New US aggression against Libya
LIBYA Washington usurped the right to militarily "punish" a nation that is unable to use chemical or any other weapons against the United States, if for no other reason than distance!
Why has Washington got it in for Libya?
THE EVIL EMPIRE has struck again. Less than two years after the American airforce's murderous raid against
Libya in April 1986, an assault that followed a series of military provocations by the US Navy against this country of less than 4 million inhabitants, the number one imperialist army has repeated its crime.
On January 4, two fighters attached to the American fleet cruising in the eastern Mediterranean shot down two
Libyan fighters a few kilometers from their country's coast.
SALAH JABER
HIS "INCIDENT," which Wash-
T ington has rushed to declare
"closed"- a high-handed attitude, to say the least — was by no means accidental. To the contrary, everything indicates that it was premeditated. Indeed, it was predictable and was predicted.
Muammar Kadhafi has never gone off Ronald Reagan's and the US media's list of
"public enemies," and in October the CIA launched a campaign of agitation against
Libya obviously designed to prepare US and world public opinion for a new aggres-
CIA director William Webster, whose outstanding humanitarian services and depth of pacifist convictions are well known, unleashed the campaign on October
25, announcing that Libya was building the biggest chemical weapons factory that his service had ever detected. The Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs then reacted by saying that the plant in question pharmaceuticals factory (it is called "Pharma-150" by the way). It rightly added that
"such habitual accusations do not come as a surprise to Libyans, and there is only one explanation for them, to provide a pretext for a new aggression against Libya." (Le
Monde, October 28, 1988.)
On December 21, Reagan in person resumed the charge in a televised interview.
On the following day, his spokesperson dotted the "i's"
of his remarks. The US president had "clearly let it be known that the use of military force was an option that had to be considered."
On December 23, Libya responded by officially informing Italy, which usually serves as an intermediary between Tripoli and Washington, that it was ready to welcome any investigating committee sent by the UN. The Libyan ambassador in Rome confirmed this position, inviting ambassadors and journalists to visit the factory in question. But he added, "We cannot accept that there is a world policeman." (Le Monde, December 25-26, 1988).
The imperialist policeman, however, continued the charge. On December 28, Reagan renewed for six months the economic sanctions that he decreed against Libya in January 1986 (a freeze on Libyan assets in the United States and a trade embargo). He justified this decision in a letter to Congress in which he repeated the accusation of "support for international terrorism" against the Libyan government, adding unashamedly that it posed "an extraordinary threat to the national security of
On December 30, Phyllis Oakley, the State Department's deputy spokesperson, rejected the Libyan proposals for an inquiry in terms that left no doubt about the United States' intention to stage a premeditated aggression. "A visit organized by Libya would not remove concern about the real nature of the plant in Rabta," she said, explaining that "a chemical arms factory could easily be modified to seem to be a normal chemical products factory."
Here the US position reached the height of imperialist arrogance and arbitrariness. In fact, in all logic, if a chemical arms factory can easily to modified to being a civilian chemical plant, the reverse is also true. Any chemical or pharmaceutical products plant can easily be modified into being a chemical arms factory. Washington thus arrogated to itself the privilege to judge who has the right not just to produce chemical weapons but even to have the capacity to produce them!
Far worse, disregarding any kind of international legality, a few days before a world conference called in Paris precisely to curb the growing recourse to chemical weapons,
The US hypocrisy is all the more flagrant if you consider the following facts: 1) The United States holds nuclear weapons by comparison with which poison gases are like a BB gun against a one-ton shell; 2) It has never issued such threats against states, such as Israel, South Africa or Pakistan, which have produced nuclear weapons; 3) it has been the main user of chemical weapons since the last world war, employing them very extensively against the Vietnamese people (Is it more "humanitarian" to burn people with napalm than to gas them?); 4) several states, including in the third world, have chemical weapons, two of which - Iran and Iraq - have used them recently; 5) the Middle Eastern state that has by far the most devastating weapons, including chemical and nuclear ones, is undoubtedly Israel, a special ally of the US
So why has Washington got it in for Libya? Some commentators have thought that they saw a desire on the part of the ReaganBush administration to work off some spite on an easy target, since Kadhafi's Libya has become relatively isolated in the world because of his nonconformist policy. However, there is is more than a safety valve in-
What frightens Washington is that Libya, like Syria, in the wake of Iran and Iraq, has been supplied by the USSR with mediumrange ballistic missiles. Israel, of course, is clearly ahead of them in this area also However, the deterrent capacity of the Israeli arsenal has certain been reduced, since the enemies of the Zionist state also have long-range means of extermination.
Moreover, Libya is reportedly developing a system of in-flight refueling for its French-built fighter-bombers, which would therefore soon become capable of intervening against Israel. (New York Times of January 1, 1989.)
In these light of these facts, it becomes clear that the new US aggression against Libya follows directly from the unalterable principle of Washington's policy in the Middle East, maintaining the military supremacy of the Zionist state. The Libyan regime remains one of Israel's most implacable enemies, in spite of the fact that it watered down its positions in 1988 in many other areas (domestic policy, Arab rela-
The new US aggression, has of course to be denounced vigorously by all anti-imperialist activists in the world. It must. in particular, be the occasion for activists in the many Mediterranean countries where there are US military bases to step up their 3 campaigns to get rid of them. *
I AINIS!