British Expats - France- Germany (Shocking Article)

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France- Germany (Shocking Article)

The Iraqi files

National Post (Canada.com)

Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Not that it should come as a surprise to anyone, but it turns out some
of the staunchest international opponents of invading Iraq -- on
principle, you understand -- were up to their eyeballs in secret deals
with the now deposed regime of Saddam Hussein. Since the fall of Baghdad
earlier this month, documents found at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, at
the headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence service, Mukhabarat, and
elsewhere around the capital have revealed just how deeply involved were
those who sided against the war at the United Nations -- France,
Germany, Russia, China and the UN itself -- in propping up Saddam's
murderous government. Others suggest at least one prominent critic of
the Anglo-American coalition may have taken millions in bribes to parrot
Baghdad's virtues in the West. And all this inside of three weeks.

Yesterday, London's Daily Telegraph published documents showing how
France's Foreign Ministry conspired with the Mukhabarat to disrupt the
Paris meetings of a prominent anti-Saddam human rights group in 1998.
France pressured the group, Indict, to accept delegates who turned out
to be Saddam's agents. It also encouraged pro-Saddam demonstrations
outside the meeting hall, discouraged French media from reporting on the
atrocities uncovered by Indict and may even have staged a bomb scare to
disrupt proceedings. The French also routinely informed Baghdad of
secrets Jacques Chirac learned in talks with Tony Blair or George W.
Bush.

Other documents have shown how, last spring, German spies approached
Saddam's regime with a plan whereby the German government would oppose
any and all military action proposed at the UN in return for "lucrative
contracts" for German companies in Iraq's oilfields. The Russians spied
on Mr. Blair during an EU summit on a possible war in February and
passed their intelligence on to Saddam. They also gave the Iraqi
Information Ministry advice on how to make it appear the regime was
co-operating with UN weapons inspectors, when it was not.

While this was going on, George Galloway, a British Labour MP, is
alleged to have championed Iraq's cause in the British and European
press, in Parliament and in the Labour caucus in return for US$3- to
US$4-million in clandestine payments from the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.
Mr. Galloway, who was an enormous thorn in Mr. Blair's side during the
run-up to the invasion, denies the charges. But still more documents
indicate payments may have stopped recently only because Mr. Galloway
upped his demands beyond what even the corrupt Iraqi regime was willing
to pay.

Then there is the UN's oil-for-food program. Since 1996, it has helped
sell US$55-billion in Iraqi oil, but authorized just US$34-billion in
aid shipments back into Iraq. The US$21-billion surplus is thought to be
sitting in UN accounts, mostly in French banks. In 2002 alone, the UN is
believed to have sold US$16-billion in oil, turned a blind eye to a
further US$5.3-billion in illegal sales (the proceeds of which likely
went into Saddam's pockets and those of his Russian and French oil
brokers) and pocketed US$483-million in commissions in the process.

With more than 1,000 UN employees and 3,000 Iraqi workers -- mostly
chosen by the regime -- oil-for-food is the UN's biggest and most
profitable single project. Still, details are sketchy because
Secretary-General Kofi Annan's office is not required to (and doesn't)
disclose the details of the contracts it signs. Nor are the French
overseers of the surplus accounts required to provide external audits.

But we know where Saddam's share of the take went. China and France are
believed to have sold "precursors" for chemical weapons to Iraq in the
weeks just before the invasion began, and shipped them through Syria.
Russia sold night-vision goggles to the Republican Guard. New
revelations turn up every day.

It is more than likely the secret documents discovered to date are just
the tip of an enormous, scheming iceberg. In the coming months, still
more direct connections are likely to be discovered between the anti-war
governments on the Security Council and Iraq's economic and intelligence
agencies. But what has been revealed to date is staggering. If anyone's
position on this war was "all about oil," it was France and Russia's,
not that of the United States. While affecting such public concern for
peace and international law, the anti-war powers have been exposed as
having acted out of self-interest of the most venal kind. To call this
performance hypocritical would not begin to do it justice.

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