The latest bin Laden's tape "could be an impostor", says researcher Bengio

LONDON, November 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – While Britain is stepping up its propaganda battle in the Arab and Muslim worlds as part of preparations for a potential military war in Iraq, a former U.N. assistant secretary general said a U.S. attack would mean ‘more Mombasas, more Balis’, news agencies reported Saturday, November 30.

Hans von Sponeck, the UN's humanitarian aid co-coordinator in Iraq from 1998 to 2000, warned that the U.S. was doing all it could to provoke war with Baghdad, and was "brutally" pressurizing other governments to support its policies, according to BBC News Online.

However, most people in the Middle East saw no justification for any pre-emptive attack.

Von Sponeck, a German citizen, said, "I've been in Lebanon, Iraq itself, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - and if there's one common denominator, it's fear and rejection of the idea of war".

"I heard it from officials, and from people in the soaks. They see it as a war between Islam and Christianity, which of course it isn't - and they're so angry.

"No one, not even the casual reader, can miss the almost desperate attempts by the U.S. authorities to destroy the arms inspection before it's properly begun - to provoke a war, in fact.

"On Thursday the inspectors went to the al-Dawrah foot-and-mouth vaccine production laboratory. Journalists said it showed no signs of use 'to the untrained eye'.

"I went there with a German TV crew in July, and only the shell of the building was still standing. Nothing could come out of there.

"There are more than 700 sites to be examined, and it needs to be done professionally, with the inspectors left alone and put under no pressure.

"And nobody - media, individuals, or governments - should prejudge their findings."

If, despite the arms inspections, the U.S. were to attack Iraq, Von Sponeck thought the consequences would be apocalyptic.

"The early stages will go pretty much according to the U.S. plan", he said. "The Iraqi military is in miserable straits, quite desperate.

"It's been reduced to buying hand-made spare parts for its equipment from back-street workshops.

"So, we'll see high-flying technology knocking Iraq to smithereens. But if you want regime change, you'll have to have troops on the ground in the cities.

"The real test will come in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk, places like that - with all the inevitable casualties on all sides.

"The U.S. will win the battle fairly quickly, but it will lose the war. This will be world war three, but it won't be like the first two - it'll be a global terror war," he said.

"If it does come to war, I think we shall see many more Mombasas, more Balis. I shiver when I hear the extreme views some people have in the region.

"But there is a public conscience in the U.S., there are many people with a natural sense of human rights - there's a growing peace movement there.

"There and elsewhere, more people are realizing that we have got to tackle the causes of terrorism, not to practice it ourselves.

In a separate related development, British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, is to publish a Foreign Office dossier Monday, December 2, setting out the alleged brutal human rights record of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, according to British daily The Guardian.

"In the Arab and Muslim world, we have just got to keep reminding people about the nature of the person we are dealing with," a Foreign Office source was quoted as saying.

On Tuesday, September 24, British Prime Minister Tony Blair presented a long-awaited dossier on Iraq, telling parliament that Iraq may be only a year or two away from possessing a nuclear bomb, and has "military plans" for the use of chemical and biological weapons – "deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them".

The dossier was supposed to make a case that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction, pulls together human rights abuses in Iraq over the last two decades and focuses on the treatment of women and of prisoners.

For legal reasons, Britain, unlike the U.S., cannot justify an attack on Iraq on the grounds of regime change.

The Foreign Office source denied that the dossier was designed to make such a case.

The source alleged President Saddam's behavior towards his own people explained why he could not be trusted with weapons of mass destruction.

"His disregard for human life is why we can't let him have these weapons," he said.

The Foreign Office is also making longer-term plans to try to encourage changes in the Middle East through educational and cultural programs, dealing especially with democracy, human rights and freedom of women.

Straw, who will visit Turkey on Tuesday, December 3, is planning an interview with Muslim media outlets in the Arab world and in Britain next week to put across a message that war is not inevitable and that a route to peace is open to Iraq if it chooses to follow it.

A similar message will be conveyed in a signed article by Blair Saturday in Jang, an Urdu daily widely read in Britain as well as Pakistan and south-east Asia.

The British government has been more energetic than the U.S. since September 11 in the pursuit of hearts and minds in the Muslim world.

Various other initiatives are planned for next week, including a new station, Radio Sawa ("together"), set up by Washington, which has begun to try to woo the Arab world, The Guardian said.

At a cost of 35 million dollars (£22.5m), it broadcasts almost non-stop music - a sugary mixture of Arab and western pop, carefully researched to appeal to the under-30s. There are also brief news bulletins in Arabic every half hour.

Radio Sawa is intended to replace Voice of America's Arabic service, proved unpopular in the region.

The Public Broadcasting System of the U.S. is planning to broadcast a two-hour documentary on the life of Prophet Muhammad on December 18 and a day later rebroadcast a two-hour documentary on the diverse interpretations of Islam around the world.

The documentaries are mainly for internal consumption within the U.S.

Combined with this, the U.S. is dropping leaflets across southern Iraq in an effort to demoralize the population.

Planes dropped 360,000 leaflets over the southern no-fly zone Thursday, November 28, following U.S.-led attacks on unmanned communication facilities between al-Kut and Basra.

The American leaflet dropped on Iraq Thursday was the fifth such in the last two months.

It is designed to demoralize air defense forces and to discourage workers from repairing equipment damaged in air raids.

One leaflet warned Iraqis in Arabic not to attempt to repair fiber-optic cables.

"You are risking your life," it said. "The cables are tools used to suppress the Iraqi people by Saddam and his regime, they are targeted for destruction."

Another leaflet, addressed to Iraqi air defense forces, says: "The destruction experienced by your colleagues in other air defense locations is a response to your continuing aggression towards planes of the coalition forces.

"No tracking or firing on these aircraft will be tolerated. You could be next."

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