25
February 2003
2. "What If Turkey Agrees?", so, what will happen if Turkey eventually strikes a deal with the United States to let it use Turkish bases? Once war starts, this deal could mean disaster for everyone involved.
3. "Turkey`s massive leap toward EU membership: 2926 people tortured in four years", according to the 2002 report of Human Rights Association of Turkey (IHD), despite new legal improvements the situation of human rights has not changed.
4. "In Autonomous North, Preparing for the Worst", there are growing fears that President Saddam Hussein's military could attack this Kurdish-controlled region with chemical or biological weapons if the United States invades Iraq.
5. "U.S. government has plans for immediate postwar relief for Iraq", the Bush administration outlined plans Monday for more than $100 million in immediate humanitarian aid to a postwar Iraq, including stockpiling water and other relief supplies.
6. "New Cyprus proposals on the table", today, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is due in Athens as part of a push for a solution to Cyprus’s problem by Friday.
1.
- BBC - "Turkey set for key war vote":
25 February 2003
The Turkish parliament is preparing to vote on allowing the deployment
of tens of thousands of US troops on its soil.
The cabinet finally agreed to the request on Monday after weeks of
pressure from Washington, which wants the option of a northern front
in any war against Iraq.
Parliament is expected to approve the deployment in Tuesday's vote,
despite widespread public opposition to a war against Iraq.
The ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party has a huge majority,
and any rebellion by war opponents is not expected to reach the numbers
required to block the deployment.
"To have kept the process any longer would not have been very
healthy, therefore it was decided to send the authorisation to parliament
today", said Deputy Prime Minister Abdullatif Sener.
The motion also authorises Turkish troops to enter Iraq. It is thought
that tens of thousands of Turkish soldiers might be given a military
role by the US in securing Kurdish northern Iraq.
A cabinet decision was delayed during weeks of tough negotiations
about a multi-billion-dollar compensation package which Turkey would
receive from the US as part of the deal.
The government in Ankara also wanted assurances about border security
and the political structure of Iraq after any war.
The issue is a sensitive one for Turkey, which fears that events
in Kurdish northern Iraq could have a knock-on effect on its own Kurdish
territories.
But Turkey, as the only Nato member to share a border with Iraq, occupies
a key strategic position and has been under heavy US pressure to agree
to the deployment.
Even after the unanimous cabinet decision, fine details of the agreement
with the US were still being worked on.
"Negotiations to reach an agreement on the military, political
and economic issues have reached an important stage," said Deputy
Prime Minister Abdullatif Sener.
He said key parts of the deal remained "unsatisfactory".
Even the exact number of US troops to be deployed was said to be still
under negotiation. Turkish television said it could be 61,500.
The US acknowledged that loose ends remained to be tied up.
"We're pleased by the actions taken by the government of Turkey
to date," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
"There are still some t's to be crossed and i's to be dotted."
In a further complication, the Turkish president declared last week
that no deployment could go ahead without a second UN resolution.
He must approve the deployment, and it was not clear whether he might
try to block it.
A similar view was expressed by the speaker of parliament, Bulent
Arinc, who said it was not appropriate to debate a motion when the
"conditions of international legitimacy have not materialised".
Once approved, the US deployment would begin without delay. US ships
laden with troops and equipment are waiting off the coast for clearance
to land. 
2. - AlterNet - "What If Turkey Agrees?":
by Maria Tomchick / February 24, 2003
So, what will happen if Turkey eventually strikes a deal with the United States to let it use Turkish bases? Once war starts, this deal could mean disaster for everyone involved.
Turkish bases are key to U.S. war plans, which rely on a two-front concept to split Saddam Hussein's troops. After a massive aerial bombing campaign, the bulk of the U.S. army will invade from the south via Kuwait, while about 20,000 U.S. troops will invade northern Iraq from Turkey.
It's what the U.S. wants to trade for those Turkish bases that could lead to disaster in Iraq. While the U.S. media has focused exclusively on billions in U.S. aid money promised for Turkey – $6 billion in grants and $20 billion in loan guarantees, at last count – there are two other conditions that Turkey is insisting on that the U.S. seems likely to grant.
First, Turkey wants oil concessions in Northern Iraq. The Bush administration likes to pretend that this war is not about oil, but when it comes to negotiating with the one country, other than Kuwait, that the U.S. absolutely needs to have on board to make this war work, then oil is definitely part of the deal. And so is territory.
Two cities in the north of Iraq were, not so long ago, a part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire: Kirkuk and Mosul. Turkey has long coveted these cities and most of northern Iraq. There's just one problem: The majority population in northern Iraq is Kurdish.
This presents a terrible dilemma: Turkey wants northern Iraq, but the Kurds also want northern Iraq as an autonomous republic, a Kurdish homeland. Turkey has spent the past decade fighting a guerrilla war against its own ethnic Kurdish population, exterminating whole villages and killing thousands of civilians in the process. If you were to ask a Kurd who is responsible for killing more of his compatriots – Saddam Hussein or the Turkish military – he'd be hard-pressed to give you a definitive answer.
The Kurds are a force to reckon with. Estimates of armed Kurdish militia men range from 70,000 to 130,000. Once the fighting starts, one of their goals will be to get control of key oil fields and maintain that control against all comers – not just Saddam Hussein's forces, but also Turkish troops. Whoever controls the oil wells, controls northern Iraq. Although leading Iraqi Kurds currently disavow any plans to establish a Kurdish republic, the Kurdish militias are not united on this point. Indeed Kurdish groups represent a variety of political and religious leanings, from nationalist groups to fundamentalist muslim groups to Marxist ideology, and they occasionally fight each other over territory. During and after any war in Iraq, these groups will certainly work out their differences with bloodshed; but the invasion of a Turkish military might unite them against a common enemy.
The second condition that Turkey wants is for its army in northern Iraq to remain under its own control, and not the control of the U.S. command. Turkey has some troops in northern Iraq right now, and has occupied portions of northern Iraq since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. But once the fighting starts, Turkey is expected to send in a much bigger force, ostensibly (and ironically) to help the U.S. army deal with the large Kurdish refugee population that this "low-impact" war will create.
Kurds are deeply mistrustful of a military that has slaughtered so many Kurds in eastern Turkey. Kurdish militias have already warned that a Turkish invasion of Iraq will be met with force. Said Hoshiyar Zebari, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party, one of the two main Kurdish groups in Iraq: "No one wants another fight, of course. But if there's a forced incursion, done under the pretext of 'I'm going to give you forced aid,' then believe me there will be uncontrolled clashes."
The Turkish military and Kurdish militias are not the only armies that the U.S. will have to worry about in Iraq. There are also armed groups along the border with Iran that have Iranian backing. These paramilitaries could pose a problem for U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians alike. In addition, when the fighting starts, Iran might invade Iraq's border regions and make a grab for disputed territory in southern Iraq, under the pretext of restoring order and protecting its own territory. Iran has already warned the United States that any planes flying over its airspace will be fired upon. U.S. troops may meet the same fate.
Shiite groups in southern Iraq have also procured arms from both the U.S. and from Iran. Just as in northern Iraq, these groups are varied in their political leanings and loyalties, sometimes fighting Saddam's troops, sometimes fighting each other. This, too, could create a problem for a U.S. invading force, particularly if Iranian troops or paramilitaries clash with the advancing U.S. forces.
It will be hard to tell friend from foe, particularly with the shockingly poor state of U.S. intelligence in Iraq. For example, the village of Khurmal, in northern Iraq, is a cinder-block town of about 7,500 Kurdish people. The whole village watched, clustered around a handful of TVs powered by a generator, as Colin Powell made his presentation to the UN. They waited for him to give evidence of Saddam's crime in gassing the Kurds – after all, Khurmal itself suffered a mustard gas attack that killed many of its residents. Instead, they watched in horror as Powell presented a satellite photo of Khurmal and claimed that it was a terrorist training camp and poison factory run by Ansar al-Islam. In fact, Ansar al-Islam doesn't control the village of Khurmal; Ansar's base is in a village named Sarget, more than four miles away on the other side of a ridge. If any U.S. intelligence agents had questioned friendly Kurdish groups, they would have easily discovered this.
The people of Khurmal have been praying ever since that U.S. missiles won't hit their town, but they don't have much hope. With U.S. planes flying at 30,000 feet, piloted by boys on amphetamines, the bombs could land anywhere; a village could look like a terrorist camp, friendly Kurdish fighters could look like Saddam's troops. The Kurds all over northern Iraq are praying, hoping the U.S. knows what it's doing.
But the U.S. shows no sign of even being aware of any of these problems. Currently, the Bush administration is setting up another situation that could lead to disaster in Iraq, even if the war ends quickly. Since January, several thousand Iraqi exiles have been training at a base in Hungary to fulfill an unspecified role in a post-Saddam Iraq. Last week, the Pentagon finally disclosed what that role will be: to guard prison camps housing captured Iraqi troops. Most of the prisoners are expected to be Sunni Muslims who owed their allegiance to Saddam Hussein. Most of the guards will be Kurds and Shiite Muslims.
This arrangement is a set-up for the kind of ethnic bloodbaths seen in Bosnia, when militia groups of one ethnicity took control of towns and villages populated by other ethnic groups. Similarly, the Northern Alliance engaged in ethnic cleansing in northern Afghanistan cities both during and after the recent U.S. war, massacring minority Pashtuns.
The Bush administration claims to be pursuing this war in order to liberate the Iraqi people. But the extent of U.S. ignorance and indifference to the problems of the Iraqi people – even to the concerns of its own allies inside of Iraq – is monumental, and surely the best reason to avoid a war altogether.
Maria Tomchick is co-editor and contributing writer for Eat the State!,
a biweekly newspaper based in Seattle, Washington.
3.
- KurdishMedia.com - "Turkey`s massive leap toward EU membership:
2926 people tortured in four years":
LONDON / February 25, 2003
by Robin Kurd
According to the 2002 report of Human Rights Association of Turkey (IHD), despite new legal improvements the situation of human rights has not changed.
The head of the Association, Husnu Ondul, mentioned the positive legal changes that had taken place in Turkey, such as the permission given to the teaching of different languages spoken in Turkey, limited broadcasting in these languages, limitation of period of detention to four days.
However, Ondul pointed out that the changes in question did not have effect in reality and that there was a tendency to undermine the legal amendments on sub levels of jurisdiction.
On the issue of torture, Ondul said that while there had been 594 people both in 1999 and 2000, the year 2001 had seen 862 people tortured and 2002, 876 people, showing a sharp increase. Thus in four years the total of tortured people in Turkey was 2926, Ondul pointed out. Ondul also emphasised that around 80 procent of torture allegations never made it to the courts.
For the details of the IHD 2002 Human Hights Report (Turkish) see:
http://www.ihd.org.tr/index.html
4. - The Washington Post - "In Autonomous North, Preparing for the Worst":
Worried About Chemical or Biological Strike by Baghdad, Kurds Vuy Masks and Plan Escape
SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq / February 25, 2003
by Karl Vick
Iraqi Kurds have begun improvising civil defense strategies and making plans to escape cities because of growing fears that President Saddam Hussein's military could attack this Kurdish-controlled region with chemical or biological weapons if the United States invades Iraq.
Gas masks have grown scarce. In the military surplus stalls of Sulaymaniyah's downtown bazaar, prices of the few, mostly used models still available have jumped tenfold in a month to $30. Buyers have made a run on disposable diapers, merchants report, because local civil defense officials publicized instructions for fashioning improvised gas masks by sprinkling crushed charcoal and salt between the absorbent layers. Plastic sheeting and rolls of wide tape also flew out of hardware shops following a public advisory to construct a sealed room in which to ride out a gas attack.
But residents questioned the value of homemade countermeasures against weapons many Kurds know firsthand. Hussein's forces gassed scores of Kurdish villages in the late 1980s, killing thousands of people.
"It's just for people's comfort, using these materials," said Ako Ali, who was peddling thick rolls of plastic from a hardware store in Sulaymaniyah's central bazaar last week. "It's something people do because their neighbors are doing the same thing."
His brother Mustapha agreed. "It is a city of fate," he said.
Senior Kurdish officials, struggling to promote public safety without promoting panic, said local history and recent intelligence underscore the gravity of the threat. Barham Salih, prime minister of the half of northern Iraq that is administered by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said his government has received credible reports that chemical weapons specialists have arrived on the Iraqi military's front lines facing the Kurdish zone.
The specialists, wearing uniforms of the Republican Guard but no patch identifying a specific unit, joined units manning freshly placed missile batteries, said Faraidoon Abdul Qadir, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan interior minister. Qadir said the missiles could reach the cities of Arbil and Sulaymaniyah, where more than half of the region's 3.5 million Kurds reside.
The officials expressed confidence in the quality of the intelligence, which they said came from multiple sources who have been reliable in the past. But they acknowledged that the chemical weapons specialists may have been moved to the front lines in the knowledge that their presence would be noted by Kurdish informants whose reports would unnerve an already edgy Kurdish population.
Salih said a tribal official quoted a senior Iraqi security official as saying that "hundreds of thousands will die. This will not be a picnic." Another source quoted a senior official declaring, "The Kurds will be eliminated."
Regardless of the veracity of the reports, Kurdish leaders say they have intensified already urgent efforts to prepare the autonomous area for a possible attack. Salih said all but a core of essential ministries will close in coming days in anticipation of a U.S.-led invasion early next month. "I'm worried about anthrax more than anything else," Salih said.
Qadir said the Kurdish administration is operating on the assumption that the Iraqi government would hope to sow panic in the Kurdish zone to impede the progress of U.S. forces moving south from Turkey. In 1991, a government crackdown on a Kurdish uprising in the last days of the Persian Gulf War prompted more than a million Kurds to flee northward on the main road toward Turkey, exactly the route U.S. armor and troops are expected to arrive by.
To avert such a move, the Kurdish civil defense department has urged the approximately 1 million residents of Sulaymaniyah to consider moving their families to outlying villages. That option did not exist in 1991. Three years earlier, Hussein's government had razed most Kurdish villages in a counterinsurgency sweep that included repeated chemical attacks, and the population feared such attacks might come again.
"We want to hide here from Saddam Hussein," said Khadeji Ahmed, who recently traveled from the oil center of Kirkuk in government-held Iraq to Gobtappa, the Kurdish village where 10 of her siblings died in a 1988 chemical attack. "People now say people in villages will live, not the people in towns. This time."
In Sulaymaniyah, meanwhile, officials are putting in place an emergency plan that would allow security forces, health care and the top layer of government to function after an attack. After increasingly vocal protests of "empty" U.S. promises of material support, the United States has promised anew to provide protective suits, gas masks and other emergency equipment for members of essential services, according to an informed source.
Most residents, however, will have to improvise. In Sulaymaniyah's central market, people without small children suddenly have been buying diapers, said Hamin Muheddin, who rearranged his stall to highlight the "affordable gas masks" -- just $1.50 for a packet of 15.
"It should be a large or regular," said Muheddin, demonstrating how to layer in the crushed charcoal and salt as the radio advised. "I actually experimented at home but had difficulty breathing, so I put it aside."
Tahir Tofik considered a roll of the wide tape stacked for sale on the sidewalk, a recent addition to kiosks that formerly sold only batteries. Rolls of plastic sheeting stood for sale next door, at 75 cents a yard.
"What can I do?" Tofik said. "My family can't sleep. We have nightmares at night. We are worried, especially for the little ones."
The advice from authorities is specific: Choose one room, as high in the house as possible, because gas settles. Seal the windows, and lay in water, food and bedding for several days.
In a sprawling home in one of the city's best neighborhoods, Sheelan Susey's mother followed the instruction to the letter, even sewing homemade gas masks for Deia, 9, Lala, 3, and their baby cousin Mustafa. Like many poorer residents who cannot afford to travel to a village, the family plans to stay put, but for a different reason.
"We're afraid we'll lose our home to looters," said Susey. They have more to lose than most, she said. But the possession Susey values most is the satellite television system that delivers the stream of information they lacked in 1991, when Kurds could see only state-controlled TV.
"In '91 we didn't know anything about the war," Susey said.
"Now we have the dish and see everything. Now we see the buildup
in Kuwait. And we are afraid."
5.
- The International Herald Tribune - "U.S. government has
plans for immediate postwar relief for Iraq":
WASHINGTON / 25 February 2003
by Harry Dunphy Associated Press
The Bush administration outlined plans Monday for more than $100 million in immediate humanitarian aid to a postwar Iraq, including stockpiling water and other relief supplies.
U.N. aid workers are already leaving Iraq, but U.S. officials said they plan to minimize disruption to the U.N. oil-for-food distribution system, which provides rations for almost all Iraqis and is the sole source of food for 60 percent of the population.
Elliott Abrams, director for the Middle East at the National Security Council, said that planning for a postwar Iraq was difficult because it was impossible to predict the severity of war-related damage. ‘‘We recognize that military action, if necessary, can have adverse humanitarian consequences and our planning is based on mitigating these consequences,’’ he said at a briefing for American and international reporters organized by the White House’s new Office of Global Communications.
Representatives from the State Department, Pentagon, U.S Agency for International Development and other departments took part in the briefing.
They included a representative of retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, who will head a Pentagon-based office to assess Iraq’s resources and to be ready to help it rebuild. Garner had a leading role in the post-Gulf war effort to aid Kurdish Iraqi refugees.
Abrams said he could not provide a timeline on how quickly administration of Iraq could be turned over to Iraqi civilians after any conflict because the situation may vary from region to region ‘‘but the general principle is to do this as soon as possible.’’
‘‘At the local, provincial and national level,’’ Abrams said, ‘‘the sooner the Iraqis can take over the better it will be for the Iraqis themselves and for coalition forces.’’
Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said $26.2 million already had been spent on various aspects of the planned relief effort, including aid to U.N. organizations, and discussions were underway on providing another $56 million.
The State Department has given the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees $15 million in anticipation of the displacement of up to two million people within Iraq or to neighboring nations.
Stockpiling in the area includes $17 million worth of blankets, water containers, shelter supplies, essential medicines and other relief items for 1 million people, plus nearly 3 million emergency daily rations similar to those dropped over Afghanistan in the first weeks of that conflict.
Abrams said other governments in the coalition had promised to provide additional millions to the United Nations and international humanitarian organizations.
The government is training and preparing a 60-person Disaster Assistance Response Team that would enter alliance-controlled areas of Iraq to coordinate relief involving the government, the United Nations and international humanitarian organizations.
The team soon will have representatives in Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan
and Qatar, a White House fact sheet said.
6. - Kathimerini - "New Cyprus proposals on the table":
UN’s Annan visits Athens today
ATHENS / 25 February 2003
PM Costas Simitis had his first meeting with Cyprus’s president-elect, Tassos Papadopoulos, in Athens yesterday. The Cypriot leader said he could not yet comment on refinements to a UN plan for a solution, saying, ‘It must be judged overall.’ Today, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is due in Athens as part of a push for a solution to Cyprus’s problem by Friday. Yesterday, Annan said a deal could be postponed for one or two days, ‘maximum one week.’
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is due in Athens today as part of his push for a solution to the Cyprus problem by Friday's deadline. But Prime Minister Costas Simitis, who met yesterday with Cyprus's newly elected president, Tassos Papadopoulos, said it was «most unlikely» a deal would be reached even by the end of March.
Parts of a revised blueprint for a «United Cyprus Republic» on the basis of Annan's plan was leaked to the press yesterday. It included an offer by Britain to hand over 50 percent of the Sovereign Base Areas that it has in Cyprus (or 116 square kilometers), 10 percent of which would go to the Turkish-Cypriot part if the two sides accept the deal.
«When I say that it is most unlikely (to reach a solution), I am not talking about February 28, but I am talking about the process itself, which is to be concluded on March 30, the end of March,» Simitis told a joint news conference with Papadopoulos. Cyprus is to sign an accession treaty with the EU on April 16. To do so, Greek and Turkish Cypriots must first accept the plan in referendums that are scheduled for March 30. Simitis stressed that nothing would jeopardize Cyprus's accession.
In Ankara, Annan met with Turkey's governing party leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and said there was an «urgency to move ahead and try and come to an acceptable solution as quickly as possible. We have a unique window of opportunity to get a united Cyprus into the EU... We hope that with good will and determination we will get an agreement and not miss this unique opportunity.» Annan said he will announce «in the next day or so» amendments to his plan. Erdogan told reporters he believed the changes will make a solution more likely. «I hope that talks between the two sides will bring about the solution we desire in Cyprus and I believe this business can be finished with the referendums to be held on both sides at the end of March,» he said.
Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash ruled out a deal by Friday.
«The two sides are as far apart as before,» he said. «They
are offering cake to the Greek Cypriots and peanuts to us,»
he said of the planned amendments.