Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1999, pages 61-62

People Watch

While Albright’s in the Air, Berger’s at the Tiller

By Lucille Barnes

Pundits who speculate whether hawks or doves rule the roost in President Bill Clinton’s foreign policy establishment might better pay attention to who speaks to the president last when Middle East policy decisions are made. Administration insiders said that after the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania last August, National Security Adviser Samuel (Sandy) Berger acted more like the corporate attorney he used to be than a coordinator of differing options when he assembled and presented the case for bombing a supposed guerrilla training camp in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum.

More recently, according to Washington Post foreign affairs columnist Jim Hoag land, after Clinton had signed off in late November on bombing Iraqi President Saddam Hussain’s assets back to the Dark Ages, it also was Sandy Berger who urged the president to call back the bombers when Saddam Hussain blinked at the last moment. Madeleine Albright was airborne for Malaysia at the time, and apparently was not consulted. So is Berger, who reputedly at one time paid dues to Americans for Peace Now, the U.S. wing of the Israeli peace group, a hawk, a dove, or simply the adviser who has the final word when the leader of the world’s only remaining superpower is forced to make a decision on U.S. Middle East policy?

The Middle East advisers on Albright’s staff, all inherited from Warren Christopher, who seemed willing to leave Middle East policy entirely up to them, remain Dennis Ross, whose lifelong commitment to Israel seems matched only by his patience with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s lies and demagoguery; Ross’s deputy, Aaron David Miller; and Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Martin Indyk.

Of the three, London-born, Australian-raised Indyk, who came to the U.S. from Israel to take a job with its Washington, DC lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and who founded the Washington Institute for Near East policy with money from AIPAC directors and their spouses, seems hardest to categorize. In Clinton’s first term Indyk, who was serving as National Security Council Near East adviser under Anthony Lake and Berger, tired of playing second fiddle to Ross and lobbied for and got the post of U.S. ambassador to Israel. He still played second fiddle, however, since when Ross visited he met alone with the Israeli prime minister, leaving Indyk outside the door, just as Ross did with U.S. ambassadors to Syria and Jordan.

Predilections aside, first-hand exposure to Israel, under the Labor governments of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres and Netanyahu’s current government, may have had some of the same sobering effect on Indyk that it has had on most foreign diplomats who serve there, making them increasingly skeptical. Indyk had particularly good reasons after a Likud cabinet minister publicly, and repeatedly, referred to him both behind his back and to his face as “Jew-boy” before Netanyahu made his minister apologize. Since Indyk’s return to Washington to become assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, with responsibility for U.S. policy toward both Israel and a couple of dozen Muslim countries, none of whose ministers has ever made public reference to his ethnicity or religion, he may have had second thoughts on a career which, up to now, has revolved solely around Israel, without making any appreciable dent in how Israelis treat Americans, much less Palestinians.

Ross may have done some reflecting, too, on his trans-Atlantic shuttle visits between two politicians in trouble. Perhaps he thinks about the poem, “oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”—not that either Clinton or Netanyahu are first-time offenders.

As for Miller, he became testy recently when a Washington Report representative suggested that, given the increasing suspicion with which U.S. peacemaking is regarded by even America’s closest Arab allies, it would make sense to name at least one American Muslim to the otherwise all-Jewish Middle East policymaking team. “I hope you don’t think I’m here just because of my background,” he flared. Miller’s non-response begs the question.

The trial of 18-year-old third-generation Palestinian American Hashem Mufleh opened Dec. 9 in an Israeli military court. Mufleh, born in Albuquerque, NM, was arrested Aug. 18 on a visit to relatives and tortured over a period of 10 days before he was allowed an interview with either his Palestinian attorney, Jonathan Kuttab, or the American consul, according to the U.S. activist organization Partners for Peace. A charge sheet, issued a month after his arrest, charged Mufleh with being a member of Hamas. The trial, delayed several times, first opened Nov. 18. When the Israeli military judge saw a number of journalists in the courtroom, however, the trial was postponed. Then, after the American consul and media personnel had left, the judge announced that he would hear a prosecution witness after all, and in Mufleh’s absence. After the prosecution witness testified only that he had studied with Mufleh at a mosque and had handed out religious literature, the judge delayed the trial to Dec. 9. At that session Kuttab said the charges against Mufleh would not hold in the United States, where Mufleh would be protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Other Arab Americans being held by Israel, according to Partners for Peace, include Bishara Saidi, a naturalized American born in Lebanon, who went with his Palestinian wife, Sawsan Saidi, to visit her family in Israel at Christmas, 1997. While at Christmas dinner in Haifa he was arrested by Israeli authorities on charges of having had contact with a foreign agent. His wife, who was pregnant, has returned to their home in a suburb of Detroit, where she has given birth, but Saidi is still imprisoned in Israel.

Another imprisoned American citizen, Anwar Mohamad, the 25-year-old manager of a Miami Beach pizza parlor, was released Dec. 7 after undergoing torture but has not yet left the West Bank. After visiting his brother near Ramallah, where he hoped to find a bride, Mohammad planned to visit his sister in Amman but was arrested at the border crossing. The Israeli government did not inform the American Embassy of his arrest, and little will be known about the case until he feels free to speak out upon his return to the U.S. According to a brother in New Orleans, the Israelis held him for nearly two months without trial on charges that he gave $200 to a charity and $200 to a mosque.

A fourth detained Arab American is prosperous Milwaukee businessman Salah Sarsour, who is about 50 years old and married with seven children. He owns office buildings and a grocery store in Milwaukee and an engineering company in Ramallah.

In December, State Department spokes man James Rubin announced a $5 million U.S. reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of alleged terrorist and exiled Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden and his alleged military commander, Muhammed Atef, on charges of successfully conspiring to bomb U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam. Meanwhile Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, arrested in Germany on U.S. charges that he was an aide to Bin Laden who had traveled to Germany to carry out an attack on the American Consulate General in Hamburg, said that he had traveled to more than 20 countries in the past four years because, as “everyone who knows me knows,” he was looking for a wife.

His trip to Germany, said Salim, who already has a wife and two children, was because he also wanted to buy a Mercedes. Denying that he belongs to what U.S. authorities describe as Bin Laden’s terrorist group, Al Qaeda, Salim said he believed Sidi Tayyib, a former associate of his who he said once was a Bin Laden associate, had become an informant for Saudi Arabia and Western intelligence. Tayyib, who also used the name Abu Fadl, is married to one of Bin Laden’s nieces, and was chief financial officer for some of Bin Laden’s companies in Sudan, Salim said.

While en route to the summit meeting of the Arabian Gulf Cooperation Council (AGCC) in Abu Dhabi, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan made a side trip to Tripoli, the capital of Libya, after being informed that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was ready to turn over to him for trial in an international court the two Libyan suspects in the bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Dec. 21, 1988. After waiting all day in Tripoli for he wasn’t sure what, at nightfall Annan was driven in a motorcade to meet Qaddafi in a guest tent in the desert. However, instead of handing over suspects Abdel Basset Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, Qaddafi—still on crutches after suffering an injury last summer in what he called an accident while exercising and which opponents say was an assassination attempt—told Annan that Libya’s General People’s Congress would have to make the decision on whether the two would be surrendered for trial in the Netherlands in exchange for lifting the U.N. embargo on Libya.

Kofi Annan’s next stop was the capital of the United Arab Emirates, for the 19th AGCC summit at Abu Dhabi’s Intercontinental Hotel. There South African President Nelson Mandela, Arab League Secretary-General Esmat Abdul Meguid, and Organization of Islamic Conference Secretary-General Izzeddeen Al Laraki also attended opening ceremonies at which UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan welcomed from the other five AGCC states rulers Sheikh Issa bin Salman Al Khalifa of Bahrain, Shaikh Jaber al Ahmad Al Sabah of Kuwait, Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Al Said of Oman, Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar, and Crown Prince Abdallah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia.

At the meeting Sheikh Zayed called for an increase in AGCC summits to twice a year and called upon all Arab chiefs of state to reach coordinated stands on the major political and economic issues facing the Arab and Islamic world. The AGCC countries, who together produce a quarter of the world’s oil, agreed to extend current volun tary limits on their petroleum production until the end of 1999 to help halt the downward spiral of oil prices. They also called upon Iraq to abide by the U.N. resolution on arms inspections.

Reports from journalists attending the conference, who included Washington Re port publisher Andrew I. Killgore, said that in view of the fall in petroleum prices the UAE had agreed to lend Saudi Arabia $5 billion to meet its budgetary obligations. Neither country confirmed the report.

Since the vehicle in which 13 visiting American businessmen were traveling in Tehran was ambushed and heavily damaged Nov. 21 by crowbar-wielding thugs outside the hotel in which they were staying, the open split between liberalizing Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, who had encouraged such visits, and such hard-line opponents within the Iranian government as spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, head of the Iranian judiciary; and Habibollah Asgaroladi, secretary of the traditionalist Islamic Coalition Society, has taken an increasingly ominous turn. On the following day Iranian secular nationalist dissident Dariush Foruhar and his wife, Parveneh, were stabbed to death in an attack on their Tehran home, which had been under round-the-clock surveillance by government security agents.

The list of other Iranian dissidents jailed, missing or killed recently, both before and after the weekend of Nov. 21-22, includes Parviz Davani, a publisher who vanished in August and reportedly was later found killed; Abbas Amir-Entezam, a former cabinet minister and prisoner, who was arrested again Sept. 8 for denouncing atrocities he witnessed during his imprisonment; periodical publisher Ezzatollah Sahabi, condemned Nov. 23 for “insulting the armed forces” and publishing “lies about the clerical tribunals”; writer Majid Sharif, found dead and apparently tortured on a Tehran street Nov. 26; writer and poet Mohammed Mokhtari, who disappeared Dec. 3 and was found apparently murdered in Tehran on Dec. 9; and writer and critic of censorship Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh, who has been missing since Dec. 9.

Another writer, Houshang Golshiri, said he, Pouyandeh and Mokhtari were among six prominent writers who were questioned by a Revolutionary Court in October about their efforts to reactivate a banned writers’ association. The harassment struck him as an echo of events in 1994 when he and more than 130 members of the writers’ association signed a letter calling for an end to censorship in Iran. Five of those who signed the letter were killed or died soon afterward under unexplained circumstances. The next year 30 members of the group narrowly escaped death while traveling by bus to a poetry conference in what one of them, Mansour Koushan, described recently as an assassination attempt by Iranian authorities.

More than 100 of Khatami’s supporters, including his two brothers, have launched a counter-offensive against his conservative critics by forming a political party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, to contest February’s first-ever elections for city and town councils, which may prove to be a crucial test of strength for Khatami and his opponents.

Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party outlawed by Turkey, told a German news program that he wants to stand trial before an international court on terrorism and murder changes to determine “if we or the Turkish government are responsible for the war against each other in which many thousands of people have died on both sides.” Under pressure from Turkish armed forces on its border last summer, Syria expelled Ocalan to Russia, which forced him to leave for Italy, where he was detained and is seeking asylum. Ocalan’s arrest and Italy’s refusal to extradite him to Turkey set off demonstrations and counter-demonstrations by Kurds and Turks at Italian embassies all over Europe, and has prompted a boycott of Italian goods and contractors by the Turkish government and people.

Iranian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Mohammed Reza Nouri said in early December that Saudi Arabia and Iran, both key members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), are renewing efforts to align their views, and Iran is “ready to back any step that will help the oil price.”

In a two-hour televised talk Dec. 6, Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia maintained that his country’s security situation is “constantly improving.” The claim was made only two weeks before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a time when Algerian violence has increased in recent years. Ouyahia is expected to announce his resignation soon in order to run in the April presidential election to succeed President Liamine Zeroual, who is not running again.

Moroccan-born former Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy announced Dec. 6 that he would not rejoin the Likud Party cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, dashing the best hopes of Prime Minister Netanyahu to survive a motion by Labor Party leader Ehud Barak to dissolve the parliament and set a date for Israeli elections well before the scheduled expiration of Netanyahu’s term in the year 2000. Levy’s move raised the possibility that immediately after President Bill Clinton’s December visit to Israel and Palestine Netanyahu’s government might fall.

Saudi billionaire businessman Prince Walid bin Talal was approached by Goldman, Sachs and Company in October to determine if his Kingdom Holding Company was interested in buying the giant hedge fund Long Term Capital Management after Goldman and 13 other Wall Street banks and brokerage houses injected $3.6 billion to save the fund from bankruptcy. Although the Saudi prince has made profitable investments in a number of troubled companies, he made no offer for Long Term Capital, whose plight subsequently eased with the rebound in Wall Street stocks.