 |
Wednesday,
March 19, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
|
Cook wins applause from Labour MPs War to be greeted with protests
|
|
|
Media and the Iraq crisis
Blix lists 12 tasks Baghdad must fulfil |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chirac
decries US ultimatum to Iraq Paris, March 18 French President Jacques Chirac suggested today that the USA was defying the international community with its ultimatum to Mr Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq or face war. The USA bears a “heavy responsibility” for the consequences, Mr Chirac warned in a statement.
|
|
Cook
wins applause from Labour MPs London, March 18 In a Commons statement that followed his resignation as leader last evening, he warned that international alliances were under threat now that the diplomatic route had been abandoned. After pledging his continued support for Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mr Cook, who had been a Labour front-bencher for 17 years, hoped that Mr Blair would continue to lead “my party and I hope he will continue to be successful”. The resignation is seen as a blow to Mr Blair, coming just hours before he is due to ask MPs to authorise the use of “all means necessary” to disarm Iraq. After paying tribute to the Prime Minister’s efforts to try to secure a second UN resolution, the former Foreign Secretary said it was not possible “now to pretend those efforts were of no importance”. His resignation statement came after his successor as Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had spoken in favour of an attack on Iraq. Mr Cook dismissed the argument that French President Chirac had alone stopped a resolution, saying that to think that was to “delude ourselves”. Neither NATO, nor the EU, nor the Security Council supported Britain and the USA, he said. Mr Cook said Iraq’s military strength was less than half of what it was at the time of the last Gulf war and added it was illogical to argue that Iraq was a threat that justified war. He dismissed Mr Blair’s claim that President Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the British, insisting that the Iraqi dictator had no weapons of mass destruction capable of being deployed against his enemies. Mr Cook said Britain was not a superpower and its interests were best protected “not by unilateralism, but by multilateralism” and added that Britain’s interests and the international alliances they depended upon were “an early casualty of war in which a shot has yet to be fired”.
PTI |
|
War to be greeted with protests Boston, March 18 They vow to block federal buildings, military compounds and streets in a rash of peaceful civil disobedience. They say they will walk out of college classes, picket outside city halls and state capitols, and recite prayers of mourning at interfaith services. With President George W. Bush signalling that war could be imminent, some anti-war groups were pressing supporters to begin civil disobedience immediately. “It is sort of an acknowledgment that we are probably not going to be able to stop the war,” said Joe Flood, who is helping to plan a student walkout from classes at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He said more than 1,000 persons had pledged to participate. Some plans for the first day or two of war are writ large, like paralysing traffic with bicycles and cars and disrupting commerce in San Francisco’s financial district. Others are small, like showing a single-lit candle on a web site of the United Church of Christ. Some are meant to be noisy, like a march in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with clanging pots and pans. Others will be quiet and solemn, like a vigil in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with Christian, Jewish and Muslim prayers. Many groups intend to carry out die-ins, where activists lie on the ground to symbolize war victims and to block passers-by.
Some students at Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania, intend to lower campus flags to half-staff. However, in Columbia, South Carolina, activists hope to serve up satire, making fun of the government’s anti-terrorism advice to homeowners. They want to plaster a federal building with duct tape and plastic sheeting. Eight opponents of war were arrested yesterday in Traverse City, Michigan, when they tried to block an army reserve convoy heading to a training area. One handcuffed himself to a truck and the other seven locked arms in front of the vehicle, the police said. In San Francisco, anti-war protesters shrouded themselves in body bags yesterday in front of the British consulate, chanting “no killing civilians in our name.” Some blocked traffic in the city’s financial district. The police in riot gear cleared an intersection and about 40 arrests were made. A pair of audacious peace activists painted “No War” atop one of the giant sails of Sydney’s landmark Opera House today just as Prime Minister John Howard committed Australian troops to an invasion of Iraq. The pair — a British man and an Australian — were arrested after they made a mockery of special anti-terrorism security supposedly in place around the harborside icon by painting their slogan on the building in giant red letters. In Manila, the Philippines police broke up a protest that formed outside the US Embassy there today shortly after President George W. Bush gave Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein 48 hours to flee his country or face a US-led invasion.
AP |
|
Media and the Iraq crisis ONLY a miracle can save Iraq from being attacked by the USA. Already over a million words a day from journalists doing the curtain-raiser are clogging the networks across the globe. When war actually breaks out even two million words may not be adequate to record all the gory details of the death and destruction that will follow. The British and the American media are streets ahead in filing details provided to them by a helpful military command structure that wants to paint Saddam Hussein as the demon responsible for the possible military action in West Asia. Readers in our part of the world should take the Western reports with more than a pinch of salt if they want to retain their faith in the worldwide anti-war protests. There are other options for getting an honest account of what happens in Iraq. Of the many responses of the Bush administration to events of September 11, 2001, one of the most significant and widely discussed was its intensified and greatly expanded propaganda programme for West Asia. Initiatives included the appointment of advertising executive Charlotte Beers to lead State Department efforts to win hearts and minds. The establishment of a radio network broadcasting pop music followed by an American slant to the news plus US government-sponsored Arabic language websites and placement of sponsored commercials and advertisements in West Asia media outlets are already in place. The Pentagon has put into place a parallel exercise by using handpicked and pliable journalists, some of them Pulitzer prize winners, to do their patriotic duty while covering the invasion of Iraq. But the more worrying aspect of the impending attack will be the safety of journalists reporting from the front. Sixteen media workers were killed when NATO destroyed the offices of Serbia’s state broadcaster in the 1999 conflict. A modest stone memorial stands just yards from the bombed-out site in Belgrade. Etched on it is a single word “zasto”? [why?]. This time the target of attack could well be the Iraqi state broadcaster. For America eliminating a few inconvenient journalists is the equivalent of swatting “them damn pesky flies”. Targeting of media facilities is a legal grey area. Under the Geneva Convention military targets have to make an “effective contribution to military action” and their destruction offer “a definite military advantage”. America has no respect for world opinion. It has ignored the authority of the United Nations. Will its hand be held back by the provisions of the Geneva Convention? However, those who have the advantage of having access to the internet can always pick up the more credible anti-war information by logging on to www.electroniciraq.net. If you click on “an open letter to Paul Wolfowitz” from a former student you will be reassured that the military action in Iraq ignored popular America anti-war protests. Both the teacher and the taught are Jews and have sound academic credentials. The letter from Josh Reubner to Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of State, among other things say:- “Lately I have come to the disturbing conclusion that the Bush Administration is using you as its “court Jew” par excellence. Rest assured, this is not a term that I learned during my studies at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies [SAIS]. Rather I picked it up in the course of my involvement with the Jewish peace movement which is calling simultaneously for an end to Israel’s self-destructive military occupation of Palestine and is helping to mobilize the millions of good-hearted Americans who have taken to the streets to protest the war of aggression that the Bush Administration is pedaling. “Court Jew” is a term that originates in the context of anti-Semitism in “enlightened” Europe. On that blood-soaked continent, the reigning monarchs and other despotic rulers thought up an ingenious system to perpetuate their oppressive systems of government. These shrewd, Machiavellian rulers made a psychologically brilliant pact with an elite, assimilationist group of Jewish subjects who craved nothing more than acceptance by the power structure of society.” The contents of the Iraq website are updated regularly. You would have a wide choice of news and views to select from. If you have the time click all, if not click on the headline that you find appealing. Click on “Canadian confiscation of anti-war tapes should never have taken”, “Argentine journalists leaving Iraq detained in Jordan”, “Keeping Americans in the dark”, “journalists back call for media protection as war in Iraq looms”, “CPJ expresses concern over embedding rules and non-embedded journalists” to get an idea of what the site is all about. |
|
Blix lists 12 tasks Baghdad must fulfil United Nations, March 18 Blix was expected to compile the list of “remaining key disarmament tasks” by the end of March but submitted it earlier at the instance of France, Russia and Germany. However, it came on the day when diplomacy ended and the USA decided to disarm Iraq by force. The inspectors could take months to complete verification but they have exhausted all their time. France wants a Security Council meeting at foreign Ministers’ level tomorrow to question Blix about his report and set a “realistic” timeframe for Iraq to disarm but council diplomats questions its usefulness as the deadline given by Washington to Saddam Hussein to leave the country would end that evening. However, members said they were contacting their capitals to see if their Foreign Ministers would be available for the meeting. The tasks are listed in the 83-page report circulated among the council members on Monday.
PTI |
|
Chirac decries US ultimatum to Iraq Paris, March 18 “This unilateral decision is contrary to the wishes of the UN Security Council and the international community which wants to pursue disarmament...,” said the statement from the presidential Elysee Palace. Mr Chirac reiterated what France had long maintained that efforts to solve the Iraq crisis by peaceful, diplomatic means must be exhausted before considering any recourse to force. However, in the increasingly tense trans-Atlantic climate the brief statement served to underscore the differences between Paris and Washington. Mr Chirac’s statement was issued hours after US President George W. Bush ordered the Iraqi leader to leave his country within 48 hours or face war. Mr Bush said on international television that Saddam’s exile was the only way for Iraq to avoid war. “Only the Security Council can legitimise the use of force,” Mr Chirac said. MOSCOW: Meanwhile, a senior Russian official, who met a son of Mr Saddam Hussein in Baghdad yesterday, said today that neither the Iraqi leader nor his sons would bow to US ultimatum to leave the country.
AP, Reuters |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 123 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
