Should he take this seriously, as a real bar to his plans for war? He will not have forgotten his father’s experience in coaxing authorisation for military force from Congress. President Bush Sr carried the Senate, then also controlled by the Democrats, by 52 to 47 on January 12, 1991, just five days before the first strikes on Baghdad.

On balance, he probably has no compelling reason to worry, provided that he does not neglect or irritate Capitol Hill. Congress is reminding him of its presence, of its fierce desire to be consulted, and of the seriousness with which it takes the battle on its own hands, the mid-term elections less than two months away.

But there was every sign in the manner of Congress’s confrontation to suggest that while it might delay approval more than Bush would like, it has not, at the moment, built up a head of steam against an attack on Iraq.

It was a certainty that as soon as Congress came back from its summer recess last week, it would give Bush a rough ride on Iraq. In the final two days before the break, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee summoned as witnesses more sceptics of an attack – from both parties – than Washington had heard in the whole year. It was inconceivable that it would not build on that unexpected success.

Hence the letter. The authors were Senator Joseph Biden, a Democrat from Delaware and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Richard Lugar, a leading Republican with particular influence on foreign affairs.

Although the senators said that “there is not consensus on many critical questions”, the demands boil down to two main themes. The first is that both Houses of Congress want more information; they are barely polite about the level of intelligence that they feel the White House has shared with them.

Some of this grumbling comes from those who appear genuinely to want Bush to make a powerful case that a pre-emptive attack is urgently needed, based on evidence of Saddam’s capabilities. But in a complaint much heard since September 11, some simply appear aggrieved that the White House has shared so little information with them.

The second grievance is the rush. Although Bush has made clear that he wants Congress to vote on this before it adjourns in mid-October for the elections, many this week said that they are unwilling. In arguing for delay, some Democrats point to the precedent of Bush’s father, who postponed the vote until after the November 1990 congressional elections.

That timetable, though, was determined partly by the United Nations Security Council, which voted by 12 to 2 on November 29, 1990, to sanction the use of force if Iraq did not withdraw from Kuwait by January 15. The crucial Senate vote occurred on a Saturday, after three days of debate, and just three days ahead of the UN deadline. Despite the closeness of the Senate vote (the House passed the measure by 250 to 183), it did equip Bush Sr to act immediately when Iraq flouted the deadline.

Despite this week’s grumbling from Congress, as in 1991, it is the UN rather than Capitol Hill that presents Bush with his greatest challenge today.

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Daily Telegraph Before a shot had been fired, Colin Powell lost his battle
By Toby Harnden
(Filed: 12/09/2002)

There was a notable absentee from the guest list at Camp David at the weekend when Tony Blair flew in for a three-hour summit with President George W Bush.

A "Colin Powell" name plaque was still attached to one of the golf buggies used to transport the bigwigs from the helipad to the Laurel cabin where the talks were to be held, but America's Secretary of State had departed just as the Prime Minister arrived.

One British official insisted, however, that Mr Powell was still "in the driving seat", because Mr Bush had "bought the Powell-Blair line" that it was essential to go to the United Nations before unleashing war on Saddam Hussein.

It is difficult to know whether this was partly wishful thinking or unadulterated spin. Ever since September 11, when, as Mr Blair told last year's Labour Party conference, the "kaleidoscope" of world affairs was shaken, Mr Powell has been losing the big argument in the Bush Administration.

He is the arch-proponent of "containing" Saddam and committing American forces only after every conceivable diplomatic and economic avenue has been fully explored, and it is preposterous to argue that we would be going into a pre-emptive war if he were in control.

For the first hour of the Camp David summit, it was Vice-President Dick Cheney who mapped out the strategy for removing Saddam with the President and Prime Minister. Note-takers were also present, but only these three spoke.

Although he has not been as voluble as Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon chief, for the past year Mr Cheney has been the most powerful voice in the Bush Administration calling for Saddam to be removed before he can use his weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Cheney and "Rummy" - the Vice-President's former mentor in Gerald Ford's Administration - are the betes noires of the Powellites, diplomats who are almost pathologically cautious and see the world in shades of grey, rather than the black and white of good and evil.

Mr Powell has made it known he resents their hold on Mr Bush. During a recent foreign visit, he took a senior American ambassador aside and gave him a run-down on the state of the debate in Washington. When he briefed Mr Bush, he explained, the President was a "Harvard and Yale man" who understood the nuances of diplomacy.

It was only when he left the company of the Secretary of State and went to talk to "the others" that he became a "gun-toting West Texan". So Mr Powell shares the European caricature of Mr Bush and risks undermining the President by saying so.

Before the Gulf war of 1991, Mr Powell had similar qualms about President George Bush Snr. The general was described in one book as feeling that "it was almost as if the president had six-shooters in his hand and was blazing away".

It seems that Mr Blair has a much better understanding of American presidents. When he said that descriptions of the younger Mr Bush as a idiotic cowboy were "a parody of the George Bush that I know and work with", he deflated the Washington elite, which adores Mr Powell, as well as Labour Left-wingers.

Mr Blair's instincts on Iraq are closer to those of Mr Bush than Mr Powell's. This is a good thing, because, during the last war with Saddam, Mr Powell was just about as wrong as it is possible to be. And as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, it is here that he and Mr Cheney, who was then the defence secretary and is now the leader of "the others", have a history.

In fact, it is probably principally because Mr Cheney outmanoeuvred Mr Powell more than a decade ago that Kuwait is still an independent country. Before the Ba'athist dictator invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Mr Powell thought he was bluffing.

Once Saddam had invaded, the general argued that Saudi Arabia should be protected by deterrence while sanctions should be used to try to persuade Saddam to withdraw. Right up to the eve of military action to liberate Kuwait, Mr Powell believed that Saddam would withdraw.

In contrast, Mr Cheney was determined from the outset that Saddam had to be forcibly ejected from Kuwait; he correctly judged that the Iraqi leader was not a rational man who would make the same calculations as a reasonable citizen of the world like Mr Powell would.

Mr Cheney had to order Mr Powell to match the serious intent of the White House with effective military plans and to stop dragging his feet. Once it became clear Mr Cheney was fully backed by the president, Mr Powell fell into line and was able to direct a brilliant military victory.

Republican presidents have always been a bit too much for Mr Powell. When he was national security adviser to Ronald Reagan in 1987, he personally advised the president to remove the demand "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall" from his speech in Berlin. Mr Reagan stood his ground and the rest really is history. There is little danger of Mr Powell taking the lead in drafting Mr Bush's crucial speech to the UN general assembly today.

Tactically, it makes sense to go to the UN to seek a resolution that restates the previous resolutions that Saddam has violated and lays down an enforcement mechanism that includes military force. Even the act of seeking UN backing over Kosovo strengthened international resolve, even though the UN failed to deliver. Securing the backing of Congress also makes good sense.

Strategically, however, the decision to go to war has already been taken and no one should be under the illusion that Mr Bush will allow himself to be tied down by the strings of multilateralism. Still profoundly affected by September 11 - there were tears in his eyes as he spoke at the Pentagon yesterday - Mr Bush is not prepared simply to wait and see whether a potential threat materialises. Already, his decisive use of the power of presidency is causing the political tide to turn in his favour.

Mr Powell is now loyally arguing the President's case in perfect synchronicity with his old boss Mr Cheney, and his superb skills as a diplomat will be usefully deployed with the French, Russians and Chinese over the coming days and weeks. But there is no doubt which of Mr Bush's advisers has ultimately prevailed.

Leader The Americans' president
(Filed: 12/09/2002)

In his speeches yesterday, George W Bush did what he does best: he bolstered American confidence, forced Americans to look forward and reminded Americans of their own strength. What a difference a year makes.

At the beginning of his presidency, Mr Bush seemed to many outside America as a little boy lost. He seemed lacking in decision and understanding. Within three days of September 11, he had the measure of what had happened, as he showed at the memorial service in Washington's National Cathedral.

His mettle was again apparent on September 20, when he addressed the joint session of Congress. "We will direct every resource at our command . . . to the defeat of the global terror network. Every nation now has a decision to make: either you are with us, or you are against us." Americans needed this show of absolute resolve.

Mr Bush had appeared inarticulate, but he has turned his lack of eloquence to his advantage. That his speeches cost him considerable effort somehow makes them more winning. A parallel is George VI: because audiences knew he was a stammerer, they found themselves on his side.

Mr Bush's awkwardness made him more believable than his predecessor, Bill Clinton, with his glib words. If Europeans are struck by the crudity of his demeanour, they fail to realise that it is precisely his homeliness that adds to his appeal for Americans.

Over the past year, Mr Bush has shown himself to be a president for the Americans in the unexpected situation in which they found themselves. In the days after the World Trade Centre's towers fell, America's confidence was devastated; its spirit could have been September 11's greatest casualty.

Imagine what the reactions of Mr Clinton, say, or Al Gore might have been to September 11. Mr Gore's hallmark is caution; his finger-wagging attitude would have been woefully inadequate. Americans felt that Mr Bush was with them, not an external critic. He took America into war in Afghanistan, and the war was won.

Mr Bush's blunt approach came as relief from Mr Clinton's "I feel your pain" approach. Mr Bush did what Mr Clinton would never dare to do: he spoke of good and evil. And, to the embarrassment of British observers, he invokes God. "Our purpose as a nation is firm, yet our wounds are recent and unhealed and lead us to pray," he said last September 14.

To Americans, this seems not embarrassing, but natural and right. After September 11, Mr Bush's approval ratings were the second highest in American history, 88 per cent. Even now, despite some anxiety over war on Iraq, his ratings are 69 per cent - Mr Clinton's all-time high.

Mr Bush's go-it-alone stance and his tough talk have raised European hackles. But his attitude was what Americans needed. Mr Bush is responsible for America's recovery, as Rudolph Giuliani is responsible for New York's. Mr Bush speaks - today as last year - of Americans' future; their resolve, not their wounds. They might not have known it when he was elected, but Americans have found in Mr Bush a great leader.

Arab press attacks American 'hostility'
By Gerald Butt in Nicosia
(Filed: 12/09/2002)

The Arab press was yesterday largely critical of the way America has reacted to the September 11 attacks, although for the most part it condemned the loss of civilian lives.

Iraq praised the terrorist attacks, with the government-controlled al-Iqtissadi weekly carrying the banner headline, "September 11, God's punishment".

In the rest of the Arab world there was anger at what is seen as America's hostility to Arabs and Muslims.

It is Washington's perceived bias towards Israel over the conflict with the Palestinians that is a major influence on Arab attitudes to the US after the September 11 attacks.

The Arabs did not condone the attacks, wrote Lebanese commentator Abdel Wahab Badrakhan, "but if the US expects us to come out with demonstrations denouncing September 11 it will be disappointed. Instead of understanding Arab aspirations, America has given its blessing to Israeli tyranny."

Jordanian writer Sultan al-Hatab said that "since September 11, Ariel Sharon has been trying to give the impression that he is involved in a war against terrorism by equating Palestine with Afghanistan, and Arafat with bin Laden."

One of Jordan's most prominent commentators, Fahed Fanek, said that by linking terrorism and Islam the Bush administration was issuing "a direct invitation to Muslims to reciprocate the hatred in kind".

Mr Fanek also warned the US that an attack on Iraq would be "an open invitation to terrorism".

Algerian columnist Saeed Muqadim, suggesting that America might launch its first missile against Iraq on the anniversary, called on Arab leaders to mark the day by denouncing "not just terrorism, but the US administration as well".

The Saudi daily al-Riyadh said America had lost the universal backing it enjoyed immediately after September 11 because it was acting like a state above international law.

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Independent Hamish McRae: Germany to abandon euroland? It may yet come down to that

12 September 2002

There is a problem with Europe. But we don't know how serious it is and while we can see in general terms the causes of its difficulties it is hard to see quite what should be done about them.

The problem is that the recovery in the eurozone has stalled. It is at the moment still inching forward but there is a serious danger that it will experience a second leg to the recession. There is a very serious danger that some parts of the zone, Germany in particular, will slip back into negative growth. Even if Germany does escape recession it is unlikely that growth will be fast enough to make any inroads into its army, 4 million strong, of unemployed. Worse, both France and Italy, the other two big eurozone economies, show signs of suffering from the German disease, albeit so far in milder form.

At the moment all the private sector forecasters are downgrading their expectations for the eurozone this year. The Eurozone Barometer, which tracks 22 forecasters now comes out with only 0.9 per cent growth this year, which is pretty dire, though the figure for next year is a more respectable 2.2 per cent. The problem is partly slow growth in export demand, as you might expect, but more the lack of domestic demand. Private consumption is forecast to be up only 0.7 per cent. Add in lower company investment (which is down) and total domestic demand has gone negative, as the left-hand graph shows.

It has gone most negative in the largest economy, Germany, the red line on that graph, but as you can see it is also falling in France, the next largest.

Why? Well for Germany there is a plausible explanation: interest rates are too high. There is a rather technical way of calculating the "right" interest rate developed by an economist called John Taylor. It takes into account the equilibrium real interest rate, the current inflation rate, the output gap and the gap between actual inflation and targeted inflation. It is a useful guide. The economics team at ABN Amro has calculated the Taylor rule for the eurozone as a whole and for Germany and compared it with actual eurozone interest rates.

As you can see from the middle graph, actual interest rates (the yellow line) were too high both for Germany (the red line) and for the eurozone (the black line) through to 1999. But since then they have been about right for the eurozone as a whole – but far too high for Germany.

This is a terrible bind because there is nothing the German authorities can do about it. Worse, it now looks as though Germany has joined the eurozone at the wrong rate, a rate that is too high for its competitiveness. Again, short of exiting the eurozone and bringing back the mark (of which more in a moment) there is nothing the German authorities can do about it.

If Germany has the wrong monetary policy, it is also hemmed in on fiscal policy. Tax receipts are plunging and the deficit this year is now projected by several forecasters to rise above 3 per cent, the official ceiling (or floor) under the Stability and Growth Pact. The pact ought to be eased for France will probably breach it too, and Portugal is already over the top. But Germany, the main architect of the pact, is determined to stay below the 3 per cent – both parties in the forthcoming election say so – even though overall borrowing is stable at about 65 per cent of GDP. So Germany will have too tight a fiscal policy too.

But the eurozone problem is not just a German one. There is the wider issue of lack of consumption. Most Europeans, unlike Americans or Brits, seem to be frightened of spending their money.

I don't think we know why this should be the case. It may have something to do with the very high levels of unemployment in most of Europe. It may have something to do with the high tax take on earned income. It may be the result of the perceived rise in prices since the euro was introduced. The figures suggest that the rise was actually quite modest but that is not what people feel, or indeed what British tourists to the eurozone report back. In Greece there has just been a 24-hour consumer strike protesting at price increases. And if you are interested in consumer confidence, what people feel matters more than what the statisticians claim to be the case.

At any rate there is a factor x, an unexplained element in the mix, that is actually very disturbing for the economic health of the eurozone.

So what will happen? Structural reforms in Germany, put in place by the new government, whoever wins, will help a bit. But they will probably be inadequate for it is difficult for Germany to move without a social consensus and the electorate is not yet persuaded of the need for radical reform of the two things that most need doing: labour laws and pensions. There will be some general uplift in the eurozone next year, but at the bottom end of the expected range. GFC Economics, a research group, thinks there is a risk that growth will not accelerate and will stagnate at about 1 per cent. If that proved the case, it would not be enough to stop the present rise in unemployment carrying on skywards.

Rising unemployment is hugely expensive for those who remain in jobs: Germany now spends nearly 2 per cent of GDP on unemployment relief. Maybe 4 million unemployed is sustainable – though in human terms that level is deeply disturbing – but suppose it rose to 5 million?

More generally, if the argument above is right, then Germany is going to experience a decade or more of very slow growth. It may even slip into deflation, like Japan. What then?

Well it means that the eurozone will in general have very slow growth because it will be dragged down by its largest member. It is pretty unhelpful to Britain, for Germany remains our second-largest market for exports, after the US. We would have to redouble our efforts to diversify away from the continental European market and try to improve our trade relations with faster-growing markets elsewhere.

It may be that after five or 10 years of cold turkey, German costs come down enough to make it more competitive. Couple that with structural reforms and maybe Germany's technical excellence will enable it to struggle through. It may be that for the sake of social cohesion, west German workers will be prepared to see a continued squeeze on their living standards, just as they have for the past decade to help rebuild the infrastructure of the former East Germany.

Then there is the unthinkable. It may be that the mathematics will become unsustainable and Germany will be forced to devalue, readopt the mark and set interest rates appropriate to its needs.

Until a few weeks ago I had not heard anyone advance this even as a possibility. Now I have heard it more than once. My instinct is that this is all 10 years away, maybe longer. It would be very difficult for there is no mechanism for leaving the eurozone. But the mayhem of past few years have taught us that the unthinkable sometimes occurs.

Rupert Cornwell: A nation torn between sorrow, patriotism and fear

12 September 2002

Leading a wounded superpower in grieving remembrance, President George Bush went to the symbol of American military might yesterday to vow that the United States would win the war that started amid the death and destruction of 11 September 2001.

On a blue and red draped rostrum in front of the spot where American Airlines flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon's south-west façade, Mr Bush portrayed his country as embarked on a titanic battle between good and evil in "the first great struggle of a new century".

The enemy "won't be stopped by decency or a hint of conscience, but they will be stopped", he warned in a capital torn between sorrow, patriotism and fears of a new attack to mark the first anniversary of the worst terrorist atrocity of modern times. With the colour-coded national security alert at an unprecedented level of orange, indicating a "serious threat", weapons have been deployed at key Washington sites. As in the weeks after 11 September, Vice-President Dick Cheney has cancelled public engagements to vanish to a "secure undisclosed location".

"A year ago this was a battlefield," Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, emphasised in his own speech at the ceremony – and in some respects the battle visibly continues now.

Outside the Pentagon and elsewhere, anti-aircraft missile units armed with live ammunition were seen in the capital for the first time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Above the city, military planes flew, just as in the first days of shock a year ago.

But the Pentagon not only symbolises grief and American power – the building where the battle plans in the war on terrorism are finalised – it has become an emblem of renewal, as the US heals the physical, if not the psychological scars of 11 September 2001.

A rebuilding programme named Project Phoenix has competed the $500m (£322m) of repairs way ahead of schedule and well under the budgeted cost of $700m (£450m). As long planned, yesterday's anniversary became the day that workers returned to all five floors of the Pentagon's south-west outer E Ring, rebuilt in the same honey-coloured Iniana limestone used for the original construction in 1941.

For an hour, however, the site became half-church, half-patriotic shrine as Mr Bush and Mr Rumsfeld led 14,000 people in remembrance of the 184 people who died there, 125 in the building, the rest on board the hijacked plane.

In a poignant touch, 100 Washington area schoolchildren, classmates of children who died in the disaster or whose parents died, recited the Pledge of Allegiance. At 9.37am, the moment the aircraft hit the building, the crowd fell silent beneath a line of American flags.

On one window a sign was taped, reading "Marian, we miss you." Mr Bush sat still, his eyes closed then blinking briefly, as he clasped hands with his wife Laura. Beside him Mr Rumsfeld, the harshly spoken physical embodiment of US determination to crush the terrorists, sat peering out over the crowd, brushing his hair back with his hand in the way he does at his combative Pentagon news conferences.

As the national anthem began, the American flag flown at the site immediately after the crash was unfurled from the roof of the repaired area. At first the fabric would not unfold properly, held back by the breeze, but then it dropped into its appointed place. "One year ago, men, women and children were killed here because they were Americans, because this place is a symbol of our country's might and resolve," said Mr Bush, who later visited Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and then ground zero in lower Manhattan, the two other sites that will for ever be connected with 11 September.

Last night the President was to deliver a national televised address from Ellis Island in New York, with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop, again symbolising the US values he insists al-Qa'ida failed to destroy.

"The terrorists chose this target hoping to demoralise our country, but they did not succeed," he told the assembly at the Pentagon. "Within minutes brave men and women were rescuing their comrades. Within hours in this building the planning began for a military response. Within weeks, commands went forth from this place to liberate and cleanse the terrorist camps. Within one year this great building has been made whole once again. The murder of innocents cannot be explained, only endured."

But the victims did not die in vain. Their loss moved a nation to action, in a war now being waged on many fronts. "We have captured more than 2,000 terrorists," while "a larger number of killers have met their end in combat". Obliquely but unmistakably, the President warned of a war against Iraq which would also be directed from the Pentagon. Despite the successes in Afghanistan, "a great deal is left to do", he said. "The greatest tasks and the greatest dangers will fall to the armed forces of the US".

The terrorists had intended 11 September to be "a day when innocents died", Mr Rumsfeld said. "But they failed, Instead it was a day when heroes were born."

Will a war really liberate these exhausted people?

Tony Blair must convince us that a war on Iraq would bring benefits to the Iraqi people and the region

By Natasha Walter

12 September 2002

Now that Tony Blair's campaign to win the British public over to war has begun in earnest, he knows that he must convince on two fronts. First, he must convince us that Saddam Hussein poses a direct threat to our safety. Second, he must convince us that a war on Iraq would bring benefits to the Iraqi people and the entire region.

This was the way that the war in Afghanistan was sold to us, too: not just as a war to protect our safety, but a war to help the Afghans. Those who were against war then were accused of wanting to abandon the Afghan people to the rule of the Taliban, and those who are against war now are accused of being prepared to abandon the Iraqi people to their fate under a terrible dictator.

Pro-war writers on the left as well as the right have therefore decided that this war is worth supporting because it could be a war to liberate the Iraqi people. Nick Cohen has asked: "How can the people of Iraq overthrow their tyrant without foreign help?" Christopher Hitchens has joined in: "Who would be the beneficiaries of an intervention? Only the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples."

Because it centres on humanitarian issues, this is the argument for war that tends to muffle the doves. Tony Blair knows it, and that is why at the TUC conference in Blackpool, he was careful to list Saddam Hussein's actions against his own people as the most egregious acts of this dictator.

There are, indeed, Iraqi dissenters who sincerely believe that a war would lead to a better future for the Iraqis and the Kurds. But there are also many Iraqi dissenters who do not believe that. And before we say that a war is in the interests of the Iraqi people, we should listen to them, too.

I have recently been speaking to Iraqis who live in exile in order to try to understand more of the spectrum of Arab opinion. One Iraqi woman to whom I spoke yesterday has visited Iraq more than once over the last couple of years. She has spoken in private to family and acquaintances and has gained some idea of how many Iraqis feel about the prospect of impending war.

"I can categorically say to you," she said, "that this is not right, to try to liberate the Iraqi people through war. They are so exhausted by war and by sanctions. Of course, they want this regime to change, but for them the most scary thing is war. They say they are coping now but they cannot cope with war. We talk about the fear of war. They do not forget the experience of 1991. The bomb damage is still there in the country, and it is still there in people's hearts and minds. Again and again, they ask me: 'Why are they interfering again with our affairs? Isn't it enough, the sanctions, the bombing?' Yes, even those people who are against Saddam Hussein, they say this."

After a brief explosion of interest in the aftermath of September 11, there is now little space in the Western media to explore the views of Arabs. That means it is easy to talk about regime change without thinking about the bodies caught in burning buildings, the grieving families, the widows, the orphans: such suffering only seems to be real to us if it occurs in Manhattan. But understandably the Iraqis I spoke to could not stop speaking of their fear of the deaths of ordinary people, their own families, their own friends. Who should decide if this is a price worth paying in order to put paid to Saddam Hussein?

If the Iraqis I spoke to felt that this was not a price worth paying, that is because they felt that no one can predict what Iraq's post-war future would be. Certainly, many Iraqis felt utterly betrayed when, despite grand promises, the US decided not to target and topple Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War; but that does not mean that they necessarily feel the way forward is another wave of attacks on their people. "The US is deeply mistaken if it thinks it will find gratitude in Iraq [after a war]," one Iraqi dissenter who was forced to leave Iraq told me. "The people of Iraq feel that they have been cruelly treated by the US and neglected by Europe."

The US now talks of promoting a democracy in Iraq, but its history of supporting tyrannical regimes throughout the world – including, in the past, Saddam Hussein – can make that promise sound a little thin. The current line from the pro-war camp is that the West now sees the error of its ways and wants to export democracy. Afghanistan is constantly held up by these pro-war writers as the great success story; but the situation there is still fragile and unpredictable, and if you go to Afghanistan you hear great bitterness voiced by ordinary people at the Americans' readiness to do business with the old warlords.

The Iraqis I spoke to were certainly unconvinced by the idea that war could provide a route to democracy in Iraq. They thought it was more likely that the result would be a puppet regime that would kowtow to the US and Saudi Arabia. Or they dreaded the disintegration of Iraq, and its fragmentation, in a deadly civil war. Mundher Adhami, an Iraqi who has signed a recently published statement against the war, said to me: "I think the US is underestimating the possibility of the disintegration that could result from such a war. It could result in a very fragile situation, in which any nasty weapons that exist in the region might be used. It is very shortsighted of the US not to see the possibility of civil war."

Instead of war, they spoke of wanting to see the promotion of democracy by other means, and talked about the lifting of sanctions; the promotion of peace throughout the region, including in Palestine; the opening of channels of communication with ordinary Iraqi people and the encouragement of opposition movements within Iraq.

If ordinary Iraqis do not believe that a war is the best way to find liberation from their tyrant, perhaps we should listen. After all, the two justifications for war – protecting the West and bringing benefits to the Middle East – are not separate. They are linked.

The liberal Iraqis I spoke to are sceptical that war can benefit Iraq, and if they are right, then even if Saddam Hussein is removed, we will be no safer. Although Bush and Blair present the greatest threat to our security as Saddam Hussein, in fact, if we have learnt anything from the unexpected terror of 11 September, it is that the immediate threat that faces us now does not come from nation states. A leader such as Saddam is viciously cruel to his own people and his neighbours, but he wants to survive. As military experts have been arguing, it is unlikely that such a survivor would now make a pre-emptive strike on the West and so write his own death warrant.

The great threat to the West now comes from tiny minorities in societies that have been damaged and fragmented. So if Iraqis feel that war will further harm their already damaged society, perhaps we should listen to them.

One Iraqi, who currently works as an academic in Britain, told me: "It may be unpleasant or uncouth to suggest that in some way the United States asked for 11 September, but if there is there is a war with Iraq, then they would be asking for a lot more terrorism."

n.walter@btinternet.com

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A conservative view of Europe

By Geoffrey Howe

Published: September 11 2002 19:37 | Last Updated: September 11 2002 19:37

Something remarkable has happened within the British government. Years of scepticism towards the idea of a European constitution have been quietly abandoned.

This symbolic retreat by the UK - signalled in a few, almost casual lines of a speech by Jack Straw, foreign secretary - has been presented as an imaginative attempt to set the European political agenda. But in the rest of Europe few leaders share Mr Straw's vision.

Most constitution-builders are looking for a slightly more arresting prospectus than a mere set of "golf club rules", as Mr Straw endearingly styled his plan. The British proposal for "a simple set of principles setting out what the European Union is for and showing that national governments are the primary source of democratic legitimacy" - however desirable - is unlikely to galvanise the rest of Europe.

Fortunately, nor is the more ambitious line pushed by some within the Commission and the European Parliament. Rather, the interesting debate in the convention on the future of Europe centres on a wide range of ideas for simplifying the treaties, streamlining the central institutions, boosting subsidiarity and better involving national parliaments. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, for example, has proposed a new European congress of MEPs and national MPs to vote on crucial Council decisions.

This week, a number of pro-European British Conservatives, including Leon Brittan, Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine, Douglas Hurd and myself, have published a contribution to the convention debate.* We hope it will embolden the UK government to take clearer, more active positions on issues and encourage pragmatists on the Continent to support institutional changes that can improve the way the EU functions without converting it into a federal state.

None of the authors of our memorandum to the convention is a great enthusiast for a European constitution. Equally, all of us accept that the existing treaties establish a de facto European constitutional order. The central issue is what exactly a new constitutional treaty should contain.

Certainly, we would welcome a succinct, legally binding declaration of general principles of the sort Mr Straw has proposed, as one part of a new treaty. But we are conscious of its likely limitations. For that reason, we support a Europe-wide equivalent of a states' rights clause - which exists in the US and Germany - as well as the creation of a council of national parliamentarians, to police subsidiarity and scrutinise pending EU legislation. The European Court of Justice could give opinions on the subsidiarity implications of draft law at the request of this new body.

The treaties should be split in two, with key institutional and policy provisions requiring full national ratification, as now, but with lesser issues open to a lighter amendment process still based on unanimity among governments.

To promote clarity and legitimacy in EU decision-making, the Council must be much more open to the public when it makes law. Conversely, to encourage greater discipline and responsibility, the European parliament should be subject to the possibility of dissolution, by joint agreement of the Council and Commission. However, both these latter institutions are themselves in need of reform.

We support the Blair-Aznar-Berlusconi proposal for a longer-term president of the Council, chosen by heads of government. A team presidency of this individual and two rotating representatives of member states would chair the various Council meetings. The Council has already reduced the number of formations in which it gathers from 16 to nine. The Commission now needs to match that, with a big reduction in its - nearly 30 - directorates-general.

The college of commissioners could be divided between (fewer) full commissioners, each in charge of a department, and a new tier of assistant or junior commissioners, mirroring the structure of national governments. It would also mean that each member state in an enlarged EU could still nominate one commissioner, rather than some states having none, as is planned.

Last, the penalties for non-application of EU laws by member states need to be greatly increased. The European Court of Justice should have a fast-track procedure for such cases and be empowered not only to impose fines but also to deprive states of their access to EU spending programmes - and, in extreme cases, to suspend their voting rights in the Council as well.

This approach to the debate on the future of Europe is, regrettably, unlikely to be endorsed by the Conservative party leadership. But it is the kind of practical but bold agenda that Mr Blair in Britain and many centre-right prime ministers on the Continent should consider in the coming months.

Lord Howe was UK chancellor of the exchequer 1979-83, foreign secretary 1983-89 and deputy prime minister 1989-90

* The Future of the EU: a positive Conservative approach, available at www.cge.org.uk

America uncovered

By David Hale

Published: September 11 2002 19:47 | Last Updated: September 11 2002 19:47

One of the great unresolved issues from September 11 is the US government's role in insuring against terrorism risk.

The US is unusual among the leading industrial nations in having no coherent government policy to help the private sector insure against terrorism. Most insurance companies have suspended all coverage for terrorism unless their clients buy a policy specifically focused on that risk. Such policies are usually far more expensive and restrictive than previous policies. If there were another attack, it is likely that there would be no significant insurance coverage for either the destruction of property or the cost of business disruption.

The Bush administration recognised the need for the government to play a greater role in insuring against terrorism risk last October. It proposed to Congress that the government would help to cover 80 per cent of the cost of terrorist attacks after the first $10bn of losses; the private sector would cover the remaining 20 per cent. The House voted to lend insurance companies money to cover their losses after the first $1bn. The Senate followed the original White House plan.

Despite the differences, there was strong support for government intervention until the issue reached an impasse over the question of tort - or litigation - reform.

The House Republicans want to limit the ability of tort lawyers to sue both the government and the private sector for punitive damages resulting from terrorist attacks. Senate Democrats, by contrast, will accept some protection for the government in punitive damage cases but not the private sector - Democrats do not want to accept constraints on punitive damages because they depend heavily upon the tort lawyers for campaign contributions. It is a remarkable commentary on the power of US litigation lawyers that they have been able to delay development of an effective policy for insuring against terrorism risk.

The insurance industry needs help because the high cost of September 11 and the falling stock market have produce d a huge decline in its policyholder surplus: the surplus fell by $18bn during 2000 because of the equity market and has fallen another $40bn because of September 11. The surplus could easily decline again this year because of the lagged costs of September 11 and the big losses that insurance companies are experiencing on their portfolios of both equities ($155bn) and bonds ($519bn). As a result, there is only $80bn of capital left to support commercial risk exposure.

The industry has announced big price increases during the past nine months in order to restore its financial health. In modern times, property/casualty insurance premiums have fluctuated between 3 per cent and 4 per cent of gross domestic product. Between 1999 and 2001, they were just over 3 per cent of GDP. If the industry is to restore its balance sheet strength, premiums will probably have to rise back to at least 4 per cent of GDP - close to $400bn, compared with $300bn last year.

While the industry has tried to reduce its exposure to property damage resulting from terrorist attacks, it will continue to have other areas of vulnerability with or without congressional intervention. In the case of the World Trade Center, the projected losses from the destruction of the buildings are about $10bn. The other losses include $10bn for other liabilities, $2.7bn for li