A Lebanese journalist of Al-Jazeera television carries a placard during a protest outside the office in Beirut, Nov. 24. (Reuters Photo)

Was President Bush’s alleged plot to bomb
al Jazeera’s international headquarters an “outlandish“ accusation as the White House now claims? Or was it a deadly serious option on the table?
Until a news organization or British official defies the Official Secrets Act and publishes the 5-page memo, we have no way of knowing. But what we do know is that at the time of Bush’s April 16, 2004 White House meeting with Tony Blair, the Bush administration was in the throws of a very public, high-level temper tantrum directed against al Jazeera.
The Bush-Blair summit took place at the peak of the first US siege of Fallujah and al Jazeera was once again there to witness the slaughter and the fierce resistance.
What al Jazeera was doing in Fallujah is exactly what it was doing when the US bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001 and when US forces killed al Jazeera’s Baghdad correspondent, Tareq Ayoub, during the April 2003 occupation of Baghdad. Al Jazeera was witnessing and reporting on events Washington did not want the world to see.
The Fallujah offensive was one of the bloodiest assaults of the US occupation of Iraq.
On April 5, 2004 US forces laid siege to city in a revenge attack sparked by the killing of 4 Blackwater mercenaries days earlier. When the US forces, led by the First Marine Expeditionary Force, attempted to take Fallujah on April 7, they faced fierce guerilla resistance.
A US helicopter attacked a mosque, hitting the minaret and killing at least a dozen people. Within a week, some 600 Iraqis were dead, many of them women and children. By April 9, some 30 Marines had been killed and Fallujah had become a symbol of resistance against the occupation.
What was more devastating than the direct resistance US forces encountered in Fallujah was the effect the story of the defense and the slaughter of the innocents was having on the broader Iraqi population.
A handful of unembedded journalists, most prominently from
al Jazeera, were providing the world with independent, eyewitness accounts. Al Jazeera’s camera crew was also uploading video of the devastation for all the world, including Iraqis, to see.
Inspired by the defense of Fallujah and outraged by the US onslaught, smaller uprisings broke out across Iraq, as members of the Iraqi police and army abandoned their posts, some joining the resistance.
Faced with a devastating public relations disaster, US officials did what they do best--they attacked the messenger. On April 11, with the unembedded reporters exposing the reality of the siege of Fallujah, Senior military spokesperson Mark Kimmitt declared, “The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies.“ A few days later, on April 15, Rumsfeld echoed those remarks calling al Jazeera “vicious.“
It was the very next day, according to the Daily Mirror, that Bush told Blair of his plan. “He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere,“ a source told The Mirror. “Blair replied that would cause a big problem. There’s no doubt what Bush wanted to do--and no doubt Blair didn’t want him to do it.“
To date, there has been no credible rejection of the Mirror’s report from the White House or 10 Downing Street.
Jeremy Scahill
COMMONDREAMS.ORG

Much to the relief of countries on the periphery of Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors decided on Thursday not to refer Iran’s case to the UN Security Council at the moment.
If this had been done the world would have had another crisis of great magnitude. Instead, the board has called on Tehran to resume its dialogue with the EU-3 which is seeking to broaden the base of the talks by taking up a Russian proposal floated recently. This has two advantages. First, the Russian proposal has a good chance of being accepted by Iran--at least it has not been rejected so far. Second, it would involve the Russians in the negotiations and thus act as a counterweight to the American hardline stance on the nuclear issue that provokes Tehran.
The plan which is now under consideration would allow Iran to convert uranium ore into gas and then pass it on to Russia to be enriched for use as fuel in its reactors. Given its good ties with Moscow, Tehran should feel confident about an uninterrupted supply of enriched uranium, which is its major concern.
The western powers, which fear that Iran is trying to master sensitive enrichment technology, should feel assured that the Russian proposal would introduce a significant gap in the nuclear fuel cycle, thus preempting the manufacture of weapons. Since Iran has repeatedly affirmed that it has no plans to manufacture nuclear weapons, it should give positive consideration to this proposal. Its relations with Russia have been good and there is no reason why it should not have confidence in Moscow for its nuclear fuel cycle.
This would require Iran to mothball its enrichment plant in Natanz. It is also important that Iran does not try to test the EU-3’s patience by venturing to enrich uranium during the course of the talks that are to resume next month. These are significant issues which should be addressed now and resolved. Brushing them aside would be unwise. Ignoring the Iran question at this stage, when much can be done to resolve it peacefully, would amount to waiting for the crisis to go out of hand.
DAWN.COM

Most of what has been written or said to depict Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s departure from the Likud Party is comparable to an “earthquake“, the “eruption of a volcano“ and has, without a doubt, turned the Israeli political map “topsy-turvy“ to borrow Haaretz Gideon Samet’s phrase.
Associated Press writer Ramit Plushnick-Masti perceived the event as part of Sharon’s “slow metamorphosis from hawk to moderate“. Bloomberg.org rushed, hours after Sharon’s move, examining the opinion of mostly pro-Israeli apologists. “Israel’s political upheaval may advance Mideast peace prospects,“ it hastily concluded.
The depiction of Sharon as a moderate, risking it all to salvage the peace process, along with his more progressive colleagues, is a misguided, if not embarrassing, inference, to say the least.
The upheaval and subsequent reshuffle that recently took place among the Labour Party rank had more to do with redefining Israel’s priorities than with achieving peace with the Palestinians. The deposing of the elitist deputy prime minister and former Labour Party leader, Shimon Peres, in favour of the more socialist-like Amir Peretz is in essence an attempt to reroute the government’s focus and resources to poorer Israeli communities whose plight has deteriorated as a result of the government’s endless spending on its ongoing illegal settlements projects in the West Bank.
Nonetheless, the mayhem in the Likud Party is essentially ideological. Though the outcome of the Israeli debacle will implausibly yield a full recognition of long-denied Palestinian rights and the acceptance, without further spins, of international law as the basis of resolving the conflict, one must not unwisely write off scenarios that will possibly emerge following the March 2006 elections.
The Likud and Sharon’s emerging political party have not changed, nor have they substantially altered their ideological interpretation of their conflict with the Palestinians. Even in the midst of the disengagement hype, Sharon never ceased to assure Israelis that the move is tactical, that his commitment to the country’s expansionist project is as ever strong and so forth.
The prevailing understanding among Israeli officials was that the “painful“ and indeed marginal withdrawal from Gaza was merely aimed at altering demographics in favour of Israel, converging the country’s resources to expand West Bank settlements and indefinitely postponing the peace process with the Palestinians. The strategy proved a winner when the Americans gave the nod to the Israeli assertion that no such process was needed for the time being until Palestinians disarm, quit incitement, prove able to govern themselves, etc.
Empowered with the unadulterated American support and a corruptible Palestinian leadership, Sharon is hoping to persist in implementing his vision that, in his opinion, will secure and irrevocably define Israel’s borders--even if at the expense of Palestinian land and rights. Thus, if one must accept that Sharon has indeed metamorphosed from one character to another, it was from a right-wing ideologue to a right-wing strategist. Alas, for the Palestinians the end result is the same.
The changes in the Israeli political scene must not be discounted as an exclusively Israeli affair in its possible outcomes or dismissed as inconsequential to the conflict. But to exaggerate its meaning to the peace process or to indulge in vague terminology with no particular meaning or usefulness, is to once again allow Sharon’s design to prevail, placing Palestinians under yet more pressure to “reciprocate“ while their land is being actively stolen and as their aspiration for a meaningfully sovereign state is gravely diminished.
Ramzy Baroud
PALESTINECHRONICLE.COM

A Chinese woman receives water in the city of Harbin, the capital of northeastern Heilongjiang province, Nov. 26. (Reuters Photo)

It may be a long time before the full damage of the disastrous benzene spill near the Chinese city of Harbin and its effect on the health of its nine million inhabitants become known. However, it is already clear that this is an extremely serious environmental event.
As the 50-mile slick of poisonous benzene moves down the Songhua, it will travel into Russia and have similar disruptive effects on the water supplies of the Siberian city of Khabarovsk. Meanwhile every mile of its journey the Songhua will be depositing poisons in the riverbed. These will enter the food chain via the fish that will eventually arrive to replace the many hundreds of thousands of fish that have currently perished.
This environmental calamity suggests that China may be paying too high a price for its breakneck economic growth. After the almost weekly loss of miners’ lives in the country’s poorly protected coal pits, the authorities were shamed into closing down some mines where safety precautions were nonexistent. Now again, with the benzene plant upstream from Harbin, it is quite clear that the safety systems failed utterly.
No industrial center can avoid the occasional small spillage of chemicals. However, to permit over 100 metric tons of highly poisonous material to escape and, worse, to flow into a major river, suggests major environmental malpractice and colossal mismanagement.
Investigation teams have reportedly arrived from Beijing and arrests among the benzene plant’s bosses are expected. Yet these individuals, however immediately culpable they may be, must not be used as scapegoats to divert attention away from the deeper malaise throughout Chinese industry.
Many Chinese will argue that they are too busy to worry about the environmental precautions considered essential in state-of-the-art chemical plants. They might point to the serious mistakes made way back in the European and North American industrial revolutions.
They would, however, be wrong on both counts. The injustices and disasters that took place 150 years ago occurred largely because people knew no better. Modern safety and environmental technology now exists in large measure because industrialized states learned the hard way how to avoid disastrous accidents.
Moreover, no one can be too busy to protect their plant and the millions of people around it. Though its economy is making money, China is not plowing enough capital back into tackling the basic issues of environment and safety. The authorities need to take a hard and urgent look at their industrial plants. They also need to tackle contingency planning, which in the Harbin tragedy appears to have been completely lacking.
There is far more at stake here than the health of its people. China is immensely proud of its astonishing achievements, be they in manufacturing or outer space. The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing will showcase this thrusting new China. However, as long as dangerous petrochemical plants and decrepit mines continue to be tolerated by the authorities, that bold new image will be flawed and China’s international reputation will be sullied.
ARABNEWS.COM

Granted, she is no Margaret Thatcher. But Angela Merkel is the first female chancellor in German history, and there are some similarities. While Thatcher’s route to the top was paved with true ideological enemies such as Miners’ Union leader Arthur Scargill, Merkel quietly pushed aside good friends.
Rumor has it that she will hang a painting of Catherine the Great in her office in the Berlin chancellery. That cruel czarina remained an exotic exception in Russia’s violent history, whereas Merkel, married and a physicist by training, is anything but exotic. Her public demeanor, a curious mixture of almost ironic detachment and an obvious abhorrence of the mutual back-slapping typical of her male competitors, has defined her political image to her detriment.
In the run-up to the recent election she took her party, the conservative CDU, from a 44 percent poll rating in May to a miserable 35 percent in September, with the Social Democrats behind by just 1 percent. The reason for that slide was obvious: Her unemotional, uncharismatic style did not click with the German people. If the election campaign had lasted another week, Schroeder might have won it--and he certainly thought he deserved to, as he made clear to Merkel in a memorable TV confrontation after the count.
Yet Merkel remained cool. Above all other qualities, that are her real strength: Looking at Berlin’s political landscape and its quarrelsome natives as if it were a small laboratory setup, populated by creatures easily managed by a regime of sanctions and rewards. It was the colossus himself, Helmut Kohl, who discovered the political talent of Merkel in 1991 among those young people who brought down East Germany’s Communist regime. He made her his minister for the environment and called her “mein Madchen“, my girl: The greatest mistake of his life. It was Merkel who, almost single-handedly, removed Kohl from the leadership of his party after the election defeat of 1998, after it became known that he had illegally accepted anonymous party donations. It was a Shakespearean performance.
Her male rivals kept telling each other and the press not to underestimate her ambition, while underestimating it themselves, and blocking each other on their way to fill a power vacuum created by Merkel’s machinations.
Now that she has established herself as the queen bee of Germany in a grand coalition with the Social Democrats, she faces four challenges: First, to live up to her own election promises; second, to stifle her Cabinet members on the left and their voters’ desire for the preservation of the welfare state; third, budgetary stability in times of unemployment; and fourth, the bleak situation of East Germany, which is bleeding its young people into the west and continues to slide into a sad state of hopelessness.
Merkel’s foreign policy views are as yet vague and unadulterated by experience. She does not speak English well, nor French, unlike most of her political peers. Her political and cultural socialization took place behind the Iron Curtain. She will attend her first meetings with Europe’s leaders with the same attitude that defined her career to the top--listening quietly, exposing an almost meek side of herself. In reality she is anything but meek, as some political heavyweights she shouldered out of the way have learned. But her biggest challenge is rekindling the European spirit after Britain’s miserable presidency and amid France’s continuing self-absorption, and this gives her a chance of making a mark in history besides being Germany’s first woman leader.
GUARDIAN.CO.UK

Anniversaries have the effect of forcing people to take stock of neglected problems. Ten years ago, an agreement reached at an Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio, put an end to a brutal civil war in Bosnia, which had left 200,000 dead and millions homeless. The accords were justifiably hailed as a triumph of American and European diplomacy. But the price of peace was to leave Bosnia dysfunctional, with two entities, 10 cantons and three presidents. It has muddled through only because a lot of power is still vested in a foreign high representative backed by foreign troops.
Fortunately, the 10th anniversary of Dayton has prompted American and European officials to start thinking about what’s next. Last month, an agreement was reached to begin building a national police force. Last weekend, Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, brought Bosnian politicians together in Washington and got them to agree to work on constitutional changes. They also agreed to press for the capture of the two most-wanted war criminals from the conflict, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. And this week the Bosnians begin talks on accession to the European Union.
The task of building a country out of a battlefield in which former combatants still live largely apart and identify more with their separate tribes than with a country called Bosnia and Herzegovina is daunting. The Serbs in particular are loath to surrender any powers over their entity, the Republika Srpska, to a central government.
Ten years ago, Richard C. Holbrooke of the United States and other Western mediators performed a remarkable feat in wrenching the Bosnian Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims from each others’ throats. But the Dayton accords have become an obstacle to Bosnia’s development. Without an effective national government, Bosnia has been unable to develop its economy, with the result that unemployment is at about 40 percent and large numbers of people subsist on a gray or black market. So long as the Bosnians remain wards of the international community, they will only slide further away from their place among the new nations of Europe.
The Bosnians themselves have to take it from here. The first step is to accept that their only future is in overcoming ancient hatreds and forming an effective Bosnian government.
IHT.COM