A Diplomat's Undiplomatic Thoughts on Martin Indyk Appointment

By Eugene Bird

A long-time professional American diplomat commented as follows on the appointment of Martin Indyk as U.S. ambassador to Israel:

"The problem is not with his intelligence, nor even with the fact that he has been totally identified with one side in a very divisive situation, a civil war really, in which America has taken sides but does not wish to admit it. In spite of his work with the Israel lobby and his statements to a reporter not long ago that he had, since the earliest age, been dedicated to Israel and helping her make a lasting peace, he might have worked out well as the Australian ambassador to Israel. And he may turn his background to real advantage. His real problem as American ambassador to Israel is that he has no roots in this country.

"Without those roots, his reactions are going to be easily questioned, and they will be. He cannot just be the guardian of Israeli interests as he has been before. Now he must act daily in a way that promotes American interests, even if they clash, as they will, with Israeli interests.

"That is what being an ambassador is all about and Jesse Helms should have questioned him closely on this matter of not having American roots. He should not have been appointed without going on the record regarding his American experience. Instead, Helms simply said that his appointment was 'not controversial' and disposed of it in five minutes."

Jesse Helms Makes His Move

Senator Jesse Helms is proposing the most sweeping reorganization of foreign affairs organizations since the first year of the Eisenhower administration. Ironically, it would undo the reforms of that previous "Republican revolution," when foreign aid, information, and other functions that had been imposed upon the Department of State after World War II were set up as affiliated but independent agencies. Ostensibly a cost-cutting measure, a major motivation seems to be to enable Senator Helms to tell his constituents he abolished AID, while quietly concealing the one-half of its foreign aid budget that goes to Israel and Egypt within the Pentagon and State Department budgets.

With House International Affairs Chairman Ben Gilman standing by his side in nominal support, even though Gilman has publicly opposed merging all key agencies into one super State Department, Senator Helms indicated his proposal is deadly serious and will have exhaustive hearings. The actual legislation remains to be introduced, but a 30-page question-and-answer document has been distributed.

Israel, Egypt and Turkey's aid, according to briefings, would come under a new undersecretary of state for international security affairs. Regular economic aid to the rest of the world would be channeled through geographic desk officers in the Department of State and through a new international development foundation, aimed at distributing aid through existing or new non-governmental organizations such as CARE, ANERA, AMIDEAST and Catholic Relief Services, the leading such organizations in the Middle East.

The complex proposal to reinflate the Department of State by placing almost all economic, commercial and information personnel directly under the secretary of state would tax the ability of any executive. But it certainly would redound to the benefit of Israel, providing both bureaucratic cover and one-stop shopping for money to fund the ever-growing web of U.S.-Israeli economic and technological ties being woven by the Clinton administration with the seemingly enthusiastic support of Congress.

"The State Department for the 21st century," as Helms calls his initiative, includes a provision for a high-level "American Desk" to act as an "ombudsman" or liaison point with public interest groups in support of business and export promotion.

The Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export-Import Bank, the latter always an orphan of congressional foreign policy making, together with the Trade and Development Agency, are proposed to be "integrated with State" but not under State. Personnel for the Voice of America, the U.S. Information Agency and Radio Marti are to be integrated into a single foreign affairs personnel system.

Helms projects savings of "more than $6 billion" over five years, although the announcement provided absolutely no details of how this would be accomplished. Administration sources are universally opposed to the move, but it seems likely that, if both Senate Leader Bob Dole (R-KS) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) seriously support the Helms initiative, substantial parts of the proposal will be enacted.

Egypt-Israel Impasse Threatens Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference opens in New York April 17 and will immediately face problems of protocol and voting procedures. The American proposal for an indefinite extension of the treaty, providing the principal underpinning to the International Atomic Energy Agency's right to inspect and prevent the spread of nuclear arms technology, needs 88 votes from current members. The U.S. was 12 votes shy when the Washington Report went to press. Many of those missing votes are tied to Egypt's refusal to go along with extending the treaty unless Israel makes some gesture to join and rid the Middle East of the immediate nuclear threat.

The meeting could break up into an acrimonious debate between the Third World and the West (North). A centerpiece of that debate will be the failure of the United States to urge Israel to follow the example of South Africa in 1994 by ending its obvious nuclear capability.

Israel Definitely a Nuclear Power But Still Claims Not to Be

Recent documents released by the State Department make clear that the U.S. had solid evidence 30 years ago that Israel was pursuing a crash nuclear program. Most sources now agree that Israel has between 200 and 400 nuclear weapons. The other "threshold" nuclear powers, Pakistan and India, are credited by the same sources with having 9 and somewhere between 50 and 60, respectively.

Egypt is reported to be seeking a concession in the form of an Israeli statement of intention to join, in exchange for the Arab states rejoining the NPT. But both sides are hanging tough and there is no assurance that Secretary of State Warren Christopher and President Bill Clinton can persuade Egypt to rejoin without some concession from Israel.

Strangely, no one expects the April conference to lead to failure of either Iran or Iraq to sign some version of the treaty. Iran has every reason to continue to claim it is not building atomic weapons, even though U.S. intelligence claims that country is quite likely only a few years away from possible testing. (Israel claims this is the reason for its retention of nuclear weapons, while not admitting it has any at all.)

Similarly, Iraq is expected to sign the treaty again. Its action will have little practical effect since Iraq already is fully exposed to U.N. and IAEA intrusive inspections.

The administration refuses to acknowledge that Israeli bombs may be an obstacle to securing an indefinite extension by 88 member states, since a total of 175 states presently are signatories to the NPT.

"Citizens of the world know," said Ambassador John Holum, "that [with the treaty in place] their neighbors will not acquire nuclear materials." He did not allude to the fact that Egypt is already aware that its main antagonist these past 40 years does have nuclear materials and continues to build warheads and missiles to carry them.

Pressures on Egypt Very Heavy

Pressures on Egypt to stop confronting Israel and the U.S. on the issue of Israeli accession to the treaty are growing on Capitol Hill. The administration will continue frequent contacts with Egypt right up to the opening day. The U.S. rationale for lack of American pressure on Israel to sign remains that the U.S. expects Israel to sign after a comprehensive peace is reached not just with her immediate neighbors but also including Iran and Iraq.

Egypt and Third World countries say that ignores the problem of regional proliferation and is hypocritical in the extreme. Although other nuclear powers have remained silent on the issue of Israeli proliferation, media in other Western countries have suggested that Israel should at least close her aging Dimona reactor and begin the process of coming into accord with international needs and practices.

The U.S. is destroying 2,000 nuclear weapons a year, matching Russian efforts to cut the total to some indeterminate level of a few thousand on each side by the early part of the next century. Success of efforts at downsizing by the major powers and preventing proliferation by the rest of the world depends on a troika of agreements: The NPT, the Test-Ban, and the Fissionable Materials export agreements. Israel would be in violation of the NPT but, so far as is known, its only test of atomic weaponry was conducted over the South Atlantic in collusion with South Africa many years ago. Ambassador Holum claims that the U.S. does not share any pertinent technology with Israel or other "threshold" states such as India and Pakistan. However, the use of new high-capacity computers from the United States by Israel is expected to lead to better missile technologies. It is impossible to separate nuclear weapons from delivery vehicle development

Most of the early Israeli nuclear technology came from France. By 1970 that was largely ended, but Israel sent out techno-spies to search out plutonium sources and weaponry technologies. A great deal of both came from the United States. Some was stolen. The rest was acquired by incremental bits and pieces from cooperative companies and from Israel's strategic relationship with the United States. The technology continues to flow, according to sources close to the Pentagon.

Clinton administration officials are holding a frenzy of briefings for both the press and the NPT member countries, hoping to gain the votes needed to carry out its indefinite extension. The administration's work would be infinitely easier if America's client state in the Middle East—Israel—would agree to start the process of de-nuclearizing and, by so doing, help revive the unraveling Middle East peace process.

Clinton Anti-Terrorism Bill Smacks of Israeli Occupation Law

British Mandatory regulations from the 1940s, aimed originally at controlling Jewish terrorists in Palestine, have been used for almost 50 years by the Israeli government against the Palestinians, complete with secret trials and administrative detention and deportations. Now, these same regulations, in slightly different form, may have reached the shores of the United States. If the administration of President Bill Clinton and a band of pro-Israel congressmen have their way, a truly ominous Omnibus Bill on Counter-Terrorism will be rushed through to use special financial and investigative pressures to stop "terrorism," as defined by the legislation's sponsors.

The massive 110-page bill would, according to an analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union, permit the president to simply declare almost any organization "terrorist." On that basis the government could order deportations of aliens without their right to see the evidence, and could fine American citizens up to $50,000 and imprison them for up to five years for giving any assets, even in kind, to a designated "terrorist" group.

While the legislation wends its way through Congress, the Feb. 10 executive order is being implemented and assets are being seized. The first seizure was a minuscule $200 bank account in New York in the name of Kahane Chai, a Jewish extremist organization associated with Dr. Baruch Goldstein and the Hebron massacre of February 1994. However, Kahane people still are operating at least three other American-incorporated groups.

Using the RICO (Anti-Racketeering) law and expanding its provisions to permit search and seizure without warrant, new identical bills proposed by the president are on the fast track in the Senate (S 390) and the House (HR 896). The Omnibus bill is extremely complex but seemingly designed to scare off the ordinary American contributor to any charitable institution working in the Middle East. Just the submission of it, according to Muslim-American groups, has frightened off past contributors to West Bank and Gaza institutions.

ACLU Preliminary Analysis of Law: Violates Constitution

In his preliminary analysis of the proposed legislation, lawyer Gregory Nojeim, formerly with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), and now with the ACLU, has pointed out numerous unconstitutional provisions. They include due process clause violations, First Amendment activity used as justification for declaring an alien deportable without any right of appeal, guilt by association, and legal harassment of American citizens by granting unfettered authority without recourse to courts.

The bill in its present form results from a year-long effort by pro-Israel forces within the administration. Although the inter-agency group, described in the March 1995 issue of the Washington Report, was set up ostensibly to deal with Jewish terrorists involved in the Hebron massacre, the resulting legislation will cast a wide net against legitimate Muslim organizations and aliens as well as against American citizens making tax-exempt contributions to organizations providing relief and services in the Middle East, including those in south Lebanon's refugee camps.

Major Arab-American groups already have begun meetings with the administration to protest the sweeping anti-terror bill and its obvious impact on the economy of the Palestinians, so dependent on money from abroad.

Middle East specialists predict that the bill, as written, will do little to curb acts of terror either in the United States or in the Middle East. One expert in the Congressional Research Service estimates that no more than $4 million a year is needed to fund all types of terrorist activities by both Lebanese and Palestinian Islamic extremist organizations. Such sums are readily available from extremist organizations such as those often associated with Iran.

The specialists point out that the World Trade Center bombing, if it was not carried out by Iranian-funded individuals, very likely was planned in Baghdad as retribution for the Gulf war. Opponents of the Omnibus bill say it will scare off genuine efforts to better the situation of the Palestinians, and do little or nothing against Jewish terrorist groups who continue to function unimpeded in the West Bank settlements, where Kahane Chai and Kach members are both well-organized and well-armed.

Eugene Bird is president of the Council for the National Interest and diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Report.