Just Foreign Policy News
December 7, 2010
*Action: Attend a "South of the Border" Screening Party
In major US media, evidence of US involvement in coups in Latin America doesn’t exist..
On December 10 – Human Rights Day – attend a house party to watch Oliver Stone’s documentary "South of the Border," and tune in to a live webcast with Just Foreign Policy President Mark Weisbrot, who co-wrote the script. Check to see if there’s a house party near you:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/southofobama/search
CounterSpin: WikiLeaks and the Coup in Honduras
One story hasn’t received enough media attention: how the U.S. embassy really saw the 2009 coup in Honduras. How did this cable conflict with official U.S. pronouncements and corporate media spin? Counterspin talks to Just Foreign Policy.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4208
Guardian Misreports Wikileaks on US Stance on Taliban Talks
The Guardian reported that "the secret cables show a united US front against talks" and that Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said: "There will be no power-sharing with elements of the Taliban." But the cable cited was sent in January, and in reporting on the cable to characterize US policy in the present tense the Guardian ignored its own reporting in July that the US said its policy had changed. It’s important that what we know about the US stance be reported correctly. If public understanding of the situation becomes pea soup, that makes it harder for people to effectively advocate for the needed change in policy to end the war.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/guardian-misreports-wikil_b_792641.html
Rabbi Michael Lerner: Save Obama’s presidency by challenging him on the left
Citing escalation of the war in Afghanistan and refusal to prosecute torture or investigate the war in Iraq, Michael Lerner of Tikkun calls for a primary challenge that would call for an immediate end to the presence of U.S. troops, advisers and private U.S.-based security firms in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and replace the "war on terror" with a Global Marshall Plan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120304148.html
Help Support Our Work
Your donation helps us educate Americans and create opportunities to advocate for a just foreign policy.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate
Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) An expert report submitted to the French foreign ministry says the cholera outbreak ravaging Haiti began at a camp for UN peacekeepers from Nepal, AFP reports. Respected French epidemiologist Professor Renaud Piarroux conducted a study in Haiti last month and concluded the epidemic began with an imported strain of the disease that could be traced back to the Nepalese base, an official close to the matter said. Foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero did not reveal the conclusion of the report, but confirmed the foreign ministry had received a copy and said it had been passed on to the UN. "From the outbreak of the epidemic, France sent to Haiti at the request of the Haitian health ministry one of its best cholera specialists, Professor Piarroux, a head of department in Marseille’s public hospitals," he said.
2) The Administration’s review of Afghanistan policy will be released to the public the week of December 13, Reuters reports.
3) The Obama administration has given up its effort to persuade Prime Minister Netanyahu to renew an expired freeze on the construction of Jewish settlements for 90 days, the New York Times reports. Officials said the administration decided to pull the plug because it concluded that even if Netanyahu persuaded his cabinet to accept an extension the 90-day negotiating period would not have produced the progress on core issues that the administration originally had hoped for.
4) Julian Assange was denied bail by a London court after he was arrested on a Swedish extradition warrant for questioning in connection with alleged sex offenses, the New York Times reports. Wikileaks said his detention would not alter plans for further disclosures. Visa, Amazon, and PayPal have cut off commercial cooperation with Wikileaks, the NYT notes. The NYT notes that Wikileaks has moved cautiously in releasing the State Department cables, posting only a few dozen cables on its own in addition to matching those made public by news publications which were given the archive. The publications have removed the names of some confidential sources of US diplomats, and WikiLeaks has generally posted the cables with the same redactions.
Justice Department prosecutors have been struggling to find a way to indict Assange since July. But while it is clearly illegal for a government official with a security clearance to give a classified document to WikiLeaks, it is far from clear that it is illegal for the organization to make it public, the Times says. [Of course, if it were illegal for Wikileaks to do it, it would be illegal for the Times to do it – JFP.]
5) The ongoing attempts to halt the release of US government communiqués has created a backlash amongst grassroots online campaigners who have rallied under the Wikileaks banner to keep the website online, The Independent reports. Using the moniker "I Am Wikileaks", supporters are using social network sites to publicise new outlets for the State Department cables when old ones get closed down or taken offline. They have also now created more than 570 mirror versions of the Wikileaks website and have called for a boycott of Paypal, Amazon and EveryDNS, three US-based websites that recently severed ties to Wikileaks. Server providers in Switzerland and Sweden are still up and running with the majority of the website running on the Swiss address www.wikileaks.ch. Anna Mosberg, CEO of Swedish provider Banhof, said she would resist any pressure from overseas to kick Wikileaks off their servers. "We would only stop hosting them if they broke Swedish law or failed to pay their bills."
Lebanon
6) Nearly 200 previously unreported U.S. diplomatic cables were posted on Thursday to the website of Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, the Atlantic reports. According to the cables, in 2008 Lebanese Defense Minister Elias al-Murr told U.S. diplomats, in a message he implied they should pass on to Israeli officials, that the Lebanese military would not resist an Israeli invasion so long as Israeli forces did not pass certain physical boundaries and did not bomb Christian communities. Murr added that he had discussed the plan with then-Military Commandant Michel Sleiman, who has since become President. English-language Arab bloggers have expressed outrage at Murr and Sleiman’s apparent invitation.
Iran
7) Sens. Lieberman, Kyl, Gillibrand, Casey, and Kirk said in a letter to Obama that the administration should make clear to Iran that domestic enrichment of uranium is not an option, Foreign Policy reports. Secretary of State Clinton said last week in Bahrain that Iran does have the right to a domestic uranium enrichment program for civilian purposes, if and when they prove to the international community they can do so transparently and responsibly.
8) Six world powers ended a meeting with Iran on its nuclear program Tuesday with plans for another meeting in Istanbul in late January, the Los Angeles Times reports. The choice of Istanbul as the location for the next meeting appears to be a compromise, the LAT says. The US and its European allies had resisted meeting this week in Istanbul, arguing privately that the Turks were not a neutral party but had taken Iran’s side.
Israel/Palestine
9) Argentina and Uruguay said they were joining Brazil in recognizing an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, AFP reports. Some 104 countries now recognize a Palestinian state. Other Latin American nations that have already taken the step are Costa Rica, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Morocco
10) Morocco broke ties with Iran and began a domestic campaign against Moroccan Shiites in exchange for cheap oil and economic aid from Saudi Arabia, according to a leaked cable published by Al Akhbar, the Los Angeles Times reports. The formal break in relations was followed by a crackdown on Morocco’s tiny Shiite minority, which resulted in the closure of religious schools and the arrest of hundreds of people.
Honduras
11) A leaked July 2009 cable signed by the U.S. ambassador to Honduras has reignited debate over the coup in Honduras, The Hill reports. Connie Mack, the likely next chairman of the House Western Hemisphere subcommittee, attacked the ambassador, Hugo Llorens, and demanded his removal. But Sarah Stephens of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, said: "The cable confirms what we believed from the beginning – this was a coup, it was unconstitutional, and it has helped undermine the rule of law, political and human rights in Honduras, with problems persisting to this day."
Cuba
12) The upcoming trial of Luis Posada Carriles will mark the first time that evidence gathered by Cuban authorities and the FBI will be presented in a U.S. courtroom to show the former CIA operative’s alleged role in a string of Havana bombings, the Miami Herald reports. Also for the first time, a jury will hear controversial but key evidence: Posada’s taped interview with a New York Times freelance journalist, who quoted him admitting that he masterminded the deadly plot to attack the Havana hotels in 1997.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Haiti cholera outbreak ‘came from UN camp’
Deborah Pasmantier, AFP, December 6, 2010
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5il6gZvRdMfaYbgsdX9X1TSW6hk3Q
Paris – The cholera outbreak ravaging Haiti began at a camp for UN peacekeepers from Nepal, according to an expert report submitted to the French foreign ministry, a source close to the matter told AFP on Tuesday.
Respected French epidemiologist Professor Renaud Piarroux conducted a study in Haiti last month and concluded the epidemic began with an imported strain of the disease that could be traced back to the Nepalese base, the official said.
"The source of the infection came from the Nepalese camp," the source told AFP, speaking on condition on anonymity as he was not authorised to discuss a report that has not yet been made public. "The starting point has been very precisely localised," he said, pointing to the UN base at Mirebalais on the Artibonite river in central Haiti.
"There is no other possible explanation given that there was no cholera in the country, and taking into account the intensity and the speed of the spread and the concentration of bacteria in the Artibonite delta," he said. "The most logical explanation is the massive introduction of faecal matter into the Artibonite river on a single occasion," the source added.
The United Nations, which has faced violent protests in Haiti over its alleged role in an outbreak that has already killed 2,000 people and made 90,000 sick, insists there is no evidence that its troops were to blame.
Foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero did not reveal the conclusion of the report, but confirmed the foreign ministry had received a copy and said it had been passed on to the United Nations for investigation. "From the outbreak of the epidemic, France sent to Haiti at the request of the Haitian health ministry one of its best cholera specialists, Professor Piarroux, a head of department in Marseille’s public hospitals," he said.
[…]
2) Factbox: Obama administration conducts Afghanistan review
Missy Ryan, Reuters, Mon, Dec 6 2010
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B557P20101206
Washington – The White House is conducting a review of the war in Afghanistan a year after President Barack Obama unveiled his revised strategy to defeat militants and bring security to one of the world’s poorest, most violent nations.
As pressure builds in the West to end an unpopular war that began in late 2001, Obama has said allied forces will begin to hand control of security to Afghan forces next year, with a goal to complete that transition by the end of 2014.
Officials say the new strategy is paying off as higher troop levels and growing participation by Afghan forces have halted the momentum of the insurgents – even as violence hits an all-time high in recent months and new polling shows Afghans are more pessimistic about their nation’s direction.
Below are facts about the Obama administration’s review of Afghanistan strategy:
What Is The Afghanistan Review?
The White House’s National Security Council will use the review to assess progress in meeting the goals laid out a year ago and will examine where Afghanistan is today in counterterrorism, security, development and governance.
It will also look at the Afghan government’s plan to broker peace talks with elements of the Taliban movement and the growth and quality of local security forces.
The review essentially asks whether the revamped strategy is working but is not expected to contain recommendations for alternate policies.
It will also examine the success of the U.S. strategy on Pakistan, which is centered around elimination of militant safe havens within that country’s borders.
When Will The Review Be Made Public?
The review is expected to be given to Congress sometime in December and released to the public in the week of December 13.
[…]
3) U.S. Ends Push to Renew Israeli Freeze on Settlements
Mark Landler, New York Times, December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/middleeast/08diplo.html
Washington – After three weeks of fruitless haggling with the Israeli government, the Obama administration has given up its effort to persuade Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to renew an expired freeze on the construction of Jewish settlements for 90 days, two senior officials said on Tuesday.
The decision leaves Middle East peace talks in limbo, with the Palestinians refusing to resume negotiations absent a settlement freeze and the United States struggling to find another formula to bring them back to negotiations. It is the latest setback in what has proved to be a tortuous engagement for President Obama.
Officials said the administration decided to pull the plug because it concluded that even if Mr. Netanyahu persuaded his cabinet to accept an extension – which he had not yet been able to do – the 90-day negotiating period would not have produced the progress on core issues that the administration originally had hoped for.
"There were different expectations on the terms of moratorium, the issues to be discussed during the moratorium, and what would happen after the moratorium expired," said a person briefed on the decision.
[…]
4) British Court Denies Bail to Assange in Sex Inquiry
John F. Burns and Alan Cowell, New York Times, December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/europe/08assange.html
London – Julian Assange, the founder of the beleaguered WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group, was denied bail by a London court on Tuesday after he was arrested on a Swedish extradition warrant for questioning in connection with alleged sex offenses.
[…] Mr. Assange’s associates said his detention would not alter plans for further disclosures like the wealth of field reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that it released over the summer and fall, and, over the past nine days, confidential diplomatic messages between the State Department and American representatives abroad.
"Today’s actions against our editor-in-chief Julian Assange won’t affect our operations: we will release more cables tonight as normal," a posting on the WikiLeaks Twitter account said.
[…] While widely anticipated, the arrest opened an array of new questions about Mr. Assange’s future, even as the Justice Department in Washington said it was conducting what Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. called "a very serious, active, ongoing investigation that is criminal in nature" into the WikiLeaks matter.
[…] His arrest came amid mounting challenges to the operation of WikiLeaks, as computer server companies, Amazon.com and PayPal.com, have cut off commercial cooperation with the organization.
Visa said on Tuesday that it had suspended all payments to WikiLeaks pending an investigation of the organization’s business, Reuters reported. The decision appeared to strike a further blow against the organization, which relies on donations made online, and came a day after a Swiss bank froze an account held by Mr. Assange that had been used to collect donations.
As of Monday night, the group had released fewer than 1,000 of the quarter-million State Department cables it had obtained, reportedly from a low-ranking Army intelligence analyst.
So far, the group has moved cautiously. The whole archive was made available to five news organizations, including The New York Times. But WikiLeaks has posted only a few dozen cables on its own in addition to matching those made public by the news publications. According to the State Department’s count, 1,325 cables, or fewer than 1 percent of the total, have been made public by all parties to date.
Justice Department prosecutors have been struggling to find a way to indict Mr. Assange since July, when WikiLeaks made public documents on the war in Afghanistan. But while it is clearly illegal for a government official with a security clearance to give a classified document to WikiLeaks, it is far from clear that it is illegal for the organization to make it public.
[…] In recent months, WikiLeaks gave the entire collection of cables to four European publications – Der Spiegel in Germany, El País in Spain, Le Monde in France and The Guardian. The Guardian shared the cable collection with The New York Times.
Since Nov. 28, each publication has been publishing a series of articles about revelations in the cables, accompanied online by the texts of some of the documents. The publications have removed the names of some confidential sources of American diplomats, and WikiLeaks has generally posted the cables with the same redactions.
[…]
5) Campaigners rally to defence as attempts to muzzle site mount
Jerome Taylor, The Independent, Tuesday, 7 December 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/campaigners-rally-to-defence-as-attempts-to-muzzle-site-mount-2152953.html
Renewed cyber attacks on Wikileaks servers in Sweden closed down sections of the whistle-blowing website today as the information war over the State Department cables escalated dramatically.
The attacks came as the Swiss post office announced it had frozen a Wikileaks bank account containing 31,000 euros, leaving the website with limited ability to raise money.
The ongoing attempts to halt the release of US government communiqués has created a backlash amongst grassroots online campaigners who have rallied under the Wikileaks banner to keep the website online.
Using the moniker "I Am Wikileaks", supporters are using social network sites to publicise new outlets for the State Department cables when old ones get closed down or taken offline. They have also now created more than 570 mirror versions of the Wikileaks website and have called for a boycott of Paypal, Amazon and EveryDNS, three US-based websites that recently severed ties to Wikileaks.
Followers have vowed to retaliate against attempts to muzzle Wikileaks. Anonymous, a shadowy network of global cyber activists behind a series of recent high profile hacks, has threatened companies with retaliatory cyber attacks if they cut Wikileaks off.
Following Paypal’s decision to suspend its Wikileaks account, Mr Assange tried to open a bank account for donations with Postfinace but the application was rejected this afternoon because the Wikileaks’ founder did not have an address in Switzerland. A spokesperson for the bank said Mr Assange would get his money back but the decision leaves Wikileaks with a drastically curtailed donation network at a time when its leader is facing the prospect of lengthy court battles to keep him in Britain.
The website’s remaining bank accounts are located in Iceland and Germany but Wikileaks claims to have lost 100,000 euros in the past week because of the Paypal and Postfinace account freezes.
[…] The first task for supporters has been to keep Wikileaks online amid a sustained campaign against the website. Service providers in France and the US have come under intense pressure to stop hosting Wikileaks, with a number of American companies eventually agreeing to cease co-operation.
[…] Other server providers in Switzerland and Sweden are still up and running with the majority of the website running on the Swiss address www.wikileaks.ch.
One Swedish provider, Banhoff, houses its servers in a former military bunker built 30 metres into the side of a mountain and has been described as one of the most secure internet facilities in the world.
Anna Mosberg, CEO of Banhof, told The Independent that her servers had yet to be attacked by hackers but she would resist any pressure from overseas to kick Wikileaks off their servers. "Our guiding principle is that Wikileaks should be treated like any of our other clients," she said. "We would only stop hosting them if they broke Swedish law or failed to pay their bills."
Lebanon
6) Lebanese Newspaper Publishes U.S. Cables Not Found on WikiLeaks
Max Fisher, The Atlantic, Dec 3
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/lebanese-newspaper-publishes-us-cables-not-found-on-wikileaks/67430
Nearly 200 previously unreported U.S. diplomatic cables were posted on Thursday to the website of Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar. The cables, from eight U.S. embassies across the Middle East and North Africa, have not appeared on Wikileaks’ official website or in the Western media outlets working with Wikileaks. Al Akhbar, which defines itself as an "opposition" newspaper, is published in Arabic. It has posted all 183 cables in their original English but promises readers a forthcoming Arabic translation.
It’s unclear how Al Akhbar got the cables, which they say are "exclusive," and whether they posted them with the permission of Wikileaks, which has tightly controlled who publishes which of its cables and when. Wikileaks offered a handful of media outlets, such as The Guardian and Spain’s El Pais, advance access to some cables on the condition that they coordinate release. But neither Wikileaks nor those media outlets have released the same cables posted by Al Akhbar. If Al Akhbar had coordinated their release with Wikileaks, it stands to reason that the Lebanese publication would have been granted sufficient advance time to translate the cables to Arabic.
The documents appear to be authentic as the cables from Tripoli match up with The Atlantic’s background reporting for an earlier story on a 2009 Libyan nuclear crisis, some details of which The Atlantic did not publish but nonetheless appear in Al Akhbar’s cables. The rest of the cables are from U.S. embassies in Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. They portray U.S. diplomats as struggling to understand and influence the region’s oppressive and sometimes unpredictable regimes.
[…] Another series from Beirut in 2008 shows Lebanese Defense Minister Elias al-Murr telling U.S. diplomats, in a message he implied they should pass on to Israeli officials, that the Lebanese military would not resist an Israeli invasion so long as the Israeli forces abided by certain conditions. Murr, apparently hoping that an Israeli invasion would destroy much of the Hezbollah insurgency and the communities in Lebanon’s south that support it, promised an Israeli invasion would go unchallenged as long as it did not pass certain physical boundaries and did not bomb Christian communities. A U.S. embassy official wrote, "Murr is trying to ascertain how long an offensive would be required to clean out Hizballah in the Beka’a." Murr added that he had discussed the plan with then-Military Commandant Michel Sleiman, who has since become the President of Lebanon. The small but vibrant community of Middle East-based, English-language Arab bloggers have expressed outrage at Murr and Sleiman’s apparent invitation, predicting it will bring political disaster and possibly worse.
[…]
Iran
7) Senators to Obama: No, Iran does not have the right to enrich uranium, Foreign Policy, December 6, 2010
Josh Rogin, Monday, December 6, 2010
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/06/senators_to_obama_no_iran_does_not_have_the_right_to_enrich_uranium
The P5+1 talks in Geneva have only just begun, but a bipartisan group of senators is already calling on the Obama administration to resist Iranian attempts at stalling, keep ratcheting up pressure as talks go on, and tell Iran they don’t have the right to enrich uranium for the foreseeable future.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week in Bahrain that Iran does have the right to a domestic uranium enrichment program for civilian purposes, if and when they prove to the international community they can do so transparently and responsibly.
But in a letter (PDF) to President Barack Obama to be delivered on Monday – but obtained in advance by The Cable – Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Kirstin Gillibrand (D-NY), Bob Casey (D-PA), and Mark Kirk (R-IL) said that the administration should make clear to Iran that domestic enrichment is not an option.
"We believe that it is critical that the United States and our partners make clear that, given the government of Iran’s pattern of deception and non-cooperation, its government cannot be permitted to maintain any enrichment or reprocessing activities on its territory for the foreseeable future," the senators wrote. "We would strongly oppose any proposal for a diplomatic endgame in which Iran is permitted to continue these activities in any form."
[…]
8) Talks fail to achieve limits on Iran’s nuclear program
The six world powers agree to meet again with Iran next month in Istanbul.
Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, December 7, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-nuclear-talks-20101208,0,5806283.story
Geneva – Six world powers ended a long-awaited meeting with Iran on its nuclear program Tuesday with plans for another meeting but no other visible result.
Officials said after a day and a half of talks that they intend to meet again with the Iranians in Istanbul, Turkey, in late January.
[…] Fourteen months ago, the six world powers also met with Iran in Geneva and emerged with a promise to meet again in a few weeks. But that meeting never took place, after a side agreement to temporarily put much of Iran’s nuclear fuel under foreign control broke down.
[…] The choice of Istanbul as the location for the next meeting appears to be a compromise. The United States and its European allies had resisted meeting this week in Istanbul, arguing privately that the Turks were not a neutral party but had taken Iran’s side.
Israel/Palestine
9) Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay recognize Palestinian state
AFP, December 6, 2010
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j6LW4hivgKRMW-N8S1xV6P9AwVew
Buenos Aires – Argentina and Uruguay said Monday they were joining Brazil in recognizing an independent Palestinian state, earning praise from Palestinian officials but an immediate sharp rebuke from Israel.
Israel called the announcement by Buenos Aires "regrettable" and said it went against an Israeli-Palestinian agreement that such a state should only be recognized with Israeli approval.
[…] But Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, on a visit to Turkey, expressed his "pride" over the decision by Buenos Aires, according to an official statement. His foreign minister, Riad al-Malki, told AFP the Palestinians had expected that Paraguay and other Latin American countries will make "similar decisions."
"The Argentine government recognizes Palestine as a free and independent state within the borders defined in 1967," Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman said, reading a letter sent by President Cristina Kirchner to Abbas. Timerman said the move reflected a general consensus among members of Mercosur, the South American trade bloc.
Uruguay announced soon afterward it will recognize a Palestinian state next year. "Uruguay will surely follow the same path as Argentina in 2011," deputy foreign minister Roberto Conde told AFP. "We are working toward opening a diplomatic representation in Palestine, most likely in Ramallah." Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay all make up Mercosur. Venezuela’s membership is pending.
[…] Some 104 countries now recognize a Palestinian state, according to the Palestinian diplomatic mission at the United Nations. Other Latin American nations that have already taken the step are Costa Rica, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
In all, 150 countries have some form of diplomatic relations with the Palestinians, said the mission, which has observer status at the United Nations.
US President Barack Obama has said he hoped the Palestinian mission would become a full UN member in 2011, alongside other nations.
Morocco
10) Morocco: For cheap Saudi oil, Rabat broke ties with Iran, cracked down on Shiites, leaked cable says
Meris Lutz, Los Angeles Times, December 6, 2010
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/12/morocco-iran-saudi-arabia-shiite-sunni.html
Beirut – At Saudi Arabia’s urging, Morocco broke ties with Iran and began a domestic campaign against Moroccan Shiites in exchange for economic trade-offs, an Egyptian diplomat told sources at the U.S. Embassy in Rabat, according to a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable published by the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar.
"[The diplomat] said goading Iran, a country with which it had limited economic interests, and demonizing the Shi’a, a powerless minority group, was a small price for Morocco to pay for a strategy that could have major payoffs," the April 2009 cable read.
In exchange for active Moroccan support, Saudi Arabia allegedly promised to ensure the flow of subsidized oil and compensate for the loss in direct foreign investment in Morocco resulting from the global financial crisis.
The diplomat, whose name had been redacted from the cable, also said that the domestic campaign against Shiites was intended to neutralize opposition groups in the municipal elections and reassert King Mohammed VI’s authority as a religious leader.
Morocco broke ties with Iran in March 2009, accusing Tehran of using its embassy in Rabat as a base for spreading Shiite Islam. The formal break in relations was followed by a crackdown on Morocco’s tiny Shiite minority, which resulted in the closure of religious schools and the arrest of hundreds of people.
The diplomatic source quoted in the leaked cable said a former Iranian ambassador had used the embassy as a regional base for visiting African countries, where he gave lectures and offered scholarships to Iran for promising Shiite scholars.
[…]
Honduras
11) Leaked cable reopens Honduras debate
Kevin Bogardus, The Hill, 12/05/10
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/132055-leaked-cable-reopens-honduras-debate
A State Department cable released by the website WikiLeaks has reopened the Washington debate over last year’s ouster of then-Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.
The leaked July 2009 cable, signed by the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, said the removal of Zelaya by the Honduran military "constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup." In stark language, the cable takes apart arguments made by defenders of Zelaya’s ouster, calling them fabrications or suppositions.
The cable has attracted the attention of the Obama administration’s critics on both the right and the left. For example, the cable has set off a new round of aspersions from the likely next chairman of the House Western Hemisphere subcommittee, Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), who said Llorens was "part of the problem, not the solution."
"If I am fortunate enough to be the chair of the committee, we are going to continue to look into the actions of the ambassador in Honduras. I don’t think he played the appropriate role. The ambassador should not be on the ground trying to manipulate the outcome," Mack told The Hill.
Mack and other Republicans have said Zelaya’s removal came about from his alleged power grab. Though Zelaya was shipped off to neighboring Costa Rica in the middle of the night by Honduran soldiers, GOP lawmakers have refused to call his ouster a coup. They say Hondurans chose to remove Zelaya through the actions of their legislative and judicial branches of government. "There is no one with a straight face that can call this a military coup. It is disingenuous," Mack said.
Others have disagreed, citing the leaked cable as further confirmation that the Honduran president’s ouster was an illegal coup.
Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, a liberal think tank, testified before Congress last year about Zelaya’s ouster. "The cable confirms what we believed from the beginning – this was a coup, it was unconstitutional, and it has helped undermine the rule of law, political and human rights in Honduras, with problems persisting to this day," Stephens said.
She said the Obama administration has distanced itself from its original take on Zelaya’s removal. "The reporting in the cable is quite clear in terms of where the administration started out, and it is equally clear that over time the Obama administration’s position on Honduras deviated further and further from the analysis contained in it," Stephens said. "Given the conditions on the ground in Honduras, and given the repercussions in the region, we continue to believe that standing firm against the coup was the right position at the beginning and the administration should have stuck with it more firmly over time."
[…]
Cuba
12) Posada trial marked by firsts.
Jay Weaver, Roberto Koltun, Miami Herald, Sat, Dec. 04, 2010
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/04/1957771/posada-trial-marked-by-firsts.html
Some evidence in Luis Posada Carriles’ upcoming trial hinges on a recorded interview, which contains a four-minute gap.
The upcoming trial of Luis Posada Carriles will mark the first time that evidence gathered by Cuban authorities and the FBI will be presented in a U.S. courtroom to show the former CIA operative’s alleged role in a string of Havana bombings.
Also for the first time, a jury will hear controversial but key evidence: Posada’s taped interview with a New York Times freelance journalist, who quoted him admitting that he masterminded the deadly plot to attack the Havana hotels in 1997.
But serious questions have already surfaced about the recordings that evoke comparisons to Richard Nixon’s infamous Watergate tapes: They have a four-minute, 20-second gap involving Posada’s commentary about a recruit convicted in Cuba of carrying out the mission, according to court records.
The trial, set for Jan. 10 in El Paso, Texas, will be a spectacle of sorts: Posada, 82 and living in Miami-Dade, has for decades been a magnet for controversy during a career striving to topple Cuba’s leader, Fidel Castro.
The Cuban exile militant stands accused of lying under oath about his leading part in the hotel bombing campaign that killed an Italian tourist – though he is not charged with causing the death.
Trained by the CIA in sabotage and explosives during the Cold War, Posada has been embraced as a hero in South Florida’s Cuban exile community but vilified as a terrorist in Cuba and Venezuela and held responsible for the hotel assaults as well as a 1976 Cuban airliner bombing that killed 73, including the Cuban youth fencing team.
In the Texas trial, the challenge for federal prosecutors will be establishing Posada’s involvement in the Havana attacks so they can prove their accusation: That he committed perjury in 2005 when he told U.S. immigration authorities that he wasn’t involved in "soliciting others" to carry out the bombings – despite allegedly admitting he did so in a 1998 New York Times article. In the story, freelance journalist Ann Louise Bardach quoted Posada as saying that he directed the bombing attacks to damage Cuba’s tourism industry. "We didn’t want to hurt anybody," the story quoted Posada as saying. "We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don’t come anymore."
But years later, at his 2005 deportation hearing, Posada denied having admitted to Bardach that he orchestrated the bombings. He said the interview was in English and therefore he misunderstood questions and misstated his answers because he had difficulty understanding the language.
[…] In May 2007, Judge Cardone threw out the perjury charges, accusing the U.S. government of engaging in "fraud, deceit and trickery."
Cardone’s dismissal was overturned by an appellate court, which led to a new indictment in April 2009 charging Posada with lying about his entry into the United States and his involvement in the Havana hotel bombings.
–
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans. The archive of the Just Foreign Policy News is here.