Steve Quayle News Alerts

May 10, 2002

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources reveal that on Monday, May 6, Israel staged its first large-scale exercise to assess its military alertness and the state of its defenses in the face of a potential Iraqi nuclear, chemical or biological missile attack on the country’s Gush Dan heartland.

The practice took place in the town of Ramla, 16 miles east of Tel Aviv.

The country’s narrowest waist is also its most densely populated region; 1.75 million inhabitants, just over one third of the Jewish population, live, work and shop in Tel Aviv and its cluster of small towns: Ramat Gan,Givatayim, Bnei Berak, Herzliya, Petach Tikva, Ramla, Lod (including Israel’s international Ben Gurion airport), Holon, Bat Yam and Rishon Lezion.

Gush Dan is Israel’s national business and financial center. It is the hub of the national north-south arteries connecting Galilee and Haifa in the north with the southern Negev desert. Two-thirds of Israeli industry, including the key arms, aeronautics, missiles and electronics manufacturing, are located here.

The WMD exercise, held in tight secrecy, was predicated on six premises:

1. That Gush Dan would be the primary target of an Iraqi air and missile assault (as it was in the 1991 Gulf War);

2. That Iraq has acquired a nuclear capability;

3. Israeli intelligence reports Iraq’s arsenal as consisting of a large, state-of-the-art missile force running into hundreds of projectiles – not a few dozen as generally assumed;

4. Israeli intelligence warns that Iraq’s missile raids against Israel and other parts of the Middle East including US targets will not this time be sporadic and irregular like 1991, but heavy blitzes of 15-25 missiles in each barrage. Their object will be maximum casualties and damage;

5. According to Israeli intelligence estimates, Iraq has in recent months sunk many millions of dollars in upgrading its missiles’ navigational and guidance systems, substantially enhancing their targeting accuracy.

6. Israel cites eight nations as Iraq’s suppliers of missile-related parts, components and systems: North Korea, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia and Syria.

They also note that Syrian military intelligence is sharing with its Iraqi opposite number valuable contacts with arms dealers in Europe and South America who can furnish Iraq’s requirements. President Bashar Assad, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly has reported in recent months, has granted Iraq the use of its Mediterranean ports of Latakia, Tartous and Banyas, transit points that enable Iraqi arms shipments to circumvent the US naval blockade on Persian Gulf seaways to Iraq.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources, Israel is also gearing up for WMD attack from sources other than Iraq.

Palestinians

Israel’s military sweep in April through the main Palestinian cities of the West Bank in its Defensive Shield Operation uncovered signs of Palestinian stockpiling of weapons-grade chemical and biological substances. In Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Qalqilya and outlying refugee camps, Israeli troops found extra-large bombs containing 200-500 kilos of explosives, hundreds of mines and containers of poisonous chemicals and bacteria. Bombs and explosive devices were discovered loaded with cyanide.

Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon put the high points of this evidence before President George W. Bush in the one-on-one part of their conversation at the White House on May 7. Later, he handed a detailed report to Vice President Dick Cheney.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources, the report covered the documents found with the substances, their wrappings and the information given up by the guards at the secret stores, all of which identified suppliers in Iraq, Syria and Central Asia.
The prohibited materials originating in Central Asia appear to have been smuggled through Turkey via Syria and the Golan Heights into the West Bank. Jordan has been used as an illicit supply route for WMD substances originating in Iraq and Abu Dhabi and smuggled in from Saudi Arabia.

Our military sources report Jordanian, Israeli and American intelligence and special forces have been scouring Jordan over the past two weeks for the Jordanians involved in the WMD smuggling operation into the West Bank.

Al Qaeda Cells

Along with the dossier linking Yasser Arafat to terrorist activity – most of which the Bush administration already had from its own and Israeli sources – Sharon also handed over intelligence data on al Qaeda undercover cells exposed and captured on the West Bank. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources, those cells were much more prevalent than just a few here and there; some were in possession of dangerous chemical or biological materials. One senior Israeli security official said to us on condition of anonymity: “If I were to hear the figure of 35 cells, I would not contradict it.” In addition to the non-conventional weaponry they were carrying, he called attention to four points:

A. Those cells did not function in a logistical and command vacuum; there must have been a command hierarchy to activate them.

B. Evidence and cash on the persons of al Qaeda prisoners on the West Bank led to connections with brother-cells in the Persian Gulf, Jordan and Lebanon.

C. Our source points out: “We know how many we have caught; we don’t know how many we have missed or what quantities of poisonous materials are still cached in unknown locations.”

D. Israel suspects that one of the al Qaeda cells still at large in Palestinian-controlled territory or Jordan may be carrying a primitive nuclear device – “one or two radiological or dirty bombs capable of contaminating large areas,” said our senior source.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Amman report that al Qaeda’s undercover presence in the kingdom with possible access to unconventional weaponry were high on the agenda of King Abdullah’s talks with President Bush and Vice President Cheney in Washington Wednesday, May 5. The king arrived in the US capital 12 hours after Sharon, which was no coincidence.

Lebanese Hizballah

Intelligence data is piling up indicating that the Lebanese Shiite group, Hizballah, has received quantities of chemical warheads for the hundreds of Russian Frog and Iranian Fajr surface missiles Iran shipped over in April via Syria (as DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported in its last Issue No. 59).

Syria

Syria’s WMD capabilities – advances in chemical weapons infrastructure and the facilities for manufacturing biological warfare agents – must be added to the Iraqi missile and Palestinian, al Qaeda and Hizballah chemical and biological terror threats against Israel’s main urban centers. Indications are gathering that all these parties are working together on a joint, simultaneous, assault against Israel.

Sharon informed the US president this week that if weapons of mass destruction were introduced in the war against his country, Israel would feel free to retaliate with every means in its arsenal, up to and including nuclear weapons.

Al Qaeda

Al Qaeda Strikes Again

The commander of the British expeditionary force in Afghanistan, Brigadier Roger Lane, said on Wednesday, May 8:
“We believe we are on the right way, that the fight against al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan is all but won, and that they are not showing a predisposition to reorganize and regroup to mount offensive operations against us.”

The British general’s statement accompanied British marines’ Operation Snipe to clear out the Shah-e-Kot region of eastern Afghanistan, while US special forces are similarly occupied in two places: the Tora Bora region near Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan, and just across the border in northern Wazirstan, one of the semi-autonomous Pashtun tribal regions of western Pakistan. There, US units are joined by Pakistani special forces.

The facts on the ground reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military counter-terrorism sources run contrary to the British general’s assessment. The last word coming out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States, Europe, Central Asia, Asia and the Middle East, is that al-Qaeda is rampant again, having embarked on its biggest ever multi-targeted terror campaign that reaches simultaneously into the United States, Britain, Germany, Pakistan, Russia and Israel. Counter-terrorism experts asked by DEBKA-Net-Weekly estimate that al-Qaeda is throwing more than 100 terror cells into the campaign. It aims also to hit US and other foreign military units in Afghanistan and surrounding countries, especially Pakistan, as well as striking inside the United and Israel, and at US and Israeli installations and institutions around the world.

Experts believe that some of the 200 to 400 operatives in these activated terrorist cells are trained as suicide killers. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terrorism experts have strong reason to believe that some are armed with bombs or explosives containing nuclear, biological or chemical components. Whether or not they are under orders to use them is unclear.

Neither is the duration of the current round. Counter-terrorism agencies, who note the start of the new offensive, say it could taper off after two or three weeks, or develop into a lengthier cycle. Two suicide bombings this week – one in Rishon Lezion, Israel, that killed 16 people on May 7, and the blast in Karachi the following day, in which 11 French shipyard workers died when their bus was rammed by a car packed with explosives – are seen as part of this cycle – and not the end of it.

Among the wave of air disasters this week, the EgyptAir 843 from Cairo that crashed into a Tunisian hillside on May 8, killing 16 of the 62 aboard, has attracted Egyptian and US terror investigators. In the south Russian republic of Dagestan, a blast tore through a Victory Day parade on May 9, killing 29 people including 7 children. President Vladimir Putin blamed the attack on terrorists, suggesting they came from neighboring Chechnya, whose rebels are allied with al Qaeda. Tunisian authorities have begun assigning to terrorist sabotage the helicopter crash on May 1, in which thirteen Tunisian military officers, including chief of staff Brig. Gen. Abdelaziz Skik, died. Evidence was found that the Bell 212 helicopter engine had been tampered with. The officers were on their way back to Tunis from a surveillance mission in the Kef region near the Algerian border. The Algerian extremist GIA is an integral part of the al Qaeda network. This was not the first attack in Tunis. Last month, a bombing attack blasted a bus carrying tourists on a visit to the 2,000-year old synagogue on the island of Djerba. Most of the 29 victims were Germans. The authorities in Berlin are treating this incident too as al-Qaeda-related.

As the terrorist hits pile up, the Afghanistan campaign drags on.

US President George W. Bush, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and supreme commander General Tommy Franks used to declare, like the British general, that the war is all but over and the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces on the run. But their optimism faded after the US-led battles against two units of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the Shah-e-Kot area, south of Gardez, ended in mid-March without a clear military victory – even though American special forces were joined by Australian, New Zealand and Norwegian elite units and had Afghan military support.

US leaders seem to have learned one of Afghanistan’s bitter lessons: Each time they were sure the al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters had been defeated, victory slipped out of their grasp. The enemy melted away from the front line with the help of sophisticated camouflage and diversionary tactics, only to regroup for fresh assaults elsewhere.

This scenario played out in November and December 2001 in Konduz and Khanabad in northern Afghanistan, when al-Qaeda forces flitted across the frontier into Pakistan and Iran. It recurred in December and January in Kandahar, where US forces control the city’s environs and international airport, but not the city itself. The Americans have not been able to take over Afghan towns in the area between Kandahar and the eastern border with Pakistan - especially in places such as Marouf, Abu Khan and Rashid Koala. Whenever US special forces come near any of these towns, al-Qaeda fighters withdraw and filter across the Pakistani border, returning when the Americans are gone.

Now, once more, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report US special forces confronted with the al-Qaeda disappearing in remote and rugged Pakistani Wazirstan, where they are engaged jointly with Pakistani elite forces in what they call the Battle of the Madressas, the Muslim seminaries that have long been breeding grounds for the militant Islamic fundamentalists nourishing al Qaeda.

This campaign inside Pakistan was launched after the CIA received intelligence that thousands of al-Qaeda fighters were hiding up in the madressas scattered around the mountain villages, training and getting ready for a fresh assault on the interim government in Kabul and the foreign troops stationed in Afghanistan.

These madressas are farm-like compounds made up of 15 to 20 one-storey structures and using adjacent caves for storing food, water and livestock. Each is surrounded by a low fence with a single gate.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources, the US-Pakistani Battle for the Madressas is a flop. Helicopter-borne forces dropped over these seminaries invariably find them deserted or occupied by innocent locals with no links to al-Qaeda or the Taliba. The fugitives are clearly forewarned of approaching danger in time to clear out, but thus far the CIA and US military intelligence have not found the source of the intelligence leaks.

One possibility is that officers or men of the Pakistani special units engaged in the hunt are loyal to the erstwhile Pakistani intelligence Afghanistan desk that was dismantled for its pro-Taliban allegiances. They may be tipping off the al Qaeda before raids.

It is also possible that local Pashtun tribesmen, who maintain round-the-clock mountaintop vigils, are reporting on US military movements. This tight communications network linking the Pashtun tribes is not necessarily anti-American; it has been around for centuries to alert the community to the approach of strangers. The Pashtun lookouts use a primitive but effective communications system made up of simple walkie-talkies and stones piled in particular patterns that convey certain messages. At night, bonfire signals are used.

These are Pashtun, not al-Qaeda, communications systems. As DEBKA-Net-Weekly has reported in the past, US intelligence monitoring posts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, the Gulf and the Middle East have never intercepted a single electronic message from al-Qaeda or Taliban commanders to their troops, since the onset of the Tora Bora battles last December. The only exception was a message from Abu Zubayda in Pakistan, who was later captured in a joint US-Pakistani raid.

A senior intelligence source monitoring the campaign’s progress told DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources: “This has become one of the most baffling mysteries ever to face an intelligence agency dealing with terrorists.” The source added: “With electronic surveillance, we can see people moving around between bases, transporting weapons, ammunition and food supplies. We know instructions are getting through to them, but we don’t know how.”

At first, some US intelligence experts believed in a network of couriers. But no such courier has ever fallen into American or allied hands, any more than a written message of any kind. Neither have any innovative al Qaeda coded transmission methods been spotted over the Internet.

According to this source, finding a way to intercept al-Qaeda messages is the key to winning the intelligence-technological battle and therefore a decisive element in the war on international terror.

“As long as we cannot find out how al Qaeda commanders communicate with their men in the field, we are flying blind as regards the network’s plans for the United States. We cannot tell where and how al Qaeda will strike.” The source asked morosely: “Will it be a conventional or nuclear attack? Everyone is fumbling in the dark.”

China Challenges Unipolar American-Dominated World

Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao’s Washington visit May 2 came close to being cancelled over the Taiwan issue. His talks with US President George W. Bush failed to make headway on this or any other contentious problems, such as Chinese military sales to states the Americans regard as rogue and Beijing’s role in the war on global terror. The Chinese vice president’s visit therefore ended with polite smiles and diplomatic platitudes – but little else. Washington and Beijing remained as entrenched as ever in their respective positions on key issues, a consequence that will strongly color the Bush-Putin summit agenda on May 25.

Above all, Chinese anger is rising over America’s growing military relationship with Taiwan.

Early in 2002 Taiwan’s military shopping list presented to the US included four Aegis class guided missile destroyers, four Kidd class destroyers, P-3 anti-submarine warfare aircraft with improved missile and torpedo systems, High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM) to counter the PLA’s new S-300 surface to air missile batteries deployed near Taiwan, Joint Direct Attack Missiles (JDAM) and other precision-guided munitions, AIM-120 air-to-air missiles, improved sensor and weapon targeting systems, naval anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles, advanced diesel-electric submarines, advanced armor and artillery systems, Apache attack helicopters, sharing of US space-based early warning missile data, and an advanced integrated command, control and intelligence system to enable precision combined arms operations.

In April 2001, the Bush administration approved the sale to Taiwan of up to eight diesel-electric submarines, four Kidd class destroyers, as well as various new missiles, aircraft and helicopters, with the decision on the balance of the weapon requests still pending.

A major focus of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) current ongoing massive modernization, domestic weapons R&D programs, and foreign technology transfers and defense acquisitions is to increase its power projection capabilities to be most likely used in a conflict with Taiwan, and possibly allied nations such as the US, Japan and South Korea.

One-China Policy on Paper

Perhaps the boldest statement Hu made during his American tour was: “If any serious complications arise with the Taiwan question, it would be difficult for China-US relations to move forward, and may even harm existing ties.” Rather less mildly, the Chinese Vice President said: “Selling sophisticated weapons to Taiwan or US-Taiwan official relations are inconsistent with the stated US commitment to a One-China policy…”.

Ironically, Hu’s visit coincides with the 30th anniversary of former US President Richard Nixon’s landmark visit to China and the issuance of the Sino-US Shanghai Joint Communiqué which began the normalization of relations between the two powers, and enshrined the One-China policy. This policy is under challenge by right-wing elements in the US Congress and the administration of President George W. Bush.

Hu was allowed a brief 30-minute meeting with President Bush and a 45-minute session with Vice President Dick Cheney on May 1st (half of each meeting likely being consumed by translation protocols), with Taiwan again at the top of the agenda. As further indication of the coolness of the encounters, the eminent Chinese visitor left the White House without comment to the news media, no joint communiqués were issued, and a US press secretary indicated that President Bush “seeks a peaceful resolution of any differences between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan and that we do not wish to see provocation on either side of the Taiwan strait”. Bush also indicated freedom of religion and human rights were major areas of disagreement with China.

Cheney’s discussion with Hu centered on the US war on terrorism and the need for China to curb missile technology exports. Bush’s comment last year that the US would do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan has not been retracted or even qualified. Hu left the impression with his Washington audiences that gradual social-economic change would naturally evolve into the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland, and the use of force would not be necessary, ignoring actual current PLA force buildups.

In a private meeting with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, the two agreed on vague measures to resume and strengthen the now suspended exchanges between the militaries of each nation. US officials have only rarely entered PLA military establishments, while in the past high-ranking PLA officers have toured many US facilities.

In his meeting with members of the US Congress at Capital Hill, Hu Jintao reaffirmed the official Chinese doctrine towards Taiwan of “peaceful reunification”, and “one country, two systems” (the Hong Kong and Macao model). Again, in the problem area of Congressional accusations of major human rights violations, Hu countered with the soft values of equality, mutual respect and non-interference in each others’ internal affairs.

Before Hu left Washington, the Armed Services Committee of the US House of Representatives passed a provision requiring the US Defense Secretary to improve Taiwan’s military preparedness, including a comprehensive plan for joint military activities within six months. House Democratic Whip Nancy Pelosi had attempted to hand Hu four letters from members of Congress that demanded the release of Chinese political prisoners, including those in Tibet, but none of the Chinese delegation would accept the letters.

On March 11, 2002, the US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz made a closed-door speech to the US-Taiwan Business Council in Florida, attended by US and Taiwanese military officials including Taiwan Defence Minister Tang Yiau-ming, on how Taiwanese military forces could be better integrated to counter a PLA ballistic missile build-up across the straits. Mr. Wolfowitz indicated that the previous US policy of permitting defense sales to Taiwan only once per year would be discontinued in favor of continuous sales and emphasized the Bush administration’s commitment “to make available to Taiwan defense articles and services that enable it to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”

Hu’s meetings with senior US officials had no apparent effect on current, planned or potential arms transfers to, and active military cooperation with, Taiwan.

Links to “Axis of Evil” States

Chinese intelligence may have also used Hu’s trip as a test of America’s perceived role of China within the US-led global war on terrorism. Following the September 11th attack on New York, Beijing was convinced that the US would cease its vocal criticism of China’s suppression of minority groups such as Islamic extremists in western China, perhaps even providing tacit support for harsh PLA anti-guerilla operations. When US criticisms of perceived human rights violations in China continued - and China was even indirectly linked to the “axis of evil” through its support for North Korea - Chinese strategists became increasingly concerned over the US’s perception of China within the new world order, uncertain whether the US considers China a cooperative friend or an enemy on the order of the former Soviet Union.

China’s relationship with Islamic weapon client states in the Middle East, and even its long-time ally Pakistan, has always been an uneasy one because of its suppression of its own Muslim population and friendly defense technology exchanges with Israel. This relationship was made ultimately palatable by China’s willingness to supply missile and weapons of mass destruction technologies to those willing to pay the price.

In the realm of defense, vague pledges were made in the Washington visit on China’s positive role in anti-terrorism, the tense Korean Peninsula situation, and the non-proliferation of long-range missiles and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. In the past, China has often promised to abide by the restrictions of the Missile technology Control Regime (MTCR) and the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. During their June 1998 summit in Beijing, President Jiang Zemin had indicated to his then US counterpart Bill Clinton that China would consider fully joining the MTCR and end missile-related sales to Islamic nations such as Pakistan and Iran.

But nothing came of these promises. The profit motive overcame other considerations and the central government claimed that many Chinese defense-related firms were becoming increasingly autonomous. For example, rather than directly selling integrated missile systems or nuclear reactors, Chinese state firms now transfer associated sub-systems and production technologies to client nations (including “rogue” states such as North Korea) under the guise of more innocent types of technical assistance. In many cases, China claims to be transferring dual-use technologies, sub-systems, and technical expertise not explicitly covered by multilateral weapons control regimes. Major Chinese exporting agencies claim to have undertaken such sales with little or no direction from higher policy-coordinating central government bodies such as the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the super armaments ministry, the Commission of Science and Technology Industry for National Defense (COSTIND).

To this day, the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington claim China is giving Iran continued missile and nuclear technology support, despite Beijing’s assurances that such support has ceased. On May 8, a week after the Hu visit to Washington, the Bush administration imposed new sanctions on Chinese (as well as Armenian and Moldovan) companies accused of aiding Iran’s weapons of mass destruction program, in violation of the MTCR.

China has boosted its sales to states that the US considers “rogue” very much to get back at Washington for a series of episodes it regards as inimical: the 1999 US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the 2002 downing of a Chinese J-8II fighter aircraft after ramming into a US EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft which then landed on Hainan Island (some sources indicate that the US surveillance aircraft was gathering data on the new Chinese nuclear attack and missile launching submarine programs which are being developed in the area), and a multi-billion dollar arms modernization of the Taiwanese military, while strengthening US defense cooperation with an area China maintains is a breakaway province

On his way to Washington, Hu stopped over in Malaysia, Singapore, Honolulu, and New York. In Malaysia, he revealed his true bent when he stated in an address to the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute that China opposes strong nations bullying the weak into accepting their vision of the world. Both China and Malaysia have voiced support for the US war on terrorism, but both are anxious about its ramifications. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said: “Malaysia would be happy if China can counterbalance US domination of world politics”.

China has not formally joined any anti-terrorist pact with the US or other ASEAN states, such as the one signed this week between Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Hu Jintao ended his inaugural US trip in San Francisco on May 3rd, after touring the Intel Corporation, the largest US microprocessor manufacturer.

Ironically, Silicon Valley is a hotbed of Chinese intelligence activities and the illegal transfer of advanced American information technologies. Sounding more like a senior state bureaucrat than a dynamic politician, the next likely leader of the most populous nation on earth, addressed fellow technocrats on the finer points of innovation and the introduction of advanced technological management techniques to boost productivity.

Recent US intelligence reports have claimed that China is involved in approximately half of all law enforcement cases related to the illegal diversion of technology from the US. Many of these cases, while often having a commercial profit motive, are also connected to intelligence and military technology transfer operations. Chinese students and employees working in foreign firms and government facilities related to advanced technologies are often recruited as intelligence operatives. Geographical areas targeted in the US include Silicon Valley, and other advanced technology cluster regions such as the Pennsylvania-New Jersey biotechnology-pharmaceutical concentration, Detroit's automotive sector, North Carolina's massive "Research Triangle" technology park, and defense research sites in New Mexico.

Is Hu a Paper Hawk?

Beijing’s official position is that Hu Jintao’s diplomatic visit abroad was a resounding success. Some compare him to a Chinese version of Vladimir Putin: highly intelligent, quiet and small, but potentially decisive, tough and ruthless. This still remains to be seen.

Hu’s visit to the US was little more than a well-orchestrated public relations exercise with no concrete policy results. The strongest imprint of China’s worldview was not left by Hu in Washington, but by the man he is to replace, President Jiang Zemin, who made no bones about Beijing’s evolving anti-US, anti-unipolar world, policy, during his April 2002 tour of Iran, Nigeria, Tunisia, Germany and Libya.

Related to Beijing’s opposition to a unipolar world, dominated by the United States, are fears of Japanese remilitarization, India’s growing closeness to the US, as well as its long-time ally Pakistan falling under American influence.

Under cover of its war on terrorism, US forces ring China with bases in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Japan and South Korea. PLA strategists see this US encirclement as potentially containing China and cutting off new energy supplies vital for the expanding Chinese economy.

Beijing’s closest ally and arms supplier, Russia, is a mere shell of its former Soviet glory, and is ultimately wary of China’s territorial aspirations in the vast tracts of Siberia. However, despite the current US-Russian rapprochement, including the last cordial Bush-Putin summit of November 2001, no aspect of Sino-Russian defense cooperation has been terminated to date (although this may be a major issue at the next Bush-Putin summit later this month).

China’s long-time ally North Korea has been labeled by the US as a member of the new international “axis of evil”. The hardliners in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and PLA believe that the US war on terrorism is an excuse to implement a “new imperialism” that will impose a system of Western values (ie. human rights, liberalism and cosmopolitanism) on the entire world.

Western intervention of the type enforced in Kosovo and Afghanistan could, in this view, be used to support similar interventions in Chinese provinces with ethnic or political dissidents such as Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, or any area where large religious groups such as the Falun Gong are reportedly persecuted.

In the final analysis, China’s military modernization continues, as does a US strengthening of forces in the Pacific theatre of operations, both possibly earmarked for contingency operations in Taiwan. Hu Jintao has reportedly been a leading figure in military cooperation with Russia, and transferring the best of what is left of the former massive Soviet military-industrial complex to China. Hu is also said to be providing lavish support and resources to modernize the PLA and build a power base within the Chinese military. How the youthful vice president consolidates and eventually uses his power remains to be seen, but few clues were provided during his US trip.

Bush

Could We Please Put the Mid East Dispute on Ice

In the last two weeks, US President George W. Bush has invited the most prominent Middle East leaders for visits to hear a simple request: Get the Israeli-Palestinian issue out of my hair until after I’ve finished with Iraq.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington sources, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI, Saudi crown prince Abdullah, King Abdullah of Jordan and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, came away with the impression that Bush had given up on his vision of a Palestinian state.

He has not, but he wants the Palestinian issue to leave him in peace in the immediate term. When the Iraqi campaign is behind him, he will get back to it. But the US president failed to make his meaning clear to his guests – both because the Palestinians have never, ever taken a back seat in international affairs and because he used diplomatic language to make his wish known.

What he said was that a Palestinian state is a dream to strive for, but for now, the Palestinians have no leader able to make the dream come true.

Crown prince Abdullah, not prepared to let Bush get away with shunting Yasser Arafat aside, urged him to give the Palestinian leader one more chance to prove he was worthy of trust.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports that Bush, for whom Arafat is permanently in last chance status, was unconvinced. However, so that he could get back to the Iraq problem undisturbed, he promised the Saudi de facto ruler he would grant his request – as long as Arafat kept to the

Gaza Strip
Bush’s decision signaled a fervent desire to wash his hands of the Palestinian Authority in view of its conspicuous failure to stem terrorism. In private conversations, he said he was prepared to talk about the Palestinian Authority only in the context of the Gaza Strip now that Israel was in effective control of the West Bank.

Saudi Arabia’s Abdullah understood the US President to be saying that Arafat can no longer dodge his obligation to fight terrorism, especially Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He fumed, but Bush stuck to his guns. He argued that Arafat, who complains that his security agencies in the West Bank were disbanded by Israel, still has the chance to prove himself by ordering his still intact Gaza Strip security and intelligence agencies to fight terrorism. Moreover, the United States was ready to send in CIA Director George Tenet to shape the often-rival security organizations into a single, viable and effective force.

But Bush laid down two conditions: Arafat must move against terror and limit his governance to the Gaza Strip.

Asked by Abdullah about the West Bank, Bush urged the crown prince to be realistic and understand that Israel was in control of the territory. This suits the US president’s plan for quiet on at least one Palestinian front for as long he needs to prepare for the offensive against Iraq. To the Saudi prince, he explained that Washington’s leverage for making Israel withdraw was limited as long as its cities were threatened by terrorists - especially on the part of suicide killers.

Bush also drew Abdullah’s attention to the Iraqi intelligence and terror base established on the West Bank and to the al-Qaeda cells – some of which Israel has uncovered – on the ground. Until recently, Bush said, the United States believed that Arafat had opened the West bank door to Iraq. But now, Washington had changed its mind and was convinced that Baghdad had set up a military intelligence presence in the territory as an Iraqi power base – a theory which Israeli sources do not buy. Iraq’s vehicle of penetration is the human and financial aid Saddam extends to the families of Palestinians killed or wounded in the Intifada.

Two weeks after the Bush-Abdullah talks in Crawford Texas were hailed by the US media as highly successful, the reality is emerging of bumpy passages and scars in the relationship that are too deep to heal.

Bush suspects Abdullah’s royal circle and Saudi military intelligence of pulling the strings behind the latest anti-American moves around the Gulf emirates, such as the sudden announcement by Oman’s foreign minister, Yusof bin Alawi bin Abdullah, that his country would not allow the United States to use Omani territory to attack any Arab nation or target – essentially, Iraq.
The United States maintains large air and naval forces in Oman as well as its biggest military storage depots in the Gulf. The Americans believe the Saudis are punishing them for declaring that Washington can live without the Prince Sultan airbase near Riyadh and has other Gulf options.
The Americans also discern the long arm of Saudi intelligence in the anti-American disturbances troubling Bahrain for the past two months and in the riots that erupted in southern Jordan against King Abdullah, who is regarded as the most staunchly pro-American Arab leader.

HOT POINTS (that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week’s Exclusives

3 May: For the first time, prime minister Ariel Sharon sets off for Washington Saturday night, May 4, completely in the dark about what awaits him in the Oval Office. The New York Times report on Wednesday, May 1 – that the Saudi ruler arrived at the Bush ranch worried about his host’s policy vacillations and came out optimistic – only deepened the anxiety in Jerusalem. Deep forebodings are entertained about the new strategy the two leaders agreed on for “joint pressure to break the deadlock in the Middle East crisis”.

As DEBKAfile wrote earlier this week, Abdullah intends to pour Saudi money into the West Bank to rebuild not only the Palestinian Authority but also Yasser Arafat’s standing as PA chairman. Bush, for his part, will steer Sharon toward a new policy. If Sharon balks, Bush will bring the full weight of the White House to bear on him, just as he did this week when he forced him to accept the transfer to a Jericho prison of the wanted killers of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi and the end of Arafat’s confinement.

Saudi money will therefore wipe out the profits of Operation Defensive Shield and the month-long siege of Arafat’s compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The US president’s decision to play the Arafat card left Sharon too stunned to speak and with few options. This week’s UN Security Council deliberations on the Jenin refugee camp fact-finding mission might have been an added complication. However the Syrian anti-Israel motion at the Security Council was defeated not by Washington, but on the initiative of factions of the UN staff who know there was no massacre in the Jenin battle. They blocked anti-Israeli moves in the Security Council because they realized that railroading Israel would destroy the last vestige of the world body’s moral legitimacy. They therefore maneuvered the deliberations into a blind alley from which Israel somehow emerged unscathed. This set of circumstances cannot be relied upon to recur in future diplomatic battles.

Ignorant of his prospects in the White House, Sharon decided to put together some cards of his own. First he leaked details of his peace plan – one drawn up by Israel’s national security council and gathering dust in a bottom drawer. Then, he chose a more powerful card: publication of the Barghouti file.

The Ramallah Fatah-Tanzim chief Marwan Barghouti was arrested two weeks ago towards the end of Operation Defensive Shield. He has been under intense interrogation since. The file contains his testimony on how he planned dozens of shooting, bombing and suicide attacks against Israelis and recruited terrorists for perpetrating them. The testimony comes in the form of written statements, recordings and videotaped reconstructions of the attacks he led. Running through the file is his constant assertion of Yasser Arafat’s complicity. In one place he says:

“When I planned this attack and others and found we were short of funds, I turned to Yasser Arafat and told him we needed more money. Before approving the funds, the president asked me to explain every detail. He knew about each attack down to the last detail and the cost of each item needed to put it into motion.”

5 May: Now that Israel has released Yasser Arafat from confinement, American, European and Saudi sources are all talking fast in the hope of moving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict onto the diplomatic track. All that remains, they imply, is for Arafat to democratize his regime and transfer authority to non-violent hands – names of candidates for the succession are freely bruited about. The diplomats will then be free to get together for another Middle East peace conference and move the conflict forward from violent confrontation to discussion.

After receiving the Saudi crown prince last month, Bush hopes to start the diplomatic ball rolling this week when he sees the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and Jordanian monarch, Abdullah II. He will listen politely to the Israeli leader’s demand to cut Arafat out of any future diplomatic process.

None of this has much to do with the Palestinian leader’s plans. According to DEBKAfile’s intelligence and Palestinian sources, far from preparing to step aside, he is hatching new schemes for upsetting the Bush-Abdullah-Sharon program, aiming to time a terror spectacular to coincide with Sharon’s White House talks on Tuesday, May 7. It would not be the first time that a major terror strike has forced the Israeli prime minister to cut short his Washington trip and come rushing home.

Fearing an Arafat provocation in Bethlehem – and with the Orthodox Easter celebrated on Sunday, May 5 - the Americans and Israelis pushed hard to get the deadlocked negotiations restarted on Saturday, May 4.

No sooner did the parties get together, when chief Palestinian negotiator Salah Ta’amri resigned, furiously accusing an unnamed “Palestinian source” of passing to Israel the list of 20 wanted terrorists barricaded in the church.

DEBKAfile’s sources name the source as Mohammed Rashid, Arafat’s personal financial adviser who joined with the Israeli prime minister’s chef de bureau, Dov Weissglass, to negotiate the terms for Arafat’s release last Wednesday, May 1, from his Ramallah compound.

To win his freedom, Arafat had to eat crow and hand the head of the second most important member of the PLO, the Palestine Front for the Liberation of Palestine, over to foreign custody. Now he must mollify the Palestinian and Arab masses and regain their trust. A terrorist spectacular timed to coincide with Sharon’s meeting in the White House - might deflect their attention from his comedown.

Arafat is also keeping a wary eye on his partners-in-Intifada, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and the Hizballah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, neither of whom will have taken kindly to his dealing with two nations, the US and UK, committed to waging war against them. Both have staked heavily in the Palestinian struggle continuing. Saddam hands out stipends - $25,000 for the family of each suicide and $5-10,000 for the families of Palestinians who are killed or wounded in battle; the Hizballah sending over arms, terror experts and high explosives. At best, Arafat risks bitter recriminations; at worst, a physical threat - unless he moves fast to break up the Palestinian Camp X-Ray in Jericho.

Certain intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Vatican, took fright when Arafat turned his rhetoric to the Church of the Nativity, shortly after the IDF lifted the siege on his Ramallah compound three days ago: “The Nativity Church,” he declared”, is the Palestinians’ al Aqsa in Bethlehem.” For many years, the Arab world used the arson attack on the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by an Australian called Michael Rohan, who was later certified as insane, as a stick against Israel.

6 May: A large number of badly wanted Palestinian gunmen were among the 200 people who dived into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem 35 days ago, just ahead of the incursion of Israeli troops and tanks, in the early days of Israel’s largest anti-terror operation against Palestinian West Bank towns. They claimed and received sanctuary in the Christian shrine.

Since then, the wanted men have been holed up in the church with a group of monks and nuns of various denominations, surrounded by Israeli tanks.

In the course of the siege, 6 gunmen were killed and 90 allowed to leave the church. Still inside are 123 gunmen, priests and others, who have been the object of feverish negotiations. Israel has demanded the handover of terrorists for trial before lifting the siege on the church and pulling its troops out of Bethlehem, the last Palestinian city from which they have not yet withdrawn. The Palestinians have been holding out.

In the past 48 hours, Palestinian sources have announced three times that the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations to end the crisis have reached a successful conclusion. Three times the talks stalled, while various international go-betweens bustled between the parties.

Monday night, yet another announcement was trumpeted that a deal was all but in the bag. But this too may have been a negotiating tactic. DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources report that Yasser Arafat has decided at the eleventh hour to withhold his signature on the all but completed accord. In essence, its terms permit the permanent exile of a small group of hard-core terrorists, known to have committed and masterminded many murders of Israeli civilians, to Italy or some other European country. Among them is the Tanzim militia commander of Bethlehem, Ibrahim Abayat, and senior Fatah and Force 17 militants from Hebron.

A second, larger group would be transferred to the Gaza Strip, away from its members’ strongholds in Bethlehem and Hebron.

According to our Washington sources, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, in between his meetings Monday, May 6, with US secretary of state Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, ordered the Israeli negotiators to wind up the Bethlehem discussions before he meets President George W. Bush at the White House on Tuesday, May 7.

The Israeli team redoubled its efforts, faced with Palestinian negotiators willing to reciprocate and terminate the war of nerves.

Still, Monday night, two snags remained.

Arafat was unwilling to afford Sharon the advantage of being able to inform the US president that Israeli forces had withdrawn from every one of the West Bank towns entered during Operation Defensive Shield.

He was even more unwilling to let three of his senior aides enjoy the kudos of resolving the Bethlehem crisis. Those aides, his deputy Abu Mazen and financial adviser Mohamed Rashid and the Gaza Strip security chief, Muhamed Dahlan, stepped into the negotiations in the last three days to haul them out of deep stalemate. Their success will enhance each of their ratings as potential successors to Arafat as Palestinian leader.

7 May: Monday, May 6, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon visited the Pentagon. On the same day, John Bolton, US undersecretary of state, disarmament expert and the closest official in that department to the White House, accused Libya, Syria and Cuba of pursuing weapons of mass destruction. The terms of this warning strongly resembled the language Washington uses in reference to Saddam Hussein. Bolton warned all three of American action to ensure they do not supply terrorists with such arms.

Regarding to Damascus, he said: “We are concerned about Syrian advances in its indigenous CW (chemical weapons) infrastructure (and believe Syria is) pursuing development of biological weapons and is able to produce at least small amounts of biological warfare agents.”

Shortly after the US issued its warning, the Hizballah fired 27 anti-air missiles from its bases in Lebanon over Western Galilee in northern Israel. Debris scattered over Shlomi and other villages in the area.

Israeli military spokesmen made haste to state that no Israeli air force planes were flying over the Israel-Lebanese frontier at the time of the Hizballah attack.

DEBKAfile’s Washington sources report that Bolton’s warning to Damascus did not come out of the blue. It was prompted by US concern over the latest Syrian military movements in Lebanon and at home and its reciprocal ties with the Lebanese Hizballah terror group.

The Americans are concerned lest the Syrians equip the hundreds of missiles in Hizballah hands with chemical warheads – hence Bolton’s sharp warning to Damascus and its timing to coincide with the Israeli prime minister’s talks with defense secretary Rumsfeld in Washington.

The Hizballah response Monday, May 6, to Bolton’s warning was a reminder to the US, Israel and Syria too that, armed with the new Iranian Fajr missiles, the Hizballah is also a force to be reckoned with.

7 May: None of the parties to the Church of Nativity settlement in Bethlehem has reason to be proud of the text cooked up by four intelligence agencies - the American CIA, the British MI6, the Vatican’s Opus Dei and the Israeli Shin Beit. It was designed to end Israel’s 36-day siege of the shrine, extricate the terrorists harbored there and remove Israeli forces from Bethlehem after they quit the other six Palestinian cities entered for Operation Defensive Shield.

All 123 individuals were to have left the church, including 39 murderous terrorists directly responsible for hundreds of Israeli deaths and injuries. Thirteen were to be flown to Egypt and wait there for the US administration to talk Italy, or some other government, round to granting them asylum; 26 to the Gaza Strip and the rest go free. At the eleventh hour, however, the Italians stalled, bitter about the “patronizing Anglo-American” who made their arrangements without bothering to consult with Rome or even discuss the details. Italy was not the only country to hold out against being made an asylum for Palestinian terrorists. At this time, no other government has been found to host the 13 Palestinian terrorists.

For three days, the Palestinians announced repeatedly that the deal was in the bag. Each time it sprang a fresh hole - typical of the handiwork of intelligence operatives who never have a complete picture to work with. They drove forward nonetheless, certain that in the final reckoning, the parties would have to sign.

The negotiating process was deliberately injected with dramatic momentum to achieve two objectives:

1. To lend a semblance of plausibility to an impossible transaction.

2. To deflect embarrassing questions to the US, British and Israeli leaders, all sworn enemies of terror, as to the morality of sending 13 hardened terrorists and murderers on a three-year jaunt to Italy - compliments of the CIA.

How will this reflect on Bush and his global war on terror?

And how will it go down for British prime minister Tony Blair and MI6 with the British commandos scouring Afghanistan’s eastern mountains for al Qaeda terrorists in a desperate attempt to prevent their regrouping for a summer assault on Kabul?

Yasser Arafat comes out of this episode as badly or even worse – his Fatah followers and the Hamas have not pulled their punches in accusing him of selling out his own fighting men.

As for Sharon, letting 13 killers assigned by Arafat to stage the bloodiest Palestinian terror and suicide missions against Israeli civilians take off for pleasant climes, will hardly give wings to his arguments for cutting Arafat the arch-terrorist out of future peace negotiations.

Israeli chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz, did not directly criticize his political masters when he briefed the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee meeting on Tuesday, May 7. He merely complained that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was undergoing “soft internationalization”– thereby meeting a longstanding Palestinian demand.

In the last week, Israel bowed to heavy pressure from Washington and lifted the two sieges left over from Operational Defense Shield – the one on Arafat’s Ramallah compound and the one in Bethlehem. Mofaz’s gripe referred to the way both were resolved. The Israeli tourism minister’s assassins ended up in Anglo-American custody in Jericho, instead of being extradited to Israel for trial, while 13 wanted Palestinian terrorists holed up in the Bethlehem church are to be shipped overseas instead of being brought to justice.

Sharon has made the colossal mistake of giving British intelligence a say in fateful decisions concerning the Israel-Palestinian conflict – their presence was permitted in Jericho and again in Bethlehem. That not very efficient presence, as the two episodes proved, means that Israel is allowing its war on terror to slip out of its hands; it is also a license for foreign governments – or their agencies – to decide on the disposition of terrorists guilty of murdering Israelis.

These two precedents are bound to proliferate very quickly; before Israeli knows it, international interference will be a ubiquitous presence at its highest state policy-making level.

Copyright © 2002