Mission & Justice

26/11/08

Iraq’s parliament has agreed to put a controversial deal allowing US troops to stay in the country for another three years to a public vote. MPs on Wednesday decided to make the pact dependent on a national referendum - to be held in 2009 - after delaying by 24 hours their vote on the deal. MPs will now vote on the wide-ranging accord on Thursday after reservations by Sunnis and opposition by Shias threatened to derail the agreement. The accord has been subject to numerous revisions in an attempt to keep various political factions on board and push it through parliament with a respectable majority.

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Josh White & William Branigin; 26/11/08

The United States military is to transfer Osama bin Laden’s former driver from Guantanamo Bay to his home in Yemen, ending the seven-year saga of a man the Bush Administration considered a dangerous terrorist but whom a military jury found to be a low-level aide. Salim Ahmed Hamdan is expected to arrive today or tomorrow in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, where he will serve the remaining month of his sentence, two US Government officials said. The Pentagon’s decision to send Hamdan home avoids what could have been a sticky diplomatic situation, as Bush Administration officials had long contended they could hold Hamdan indefinitely. It also prevents the president-elect, Barack Obama, from deciding Hamdan’s fate early in his term. Mr Obama has said he wants the prison in Cuba shut.

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Jason Koutsoukis; 25/11/08

Hundreds of combative Jewish settlers, who were ordered to leave a house in Hebron that police say they occupied with forged documents, now face eviction within 30 days. According to a High Court ruling issued last week, the 150 settlers who have taken over the four-storey building had until last week to leave pending a district court decision to determine the building’s ownership. Fearing a violent confrontation with the settlers, Minister for Internal Security Avi Dichter said every effort would be made to secure a peaceful eviction. “The IDF and the Israel Police have no intention of deviating from the High Court of Justice’s ruling,” Mr Dichter said.

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25/11/08

Iraqi politicians opposed to the proposed security agreement with the United States have argued that it does not explicitly protect Iraq’s vast oil wealth and other assets from seizure to satisfy billions of dollars in legal claims against the former government of Saddam Hussein. An extension of this protection, which is guaranteed in the UN resolution that the security agreement is meant to replace, will have to be negotiated separately. This will be critical to protecting Iraq’s assets, or the Government’s main source of revenue - oil exports - could be thrown into disarray when the UN resolution expires on December 31. It appeared doubtful the hole in the security agreement would create enough opposition in parliament to defeat final approval in a vote scheduled for today.

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25/11/08

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have claimed to have arrested the members of a spy network linked to Israeli intelligence who tried to gather information on Iranian nuclear and military programs. Revolutionary Guards chief Mohammad Ali Jafari said on state radio last night that its intelligence bureau had recently discovered the spy network, linked with Israel’s Mossad. “This network sought to gather important information from the Guards’ military section, the country’s nuclear centres and some security officials,” Mr Jafari said. “Very good information as well as equipment that this network were supplied with have been discovered and people will be informed of the evidence in the near future.”

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25/11/08; (2 Items)

Judging from the tone of the letters published about David Hicks (Most Talked About, 22-23/11), our tolerance and the concept of a fair go have deserted the Australian psyche. No one deliberately makes bad judgments but all of us have. Thankfully, if we are lucky, the number of errors of judgment diminishes over time. This young man is no exception and he most certainly has paid his price. Let’s move on. Barry Teal; Woorinen South; Vic

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Editorial: 24/11/08

If the Iraqi Parliament on Wednesday votes to allow American troops to stay in Iraq for three more years, it will be legitimizing the occupation and infringement on their national sovereignty. The agreement is hailed by both Baghdad’s government and the Bush administration as a historic deal, necessary, they claim, to help sustain stability and security until Iraq was able to build its own army and police force. But even as they argue that Iraq’s security forces are not ready to stand on their own, Washington and Baghdad both agree that the insurgency — of which the US is to blame for instigating — is losing steam. So which is it? If anything, the pact will serve to further divide Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic groups, now vying to consolidate their power bases ahead of next year’s local and parliamentary elections. Supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, who include 30 MPs, have opposed the deal from the start.

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Gideon Boas; 24/11/08

As the US President-elect, Barack Obama, vows to close Guantanamo Bay, pull troops out of Iraq, ensure the US ceases its use of state-sanctioned torture and rebuild America’s “moral stature in the world”, it is tempting to succumb for the first time in many years to the feeling that the course of international politics and justice is changing direction for the better. While of less significance internationally, a similar feeling emerged from the decommissioning of the Howard government and a reduction here in the politics of fear that has been the hallmark of the Bush and Howard years. The war on terror became a brand name for a war of aggression and subsequent occupation of Iraq, in clear violation of the United Nations Charter.

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Azadeh Dastyari; 24/11/08

President-elect Barack Obama has signalled that a high priority for his administration will be to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, where hundreds of detainees have been held without trial for up to six years. However, the prison is not the only US operation in Guantanamo Bay, nor are the “enemy combatants” the only people to have been left in limbo on the military site. Around the corner from the prison is the “Migrant Operations Centre”, a euphemism for a refugee camp that currently holds 40 Haitian and Cuban refugees, and has held thousands of refugees since it opened in 1991. There is no indication that President-elect Obama has any intention of closing down the facility for refugees on Guantanamo Bay.

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Laura King; 24/11/08

Two British MPs have urged the Brown Government to reveal whether it knew in advance about a US missile attack in Pakistan that reportedly killed the alleged mastermind of an airline bombing plot. Pakistani intelligence officials claim British-Pakistani Rashid Rauf died on Saturday when a missile hit a tribesman’s house in the village of Alikhel, part of a north-western border district that is a known stronghold of al-Qaeda and Taliban militants. Rauf was the alleged al-Qaeda mastermind of a 2006 trans-Atlantic jet bombing conspiracy.

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