Hunt for Karadzic ends as fugitive is found

Taken from the Independent, UK, 22/07/2008

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade

After a 13-year hunt Radovan Karadzic, the man accused of masterminding the Srebrenica massacre, has finally been arrested in Serbia.

It was a momentous arrest that brought to mind the capture of Saddam Hussein. "Ladies and Gentlemen, we got him." They were the words of Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Iraq, on the capture of the former Iraqi leader. But they could equally apply to last night's triumphant announcement that the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic had finally been run to ground by Serbian security forces.

Karadzic, wanted by the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for genocide, has eluded the world's best-equipped armies since the end of the Bosnian war in 1995 and topped the list of the UN war crimes court for former Yugoslavia. His co-indictee, the Bosnian Serb military commander General Ratko Mladic, remains at large, however.

The pair are accused of masterminding the massacre of more than 7,500 Muslim men and boys in the "safe haven" of Srebrenica in July 1995. It was the worst atrocity in Europe since the end of the Second World War. They are also indicted for the siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, that lasted for three-and-half years and left 10,000 people dead.

Karadzic, 64, has been handed over to the war crimes section of Belgrade County Court, pending his extradition to The Hague, in The Netherlands. No details were released last night on the circumstances of the arrest which was announced by the Serbian president's office.

The arrest, a milestone for Serbia, which had been accused of shielding the pair for more than a decade, sets the Balkans country firmly on the road to European Union membership under the new pro-European government there. The arrest of Karadzic and other indicted war criminals is a key condition posed by the EU for membership.

The news was greeted with euphoria across Europe, and welcomed by the UN War Crimes Prosecutor for the Former Yugoslavia and by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which had launched a number of unsuccessful raids on Karadzic's presumed hideouts in recent years.

The EU said the arrest "illustrates the commitment of the new Belgrade government to contributing to peace and stability in the Balkans region".

A statement from the EU presidency, currently held by France, said the arrest was "an important step on the path to the rapprochement of Serbia with the European Union". The issue of Serbian membership is expected to be discussed by EU foreign ministers in Brussels today.

Richard Holbrooke, a former US assistant secretary of state for Europe who negotiated the 1995 Dayton accords that ended the Bosnian war, welcomed his capture, describing him as the Osama bin Laden of Europe, "a real, true architect of mass murder".

In Britain, the shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, also welcomed the arrest but pointed out that the fractured country of Bosnia would only obtain closure once Mladic, too, had been sent to The Hague. The leader accused of being the architect of the Balkan wars, Slobodan Milosevic, died in The Hague in 2006 while fighting war crimes charges.

Many in Serbia, however, will be more circumspect about Mr Karadzic's arrest, which took place only weeks after the new government took power under President Boris Tadic, suspecting a deal had been brokered. For many Serbs, Karadzic is still a hero of the Bosnian conflict, which left more than 100,000 dead, mostly non-Serbs. More than 1.8 million people were forced to leave their homes and many remain displaced.

Karadzic, a psychiatrist by training, went into hiding only a year after the war in Bosnia had ended with the Dayton accords.

It is widely believed that he used the sanctuaries of Orthodox monasteries in the border region of eastern Bosnia and Montenegro for years. He is also said to have resorted to elaborate disguises, such as posing as a priest by shaving off his trademark silver mane and donning a brown cassock, to elude authorities.


Karadzic in disguise that eluded everyobe for many years

While in hiding, he published five books – poetry and novels – widely publicised by his supporters. The former UN prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia, Carla del Ponte, openly accused successive Serbian governments of shielding Karadzic. She also said that Mladic could be arrested if the "political will" were present. Attempts to reach Karadzic through his family, through regular searches at their homes in Pale, once the stronghold of Bosnian Serbs, were in vain. He did not react to an appeal by his wife, Ljiljana, in 2005, who begged him to surrender saying the family could no longer "live under pressure." Karadzic has a daughter, Sonja, and son, Sasa with Ljiljana,

Additional reporting by Anne Penketh

13-year search
*Radovan Karadzic has been one of the world's most wanted men since 1995. Before last night's arrest, sightings of Karadzic were rare, but in 2004 he published a book, Miraculous Chronicles Of The Night. Pressure to capture him mounted in 2005 after several of his ex-generals gave themselves up, and a video showing Bosnian-Serb soldiers shooting captives from Srebrenica was shown at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. In 2007, the homes of Karadzic's two children were raided by Nato troops, who suspected they were supporting him.





Ratko Mladic Bosnian Serb military commander whispers to Karadzic. Both are accused of masterminding the massacre of more than 7,500 Muslim men and boys in the 'Safe Haven' of Srebrenica in July 1995


Muslim refugees ride a United Nations truck as they flee the Serb-besieged Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica for Tuzla in March 1993


Forensic experts examine remains of the bodies after removing layers of soil from a massgrave near eastern Bosnian town of Zvornik, 28 July 2003. The massgrave is thought to contain several hundred bodies of Bosnian Muslims, killed in 1995 Srebrenica massacre and others killed in Zvornik at the beginning of war


Stacks of unidentified corpses line the walls of an underground shelter at a Bosnian morgue in Tuzla. The bags contain victims found in mass graves after the 1995 Srebrenica massacre


A Bosnian woman weeps next to the coffins of Muslim men and boys before their burial in Potocari, near Srebrenica, 11 July 2004. The identified remains of 338 Muslim men, aged from 15 to 70, were buried in a common funeral, marking the ninth anniversary of the massacre of Srebrenica

Report: Israeli jets flying over Iraqi territory in preparation for strike on Iran

Taken from YnetNews, Israel, 11.07.2008

Sources in Iraq's Defense Ministry say for past month Israel using American bases to conduct overflights as part of rehearsal for possible bombing or Iranian nuclear facilities




Israeli fighter jets have been flying over Iraqi territory for over a month in preparation for potential strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, sources in the Iraqi Defense Ministry told a local news network Friday, adding that the aircraft have been landing in American bases following the overflights.

Word of Israel's alleged Air Force maneuvers in Iraq has reached Iran. The sources said the US has boosted security in and around the bases used by Israel during the exercises.

According to the Defense Ministry officials, retired Iraqi army officers in the Al Anbar district reported that fighter jets have been regularly entering Iraqi airspace from Jordan and landing at the airport near Haditha.

The sources estimated that should the Israeli jets take off from the American bases it would take them no more than five minutes to reach Iran's nuclear reactor in Bushehr.American officials said recently that more than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters took part in maneuvers over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece in the first week of June, apparently a rehearsal for a potential bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities.

Oil giants return to Iraq

Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total set to sign deal with Baghdad

Taken from The Independent, UK, Friday 20 June 2008
By Patrick Cockburn

Nearly four decades after the four biggest Western oil companies were expelled from Iraq by Saddam Hussein, they are negotiating their return. By the end of the month, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total will sign agreements with the Baghdad government, Iraq's first with big Western oil firms since the US-led invasion in 2003.

The deals are for repair and technical support in some of the country's largest oilfields, the Oil Ministry in Baghdad said yesterday. The return of "Big Oil" will add to the suspicions of those in the Middle East who claimed that the overthrow of Saddam was secretly driven by the West's desire to gain control of Iraq's oil. It will also be greeted with dismay by many Iraqis who fear losing control of their vast oil reserves.

Iraq's reserves are believed to be second only to Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, but their exploitation has long been hampered by UN sanctions, imposed on Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The major oil companies have been eager to go back to Iraq, but are concerned about their own security and the long-term stability of the country. The two-year no-bid agreements are service agreements that should add another 500,000 barrels of crude a day of output to Iraq's present production of 2.5 million barrels a day (b/d).

The companies have the option of being paid in cash or crude oil for the deals, each of which will reportedly be worth $500m (£250m). For Iraq, the agreements are a way of accessing foreign expertise immediately, before the Iraqi parliament passes a controversial new hydrocarbons law.

But they mean that the four oil companies, which originally formed the Iraq Petroleum Company to exploit Iraqi oil from the 1920s until the industry's nationalisation in 1972, will be well-placed to bid for contracts for the long-term development of these fields. The oilfields affected are some of the largest in Iraq, from Kirkuk in the north to Rumaila, on the border with Kuwait. Although there is oil in northern Iraq, most of the reserves are close to Basra, in the far south.

Since the US invasion, Iraqis have been wary of foreign involvement in their oil industry. Many are convinced that the hidden purpose of the US invasion was to take over Iraqi oil, but the Iraqi Oil Minister, Hussein Shahristani, has said that Iraq will hold on to its natural resources. "If Iraq needs help from international oil companies, they will be invited to co-operate with the Iraqi National Oil Company [Inoc], on terms and conditions acceptable to Iraq, to generate the highest revenue for Iraq".

Inoc's technical expertise has deteriorated sharply during the long years of sanctions. Iraq is currently exporting 2.1 million b/d and is expecting to have oil revenues of $70bn this year, but its government administration is too dysfunctional and corrupt to rebuild the electricity or water supply systems. The government has $50bn in the Federal Bank of New York.

Mr Shahristani has been highly critical of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) for auctioning off oil concessions in Iraqi Kurdistan without reference to the oil ministry in Baghdad.

In an interview with The Independent last year, he said Inoc would never do business with any oil company that signed up with the KRG, and he also doubted if the oil could be exported without pipelines. "Are they going to carry it out in buckets?" he asked.

Several of the small oil companies who have signed contracts in Kurdistan are hoping that in the long term there will be an agreement between the Kurds and the central government and they will then sell out to the majors at a large profit.

The technical support agreements, as the service agreements are known, may open the door to Iraq for the majors. Mr Shahristani has said that Iraq will open up the same fields for bidding for long-term development projects soon. "We're going to announce the first licensing round by the end of this month or early next month," he said.

The high price of oil means that Iraq is not under immediate pressure to maximise its oil revenues. The Iraqi parliament has suspected anything which looks like giving foreign companies ownership of Iraq's oil through a production sharing agreement.

The nationalisation of Iraq's oil is one the few acts of Saddam Hussein's long years in power which is still highly popular, and Iraqi members of parliament are fearful of anything that looks like back-door privatisation in the interests of foreigners.

Big four have history of control
For the four oil giants, the new agreements will bring them back to a country where they have a long history. BP, Exxon Mobil, Total and Shell were co-owners of a British, American and French consortium that kept Iraq's oil reserves in foreign control for more than 40 years.

The Iraq Petroleum Company (once the Turkish Petroleum Company) was formed in 1912 by oil companies eager to grab the resources in parts of the Ottoman Empire.

The company was formalised in 1928 and each of the four shareholders had a 23.75 per cent share of all the oil produced. The final 5 per cent went to Calouste Gulbenkian, an Armenian businessman.

In 1931, an agreement was signed with Iraq, giving the company complete control over the oi fields of Mosul in return for annual royalties. After Saddam's coup in 1958, nationalisation came in 1972.

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It's sad to see a country that was only a decade ago was one of the most advanced economies in the Arab world with women entitled freedoms like being able to work, go to school, being destroyed for the sake of oil and oil supply. Most people knew from the begining that the war in Iraq was about Oil and gaining control of the Middle East - in September 2007, Alan Greenspan a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, said in his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” a few months earlier the Australian Defence Minister admitted his country's troops are in Iraq to secure oil interests. Brendan Nelson is believed to be the first government minister from any country with forces in Iraq to publicly admit oil was a key factor in their presence. 'Obviously the Middle itself, not only Iraq but the entire reason, is an important supplier of energy, oil in particulary, to the rest of the world,' he told a radio programme. He said Australian forces were there for 'resource security'. Yes, we depend on the oil from the Middle East, yet we spend billions of developing weapons or sending people to the moon when this money could be used to investigate alternative fuels. You have to ask why this has not happened.