03 April 2003
Former Top Diplomat Rebuts Oil Rationale for Coalition Action in Iraq
(Amb. Cohen says Africans should back U.S. moves against Saddam) (670) By Jim Fisher-Thompson Washington File Staff Writer Washington -- The United States and its coalition partners want to topple Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime not because of oil as some critics of the war have charged but to liberate people who have lived under one of the world's "harshest dictatorships," says former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen. The charge that 250,000 mainly American and British troops are in Iraq to lay claim to its substantial oil resources is "simply not true," said the retired diplomat. "As far as the United States is concerned, what is important is that oil should flow and that is should be on the market." Cohen spoke to the Washington File during a break in a discussion on "The Shape of the World in the Post-Cold War Environment" sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) on March 28. Under the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program Iraq has been allowed to export close to 1.7 million barrels of oil per day. Before the first Gulf War, in 1991, its exports were 3.5 million barrels a day. "Wherever you go in the world," the former U.S. Ambassador to Senegal explained, "oil is being exported by multinational corporations and all of them consist of partnerships, whether they're French, American, British, Norwegian or Malaysian. You look at every exploratory [oil and gas] field and you see involvement that is 20% American, 20% European, 20% Asian and so forth. There is no competition for the control of resources. What the United States wants is for oil to be able to go onto the market and be sold." According to the diplomat, "It doesn't really matter who controls the oil in the Middle East. They're all going to be willing to sell it" in the long run. The Coalition is in Iraq not because of oil "but because of stability and security." People have to understand, Cohen said, that "The United States was badly hurt on September 11 and from a Middle Eastern source," referring to the attack by self-proclaimed Islamic extremists, many of whom were Saudis, who killed nearly 3,000 people when they crashed four hijacked passenger airliners into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon building and into a field in Pennsylvania. The attack, he explained, was "symptomatic of the fact that the Middle East, as a source of instability in the world, is steadily getting worse rather than getting better. So, taking action [against repressive regimes in places like Afghanistan and Iraq] is not only for the security of the United States but for the security of all other countries." Secretary of State Colin Powell also touched on Iraq's oil when he said that following the toppling of Saddam's regime, the Coalition would most likely help establish a temporary custodianship that would use oil revenues for the benefit all citizens and not just a political party elite. He emphasized, "The oil of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people." After retiring from the Foreign Service 10 years ago, Cohen set up an international consulting firm in partnership with Jim Woods, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs. Asked how his African friends and clients viewed the conflict in Iraq, Cohen said, "They are analyzing it, as they should be doing, and are saying that they don't quite understand why the United States is not dealing more forcefully with the Israel/Palestine issue. They tend to say that the problems of the Middle East would be diminished if we would solve it." Cohen said, "There a lot of people who agree with this analysis, including Americans. For example, [retired Marine] General Anthony Zinni [former U.S. commander of the Central Command (CENTCOM), that controls the U.S. portion of the Iraq War] and others have said that." (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
