US embassy cable - 03OTTAWA2306

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 OTTAWA 002306 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR WHA/CAN, WHA/PDA 
WHITE HOUSE PASS NSC/WEUROPE, NSC/WHA 
 
E.O. 12958:  N/A 
TAGS: KPAO, KMDR, OIIP, OPRC, CA, TFUS01, TFUS02, TFUS03 
SUBJECT:  MEDIA REACTION: AFRICA; NATO; IRAQ; NORTH 
KOREA; ICC 
 
AFRICA 
1.   "Taylor's odious exit' 
The liberal Toronto Star opined (8/12): "Charles Taylor 
has finally been pried from power in Liberia, and 
that's a relief. It offers hope, however faint, for the 
3.3 million people who have endured 14 blood-spattered 
years under his kleptocratic reign of terror first as a 
warlord, then as president.... Yet welcome as his 
ouster is, it offers no assurance that he will face a 
United Nations war crimes indictment. A tribunal in 
Sierra Leone says he bears the 'greatest 
responsibility' for a 10-year war there in which 
70,000 died. Taylor, who denies the charge, should have 
been escorted from his Monrovia mansion straight into 
the prosecutor's arms. Instead, he quit Liberia 
yesterday seeking safe haven in Nigeria. If he finds 
it, his removal will be an odious deal, made at too 
high a price. Taylor was under U.N. indictment and 
sanctions, some American pressure, and siege by rebels 
who held 80 per cent of the country. His time was up. 
There was no need to cut a deal letting him dodge 
justice.... At a time when former Yugoslav leader 
Slobodan Milosevic is on trial for war crimes and 
Rwanda's prime minister Jean Kambanda has been jailed, 
Taylor's pain-free exit is a blow to the U.N., to the 
International Criminal Court and to the rule of law. 
Peace talks among Liberia's warring factions may yet 
result in a government that can put the worst days 
behind. That would be a mercy. But the manner of 
Taylor's removal exposes the international community's 
spinelessness in failing to bring an indicted war 
criminal to justice. It is a betrayal of his many 
victims across West Africa. And it can only encourage 
other lawless leaders." 
 
NATO 
2.   "Putting things in order' 
Under the sub-heading, "In a dangerous and unstable 
world, NATO finds new purpose," the nationalist Ottawa 
Citizen editorialized (8/12): "... The proliferation of 
failed, or failing states, and the terrorists incubated 
therein, have made NATO more necessary than ever. This 
renewed purpose was demonstrated yesterday when, for 
the first time in its 54-year existence, 
NATO stepped beyond the borders of Europe and assumed 
command of the 5,000-strong International Security 
Assistance Force in Afghanistan.... Despite the rift 
between the U.S. and 'old' Europe over Iraq, the 
alliance's 19 members recognize that the U.S. can't 
fight alone against fanatics trying to acquire nuclear 
weapons. To those who object to 'defensive 
imperialism,' we reply: The West will keep its armies 
at home when the enemy stops training suicide bombers." 
 
IRAQ 
3.   "Bush called Saddam's bluff" 
Editorials editor Jonathan Kay commented in the 
conservative National Post (8/7): "Evidence that Saddam 
Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction 
could theoretically emerge any day.... War supporters 
have to prepare themselves for the eventual admission 
that Iraq, as attacked, was likely WMD-free. This 
admission should not be particularly toxic. The legal 
basis for war was never that Saddam had WMDs, but that 
he'd flouted the many Security Council resolutions 
requiring him to come clean on inspections, and 
that he had never accounted for the WMD precursor 
materials we know he purchased. As for the moral 
justification, it is already crystal clear. 
Dozens of mass graves have been found, and thousands of 
Iraqis have come forward to tell stories of torture and 
unimaginable brutality under Saddam. The mere fact WMDs 
aren't found won't change the reality that the 
dictator's ouster has made the world, and Iraq in 
particular, a far better place.... Why would a dictator 
fool two major Western powers into invading his 
country?... [T]he Iraqi dictator kept the world 
guessing because he wanted to look strong in the eyes 
of other nations.... Simply put, Saddam sought to 
fool the world into thinking he still had a powerful 
WMD program - and he succeeded brilliantly. Even the 
intelligence agencies of France and Germany, whose 
governments so vehemently opposed the war, believed 
Saddam was hiding something. Through his ruse, Saddam 
forced Messrs. Blair and Bush to decide between war and 
acceptance of the risk that Iraq's madman really was 
building deadly toys. Faced with this choice, and given 
the information they had, the two leaders correctly 
concluded the costs of inaction far outweighed the 
costs of military conflict. Thus was a just war fought 
and won, no matter what the victors find in the sand." 
 
4.   "What language is U.S. speaking in Iraq?" 
Editorial page editor emeritus Haroon Siddiqui observed 
in the liberal Toronto Star (8/11): "One cringes on 
hearing some Americans analyze non-Americans.... What 
planet do these Americans live on? Or are they so 
preoccupied spinning propaganda that they have no sense 
of reality? Or is it that they just don't care what 
anyone thinks beyond their core constituency of fellow 
citizens and foreign fellow travellers? So monumental 
has the mismanagement of post-Iraq been that essential 
services and law and order are still not back to pre- 
war levels. Looting has given way to carjacking and 
kidnapping. Iraqi frustrations over rampant crime have 
the eerie echo of 
women in U.S.-controlled Afghanistan who lately have 
been complaining that, under the Taliban, they were at 
least safe from rape. The Americans are operating in 
chaotic conditions under which many are getting killed. 
But they have contributed to the chaos by being ill- 
prepared for post-war Iraq, by being culturally 
clueless and trigger-happy.... The bombing of the 
Jordanian embassy in Baghdad Thursday had the stamp of 
Al Qaeda terrorism. If so, the Americans have been 
going after the wrong people on false assumptions and 
weak intelligence.... American forces have been given 
the benefit of the doubt because they've been facing 
guerrilla attacks. But their actions and, in fact, 
their entire approach to the occupation raise 
disturbing questions, summarized in what Iraqis most 
often ask visitors: 'How do Americans think of us, as 
Iraqis or as animals? Why do they treat us like 
cattle?'" 
 
NORTH KOREA 
5.   "Next stop, North Korea?" 
The leading Globe and Mail opined (8/11): "Is the 
United States starting to prepare for war against North 
Korea? One might think so, considering the 
sabre-rattling in Washington even as the American 
military is fully engaged in Iraq. The latest warning 
came last week from James Woolsey, a former CIA 
director.... The prospect will strike many observers as 
the height of folly - how, for a start, would the U.S. 
expect China to react to an American invasion next 
door? - but in some quarters in Washington it is being 
taken very seriously. Mr. Woolsey, who is thought to 
reflect much Pentagon thinking, was an early proponent 
of an invasion of Iraq. That he has turned his 
attention to North Korea is hardly insignificant.... To 
what degree, however, is this merely geopolitical 
gamesmanship? The blunt talk is 
occurring when there is also tangible progress in 
diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to the 
impasse..... The six-party talks, expected to begin 
this month or early in September, should clarify 
matters. Some form of non-aggression agreement is 
certain to be opposed by those in Washington who 
are convinced regime change is as legitimate an 
objective in North Korea as in Iraq. And, they point 
out, any deal to shut down North Korea's nuclear 
facilities will be only as good as the verification 
process. It will have to include sweeping inspections, 
given North Korea's history of duplicity. Still, a 
multilateral pact appears significantly more attainable 
now than just a few months ago, and would be infinitely 
preferable to a war that might result in a loss of life 
not unlike what occurred 50 years ago in the Korean 
War. As long as progress is being made at the 
negotiating table to blunt the threat from North Korea, 
it should be pursued with full effort." 
 
ICC 
6.   "In dire need of international court" 
London-based independent journalist Gwynne Dyer wrote 
in the liberal Toronto Star (8/11): "...Current 
attempts to bring genocidal killers to justice around 
the world are scattered and stumbling. Cambodia has 
just announced that only the 10 most senior surviving 
Khmer Rouge leaders will stand trial for the slaughter 
of the killing fields that cost 1.7 million lives in 
the late '70s.... Or look at the U.S. and British 
attempts to remove Carla Del Ponte as chief prosecutor 
for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The 
stated reason is because she is too busy as chief 
prosecutor for former Yugoslavia, but it's really about 
stopping her from expanding the indictments beyond 
members of the former Hutu government to include 
members of the current Tutsi-led government of 
Rwanda.... If no permanent and independent body has the 
authority to deal with this sort of crime, then it 
will be politics that decides who is punished and who 
gets off. The International Criminal Court, which came 
into formal legal existence on July 1, 2002, was 
designed to move the world on from that primitive 
system. But it is under heavy assault by the current 
U.S. administration, which loathes the very idea of the 
ICC. Why? The United States says it fears that American 
service personnel engaged in international peacekeeping 
operations might become victims of nuisance 
prosecutions brought by the ICC, whose judges it does 
not control.... The ICC has become an obsession of the 
Bush administration, which sees all international 
structures that are beyond Washington's control as 
potentially hostile curbs on the exercise of American 
power. Latterly, Washington has even been cutting 
military aid to poor countries that refuse to sign 
treaties promising never to hand American 
personnel over to the ICC. Yet the ICC is up and 
running. Its 18 judges - distinguished jurists from 18 
different countries - were selected last year, 
and chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, a former 
prosecutor of the Argentine junta, was inaugurated in 
June.... It will take time for the ICC to have an 
impact, because it cannot deal with crimes committed 
before July, 2002. It will take even more time because 
of American attempts to sabotage it, but since U.S. 
hostility is driven by ideology rather than national 
interest, that could change as soon as the next 
administration. The goal is to create a single standard 
and a single authority for dealing with 
genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity when 
local governments are unable or unwilling to act. Ten 
years from now we will probably be a lot closer to that 
goal." 
 
CELLUCCI