MEDIA REACTION IRAQ; HARARE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 HARARE 000451 SIPDIS DEPT FOR INR/R/MR AND AF/PDPA DALTON, MITCHELL AND SIMS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL KPAO KMDR ZI SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION IRAQ; HARARE ¶1. In an opinion piece carried in the March 2 edition of the government-controlled weekly "The Sunday Mail," Dr. Tafataona Mahoso criticized the United States and Britain for appearing to be "arm-twisting" the United Nations to sanction the war against Iraq. Under headline "Sinister motives fuel assault on Iraq: "Britain and U. S. arm-twist ¶U. N. to bless illegal war," Mahoso argues: ¶2. "An impressive number of international summits and conferences have come out clearly on the side of peace and against the threatened U. S. - UK war on Iraq. A few weeks ago, the African Union declared its position against war. . .All these are impressive expressions of world opinion, when taken together with the millions of demonstrators who took to the streets on 15 February on all five continents of the globe. But there is now a need for the key members of the coalition, especially NAM, to think ahead beyond the current stalemate between U. S, weapons of mass destruction, on the one hand, and the moral power of the loose anti-war alliance on the other. First of all, too many opponents of the war in Europe and America are opposing it just so that history will count them as having expressed doubts about it but having failed to stop it. This is particularly true of the white liberals in North America. They know that the U. S. military- industrial complex stands to make huge profits from weapons and oil if the war takes place. However, they wish Bush and Blair would not wage the war without first bribing the U. N. to bless the war. This is where the African Union and NAM stand out. They see the war as a most horrific holocaust, whether or not the U. S. and UK manage to bribe the ¶U. N. to bless it. In other words, too many in the North oppose only the Bush-Blair means of waging the assault on Iraq. They would go quiet if Blair and Bush succeeded in making the proposed genocide legal. The view from the South, on the other hand, is that Iraq is only a sacrificial lamb, another means to an end; just as Yugoslavia was also a means to an end. "The real objectives of the war are: To bring western and central Asia firmly under the unipolar system dominated by the U. S., and to prevent a possible coalition or alliance of the future which could bring Russia, India and China together, especially if Namibia's proposal to make India a permanent Security Council member were to succeed; To bring all major oil reserves under U. S. control; even Sudan and Nigeria will not be spared; To wage war on the old U. N. system before its Security Council mechanism is captured by a coalition of emerging powers and used to neutralize the U. S.-UK alliance. . .; To use the oil power so obtained as means of controlling the allies of the U. S. who may be threatening to declare their independence from their post-Second World War dependence on North America. Now, the main objective of the loose alliance against war should be to stop the aggression before it happens. . .So the loose alliance needs to become tighter and immediately announce that a unilateral war on Iraq will mean: That the majority of U. N. members would decide to forfeit U. S. contributions to the budget of the same and move the U. N. headquarters out of the U. ¶S. for good; That the majority of the U. N. members would immediately change the U. N. Security Council system by creating new permanent members such as Brazil, India and the AU; That the majority would seek to tighten their anti-war alliance until it can impose some trade sanctions against the U. S.; That the coalition would agitate for the removal of U. S. military bases from member states, especially in the South. "These ideas follow from a logical analysis of the situation. In Yugoslavia, the U. S. managed to wage war on Europe, using NATO and making Europeans pay for the cost. Many thought that would be the last war in which the U. N. was arm-twisted to bless an illegal war. But it was not. Over Afghanistan, the world at first went along with the `war on terrorism' until that war became terrorism in itself. Now, the aggression against Iraq just came out of the blue. The attempts to justify it have been the weakest the world has ever heard compared to those for the Gulf war, the Yugoslav war and the Afghan war. But the current attempts are costing the U. N. very dearly. The whole system has been commandeered to make the war on Iraq appear to be the only business of the U. N. that is worth doing at present. This should not be tolerated." SULLIVAN