Mideast RoundupDecember 13, 2002
Iraq
First Scientists Executed
"The preeminent test of Hans Blix's good faith as chief inspector is whether or not he is willing to pull people out of the country to talk to them. If he doesn't do this, he has very little chance of being taken seriously by the US government" - James Woolsey, a former CIA director
The former espionage chief understood the urgency of getting Saddam Hussein's nuclear team out of his reach - both to pump them for the evidence of Iraq's unconventional weapons programs and to save their lives. However, the scientists, their families and the technicians were not rescued. And the Iraqi ruler did not hang about. One group, whose members knew too much and were branded weak or unreliable by Iraqi intelligence, were whisked away to hiding places with their immediate families. But that was not all the Iraqi ruler had in store for them. According to reports reaching DEBKA-Net-Weekly, eleven scientists working on illegal weapons programs - biological weapons experts, virologists, chemists and nuclear engineers, possibly three heads of projects - were put to death last weekend with some 12 of their close relatives, to ensure their silence, both to the weapons inspectors and for the eventuality of a war ending in American victory.
Reports of the executions have filtered out to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources from Iraqi exiles related to the disappearing scientists, most living in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Geneva and London. Some have discovered their kinsmen were spirited away in Iraq but do not know what has happened to them. They implored DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources not to name any names because of the slim chance that some of the scientists on Saddam's death list may have eluded his agents and are alive, hiding out somewhere in Iraq.
It is also possible that Baghdad deliberately leaked misinformation about which ones were executed and which still alive in secret detention.
To put an end to the suspense, a group of Iraqi expatriates told DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources they were considering petitioning Blix and UN secretary general Kofi Annan to demand that Iraq allow the inspectors to see the missing scientists and verify they are unharmed.
Our sources estimate that Iraqi intelligence is holding a second group of high-risk scientists, estimated at 20 senior project directors and 60 of their relatives, in a special detention camp. Staff members who are still free have been warned that their superiors' wellbeing depends on their keeping mum about their work in interviews with UN inspectors. They were cautioned that if they tried to escape the country, Iraqi intelligence would catch up with them wherever they hid. To ensure their obedience, their families were taken from home and scattered around intelligence installations and army camps across the country. Under military guard, they are not allowed visitors.
For some, Saddam dangled a carrot with his stick.
Five days before Iraq handed in its weapons declaration to the UN on December 7, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources learned that the installations administered by Saddam's program of unconventional weapons called factory-floor meetings of their scientific and technical staffs. Each staffer was handed a script and told to memorize his lines for answering any questions the UN inspectors might put about his work. Those who performed "honorably" were promised handsome rewards after the war was over, such as a luxury villa in the suburbs of their home-towns and a lavish pension for life. Iraqi intelligence used the occasion to assess the reliability of the individual scientists and technicians before streaming them into groups.
At Nuclear Brink
1. Middle East Poised to Tip Over?
Recent developments tend to support a growing conviction that the United States, together with Israel and the rest of the Middle East, are building up to a nuclear conflict.
These indicative developments were noted by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence experts:
A.
US and Israeli air squadrons equipped with neutron bombs were put on alert several days ago.
B.
Large amounts of intelligence data fed to the governments of the United States, Britain and Israel attest to Israel, the longtime though unadmitted solo nuclear power in the region, having been joined by Iraq and Iran who are said to have acquired various types of atomic weapons. While former intelligence assessments spoke of radiological or "dirty" bombs, updated information suggests both Iran and Iraq now possess small one-kiloton nuclear bombs, shells, landmines and naval mines, which are capable of destroying battleships, aircraft carriers and oil tankers.
C.
There is also ample intelligence information that nuclear or radiological bombs have reached the hands of terrorist groups run by Iraqi military intelligence or al Qaeda - or both.
D.
On the biological warfront, persistent reports indicate plans by Iraqi terrorist elements or al Qaeda to infect the United States, Europe or even Japan with such diseases as smallpox and anthrax by means of germs planted in oil tankers before they sail out of Saudi or Kuwaiti ports. Since early last week, small contingents of US Navy Seals, especially trained in the handling of biological weapons, have been posted in all Gulf oil terminals. Those terminals are now effectively under military administration and the movements of vessels in harbor, including oil tankers, restricted from dawn to dusk. Ship owners have been warned the Seals will fire on any ships violating the prohibition.
These strict security procedures were introduced in the light of intelligence received of a plan for Iraqi and al Qaeda frogmen to board the tankers in port and infect their cargos with biological agents. Acting on automatic slow-release mechanisms, the agents will spread through the vessel also infecting the oil in its storage tanks. On reaching harbor, the crew, unknowingly diseased together with ship's cargo and waste, will carry the contagion ashore.
The announcement Thursday December 11 that all Americans will be offered smallpox inoculations, as well as half a million troops, ties in with the increasingly tangible nuclear and biological threats. So does the timing of the White House release of sections of its new strategy document on December 10:
"The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force, including the resort to all our options, to the use of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) against the United States or our forces abroad, and friends and allies." The document emphasizes the US president's reliance on counter-proliferation measures, including physical interdiction and pre-emptive strikes against "states or groups" whose weaponry could pose a threat to the United States.
Washington's hand was also discernible in the dire utterances coming a week earlier, on December 2, from Ephraim Halevy, former director of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and now prime minister Ariel Sharon's national security adviser. He spoke of a mega-terror menace hanging over Israel as essentially one of "genocide" with the aim of destroying Israel to its very foundations. "To meet a threat on this scale," he said, "Israel possesses a broad and diverse array of capabilities, some of them not yet revealed." Inherent in Israel's national security balance, he explained, is the ability to countervail menaces of this kind. Should the danger come to pass, that ability will take the conflict to a new plane which, Halevy was sure, would be understood and accepted by world opinion.
These words were generally taken as a reference to weapons and war tactics never yet brought into use that would be employed to counter an unconventional threat to Israel, including a large-scale massacre. Issued shortly after Al Qaeda struck Israeli targets in Mombasa, they were aimed at offsetting the nuclear, biological and chemical terror danger now posed separately and jointly by Iraq and al Qaeda. Once again, such a counter-strike could well be pre-emptive. Immediately after Halevy spoke, US and Israel nuclear squadrons were put on alert.
However, nuclear tensions soared in earnest after Iraq's submission on December 7 of its mammoth declaration of weapons of mass destruction to UN headquarters in New York and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
Glimpsed between the lines on those 11,820 pages and 12 CD-Rom discs is more than a recycled catalogue of Iraq's civilian and military industrial history. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources, when pieced together the documents reveal Iraq as possessing a fully matured nuclear capability. However, most tellingly, the nine chapters of the declaration are impregnated with menacing overtones - especially the ones listing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Implicit is the threat to unleash those weapons if the United States goes to war against the Saddam Hussein regime.
These are the declaration's main points as culled by our sources:
1.
Iraq reserves the option of retaliating to an American offensive where and when it chooses. This need not be immediately, or even target US troops and bases in the Middle East and Gulf, but could turn into an assault against Washington's premier allies (presumably using terrorists).
2.
Baghdad's favored candidates for retribution - or even pre-emptive attack - are Britain and Israel. (More about Britain's role in the Iraq war in a separate <#5>article in this issue.)
3.
The oil fields and terminals of Kuwait and Qatar are on Iraq's firing line because of their cooperation with the United States in its war preparations against Iraq.
A senior intelligence source made this comment to DEBKA-Net-Weekly after a preliminary examination of the Iraqi declaration:
"It is a piece of psychology meant to show US leaders and those of other countries supporting Washington's war effort that an attack on Iraq would be a misadventure ending for each of them in national disaster."
Another central point made by the source is this: "Iraq contends with some justice that it did not develop and build its weapons of mass destruction unaided, but received help from a long line of companies in the United States, Europe, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Japan, Singapore and Australia. Therefore, not only the companies, but also the governments of those countries must be held accountable for Iraq's WMD programs. In the best case, they could claim ignorance; in the worst, they turned a blind eye."
The Iraqi compilers of the documents hinted strongly that some names were held from the list of foreign companies and governments contributing to the Iraqi WMD program. "The inference," according to our intelligence source, "is that Baghdad is holding those names over the heads of the United States and the world body and will publish them when it is expedient for Iraq."
It is also necessary to note the supplier-countries left out of the Iraqi document, although they are known to have assisted Saddam's unconventional weapons programs. Their omission indicates that Baghdad considers them friendly or still useful. They include Russia, China, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia and others.
2. Contents of Saddam's Nuclear Arsenal
Back in the 1990s, the discovery of Iraqi nuclear facilities would have prompted an immediate US attack. Now, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence experts say, the name of the game is not if nuclear weapons will be used but when, under what conditions - and who uses them first.
Other big question marks hang over the impact nuclear warfare will have on global politics, the oil and financial markets and the war against terrorism. Much will depend on which country is victimized by atomic aggression, how badly it is crippled and whether it will be in any condition to retaliate or launch a second strike.
Three countries hold the key to the new Middle East nuclear equation: the United States, Israel and Iraq. All three have first-strike capabilities within the range of their respective nuclear arsenals.
Most of the information on Iraq's nuclear armory comes from Iraqi exiles. They all repeat the same mantra: Iraq was able to build an atomic bomb in the late 1980s, but Saddam Hussein wanted a small, smart bomb to fit as a warhead on a Scud missile. In the early 1990s, he was persuaded by threats of American invasion and domestic insurgency to make do with any kind of nuke as long as it was immediately available. He decided to develop a weapon first and only then worry about a vehicle for delivering it.
On September 30, 1998, the Washington Post reported under the headline, "Iraqis work toward A-bomb":
"United Nations arms inspectors reported twice to the United States in 1996 and 1997 that they had credible intelligence indicating that Iraq built and has maintained three to for implosion devices that lack only cores of enriched uranium to make 20-kiloton nuclear weapons, according to US government and UN sources."
Evidence turned up near Kabul and Kandahar, in the course of the Afghanistan War, shows that, as of 1998, al Qaeda has had in its possession a little more than half the amount of enriched uranium mentioned in the Washington Post article. Therefore, it makes sense to extrapolate that Iraq, with its far greater resources, must have acquired sufficient enriched uranium to build those 20-kiloton bombs.
Interviewed some time after he defected in 1994, Dr Khidir Hamza, former director of Iraq's nuclear arms program and the most senior Iraqi scientist to escape to the West, had few doubts. Asked if Saddam was working on a nuclear bomb that could be dropped from a plane, Hamza replied:
"Yes, I think that is why they are still working on it. When you have a nuclear bomb you have to harden it so it can survive the long trip to its target, and also work once it gets there. We did not have this hardening ability in 1990. We were barely able to build a dummy, empty bomb. The hardening work began after the (1991) war. I think that today most of the parts can be hardened to the point of surviving the trip to target. I believe the series of bombs are more effective because they have been scaled down."
In 1995, another defector, Saddam's brother-in-law Hussein Kamel, confirmed: "We successfully completed the first test of an Iraqi atomic bomb. It had a 10-kiloton yield and contained 93 percent pure enriched uranium. Iraq became the first country to test a nuclear weapon without the knowledge of the international community."
At the time, US intelligence agencies dismissed Kamel's disclosures as science fiction for the sake of ingratiating himself with the West.
But the testimony of the two former senior figures in Iraq's nuclear program - and of Abbas al-Janabi, private secretary to Saddam's son Uday - revealed that Iraq had successfully conducted a nuclear test in September 1989 deep under Razaza Lake, southeast of Baghdad, and had since built up a nuclear stockpile. The blast was not detected because of the bomb's size - as small as the one that destroyed Hiroshima during World War Two - and it was deep enough to be muffled. Iraq, they reported, had later carried out more tests. Bombs were hidden in a bunker under the Hamrin Mountains, north of Baghdad.
All the information assembled suggests that Iraq's nuclear inventory consists of three Hiroshima-size bombs, three implosion bombs and three thermo-nuclear bombs, a total of nine atomic bombs.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report this figure as being close to the one estimated by US intelligence.
Dual-Purpose Facilities
A gravity bomb and radiological weapon were developed at Nassar Industries, a dual-purpose facility north of Baghdad.
The plan for a delivery vehicle was based on an engine with a payload chamber of 1.25 meters in diameter and the capability to deliver a one-ton warhead to a range of 1,200 km (720 miles). It was also developed at a seemingly innocuous Nassar plant surrounded by other factories that manufacture vital parts of the atomic weapon.
The Nassar 28 facility, for example, made the 400 kg (880 lb) casings for the bomb and is believed to have produced 100 units so far. UN inspectors destroyed 25 casings before 1998, leaving 75 unaccounted for.
The Iraqis now have several dozen nuclear weapons that combine the efficiency of conventional gravity bombs with the dispersal of radioactive material. These radiological devices contain fissionable matter, plutonium and other material from civilian atomic reactors. They produce an effect similar to radioactive fallout from a nuclear weapon that can contaminate large areas and cause mass casualties and the quick collapse of the local medical system. Radiological bombs are meant to be used mainly against population centers and to contaminate water supplies.
Saddam has trained a special 50-strong suicide unit to detonate the bombs. Known as the "Men of Sacrifice", they are periodically transferred to other special units to ensure their training remains secret and far from the prying eyes of foreign intelligence. Many of these suicide terrorists are Palestinians living in Lebanon.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, the hardcore kamikazes are the source of US and Israeli concerns that Saddam's nuclear strike will not be carried out by planes or missiles but by Palestinian terrorist cells or others using or infiltrating their network.
The "Men of Sacrifice" often travel to other countries, including the United States, to spy out their assigned targets. Reconnaissance missions have also been carried out in London, Paris, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba.
It is still unclear how Iraq intends to transfer nuclear weapons to suicide units in the field. A single 12-kiloton bomb weighs almost two tons. But DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources note that, after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, large container ships packed with al Qaeda operatives and weapons reached harbor on the East and West coasts of the United States. Iraqi nuclear bombs could have been delivered the same way, assembled or semi-assembled on trucks unloaded at the pier and driven to the chosen blast site.
According to Iraq's war strategy, "this weapon should be used near the border against the largest number of advancing enemy soldiers as possible". The same doctrine of causing mass casualties applies to civilian population centers.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that Iraqi scientists have assembled three types of radiological weapons, all capable of being transported by truck. Their components have been scattered in several hidden locations but they can be collected and assembled swiftly. Some 10 such secret sites are believed to exist, putting Iraq in a high state of operational readiness.
Al-Hussein Missile Brigade 223 - Never Inspected
No UN arms inspector has ever roared up in a Landrover to give Iraq's 223rd al-Hussein Missile Brigade the once-over. Nor was a word written about the 223rd in Baghdad's massive arms declaration to the world body claiming Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.
Nonetheless, according to our intelligence sources, this unit has between 45 and 60 al-Hussein missiles with a range close to 800 km (480 miles). Some are configured to carry chemical and biological warheads, and they are all under tight presidential control.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly brought this outfit to light in our last issue when we reported that American and British special forces had encircled some 223rd's elements.
Special Unit 2001 is responsible for the storage and transfer of chemical and biological weapons, including the 223rd's warheads. The brigade includes three operational battalions, each with at least one launch device in a state of full operational readiness. The brigade's three other battalions are on standby, meaning their launch devices have not been assembled. Unconfirmed intelligence reports say the 223rd incorporates two other al-Hussein missile units armed with cruise missiles and drones capable of delivering chemical and biological agents. The information is based on previous reports that special 50-ton flatbed transport vehicles called al-Nida have been built for them. But it also highly likely the additional units simply provide auxiliary services for the brigade.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that the al-Hussein missiles built especially for the 223rd are complex and sophisticated. They were designed with detachable warheads capable of delivering a one-ton payload at a distance of 650 km (390 miles).
It is now clear the Iraqis did not let UN sanctions get in the way of their program to develop weapons of mass destruction, particularly long-range missiles.
Under limitations imposed by the sanctions, Iraq developed and tested missiles with a range of only 150 km (90 miles). But Iraqi scientists, with longer ranges in mind, tested the missiles' re-entry into the atmosphere and developed state of the art guidance systems. Computer simulations, wind tunnel and engineering tests were conducted secretly during the manufacturing process. Iraq also developed practice and operational warheads, testing various configurations to achieve the best design for carrying a non-conventional payload. Iraq ran a seemingly sanction-compliant research program called ÎMeteo 1" that was really aimed at building a warhead that could be dropped by parachute. It is unclear how much progress, if any, the Iraqis made.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources note that since the last time the United States went to war against Iraq, Baghdad has had more than a decade to improve its decoy system, weapons dispersal procedures, command and control links and attack methods.
Early models of Iraqi bombs and warheads could not deliver large quantities of chemical or biological material. Dispersal was poor and the trigger apparatus inaccurate. Iraq lacked weather monitoring systems and other sensors essential for long-range attacks.
But over the past six years, Iraqi scientists have worked out the gremlins and vastly improved the munitions. Iraq has conducted secret weapons experiments under the guises of civilian technological development. Target acquisition techniques and weather sensors have been improved. Iraq's advanced weapons are now probably five to 10 times more effective than their original models. Passing UN inspections and the perusal of official documents cannot accurately establish the full gamut of Iraq's progress.
Intelligence agencies would be better placed to pick up clues by sustained monitoring of the influx of weapons experts into special Iraqi units such as the 223rd and of live-fire exercises.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military experts believe the strides Iraq's military and its scientists have made afford Saddam, for the first time, a second-strike capability.
Iraq will retain the option of using the 223rd Missile Brigade should a nuclear or radiological attack on a US or Israeli city elicit retaliatory neutron bomb strikes against Baghdad or Tikrit. Alternatively, the 223rd would be able to fire missiles tipped with chemical, biological or nuclear warheads at US troops advancing on Baghdad for an all-out American offensive to oust Saddam.
Even a punishing US nuclear response would still leave the Iraqis with one last option: terrorism.
Al Qaeda
Mombasa Bomber Fazul's Secret Hideaway
The region is called Jubbada Hoose and it's where US and Israeli commandos fear to tread.
Welcome to the heavily protected northern Somali hideout of Mohammad Fazul, commander of the November 28 al Qaeda attacks against the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel and Israeli Arkia airliner in Mombasa, Kenya.
Fazul and 15 to 20 members of his team destroyed the hotel, killing 10 Kenyans and three Israelis, their shoulder-launched missiles narrowly missing downing a charter aircraft with 270 people on board. DEBKA-Net-Weekly has learned that the terrorists, who must have skipped out of Mombasa on two or three light planes that were waiting at a bush airstrip near the Indian Ocean resort, were flown to a hideout located southwest of the Somali city of Xagar. There, they are in the company of at least 150 al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad fighters.
They are also well protected.
A coalition of Somali supporters of Osama bin Laden shelters the Xagar fugitive community. It is made up of local warlords, who receive money, weapons and orders from Colonel Barre Aden Share, known locally as Barre-Hiralle. The colonel gets his income, support and men from Sheikh Bashir of the fundamentalist Jama Islamiya and Abdulqassim Salaad Hassan, the transitional president of Somalia.
This al Qaeda hideout is therefore virtually inaccessible for Israel or America for raids to go in and capture Fazul and the hardcore al Qaeda team which struck in Mombasa.
Fazul ranks high on the US and Israeli most wanted list. He took part in and planned at least five major attacks over the past seven years. They included:
The attempted assassination of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995.
The hijacking of Ethiopian Airlines flight 961 on a flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi in 1996. Among those killed before the plane crash-landed off the Comoros Islands were senior executives of Israel Aircraft Industries and intelligence officials from Israel, the United States and the Ukraine.
The 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The bombing two years ago of the USS Cole in Aden.
Any assault on the hideout would immediately bring thousands of fanatical Somali Muslim fighters racing to the scene. Israeli and American officers conducting the hunt for Fazul and his men told DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources that careful planning went into his choice of refuge. It bespeaks the extreme caution that characterizes Fazul's planning for terrorist attacks and the way he charts fail-safe escape routes for himself and his men. One source commented that the Somali retreat is so heavily protected that any attempt to breach it might precipitate a battle "on the scale of the deadly ambush al Qaeda and Somali warlord Mohammad Farah Adid's partisans sprung on elite US forces in Mogadishu in October 1996."
After that debacle, Americans troops hurriedly withdrew from Somalia.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources report that any attempt to go after Fazul will therefore have to wait until he comes out of hiding and leaves the country.
Ukraine
President Kuchma is after Revenge on US
Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma wants to settle a score with Washington. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Moscow report he is livid over American and British investigations into the allegations that he approved the sale of four Kochuga radar systems to Iraq.
He is also fuming over his personal humiliation by American leaders who had him declared persona non grata at the last NATO summit in Prague.
The Americans are furious with Kuchma. The Kochuga radar system he sold the Iraqis present one of the toughest problems facing US warplanes in Iraqi skies. Because it is "passive", it can spot American planes without warning their pilots they have been "lit up".
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, some of the Ukrainian leader's closest advisers tried to talk him out of making the sale to Saddam Hussein, but Kuchma was determined to press ahead. He now denies personal involvement in the deal.
But, above all, he wants to punish the Americans for blackballing him. So, early this week, he instructed Ukraine's prosecution service to seek the assistance of the Russian government in lifting from the Black Sea bed the Air Sibir Tupolev-154 that crashed in September 2001. Everyone aboard - 78 passengers, most of them Israelis of Russian origin, and crew - died in the disaster. A Russian investigation found the plane had been shot down by a stray Ukrainian missile in the course of a military exercise. Five Ukrainian generals, including a former chief of staff, were fired and court-martialed for the mishap.
Some sources in Kiev claim that Kuchma wants the plane salvaged to provide grounds for the generals to file an appeal against their conviction.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources claim there is more to it.
The convicted men claim they were forced to admit to shooting the missile that downed the airliner and let themselves be framed under political pressure. But a proper inspection of the plane's fragments, they are sure, will prove that it was not brought down by a missile but by terrorists or hijackers aboard. This claim is supported by the fact that Ukraine's air defense units are not equipped with long-range missiles capable of reaching aircraft over the Black Sea.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, the Air Sibir plane took off from Tel Aviv with many empty seats. Departing from its flight plan, apparently on orders from the airline's Russian offices, the aircraft made an unscheduled landing at a small airport in Bulgaria to take on additional passengers. They turned out to be an al Qaeda-Chechen terrorist team. Over the Black Sea, the terrorists sprayed the cabin with automatic weapons fire, causing the plane to plunge into its deepest part.
Russian rescue boats found no survivors and only a scattering of floating aircraft parts -- including a cockpit door pocked with bullet holes. CNN was the first to show footage of the perforated door, but suddenly stopped broadcasting the images several hours later.
In the meantime, Washington stepped into the picture with an unexplained announcement that it had satellite images clearly showing the plane had been downed by a surface-to-air missile. The United States promised the crash investigators access to this footage. This willingness to hand over secret satellite photos to Moscow and Kiev caused a sensation in the intelligence community. The resolution of spy satellite photography is normally a carefully guarded secret, especially for the American government.
Not surprisingly, those images were never handed over.
The timing of the disaster explains the next chapter of this episode.
The Air Sibir plane was hijacked six weeks after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington and less than three weeks after the US went to war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Bush administration feared that word of another al Qaeda success in hijacking an airliner would give Osama bin Laden a sense of victory, just as the war against him was getting off the ground. The fact that Chechen insurgents shared that victory was judged by Washington as a maneuver designed to embarrass Russian president Vladimir Putin for striking an anti-terror military pact with George Bush, which placed Russian and Uzbek special troops at the disposal of US forces fighting in Afghanistan.
It therefore suited the Bush administration to keep the terrorists' success over the Black Sea under tight wraps. Putin, Kuchma and the Israeli prime minister at the time, Ehud Barak, were discreetly asked to keep the story quiet and play along with the stray missile account.
All three consented. The Ukrainian president used it pragmatically to purge the Ukrainian military of his opponents and shore up his authority.
Since then, Kuchma has found it politic to restore those officers' "lost honor" by clearing them of guilt. He can do this by demonstrating that the Air Sibir plane was not destroyed by a missile.
But, most of all, the Ukrainian president wants to break the real story open in order to get back at the Americans by exposing them as lying to cover up a terrorist attack on the international airways.
United Kingdom
US-UK War on Iraq - Minus British Troops
As the date for war on Iraq approaches, less and less is heard of the US-UK military partnership in the coming conflict. The impression gained from the most recent pronouncements issuing from 10 Downing Street is that, this time round, British troops will not be fighting alongside the Americans as they did in Gulf War One eleven years ago.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, the 2,000-strong British commando units already operating in Iraq will stay there, the two dozen Royal Air Force vertical takeoff Harrier fighter-bombers will continue to join US air sorties against Iraqi targets, and the two British carriers will remain in the arena. However, the 30,000 British troops and 600 tanks promised for the campaign will not materialize, for three compelling reasons:
First, the British treasury has nowhere to find the money to raise a force of this size and maintain it for any length of time overseas. Washington will not stump up, arguing it is already funding the entire war effort on its own and the war coalition partners will have to pay their way.
Second, Britain is short of the regular and reserve manpower for putting up an army for the Gulf War.
Third, the large-scale maneuver the British army staged last summer in Oman demonstrated its lack of equipment for modern desert warfare, particularly electronic intelligence gear, personal accoutrements - chiefly anti-biological and chemical warfare equipment, tanks, artillery, helicopters, communications equipment and vehicles.
Upgrading the army would be a multi-billion dollar enterprise and is out of the question.
In addition, while the Blair government goes along with President George W. Bush's plan to disarm Saddam Hussein of unconventional weapons, the prime minister has never endorsed the Bush team's goal of regime change in Baghdad.
Finally, at a time that many of Britain's essential services are strike-ridden and otherwise in low condition, the threat of mega-terror appears larger than ever before, whether the assailant is Iraq or al Qaeda. The projected consequences of such an attack for the British economy are regarded as unsustainable. Tony Blair was therefore advised to keep a low profile on the war with Iraq - at least until basic amenities are in place in London to meet large-scale terror attacks.
HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives
9 December: On instructions from attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein, the Israeli police have begun investigating the business dealings of former Shin Beit officer Yossi Ginossar with Palestinian leaders, to determine if there are grounds for a criminal investigation.
Ginossar says his business ties with Yasser Arafat's top officials, especially his personal financial adviser Mohammad Rashid, were public knowledge, entailed no illegal actions and were found useful by four Israeli prime ministers. "Muhammad Rashid never dealt in terrorism," Ginossar assured weekend interviewers.
The primary allegation against him is that a company owned by Ginossar and his business partner, Ezrad Lev, advised Rashid (and therefore Arafat) on his business investments against commissions. Lev, who has turned against his partner, accused Ginossar of paying kickbacks to Rashid. He claimed that $300 million of Palestinian revenue was secretly transferred to a Swiss bank account of which $65 m had disappeared.
This missing sum has been the subject of investigations by the United States and the European donors. Rashid was singled out - not only as manager of Arafat's secret funds, but as the senior bankroller of his terror networks and directly involved in the arms smuggling shipment aboard the Karine-A aborted last January. Detailed information on Rashid's role in the terror movement was volunteered to the US government, according to an exclusive account from DEBKAfile's Washington sources, by Muhammed Dahlan, former chief of Palestinian preventive security in the Gaza Strip and currently Arafat's national security adviser. Dahlan needs to buy immunity, according to the same sources, after American raids in Zagreb, Bosnia, turned up documents naming him as the live wire in exchanges between Arafat and Osama bin Laden that took place as early as 1995, when the al Qaeda leader was still operating out of Khartoum.
According to our sources in Washington, a decision was taken to make an example of Ginossar as a cautionary message to Israeli business interests to withdraw from dealings with the Palestinians - especially the partnerships in the monopolies supplying essential products to the Palestinian Authority that grew out of the Oslo accords. The message from Washington: Drain the money swamp that sustains Palestinian terror. Break up the Israeli-Palestinian monopolistic partnerships.
The police investigation ordered last week is aimed at getting to the bottom of how the Israeli-Palestinian monopolies system worked and who profited from them, a project that could jolt a few high-placed individuals and groups from Labor, some of whom put up Amram Mitzna's run for the party leadership, and also in prime minister Sharon's immediate circle.
According to DEBKAfile's Washington sources, the US government is particularly interested in the transactions that went on around the Jericho Casino, a joint Austrian-
Palestinian-Israeli venture, and has begun discreetly investigating an unexplained discrepancy: While the gambling palace's revenues totaled $50-60,000 a day, the amount banked was ten times larger, between $500,000 and $800,000.
While the terror war raged and ravaged the Israeli economy, huge amounts of cash poured into Arafat's war chest, Israel's good name was marred, while the Palestinian economy was starved of investors and business entrepreneurs who were put to flight by the monopoly system and rampant corruption. Hungry and bereft of means of livelihood, many young Palestinians are easily lured into Arafat's cycle of suicidal terror.
10 December: A distinct tilt from left to left-of-center characterized the parliamentary list Israel's opposition Labor party picked Monday, December 9, to fight the January 28 general election. Labor, under its new leader Amram Mitzna - and a partially revamped top rank - thus signaled its readiness to take on the Israeli voter whom relentless Palestinian terrorism has rendered mistrustful of peace slogans. More subtly, the modified lineup reflected a willingness to heed the prime minister, Likud leader Ariel Sharon's siren call for a post-election national unity government in partnership with its former partner Labor.
Sharon reissued this call Tuesday morning, December 10, before the results of the Labor ballot were fully counted.
He heard a different tune at the Likud primary on Sunday, December 8.
Sharon's party knows that a broad coalition government weakens its leverage and cuts into the jobs available for the Likud faithful. To offset its leader's swing to the center, Likud returned a hawkish parliamentary list, one third of which was made up of Sharon's rival, foreign minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Both made unexpected choices for the top slots: Likud's parliamentary list is headed by Tzahi Hanegbi, environment minister, party veteran and hawk; Labor by Matan Vilnai, former general who served in Sharon-led coalition that broke up last month as minister of science and sports.
Neither party leader can be expected to keep at least one of his pre-election promises: Sharon's to retain all the incumbent Likud ministers in his next administration and hand cabinet posts to his supporters who lost their Knesset seats; Mitzna's to retire from the Labor leadership if his party comes in with less than 20 seats.
After beating Netanyahu for the top spot, Sharon is the "the old man" and Likud's tested vote-catcher who has overcome all challengers. After the purging of several vocal peaceniks on the Labor list, DEBKAfile's political analysts produced a rough sketch of one possible post-election pattern at the top of the next government: Sharon - prime minister, Mitzna - deputy prime minister and finance, Shaul Mofaz (Likud) - defense, Netanyahu - foreign affairs, former defense minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer - national infrastructure, Vilnai - internal security, Shimon Peres - minister without portfolio.
11 December: The turning of a blind eye in certain, select cases has produced some strange anomalies in the global war on terror. DEBKAfile's counter-terror experts note some striking instances.
Prague is a case in point. President George W. Bush, in the Czech capital last month for an important NATO conference, which was dedicated inter alia to international cooperation for the stamping out terror, was prevented by a terrorist alert from going to Radio Liberty studios for a scheduled interview. The interview took place in his hotel room. Similarly, Israeli tourists flocking to Prague were cautioned last week to be on guard against an active terrorist danger.
DEBKAfile's counter-terror experts stress that the threat does not come from distant lands but from next door, the Balkans. The unacknowledged source of trouble is Macedonia.
All Skopje has become accustomed to seeing a 45-year old man clad in a long white robe and flak jacket pushing his cart around the food shelves of the big Vero department store almost every Wednesday or Thursday of the week. Two hand grenades are stuck in the jacket's front pockets and a Kalashnikov automatic rifle slung across his back. Most of Vero's customers and staff know him to be one of 30 wanted top al Qaeda and Hizballah operatives hiding in the Crna Gora Mountains north of the capital, near the Kosovo border. The Macedonian army and NATO forces policing the Kosovo Macedonia frontier have thrown out an extensive dragnet for their capture. Yet none of the hunters has ever waylaid the frequent shopper or followed him to his hideout.
The reason is simple. Those 30 terrorists are under the protection of Ali Ahmeti, formerly a key commander of the National Liberation Army (NLA), who went into national Macedonian politics by running for election on September 15 at the head of the new Albanian Democratic Party. He appears to be under European protection. The European Union-brokered Ohrid peace accord, signed in 2001 to halt ethnic Albanian insurrectionist violence, provided for its ringleader to enjoy a power sharing arrangement in Macedonia. In return, he pledged to renounce civil strife and turn his back on organized crime and his Islamist terrorist associations.
Ahmeti was also supposed to hand over the names of the 30 terror chiefs hiding in the hills.
The Albanian rebel chief, since gaining his seat in parliament, has not honored those promises. He did not disarm is militia and, while handing over 30 names, which still have to be checked, he claimed he never agreed to their detention.
Moreover, the guerrilla leader turned politician has opened the door wide to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and allied terrorist groups from the Middle East. Neither Macedonian police officers nor international peacekeepers dare venture into parts of Tetovo and most of the villages strung along Macedonia's western frontier. The coalition of Islamist terrorists who rule that area pose a rising threat of extremist Muslim penetration to other parts of former Yugoslavia and their European neighbors, while turning Macedonia into their launching pad for terrorist attacks across Europe.
However, the European governments who brokered the accord are restraining NATO and Macedonian forces from going after the al Qaeda and Hizballah leaders, fearing the Macedonian government will fall and the country revert to civil bloodshed between Macedonian Slavs and militant Albanians.
Link to Article Source
|
|
