[ L'ex ministro dell'ambiente britannico Michael Meacher candidamente
ci spiega che le riserve petrolifere USA-GB saranno agli sgoccioli tra
5 o 6 anni, e che attorno al 2020 questi paesi dipenderanno dalle
importazioni di greggio per circa l'80 per cento del loro fabbisogno.
Questo e' l'unico motivo per cui si e' lavorato recentemente al
"riavvicinamento" con la Libia, benche' negli anni passati Gheddafi
fosse stato demonizzato come leader del "terrorismo mondiale" e persino
agenti di Al Qaida fossero stati pagati dalla GB per ammazzarlo (nel
1996).
Ma l'articolo di Meacher e' particolarmente interessante perche' rivela
che USA e GB non sono nuove a questo tipo di "alleanze con il diavolo".
Viene fatto l'esempio delle forniture di armi ai musulmani di Bosnia ,
orchestrate dagli USA per il tramite non solo dei turchi ma anche degli
iraniani e degli stessi fanatici mujaheddin islamisti. Si parla poi del
sostegno ai narcotrafficanti ed assassini dell'UCK, pure essi aiutati
"via Al Qaeda" oltreche' direttamente, grazie ai bombardamenti della
NATO nel 1999 ed alla conseguente occupazione militare... Ed a
spiegarci tutto questo e' l'ex ministro dell'ambiente britannico
Michael Meacher ! (IS) ]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4889641-103677,00.html
The path to friendship goes via the oil and gas fields
Colonel Gadafy is just the latest beneficiary of a cynical strategy
Michael Meacher
Saturday March 27, 2004
The Guardian
So "brave" Muammar Gadafy has agreed on the importance of combating
terrorism. A handshake with Tony Blair has sealed his re-entry into the
international community, with contracts worth several hundred million
pounds for Shell and BAE to follow. His compliance in opening up Libya
to nuclear weapons inspectors has been spun as a major triumph in the
"war on terror". The motives, however, are rather more cynical.
Negotiations for a rehabilitated public image for Colonel Gadafy,
linked to improved western access to Libyan oil, began to surface in
August 2002 with the visit by the Foreign Office minister, Mike
O'Brien, to Sirte, near Tripoli. As the BBC said at the time, Libya was
keen to re-enter the world economy, and the UK did not want to lose out
on potentially lucrative oil contracts.
For both the UK and US, an energy crisis is looming. The latest BP
statistical review of world energy predicted that UK proven oil and gas
reserves will last, respectively, only 5.4 and 6.8 years at present
rates of use. It has been estimated that by 2020 the UK could be
dependent on imported energy for 80% of its needs. The US energy
department has calculated that net imports of oil, already at 54%, will
rise to 70% by 2025 because of growing demand and declining domestic
supply.
Libya produces high-quality, low-sulphur crude oil at very low cost (as
low as $1 per barrel in some fields), and holds 3% of world oil
reserves. It also has vast proven natural gas reserves of 46 trillion
cubic feet, but actual gas reserves are largely unexplored and
estimated to total up to 70 trillion cubic feet.
The problem of access to Libyan hydrocarbons was Gadafy's record of
running a state terrorist machine - responsible for arming the IRA, the
shooting of PC Yvonne Fletcher and the bombing of Pan Am flight 103
over Lockerbie in 1988. Britain had even, according to the former MI5
agent David Shayler, paid £100,000 to an al-Qaida cell in Libya to
assassinate Gadafy in 1996, and then granted asylum to a member of the
cell named Anas al-Liby, who lived in Manchester until 2000.
Moreover, just two months before Gadafy's pact with the west was
announced on December 19 last year, Libya was caught trying to import
nuclear technology from Malaysia. If it had been Saddam Hussein, no
doubt the deal would have been scotchedon the grounds of his
unreliability and bad faith. But it is remarkable how sometimes
terrorists suddenly turn into "statesmanlike and courageous" friends
(to use Jack Straw's phrase).
None of the history of mutual hostility over the past two decades
prevented a deal along these simple lines: we accept your
acknowledgement of guilt over flight 103, you open up your WMD
programmes to inspection, and then both of us can start benefiting from
trading your oil again. The weakness of this deal as presented,
however, is that it appears that Libya didn't have any WMD, other than
chemical weapons no longer likely to be useable. The International
Atomic Energy Agency stated last December that "Libya was not close to
building a nuclear weapon". Indeed, Libya had itself nine months
earlier proposed inspections, so the west's triumphalism says more
about the US-UK desire to placate domestic critics than about forcing
any fundamental policy change on a recalcitrant Gadafy.
Nor is this rapid shift from terrorist to statesman confined to Libya.
The US backing of Islamic terrorism in the Balkans provides another
example. As the official Dutch inquiry into the 1995 Srebrenica
massacre has now revealed, a secret alliance was formed between the
Pentagon and radical Islamist groups to assist the Bosnian Muslims in
violation of the UN arms embargo. A vast secret conduit of weapons
smuggling through Croatia was organised by US, Turkish and Iranian
clandestine agencies, together with Afghan mojahedin and pro-Iranian
Hizbullah. Aircraft from Iran Air were used, joined by a US-sponsored
fleet of C-130 Hercules.
The 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, directed by the
US general Wesley Clark, was said to be stopping an alleged "genocide"
by the Serbs in Kosovo (some 2,000 bodies were later exhumed, a
horrifying number but far short of the 100,000 the US predicted). The
US goal was to assist the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Yet the year
before, the US state department had branded the KLA a terrorist
organisation, financing its operations from the heroin trade and funds
from Islamic countries and individuals, including Osama bin Laden.
As James Bissett, the former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, has
subsequently reported: "This did not stop the US from arming and
training KLA members in Albania and sending them back into Kosovo to
assassinate Serbian mayors, ambush Serbian policemen and intimidate
hesitant Kosovo Albanians ... Despite a UN arms embargo, and with the
support of the US, arms, ammunition and thousands of fighters were
smuggled into Bosnia to help the Muslims ... Bin Laden and his network
were also active in Kosovo, and KLA members trained in his camps in
Afghanistan and Albania." According to reports in April 1999,
assistance was also provided by Britain's SAS.
Through much of the 1990s, US support for Islamic militants in former
Yugoslavia was backed up by covert US airdrops of arms, especially at
Tuzla in northern Bosnia. These took place in the face of Operation
Deny Flight, the UN-imposed and Nato-policed no-fly zone over Bosnia.
The US House of Representatives also failed to authorise the war under
the War Powers Act, making it illegal (shades of Iraq). But the
airdrops were only the tip of the iceberg. Retired US officers heading
Military Professional Resources Inc, a private paramilitary firm based
in Virginia, planned the bloody Croatian "liberation" of the Serb-held
Krajina enclave, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of 200,000
Serbs.
US goals in the use of the KLA as a proxy force, similar to the
funding of the Contras against the leftwing Sandinista government in
Nicaragua in the 1980s, were partly to remove Milosevic and break up
Yugoslavia as one of the remaining Communist regimes. But related
motives were to break Russia's monopoly over oil and gas transport
routes and secure pro-western governments in the strategic Black
Sea-Caspian Sea oil-rich basin. A crucial oil corridor, called the
Trans-Balkan pipeline, designed to become the main route to the west
for oil and gas extracted in central Asia, was to run from the Black
Sea to the Adriatic via Bulgaria, Macedonia near the border with
Kosovo, and Albania. Another was to run across Serbia to Adriatic ports
in Croatia and Italy, fed by a pipeline running from a Black Sea port
in Romania.
The implications of this are stark. The US played a major role in
creating and sustaining the mojahedin to fight the invading Soviet army
in the Afghan war of 1979-92. Then from 1992-95 the Pentagon assisted
the movement of thousands of Islamic fighters from central Asia to
fight alongside Bosnian Muslims and remove the Milosevic barrier, and
so extend US influence in a key area of oil geopolitics - a "pact with
the devil", as Richard Holbrooke, America's former chief Balkans peace
negotiator put it. It has proved quite another thing to rein them back
in again. Before President Bush trumpets his dedication to his war on
terror, he should reflect on his country's links with terrorism over
the past decade where it has suited US interests.
· Michael Meacher was environment minister, 1997-2003.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
ci spiega che le riserve petrolifere USA-GB saranno agli sgoccioli tra
5 o 6 anni, e che attorno al 2020 questi paesi dipenderanno dalle
importazioni di greggio per circa l'80 per cento del loro fabbisogno.
Questo e' l'unico motivo per cui si e' lavorato recentemente al
"riavvicinamento" con la Libia, benche' negli anni passati Gheddafi
fosse stato demonizzato come leader del "terrorismo mondiale" e persino
agenti di Al Qaida fossero stati pagati dalla GB per ammazzarlo (nel
1996).
Ma l'articolo di Meacher e' particolarmente interessante perche' rivela
che USA e GB non sono nuove a questo tipo di "alleanze con il diavolo".
Viene fatto l'esempio delle forniture di armi ai musulmani di Bosnia ,
orchestrate dagli USA per il tramite non solo dei turchi ma anche degli
iraniani e degli stessi fanatici mujaheddin islamisti. Si parla poi del
sostegno ai narcotrafficanti ed assassini dell'UCK, pure essi aiutati
"via Al Qaeda" oltreche' direttamente, grazie ai bombardamenti della
NATO nel 1999 ed alla conseguente occupazione militare... Ed a
spiegarci tutto questo e' l'ex ministro dell'ambiente britannico
Michael Meacher ! (IS) ]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4889641-103677,00.html
The path to friendship goes via the oil and gas fields
Colonel Gadafy is just the latest beneficiary of a cynical strategy
Michael Meacher
Saturday March 27, 2004
The Guardian
So "brave" Muammar Gadafy has agreed on the importance of combating
terrorism. A handshake with Tony Blair has sealed his re-entry into the
international community, with contracts worth several hundred million
pounds for Shell and BAE to follow. His compliance in opening up Libya
to nuclear weapons inspectors has been spun as a major triumph in the
"war on terror". The motives, however, are rather more cynical.
Negotiations for a rehabilitated public image for Colonel Gadafy,
linked to improved western access to Libyan oil, began to surface in
August 2002 with the visit by the Foreign Office minister, Mike
O'Brien, to Sirte, near Tripoli. As the BBC said at the time, Libya was
keen to re-enter the world economy, and the UK did not want to lose out
on potentially lucrative oil contracts.
For both the UK and US, an energy crisis is looming. The latest BP
statistical review of world energy predicted that UK proven oil and gas
reserves will last, respectively, only 5.4 and 6.8 years at present
rates of use. It has been estimated that by 2020 the UK could be
dependent on imported energy for 80% of its needs. The US energy
department has calculated that net imports of oil, already at 54%, will
rise to 70% by 2025 because of growing demand and declining domestic
supply.
Libya produces high-quality, low-sulphur crude oil at very low cost (as
low as $1 per barrel in some fields), and holds 3% of world oil
reserves. It also has vast proven natural gas reserves of 46 trillion
cubic feet, but actual gas reserves are largely unexplored and
estimated to total up to 70 trillion cubic feet.
The problem of access to Libyan hydrocarbons was Gadafy's record of
running a state terrorist machine - responsible for arming the IRA, the
shooting of PC Yvonne Fletcher and the bombing of Pan Am flight 103
over Lockerbie in 1988. Britain had even, according to the former MI5
agent David Shayler, paid £100,000 to an al-Qaida cell in Libya to
assassinate Gadafy in 1996, and then granted asylum to a member of the
cell named Anas al-Liby, who lived in Manchester until 2000.
Moreover, just two months before Gadafy's pact with the west was
announced on December 19 last year, Libya was caught trying to import
nuclear technology from Malaysia. If it had been Saddam Hussein, no
doubt the deal would have been scotchedon the grounds of his
unreliability and bad faith. But it is remarkable how sometimes
terrorists suddenly turn into "statesmanlike and courageous" friends
(to use Jack Straw's phrase).
None of the history of mutual hostility over the past two decades
prevented a deal along these simple lines: we accept your
acknowledgement of guilt over flight 103, you open up your WMD
programmes to inspection, and then both of us can start benefiting from
trading your oil again. The weakness of this deal as presented,
however, is that it appears that Libya didn't have any WMD, other than
chemical weapons no longer likely to be useable. The International
Atomic Energy Agency stated last December that "Libya was not close to
building a nuclear weapon". Indeed, Libya had itself nine months
earlier proposed inspections, so the west's triumphalism says more
about the US-UK desire to placate domestic critics than about forcing
any fundamental policy change on a recalcitrant Gadafy.
Nor is this rapid shift from terrorist to statesman confined to Libya.
The US backing of Islamic terrorism in the Balkans provides another
example. As the official Dutch inquiry into the 1995 Srebrenica
massacre has now revealed, a secret alliance was formed between the
Pentagon and radical Islamist groups to assist the Bosnian Muslims in
violation of the UN arms embargo. A vast secret conduit of weapons
smuggling through Croatia was organised by US, Turkish and Iranian
clandestine agencies, together with Afghan mojahedin and pro-Iranian
Hizbullah. Aircraft from Iran Air were used, joined by a US-sponsored
fleet of C-130 Hercules.
The 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, directed by the
US general Wesley Clark, was said to be stopping an alleged "genocide"
by the Serbs in Kosovo (some 2,000 bodies were later exhumed, a
horrifying number but far short of the 100,000 the US predicted). The
US goal was to assist the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Yet the year
before, the US state department had branded the KLA a terrorist
organisation, financing its operations from the heroin trade and funds
from Islamic countries and individuals, including Osama bin Laden.
As James Bissett, the former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, has
subsequently reported: "This did not stop the US from arming and
training KLA members in Albania and sending them back into Kosovo to
assassinate Serbian mayors, ambush Serbian policemen and intimidate
hesitant Kosovo Albanians ... Despite a UN arms embargo, and with the
support of the US, arms, ammunition and thousands of fighters were
smuggled into Bosnia to help the Muslims ... Bin Laden and his network
were also active in Kosovo, and KLA members trained in his camps in
Afghanistan and Albania." According to reports in April 1999,
assistance was also provided by Britain's SAS.
Through much of the 1990s, US support for Islamic militants in former
Yugoslavia was backed up by covert US airdrops of arms, especially at
Tuzla in northern Bosnia. These took place in the face of Operation
Deny Flight, the UN-imposed and Nato-policed no-fly zone over Bosnia.
The US House of Representatives also failed to authorise the war under
the War Powers Act, making it illegal (shades of Iraq). But the
airdrops were only the tip of the iceberg. Retired US officers heading
Military Professional Resources Inc, a private paramilitary firm based
in Virginia, planned the bloody Croatian "liberation" of the Serb-held
Krajina enclave, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of 200,000
Serbs.
US goals in the use of the KLA as a proxy force, similar to the
funding of the Contras against the leftwing Sandinista government in
Nicaragua in the 1980s, were partly to remove Milosevic and break up
Yugoslavia as one of the remaining Communist regimes. But related
motives were to break Russia's monopoly over oil and gas transport
routes and secure pro-western governments in the strategic Black
Sea-Caspian Sea oil-rich basin. A crucial oil corridor, called the
Trans-Balkan pipeline, designed to become the main route to the west
for oil and gas extracted in central Asia, was to run from the Black
Sea to the Adriatic via Bulgaria, Macedonia near the border with
Kosovo, and Albania. Another was to run across Serbia to Adriatic ports
in Croatia and Italy, fed by a pipeline running from a Black Sea port
in Romania.
The implications of this are stark. The US played a major role in
creating and sustaining the mojahedin to fight the invading Soviet army
in the Afghan war of 1979-92. Then from 1992-95 the Pentagon assisted
the movement of thousands of Islamic fighters from central Asia to
fight alongside Bosnian Muslims and remove the Milosevic barrier, and
so extend US influence in a key area of oil geopolitics - a "pact with
the devil", as Richard Holbrooke, America's former chief Balkans peace
negotiator put it. It has proved quite another thing to rein them back
in again. Before President Bush trumpets his dedication to his war on
terror, he should reflect on his country's links with terrorism over
the past decade where it has suited US interests.
· Michael Meacher was environment minister, 1997-2003.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004