The shipping of 19,000 soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division to U.S. bases in Kuwait, along with other deployments, will bring the U.S. force in the Middle East to a quarter of a million troops.

In face of a narrow vote by Turkey’s parliament on March 1 to reject a proposal to allow the stationing of U.S. troops in the country as a northern invasion force against Iraq, Washington has been applying heavy-handed pressure on Turkish officials to reverse the vote. U.S. ships remain off the Turkish port of Iskenderun, ready to unload military equipment.

The previous week, officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN body, carried out "inspections" of nuclear power plants under construction in Iran. The move underscored the fact that Iran is the larger target of imperialism’s longer-term drive to war in the region. Washington has accused the Iranian government of secretly developing a nuclear weapons program as an argument for justifying increasingly aggressive measures against that nation.

On the diplomatic front, Washington, with backing from the British and Spanish governments, has been drumming up support for a UN Security Council resolution stating that the Iraqi government has failed to meet its "final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" as dictated by the Security Council. Moscow has threatened to veto the resolution.

The representatives of the French, German, and Russian governments are pressing for a counterposed statement. Their document states that UN "inspectors" are "functioning without hindrance" and concludes that they should be given a "clear program of action" to force Iraq to "disarm."

Washington, Paris, London, Moscow, and Beijing are the five permanent members of the Security Council, with veto power. Each of the other 10 members, who lack veto authority, serves a term of two years. The imperialist powers of the United States, France, and the United Kingdom have repeatedly used Security Council resolutions as cover for their aggressive moves, from the U.S.-led Korean War in 1950–53 to the imposition of deadly economic sanctions on Iraq in 1990, and several times since.  
 
Race to grab oil resources
The French rulers have cultivated the image of being for "peace" as opposed to their rivals in Washington. President Jacques Chirac, however, has aggressively called for the continuing "disarmament" of Iraq--the crushing of what remains of its military capacities and the denial of its sovereignty by a roving gang of UN-sponsored "weapons inspectors."

When the UN’s chief "arms inspector" Hans Blix insisted that Iraq destroy its Al Samoud missiles, the French government instructed Baghdad to comply immediately.

U.S. president Bush, on the other hand, pooh-poohed the ultimatum, saying that the missiles were "the tip of the iceberg."

"Time is short," Bush added.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said on February 28 that the U.S. administration wants to see both "disarmament and regime change" in Baghdad.

These clashes between the U.S. and French governments are part of their race to grab control over a bigger slice of the oil reserves in the Middle East and elsewhere. Over the last decade Paris has signed hundreds of trade and investment deals with the Saddam Hussein regime, centering on the country’s massive oil reserves. For example, TotalFinaElf, the largest French oil producer, has contracts with Iraq to exploit Iraq’s Majnoon and Bin Umar oil fields once UN sanctions are lifted (see French oil deals threatened by war on Iraq.)

The governments of the Russian and Chinese workers states have reached similar agreements with Baghdad. The Iraqi government also owes Moscow billions of dollars in foreign debt.

These oil contracts and debts could be voided by a U.S.-British invasion force that--according to Washington’s explicit plans--would immediately storm the oil fields not already secured by U.S. Special Forces operating in Iraq.

The French-Iraqi oil deals have been reached in a period when UN economic sanctions, under the guise of the "oil for food" program since 1995, have devastated the country’s economic development.

According to a report published by the Global Policy Forum, "Politically motivated blocks and ‘holds,’ imposed almost entirely by the United States, have plagued the [oil for food] program.... There has been little repair and renewal of Iraq’s badly-deteriorated infrastructure, including water treatment, electricity, and public health.... Studies have amply documented a substantial rise in mortality of children, five years of age and under, and credible estimates suggest that at least 400,000 of these young children have died due to the sanctions."

The representatives of both Paris and Washington backed these measures as they were implemented during the 1990s. The rift between these two powers has become sharper in the current imperialist drive to a new war, however.

French president Chirac’s frustration with the U.S. and British push to line up other European governments behind their drive to an invasion--a successful flanking operation against Paris and Berlin--exploded in public during a February 17 meeting of European Union (EU) governments. The 13 EU candidate members, all of which signed a letter backing Washington’s policy, had been "badly brought up," he fumed, and had missed "an opportunity to keep quiet."

The deputy foreign minister of the Czech Republic, which has taken a pro-U.S. stance, commented, "we thought we were preparing for war with Saddam Hussein and not Jacques Chirac."

Noting the "self-seeking" behavior of the rival governments in the UN arena, the February 11 online edition of the right-wing National Review crowed that "it’s so blatant it’s refreshing." Arguments within NATO and the UN confirm that these bodies are not "supra-national entities with corporate interests," the publication remarked; rather, they are "arenas in which countries pursue politics by other means."  
 
War moves well advanced
The actions of the "inspection" teams, which assume the power to enter and close off Iraqi government offices, factories, laboratories, and any other facilities they select--declaring a "no-fly, no-drive" zone around them--are one piece in the imperialist war against Iraq and its national sovereignty that is already well advanced.

Other fronts of this offensive include the growing presence of U.S. troops in northern Iraq; the stepped-up bombing raids by U.S. and British planes in the "no-fly zones," which cover half the country; and a naval blockade policing the imperialist sanctions. The latter involves ships from Australia, New Zealand, and other countries, along with those from the United Kingdom and the United States.

Meanwhile, the air and naval buildup continues apace. Giant B-52 bombers began bombing drills in the northern gulf area February 23, reported the U.S. Central Command (Centcom).

The assignment of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier to the Arab-Persian Gulf means that as many as six U.S. carrier battle groups "will be operating in the area," reported the Associated Press March 1. "The U.S. has deployed this many carriers before, but it’s never deployed this much striking power," said one U.S. military "analyst."

The aircraft carrier deployment "tells you...it’s going to be an overwhelming air assault," he said.

Over the past month the officers in the battle command responsible for the invasion moved from Centcom headquarters in Florida to Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar. "This time it is not an exercise," reported the Associated Press, referring to December maneuvers in the Gulf that put the command structure through a trial run.

Close to 100,000 of the more than 200,000 U.S. forces now poised in the Arab-Persian Gulf are in Kuwait, at Iraqi’s southern border, reported the Voice of America radio station February 21. "Thousands more U.S. military personnel are still flowing into the region," it continued.

A part of that massive force is already stationed inside Iraq. According to a February 4 Agence-France Presse report, Kurdish representatives say that "between 700 and 1,000 U.S. troops are in northern Iraq, with some 50 more arriving each day." Three airstrips in the region known as Iraqi Kurdistan have been prepared for use by the U.S. forces. CIA operatives have also been active in the area.

The Washington Post reported January 30 that the "higher profile of U.S. activity in northern Iraq comes as the U.S. government is preparing to advise Kurdish leaders...that [their] paramilitaries should stay in place and should not seize new territory, especially around the oil fields near the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk."

Washington is watchful that the Kurds, millions of whom live in Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria, don’t step up their struggle for national self-determination, as they did in the aftermath of the 1990–91 war. Both the Turkish and U.S. governments have made it clear that they will try to block any such development.  
 
U.S. pressures Turkish government
Thousands of Turkish troops would enter Kurdish-held areas in northern Iraq under an agreement signed by the Turkish cabinet and U.S. officials on February 24. The agreement--centered on the stationing of a U.S. invasion force of 62,000 U.S. troops in southern Turkey--hit a snag when it was narrowly rejected by the country’s parliament March 1. U.S. forces already use Turkish airfields as their base for attacks on Iraq’s northern "no-fly zone."

The parliamentary debate and vote took place as large protests were held reflecting the overwhelming opposition among working people in Turkey to war on Iraq.

"They did what?" said one State Department official on hearing of the narrow vote to reject the deal, according to Agence-France Presse. The next day Turkey’s foreign minister, under intense U.S. pressure, said the proposed deal would be resubmitted. Some two dozen U.S. vessels are waiting off the Turkish coast to unload military equipment.

Noting that Turkey was in its "deepest recession since 1945," the Reuters news agency reported that if the parliament balks again it "stands to lose a multi-billion-dollar U.S. aid package.... A $16 billion IMF loan package could also now be seriously in question."

Ankara’s proposal to renegotiate the terms of International Monetary Fund loans was one of the sticking points in the talks on the U.S. military deployment in Turkey.

"Diplomats say the government may be able to present a revised U.S. troop plan if the UN Security Council passes a new resolution explicitly authorizing use of force against Iraq," reported Reuters.  
 
‘Let the inspectors do their work’
The majority of the forces organizing the large peace demonstrations that have been held in the United States have promoted, as an axis of their slogans, the false view that the United Nations presents a peaceful alternative to the U.S.-led drive to war (see article). "’Give inspections a chance to work’ was the refrain heard from speakers and marchers" at the February 16 San Francisco march, reported the February 22 issue of the People’s Weekly World, the newspaper of the Communist Party USA. The article approvingly quoted Democratic congresswoman Barbara Lee, who advised the crowd to "’say no to preemptive strike. Yes to disarmament and inspections.’"

A PWW article reporting on a meeting in Chicago of the CPUSA’s National Board quoted party national chairman Sam Webb. "We need to call for no unilateral action," he said. "Let the sanctions work!"

Two weeks later the paper issued a correction, explaining that "the correct quote should read, ‘Let the inspections work.’"  
 
UN ‘inspectors’ in Iran
One of the most prominent UN "inspectors"--Mohamed el-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency--paid a visit to a nuclear power plant construction site at the Iranian city of Natanz on February 22. Other UN officials snooped around another power plant in Arak, in the central region of the country.

The stated aim of the "inspections" is to ensure that Iran’s nuclear industry is limited to civilian, not military, purposes. The Iranian government says it will use nuclear power for energy production only, but Washington asserts the facilities are part of a secret nuclear weapons program.

Washington is pressuring the Russian government to break its contracts to supply fuel to the Iranian facilities.

U.S. officials have opposed moves inside northern Iraq by an Iranian-backed militia with links to Kurdish forces opposed to the Iraqi government.

"We think any Iranian presence or Iranian-supported presence in that region is destabilizing and not positive," declared State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. Some 1,000 fighters of the militia, called the Badr Brigade, have set up camp in the area, which is controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, an organization that has ties to the Iranian government.
 
 
Related articles:
Bring the troops home now!
French oil deals threatened by war on Iraq  
 
 
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