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UN report: World threatened by 'cascade of proliferation'
Endorses preemptive strikes
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COMThursday, December 2, 2004
A report submitted to the United National today called the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction a leading threat and endorsed the preemptive strike option.
UN member states have the right to defend themselves, including preemptively, when an attack was deemed imminent, the report said. The panel also urged the Security Council to be prepared to "act earlier, more pro-actively and more decisively than in the past."
The report sounded a note of alarm, suggesting that the world is on the verge of losing control over the spread of WMD.
"We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the nonproliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation," the report said.
The report came amid an effort by the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect suspected Iranian nuclear weapons sites, Middle East Newsline reported. IAEA director-general Mohammed El Baradei told the New York Times on Thursday that Iran has refused to allow inspections of sites in northern and southern Iran.
"The international community does have to be concerned about nightmare scenarios combining terrorists, weapons of mass destruction and irresponsible states, which may conceivably justify the use of force, not just reactively but preventatively," the panel said in a 95-page report.
A 16-member panel concluded a study for the United Nations that warned that unidentified states and groups deemed terrorists could launch a WMD attack anywhere in the world.
"The question is not whether such action can be taken: it can, by the Security Council as the international community's collective security voice, at any time it deems that there is a threat to international peace and security."
The panel, created by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan in 2003, submitted 101 recommendations to improve international security. The recommendations included stricter controls meant to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and a definition of terrorism that would prevent states from sponsoring insurgency groups that target civilians.
Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a document the UN panel said must be strengthened. The report said the NPT has lost much of its effectiveness.
"[The NPT] is not as effective a constraint as it was previously because of the lack of compliance, threats to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a changing security environment and the diffusion of technology," the report said.
"The case for collective security today rests on three basic pillars," the panel said. "Today's threats recognize no national boundaries, are connected, and must be addressed at the global and regional as well as the national levels. No state, no matter how powerful, can by its own efforts alone make itself invulnerable to today's threats."
The panel said the UN Security Council or individual states must be prepared to eliminate WMD threats before they could be carried out.
The report called on the UN to undergo reforms that would allow the world body to direct campaigns against terrorism and WMD proliferation. The recommendations, requiring approval by member states, would include "a more proactive" Security Council. The panel also urged the council to expand to 24 members.
The panel offered a definition of terrorism that unlike several Arab and Islamic states does not refer to efforts at national liberation. The panel's definition of terrorism comprised "any action ... that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or noncombatants, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government..." to take a specific action.
"There is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians," the report said.

WHAT IS AL-QAEDA MANAGEMENT DOING IN IRAN?

By Sharon Chadha

"No Al-Qaeda leaders are in Iran," Iranian Deputy Interior Minister Ali Asqar Ahmadi said at a 28 September news conference in Tehran. "Iran has never permitted the transit of terrorists to Iraq or any other country from its own territory," he added. Although Tehran has repeatedly issued such denials, two separate Iranian officials confirmed in 2003 and early 2004 that Iranian authorities are holding Al-Qaeda members in custody, and that they will be brought to trial as they constitute a threat to Iran's national security, ONASA news agency reported on 15 February 2004.

But to date, no such trial is known to have taken place. Reports nonetheless persist that hundreds of Al-Qaeda operatives along with some 18 senior leaders -- including Saif Adel, Al-Qaeda's military commander, and Osama Bin Laden's son, Saad, are living in Iran. Spain's top counterterrorism judge has dubbed this Al-Qaeda's "board of managers," according to the 1 August "Los Angeles Times." A French counterterrorism official says that these leaders have "controlled freedom of movement" inside Iran, AFP reported on 15 July, and the London-based Arabic daily "Al-Sharq al-Awsat" reports that some are even living in villas near the Caspian Sea coast town of Chalus, AFP reported on 28 June. Other accounts of their activities are far more disturbing. U.S. communications intercepts indicate that the 12 May 2003 attacks on the expatriate compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, were orchestrated from Iran, according to the 1 August "Los Angeles Times," and though others may be involved, European government officials reportedly point to Adel as the primary suspect.

Moreover, French government officials are reported to suspect that the Al-Qaeda leadership based in Iran played a role in the suicide bombings that targeted Western and Jewish interests in Casablanca, Morocco, that occurred four days after the Riyadh attacks and resulted in the death of 33 civilians as well as 12 suicide bombers Al-Qaeda members in Iran are also said to have funded the Istanbul bombings in November 2003, in which two synagogues, the British Consulate, and a London-based bank were bombed and 63 people were killed, according to court testimony provided by Adnan Ersoz, one of 69 charged in connection with these incidents, AFP reported on 13 September.

Spanish investigators believe that even the 11 March commuter train bombings in Madrid were at least partially planned from the Al-Qaeda base in Iran. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, named by Spanish police as a primary suspect, is suspected of having operated from Iran, as is another suspect, Amer Azizi, who is believed to have spent time in Iran before returning to Spain to carry out the attacks, according to Spanish communications intercepts cited in the "Los Angeles Times."

These intercepts indicate that Azizi met with then-Al-Qaeda-affiliate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist believed to be behind various assassinations, car bombings, and beheadings in Iraq. It is widely reported that he too has used Iran as his base of operations, where he was able to extend his reach as far as Europe, and where he remains the primary suspect in terror plots involving chemical and biological weapons attacks on targets in Europe that were foiled in 2002 and 2003, according to law enforcement authorities in London and Paris cited by the "Los Angeles Times." U.S. government officials are said to believe that al-Zarqawi had more contact with the Iranian government than he ever did with former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, according to "Newsweek" of 25 October. Although some U.S. analysts remain skeptical of the notion that al-Zarqawi could have established a close relationship with the Shi'ite regime given his alleged hostility toward Shi'ites in general, Jordanian intelligence have corroborated the existence of such links, the weekly reported.

That al-Zarqawi was indeed allowed to operate from Iran was confirmed by a commander of the elite Al-Quds unit of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), General Qasem Suleimani, who reportedly said that the IRGC provided assistance and refuge to al-Zarqawi in order to prevent the establishment of a pro-U.S. regime in Iraq, according to "Al-Sharq al-Awsat" on 11 August. The general's remarks contrast with the official position of the Iranian government, which is that it has "no affinity" with Al-Qaeda and has from time to time arrested and extradited various Al-Qaeda suspects to their home countries. In August, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry foiled a series of assassinations allegedly being planned by Al-Qaeda's Adel along with a high-ranking leader of the IRGC, "Al-Sharq al-Awsat" reported on 19 August. The plot, which was revealed in recorded telephone calls, targeted U.S. military, CIA, and FBI personnel in the former Soviet Republics that neighbor Iran. According to the Arabic daily's source, the plot was apparently conceived in order to force a confrontation with both the United States and Iran's northerly neighbors -- Armenia, Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave, and Turkmenistan -- and it furthermore shows the deep divisions between the hard-line and reformist factions in determining Iranian foreign policy. Many Iran experts are not surprised that the IRGC might provide assistance and refuge to Al-Qaeda members at the same time that other elements of the Iranian government, such as the Intelligence Ministry, are arresting and extraditing Al-Qaeda suspects. Many experts believe the IRGC operates beyond the control of elected politicians in Tehran and answers only to the hard core of the unelected clerical elite. As a top French law enforcement official told the "Los Angeles Times": "Iranians play a double game. It is a classic Iranian style of ambiguity, deception, manipulation.

Everything they can do to trouble the Americans, without going too far, they do it. They have arrested important Al-Qaeda people, but they have permitted other important Al-Qaeda people to operate."

Source: RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 8, No. 225, Part III, 2 December 2004