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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (5790)	8/25/2003 8:21:58 PM
From: lorne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

France: No proof Hamas is terror group Official fingers only 'military wing' of organization for violence August 25, 2003 worldnetdaily.com The French government is once again bucking the United States-led international war on terrorism and urging fellow Europeans to follow suit by not classifying Hamas and Islamic Jihad as terror organizations. While the U.S. State Department lists the groups as sponsors of terror, the European Union has only flagged what it calls a "military wing" of Hamas – Izzedine al-Qassam. The terror designation allows the freezing of assets and the imposition of sanctions. Following last week's suicide bombing on a crowded Jerusalem bus in which 20 people were killed, including several children, the U.S. froze the assets of six Hamas leaders and those of mostly European-based Palestinian charities it accused of fund-raising for Hamas. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack and Hamas released video of the 29-year-old Hebron man it said was the bomber. After Israel launched retaliatory missile strikes in which a senior Hamas leader was killed Thursday, both groups pronounced an end to their seven-week cease-fire. Hamas and Israeli leaders traded accusations over this latest road block to the "road map" to Mideast peace. "The assassination of Abu Shanab ... means that the Zionist enemy has assassinated the truce, and the Hamas movement holds the Zionist enemy fully responsible for the consequences of its crime," Hamas spokesman Ismail Haniyah told reporters in Gaza. Last night, the EU joined the diplomatic frenzy to put the "road map" back on course. The Associated Press reports Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, whose country holds the EU presidency, held telephone talks last night with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Israeli Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom and Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath on "the tragic events in Iraq and the Middle East. Frattini reportedly stressed the struggle against terrorism must "continue to be among the international community's top priorities." To that end, Frattini said EU foreign ministers will discuss "the problem of Hamas" at a Sept. 5-6 meeting in northern Italy, ostensibly to review its classification of the group. According to the news wire, Frattini said that while Shalom called for "the immediate dismantling" of Hamas, Shaath pleaded for European understanding of the "particularly delicate phase the [Palestinian] government of Mahmoud Abbas is experiencing at the moment." The Jerusalem Post reports an adviser to President Chirac, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, is lobbying the EU to resist Israel's pressure to add the full Hamas organization to its terror list. "If we find that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are indeed terror groups opposed to peace, we may have to change the EU's stand," Gourdault-Montagne reportedly told the Israeli ambassador in France, Nissim Zvilli. "However, we mustn't limit ourselves to one, clear cut, position." According to the Post, Gourdault-Montagne's assertion drew outrage at Israel's foreign ministry. "Such an attitude is one of criminal negligence. It refuses to assume responsibility over the war against – and thus legitimizes – terrorism," an official is quoted by the paper as saying. In March, a threatened veto by France forced the U.S. and Britain to abandon efforts to secure a new United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing the use of military force to disarm Saddam Hussein of suspected weapons of mass destruction. A coalition of some 40 countries subsequently invaded Iraq over continued pleas for diplomacy from a handful of council members, including France. Paradoxically, France subsequently offered its military expertise with weapons of mass destruction to the coalition effort, despite its fierce opposition. French ambassador Jean-David Levitte told CNN days before the launch of the war that the use of biological and chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein's forces would "change completely the perception and the situation for us." He said the French military had equipment to fight "under these circumstances" and could join the coalition if forces came under such attack. French officials, who have consistently objected to placing Hezbollah on the EU terror list, claim there is insufficient proof the entire organizations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, not just their "military wings," are involved in terrorism. Israel and the U.S. argue no such distinction can be made. "There's no question that there is a direct link between the heads of Hamas and the terrorists on the ground," Gideon Meir, an Israeli foreign ministry official, told the Jerusalem Post. Meanwhile today, Izzedine al-Qassam leaders again vowed revenge after Israeli missile strikes killed another four members in Gaza City last night. "Our response will be painful and quick," officials pledged in a statement.

To: KLP who wrote (5790)	8/26/2003 10:08:31 PM
From: lorne	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 15987

WAR ON TERROR Saudis join funding probe Joint task force will station U.S. agents in kingdom August 26, 2003 worldnetdaily.com Saudi Arabia is opening its doors to United States law enforcement officials for the first time, as part of a new joint effort to stem the funds flow to terror groups like al-Qaida. The Washington Post reports the two countries are in the process of setting up a joint task force that will station U.S. agents in the desert kingdom to mine information from bank accounts, computer records and other financial data to track and shut down terror financing. Senior officials from the Federal Bureau of Intelligence and the Internal Revenue Service are flying to Riyadh today to work out the operational details. According to the paper, al-Qaida's suicide bombings on residential compounds in Riyadh, which killed 34 people, spurred the apparent increased cooperation on the part of the Saudis in the U.S.-led war on terror. A joint Saudi-U.S. intelligence task force was set up to track the perpetrators of those May attacks. This task force is described as the "template" for the current endeavor. Word of the joint task force comes amid a CIA report that fingers Saudi Arabia as the leading financier of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq claiming the lives of American soldiers daily. Saudi cooperation has been heavily questioned. The kingdom has dragged its heels in freezing assets tied to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who hails from Saudi. Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. And the recently released congressional report on the 9-11 attacks accused the Saudi government of financing al-Qaida operations through Saudi-based charities. The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan donated millions of dollars to bin Laden's favorite charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, or IIRO. And tens of thousands of dollars in donations made by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, also ended up in the hands of two al-Qaida operatives who later became hijackers. According to a report prepared for the United Nations and released in February, Saudi Arabia has transferred $500 million to al-Qaida over the past decade and Saudi dollars still represent the most important source of financing for bin Laden's terror network. The 34-page analysis of French investigator Jean-Charles Brisard, who was asked to study the issue by the U.N. Security Council, found that despite pressure from the U.S. Riyadh had failed to turn off the spigot. WorldNetDaily reported the House of Saud has also donated more than $4 billion to Palestinian "Mujahideen fighters" over the past five years to help finance offensive terrorist operations against Israel. "One must question the real ability and willingness of the kingdom to exercise any control over the use of religious money in and outside of the country," investigator Brisard concluded in his report. WND reported earlier this month that Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has called on Riyadh to remove a powerful member of the Saudi royal family for failing to police terrorist funding. Schumer wrote a letter to Prince Bandar demanding Prince Nayef ibn Abdulaziz, the Saudi interior minister who oversees the kingdom's anti-terrorism efforts, be replaced. Prince Nayef is the same official who blamed the "Zionist" lobby for the 9-11 attacks. Twenty-eight pages of the 800-page congressional report the Bush administration refused to declassify is said to detail suspected ties between the Sept. 11 hijackers and agents of the Saudi government. Congressional sources claim the report was delayed for months over arguments with the Bush administration on details of Saudi involvement with al-Qaida. The Saudis consistently and adamantly proclaim themselves as a "vigilant" partner with the U.S. in the terror war. "We have been vigilant in trying to choke off the financing for terrorists and those who engage in terrorism, because we believe that the most important part in the international effort against terrorism is to choke them of their financing and to handicap their abilities to do damage to innocent people," said Adel al-Jubeir, foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, at a December press conference in Washington, D.C. "Saudi Arabia and the United States have been the two countries that have worked the closest in the war on terrorism, with all due respect to naysayers." As proof of its commitment, al-Jubeir pointed to the creation of a high commission for oversight of charities that would conduct audits. In addition to mounting a PR offensive, the Saudis are spending millions to fight a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by relatives of Sept. 11 victims. Sept. 11 families seek to further document the claim that certain Saudis and Saudi-backed organizations knowingly supported the Taliban and al-Qaida. Their case rests on the legal theory that those who knowingly fund terrorist organizations are liable for the damage done by those groups. Senior government officials view the new joint task force as a test for the Saudis. "I don't think there is a more immediate way to test the joint resolve of our countries than to have a joint investigative unit, with the linguistic and computer resources of both our countries, that is capable of focusing on specific targets, rather than talking in generalities," David Aufhauser, the Treasury Department's counsel general who helped negotiate the agreement, told the Post. "We now have a testable proposition of people's resolve." The Post reports the task force evolved from a July telephone call between President Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah. While the official Bush administration position is that Saudi Arabia is a partner in the war on terrorism, WND reported it quietly added the kingdom to its watch list of terrorist-sponsoring countries subject to immigration restrictions. An INS policy implemented last October required the fingerprinting, photographing and monitoring of men, ages 16 to 45, who enter the U.S. from Saudi Arabia. The move drew heavy fire from outraged Saudis.