US embassy cable - 03HARARE451

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 HARARE 000451 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
DEPT FOR INR/R/MR AND AF/PDPA DALTON, MITCHELL AND SIMS 
 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL, KPAO, KMDR, ZI 
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION IRAQ; HARARE 
 
 
  1.   In an opinion piece carried in the March 2 edition of 
      the government-controlled weekly "The Sunday Mail," Dr. 
      Tafataona Mahoso criticized the United States and Britain 
      for appearing to be "arm-twisting" the United Nations to 
      sanction the war against Iraq.  Under headline "Sinister 
      motives fuel assault on Iraq: "Britain and U. S. arm-twist 
      U. N. to bless illegal war," Mahoso argues: 
 
  2.   "An impressive number of international summits and 
      conferences have come out clearly on the side of 
      peace and against the threatened U. S. - UK war on 
      Iraq.  A few weeks ago, the African Union declared 
      its position against war. . .All these are 
      impressive expressions of world opinion, when taken 
      together with the millions of demonstrators who took 
      to the streets on 15 February on all five continents 
      of the globe.  But there is now a need for the key 
      members of the coalition, especially NAM, to think 
      ahead beyond the current stalemate between U. S, 
      weapons of mass destruction, on the one hand, and 
      the moral power of the loose anti-war alliance on 
      the other.  First of all, too many opponents of the 
      war in Europe and America are opposing it just so 
      that history will count them as having expressed 
      doubts about it but having failed to stop it.  This 
      is particularly true of the white liberals in North 
      America.  They know that the U. S. military- 
      industrial complex stands to make huge profits from 
      weapons and oil if the war takes place.  However, 
      they wish Bush and Blair would not wage the war 
      without first bribing the U. N. to bless the war. 
      This is where the African Union and NAM stand out. 
      They see the war as a most horrific holocaust, 
      whether or not the U. S. and UK manage to bribe the 
      U. N. to bless it.  In other words, too many in the 
      North oppose only the Bush-Blair means of waging the 
      assault on Iraq.  They would go quiet if Blair and 
      Bush succeeded in making the proposed genocide 
      legal.  The view from the South, on the other hand, 
      is that Iraq is only a sacrificial lamb, another 
      means to an end; just as Yugoslavia was also a means 
      to an end. 
 
      "The real objectives of the war are: To bring 
      western and central Asia firmly under the unipolar 
      system dominated by the U. S., and to prevent a 
      possible coalition or alliance of the future which 
      could bring Russia, India and China together, 
      especially if Namibia's proposal to make India a 
      permanent Security Council member were to succeed; 
      To bring all major oil reserves under U. S. control; 
      even Sudan and Nigeria will not be spared; To wage 
      war on the old U. N. system before its Security 
      Council mechanism is captured by a coalition of 
      emerging powers and used to neutralize the U. S.-UK 
      alliance. . .; To use the oil power so obtained as 
      means of controlling the allies of the U. S. who may 
      be threatening to declare their independence from 
      their post-Second World War dependence on North 
      America.  Now, the main objective of the loose 
      alliance against war should be to stop the 
      aggression before it happens. . .So the loose 
      alliance needs to become tighter and immediately 
      announce that a unilateral war on Iraq will mean: 
      That the majority of U. N. members would decide to 
      forfeit U. S. contributions to the budget of the 
      same and move the U. N. headquarters out of the U. 
      S. for good; That the majority of the U. N. members 
      would immediately change the U. N. Security Council 
      system by creating new permanent members such as 
      Brazil, India and the AU; That the majority would 
      seek to tighten their anti-war alliance until it can 
      impose some trade sanctions against the U. S.; That 
      the coalition would agitate for the removal of U. S. 
      military bases from member states, especially in the 
      South. 
 
      "These ideas follow from a logical analysis of the 
      situation.  In Yugoslavia, the U. S. managed to wage 
      war on Europe, using NATO and making Europeans pay 
      for the cost.  Many thought that would be the last 
      war in which the U. N. was arm-twisted to bless an 
      illegal war.  But it was not.  Over Afghanistan, the 
      world at first went along with the `war on 
      terrorism' until that war became terrorism in 
      itself.  Now, the aggression against Iraq just came 
      out of the blue.  The attempts to justify it have 
      been the weakest the world has ever heard compared 
      to those for the Gulf war, the Yugoslav war and the 
      Afghan war.  But the current attempts are costing 
      the U. N. very dearly.  The whole system has been 
      commandeered to make the war on Iraq appear to be 
      the only business of the U. N. that is worth doing 
      at present.  This should not be tolerated." 
 
SULLIVAN