No to Militarisation and Imperialist War!

Workers' Daily Internet Edition : Article Index :

Territorial Army Call-Up:
No to Militarisation and Imperialist War!

One Out All Out

Testimony of Yvonne Ridley

Statement of the Government of Cuba on the US Guantanamo Naval Base

FARC Condemn Warmongers and Agree to Resume Talks

More than 100 Territorial Army (TA) military intelligence troops are to be activated in the first compulsory call-up of the reserve forces since Britain committed its aggression against Egypt in the Suez crisis of 1956.

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon announced in a statement to MPs that the Territorial Army military intelligence specialists are needed.

The soldiers will take part in security work and intelligence gathering in both Afghanistan and Britain. In London, MI5 and MI6 officers are already questioning captured Al-Qaida and Taleban fighters, it was reported in The Guardian.

Eighteen members of 23 MI – "Military Intelligence" – Company based in Edinburgh will form part of the deployed intelligence team. The Company is part of 3 MI Battalion, the TA Intelligence Corps with its HQ in London and detachments in Bristol and Edinburgh.

TA reservists can be ordered to leave their civilian jobs for up to a year, with the Ministry of Defence making up any difference between their civilian salaries and TA pay.

WDIE condemns this move to mobilise the reserve forces in pursuit of Britain’s unjust war in Afghanistan. The call-up is part of the deepening reactionary trend in society and is opposed to the demand of the people’s forces that issues between states are settled without recourse to force and militarism. It is not without significance that the last time the TA was subject to call-up was when Britain sought to prevent Egypt from exercising its sovereignty and controlling the Suez Canal, which ended in a debacle for the British government. The British working class and people must continue to demand No to Militarisation and Imperialist War! They must build up the Workers’ Opposition to the government’s intervention and aggression abroad and its retrogression at home.

WDIE has received from NUJ Manchester the following appeal regarding journalists on Bradford-based newspapers, which we are reproducing in full.

National Union of Journalists members at a series of Bradford-based papers have voted to take strike action on three days this month. They will stay away from work on the morning of Wednesday January 16, and all day on Friday January 25 and Thursday January 31 – unless management increase a pay offer of 2.5 percent.

In a ballot held just before Christmas more than 80 percent voted for strike action. At a well-attended chapel (workplace branch) meeting on January 7 just one person voted against the walkouts. No one abstained. The company's managing director Tim Blott was given permission to address the meeting – but his appeal for journalists' to accept the 2.5 percent offer failed to win the chapel over.

The union's national executive agreed unanimously to support the dispute at its meeting on January 11.

HOW YOU CAN HELP...

The chapel needs money to pay for campaign material and to help cover the wages people will lose by striking. Please urge your union branch, political party, community group, church, or other organisation to make a donation or hold a whip round. Management have promised strikebreakers a bonus and threatened to dock a whole day's pay during Wednesday's half-day stoppage. Cheques should be made payable to "Newsquest Bradford NUJ Chapel" and sent to 22 Swan Street, Manchester, M4 5JQ. Individual donations are also welcome however small.

On Wednesday January 16 chapel members will be picketing the offices of the Telegraph and Argus in Hall Ings, central Bradford, and in Shipley, the offices of the Keighley News, the Ilkley Gazette, the Craven Herald in Skipton, and the Wharfdale Observer in Otley. NUJ members and any other trades unionists will be very welcome to visit the picket lines and offer support. Bring your banners! The papers are owned by Newsquest – the UK arm of the US media giant Gannett.

Send polite protests about the low pay in Bradford (see details below) to Newsquest's UK boss paul.davidson@newsquest.co.uk

It only takes a minute to send a message of support. But these can be very uplifting to people standing in the cold on a picket line. Please send your greetings before the walk out to sarah@casamft.freeserve.co.uk and/or bobsmith2001@btopenworld.com

Please forward this email to as many people as possible.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE...

Wages for local newspaper journalists in the UK are scandalously low. Bosses say they don't need to pay more because plenty of people apply for jobs. Victory in Bradford and in other centres will help push the rate up in papers.

Trainee managers at McDonalds in the UK on their first day in work, when they know nothing, earn £17,000pa. Most newly qualified senior local paper journalists – who have at least two years experience and all their professional qualifications – earn less than that.

NUJ members at Newsquest (Bradford) earn on average 20 percent less than the official UK average wage. They submitted a claim for a 7.5 percent rise, an extra day's holiday, and improved sick pay and mileage rates. The mileage rate was cut last month by 1.5p.

Graduates start on as little as £10,500pa.

Last year Newsquest (Bradford) made £6 million.

Miles Barter, NUJ Northern regional organiser, 13 Jan 2002

Let me tell you the tale of two Brits who were arrested in Afghanistan last year. It was a time when the country was in the grip, so we were told by George Bush and Tony Blair, of one of the most brutal regimes in the world. The first Briton was arrested for entering the country illegally, without a passport and visa. The second Briton was arrested and until this present day we still don't know what the charges are and so we must presume him innocent until proven guilty.

The first Briton was interrogated for six days by Taleban intelligence, held under house arrest in Jalalabad in an air-conditioned room with access to a flush toilet and shower facilities. By the fourth day the Taleban had mysteriously received a Western intelligence file revealing that the Briton held was in fact a spy.

After further investigations the file was proven to be bogus and the mischievous work of Western intelligence. However, the original charge of entering the country remained. The prisoner, so far unharmed, was driven from Jalalabad to Kabul prison and remained there for four more days. After complaining about cramped conditions the Taleban removed the Brit to comfortable sleeping quarters used by their own soldiers. Again a private room was made available.

On the final night the prisoner was left frightened and terrified when more than 50 cruise missiles dropped on Kabul courtesy of Britain and America. The next day on October 8 the British prisoner feared the Taleban would take revenge, but instead this reviled regime released the accused on humanitarian grounds waving a release form signed by Mullah Omar.

The other British prisoner was not so lucky. His captors tortured and beat him, bound and gagged him and put him in cramped, insanitary conditions. When he was moved to his next prison he was shaved, gagged, blindfolded, masked and drugged before being tied in to the seat of an aeroplane and flown halfway round the world to Cuba.

This Briton is now in the hands of the Americans . . . we might never even know his name. The first prisoner, Yvonne Ridley, was much more lucky and thankfully due to the courtesy and respect accorded me I am free to write this story. I was fortunate. I was captured by the Taleban.

Judging by the treatment meted out to the unknown Brit and other detainees one can only assume it is they who are now in the hands of an uncivilised, barbaric regime.

Perhaps President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair might want to ponder these three words – pot, kettle and black!

Yvonne Ridley

The following is the statement by the Government of Cuba of January 11 on the US Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the US is caging alleged Taleban and al-Qaida fighters who have been captured.

The American Naval Base at Guantanamo is a facility located in an area of 117.6 square kilometres of the national territory of Cuba occupied since 1903 due to an Agreement on Coaling and Naval Stations signed by the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Cuba under President Tomás Estrada Palma. At that time, our country was not really independent since an amendment -- known as the Platt Amendment -- had been passed by the US Congress and signed by President McKinley on March 1901 while our country was under occupation by the US army after its intervention in the independence war waged by the Cuban people against the Spanish metropolis.

The Platt Amendment, which granted the United States the right to intervene in Cuba, was imposed to the text of our 1901 Constitution as a prerequisite for the withdrawal of the American troops from the Cuban territory. Following that clause, the aforementioned Agreement on Coaling and Naval Stations was signed on February 1903 in Havana and Washington, respectively. It actually included two areas of our national territory: Bahía Honda and Guantanamo, although a naval base was never established in the former.

In Article II of that Agreement, the right was literally granted to the United States to do "all that is necessary to outfit those places so they can be used exclusively as coaling or naval stations, and for no other purpose."

In addition to that treaty of February 1903, on May 22 that same year a Permanent Treaty of Relations was signed by Cuba and the United States of America using the exact text of the 8 clauses contained in the Platt Amendment which were thus turned into articles of the said treaty.

Twenty-one years later, on May 29, 1934, in the spirit of the American "Good Neighbour" policy under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a new Treaty of Relations was subscribed between the Republic of Cuba and the United States of America that abrogated the previous 1903 Treaty, thereby abrogating the Platt Amendment. The new Treaty definitely excluded Bahía Honda as a possible base, but it sustained the presence in Guantanamo Naval Base and kept in effect the rules of establishment. As for such rules that remained in force, the Article III of the new Treaty literally stated:

"Until the two contracting parties agree to the modification of the agreement in regard to the lease to the United States of America of lands in Cuba for coaling and naval stations signed by the President of the Republic of Cuba on February 16, 1903, and by the President of the United States of America on the 23rd day of the same month and year, the stipulations of that agreement with regard to the naval station of Guantanamo shall continue in effect. The supplementary agreement in regard to coaling and naval stations signed between the two Governments on July 2, 1903 also shall continue in effect in the same form and on the same conditions with respect to the naval station at Guantanamo. So long as the United States of America shall not abandon the said naval station of Guantanamo or the two Governments shall not agree to a modification of its present limits, the station shall continue to have the territorial area that it now has, with the limits that it has on the date of the signature of the present Treaty."

As evidence of the abusive conditions imposed by that Treaty, the above-mentioned supplementary agreement established that the United States would compensate the Republic of Cuba for the leasing of 117.6 square kilometres -- that is, 11,760 hectares comprising a large portion of one of the best bays in the country -- with the sum of 2,000 US dollars annually, presently increased to 4,085 US dollars annually -- that is, 34.7 cents per hectare -- to be paid to Cuba in yearly cheques. An elemental sense of dignity and absolute disagreement with what happens in that portion of our national territory has prevented Cuba from cashing those cheques which are issued to the Treasurer General of the Republic of Cuba, a position and an institution that ceased to exist a long time ago.

After the victory of the Revolution in Cuba, that base was the source of numerous frictions between Cuba and the United States. The overwhelming majority of the over three thousand Cubans who worked there were fired from their jobs and replaced by people from other countries. At present, only 10 Cubans work there.

In the past, shots were often made from that facility against our territory, and several Cuban soldiers died as a result. Counterrevolutionaries found haven and support over there. Following unilateral decisions by leaders of the US government throughout the revolutionary period in Cuba, tens of thousands of immigrants -- Haitians and Cubans who tried to make it to the United States by their own means -- were taken to that military base. Throughout more than four decades, that base has been put to multiple uses, none of them contemplated in the agreement that justified its presence in our territory.

But, Cuba could do absolutely nothing to prevent it.

On the other hand, for almost half a century propitious conditions have never existed for a calm, legal and diplomatic analysis aimed at the only logical and fair solution to this prolonged, chronic and abnormal situation, that is, the return to our country of that portion of our national territory occupied against the will of our people.

However, a basic principle of Cuba's policy toward this bizarre and potentially dangerous problem between Cuba and the United States, which is decades long, has been to avoid that our claim would become a major issue, not even a specially important issue, among the multiple and grave differences existing between the two nations. In the Pledge of Baraguá presented on February 19, 2000, the issue of the Guantanamo base is dealt with in the last point and formulated in the following way: "In due course, since it is not our main objective at this time, although it is our people's right and one that we shall never renounce, the illegally occupied territory of Guantanamo should be returned to Cuba!"

That military enclave is the exact place where American and Cuban soldiers stand face to face, thus the place where serenity and a sense of responsibility are most required. Although we have always been willing to fight and die in defence of our sovereignty and our rights, the most sacred duty of our people and their leaders has been to preserve the nation from avoidable, unnecessary and bloody wars.

At the same time, that is also the place where it would be easier for people interested in bringing about conflicts between the two countries to undertake plans aimed at attracting aggressive actions against our people in their heroic political, economic and ideological resistance vis-à- vis the enormous power of the United States.

Our country has been particularly thoughtful about applying there a specially cautious and reasonable policy.

It should be pointed out, however, that even if for decades there was quite a lot of tension in the area of the Guantanamo naval base, there have been changes there in the past few years and now an atmosphere of mutual respect prevails.

In 1994, when a large number of rafters sent by the US authorities concentrated there, the situation created the need to solve the numerous problems that had been accumulating, which endangered the lives of many. Some people interested in migrating to the United States from our own territory attempted to do so through the base, while not a few tried to leave the American military base and return to our country crossing mined fields. Accidents occurred and often our soldiers had to take major risks to rescue people from the mined fields. Such actions also required information and co-operation from the personnel stationed at the base. Additionally, there were the heavy rains and swollen rivers in the area that swept away mines and blurred their markings which gave rise to similarly hazardous situations for all.

Such circumstances contributed to an improvement of the atmosphere there and to authorised, albeit minimal, contacts that were indispensable to those in positions of responsibility on both sides of the base area. Consequently, what prevails there today is not what could be described as an atmosphere of hostility or war.

Two new international developments have had a bearing on the situation in that base: the war in Kosova in 1999 and the war in Afghanistan after the terrorist acts of September 11. In both cases, the United States has played a protagonist role.

In the former case there was a large number of Kosovars refugees. The Government of the United States of America, in accordance with previous commitments, made the decision to use the military base to shelter a number of them. Such decisions are always made unilaterally; our views are never previously asked; and, we were never even informed. However, on that occasion, for the first time, we were informed of the decision and the rationale behind it. We then gave a constructive response.

Although we were opposed to that war, there was no reason for us to oppose the assistance that the Kosovar refugees might need. We even offered our country's co-operation, if necessary, to provide medical care or any other services that might be required. Ultimately, the refugees were not sent to Guantanamo naval base.

This time the decision has been adopted to bring prisoners of the war in Afghanistan to that military base. The same as in the past, we were not consulted but there was a gesture in previously providing ample and detailed information on the steps that would be taken to accommodate the prisoners there and ensure that the security of our people is not in anyway jeopardised. The latest details were given to the Cuban authorities last Monday, January 7, 2002.

The information supplied indicates that there will be a strong reinforcement of the military personnel at the base in charge of taking the necessary measures for the accomplishment of their objectives.

Despite the fact that we hold different positions as to the most efficient way to eradicate terrorism, the difference between Cuba and the United States lies in the method and not in the need to put an end to that scourge, -- so familiar to our people that have been its victim for more than 40 years -- the same that last September 11 dealt a repulsive and brutal blow to the American people.

Although the transfer of foreign war prisoners by the United States government to one of its military facilities -- located in a portion of our land over which we have no jurisdiction, as we have been deprived of it -- does not abide by the provisions that regulated its inception, we shall not set any obstacles to the development of the operation.

Having been apprised of the operation and aware of the fact that it demands a considerable movement of personnel and means of air transportation, the Cuban authorities will keep in contact with the personnel at the American naval base to adopt such measures as may be deemed convenient to avoid the risk of accidents that might put in jeopardy the lives of the personnel thus transported.

Despite the major increase of military personnel that such an operation will require, we feel that it does not pose any threat to the national security of our country. Therefore, we will not increase the Cuban personnel or the military means stationed in the area of that facility. Our highly disciplined and qualified personnel suffice to ensure the safety of the population in the region in case of any danger that might originate with the transfer of the foreign prisoners to that base.

Cuba will make every effort to preserve the atmosphere of détente and mutual respect that has prevailed in that area in the past few years.

The government of Cuba appreciates the previous information supplied and has taken note with satisfaction of the public statements made by the US authorities in the sense that the prisoners will be accorded an adequate and humane treatment that may be monitored by the International Red Cross.

Although the exact number of prisoners that will be concentrated there is not yet known, just like on the occasion of the project to transfer to that place thousands of Kosovars refugees, we are willing to co-operate with the medical services required as well as with sanitation programmes in the surrounding areas under our control to keep them clean of vectors and pests. Likewise, we are willing to co-operate in any other useful, constructive and humane way that may arise.

This is the position of Cuba!

On Monday, France’s Ambassador to Colombia, Daniel Parfait, read a statement saying that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had dropped its objections to returning to peace talks that have been paralysed since October. He said President Andres Pastrana had signed off on the agreement, reached with the help of a UN envoy, Catholic Church delegates, and ambassadors from 10 countries. He made the announcement flanked by James LeMoyne, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's special advisor on Colombia.

The government had earlier set a deadline for rebels to agree to resume the peace process or troops would move to retake their safe haven in southern Colombia. The accord held out new hope for cease-fire talks envisioned prior to the breakdown in the peace process.

FARC negotiator Raul Reyes, seated beside Parfait during the announcement, confirmed that FARC was satisfied that military controls placed around the zone were not endangering the peace talks.

"We are going to propose solutions to President Pastrana and to [FARC] commander Manuel Marulanda," Parfait told reporters. "We are not going with empty hands." Parfait was accompanied on the mission by envoys from Canada, Sweden, Cuba, Norway, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Switzerland and Venezuela. After landing in San Vicente del Caguan, they headed directly to the nearby village of Los Pozos, where FARC rebels and UN envoy James LeMoyne awaited. "We believe that if we manage to advance, that very soon the [two] sides can begin to talk again," LeMoyne told reporters early Monday.

The announcement came a day after FARC issued a communiqué blaming Pastrana for the break-down in the talks, which we reproduce from the text as published by the BBC on Sunday.

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FARC communiqué:

"Warmongers Win Out"

[The following is the text of FARC's communiqué read out on Caracol TV by FARC spokesman Simon Trinidad:]

Public communiqué: The spokesmen of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) at the National Dialogue and Negotiation Table tell national and international public opinion the following:

1. After learning about President Andres Pastrana Arango's decision to end the dialogue and negotiation process with the FARC- EP, despite the efforts made on 11 and 12 January, with the presence Mr James LeMoyne, special adviser of the UN Secretary General, we propose to Mr President the official return of the urban areas of the five municipalities in a public ceremony in the same way we received them, in the presence of representatives of the international community, economic groups, workers, peasants, political parties and various personalities and organisations that in the past three years have made their contributions to this attempt to achieve national reconciliation and reconstruction.

2. The 48-hour ultimatum, which will expired at 2130 on 14 January [0230 GMT 15 January], established by Mr President unilaterally changes everything that has been agreed upon in the past three years.

And thus, it closes the possibilities to the current process, which despite difficulties, has valuable tools, the main of them being the common agenda to achieve change for a new Colombia and the proposals exchanged by the parties regarding a cease-fire and end to the hostilities, the document containing the recommendations of the Commission of Personalities, the San Francisco de la Sombra Agreement, and the draft prepared with the UN facilitator who has continuously consulted Mr President.

3. Once again the selfish interests of a privileged and rich minority are being placed above the interests of 40 million Colombians. For the time being, the warmongers have won out to obstruct the possibilities of achieving peace with social justice.

4. Mr President: You, as head of state and government, are called upon to guarantee the lives and security of the inhabitants of the five municipalities within the demilitarised zone.

We will comply with our commitment to retreat from the urban areas as was agreed upon between you and Commander-in-Chief Manuel Marulanda Velez at the beginning of the process.

5. To the country and the world we reaffirm our willingness to continue using all forms of struggle to achieve the changes that Colombia needs to in order to reconcile and reconstruct the homeland.

This has been and continues to be our goal. The search for political solution belongs to Colombians and this will always be the best path to follow in the future.

6. We urge all Colombians to struggle in an organised manner to attain the economic, political, social changes that Colombia requires.

Signed on behalf of the FARC-EP by spokesmen Raul Reyes, Joaquin Gomez, Carlos Antonio Lozada, Andres Paris, and Simon Trinidad in the mountains of Colombia on 13 January 2002.