U.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Condemning Killing of Hamas Leader Yassin, 03/25/04
snip:
On Wednesday, the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva voted 31-2 to condemn Israel for Yassin's death, but the body has no power to punish countries. A resolution by the Security Council would have carried more international weight. The 11 Security Council members who voted for the measure on Thursday were: China, Russia, France, The Philippines, Angola, Chile, Pakistan, Spain, Algeria, Benin and Brazil. Britain, Germany and Romania abstained from the vote.--end snip
Link no longer found: www.adn.com/24hour/story/1245613p-8299749c.html, entitled: Russia boasts weapon to overcome U.S. Star Wars
snip:
MOSCOW (March 29, 5:17 am AST) - Russia has designed a "revolutionary" weapon that would make the prospective U.S. missile defense useless, Russian news agencies reported Monday, quoting a senior Defense Ministry official. The official, who was not identified by name, said tests conducted during last month's military maneuvers would dramatically change the philosophy behind development of Russia's nuclear forces, the Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies reported. If deployed, the new weapon would take the value of any U.S. missile shield to "zero," the news agencies quoted the official as saying.
The official said the new weapon would be inexpensive, providing an "asymmetric answer" to U.S. missile defenses, which are proving extremely costly to develop. Russia, meanwhile, also has continued research in prospective missile defenses and has an edge in some areas compared to other nations, the official said. EU slaps France in the face over lifting Chinese arms ban (China), 04/28/04
--snip:
He [ed: French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier] said the EU was treating China like Zimbabwe, Sudan or Myanmar while cooperating with it on satellite technology.
end snip
Claudia Rossett: Oil-for-Terror: U.N. Iraq money may have ended up in accounts tied to al Qaeda and the Taliban, 04/28/04
snip:
It's looking more and more as if one of the best reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein was that it was probably the only way to get rid of Oil-for-Food. The problem wasn't simply that this huge United Nations relief program for Iraq became a gala of graft, theft, fraud, palace-building and global influence-peddling--though all that was quite bad enough. The picture now emerging is that under U.N. management the Oil-for-Food program, which ran from 1996-2003, served as a cover not only for Saddam's regime to cheat the Iraqi people, but to set up a vast and intricate global network of illicit finance. In Oil-for-Food, "Every contract tells a story," says John Fawcett, a financial investigator with the New York law firm of Kreindler & Kreindler LLP, which has sued the financial sponsors of Sept. 11 on behalf of the victims and their families. In an interview, Mr. Fawcett and his colleague, Christine Negroni, run down the lists of Oil-for-Food authorized oil buyers and relief suppliers, pointing out likely terrorist connections. One authorized oil buyer, they note, was a remnant of the defunct global criminal bank, BCCI. Another was close to the Taliban while Osama bin Laden was on the rise in Afghanistan; a third was linked to a bank in the Bahamas involved in al Qaeda's financial network; a fourth had a close connection to one of Saddam's would-be nuclear-bomb makers.
--end snip
Link no longer working at Insight.mag, article entitled: "Walker's World: Bush Blair to Talk China"
snip:
The Americans also want to talk about China, and the moves by the European Union to lift the embargo on arms sales to Beijing that was imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre nearly 15 years ago.
The push to lift the EU embargo is being led by French President Jacques Chirac, who sees a glittering opportunity, not just for French arms sales, but for a warm new relationship with Beijing that can lead to even more lucrative deals.
--end snip
Enuf for now.
Need to add a fifth one:
A U.S. official said the money was wired to an account in the Rafaidan Bank of Jordan then transferred to the personal account of Iraq's ambassador to Jordan, who would then have the money delivered to the Palestinians.
As WorldNetDaily reported, remnants of Saddam's regime may still be funding terrorism against Israel by continuing the payments to families of Palestinian suicide bombers the dictator previously provided, according to a document recently seized in Iraq and obtained by WorldNetDaily .
The document, discovered by a U.S. military unit on the body of an Iraqi combatant in Northern Iraq in September, is a general "Certificate of Martyrdom" honoring a family member who carries out a suicide attack against Israelis.
According to documents captured in 2002 by Israel's Operation Defensive Shield, Saddam set up an "Arab Liberation Front" – a Ba'ath party department in the Palestinian areas used to encourage terrorism and issue checks, usually through the Palestine Investment Bank, to the families of suicide bombers.
The payments were $15,000 at the start of the intifada, and were later raised to $25,000.
Saddam would also issue checks of $10,000 to the families of "ordinary" Palestinians killed in the intifada by other means, such as "through the aggression of the Zionist army."
A $25,000 check and martyrdom certificate, for example, was transferred June 23, 2002, to Khaldiya Isma'il Abd Al-Aziz Al-Hurani, mother of the Hamas terrorist Fuad Isma'il Ahmad Al-Hurani, who carried out a suicide attack on March 19 of that year in Jerusalem's Moment Cafe. Eleven Israelis were killed and 16 wounded in the attack.
bump