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### Viewing cable 03OTTAWA2306, MEDIA REACTION: AFRICA; NATO; IRAQ; NORTH

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Reference ID | Created | Released | Classification | Origin
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
03OTTAWA2306 | 2003-08-12 20:08 | 2011-04-28 00:12 | UNCLASSIFIED | Embassy Ottawa

`

    This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

` `

    UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 OTTAWA 002306

    SIPDIS

    STATE FOR WHA/CAN, WHA/PDA
    WHITE HOUSE PASS NSC/WEUROPE, NSC/WHA

    E.O. 12958:  N/A
    TAGS: KPAO KMDR OIIP OPRC CA
    SUBJECT:  MEDIA REACTION: AFRICA; NATO; IRAQ; NORTH
    KOREA; ICC

    AFRICA
    ¶1.   "Taylor's odious exit'
    The liberal Toronto Star opined (8/12): "Charles Taylor
    has finally been pried from power in Liberia, and
    that's a relief. It offers hope, however faint, for the
    3.3 million people who have endured 14 blood-spattered
    years under his kleptocratic reign of terror first as a
    warlord, then as president.... Yet welcome as his
    ouster is, it offers no assurance that he will face a
    United Nations war crimes indictment. A tribunal in
    Sierra Leone says he bears the 'greatest
    responsibility' for a 10-year war there in which
    70,000 died. Taylor, who denies the charge, should have
    been escorted from his Monrovia mansion straight into
    the prosecutor's arms. Instead, he quit Liberia
    yesterday seeking safe haven in Nigeria. If he finds
    it, his removal will be an odious deal, made at too
    high a price. Taylor was under U.N. indictment and
    sanctions, some American pressure, and siege by rebels
    who held 80 per cent of the country. His time was up.
    There was no need to cut a deal letting him dodge
    justice.... At a time when former Yugoslav leader
    Slobodan Milosevic is on trial for war crimes and
    Rwanda's prime minister Jean Kambanda has been jailed,
    Taylor's pain-free exit is a blow to the U.N., to the
    International Criminal Court and to the rule of law.
    Peace talks among Liberia's warring factions may yet
    result in a government that can put the worst days
    behind. That would be a mercy. But the manner of
    Taylor's removal exposes the international community's
    spinelessness in failing to bring an indicted war
    criminal to justice. It is a betrayal of his many
    victims across West Africa. And it can only encourage
    other lawless leaders."

    NATO
    ¶2.   "Putting things in order'
    Under the sub-heading, "In a dangerous and unstable
    world, NATO finds new purpose," the nationalist Ottawa
    Citizen editorialized (8/12): "... The proliferation of
    failed, or failing states, and the terrorists incubated
    therein, have made NATO more necessary than ever. This
    renewed purpose was demonstrated yesterday when, for
    the first time in its 54-year existence,
    NATO stepped beyond the borders of Europe and assumed
    command of the 5,000-strong International Security
    Assistance Force in Afghanistan.... Despite the rift
    between the U.S. and 'old' Europe over Iraq, the
    alliance's 19 members recognize that the U.S. can't
    fight alone against fanatics trying to acquire nuclear
    weapons. To those who object to 'defensive
    imperialism,' we reply: The West will keep its armies
    at home when the enemy stops training suicide bombers."

    IRAQ
    ¶3.   "Bush called Saddam's bluff"
    Editorials editor Jonathan Kay commented in the
    conservative National Post (8/7): "Evidence that Saddam
    Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction
    could theoretically emerge any day.... War supporters
    have to prepare themselves for the eventual admission
    that Iraq, as attacked, was likely WMD-free. This
    admission should not be particularly toxic. The legal
    basis for war was never that Saddam had WMDs, but that
    he'd flouted the many Security Council resolutions
    requiring him to come clean on inspections, and
    that he had never accounted for the WMD precursor
    materials we know he purchased. As for the moral
    justification, it is already crystal clear.
    Dozens of mass graves have been found, and thousands of
    Iraqis have come forward to tell stories of torture and
    unimaginable brutality under Saddam. The mere fact WMDs
    aren't found won't change the reality that the
    dictator's ouster has made the world, and Iraq in
    particular, a far better place.... Why would a dictator
    fool two major Western powers into invading his
    country?... [T]he Iraqi dictator kept the world
    guessing because he wanted to look strong in the eyes
    of other nations.... Simply put, Saddam sought to
    fool the world into thinking he still had a powerful
    WMD program - and he succeeded brilliantly. Even the
    intelligence agencies of France and Germany, whose
    governments so vehemently opposed the war, believed
    Saddam was hiding something. Through his ruse, Saddam
    forced Messrs. Blair and Bush to decide between war and
    acceptance of the risk that Iraq's madman really was
    building deadly toys. Faced with this choice, and given
    the information they had, the two leaders correctly
    concluded the costs of inaction far outweighed the
    costs of military conflict. Thus was a just war fought
    and won, no matter what the victors find in the sand."

    ¶4.   "What language is U.S. speaking in Iraq?"
    Editorial page editor emeritus Haroon Siddiqui observed
    in the liberal Toronto Star (8/11): "One cringes on
    hearing some Americans analyze non-Americans.... What
    planet do these Americans live on? Or are they so
    preoccupied spinning propaganda that they have no sense
    of reality? Or is it that they just don't care what
    anyone thinks beyond their core constituency of fellow
    citizens and foreign fellow travellers? So monumental
    has the mismanagement of post-Iraq been that essential
    services and law and order are still not back to pre-
    war levels. Looting has given way to carjacking and
    kidnapping. Iraqi frustrations over rampant crime have
    the eerie echo of
    women in U.S.-controlled Afghanistan who lately have
    been complaining that, under the Taliban, they were at
    least safe from rape. The Americans are operating in
    chaotic conditions under which many are getting killed.
    But they have contributed to the chaos by being ill-
    prepared for post-war Iraq, by being culturally
    clueless and trigger-happy.... The bombing of the
    Jordanian embassy in Baghdad Thursday had the stamp of
    Al Qaeda terrorism. If so, the Americans have been
    going after the wrong people on false assumptions and
    weak intelligence.... American forces have been given
    the benefit of the doubt because they've been facing
    guerrilla attacks. But their actions and, in fact,
    their entire approach to the occupation raise
    disturbing questions, summarized in what Iraqis most
    often ask visitors: 'How do Americans think of us, as
    Iraqis or as animals? Why do they treat us like
    cattle?'"

    NORTH KOREA
    ¶5.   "Next stop, North Korea?"
    The leading Globe and Mail opined (8/11): "Is the
    United States starting to prepare for war against North
    Korea? One might think so, considering the
    sabre-rattling in Washington even as the American
    military is fully engaged in Iraq. The latest warning
    came last week from James Woolsey, a former CIA
    director.... The prospect will strike many observers as
    the height of folly - how, for a start, would the U.S.
    expect China to react to an American invasion next
    door? - but in some quarters in Washington it is being
    taken very seriously. Mr. Woolsey, who is thought to
    reflect much Pentagon thinking, was an early proponent
    of an invasion of Iraq. That he has turned his
    attention to North Korea is hardly insignificant.... To
    what degree, however, is this merely geopolitical
    gamesmanship? The blunt talk is
    occurring when there is also tangible progress in
    diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to the
    impasse..... The six-party talks, expected to begin
    this month or early in September, should clarify
    matters. Some form of non-aggression agreement is
    certain to be opposed by those in Washington who
    are convinced regime change is as legitimate an
    objective in North Korea as in Iraq. And, they point
    out, any deal to shut down North Korea's nuclear
    facilities will be only as good as the verification
    process. It will have to include sweeping inspections,
    given North Korea's history of duplicity. Still, a
    multilateral pact appears significantly more attainable
    now than just a few months ago, and would be infinitely
    preferable to a war that might result in a loss of life
    not unlike what occurred 50 years ago in the Korean
    War. As long as progress is being made at the
    negotiating table to blunt the threat from North Korea,
    it should be pursued with full effort."

    ICC
    ¶6.   "In dire need of international court"
    London-based independent journalist Gwynne Dyer wrote
    in the liberal Toronto Star (8/11): "...Current
    attempts to bring genocidal killers to justice around
    the world are scattered and stumbling. Cambodia has
    just announced that only the 10 most senior surviving
    Khmer Rouge leaders will stand trial for the slaughter
    of the killing fields that cost 1.7 million lives in
    the late '70s.... Or look at the U.S. and British
    attempts to remove Carla Del Ponte as chief prosecutor
    for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The
    stated reason is because she is too busy as chief
    prosecutor for former Yugoslavia, but it's really about
    stopping her from expanding the indictments beyond
    members of the former Hutu government to include
    members of the current Tutsi-led government of
    Rwanda.... If no permanent and independent body has the
    authority to deal with this sort of crime, then it
    will be politics that decides who is punished and who
    gets off. The International Criminal Court, which came
    into formal legal existence on July 1, 2002, was
    designed to move the world on from that primitive
    system. But it is under heavy assault by the current
    U.S. administration, which loathes the very idea of the
    ICC. Why? The United States says it fears that American
    service personnel engaged in international peacekeeping
    operations might become victims of nuisance
    prosecutions brought by the ICC, whose judges it does
    not control.... The ICC has become an obsession of the
    Bush administration, which sees all international
    structures that are beyond Washington's control as
    potentially hostile curbs on the exercise of American
    power. Latterly, Washington has even been cutting
    military aid to poor countries that refuse to sign
    treaties promising never to hand American
    personnel over to the ICC. Yet the ICC is up and
    running. Its 18 judges - distinguished jurists from 18
    different countries - were selected last year,
    and chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, a former
    prosecutor of the Argentine junta, was inaugurated in
    June.... It will take time for the ICC to have an
    impact, because it cannot deal with crimes committed
    before July, 2002. It will take even more time because
    of American attempts to sabotage it, but since U.S.
    hostility is driven by ideology rather than national
    interest, that could change as soon as the next
    administration. The goal is to create a single standard
    and a single authority for dealing with
    genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity when
    local governments are unable or unwilling to act. Ten
    years from now we will probably be a lot closer to that
    goal."

    CELLUCCI

`