24
April 2003
2. "Turkey's secular elite clashes with government on Islamic-style headscarves", tensions rose between Turkey's staunchly secular establishment and the Islamist-rooted government on Wednesday over strictly-guarded rules governing the separation of church and state in the Muslim country.
3. "EU to increase funds for Turkey", European Commissioner Michaele Schreyer, responsible for budget, begins a 2-day visit to Turkey Thursday in order to discuss the increased funding proposed by the Commission for the pre-accession strategy of the country.
4. "What the Kurds Want", George Bush and Tony Blair are icons for Iraqi Kurds for overthrowing an evil regime. We are proud that Kurds fought side by side with the coalition forces.
5. "Kurds eye a homeland of their own", the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq has brought to the fore the Kurds, a people whose centuries-old dream of statehood has contributed to Middle East complexities.
6. "Cypriots rejoice as border is opened", It started as just a trickle, but by mid-afternoon yesterday the checkpoints in Nicosia were flooded with Turkish and Greek Cypriots impatient to visit the other side of Europe's only divided capital.
7. "Chirac's Latest Ploy", the Oil-For-Food-Program: Where The Money Went
8. "Turkish troops leaving Iraqi border area", several thousand Turkish troops amassed along the frontier with Iraq began leaving the region on Wednesday, witnesses said, in a sign of easing tensions along the border.
1. - USA TODAY - "Kurds push U.S. to back their place in government":
DUKAN, Iraq / 23 April 2003
by Donna Leinwand
Kurdish leaders meeting with U.S. envoy Jay Garner made it clear Tuesday that they expected help from the U.S. government in their efforts to claim a role in a new Iraqi government.
Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general charged with coordinating the reconstruction of Iraq and putting together an interim government, is beloved among northern Iraq's Kurdish population. As chief of Joint Task Force-Bravo in northern Iraq in 1991, Garner ran Operation Provide Comfort, which gave food and shelter to thousands of Kurdish refugees. This is his first trip back to the region.
The United States also helped the Kurds gain a measure of autonomy from Baghdad. Turkey, which lies north of Iraq, watches events in the Kurdish area closely. Turkish leaders are concerned that their country's minority Kurdish population might try to seek independence.
''We have chosen our allies and our camp, the United States of America, against tyranny and terrorism,'' said Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two major political parties in the region. ''President Bush liberated Kuwait and the (Persian) Gulf. Another Bush came and liberated Iraq. Let us hope that something will happen for the Kurdish people.''
Talabani and Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, assured Garner that they would not seek to break from Iraq to form an independent country.
The Kurds formed a regional government in 1991 under the protection of U.S. and British jets patrolling northern Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees fled after President Saddam Hussein's troops crushed a Kurdish rebellion.
Tuesday morning, banners strung up at the university auditorium where Garner spoke called for democracy and federalism for Kurdistan as part of Iraq.
An independent Kurdistan ''is not our dream,'' Talabani said. ''This is the accusation of our enemies in Iraq. Our dream is to live within the framework of a democratic Iraq based on democratic, parliamentary human rights and equal rights of citizenship for everyone.''
The U.S. envoy repeatedly praised the Kurdish leaders for making the area a model for democracy.
''What you have done here in the last 12 years is marvelous, and it is a wonderful start to self-government and democracy, and what you have done here can serve as a model for the rest of Iraq,'' Garner told the crowd at the auditorium.
Before the meeting in Dukan, Kurds in nearby Sulaimaniyah embraced Garner with exuberance. It was a dramatic contrast to the reluctant handshakes he received in Baghdad on Monday.
Mobs of university students crowded the street to wave, and children threw flowers. Kurdish leaders, not only grateful to Garner but also mindful of his popularity, were equally effusive.
''You always make me feel at home,'' Garner told Talabani.
Talabani responded, ''When you retire, come back to Kurdistan . . . and we'll prepare a beautiful house for you.''
The Kurds, however, are tallying up a questionable human rights record. Some Kurdish fighters have allegedly driven non-Kurds from their homes south of Kirkuk, a major city in the Kurdish region.
Talabani said all Iraqi groups opposed to Saddam condemned ''ethnic cleansing'' policies when they met in London before the war started last month.
Garner said a committee would be formed to arbitrate ''what is fair.'' He blamed the trouble on Saddam's regime.
''The only ethnic cleansing that has been done in Iraq was done by
Saddam Hussein,'' Garner said. ''This is a different era with different
leaders who don't want to see that again.''
2.
- AFP - "Turkey's secular elite clashes with government on
Islamic-style headscarves":
ANKARA /April 23, 2003
by Hande Culpan
Tensions rose between Turkey's staunchly secular establishment and
the Islamist-rooted government on Wednesday over strictly-guarded
rules governing the separation of church and state in the Muslim country.
The latest episode in a long series of disagreements erupted over
the wearing of the Islamic-style headscarf, seen by the secular elite
as a
statement of support for political Islam and which is banned from
public offices and schools.
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the army and opposition MPs on Wednesday
shunned an official reception given by parliament speaker Bulent Arinc
to mark a national holiday, in which the headscarf made an unprededented
appearance.
At least five MPs from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)
attended the reception with their headscarved wives, in a move likely
to be seen by many as an affront to the secular system.
But in a bid to avoid a potential crisis, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan and several ministers, including Foreign Minister Abdullah
Gul, chose to attend the function alone without their headscarved
wives.
"We have said before that we will never be a side to any tension
in the society. Thus, we will never respond to the efforts of those
who are trying to create tension in our country," Erdogan told
reporters at the reception.
He implicitly accused the secular elite of trying to deviate the country
from its true agenda.
"The people will never forgive those who contribute" to
the tension, Erdogan said.
Arinc, an AKP member, also left behind his headscarved wife, who has
already been at the at the centre of controversy when she attended
an official ceremony to see off the president on a visit abroad last
year.
"No one would benefit from bringing an issue to a point of tension
and then carrying Turkey from this tension to a crisis," Arinc
said earlier on Wednesday in reference to the planned boycott.
The Turkish military sees itself as the self-appointed guardians of
secularism and is watching closely to see whether the AKP, a conservative
movement with Islamist roots, deviates from secular principles.
The AKP says it has dropped its past Islamist views, but it is still
suspected by many of harbouring a hidden Islamist agenda.
The liberal Radikal daily on Wednesday warned of a "dangerous
escalation" in the battle over secularism.
"All eyes will now be on the National security council meeting
on April 30" when top army officers might issue a new warning
to the government on the headscarf issue, the paper said.
The headscarf dispute comes atop last week's decision by the AKP government
to back a controversial expatriate religious association long suspected
of promoting fundamentalism.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said he had asked Turkish embassies
to support the Milli Gorus (National Vision) organisation, which has
built a strong network among expatriate Turks in Europe, primarily
in Germany.
Turkey's secularist establishment has long suspected the grouping
of fostering religious fundamentalism and raising militants against
the country's secular system.
Milli Gorus rejects the charges, and says it has only social, religious
and cultural concerns and aims to protect the interests of Muslim
communities in Europe.
3. - IRNA - "EU to increase funds for Turkey":
Brussels / April 24, 2003
European Commissioner Michaele Schreyer, responsible for budget,
begins a 2-day visit to Turkey Thursday in order to discuss the increased
funding proposed by the Commission for the pre-accession strategy
of the country.
The EU financial programming for Turkey provides for a gradual increase
from 250 million euro in 2004, 300 million euro in 2005 to 500 million
euro in 2006.
Schreyer is to meet ministers, senior administration officials and
the president of the Court of Auditors, as well as civil society,
to help Turkey in its bid to join the EU and to ensure that the money
is spent according to the principles of sound and efficient financial
management, said a Commission announcement.
4. - The Wall Street Journal - "What the Kurds Want":
by Barham Salih / April 22, 2003
George Bush and Tony Blair are icons for Iraqi Kurds for overthrowing an evil regime. We are proud that Kurds fought side by side with the coalition forces. According to the Americans, our Kurdish soldiers gave an excellent account of themselves. There is no better motivation on the battlefield than to know that freedom is ahead, rather than some Fedayeen thug behind.
In parts of Iraq there has been inevitable disorder. The Baath Party pushed itself into every corner of life. Its defeat has led to a temporary vacuum. That is being filled, and leaders of communities are emerging from within Iraq. If we are to build democracy we must work with those who endured Saddam's Iraq and enable them to discard the fear that dominated their lives. They lived under a regime that executed people for suspected thoughts as well as for real opposition. They have to be empowered, not have self-serving and unknown leaders forced upon them. Top regime criminals must be tried. The Baathist mentality of deference must cease.
The new Iraqi state should have clearly limited powers. Those who want a strong executive presidency show no understanding of either Iraq or the Middle East. The region is too full of strongmen, many of whom are the West's best friends -- when it suits them. It would be better for Iraq to have a representative, collegial leadership. It cannot be democratic if it is not also federal, a state that recognizes the rights of my long-abused people. We Kurds, some 25% of all Iraqis, have not been the only victims of Saddam and the failed state of Iraq, but we have been its primary victims. The Kurds are Iraq's democratic vanguard, thanks to 12 years of air cover; we have a diversity of opinions, a free media, and a respect for minority rights that is not found elsewhere in the Islamic Middle East.
Free Iraqis need to strike a careful balance. We must recognize suppressed identities and religious rights while not favoring them. The new Iraq must not be communally based. Federalism will be geographic, discrimination illegal. Justice demands that we reverse ethnic cleansing. The Arabization of Iraqi Kurdistan, the settlement program that few have ever heard of, began 40 years ago, before the long tyranny of the Baath Party. Over 600,000 persons in Iraqi Kurdistan, mostly Kurds but also Turkmens and Assyrian Christians, are internally displaced. In the wake of liberation, there have been regrettable episodes in which individuals have taken the law into their hands in an attempt to redress Arabization. All reversals of ethnic cleansing must be conducted lawfully: Iraqis have had enough of violence and summary justice. The Arab settlers who were used to colonize Khanaqin, Sinjar, Makhmoor, Sheikhan and Kirkuk must be treated fairly. We must not tolerate abuses.
Within the region we must build good relations with our neighbors, promote the peaceful resolution of disputes and, above all, end the use of terrorism. At the same time, we will politely and firmly ask our neighbors to leave us alone. As for the U.N., it has a role to play; but it must win back the trust of Iraqis. The U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program has been mismanaged appallingly. Half of the money allocated to Iraqi Kurdistan never reached us, thanks to bureaucratic obstacles erected in Baghdad and supported by U.N. Plaza. In Suleimaniyah, we have waited five years for the program to build a 400-bed hospital. No money from Oil-for-Food was allocated to cover the basic running costs of the Kurdish authorities. We could not pay a single Kurdish teacher or doctor with this money, while Oil-for-Food largesse went to Uday Hussein's National Olympic Committee.
Despite change in Baghdad, there has been no change of heart at the U.N. The U.N. Secretary General has the right to take unspent Kurdish money from the Oil-for-Food program and use it as he sees fit for Iraq's immediate humanitarian needs. Nobody can object to that in principle. The problem, as ever, is U.N. practice. We have been told that any money taken from the Kurdish account is "reimbursable," that we will still be entitled to it. When, how, and, frankly, if, this money will ever be reimbursed we do not know. Let international control of Iraqi oil continue, but please, let it be to the benefit of Iraqis and not U.N. bureaucrats.
The transition in Iraq will not be easy, and must be assessed in its proper context. Iraq's decimated civil society -- coupled with the many external influences -- will inevitably make the transition a rather complicated process. The future of Iraq is of consequence not only to the people of Iraq, but also the wider Middle East and beyond. The stakes cannot be any higher: for those of us who would like the Islamic Middle East to aspire toward more democracy, as well as for those who seek to maintain the status quo.
These historic challenges can best be tackled through a partnership
between Iraqis and the U.S.-led coalition. A broad-based provisional
national Iraqi government must be established very soon, tasked with
maintaining order, resuming public services and preparing for elections
-- both local, for municipalities, and national, for a constituent
assembly to ratify a new constitution. Free Iraqis must shoulder the
responsibility for governing their country. These are great challenges.
We do not pretend that we can surmount all of our problems and we
will need consistent support. Whatever happens, let us not forget
the terror that we have emerged from, just as we will never forget
those who freed us.
5. - THE WASHINGTON TIMES - "Kurds eye a homeland of their own":
NICOSIA, Cyprus / April 23, 2003
by Andrew Borowiec
The U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq has brought to the
fore the Kurds, a people whose centuries-old dream of statehood has
contributed to Middle East complexities.
Now the aspirations of the Kurds are challenging Iraq's future rulers,
while in Ankara the authorities fear that any Iraqi concessions to
the Kurds may spark similar demands among Turkey's restive Kurdish
minority.
The United States is faced with the dilemma of unfulfilled Kurdish
hopes, Arab accusations of plans to fragment Iraq, and Turkey's threat
of military intervention to prevent the creation of an independent
Kurdistan in the region where Turkey, Iraq and Iran meet.
The contribution of Kurdish fighters in seizing northern Iraqi oil
centers at Kirkuk and Mosul from Saddam Hussein's troops can no longer
be ignored by Washington, diplomats say.
They add, however, that while some Kurdish leaders might cooperate
with U.S. plans and intentions, the Iraqi Kurds cannot be taken for
granted as allies.
To many U.S. diplomats in the area, the Kurdish problem looms as a
nightmare.
It is particularly sensitive in view of accusations of a U.S. betrayal
of the Kurds after the 1991 Desert Storm campaign, when the first
President Bush encouraged a Kurdish uprising and then ignored it.
The world remained silent, then, as Saddam Hussein's troops repressed
the Kurds, who remained very much "accursed people" and
"orphans of the universe."
Now the Iraqi Kurds expect a reward from Washington for their cooperation.
Failure to honor any commitments Washington may have made could provoke
a violent wave of anti-Americanism and obstruction, area specialists
say.
"There is a price for Kurdish help against Saddam," said
Peter W. Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador and specialist of the
area's problems. "Will the Kurds be deceived again?" he
asked. Right now, no one seems to have an answer.
The Two main Iraqi Kurdish parties — the Kurdistan Democratic
Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan (PUK) — envisage a large degree of autonomy for
the Kurdish area in a federated Iraq. The idea is firmly opposed by
Iraq's Arab neighbors, who see in it the beginning of Iraq's fragmentation
and their own weakening.
"The Kurdish people are not ready to accept being ruled as we
were ruled before," said Roj Shawess, speaker of the KDP parliament
in Erbil. "We will ask for a federal system with international
guarantees."
While the protection by U.S. and British air patrols over northern
Iraq during the past decade gave Iraqi Kurds a form of self-rule and
security, the situation of Kurds in nearby Turkey is basically that
of second-class citizens.
About 15 million of the 66 million inhabitants of Turkey are fully
or partly Kurdish. Their clamor for recognition and a say in public
life is regarded by officials as potential dynamite under the republic's
foundations.
The treatment of the Kurds changed radically after the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire and the birth of the Turkish republic in 1923,
when the Kurdish language and national characteristics were banned.
Officially, the Kurds became rural "mountain Turks."
According to Jason Goodwin, a historian of the Ottoman Empire, although
the Kurds are Muslims "they became the new republic's second-class
citizens. Now, 80 years of Turkish repression have fostered a cycle
of violence and a legacy of mistrust."
Since 1924, there have been 29 Kurdish uprisings against Turkish rule
— all drowned in blood.
Despite some recent concessions, the Kurdish language is still banned
in schools, use of the term "Kurdistan" is punishable by
jail, and the wounds of the recent war against Kurdish separatists
are still festering.
Turkey's war against the leftist separatist Kurdistan Workers Party
(PKK), which theoretically ended three years ago in the bleak mountains
of southeastern Turkey, killed about 30,000 people, displaced 4 million,
and destroyed thousands of villages.
Most of the fighting stopped when PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, captured
by the Turks and sentenced to death, appealed to his fighters to end
the war. His death sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment.
The war's conduct weighed heavily on Turkey's democratic credentials,
but there were few protests in the West because the PKK was considered
to be communist.
However, the Turkish government does not oppose Kurdish assimilation
— it encourages it, with considerable resistance from those who
seek to preserve a Kurdish identity. Nonetheless, Kurds have become
judges, Cabinet ministers, members of parliament.
Intermarriage exists mainly in urban centers, where ethnic Kurds rarely
use their native language. Kurdish nationalists, active mainly in
rural areas, are divided: Some demand an independent Kurdistan, others
would settle for autonomy, and many would simply like freedom of Kurdish
expression. All such demands have been opposed by the government.
In last November's legislative elections, a pro-Kurdish party know
as the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP) failed to win the 10 percent
threshold required to win parliament seats.
After the recent war against Iraq, according to historian, Mr. Goodwin:
"The key Turkish objective is to prevent any radicalization of
its Kurdish population."
Meanwhile, despite their crushing defeat by Saddam Hussein's military
in 1991, and thanks to the "no-fly" zone imposed over northern
Iraq by U.S. and British planes, Iraq's "orphans of the universe"
are now as close as they ever have been to creating their own civil
society and a form of democracy.
Close to 4 million Kurds live in northern Iraq. A common government
established by the two big parties broke down in 1994. After intense
fighting, the two parties agreed to cooperate, with Mr. Barzani's
KDP administering the northern part of the enclave and Mr. Talabani's
PUK, the east.
The size is approximately 15,000 square miles — a fifth larger
than Maryland — and varies from parched desert to the breathtaking
mountains on the border with Turkey.
Repression of the Iraqi Kurds by Saddam's regime began in 1987 during
the Iran-Iraq war, when there were Kurds on both sides of the battle
lines. During the next three years, more than 4,000 villages were
destroyed and about 100,000 people were killed in this and a subsequent
campaign in 1991.
The Kurdish enclave has several military airfields built by Iraq.
The number of Kurdish fighters — called Peshmerga, "those
who face death" — is said to be 100,000. About 20,000 of
them took part in ousting Iraqi forces from Mosul and Kirkuk, then
withdrew at the request of the United States.
According to diplomatic assessments, Kurdish leaders in Iraq know
that Turkey will not tolerate an independent Kurdistan, nor Kurdish
control over nearby Iraqi oil fields, a source of enormous income.
Last November the two Kurdish factions drafted a constitution outlining
a system under which the Kurds would have autonomy in a federal Iraq.
"If Iraq is to be united, federalism is the only solution,"
said Berham Saleh, prime minister of the PUK government.
The 15-page draft constitution proposed that Iraq consist of two regions
— one Arab, south of Kirkuk, and one Kurdish in the northern
part. A clause stipulating that "the city of Kirkuk shall be
the capital of the Kurdistan region" immediately brought a violent
reaction from Turkey, which refused to allow so much of Iraqi oil
wealth to be controlled by Kurds.
By all indications, the document is doomed to be soon forgotten and
the plight of the "accursed people" will continue —
this time with mounting international complications.
6. - The Financial Times - "Cypriots rejoice as border is opened":
by Andreas Hadjipapas and Kerin Hope / April 24, 2003
It started as just a trickle, but by mid-afternoon yesterday the
checkpoints in Nicosia were flooded with Turkish and Greek Cypriots
impatient to visit the other side of Europe's only divided capital.
"I'm overjoyed," said Ahmet Osduran, a grey-haired Turkish Cypriot who was first in line to show his identity card at the Ledra checkpoint. "I'm going to walk over and visit my home for the first time in so many years."
A Nicosia police official said about 1,600 Turkish Cypriots had arrived by mid-afternoon, and almost 700 Greek Cypriots had crossed in the other direction: "The numbers are rising but it's all going smoothly."
Paschalis Nicolaou, a Greek Cypriot on his way to Varosha, an abandoned district in the north, said: "The walls won't come down in 24 hours but I want my country to be for all of us, and I want to go back to where I was brought up."
The Turkish Cypriot government's decision to open the border took Greek Cypriots by surprise. The move was partly due to pressure from Turkey, which wants to improve relations with the European Union, and popular support for unification among Turkish Cypriots.
The decision drew cheers from the crowds as they gathered at the Greek side of the Ledra checkpoint in the centre of the capital to see the Turkish Cypriots arrive. They came on foot, because cars registered in the north could not be insured for the Greek-controlled south.
The two communities have lived in isolation since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded northern Cyprus in response to a coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece. The latest round of UN-sponsored reunification talks collapsed because Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot leader, blocked a deal accepted by Greek Cypriots.
But the stakes were raised last week when Tassos Papadopoulos, president of the Greek Cypriot-controlled south, signed Cyprus's EU accession treaty on behalf of both communities. Mr Denktash faces intensifying pressure from Turkish Cypriots, who are overwhelmingly in favour of EU membership.
The Ankara government has also turned up the heat on Mr Denktash. Without a deal on Cyprus, Turkey has little chance of securing a firm date for the start of EU accession talks.
"For the first time the army, the Turkish government and Mr Denktash are all on the same side. This marks a promising departure," said one analyst.
Greek Cypriot officials sounded a touch disgruntled by Mr Denktash's move. It appears to have pre-empted Mr Papadopoulos's plans to launch his own package of confidence-building measures agreed with Brussels.
Kypros Chrysostomides, the government spokesman, welcomed Mr Denktash's decision to allow freedom of movement, but added: "This doesn't mean a settlement is round the corner or that the wall dividing the island has fallen. We are still far from this goal."
But Serdar Denktash, deputy prime minister and the son of the Turkish Cypriot president, made a point of reassuring journalists at the checkpoint. Considered his father's successor, he has pursued more moderate policies and worked at building relationships with pro-European Turkish politicians. With elections in north Cyprus due in December, the younger Mr Denktash wants to assure his political future.
He said: "From now on the Greek Cypriots won't be the enemy.
They'll be our neighbours." Additional reporting by Metin Munir
in Istanbul and Leyla Boulton in Ankara
7. - The New York Times - "Chirac's Latest Ploy":
The Oil-For-Food-Program: Where The Money Went
WASHINGTON / 24 April 2003
Jacques Chirac's scheme to win French companies fat contracts in reconstructing Iraq has run into realpolitik: anti-U.S. actions have consequences.
After a decade of opposing any pressure on Saddam to obey U.N. resolutions, France reversed itself after its favorite dictator was brought down. Chirac and his new ally, Vladimir Putin, let it be known they would refuse to lift U.N. sanctions on the sale of Iraqi oil.
Last week's Chirac-Putin ultimatum: If we don't get French-Russian contracts to rebuild Iraq, we won't let Iraq sell its oil. You suffer the casualties; we get the contracts.
France and Russia also want to keep under U.N. control the currently permitted sale of Iraqi oil, ostensibly to buy food and medicine for a majority of Iraqis. That's because the oil-for-food bureaucracy headed by Benon Sevan let Saddam steer billions in banking and commercial business to Paris, Moscow and Damascus.
The blatant hypocrisy of all this created an op-ed firestorm. In The Times, Claudia Rosett exposed the secrecy of the oil-for-food boondoggle, manipulated by Saddam to favor Security Council supporters. Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post excoriated Chirac's brazen flip-flop of opposing sanctions on Saddam and then insisting they be imposed on post-Saddam Iraq. My own tirade appeared in The International Herald Tribune, read in Paris by Quai d'Orsay's would-be Talleyrands.
As France appeared to be taking the moral low ground, Security Council diplomats became uncomfortable. Then France appeared to have been struck by sweet reason. Instead of ending sanctions on a regime that no longer existed, France floated a proposal merely suspending sanctions until the Security Council decides that the new post-Saddam Iraq is not making weapons of mass destruction.
Some compromise. That neat trick is designed to force the U.S. into gaining the U.N. inspectors' approval before sanctions are ended. It would keep a heavy U.N. foot on Iraqi pipelines and keep France in the reconstruction contracts business. Suspension would put the emerging Iraq in a class with Libya, still suspended after its downing of Pan Am 103.
Fortunately, Colin Powell is not about to be sandbagged again. State spent yesterday preparing a U.N. resolution to decisively end, not merely suspend, economic sanctions on Iraq. If carefully crafted, it should contain language similar to that of the oil-for-food resolution. That would guarantee that proceeds from future oil sales held in trust for the interim Iraqi authority would be immune from attachment by previous claimants.
In plain language, that means that sales of Iraqi oil sold starting now would be for rebuilding the nation, and could not be snatched by France and Russia to pay Saddam's old arms debts. Chirac and Putin won't like that a bit. Would either of them veto the will of a Security Council majority and stand before the Arab world as greedy obstructionists? Let's see.
Planners of the trust fund flowing from the end of sanctions should draw lessons from the Saddam-dominated, secretive U.N. oil-for-food mess. Barham Salih, a Kurdish leader, told The Wall Street Journal that "half of the money allocated to Iraqi Kurdistan never reached us, thanks to bureaucratic obstacles erected in Baghdad and supported by U.N. Plaza. . . . We could not pay a single teacher or doctor with this money, while oil-for-food largess went to Uday Hussein's National Olympic Committee."
U.N. Under Secretary Sevan admits that the French bank BNP Paribas was chosen to issue letters of credit to most of the favored suppliers, but brands as "inaccuracies" charges by Ms. Rosett and me of secrecy. He cites a hundred audits in five years. But details of which companies in what countries got how much - that's not public.
The U.S. has a seat on the "611 committee," which supposedly oversees this $12 billion bureaucratic bonanza. Its reports should be available to Congress; Henry Hyde, the House's International Affairs chairman, is looking into that. Senator Arlen Specter of Senate Appropriations wrote to Powell yesterday about "reports that these funds are a slush fund," saying, "I urge the State Department to demand an accounting."
France hasn't seriously harmed the United States; we'll be friendly
again. But in their hubristic drive for dominance in Europe, combined
with their grubby grab for contracts, Chirac and his poodle Putin
have severely damaged the United Nations.
8. - Reuters - "Turkish troops leaving Iraqi border area":
SILOPI, Turkey / April 23, 2003
Several thousand Turkish troops amassed along the frontier with Iraq began leaving the region on Wednesday, witnesses said, in a sign of easing tensions along the border.
NATO-member Turkey backed off threats to enter northern Iraq, controlled by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, after the United States warned it could complicate its own military operations.
But Turkey has reserved the right to send troops to northern Iraq, where Ankara already keeps a few thousand troops, if it sees Kurdish moves towards independence from Iraq or threats to a small Turkish-speaking minority in the north.
Witnesses said they saw soldiers from mechanised units packing up and leaving camps. Personnel carriers barrelled down the highway outside of Silopi, a Turkish town a few kilometres away from the Iraqi border gate.
The departure of troops sent to the southeast in February to support the Second Army already based there was the first time the Turkish military was seen pulling out of the area.
A military official in Silopi would not confirm the withdrawal, but said the General Staff headquarters in Ankara was expected to make a statement soon.
Turkey fears a Kurdish state in northern Iraq will re-ignite separatist violence on its own territory. Kurdish rebels waged a campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s that killed more than 30,000 people.
Relations soured between Ankara and Washington over Turkey's refusal last month to allow in some 60,000 U.S. troops to launch a "northern front" against Iraq.
But a multi-billion dollar U.S. aid package for crisis-hit Turkey
and Ankara's pledges not to unilaterally invade the north have gone
some way to repairing ties between the traditionally close allies.