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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (632)	12/21/2003 10:10:46 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Revealed: the real reason for Gaddafi's WMD surrender By Julian Coman and Colin Brown (Filed: 21/12/2003) <font size=4> Libya's promise to surrender its weapons of mass destruction was forced by Britain and America's seizure of physical evidence of Col Muammar Gaddafi's illegal weapons programme, the Telegraph can reveal. United States officials say that America's hand was strengthened in negotiations with Col Gaddafi after a successful operation, previously undisclosed, to intercept transport suspected of carrying banned weapons. The operation is said to have been carried out under the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), an international, American-led scheme to halt the spread of WMD by seizing them in transit. The PSI was first mooted by President George W Bush in May but was not officially launched until September. Last week, a senior official from the US State Department confirmed that the PSI had "netted several seizures", although he refused to give further details. <font size=3> President Bush and Tony Blair had praised Libya's decision to give up its WMD and allow international inspectors to oversee their destruction. Mr Bush described it as a "wise and responsible choice" while a statement issued by the Libyan foreign ministry said that the country had agreed "of its own free will" to destroy its unconventional weapons. The PSI operation, however, added decisively to the pressure already brought to bear on Col Gaddafi by America and Britain as they prepared to attack Iraq in March. <font size=4> One Cabinet minister said: "It demonstrates that change can be brought about by standing tough. There is no question that this change of heart by Gaddafi was brought about by the fact that the US and Britain were seen to be standing up to and called Saddam Hussein's bluff." <font size=3> The Travellers Club in Pall Mall, beloved of spy novelists and frequented by senior officers in the intelligence services, was the venue last week for the final breakthrough talks between MI6 and Libyan intelligence officials. British immigration rules were discreetly changed to allow the Libyans to enter the country on visas. Three Libyan officials met a four-strong British team led by William Ehrman, the director general of defence and intelligence at the Foreign Office, and including two MI6 officers, to agree the text that would be read out on Libyan television on Friday night. Mr Blair was forced to wait until the Libyan statement had been taken down by the BBC monitoring unit, translated and its contents checked to make sure they tallied with the agreed text before he was given the go-ahead to make his announcement in Durham during the 10pm news broadcasts. The Government is hoping that the capture of Saddam, the collapse of the European Union constitution talks, and Col Gaddafi's commitment to surrender WMD will boost Mr Blair's standing with his own backbenchers. "It has been a triple whammy and there is a sense of success at the end of this year," said a Downing Street official. "It is important domestically, but it is also important internationally." At a PSI conference in Washington last week, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence, reminded the 16 member countries - who include France, Germany, Italy and Japan in addition to Britain and America - that the threat to global security extended beyond North Korea and Iran, the focus of recent pressure from Washington over their nuclear programmes. "While PSI participants agree that North Korea and Iran are of particular concern, we know that our efforts cannot be confined to just any one or two countries alone," Mr Wolfowitz said. Libya has long been in American sights over its acquisition of WMD. In June, John Bolton, the under-secretary of state for arms control and international security, warned that the regime was exploiting the suspension of United Nations sanctions after the Lockerbie trial. "Since the sanctions were lifted, Libya has been able to be more aggressive in pursuing weapons of mass destruction. Libyan agents are trying to acquire dual-use technology. That is very worrying," he said. The Libyan foreign ministry announced yesterday that it had already sent a team to Vienna to begin talks with the International Atomic Energy Authority, the UN nuclear watchdog. The official Libyan news agency, Jana, last night quoted Col Gaddafi as declaring that his statement on WMD was "a courageous step which deserves the support of the Libyan people". telegraph.co.uk.

To: Sully- who wrote (632)	12/22/2003 5:01:03 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

I Remember Muammar By WILLIAM SAFIRE WASHINGTON As American tanks began to roll through Iraq to overthrow Saddam, Libya's longtime terrorist, <font size=4>Muammar Qaddafi, came up with a strategy to avoid being next on the regime-change list: pre-emptive surrender. <font size=3> Nobody calls it that, of course. Diplomats and doves want to treat the dictator's epiphany as the result of patient negotiation stretching back for decades. Some Republicans claim he was softened up by a bomb dropped his way in the Reagan years. But three years after that, his terrorists murdered 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am 103. Subsequent sanctions led to economic pain and the threat of a coup. After acknowledging Libyan responsibility, he has been trying to get U.S. oil companies back by promising to pay damages to the families of his victims. That was not what caused this tyrant suddenly to confess to buying and developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and to promise to reveal all to inspectors. He was transformed into a pussycat by the force of American arms in stopping the spread of mass-destruction weaponry. <font size=4> Why did Qaddafi have his spy chief, Musa Kussa, approach Britain's Tony Blair — not France, Germany or the milquetoast U.N — to get off George W. Bush's short list of rogue nations? The reason: Britain was America's primary ally in the war against Saddam and was the bridge to Washington. This shows that it pays to be a staunch friend of the U.S. in extending freedom and does not increase a nation's strategic importance to be America's political adversary. France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schröder may at last be taking this lesson to heart. <font size=3> Only because American antiterrorist resolve in Iraq was not lost on the ayatollahs of Iran, and because tens of millions of young Persians hunger for the democracy they can see in store for neighboring Arabs, were French and German diplomats able to elicit vague promises of W.M.D. restraint in Teheran. And because unemployed French and German workers were angry at Chirac and Schröder when the Pentagon announced that no Iraqi reconstruction jobs would come their way from U.S. taxpayer funds, those erstwhile foot-draggers last week rushed to embrace Bush envoy James Baker. The awful prospect of missing out on a chunk of our huge investment in rebuilding Iraq made them eager to consider forgiving billions in odious loans they had happily extended to Saddam's tyranny. <font size=4> Not all rogue nations have gotten the word.<font size=3> North Korea, the source of missiles to both Libya and Iraq, remains intransigent as China vainly tries to induce the U.S. to appease Pyongyang again. Syria, reported to be concealing billions of Saddam's money, claimed last week it shook $23 million out of Qaeda money smugglers, but won't let us interrogate them and wants to keep the proceeds in Syrian-occupied Lebanese banks. <font size=4> On the whole, however, the post-9/11 Bush foreign policy — to remove the global threat of terror enabled by regimes opposing freedom — is succeeding. Events are proving that we and our coalition allies were right to root out the sources of terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the skin-saving démarche of Qaddafi demonstrates, introducing freedom to countries long denied it has a powerful effect on the actions of regional neighbors. <font size=3> The euphoria of my fellow Wilsonian idealists, though understandable after this early winter of our discontent, is premature. Casualties will continue over there; Al Qaeda will likely attack us over here. Vladimir Putin, given a free pass by Bush and triumphant in Russian elections, will continue to ship nuclear fuel and scientific know-how to Iran, making it easier for those ayatollahs to break their promises to overly trusting Europeans. <font size=4> I remember Colonel Qaddafi's underground poison-gas factory — "Auschwitz in the Sand" — and wonder where he bought Libya's present stock of centrifuges. As a Syracuse University dropout and trustee, I visit the memorial on campus to the 35 college students aboard Pan Am 103 whose blood can never be washed from his hands. It may be, "for reasons of state" — like Musa Kussa's help in penetrating terrorist-protecting parts of Syrian and Saudi intelligence services — we should ultimately permit our investors to revive Libya's oil industry. But we should verify and never trust, and neither forget nor forgive Muammar Qaddafi. <font size=3> nytimes.com