Fisk: Nato used exactly the same trick to ensure war with Milosevic

From: "Muslim News" <editor_@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <submit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 22:01:39 +0100
It's the same old trap. Nato used exactly the same trick to ensure that
it could have a war with Slobodan Milosevic. Now the Americans are
demanding the same of Saddam Hussein – buried well down in their list of
demands, of course. Tell your enemy that you're going to need his roads
and airspace – with your troops on the highways – and you destroy his
sovereignty. That's what Nato demanded of Serbia in 1999. That's what
the new UN resolution touted by Messrs Bush and Blair demands of Saddam
Hussein. It's a declaration of war.

It worked in 1999. The Serbs accepted most of Nato's Interim Agreement
for Peace and Self-government in Kosovo, but not Appendix 8, which
insisted that "Nato personnel shall enjoy ... free and unimpeded passage
and unimpeded access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."

It was a demand that Mr Milosevic could never accept. US troops driving
through Serbia would have meant, in these circumstances, the end of
Yugoslav sovereignty.
But now we have the draft UN resolution which Presidents Bush and Blair
insist the UN must pass. Arms inspection teams, it says, "shall have the
right to declare for the purposes of this resolution ... ground and
air-transit corridors which shall be enforced by UN security forces or
by members of the UN [Security] Council".

In other words, Washington can order forces of the US (a Security
Council member) to "enforce" these "corridors" through Iraq – on the
ground – when it wants. US troops would thus be in Iraq. It would be
invasion without war; the end of Saddam, "regime change", the whole
shebang.

No Iraqi government – even a Baghdad administration without the odious
Saddam – could ever accept such a demand. Nor could Serbia have accepted
such a demand from Nato, even without the odious Slobodan. Which is why
the Serbs and Nato went to war.
So here it is again, the same old "we've-got-be-able-to-drive
through-your-land" mentality which forced the Serbs into war and which
is clearly intended to produce the same from Saddam.

America wants a war and here's the proof: if the United States truly
wished to avoid war, it could demand "unfettered access" for inspectors
without this sovereignty-busting paragraph, using it as a second
resolution only if the presidential palaces of the Emperor Saddam
remained off-limits.

Saddam can open his country to the inspectors; he can open even his
presidential palaces. But if he doesn't accept the use of "Security
Council" forces – in other words, US troops – on Iraqi roads, we can go
to war. There's also that other paragraph: that "any permanent member of
the Security Council may request to be represented on any inspection
team." In other words, the Americans can demand that their intelligence
men can return to become UN inspectors, to pass on their information to
the Israelis (which they did before) and to the US military, which used
them as forward air controllers for their aircraft once the inspectors
were withdrawn.

All in all, then, a deal which President Saddam – yes, Saddam the
wicked, Saddam the torturer, Saddam the lover of gas warfare – could
never, ever accept.
He's not meant to accept this. Which is why the Anglo-American draft for
the UN is intended to give us war, rather than peace and security from
weapons of mass destruction.

Source: The Independent

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Fisk: Nato used exactly the same trick to ensure war with Milosevic

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