If you look back to those months of negotiations, Germany and Japan were at first opposed to military action. Their arms were gradually twisted and they went along, but never participated. The most they were willing to do was to pay for the action. The attitudes of the states of the region were very mixed. These really had their arms twisted (Yemen, for example, was threatened with serious economic sanctions if it did no got along). Finally, there was a vote, but it was an unclear vote and, incidentally, an illegal vote, because China abstained, and support for the use of force has to be unanimous in the Security Council.
So although there was a kind of support, a good bit of the world knew that they were being dragged into conflict and that there still were opportunities for a negotiated settlement that the U.S. was trying to avoid. Every successive action has cut down that support even more: at present, Saudi Arabia will not permit U.S. planes to base there to fly missions and this time even Kuwait would not support the U.S. action. The people of the region, of course, are always opposed to U.S. policy - that was true in 1991 too.
And Secretary-General Kofi Annan has played a far more positive role on the question of Iraq than Perez de Cuellar did in 1991.
Kofi Annan is barely quoted in the U.S. - you just find a few sentences here and there. The message, however, is clear enough; he called it a "sad day" for the United Nations and for the world. He is being bypassed; the United States does not want the United Nations to become involved because it knows that it cannot get support there. As I said, even the timing of the bombing was a slap in the face for Kofi Annan and the United Nations.
It now appears - we can't be certain - that Richard Butler sent his report directly to the White House before it was sent to the Security Council. There are also reports from anonymous high-level officials in the United Nations that the Report was written in connection with the White House (although I do not know about that). The Clinton administration has announced officially that it began the planning for the bombing before the U.N. session because it already had the Report, which, of course, is completely improper and underscores the fact that the leadership of UNSCOM is working with the Clinton administration.
Would you discuss another aspect of the timing of the attack, that is, the widespread conviction that President Clinton attacked Iraq now because of the impeachment proceedings against him?
That is very widely held; I think it is very implausible.
If you think about it, the coincidence of timing only harms Clinton and undermines his credibility further. His credibility is low, and to use this action as an attempt to delay the impeachment hearings by a day simply makes him look ridiculous.
On the other hand, there is one noteworthy feature of the coincidence of timing. The House debate on impeachment has been totally cynical on both sides, and Republicans and Democrats are making it very clear that there is no issue of principle involved at all. That is clear from the fact that the vote is on pure party lines. On issues of principle, you cannot get a clear division between Democrats and Republicans. That is outlandish, since they are more or less identical on most issues, and no issue of principle is ever going to divide them right down the line.
The Democrats are using the coincidence of timing in order to build up future political campaigns. In the next campaign they will take the line that when our brave sons and daughters put their lives on the line to defend the country, the evil Republicans attacked the Commander-in-Chief.
The coincidence of timing, then, is harmful to Clinton personally but it could be helpful to the public relations efforts of the Democratic Party.
After the cessation of bombing there have been statements to the effect that, on the one hand, the U.S. reserves the right to strike again at any time and, on the other hand, that the next phase is very much a diplomatic phase.
The U.S. is simply saying that as far as it is concerned, all options are open, and nothing else matters - not international law, not the World Court, not the United Nations, and not the opinions of the countries and peoples of the region. If our purposes can be served by diplomacy, we will use diplomacy; if they can be served by force, we will use force.
The attacks have shattered Iraq's infrastructure further. It is clear that the recent economic history of Iraq is one of a human development disaster and profound regression in areas of earlier achievement, such as health, nutrition and education. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has been reported as saying that the U.S. "completely disowns" any responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children and Tony Blair has said that "nutritional problems" - that is a quote - in Iraq are not the result of sanctions. Would you comment on this? In your perception, how long will sanctions last?
Every time Tony Blair opens his mouth, he looks more disgusting and ridiculous, and his performance marked a painful and shameful day in the history of Britain. As for Madeleine Albright, her comments over the years have captured very clearly the moral level of U.S. actions. In 1996, an interviewer on "60 Minutes" on national television asked her for her reaction to reports from the United Nations that half a million Iraqi children had died from the sanctions. Her answer was, "Well, this is a price that we feel that we are willing to pay." So we - we - are willing to pay the price of dead Iraqi children. We do not care if we carry out mass slaughter; the deaths could, I think, properly be called a form of genocide.
Take a look at the situation right now. There is a temporary oil glut and prices are very low, and that is harmful to the big energy companies, which are overwhelmingly U.S. and British. The U.S. Gover nment does not want the price to go any lower, because its economy relies quite heavily on recycling petrodollars from other countries. These go to U.S. treasury securities, arms purchases, construction projects and so on. The U.S. will be happy for oil prices to go up and does not want Iraqi oil on the market right now. They are hence quite happy to bomb a refinery in Basra and hold back oil exports.
Furthermore, Iraq will be brought back into the system sooner or later. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world and as an oil shortage develops and prices begin to rise, the U.S. and Britain will bring Iraq back into the market. They do, however, have a problem. Because of the events of the past years, their competitors France and Russia (and also Italy) now have an inside track on Iraqi oil production. The U.S. and Britain are not going to tolerate that, since Iraq is much too rich to allow it to fall into the hands of competitors. That will take some complicated manoeuvring: the U.S. and Britain have enough force to achieve their ends, but it won't be easy. That is another potential conflict between the U.S. and the European Union. (When I speak of the E.U., I exclude Britain, which is a client of the U.S.)
Putting that relatively long-term issue aside, how long will the sanctions go on? As long as the U.S. and Britain insist that the Iraqi people be punished and that Iraqi oil be kept off the market, and as long as they are so powerful in the world that other forces cannot counter-react.
The official version appears to be that sanctions are in place because Iraq is not cooperating with UNSCOM.
That is the pretext, but that is a joke. The U.S. does not cooperate with international law. Are they therefore proposing sanctions against the U.S.?
The relative insensitivity of U.S. public opinion towards suffering in Iraq has been quite extraordinary. The U.S. line on Iraq, after all, does not play in any other part of the world.
For one thing, the U.S. public does not know much about it. The picture that is presented is that Saddam Hussein is the worst person since Attila the Hun. If you asked the person on the street, the reaction would be that he is torturing his people and the U.S. is trying to get rid of him in every way it can in order to save the people of Iraq. And if people are being killed, that's Saddam Hussein's fault: why doesn't he do what we tell him?
On the other hand, there are lots of actions all over the place. They are small and disorganised but there is quite a lot of protest action.
This is by no means the only human development catastrophe that does not arouse attention here. During the 1980s, about a million and a half people were killed by the South African authorities, backed by the U.S. and Britain, in surrounding countries. Today, one of the worst human development catastrophes in history is taking place in Russia. Who knows how many millions of people have died as a result of the imposition of the market regime? People do not care about that either. Since U.S. policy is by definition benevolent, if millions of people are dying in Russia because of the imposition of market rule, it must be their fault.
The U.S. has now offered to "strengthen its engagement with the Iraqi opposition". Do you consider this to be part of the larger strategic objective of which you spoke?
