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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 July 2000 Issue No. 489 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 July 2000 Issue No. 489
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region Focus International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A spin on Saddam
By Salah HemeidUS Vice President Al Gore told a group of Iraqi opposition leaders during a meeting last Monday that Washington still supports their efforts to oust President Saddam Hussein whom he described as hindering Middle East peace. Gore, who is the Democratic Party candidate in the presidential elections due in November, however, stopped short of pledging any direct US help to remove the Iraqi leader from power.
"The United States will not flag in supporting your efforts to promote a change of regime. I believe that there can be no peace for the Iraqi people and a genuine peace for the people of the Middle East so long as Saddam is in a position to brutalise his people and threaten his neighbours," Gore told the representatives of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an American-backed group seeking to overthrow Saddam. "In the interests of regional peace and for the sake of human decency, [Saddam] must be removed from power. That is the policy of this administration. It is the policy I support. It is the policy I am personally committed to," he added.
After the meeting, a State Department official told reporters that the United States will train up to 145 members of the Iraqi opposition in exile in skills such as field medicine, logistics, computers, communications, broadcasting and power generation. The aide will be given under the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act passed by the US Congress to back opposition efforts to remove Saddam from power. But the unidentified official made it clear that Washington will not train Saddam opponents in combat skills to fight the Iraqi army.
The opposition leaders praised Gore's remarks and said they found a new friend in Washington on whom they pinned a great hope if he becomes the next president of the United States. "We feel that we can move further forward after this meeting with the Vice president".
Sherif Ali Bin Al-Hussein, leader of the Iraqi Monarchist Movement even went as far as saying that opponents of Saddam had got the impression that if Gore is elected "he would take a much more active position in supporting the Iraqi opposition to bring Saddam down."
But other Iraqi opposition groups which boycotted the meeting with Gore dismissed the discussions as a mere exercise in public relations and ruled out any serious American effort to get rid of Saddam.
Hamid Al-Bayati of the supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told Al-Ahram Weekly, that his group has been boycotting the INC since April 1999 because the INC has accepted American funding and other kinds of kinds of support. "This definitely harms our position among our own people inside Iraq," said Bayati, whose Shi'ite group is the only opposition movement which carries military operations in southern Iraq. Another group, the Iraqi Centralist Democratic Trend, accused the administration of interference in the opposition affairs by trying to deepen the division among the already fragmented opposition groups.
Other opposition leaders accused Gore as well as his Republican opponent, Texas governor, George W Bush, who plans to meet the same delegation later, of using Iraq as a foreign policy showcase in their presidential campaigns.
Indeed, organisers of the Bush election campaign have already joined critics of the Clinton's administration policy toward Iraq which they accused of failure of getting rid of Saddam. Richard Perle, an assistant secretary of defence under President Ronald Reagan, and a senior aide to the Republican candidate told a senate hearing that a Bush administration would take seriously its duty to support the Iraqi opposition, with a view to ousting Saddam. The argument he and other advisors are advancing against the administration record is that Saddam does not appear significantly weaker than he was when President Clinton took office in January 1993.
"Unless the strategy is to bring down the Saddam regime by inducing fatal laughter... this is not the way to advance the purposes of the Iraqi Liberation Act," said Perle. He suggested the Clinton administration reassign Frank Ricciardone, the State Department official responsible for relations with the INC, and appoint someone who "believes in the goals and objectives of the Iraqi Liberation Act," a reference to Ricciardone who is believed to prefer a softer statement vis-à-vis toppling Saddam.
Critics have always said that the Clinton administration lacks a clear policy toward Iraq and concluded that Washington is not serious about getting rid of Saddam's regime. Some Iraqi opposition groups, and even many of Iraq's neighbours, usually accuse American decision-makers of pursuing policies designed only to serve domestic purposes. Some of the opposition movements are expressing frustration especially in regard to the continuation of sanctions which, they insist, help the Iraqi regime tightening its control of the devastated population and doing more harm than good to their efforts to topple Saddam. Most of the Arab governments, hence, refuse to support the INC leaders and accuse them of being 'American stooges.'
