Libya, Oh Libya!

Scourge no more

Two years ago, when George W. Bush identified an “axis-of-evil” in his State of the Union address, some in the audience were surprised to learn that Libya was not a member of this enemy club.

This week, a group of US congressmen sat down for talks and tea with Libyan supremo Muammar Gaddafi, one-time scourge of the Washington establishment.

“We want to forget the past,” said Congressman Solomon Ortiz, “on this new day we want to turn a new page.” Delegation leader Curt Weldon spoke of “the hope that we will achieve normal relations soon.” A day earlier, Congressman Tom Lantos became the first US official to step on Libyan soil for 38 years.

Libya’s decision last month to abandon its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programmes, open up its facilities to international bodies, and offer information about the global network of proliferation, has profoundly altered the balance of international relations. Libya is currently flavour of the month.

The scale of Libya’s WMD programme surprised everyone and is being seen as yet another embarrassing failure of intelligence. Opinion is divided on just what made Libya ‘fess up. Was it fear of going the way of Saddam? Or was this a triumph of old-fashioned diplomacy?

The Financial Times suggested this week that, in a September 2002 letter to Gaddafi, British prime minister Tony Blair held out “the carrot of a normalisation of relations with Washington.” The Libyan prime minister Shukri Ghanem identified other incentives, including economic wisdom and fear of theft. Speaking in New Mexico, President Bush put a different gloss on it: “Nine months of intense discussion with Gaddafi worked because the word of this country matters,” he said in full election swing. “When you say something, you better believe it. People now trust the word of America.”

But in some ways, in the week that saw the resignation of chief American arms inspector in Iraq David Kay (who claimed there were no WMD in Iraq), Libya’s “normalisation” could prove embarrassing for Bush. Libya had an advanced nuclear weapons programme, Iraq, it seems, did not. Questions are starting to be asked. Why Iraq? Why not North Korea, Iran, Libya – Pakistan even? All these countries pose bigger threats than Iraq. Did Bush go for the smaller threat as part of some kind of domino theory? Or was this just about settling old scores?

On Friday, Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf, did some confessing of his own. For the last fifteen years, Pakistani nuclear scientists have been running a “nuclear bazaar” in which they have been selling the technology for enriching uranium for “personal financial gain”.

Oh, terrific!

The opening of Libya’s programme has brought some worrying lessons. The New York Times talks of “a remarkably sophisticated network of nuclear suppliers, spanning the globe from Malaysia to Dubai.” If you were shopping for WMD, it’s unlikely you’d head to Baghdad. “The strategy of containing Iraq appears to have been largely successful,” Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said this week, identifying a “Wal-Mart of private sector proliferation” whose sophistication “frankly, has surpassed my expectations.”

This is almost too scary to think about. “The struggle against nuclear proliferation urgently needs re-examining,” concludes the FT, leaving out the colourful language the Diary might have resorted to.

The New York Times held a telling 90-minute interview with General Mirza Aslam Beg, commander of the Pakistani army from 1988-1991. Beg said he never approved the transfer of technology to Libya and Iran, that Muslim countries were right to pursue the nuclear bomb as long as India and Israel had theirs, that nuclear scientists who sell technology or information for personal profit should not be punished, and that the US was blocking not aiding the spread of democracy in the Muslim world.

Did anyone say “crossed-wires”?

Beg, a proponent of an anti-US, Pakistan-Iran-Afghanistan alliance, said investigators “would not dare” to question him, which just about sums things up. With allies like these...

Anyway, Gaddafi’s decision to extend the olive branch seems like a wise move for his country. “Normal relations” between Washington and Tripoli will likely resume next year. Meanwhile, the European Union wants in. Now that Libya has settled with France over the Lockerbie bombing, “2004 can mark a decisive turning-point in relations between Europe and Libya,” says Romano Prodi, head of the European Commission.

Iraqi transition

Speaking of which, we got some insight into how European foreign policy works this week.

On Tuesday, the FT ran a piece on how the “European Commission is resisting US and British demands that Iraq be given a seat soon in the World Trade Organisation.” At stake, said the paper, were “renewed transatlantic tensions over foreign policy.”

Last week, an Iraqi delegation travelled to Geneva to press its application for World Trade Organisation (WTO) membership. The US, backed by the UK, wants the WTO ruling council to grant Iraq observer status early February.

The EU appeared none too pleased with this rapid transition to a market economy, saying the US demand was “irregular”, “premature” and “bizarre” – terminology with a distinctly French twang.

The decision should wait, said the EU, until Iraq elects itself a government in June or July 2004. You can imagine how well that went down in Washington.

Suspicions abound that this is revenge for banning European companies from bidding for Iraqi contracts.

Then, on Wednesday, a different story appeared in the FT under the headline “EU backs Iraqi plea for WTO presence”.

What? thought the Diary. Can the EU have caved into US demands and avoided another transatlantic spat?

No chance. The backing for Iraq’s application came with a big condition: extend this status to Iran and Syria.

Needless to say, Washington is not so hot on the idea. Of such things are statesmen made.

Who’s that Dick?

Speaking of whom, US vice-president Dick Cheney honoured the world with a trip outside his own country this week. Since becoming (arguably) the most powerful vice-president in history, Cheney has travelled outside the US once.

That’s once, for those of you who didn’t catch it the first (and only) time.

Simple mathematics tells you that this week’s vacation, therefore, was Cheney’s second foreign excursion in three years.

[The first trip, by the way, was a quick dash to the Gulf to whip up support for bombing Baghdad. Ever the diplomat...]

Still, at least the US doesn’t involve itself much in foreign affairs. Oh no, hold on...

Anyway, Cheney, for those of you who’ve never heard of him, is a famously elusive figure. Whether he’s having another heart operation, filling the campaign coffers, or planning a pre-emptive attack, he is rarely seen or heard from in public. The Washington Post says that the V-P has “barely” spoken to reporters since taking office. But now, his “Increased Visibility” as the sub-heading goes, is “Intended to Bolster Bush’s Image”.

Photograph Dick Cheney and he always looks like he’s growling angrily and meanly. This is an objective observation. Some politicians are best kept under wraps. Cheney is one of them. Charm is not his weapon. Close, but no Monica Lewinsky, and no cigar.

Cheney, says the Post, “spends many Monday and Fridays raising campaign money” and “can rarely be seen in the United States except walking in and out of Republican fundraisers.” He is set to “make frequent appearances in targeted television markets that Bush cannot hit.” These markets are not identified.

As part of what the Post calls “a subtle makeover”, the former chief executive of Halliburton represented the US at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week all by his lonesome. His message, you’ll be surprised to hear, was uncompromising and, in a description the Diary is happy to attribute to the Post, “included soaring, Reaganesque flourishes that are uncharacteristic of Cheney”.

Yikes!

“Am I an evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” Cheney said in an interview with USA Today and the Los Angeles Times earlier this month. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”

Mmm...

The Davos speech, part of Dick’s “five-day swing through Switzerland and Italy” (NYT), was a bit less disturbing (see Simon Zadek’s reports for openDemocracy from inside Davos). “Direct threats require direct action,” Cheney said, calling on Europe to do more about spreading global democracy and defeating terrorism – both, the Diary understands, by military means.

As Mary Matalin, long-time Cheney advisor, said of her boss this week in the New York Times: “He’s particularly adept at putting events in a historical context.”

That’s for sure.

Neo-cons on the catwalk

Finally, the Diary couldn’t help noticing a piece this week by the indomitable Suzy Menkes, much-celebrated fashion correspondent of the International Herald Tribune.

The piece about the men’s catwalk collections in Paris was titled “Neocons and new romantics”.

Menkes’ pen can make or break a season. This week she gets political: “New romantics – some rebounding from the 1980s, others today’s neo-conservatives – are the fashion heroes of the Paris menswear season.”

What’s this? Are Richard Perle, David Frum, Paul Wolfowitz and co. strutting their stuff on the catwalk?

Not quite. The piece is almost beyond the Diary’s comprehension, but starts with a description of John Galliano’s latest fashion feast. Menkes describes Galliano as “playing to the pink euro, sending out clothes that were a caricature of a gay man’s wardrobe”. Unfortunately, Menkes concludes, the designer has “misjudged the developments over the past 20 years, from men in skirts through hunks in sports clothes to today’s metrosexual, who has long since been in touch with his softer side.”

See the connection yet?

“It’s virile in cut and styling and it’s for real men, not some gay uniform,” Galliano insisted. But Menkes remained unconvinced, describing “a parade of codpieces … spiv’s suits with built-in suspenders – all kitted out with knuckle-rings and serpent necklaces that the models twirled suggestively.”

Gee, these neo-conservatives, are real neo!

(Read more on the neo-cons)

Figures of the week

$2,350 billion
The projected US budget deficit over the next decade

2
The total number of emails sent by President Clinton in his eight years in the White House (Read more)

Quotes of the week

“I am flabbergasted. I am astonished. I am blown away. Opportunity has touched down in an alien and bizarre landscape. I still don’t know what we’re looking at.”
Steven Squyres, chief scientist of NASA’s Mars mission on the first images sent from the Opportunity rover to Earth.

“We find ourselves in front of a real Berlin Wall that is dividing us from the free Italy that we have in mind, but gradually our ideas are creating cracks.”
A classic from Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his party Forza Italia.

“People would vote for a cat if he could beat George Bush.”
Matt Nosanchuk, a campaign worker for Senator John Kerry, as quoted in Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

“Weapons of mass destruction – including evil chemistry and evil biology – are all matters of great concern”.
US Attorney-General John Ashcroft

“We were all wrong, and that is most disturbing.”
David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, in testimony to the US Senate about Iraq’s (lack of) WMD. Read the transcript.

“The allegation that I or anyone else lied to this House or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence on weapons of mass destruction is itself the real lie. And I simply ask that those who made it and those who have repeated it over all these months now withdraw it, fully, openly and clearly.”
British prime minister Tony Blair addressing the House of Commons after the publication of Lord Hutton’s inquiry into the death of British weapons inspector David Kelly.

Contact the Diary: dominic.hilton@opendemocracy.net