too many coups spoil the chemical soup

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday April 19, 2002 20:42 by mr. Boy

the toxic avenger

EU and Ireland buckle under more US. 'with us or against us' nonesense and at the same time smooth the way for a lovely war. ( which will be good for tv. which is cool, more cyber bombs to look at, yipee!(1)

"What the Americans are doing," Bustani says, "is a coup d'etat.

The US. is getting rid of Bustani because he tried to examine US site and he has no spooks in his outfit which
(2)'has sought to examine facilities in the United States with the same rigour with which it examines facilities anywhere else. But, just like Iraq, the US has refused to accept weapons inspectors from countries it regards as hostile to its interests, and has told those who have been allowed in which parts of a site they may and may not inspect. It has also passed special legislation permitting the president to block unannounced inspections, and banning inspectors from removing samples of its chemicals.

"Ill-considered initiatives" is code for the attempts Bustani has made, in line with his mandate, to persuade Saddam Hussein to sign the chemical weapons convention. If Iraq agrees, it will then be subject to the same inspections - both routine and unannounced - as any other member state (with the exception, of course, of the United States). Bustani has so far been unsuccessful, but only because, he believes, he has not yet received the backing of the UN security council, with the result that Saddam knows he would have little to gain from signing.

Bustani has suggested that if the security council were to support the OPCW's bid to persuade Iraq to sign, this would provide the US with an alternative to war. It is hard to see why Saddam Hussein would accept weapons inspectors from Unmovic - the organisation backed by the security council - after its predecessor, Unscom, was found to be stuffed with spies planted by the US government. It is much easier to see why he might accept inspectors from an organisation which has remained scrupulously even-handed. Indeed, when Unscom was thrown out of Iraq in 1998, the OPCW was allowed in to complete the destruction of the weapons it had found. Bustani has to go because he has proposed the solution to a problem the US does not want solved.

http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=2218 (1)

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4394862,00.html(2) b-

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2002/0419/breaking55.htm d+
ps. new game lets rate newspaper stories.