Trouble & Attitude 1/Trouble and Attitude - Issue 01.iso/pc/pctext/ewrepa1.txt

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(Beginning of Part 1)
Volume 12, No. 21, December 2, 1994

Opponents

Sheikh Zaki Yamani, the flamboyant former
Saudi oil minister, has emerged as a leading oppo-
sition figure to the House of Saud according to
reports from London. Yamani was sacked by
King Fahd eight years ago. His return to promi-
nence comes at a time when the 6,000-member
royal family is facing intense public disapproval.
That censure focuses on the greed of the Saudi
princes in reserving all positions of power for
themselves, their hard-drinking ostentatious flout-
ing of the strict Wahabbite religious laws on
which they base the legitimacy of their rule, and
their squandering of billions of dollars of Arabia's
oil revenues on personal luxury and non-essential
projects.

Yamani, a commoner lacking any blood tie to
the royal family, is the son of a religious judge.
He has not joined with any organized opposition
group in Saudi Arabia, but he has made his home
in Jiddah a focal point for critics of the Saudi
regime. Two of them, Mohamed Salahadeen, a
leading journalist, and Mohamed Tayeb, a busi-
nessman, were recently arrested. In addition, the
editor of Al-Yamama magazine was fired after he
published an interview with Yamani. The regime
failed to buy off Yamani by offering him a job as
the head of the Shura [Consultative Council], an
advisory group that King Fahd formed recently.
The King appoints its members and the council in
reality is powerless.

Yamani is supported by a considerable number
of mainline Sunni Muslims based in the Hejaz
region, the westernmost and most populous area
of the country. Hejaz is the highland and coastal
strip extending from Aqaba south along the Red
Sea and containing the holy shrines of Mecca and
Medina. From the 16th century until 1924 when
it was conquered by Ibn Saud, Hejaz was ruled by
Hashemites, who also provided the royal house of
Jordan and, briefly, Iraq. The opposition to the
House of Saud also comes from Arabia's Shi'ite
minority, concentrated in the oil-rich eastern
region along the Persian Gulf where they com-
prise a significant portion of the population, and
the observing Wahhabis, led by the Committee for
the Defense of Legitimate Rights, now operating
visibly from London.

Yamani has begun to issue reports from his
London base, the Centre for Global Energy
Studies, that directly contradict official Saudi

IN THIS ISSUE

1Opponents: The House of Saud faces chal-
lengers of credibility.

2Chemical Biological Weapons: New data
on deadly programs in Yeltsin's Russia.

3Africa Briefs: Shorter items from Somalia,
South Africa and Zimbabwe.

4Intelligence of a Superpower: Japan con-
siders reorganization of its intelligence agencies.

5Jiang's Stature: Efforts by Deng's allies to
jump-start a personality cult reveal the general
secretary's weak position.

6Asia and Pacific Briefs: Reports from Ban-
gladesh, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Palau and
Taiwan.

7The Mafia Wins: An inconsequential
report on the U.N. crime conference in Naples!

8Berlusconi's Bombs: Italy's fragile ruling
coalition faces new troubles from charges of
corruption and attempts to produce a balanced
budget.

9The End of NATO? NATO's political and
military defeats pave the way for the success of
the toothless talk-fest of the Conference on
Security and Cooperation in Europe next week.

10Europe Briefs: Stories datelined Austria,
France, Hungary, Italy, Romania and Turkey.

11The Green Machine: With the passage of
new laws in Europe and North America, envi-
ronmental auditing takes on a life of its own.

12Tehran's Long Arm: Reports from Europe of
potential terrorist attacks on Morocco and vari-
ous Gulf States in the wake of the Casablanca
economic conference.

reports on policy. The center's disputes of the
official claim that Saudi Arabia's present financial
crisis was caused by the Gulf war. "Our studies
show that Saudi Arabia's real income increased as
a result of the Gulf war," said Fadhil Chalabi, the
center's director.

The British government recently refused politi-
cal asylum to Dr. Mohammed al-Massari, a foun-
der and leader of the Committee for the Defense
of Legitimate Rights, the most prominent opposi-
tion group. Al-Massari, formerly a professor of
physics at King Saud University in Riyadh, was
arrested and jailed for six months last year.

On his release, he traveled to Yemen and on a
Yemeni passport in April arrived in London
where he immediately began an outspoken cam-
paign, castigating the Saudi regime and criticizing
its policies. Al-Massari says that his 18-year-old
son, Anmar, has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia
and is being used as a hostage to persuade him to
return to Riyadh.

The Saudi government put strong pressure on
the British government, which highly values its
ties to Riyadh, to deny al-Massari political asylum
or residency in London where he would be guar-
anteed a major audience of media and human
rights organizations. The United Kingdom sells
the Saudi regime billions of pounds worth of arms
and is committed to shoring up the ruling family.
The British government has ordered al-Massari to
either leave the country or be deported; but he
says he first will appeal.

The British decision to expel this Arabian
opposition leader follows a visit of Prime Minister
John Major to Saudi Arabia in September. Major
is believed to have agreed that dissidents would
not be allowed to operate from Britain.

Al-Massari's American-born wife Lujain said,
"If he is deported to Yemen, the chances of him
being kidnapped or assassinated will go up dra-
matically."

Biological Warfare

Now its semi-official. A recent paper by Russian
scientists and Harvard's controversial Matthew
Meselson, debunker of mycotoxins ["yellow rain"]
and other Russian biological or toxin-based weap-
ons, confirms that the April 1979 outbreak of
anthrax in Sverdlosk - seven years after Moscow
signed the Biological Weapons Convention -
resulted from an accident in a biological warfare
plant, the Microbiology and Virology Institute.
Hundreds died of pulmonary anthrax, but Moscow
said the epidemic came from infected meat. The
U.S. government did not believe the official word
from Moscow because the victims lived near the
research institute or worked there, they suffered
pulmonary anthrax, not the intestinal form and
because decontamination troops were on the roofs
and in the streets scrubbing down the whole
district with decontamination solutions - useless if
the source were infected meat.

The accident did not slow Moscow's biological
warfare research; but in 1992, when the need for
Western aid was intense, Russia announced all
such research would end that September. Yet
there is still no right to inspect suspect laborator-
ies or military bases; and given Moscow's record -
the truth is difficult to discern. However, at least
three defectors say that through September 1992
scientists at the Institute of Especially Pure Bio-
preparations at Lakhta, 20 miles outside St. Pet-
ersburg, were preparing to modify the bubonic
plague bacterium [yersenia pestis] - cause of the
Black Death that killed half to three-fourths of
the population of Asia and Europe in its first
outbreak in the 14th century - to make it more
virulent and resistant to antibiotic treatment.

This research, conducted by the Russian gov-
ernment after dissolution of the Soviet Union,

went one stage further. Plans were actually made
for the plague bacterium to be released, together
with a virulent form of influenza. The combina-
tion would make diagnosis difficult, would cer-
tainly delay treatment and thus multiply the death
toll. No one is saying where and when the virus
was to have been released. Of even greater con-
cern, no one is saying what happened to the
stocks of plague bacterium that were manufac-
tured and must still be held in reserve somewhere.

In 1991, a team of Western germ warfare
experts was allowed to visit St. Petersburg, then
still called Leningrad. They found nothing indic-
ative of biological warfare research. Weapons
research was strictly segregated and scientists
worked on a "need-to-know" basis. The KGB
team responsible for the facility took the precau-
tion of sending the plague researchers on leave
while the foreigners visited. The secret remained
secret. With the assistance of the two defecting
Russian scientists, a detailed and substantial chal-
lenge was issued by the British and U.S. govern-
ments. Caught off guard, Russia first denied but
subsequently admitted the existence of the pla-
gue-research program. President Boris Yeltsin
then said work had stopped and that the Biologi-
cal Weapons Convention was being honored.

This summer there was an outbreak of plague
in India's Gujrat, an area where research projects
are typically undertaken. India has excellent
military and scientific relations with Russia.
Some question whether it might extend to cooper-
ation on biological weapons and if a research
accident in India loosed some bacteria. If so, it
might explain this year's Indian plague outbreak
better than the claim that rats were stirred up by
last year's moderate earthquake.

SOMALIA. This week the last troops of the
United Nations, all of them from India, withdrew
from the inland town of Baidoa and Kismayo.
According to U.N. military spokesman Major
Zubair Chattha, the Indian troops handed over
control of key infrastructure such as airports and
harbor facilities to the U.S.-trained Somali police
force. Many observers believe the police force
will evaporate once fighting among the clans and
subclans resumes and that its members will
decamp to their own clans taking whatever weap-
ons they can. Baidoa controls much of Somalia's
most fertile farmlands. However, many believe
that clan fighting is more likely to erupt at Kis-
mayo, between allies of General Mohamed Farah
Aidid and the local warlord, General Mohamed
Said Hersi nicknamed "Morgan."

SOUTH AFRICA. Housing Minister Joe Slovo
and Premier Tokyo Sexwale of Pretoria-
Witswatersrand-Vereeninging province last week-
end announced the forgiving of a total of $430
million in debts owed by black and Coloured
[mixed-race] tenants who participated in a rent
and utility strike during the past decade against
apartheid discrimination in housing.

Slovo and Sexwale said that in exchange for
the debt write-down, all tenants must immediately
start paying their rent and utility bills and all
arrears starting from January 1994, when it
became clear that the country was about to be
ruled for the first time by a black majority gov-
ernment. The decision is believed likely to serve
as a precedent for other provinces and urban
regions where another $1.7 billion in debts has
been accumulated.

Payment of an entire year's rent and utility
bills will be a tremendous monetary burden for
most of the families; but Sexwale admonished
them, saying, "You cannot boycott your own gov-
ernment." He added, "The legacy of not paying
for houses and services is clearly understood; but
as a government we must say there is going to be a
time when we will be tough." There is something
ironic in seeing veteran warhorses of the South
African Communist Party cracking the whip like
19th century landlords on one hand while forgiv-
ing some debts with the other.

The actions of Sexwale and Slovo in forgiving
most of the rent and utility arrears reflect the
growing disillusionment of the membership of the
African National Congress (ANC) with their
largely non-African, unregenerate Communist
leaders.

The housing and utility rulings come at the
same time as the electoral defeat of Patrick "Ter-
ror" Lekota, premier of the Orange Free State, at
a provincial ANC party congress. The victor


made the point that the government has neglected
blacks in the interests of mollifying whites. While
Lekota retains his job as premier, at least until
for the time being, the vote will create problems
for the planners of the ANC national congress to
be convened in Bloemfontein this month.

Lekota was one of the ANC's most charismatic
figures, tipped as a future cabinet minister or
even president. This defeat may suggest that he
has reached the peak of his career and may not
recover politically.

Officials of the ANC immediately took steps to
isolate themselves from Lekota. Charles Masibi
attacked the premier saying, "He appointed rich
people from Qwa Qwa [a former homeland] to
their old positions and concentrated on meeting the
needs of the Afrikaner farmers. He alienated the
people who swept the ANC to power, and these
same people ask why."

Plans and policies of the ANC will be debated
this month during the Bloemfontein congress.
One paper, allegedly written by first deputy pres-
ident Thabo Mbeki, is being distributed. It con-
centrates on the needs of blacks and maintains
that April's elections did not mark a "complete
transfer of power." The document indicates that
business, industry, the economy and administra-
tion would become targets for integration.

Other problems facing the ANC are in the
North West province where Premier Popo Molefe
fired provincial Agriculture Minister Rocky
Malabane-Metsing. The sacked minister's
offense? Molefe says Malabane-Metsing attempted
to undermine his authority.

ZIMBABWE. The Student Representative
Council of the University of Zimbabwe sent a
letter to parliament threatening to amputate limbs
and perform other medical procedures on whites
in the streets. The student council said this action
will be taken unless a Scottish anesthetist facing
five charges of killing patients through negli-
gence, is found guilty and given an "appropriate
sentence." The letter, sent to the attorney general
as well as parliament, said that if Dr. Richard
McGown is not declared guilty and punished, "we
will perform epidural morphines and amputations
to whites on the streets."

McGown, 57, who denies the charges, has been
waiting for four months for judgement. His
arrest and trial came after a racial uproar last year
when a parliamentary committee, since discred-
ited, accused him of conducting illegal and racist
experiments on black Zimbabweans.

McGown remains at the focal point of a wave
of anti-white sentiment, much of which is cen-
tered around issues of land ownership legislation
proposed by the ruling Zimbabwe African
National Union-Patriotic Front party. The stu-
dents entered the controversy last month when
they launched a "smash racism" campaign in
which they invaded nightclubs and restaurants and
harassed local and foreign customers.


Intelligence of a Superpower


Japanese commercial sources indicate that the
government is considering combining some or all
of the existing five separate intelligence and secu-
rity agencies into one super service. This is seen
as essential in order to prepare Japan for strategic
and economic competition in the twenty-first
century.

Japan's American-drafted post-war constitution
is pacifist and contains strong inhibitions on
militarism. At the same time, it allows for self-
defense, a concept that has permitted Japan to
expand and modernize its Self-Defense Force as
the credible threat from East Asian regional pow-
ers has increased. Japan's strategic defense has
been taken care of by the nuclear umbrella of the
United States. It seems that Japanese officials
have worried about the depth of the American
strategic commitment for some time.

Recently, press reports indicated that in 1967,
as China and Russia were building up their
nuclear arsenals and the United States was begin-
ning to promote the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) scheduled for renewal next year, the
government of then-Prime Minister Eisaku Sato
commissioned a panel of scientific experts to
study Japan's nuclear weapons options. The panel
produced at least two reports between 1968 and
1970 that were recently obtained by Japanese
media. The panel of experts and scientists con-
cluded that in a short time, Japan could acquire
the technical capability to develop a small pluto-
nium-based nuclear arsenal, but that the political
cost of so doing would be international isolation,
strains on the national economy and intensifying
political opposition from the highly anti-nuclear
Japanese populace. The experts also questioned
the strategic value of developing a nuclear weap-
ons capability, noting that Japan had small chance
of catching up to the large nuclear weapons
stockpiles of China and the Soviet Union, and -
equally important - the existence of a small Japa-
nese nuclear weapons capability might make the
island an even more attractive target for both its
large, nuclear-armed neighbors.

Sato made Japan's three non-nuclear principles
[not allowing, not manufacturing and not possess-
ing atomic weapons] a formal national policy in
1971. Three years later he was awarded the
Nobel peace prize. Anti-nuclear critics focus on
Japan's support for breeder-reactor technology, a
process that creates more plutonium than is
burned, and its nuclear fuel recycling program
that extracts plutonium from spent uranium fuel
rods as well as Japan's successful space rockets
and earth-sensing satellite program as giving cause
to doubt Tokyo's commitment to non-nuclear
weapons status and avoidance of offensive stra-
tegic weapons such as intermediate-range and
intercontinental ballistic missiles.

To date, it should be noted, there is no evi-
dence that Japan is developing IRBMs or ICBMs,

or nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, Tokyo is clearly
uneasy about China's military modernization and
remains shocked about North Korea's development
both of nuclear weapons and medium-range
missiles as a delivery system.

This new awareness of East Asia's military
buildup appears to underlie the proposed recon-
figuration of Japan's intelligence and security
agencies gathering political, military and economic
intelligence. Last year, when North Korea con-
ducted the debut launch over the East China Sea
of the Nodong-I missile, which can reach western
Japan, Tokyo received the information from U.S.
intelligence services. The missile test appears to
have brought home to Japan's government the
extent of its dependence on the United States,
thus sparking the review.

Each of the five agencies is governed by a
different Cabinet ministry, making coordination
difficult. These agencies include:

The Bureau of Investigation and Information
(Naicho), a group of some 500 experts and ana-
lysts working in a small building near the resi-
dence of the prime minister, to whom the Naicho
reports. It has no "action service" but rather
focuses on providing information and analysis to
its governmental customers.

The Defense Agency has a special bureau that
operates electronic intelligence complexes in
Wakkanai, in the extreme north, where interest
focuses on the Russian fortress of Vladivostok and
closer bases in the Kuriles.

The Foreign Ministry has its own Bureau of
Intelligence and Analysis.

The police Public Security Bureau (Koanbu) is
responsible for counterintelligence and counter-
terrorism.

The Justice Ministry directs the Agency for
Investigating Public Security (Koanchosa-cho), and
has between 6,000 and 8,000 employees in offices
across the country.

Excluded from the Japanese public discussion
of Japan's intelligence and security constellation is
its brightest star, the Ministry of International
Trade and Industry (MITI). MITI's activities are
considered by Japanese officials to be potentially
embarrassing and thus extremely sensitive, for
MITI's targets are not so much declared or prob-
able enemies like China, North Korea or Russia,
but political allies and major trading partners
among the industrialized Western democracies.
According to Western sources, MITI operates the
most comprehensive network of industrial espion-
age agents in the world, often in consort with
various Japanese industries to whom it feeds
high-technologies obtained via subterfuge and
stratagem.

Jiang's Stature

China's President and Communist Party of China
(CPC) General Secretary Jiang Zemin was about
to arrive in Vietnam for his first visit since the
two traditionally hostile Communist states restored
diplomatic ties three years ago when CPC elder
Bo Yibo, 86, a conservative ally of nonagenarian
patriarch Deng Xiaoping, gave a rare interview to
the national media. Though the "Bao Jiang"
[Build up Jiang] campaign appeared early this
year as Deng's health began a significant decline,
only now has his major ally among the party
elders found it essential to weigh in publicly on
behalf of Deng's heir apparent.

Bo struck out at China's technocrats regional
leading cadres who have lost faith in Marxist
doctrines and ignore the center's guidance par-
ameters. At the same time, Bo threw his support
behind Deng's anointed successor, Jiang, quoting
Deng as emphasizing that the party must rally
behind Jiang, who is 68, as "the core of the third
generation" of CPC leaders.

Simultaneously, Bo admonished the party's
hard-liners that they will doom China's ruling
party if they fail to take into account dissenting
views from the populace. Said Bo, "We must
remember the famous dictum by Comrade Xiao-
ping: a ruling party should not be afraid of voices
of the people. What it should be afraid of is when
there is no more noise, but silence."

Though some thought such well-publicized
remarks may have been intended for an audience
of Vietnamese party officials, who do not allow
open political dissent even within the party, the
consensus in Beijing and Shanghai, Jiang's home
base, was that Deng and Bo intended a domestic
audience for their strictures. Indeed, in the weeks
immediately prior to Bo's public interview, the
national media have published a series of articles
focusing on the dual theme of the need for party
discipline and the need for political reform within
the CPC. Renmin Ribao [People's Daily] main-
tained in an editorial commentary that a policy
should be carried out only if it had popular sup-
port. And Xinhua, the official news agency, said
subsequently that public opinion polling would be
made extensive in order to solicit and collect the
public's views and opinions.

However, it is clear that Jiang and the sup-
porters of Deng Xiaoping do not feel secure or at
all certain that he will be able to lead China into
the new century. One sign is the program of
intensified ideological indoctrination of the
People's Liberation Army (PLA) launched in
September. The indoctrination program for the
PLA and the People's Armed Police (PAP) amount
to an attempt to build a protective "cult of per-
sonality" around the general secretary by demand-
ing the armed forces adhere to absolute loyalty to
the CPC "leadership collective with Comrade
Zemin as its core."

Recent Beijing reports indicate that Jiang
personally has presented theories of conspiratorial
but unnamed Western powers to "divide up" the
People's Republic. Jiang was quoted as telling
PLA troops, "First of all, soldiers must have a
sense of crisis about the party, which is a prere-
quisite for solving other problems;" and emphas-
ized the tradition of CPC political supremacy over
the army, "the Party commanding the gun," as he
phrased it. Meanwhile, Jiang's ally, Vice-
Chairman of the Central Military Commission
General Zhang Zhen, is shaking up the officer
corps of the army and the police. General Zhang
wants officers selected on the "five lakes and four
seas" basis, meaning distribute leadership posi-
tions among officers with differing backgrounds.
This has been interpreted as subtle criticism of
Jiang, who blatantly has been awarding senior
PLA and PAP commands to his own Shanghai
protégés. One such is General Ba Zhongtan, now
the PAP commander, who was a Jiang crony
during his years as chief of the Shanghai garrison.
There are rumors that Jiang is seeking to promote
another member of the "Shanghai Gang" - a
retired police chief - as a vice minister in the
Ministry of Public Security.

The intensity of the Bao Jiang campaign in
recent weeks has an unintended side effect. It
highlights the essential shallowness of Jiang's
national backing and accomplishments. Essen-
tially, Jiang is a technocrat and politician.
Trained as an engineer, he was 23 in 1949, when
the Communists drove out the Nationalists, and
lacks a military service record in the civil war or
the resistance against the Japanese.

Five years have passed since Jiang was named
CPC general secretary and chairman of the Cen-
tral Military Commission (CMC). When he first
appointed Jiang party chief, Deng asked both
Premier Li Peng and his deputy not to be jealous
that someone less senior was promoted over them.
He had the same request of the military several
months later when Jiang, a civilian, was named
chairman of the CMC. It is telling that after the
passage of so much time, Deng and Bo have had
to conduct this year's Bao Jiang campaign to
ensure his succession.

The Chinese leaders appear terrified of the
idea of employing in even the most limited way
the standard method of political and policy legiti-
mization of the rest of the world - the ballot.
The idea that Xinhua, which has a well-known
link to China's internal security and foreign intel-
ligence services, should conduct public opinion
polls to determine the degree of public support
for announced policies shows the degree of fear
of the populace circulating among the leaders. So
do the new directives ordering peasants to be kept
on the farms and crackdowns on the "floating
population" of redundant peasants seeking to find
their fortunes by migrating and finding work in
urban factories.

BANGLADESH. The long-simmering, seem-
ingly implacable rivalry between Prime Minister
Khaleda Zia, leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist
Party (BNP) and opposition Awami League leader
Hasina Wajed continues with the opposition
parties, led by the Awami League and deposed
President H.M. Ershad's Jatiya Party, boycotting
parliament since March in an attempt to force
early elections under a neutral, caretaker govern-
ment. Polls are not required until February 1996.

The stalemate, sharpened last month by a
general strike, has begun to affect foreign trade
and investment. Commonwealth envoy Sir Ninian
Stephen spent November talking to party leaders
in an effort to heal the split but neither side
appeared willing to show flexibility. Awami's
Hasina maintains the work stoppages have no real
impact on Bangladesh's economy and notes inves-
tors remain interested in other troubled Asian
countries including Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
Bangladesh's businessmen disagree, charging that
each day of work stoppage costs the country $50
million in lost production and trade.

MALAYSIA. Kuala Lumpur is seeking warmer
ties to the Myanmar ruling military junta, the
State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC), which has ruled since the 1988 coup
that overturned democratic elections. The latest
exchanges involve the arrival in Yangon of Mal-
aysian commander in chief General Tan Sri Bor-
han Bin Haji Ahmed and his delegation for
meetings with senior generals of the SLORC. The
SLORC first secretary and strongman, Lieutenant
General Khin Nyunt, is scheduled to make his
first visit to Kuala Lumpur momentarily. Mal-
aysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamed is
said to have been irked that the Indonesians were
first off the mark in courting the SLORC, by
hosting Khin Nyunt earlier this year.
(End of Part 1)