[Dryerase] Alarm!--War Notes 11-1-02

[The Alarm!Newswire]

War Notes 11-1-02

By sasha k
The Alarm! Newspaper Columnist

North Korea
North Korea’s confession that they have an active nuclear weapons 
program, in breach of a 1994 agreement with the US, has many people 
asking “why are the Koreans admitting this now?”  North Korea is 
already under diplomatic pressure and has been named as one of the 
three members of the infamous “axis of evil,” so why bring more 
pressure upon themselves?   North Korea is certainly not in good shape, 
economically or in terms of international relations--they have few 
friends left in the world.  But for all Bush’s talk of the axis of 
evil, North Korea hasn’t gotten much attention lately.  Now they have.  
And, perhaps, that is the point.

By playing the nuclear weapons card, North Korea might be trying to 
bring about a more engaged relationship with the US.  North Korea seems 
to be betting that this confession will bring about negotiations with 
the US that could lead to normalization of relations.  Of course, with 
the Bush administration such a bet might be a long shot.

Strangely enough, the Bush administration took half a month to disclose 
North Korea’s confession.  Why did the US hold the information secret 
for so long?  It looks like the Korea issue has started another 
internal battle in the Bush administration: with Powell’s State 
Department looking to negotiate and the Rumsfeld wing pushing a much 
harder line.  Powell has already started talking on the diplomatic 
front, meeting with the South Korean Foreign Minister Choi Sung-hong 
and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov late last week.

“This is a time to approach this matter with care, to consult closely 
with our friends. We are all in this,” Powell told reporters.  Others 
within the State Department indicate that the US will take a flexible 
approach to North Korea.  And President Bush stated that, unlike with 
Iraq, the US would use diplomatic pressure, not military threats, to 
persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program.

Department of hypocrisy
The different treatment that North Korea and Iraq are getting isn’t 
lost on the Iraqis.  Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, one of 
Saddam Hussein’s most trusted advisors, bluntly stated, “North Korea 
has admitted to having a secret nuclear program.  The United States is 
not asking that North Korea be inspected in the way they are asking for 
Iraq to be inspected.  Why?  Because there are two things absent in 
North Korea: oil and Israel.  The reason for this warmongering policy 
towards Iraq is oil and Israel.”  Aziz’s statement is part of the 
diplomatic wrangling surrounding the expected UN resolution on Iraq.

Bush speak on the diplomatic front:  To the confusion of many, Bush has 
redefined one of his favorite terms, “regime change.”  “[I]f he [Saddam 
Hussein] were to meet all the conditions of the United Nations, the 
conditions I’ve described very clearly in terms that everybody can 
understand, that in itself will signal the regime has changed,” Bush 
said.  So now a regime change does not mean a new regime is put in the 
place of the old, but that Hussein (since Bush defines the regime as 
Saddam Hussein) changes his ways.

This sudden change in terminology comes, of course, as Bush is trying 
to convince the big five permanent Security Council members to pass the 
US version of a resolution on Iraq.  Negotiations for such a resolution 
have been going on for over six weeks.  Both France and Russia, 
however, have been circulating proposals in the UN that take out 
language that could be interpreted as authorizing an attack on Iraq, 
forcing the US to slowly remove such language.

But on October 23, the US finally formally presented the Security 
Council with its draft resolution, which included a threat of military 
action.  The Russian ambassador to the UN, Sergey Lavrov, stated that 
Russia opposed any resolution that included automatic authorization for 
the use of military force, and that the demands on Iraq for inspections 
were “unimplementable, unrealistic.”

Yet it is unlikely that France, Russia or China will veto the 
resolution if the US can garner the seven votes—plus Britain and the 
US—necessary out of the fifteen Security Council member states.  Mexico 
and Ireland are key pivot votes.

The US, fearing that the resolution won’t be strong enough for its 
tastes, is now arguing to have inspections carried out quickly and 
forcefully in order to push Iraq into noncompliance.  After many weeks 
of debate on the UN resolution, the US wants to make sure it can still 
fight its war in the winter months (beginning between December and 
February), before the sand storms and heat of the spring and summer 
make war efforts more difficult.  Both Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the 
national security advisor, argued that the inspections should be a 
quick test of Saddam Hussein.

War preparations
The build-up in the Gulf is speeding up.  More and more troops are 
arriving at bases in the Gulf.  Two aircraft carriers are soon to leave 
for the Gulf bringing the total there to four.  The Defense Department 
is also beginning to train at least 5,000 troops recruited from the 
Iraqi opposition to act as spotters and translators in the coming war.  
More dangerous for regional stability, there are reports that the Bush 
administration is planning a joint strike with Israel into Iraq’s 
western territory to disarm any missiles that threaten Israel.
 
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