Bush & Putin on Iraq
WRP | 23.09.2002 08:45
by wrp 6:28am Mon Sep 23 '02
BUSH OFFERS PUTIN A SHARE OF THE LOOT
THE Bush administration is to have a series of meetings with Russian Foreign
and Defence Ministers where Russia will be offered a share in the'reconstruction of Iraq' after a regime change has been forced by anAnglo-American invasion.
For a 'share in the reconstruction of Iraq' read a share in the exploitationof the looted oil wells and oil reserves.
The alternative to the acceptance of this offer will be to see none of Iraq's debts to Russia paid by the puppet government that the US is proposing to
impose, all of the contracts that the Saddam Hussein government has agreedto sign with Russia ripped up, and Iraq declared a no-go area for Russian
oil companies and arms salesmen.
Russian policy is that there must be a return of the weapons inspectors toIraq, and once this is done there is no reason why there cannot be a
peaceful solution to the crisis, with the UN sanctions lifted off of thecountry.
Iraq has agreed in principle with Russia some $40 billion in businesscontracts, to be activated once sanctions have been lifted. However, the USclearly believes that it is making Putin an offer that he cannot refuse,
since it is also putting pressure on Putin in other areas, namely in CentralAsia, where Putin allowed the US to establish bases.
Not content with this, the US is now established in Georgia, in theCaucasus, where sections of the Shevardnadze regime are arguing that Georgia should apply to join NATO.
Two weeks ago the US warned Russia that it was guaranteeing the sovereigntyof Georgia, and that Russia must not attack Chechen nationalists who have
established themselves in the Pankisi Gorge inside Georgia.
The prospects are that once Putin is able to get some verbal concessionsfrom the US over Georgia and about doing business in a post-Saddam Iraq he
will agree that the Russian representative in the Security Council looks theother way and abstains when the US moves its resolution on Iraq at the Security Council.
Meanwhile, the working class and the poor of the world are becoming more andmore angry, as the conduct of Bush and Powell makes it clearer and clearer
that the US does not want the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq, and apolitical settlement with the Iraqi people and its government - it wants a
war of conquest and robbery to steal Iraq's oil.
The proposition from Powell is that unless the US gets the Security Councilresolution that it wants - to give it the go-ahead for a military attack on
Iraq - it will veto weapons inspection teams, and attack Iraq along with itsallies. This has convinced millions of people that the US and British ruling
classes are the arrogant aggressors and that the Iraqi people are the victims of aggression.
The situation is now crystal clear. The world capitalist crisis is driving the imperialist powers forward to grab Iraq's oil and oil reserves as a way out of the crisis.
The imperialists must have this war, and this is why they are demonising Iraq, and will not listen to reason.
The anti-war movement is growing rapidly, but however big it gets it will not be able to stop this war through just mass pressure. The only way to
stop this war is to bring down the imperialist governments who are determined to wage it.
The TUC demanded that Blair produce proof that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and insisted that the UN should be in charge. What they
have got back is absolute proof that Bush and Blair are determined to go to war, that they want no truck with weapons inspectors, and are determined to
destroy the United Nations.
The trade unions now have a duty to stop the war and defend the Iraqi people from mass slaughter. They must tell Blair that all British troops, planes
and ships must be withdrawn from the Gulf and the Middle East, and that any assault on Iraq will be met in Britain by a general strike against the Blair government.
They must bring down the Blair government and go forward to a workers' government that will carry out socialist policies. This is the only way to
stop the war, through smashing the British imperialist government.
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