War on Iraq has begun

War on Iraq has begun 
 
The following was forwarded to me via someone in Washington.  The 
information comes from an Israeli based news website 'debka.com' which 
puports, I'm told, to have sources within the intelligence communities.

The report provides evidence that the war against Iraq has already 
started on March 13.  Yesterday's bombing by US planes only lends 
weight to the fact that the US & UK are not going to 'declare war'  - 
which would be politically suicidal for Blair, and likely to cause 
serious difficulties international for the Bush junta.  While they sun 
themselves on the beaches of the Azores this weekend, military action 
has already begun, with UK troups involved.

So, what's the betting that the opposition to Blair in the Labour Party 
will peter out?

Firoze

************

DEBKA CONFIDENTIAL REPORT #101
14 March 2003
War in Iraq

The Offensive Unfolds

The US-led Iraq War began on Thursday, March 13  not with a formal 
declaration or a spectacular eruption, but as an unfolding campaign.

On Wednesday, March 12, war commander General Tommy Franks returned 
to his forward headquarters in Qatar carrying his orders, which were 
to go on the offensive on March 13 as military sources reported in 
Debka #100 on March 7.

According to sources in Washington, he acted on three decisions 
taken by President George W. Bush:

A. The war date March 13.

B. Not to deliver a formal declaration of war in an announcement 
to the American people, as he had planned to do, but to kick off 
the campaign without this formality.

Readers should not be surprised to discover in the next few hours 
or days that five US special forces battalions have captured Iraqi 
oil fields along the Iraq-Kuwait border and that American and 
British commandos are advancing on the large Romeila oil field 
near Basra. Our military sources report that these military 
movements are now underway.

C. To stop waiting for the UN Security Council to act, approve or 
come to any compromises on the Iraq crisis. Continuing diplomatic 
acrobatics at the Security Council can serve as a useful 
smokescreen for the action going forward on the battlefields of 
Iraq.

US military movements Likewise, American and Turkish thrusts into 
northern Iraq are providentially obscured, according to military 
sources in Washington and Ankara, by the uncertainty hanging over 
whether or not Ankara will approve the transit of US forces into 
northern Iraq and the opening of a northern front.

Even the latest word that Turkey has refused US warplanes passage 
through its air space to bomb Iraq is a misrepresentation of the 
facts to hide what is going on from the Turkish public which is 
predominantly anti-war. According to the most credible information 
reaching us, Washington and Ankara are in full agreement on the 
passage of US troops into northern Iraq along with some 100,000 
Turkish soldiers. Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 
who has given the nod to the deal, is waiting for the Security 
Council to wrap up its debate before convening the Turkish 
parliament for an emergency session to ratify the agreement.


US-Turkish military agreement - high points

A. The US army will be allowed to transfer as many forces as 
necessary to the northern front through sea ports, air fields 
and bases in southern Turkey.

B. Two squadrons of US F-15 and F-16 warplanes already stationed 
at Turkish air bases will go into action without delay against 
Iraqi targets in northern Iraq, especially around the oil cities 
of Mosul and Kirkuk.

C. Along with the US army, seven Turkish divisions comprising 
100,000 troops will push into northern Iraq. The Turkish force 
will be distributed as follows: five divisions will deploy in 
northern Iraq, or northern Kurdistan, along a line some 50 
kilometers (30 miles) inside Iraqi territory across the northern 
peaks of the Kurdistan mountains; two divisions will move 220 
kilometers (130 miles) inside northern Iraq to the town of Sham 
Chamchamal north of Kirkuk, now held by Jalal Talabani's Patriotic 
Union of Kurdistan forces.

For the first time since the start of US military activity in 
northern Iraq in mid-2002, heavy exchanges of fire erupted in the 
town Thursday between the Iraqi 5th army and PUK fighters. The 
clashes effectively kicked off the battle for Kirkuk.

D. A US-Turkish-Kurdish command center staffed by senior officers 
from all three sides was recently established in a Turkish military 
camp at Kiziltap on the Iraq-Turkey border. The headquarters will 
coordinate military movement within northern Iraq to try to ensure 
friendly fire incidents do not occur.

According to military sources, the command center quickly proved 
its worth earlier today when the Turkish 20th division tried to 
cross into northern Iraq and drew fire from forces of the Kurdistan 
Democratic Party led by Massoud Barazani. The Turkish division was 
ordered by the joint headquarters to pull back and is now parked 
near the Turkish town of Sino awaiting new orders.

If Turkey drops out, go to Plan B

But just in case the Erdogan government discovers it cannot live 
up to the Ankara- Washington deal, the US war command headed by 
General Tommy Franks has prepared a fallback plan.

Parts of the US 82nd and 101 airborne divisions will be dropped 
over the oil cities and oil fields of Kirkuk and Mosul by hundreds 
of helicopters taking off from US carriers in the Mediterranean 
flying across Israel and from American bases in Jordan and Israel. 
These troops will link up with the US forces landing Thursday night, 
March 13 at the big Saudi airbase at Tabuk, near the Jordanian 
border.

Military sources report that, since Wednesday night, March 12, 
hundreds of American military aircraft have been coming in to Tabuk - 
bombers, fighters and Marines helicopters, as well as military and 
civilian transports carrying legions of ground troops, bound for 
the western and northern warfronts in Iraq.

Thus far, Iraqi military intelligence has shown an impressive 
ability to track American military movements and respond at speed. 
American deployments in Turkey and northern Iraq were discovered 
and brought forth a rapid change of Iraqi tactics. On the morning 
of Wednesday, March 13, the Special Republican Guards Adnan Division, 
which had been on its way out of the Mosul district after being 
ordered to pull back to the Tikrit-Baghdad central region, suddenly 
turned in its tracks. By Thursday night, the division was 
repositioned around Mosul, the oil fields and along the Mosul-Kirkuk 
highway. Concurrent with this maneuver, the 5th Iraqi Army was told 
to pull out of its positions in northern Kurdistan - particularly 
Jabel Finjar opposite the Turkish frontier, and regroup around 
Kirkuk and its oilfields.

Military analysts interpret these movements to mean that Saddam 
Hussein has made a last-minute switch in his plan to concentrate 
all his military strength in an Iron Triangle to defend Iraq's 
heartland and the cities of Baghdad and Tikrit - as we reported in 
a previous issue, and has decided instead to defend the northern 
oil fields after all. Therefore, if the Americans, the Turks and 
the Kurds expected the oil fields of the north to drop into their 
laps without a fight, they will have to think again. Our military 
experts recall that a battalion of armed Iranian opposition 
Mujaheddin el-Khalq suicides is posted at Kirkuk with orders to 
torch the oil fields when the Americans land. There is no knowing 
if Saddam will order this act of destruction to go forward in order 
to defend the two oil cities, or put it on hold until he sees which 
way the fighting goes.

US aerial war in force

On Sunday, March 9, Saddam Hussein completed the concentration in 
the Baghdad region of six of the seven divisions of his Special 
Republican Guards, his primary combat strength.

Saddam's Iron Triangle.

Our military sources say that over last weekend, the Tewakalna 
(Trust in Allah) Division was brought over from the southern 
Iraqi oil fields and Nassiriyeh.

The redeployment of this fighting division completes the Iron 
Triangle formation we reported earlier, setting up a shield to 
defend Baghdad and Tikrit, buttressed by six divisions and covering 
a piece of terrain with a radius of 50 km. These divisions have 
not been permitted to enter either city, but are deployed around 
them.

General Tommy Franks was waiting for just this moment, when the 
entire core of Saddam's combat strength was assembled in a single, 
enclosed area. Twenty-four hours after the Tewakalna Division 
moved north, American and British warplanes homed in to strike 
the optic fiber communications backbone of Baghdad's defenses and 
the outer fringes of the new concentration. They are acting on the 
same strategy in Iraq's central heartland and cities as they did 
in the north and south - first knocking out Iraqi communications 
centers, especially the ones operating on optical fibers, then 
targeting artillery and missiles - and finally tanks.

The American-led forces have finished stages one and two, but 
have not yet gone for Iraq's tank forces. With the vast number of 
warplanes at their disposal ò 500-600 ò this softening up 
preliminary to the invasion, up to and including the destruction 
of Iraqi tanks, should be over and done with in the space of a week.

Might Saddam's elite divisions stage a coup?

Military and intelligence sources question if this concentration of 
Iraq fighting strength in the Iron Triangle will guarantee the 
defense of Saddam's regime against an American onslaught. The 
question facing Saddam Hussein is this: Can he trust those units? 
Or will they turn against him, when the Americans are at hand, 
instead of the assailants. His qualms are reflected in the manner 
in which he has deployed his four elite armored divisions in the 
Iron Triangle: Hamurabi, Nebuchadnezzar, Al Medina and Saddam's 
Fedayeen suicides. To wage a last stand in this arena, Saddam 
would need to surround it with an outer chain of defense and group 
his four most loyal divisions in the center - that is in Baghdad. 
However there is no sign so far that these divisions have been 
allowed into the city.

Intelligence experts of the US war command suspect the Iraqi ruler 
may be afraid that, once inside the capital, they will stage a coup 
to overthrow him and then offer the American commanders terms for 
entering Baghdad without a fight. Our military sources report that 
General Franks has glued every electronic and human surveillance 
resource at his disposal to tracking the movements of those four 
divisions. If they are kept out of Baghdad, they will be easy prey 
for American warplanes and missiles. But if they go in, Saddam and 
his ruling elite could well become the first casualties of war - 
and the last.

Southern bridges as potential flashpoints

Thursday, March 13, military sources report, 8-10 battalions of US 
special troops drove from Kuwait into Iraq and split into two 
columns: Five battalions captured the oil fields on the Kuwaiti-
Iraqi frontier and, by Friday morning, were on their way to the 
big oil fields around Basra, backed up by American and British 
commandos.

The remaining battalions headed for the two big bridges on the 
Euphrates River near Nassiriyeh. The plan is to drop by parachute 
large-scale US special forces at the bridges so that they can 
link up with the battalions and seize the bridges before the 
Iraqis blow them up. Eliminating the bridges would considerably 
hold up the progress of heavy US armored forces from Kuwait to 
Baghdad.

Our sources add that if the Iraqi units guarding the bridges do 
not surrender, the American invaders will get their first taste 
of real combat in Iraq.

They also report that all the aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, 
including the British Ark Royal, advanced Thursday to the northern 
tip of the Gulf and are now anchored opposite the Faw Peninsula and 
the southern entry to the Shatt al Arb. Their escort and auxiliary 
vessels deployed there two days earlier. The US-UK fleets are now in 
position to lower the troops on their decks to shore for the conquest 
of Faw, Umm al Qasr and Basra.


Last-Ditch Mediation

Former Lebanese President and US Officer Call on Saddam

Denials aside, intelligence sources report that former Lebanese 
president Amin Gemayel visited Baghdad twice this month on a secret 
mediation mission.

He handed Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein Washington's final offer to 
quit Iraq with his family - including his sons Uday and Qusay - and 
the country's top political and military leadership, and go into 
exile in an Arab country. The offer included safe conduct guarantees 
for Saddam and his entourage along with a US pledge not to freeze 
his secret bank accounts.

Gemayel's personal relationship with Saddam dates to back to the 
1970s and early 1980s, when he was chief of the Lebanese Christian 
Phalange militia in Beirut. In those days, he was a frequent visitor 
to Baghdad, accepting largesse from Saddam to the tune of millions 
of dollars to support his Christian fighters. The bond of friendship 
the two men developed then is still strong today.

According to intelligence sources, Saddam rolled out the red carpet 
for his guest this month, hosting Gemayel in his Baghdad and Tikrit 
palaces and clearing his calendar as if he had all the time in the 
world to prepare for a US attack.

The last time he visited Baghdad, March 7-10, the Lebanese politician 
was accompanied by a special guest - an American colonel. This officer 
was received by Saddam for an afternoon tete-a-tete on March 8.

Our sources are unsure just how the US officer - who knows Saddam 
personally - got himself invited to Iraq. They assume Gemayel 
wangled the invitation during an earlier visit. At the same, Saddam's 
acquaintance with the American colonel apparently dates back to the 
Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when he paid a number of secret visits 
to Baghdad. The American was there again just before the first Gulf 
War in 1991.

Gemayel tied up the last ends of the American's Baghdad trip from 
Amman. Intelligence sources report that the colonel crossed into 
Iraq either from Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. Gemayel and senior Iraqi 
intelligence officials were waiting for him and they all flew 
immediately by plane and then helicopter to a secret meeting place 
near Baghdad. A senior intelligence source, who was briefed on the 
conversation between Saddam and the US officer, reports that the 
Lebanese ex-president and an interpreter - a short man who spoke 
only whenever Saddam whispered something in his ear - were also 
present. After Saddam warmly shook his hand, the colonel said: It's 
been a long time since I last saw you, but you seem to be in great 
shape. You are a great soldier and I'm looking forward to facing you 
on the battlefield.

When do you intend to attack and try to kill me? Saddam asked.
Basically, after the March 19 deadline passes, came the reply.

'You managed to get me to destroy my missiles,' the Iraqi leader 
said, pausing for effect. 'Is the 19th the date of the attack or 
just the day when you want me to leave Iraq? After all, that's 
what you came for.'

The colonel answered: 'According to our orders, that's the date 
when we are supposed to head out and get you. And we've already 
been told, Don't come back with him left in place.'

Saddam was not pleased. 'You are the sons of Satan. Go to hell. I'm 
not afraid of you.'

'We may not even wait until the 19th now,' the colonel shot back.

'Well then,' Saddam said. 'What's the offer and where do you want 
me to go?'

'Egypt, Sudan, Syria - there's a long list of offers. Even Iran 
made an offer.' A defiant Saddam answered in English: I will die 
before I surrender.'

Tempers flared as the colonel told the Iraqi leader: 'If you don't 
leave, we will target you.'

A fuming Saddam began talking gibberish, before finally calming 
down and whispering something to the interpreter, who said: 'The 
president believes he is going to send you back to your leaders 
in a box as a message.'

The American officer was unfazed.

'In that case, the war would start today,' he replied. 'We know 
where you are every day.'

'I have no fear of death,' Saddam said.

According to sources, the conversation then turned to the 
underground bunkers where Saddam and his family planned to seek 
shelter from US bombs.

'How long do you think you can hold out there? Maybe four to six 
weeks, tops,' the colonel said.

'Don't worry, when I have to get out, I will,'Saddam said.

'We all know that if you leave your shelter after the war begins, 
the people on the street and Iraqi troops will tear you to shreds,' 
the officer said.

Saddam replied with a dismissive wave of the hand.

Time was up, and Gemayel and the colonel flew back to the Iraqi 
border. At the frontier, Gemayel bade the officer farewell and 
returned to Saddam's palace in Baghdad.

According to our information, the US colonel arrived in Kuwait 
early on Wednesday, March 12, and made his report immediately to 
Washington. From Baghdad, Gemayel made his way to Amman and sent 
his own equally pessimistic report to Washington.

Telephone Summitry Revisited

Putin Is Back On-line to Warn Bush of Security Council Trap

After a long, chilly pause, Russian president Vladimir Putin and US 
president George W. Bush had a heart to heart conversation on March 6 
of the kind that became routine before and during the Afghan War - 
but not much since Iraq took center stage.

This time too, Putin did most of the talking and what he conveyed, 
according to exclusive information reaching sources in Washington 
and Moscow, was a grim warning: Run as fast as you can from the 
Security Council. Spelling out his strange message, Putin said: 
'Drop the resolution. Don't let it go to vote. I'm talking as a 
friend. The same people who ambushed you (the United States) in 
Mogadishu and Srebrenica are now lying in wait for you again both 
in the Security Council and, later, in Iraq.'

The US-UK second resolution on Iraq, he explained, was playing 
straight into the hands of those people. By giving the Security 
Council sole power to determine the legitimacy of the allied 
coalition's diplomatic posture and offensive against Iraq, Washington 
was storing trouble for itself; it was planting an obstacle in the 
path of its own action and putting it in the hands of its foremost 
antagonist, France. Chirac, Putin warned, had hatched a scheme for 
turning the Security Council around to undermine the US-led coalition 
at a critical juncture in its offensive.

At the time of Putin's warning, Bush and British premier Tony Blair 
were still working flat out for a majority of nine to back a 
resolution serving Saddam with a tight ultimatum to prove by March 17 
that he was acting to disarm. They believed a majority vote, even if 
nullified by a French veto, would lend moral weight to military 
action against Iraq.

Six days later, Bush ò possibly under the influence of Putin's 
advice - showed strong signs of washing his hands of international 
diplomacy and pressing on with his offensive against Iraq without 
waiting for UN sanction. He appeared to have decided against a formal 
declaration of war but instead letting the assault unfold, mainly by 
means of rapid, covert strikes to capture large swathes of territory.

The telephone call melted much of the chill that overlaid
Washington-Moscow relations ever since Moscow teamed up with Paris 
and Berlin to block US military action in Iraq. Putin made a 
strenuous effort to restore the personal trust and cooperation he 
and Bush had maintained in the Afghan War. This give and take 
relationship was initiated in the landmark telephone conversations 
they held on September 13 and 23, 2001 (reported at length in DEBKA 
#32 5 Oct 2001) in the aftershock of the al Qaeda attacks in New 
York and Washington.

On March 6, the Russian leader explained that his real policy on 
Iraq was quite different from its public presentation. He was far 
from hopping into bed with Germany and France - and certainly not 
with Chirac. Russia, he said, will do what it can to avoid the 
Security Council proceedings on Iraq and imposing a veto. But he 
advised Bush it would be in his best interest to stop hanging about 
waiting for UN legitimacy; if he had resolved to act on Iraq, then 
he should go ahead and do it now.

Putin backed up that advice, according to sources, by exposing the 
game behind France's obstructionism, recalling how in their 
September 13 conversation, the Russian leader handed Bush 
confidential information on the intelligence networks behind al 
Qaeda. Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, he now disclosed, 
were disingenuous in their fight to turn the UN and the 
international community against a US-led war in Iraq. Their short-
term tactics were really aimed at egging the US president on to 
attack, and then leading him into an entanglement deadly enough to 
humiliate America, cripple the presidency and force the American 
army to beat an embarrassing retreat from Iraq. Chirac intended to 
achieve this goal in two steps.

The first would be to veto the US-UK resolution so as to deprive 
the offensive of international sanction; the second would be the 
deployment in Iraq of a French or European force  'if he can get 
one organized ' to be positioned near the southern oil fields and 
serve as a barrier against the US advance from Kuwait.

The French-sponsored force would be presented to the Security 
Council as an - international protective contingent - As the force 
took position, France would file a companion motion ordering the 
withdrawal of all illegal 'foreign invasion forces' from Iraq and 
the cessation of all hostilities.

The British, to whom Washington has assigned to a military zone in 
southern Iraq, would be specifically targeted. Chirac would thus 
enlist the Security Council to his effort for expelling the British 
and then the Americans from Iraq. Washington would have no option 
but to veto the motion. However, France would have gained an 
internationally recognized military foothold in the region 
alongside US forces, as well as Security Council support for a 
military presence to guard French interests in the Gulf and Arabia 
and create a safe haven for Saddam, his sons and top Baath and 
military leaders.

Reviving a personal alliance

As part of his warning, Putin offered to revive Russian-US military 
cooperation and place Russian military and intelligence resources at 
Bush's disposal, as he did in the dire post-9/11 days leading into 
the Afghan War.

Two days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the 
Pentagon, the Russian leader, as reported on October 5, 2001, laid 
out for Bush for the first time the most sensitive intelligence 
data available to the Kremlin on al Qaeda's leaders and their 
intelligence and logistic backers for strikes against US targets. He 
named those sponsors, which included Iraqi military intelligence and 
Saudi Arabia's GIS general intelligence service, and offered the US 
president the names of the senior officers and agents who directly 
aided Bin Laden's terrorists.

Bush was finally convinced that Putin's offer was sincere when he 
leveled with him on the role played by Russian intelligence. The 
Russian leader named the names of former top Russian intelligence 
officials, late of the First Chief Directorate - the Soviet KGB's 
foreign intelligence arm - who had been selling their services to 
business interests in the Arab world and Europe from the time the 
communist empire broke up in 1991. Those officers knew perfectly 
well that the intelligence they were handing over to their paymasters 
would end up ultimately in the laps of al Qaeda.

Putin, himself a former First Chief Directorate high officer of many 
Cold War years, promised in September 2001 to extract from those 
officers the goods needed to enable America to conduct an effective 
global war against terror.

That demonstrative offer of help became the lynchpin of the accord 
between the American and Russian presidents over joint military 
action in Afghanistan. Military intelligence sources say that even 
today, not all the details of that joint venture have come out. For 
instance, Washington and Moscow are still guarding the secret of how 
Russian and Ubzek tanks led the armored thrust against Mazraat al-
Sharif and Konduz in October 2001 and the subsequent pincer movement 
that led to the capture of Kabul.

However, in the Fall of 2002, the Russian president told his advisers 
he was disenchanted with his working relationship with the US leader. 
His wholehearted military and intelligence collaboration, he said, 
had not been adequately reciprocated. His list of grievances was a 
long one, topped by Washington's lack of support on the Chechnya 
conflict:

He charged Washington with a change of attitude after the victory in 
Afghanistan. From that time on, the Americans adopted a go-it-alone 
posture in the global campaign against terror, fobbing off allies 
and their concerns. He was particularly peeved by the Bush adminis-
tration's opposition to Russian military operations in the Pankisi 
Gorge, whose objective was to flush terrorists out of the haven and 
training ground they had established in this inaccessible corner of 
the Russian-Georgian frontier.

'That area is used by terrorists as a dangerous stamping ground,' 
Putin warned world leaders, including German chancellor Gerhard 
Schroeder and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, when they visited 
him in recent months. 'Ultimately, more terrorist attacks on the 
9/11 model will be mounted from there and reach Moscow, London, 
Berlin and Tel Aviv.' Putin was additionally disappointed by what 
he saw as Washington's unwillingness to cooperate with Russia in 
developing Central Asia's oil and gas fields and building a gas 
pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and from there to India.

His third grievance was the paucity of US financial assistance to 
Russia. Upon learning of the Russian president's catalogue of 
complaints, White House, Pentagon, national security council and 
CIA officials shook their heads and lamented Putin's transformation 
from an active to a passive ally. 'Vladimir Putin is sitting around 
waiting for us to do his job for him,' they commented. 'It doesn't 
work like that. We are prepared to help him in all his endeavors 
but we can't do his work for him.'

White House-Kremlin dissonance hit its worst patch when Moscow 
joined the campaign by France and Germany to impede US military 
action to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Chirac as common adversary

The Putin-Bush telephone conversation of March 6 was an important 
step on the to path to fence-mending, taking off from the Russian 
president's advocacy of a common front against the machinations of 
French President Chirac and an offer to resume a generous degree 
of diplomatic, military and intelligence cooperation between the 
two countries. Russian experts report the gist of Putin's 
presentation of France's strategic ambitions as follows:

Chirac is planning to exploit the American-Israeli military and 
political alliance to isolate them both in the Middle East and 
portray them in the Arab world as hostile co-conspirators. This 
stratagem will be a means to the end of restoring France to what 
its president regards as his country's historic role in the region 
as the dominant world power. According to Putin, Chirac's ambitions 
transcend the Middle East. He expects to ride the tempest he raised 
over Iraq all the way to the top spot in Europe. From his 
conversations with the French president and input from the Russian 
security service FSB, the Russian president concluded that Chirac 
believes he has maneuvered German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder into 
an inferior position, where he must follow France's Europe-popular 
lead whether he likes it or not.

Chirac, says Putin, has sized up Schroeder's situation as follows:

The chancellor's strongest rival, foreign minister Joschka Fischer, 
has been pushing him into France's corner, but will at some point 
perform an about-face and seek Washington's support for his own 
candidacy. Schroeder is onto Fischer's duplicity but is helpless to 
fight back because the foreign minister holds compromising material 
on his private life, especially his extramarital affairs. With 
American unpopularity in Europe at a peak and Schroeder in the bag, 
Chirac feels free to further his grand scheme by polishing off Tony 
Blair.

At that point in the Putin-Bush conversation, the million dollar 
question came up, according to sources: What are Chirac's sources 
for the high-grade insider information essential for the sort of 
high-stakes power game not seen since the Cold War? This question 
occupied the most compelling part of the long exchange between the 
two leaders.

Putin drew on his personal background in the KGB for an answer. He 
referred to a coalition of European and Middle Eastern intelligence 
bodies rampant in the second half of the 20th century and during 
the Cold War, and said he was convinced it had regrouped, adapted 
and was going strong again in the new millennium.

While serving many masters, this clandestine coalition had always 
been faithful to one goal, the undermining of America as the number 
one superpower by burrowing under its political, military and 
economic foundations. Since the demise of the Soviet Union and 
attendant crumbling of hierarchies, this group has undergone various 
metamorphoses and filled in ranks depleted by changes such as the 
retirement or reduced activity of former KGB and other components.

The anti-US group began its recovery after George W. Bush and 
Dick Cheney entered the White House and the 9/11 attacks focused 
the United States on a global war against terrorism. These events 
placed the enemy squarely back in its sights. By then, the under-
cover coalition was back in action. It had absorbed private 
security bodies and begun to serve not so much sovereign states 
as economic interests, mainly in Europe and the Middle East.

Viewing the burgeoning Islamic terror movement as the enemy's enemy, 
the reconstituted intelligence group decided that America's global 
war on terrorism was detrimental to its own interests.

That judgment applied doubly to the Bush decision to make war on 
Iraq, the most important, richest and strongest Arab country. The 
conquest of Baghdad, overthrow of Saddam Hussein and capture of 
one of the world's most abundant oil reserves would shut down the 
covert organization's most important arena for years to come. Bush 
and his military plans for Iraq must therefore be thwarted with 
every weapon in the versatile group's arsenal.

Once again, Putin named names, revealing the identities of the 
group's leading members, all of them former key players in national 
security agencies and diplomatic corps, business and international 
finance.

The Russian president named only one high-placed name in politics: 
the former UN secretary general and Egyptian foreign secretary 
Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Outside the limelight, he is the third 
member of the Paris threesome dedicated to fighting American 
interests, alongside Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin. 
As the most creative strategic thinker of the three, Boutros-Ghali 
is in Putin's view the brain behind Chirac's anti-US campaign on 
Iraq.

Man with a past

Intelligence sources report that the name Boutros-Ghali is very 
familiar in certain circles in Washington. They recall what 
happened when he applied for a second term as UN Secretary General 
in 1996 and why his bid was defeated.

President Bill Clinton, secretary of state Madeleine Albright, 
defense secretary William Cohen, national security adviser Anthony 
Lake, CIA Director John Deutsch and his deputy George Tenet got 
together secretly at the White House to confer on the second term. 
Albright was vigorously opposed to retaining the Egyptian diplomat 
at the head of the world body. Her judgment was borne out by 
intelligence data on his record. The evidence of his activities 
in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993, in Bosnia and Serbia in 1995 and 
1996 as well as his operations in and around UN headquarters in 
New York led them to the conclusion that he had been exploiting 
his office as UN secretary to harm America's national and security 
interests.

The Mogadishu battle of October 1993 in which American forces were 
trapped, into what was later described as the 'biggest firefight 
involving American combatants since Vietnam', led American troops 
to their first face-to-face encounter with al Qaeda fighters in 
the ranks of the local rebel chief - and disaster. Intelligence 
information gathered later raised suspicions that elements in the 
UN secretary's office in charge of the Somali operation may well 
have engineered the trap for the purpose of forcing the Americans 
into a humiliating retreat and loss of face.

The intelligence background of the civil war in Bosnia Herzegovina, 
in which Serbian and Croatian armies participated, bears remarkable 
parallels to the Mogadishu contretemps. There too, UN forces went 
in first, followed by American troops, who are still there. Both 
times, a behind-the-scenes hand in the UN secretary's office 
manipulated events in such a way as to mire American troops and 
policies in situations that would gravely damage America's world 
standing.

Some intelligence reports raised troubling questions about the 
nature of the relationship between Boutros-Ghali's office in New 
York and the UN force commander of Yugoslavia at the time, the 
French General Bernard Janvier, whom the CIA strongly suspected of 
maintaining clandestine ties with espionage bodies hostile to the 
United States. Intelligence sources report that these past cases 
were aired in the March 6 telephone conversation between Presidents 
Bush and Putin as pertinent to the evaluations they traded on the 
current difficulties besetting the White House's Iraq war policy. 
Putin reminded the American president that, when they talked on 
September 13, they agreed they would not continue to resort to 
outside political military or intelligence bodies inimical to the 
United States, but trust only to the reciprocal ties between their 
own undercover resources. Russia, he promised, would share with Bush 
any intelligence input he needed on these matters. That decision 
was the right one, he said, but when the Afghanistan War came to an 
end, certain people in Washington went back to the old sources, the 
ones who had acted against American interests through the 1990s. He 
held up America's misfortunes in the Security Council over Iraq as 
the outcome of these mistaken alliances.

Tony Blair at risk

When Bush asked what he thought would become of the British premier, 
Tony Blair, Putin replied, according to intelligence sources, that 
as far as he knew the British intelligence services had abandoned 
him. This confirmed the US intelligence assessment that the British 
secret service had tipped off certain Labor, Conservative and Social 
Democrat MPs, that Blair was no longer their man. In the Russian 
leader's view, if the British prime minister continues to sink at 
the present rate, he will not be around much longer. The two 
presidents also conferred on the emissaries both have been sending 
to Baghdad to persuade Saddam Hussein to remove himself and avert 
the war.

The CIA has been using the former Lebanese president Amin Gemayel 
(See separate section in this report), while the FSB had sent former 
Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov (as revealed exclusively by 
DEBKA on February 25).

They agreed that there was little to choose between their 
propositions to the Iraqi ruler. Both offered safe conduct for him, 
his family and top members of his regime, if he consented to go 
into exile. The only difference was that the Russian plan offered 
him internal exile ò an old Stalinist custom for political dissidents - 
while the Americans demanded he shake Iraqi dust off his shoes for 
good.

Finally, Bush asked the Russian leader what help he could offer the 
Americans now fighting in Iraq.

Our sources in Moscow disclose the four points outlined by Putin:

1. Russia will refrain from exercising its veto against the 
US-British-Spanish proposed resolution in the Security Council.

2. Russia will place certain Russian special forces units on the 
ready at bases in Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan for immediate departure 
for Iraq. They will include spetsnaz fighters, units who carried out 
training exercises in Iraq in recent years and are familiar with the 
terrain and tribal dialects, and also rapid deployment contingents 
of the 1st Rifles Division. They are to be contingency forces, to 
be dispatched in total secrecy only if Americans troops are 
surrounded and needed to be rescued from being wiped out. The 
Russian expeditionary force will be equipped and trained for 
combat in areas contaminated by nuclear, chemical and biological 
weapons.

3. If any further assistance is required, the two presidents will 
talk again over the direct line linking the White House and the 
presidential office in the Kremlin.

4. To make his own preparation for the emergency, Putin tightened 
his control over the Russian intelligence services. As a result of 
the telephone conversation between the two presidents, the 
information reached Washington that the Russian president was 
about to convert the FAPSI agency responsible for government 
communications and electronic surveillance, the counterpart of 
the American National Security Agency, from an autonomous body 
to a department in the Federal Security Service, the FSB, 
successor to the KGB.

Our sources in Moscow add that, when Bush asked him the reason 
for the reshuffle, Putin replied that he had discovered there 
were still agents in the FAPSI maintaining illicit ties with 
foreign clandestine bodies. He had put the whole agency under 
close scrutiny, he said half-jokingly, so as 'to avoid the fate 
that had overtaken Tony Blair'.

In the same reorganization, the Russian president secured control 
over Russia's border guards divisions, which he himself had headed 
in 1998, by transferring them from the Interior Ministry to the 
federal security service.

He also put the border guards on high alert following intelligence 
he had received that when the US attack on Iraq begins, al Qaeda 
units will try and cross into Russia for largescale terrorist 
attacks, using Chechnya, the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia, and Afghanistan 
via Tajikistan as springboards. Bin Laden's commanders would also 
try to head out of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, the Fernanga Valley 
and Kazakhstan to reach and activate sleeper terrorist cells 
planted in Russia.

Iran's Nuclear New Year Production Target: A Miniaturized Nuke

Iran is about to celebrate its March 21 New Year in a nuclear though 
not a big - way. The uranium conversion plant at Esfahan, which will 
produce UF-6, a gas used for uranium enrichment, will be operational 
in a few weeks. That will be the New Year's gift to the nation that 
Iran's spiritual leader Ali Khamenei intends to announce.

Two years ago, Iran secretly purchased large quantities of UF-6 from 
China in violation of Teheran's commitments under the nuclear non-
proliferation treaty. US intervention with Beijing halted the 
shipments. Now, thanks to the Esfahan facility, Iran will no longer 
be dependent on foreign suppliers.

The plant will also manufacture centrifuge units that can be used to 
make weapons-grade uranium. The units are to be taken to the Kala 
Electric factory in a north Teheran suburb for testing. Kala, 
ostensibly a factory for watches, is located several dozen kilometers 
from the Moallem Kalayeh complex of underground chambers where Iran 
is reported to have built secret nuclear facilities.

All this has the United States worried. Washington has no doubt 
Iran intends to achieve a high level of centrifuge expertise so 
that it can make highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombs.

The latest developments follow a visit to Teheran last month by 
Mohamed El Baradei, director of the International Atomic Energy 
Agency (IAEA), who was shown a building under construction for a 
uranium enrichment facility near Natanz. But sources say the 
Iranians made sure he did not spot the telltale signs that the 
facility would be used to produce weapons-grade uranium.

One giveaway would have been the presence of a large number of 
centrifuges, such as are required to enrich uranium to a degree 
of 85 to 90 percent. However, back in August, Iranian leaders 
ordered some of those centrifuges to be dismantled, after their 
intelligence services reported the discovery by Israel and the 
United States that the enrichment plant was under construction, 
labeled officially as a anti-desertification project although it 
was going up in a particularly lush region.

By the time El Baradei showed up, he could see only enough 
centrifuges for uranium enrichment of 10 percent. Part of the 
stock was hidden behind a dividing wall beyond which the nuclear 
inspector was denied access.

Surprisingly, El Baradei gave the miss to another suspect facility, 
the heavy water plant under construction in the city of Arak, some 
150 miles (240 km) south of Tehran. After Iran's nuclear program 
was exposed, work at Arak was suspended for a time as authorities 
looked for ways to continue to fool the world. Iran subsequently 
decided last summer to stop installing the equipment necessary for 
large-scale heavy water production. Instead, it opted for small-
scale production that will be gradually increased as international 
interest in Iran's nuclear weapons project wanes.

The engineer in charge of the project has been identified as Behnam 
Asgar-pour. Meanwhile, uranium mining is proceeding at full speed 
at the Chadramlou quarry in the Saghand region near the city of 
Kashan. Dr. Ghassem Soleimani is the head of this project, assisted 
by chief production engineer Mehdi Kabir-zadeh.

Over the past few months, Iran has secretly hosted groups of nuclear 
experts from North Korea, China, Pakistan and Russia. They came to 
help establish a minimum size for an Iranian nuclear bomb and look 
into the production of radiological, or 'dirty', atomic devices 
for terrorist use. The results of the visits are still unclear. 
But Iran is seriously interested in producing a lightweight, 
miniaturized bomb suitable for terrorists and delivery from small 
aircraft or drones.

HOT POINTS

A Digest of the Week's Exclusives

9 March: Nominating his most outspoken critic, Mahmoud Abbas, 68, 
the veteran PLO secretary general usually known as Abu Mazen, as 
first Palestinian prime minister certainly stuck in Yasser Arafat's 
throat. Yet he went through with his presentation to the PLO Central 
Committee and the Central Council in Ramallah, on Saturday, March 8 
and Sunday March 9.

To make sure the Palestinian leader did not back out at the last 
minute, Israel conveyed a hint that he may be closer to deportation 
than he thinks.

Monday, March 10, the Palestinian Legislative Council is due to 
determine what authority the new position will carry.

The showdown between Arafat and Abu Mazen over the division of 
authority between them is the focus of heated deliberations in 
these labyrinthine institutions. But a senior Palestinian source 
reported that at this stage, Abu Mazen has been neatly out maneuvered. 
The nominee insists that without real powers, he will not take the 
job. He is demanding authority to lead any negotiations with Israel 
and choose his ministers. He is thinking in terms of a cabinet of 
apolitical technocrats and he hopes for majority backing at the 
Legislative Council meeting on Monday, March 10. However, on the 
way to the Council meeting, our Palestinian source reports a decision 
rammed through by Arafat's backers leaving him in full command of 
all Palestinian security and police organizations. Any authority 
conferred on Abu Mazen to negotiate with Israel or achieve a ceasefire 
is valueless as long as the power to halt Palestinian terror is out 
of his hands.

Abu Mazen strongly disputes Arafat's basic precepts, the mainsprings 
of the Intifada, especially his conviction that Palestinian violence, 
especially his campaign of suicidal terror, will destroy Israel once 
and for all. He is equally sure that his ally, Saddam Hussein, will
beat the Americans and the anti-war coalition will then form up behind 
the Palestinians. Abu Mazen regards Arafat as deluded. He fears the 
Palestinian people is cracking under the burden of violence and 
Arafat's all-out support for Saddam Hussein will lead the Palestinian 
people to disaster as it did in 1991.

The Palestinian leader was finally cornered into agreeing to create 
a prime minister's post by his last remaining supporters, the 
Europeans. The European Union emissary, Miguel Moratinos, and UN 
Middle East Envoy Terje-Larsen, bearded Arafat in his Ramallah 
office and warned him: 'If you don't appoint a prime minister with 
real authority, by next week you'll find yourself in Cyprus!'

But, in private, he never for a moment abandoned his conviction 
that his fate vis a vis Israel and Saddam's fate opposite the 
Americans were inextricably linked. To his close aides, he 
confided his belief that 'they' - meaning the Israelis and the 
Americans - were pushing the Abu Mazen appointment forward as a 
vehicle for getting rid of him and effecting a regime change in 
Ramallah analogous to their goal in Baghdad. But he promised to 
fight with all his might so as not to let 'them' get away with it.

11 March: Pivotal developments in the last few hours have led 
Washington to a crossroads:

1. British prime minister Tony Blair has been threatened with a 
revolt in his cabinet and party if he orders the British army into 
battle alongside the United States without Security Council backing. 
America's primary war ally is in dire straits, which was apparent 
in the statement by foreign secretary Jack Straw in Manchester Monday 
that his government would be willing to consider a minor adjustment 
in the date of the Security Council ultimatum to Saddam Hussein.

The happenings in 10 Downing Street also have military fallout. If 
Blair is constrained by his political misfortunes from sending 
British troops in with the first US-led invasion wave - even if they 
arrive a few days later, the American war command will have to start 
the offensive short of the promised 40,000 British troops, pilots, 
commandos and sailors.

As revealed in Debka #100, the British 1st Armored Division is 
assigned to capturing all southeast Iraq, including the region's 
most important oil fields and the province of Khozistan abutting on 
Iran. British commandos are already playing a key role on the western 
front. They were intended to go on to be part of the main American-
British thrust from the west against Tikrit and Baghdad.

The non-participation of British troops in the first stages of the 
campaign will also affect allied aerial and naval deployments. The 
US war command will have five aircraft carriers at its disposal 
instead of six and 450-480 warplanes instead of 600.

This is a worst-case scenario and may not come about. Blair may 
decide to put his reputation and standing on the line and order 
the British army to go into action together with the Americans. 
Until this happens, however, the Bush team will be having sleepless 
nights.

2. These setbacks, real and potential, are having an adverse effect 
on other fronts, military and diplomatic. In Ankara, for instance. 
Washington had been assured that Recept Tayyup Erdogan once he took 
over as Turkish prime minister would quickly clear the way for the 
landing of 62,000 US troops in Turkish bases to open a second front 
in northern Iraq. But on Monday, March 10, Erdogan, clearly 
influenced by the diplomatic reverses suffered by Washington, 
sounded as though he was developing an incipient case of cold feet.

C. In the diplomatic arena, the US and Britain have suffered a 
stinging defeat in their campaign to drive a second Iraq resolution 
through the UN Security Council. What they needed was 9 votes out 
of 15 and no veto. What they had in the bag by Monday night, March 
10, was only the four votes of the US, Britain Spain and Bulgaria 
in favor, five opposed, including France and Russia who promised to 
veto the motion if it gained a majority, five waverers and one 
abstention, Pakistan. Instead of isolating France, as the leader 
of the anti-war camp, President Chirac succeeded in isolating the 
US and Britain.

D. Gulf sources reveal that Chirac spent most of Monday trying to 
persuade Saddam Hussein to make a grand gesture and, in an address 
over Iraqi television, announce the dismantling of an important 
weapon system of mass destruction and a major concession to the 
UN inspectors. The presidential palaces in Paris and Baghdad were 
still making the telephone wires hum as we wrote this.

In the light of all these setbacks, Bush and his team must take 
one of their hardest decisions since attaining the White House. 
Their options are shrinking as fast as the time at their disposal. 
Launching the war within days would mean fighting short-handed - 
at least in the early stages.

When the war is over, thorny questions will be asked about how 
American diplomacy came to fail so abjectly and how a war effort, 
planned in every political, military and logistical detail for more 
than a year, came to be launched before the armed forces were 
fully prepared.

Finally, while justly proud of capturing al Qaeda's No. 3 commander, 
the United States will find that adverse fortunes on the Iraq front 
will have an effect on its other front, the global war on 
international terror.

Israel is also bound to be affected by whatever is decided. 
Official spokesman have repeated ad nauseum that the US war on 
Iraq is not Israel's war, that the dangers to this country are 
minimal and that they will be dealt with by the Americans. Not 
surprisingly, these statements have never carried much weight with 
most Israelis. They are even less trusting in such outside guarantees 
now that grave uncertainties hover over United Nations, British and 
Turkish capabilities for action. It stands to reason that no nation 
facing a military threat from a neighbor, including missiles, 
warplanes, drones and suicides bearing chemical, biological and 
maybe radioactive weapons, can afford to play down these dangers 
or entrust its security to any hands other than its own.

This dictum Israel brushed off in the first Gulf war in 1991 and 
paid for it dearly in the 1993 Oslo Accords and its consequence: 
the Palestinian confrontation declared in 2000 and still raging. 
Israeli leaders look like making the same mistake again in 2003.