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THE
ROVING EYE
Beating
the African drum
By Pepe Escobar
CAIRO - US Secretary of State Colin Powell said
the United States may have "nine or 10 votes" to pass
the US-UK-Spanish-sponsored second United Nations
resolution setting March 17 as the last deadline for
Iraq to disarm - or else. It's not true, though. The key
is Africa. If two of the three African nations - Guinea,
Cameroon and Angola - currently sitting as non-permanent
members of the Security Council vote "no", there will be
no UN second resolution to legitimize war.
African diplomats are bemused, and quick to
point out that when you are a poor African nation, the
international community only voluntarily turns all its
attention to you for reasons of self-interest or power
politics - and not to alleviate poverty, help in
investment in health and education, or to fight
corruption. French Foreign Minister Dominique de
Villepin on Sunday started a whirlwind tour of the three
members of the U-6 (undecided six), as they are known in
UN corridors, after Washington has been frantically on
the phone with all of them. It's a
Paris-against-Washington game played out in western
Africa with a time limit and no strategies spared. The
prize for Washington is to get all three votes. For
Paris, two are enough to prevent it from having to use
its veto if a resolution is passed. In a nutshell,
Africa - snubbed by the West in any major international
decision - is now in effect deciding whether the United
States and United Kingdom go to war in Iraq legitimized
or not by the concert of world nations.
Guinea
has presided over the Security Council since March 1.
Guinea, one of the world's poorest nations, is Muslim
and francophone. Public opinion is overwhelmingly
against the war. France is its No 1 source of economic
help. The US is its No 1 source of military help. In
2002, Washington spent US$3 million to train 300 Guinea
Rangers and also subcontracted operational help from the
Israeli military, so that Guineans could fight the
dangerous spillover from anarchic Liberia and Sierra
Leone. Most Guinean bauxite - 75 percent of local
exports - is bought by US firms. Washington has been
assiduously courting Guinea since late February. Guinea
is yet to make a final decision on Iraq.
Cameroon, also a francophone nation, is involved
in all sorts of cooperation with France, and it has a
military agreement. More than 150 companies and 20,000
French expats live in Cameroon. In the recent
Franco-African summit in Paris, President Paul Biya not
only signed the French-sponsored declaration privileging
the work of the UN inspectors, he also stressed that he
totally agrees with President Jacques Chirac's strategy.
Cameroon at the moment is at odds with its
powerful neighbor Nigeria: they both aspire to control
the oil-rich island of Bakassi. George W Bush personally
called Biya last week. Certainly, Biya was reminded in a
not-too-subtle way that Cameroon - as well as Guinea -
depends heavily on a relative commercial bonanza offered
by the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). This US
mechanism is a Sword of Damocles: one of its key
provisions is that nations are prohibited to "engage in
activities that would undermine United States national
security in the domain of foreign policy".
Former Portuguese colony Angola is the
second-largest sub-Saharan oil producer, behind Nigeria:
920,000 barrels a day. The nation swims in oil as well
as corruption. Angola has just emerged from a
devastating civil war that lasted more than a quarter of
a century. Since rebel leader Jonas Savimbi died one
year ago, Angola has been desperately trying to convene
a donors' conference. The nation needs everything: from
total rebuilding of infrastructure to a semblance of
normal life to 4 million internally displaced people and
more than 300,000 refugees.
The US Agency for
International Development (USAID) approved pitiful
annual aid of $15 million to Angola. There's no
democracy in sight, but Washington does not care: US oil
companies are in charge. Both Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney have been on the phone with President
Eduardo dos Santos. But the very articulate head of
state may not want to be totally dependent on the
Americans. Portuguese-speaking Brazil is exerting
discreet pressure for Angola to align itself with the
axis of peace.
The unbearable position of the
U-6 - the three Africans plus Mexico, Chile and Pakistan
- forced to choose between nothing else than two
clashing visions of what the world will be like in the
near future, is causing them tremendous strain.
Mexico has been slowly aligning itself with the
US-UK-Spanish camp - something that provoked Chile's
fury: Mexico was accused of betrayal because the two
Latin American nations had agreed on a common position.
Mexico has no way out: Ninety percent of its trade is
with the United States. Brazilian President Lula da
Silva is doing everything to encourage Chile to follow
the Franco-German-Russian axis of peace. But Chile has
just signed a free-trade agreement with the US and is
about to sign another agreement to buy F16s at discount
rates.
Chile couldn't take it any more and went
public on its extreme discontent about the very short
deadline of March 17. This has already forced the US, UK
and Spain to adopt a detailed so-called "shopping list"
of disarmament to be presented to Saddam Hussein's
regime.
A key development since Hans Blix's
report on Friday is that now the US-UK-Spanish camp is
not insisting any more on disarmament by the March 17
deadline. Blix in his latest report said there are no
fewer than 115 key questions that Saddam's regime has to
answer to convince the arms inspectors that it really is
getting rid of chemical, biological and conventional
munitions.
So a short list is now in the cards.
The regime will have to answer very precise questions
on, among other items: the whereabouts of 50 Scud-B
warheads; a propellant program for prohibited missiles;
the discrepancy between Iraq's admission to have
illegally imported 131 Volga engines for its al-Samoud 2
missiles and a total number of 380 known to the UN; the
total number of al-Samoud 2 missiles; 550 155-millimeter
shells filled with mustard gas; 350 or so R-400 bombs;
6,500 bombs filled with chemical agents;
unmanned-air-vehicle programs, spray tanks and
chemical/biological warheads for Scud missiles; the
weaponization of VX nerve gas; precursor chemicals for
the nerve agents tabun, sarin, cyclo-sarin and VX; 80
tons - or more - of mustard gas; 10,000 liters of
anthrax; production capacity of 6,000-16,000 liters of
anthrax; 3,000-11,000 liters of botulinum toxin; and
production of botulinum toxin and research into
aflatoxin.
The UN vote will happen some time
before the end of the week. All bets are off. The US is
ready for war. With or without the UN's endorsement? The
answer lies with Guinea, Cameroon and
Angola.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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