Syed Javed Hussain
Despondency hardly learns from experience: quite rightly so in case of Mr George W Bush, the all times hawkish, bullying and flamboyant Presidentof the USA. Since he declared three countries as ‘Excess of evil’ namely, Iran, Iraq and North Korea, he has gained a little or noting from his confrontation with these States but in the stupor of persistent failures coming one after the others Mr Bush is committing one mistake after another for disastrous consequences to the world peace.
Hegemonic attitude of Mr Bush to treat other sovereign nations as America’ s principalities has created all the problems in international relations and further his persistent claim to chalk out a new Middle East order has directly thrown a challenge to the regional States who have different outlook on State relations.
America’s blinders on Middle East and its outright support to Israel in all weathers are helping no one. Especially its support to Israel on latter’s attack on Lebanon, which was condemned fervently by the whole world, throws a spanner into every arrange-ment or initiatives that has came from Washington. The US State Department lags far behind in its PRs which on the contrary should have superseded all such moves.
The US administration has failed to realise that hackneyed carrot and stick policy, a very favourite instrument of US foreign policy, is rendered ineffective when it relates to people and issues that have ideological moorings; in such cases only arguments, discussions, dialogues and persuasion can succeed.
Horrifically Israel, its lobbyists at the US and the power drunk sphinxes at the helm of affairs in Washington power corridors as well as their friends in the West have refused to learn from their mistakes and change their course of action. The world would have been safer had the US State Department not thrust its unjust policies down the throat of aggrieved peoples in all conflict ridden hot spots of the world.
Does it sound like a colossal misreading of the US involvement in world affairs? It should not. Wherever in the world, the US promoted solution is not welcome there the rising human cost is no deterrent to the US policy makers. And since the beginning of the US war on terror no amount of collateral damage is discouraging and a challenge to human sensibilities to the US policy-makers. Mr Bush has all along been given free ride to his own whims and wishes.
Despite the fact that Mr Bush’s hawkish policies are bringing any success, he is not discouraged to draw upon his unending store of misplaced illusions and misjudgements. He is sill more than willing to kill a fly with a tank shell. North Korea has declared itself nuclear, but America will not talk to it directly and frankly but rather would empower its proxies in the region to enhance the very threat NK wants to neutralise.
Afghanistan spectre is rising again and is displaying a potential to plunge the whole world into yet another crisis. Iraq war is far from over, implications of Lebanon war are beginning to emerge, however, Mr George W Bush still feels himself in the driving seat and wants to draw the ME map. He would not listen to any sane voice on Iran’s nuclear programme and no amount o sensible talk can dissuade him away from the war path whereas the whole world thinks that talks can lead us to a way out of the present quagmire, and some reasonable solution can be found.
French President Jacques Chirac has come in the open to call for dialogue over Iran’s nuclear programme. Talking to a local radio on Monday (18-9-20060 which was widely reported in all big newspapers across the globe he said, referring Iran to the UN Security Council is not the best way to resolve a crisis over its nuclear programme. ‘I don’tbelieve in a solution without dialogue,’ Mr Chirac told local radio, urging countries to remove the threat of sanctions against Iran. I think that Iran is a great nation and that we can find solutions through dialogue, he added.
There is yet another suggestion, whose pros and cons are still to be worked out, that promotes a solution to the nuclear controversy. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has proposed setting up uranium enrichment centres under UN control to end nuclear disputes like the one over Iran. Steinmeier said such centres could be used by several nations and placed under control of the watchdog IAEA.
According to him ‘interested countries like Iran could in this way obtain nuclear fuel for civilian use under strict control,’ Steinmeier said. ‘It could be financed by countries that claim the right to buy nuclear fuel,’ he added.Europe needs to get out the American rot now and exert itself for a just, equitable and reasonable solution to the problem quite in line with the honour, dignity and sovereignty of a proud nation.
Mr Bush was wrong on Iraq; neither he could find WMD nor he could establish any relationship of Saddam’s regime with Al-Qaeda. He has been proved wrong on Iran too, and therefore, he should not be allowed to plunge the world into yet another crisis.
He does not deserve any moral backing from world community on Iran’s nuclear issue. His immoral war-mongering team of nondescript sycophants have been cooking up stories on Iran’s nuclear programme and making a lot of hue and cry in international media about Iran’s links with terrorists to discredit a hugely honourable, cultured and humanist Islamic nation. This month two revelations have come as great eye opener to the world community.
Vilmos Cserveny, a senior director of the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog, in a recent letter addressed to the chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has described the committee’s claim that the Iranians were trying to acquire nuclear-weapons capability as ‘outrageous and dishonest.’ The letter which was widely reported in the US media last week complained to Rep Peter Hoekstra that the report by his committee had given ‘incorrect and misleading’ information to the IAEA to try to mislead it.
The committee report had stated that IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei removed a senior inspector ‘for concluding that the purpose of Iran’s nuclear programme is to construct weapons’; in reality, Mr Cserveny pointed out, it was Iran, not Mr ElBaradei, who had asked forthe inspector to be replaced, under a right Tehran enjoys under agreements governing countries’ relationships with the IAEA.’ Another report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, brings the cat out on Iraq. The document said the CIA had learned in late 2002 from a top-level Iraqi contact, then Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, that ‘Iraq has no past,current, or anticipated futurecontact with Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’ and and ‘Bin Laden was in fact a long-time enemy of Iraq’.
Mr Bush and his acolytes are busy cooking stories to hoodwink the world community to advance their own agenda under the influence of diabolical fanatic Zionist lobby in Washington. Sheer strength of Iran’s argument and honesty of purpose can defeat these liars to bring peace, stability and security to the Gulf region as well as the world along with a just international order as a by product of a principled stand.
Information
Hegemonic attitude of Mr Bush to treat other sovereign nations as America’ s principalities has created all the problems in intern-ational relations and further his persistent claim to chalk out a new Middle East order has directly thrown a challenge to the regional States who have different outlook on State relations.
First appeared in Pakistan Observer on September 26, 2006