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Fri 7 May, 2004 12:24 am
Powell aides go public on rift with Bush
DAWN, Pakistan's most widely circulated English language newspaper.
By Gary Younge
NEW YORK: The US secretary of state Colin Powell's key aide has described US sanctions policy against countries such as Pakistan and Cuba as "the dumbest policy on the face of the Earth".
In an article in GQ magazine, Larry Wilkerson, chief of staff of the United States secretary of state, bemoans Mr Powell's fire fighting role in President George Bush's cabinet.
"He has spent as much time doing damage control and shall we say, apologizing around the world for some less-than-graceful actions as he has anything else."
The article, which includes an interview with Mr Powell, is most illuminating for the comments made by his close friends and colleagues who are explicit about his distrust and disdain for the hawks in the administration.
Mr Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, remarks on his boss's anguish at the damage to his credibility following his speech to the United Nations last year making the case for war and insisting there were weapons of mass destruction. "It's a source of great distress for the secretary," he said.
Meanwhile his mentor from the National War College, Harlan Ullman, describes the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, as a "jerk". He said: "This is, in many ways, the most ideological administration Powell's ever had to work for. Not only is it very ideological, but they have a vision. And I think Powell is inherently uncomfortable with grand visions like that."
Their candour suggests that the internecine battles within the administration are becoming increasingly bitter and open, particularly those between the departments of defence and the state.
"None of Powell's friends had made any pretence of speculating about or guessing at his feelings," wrote the journalist, Wil Hylton. "They spoke for him openly and on the record."
Mr Wilkerson even makes jibes at the war record of Mr Bush's inner circle, comparing their desire for military conflict with their reluctance to serve as young men: "I make no bones about it.
I have some reservations about people who have never been in the face of battle, so to speak, who are making cavalier decisions about sending men and women out to die."
He then goes on to name former neo-conservative adviser, Richard Perle. He said: "Thank God (he) tendered his resignation and no longer will be even a semi-official person in this administration."
One of the most glaring examples of this departmental rivalry is in the policy towards China and Taiwan, which has been lobbying the US to support its move towards official independence from China.
Such a move would incense the Chinese and inevitably inflame tensions in the area. Nonetheless, Mr Powell's colleagues say the Bush administration has been encouraging the Taiwanese in their efforts.
"(Taiwan) is another place where you get a lot of tension," says Mr Wilkerson. "Because there are literally people from the defence department on that island every week.
Every week. And have been for three years. And many of those people are delivering messages to Taiwan that Taiwan needn't worry. Meanwhile, we're trying to maintain a more balanced attitude."
Mr Wilkerson compares Mr Powell's carrot-and stick approach to Pakistan to the hawks' lack of diplomacy. "When all you use is a stick, you're not going to get very far." Negotiation, he argued, makes more progress "than if you just sanction somebody and walk off and say, 'That's it, I'm not dealing with you any more'."
"It hasn't worked in Cuba for 40 years," says Mr Hylton. "(It is the) dumbest policy on the face of the Earth," replies Mr Wilkerson. -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
Bush Moves to Slow Flow of U.S. Dollars to Cuba
NewsMax Wires
Friday, May. 07, 2004
President Bush is moving to reduce the flow of U.S. dollars to Cuba and taking other steps to try to hasten the end of Fidel Castro's communist government in Havana. The steps were recommended by a study commission headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Mr. Bush said the United States will increase support for organizations supporting Cuban dissidents and take steps to reduce the flow of dollars to Cuba from tourists and remittances, as part of a tough new strategy to help Cubans become free of what he termed the "tyranny" of the Castro government.
At a White House meeting Thursday with members of the commission he ordered be set up last year, the President said the United States will not passively await a change in government in Cuba.
"It is a strategy that will prevent the regime from exploiting hard currency of tourists and of remittances to Cubans, to prop up their repressive regime," he said. "It is a strategy that says we're not waiting for the day of Cuban freedom. We are working for the day of freedom in Cuba."
The report called for spending of nearly $60 million in funds already appropriated by the Congress to support democracy-building and public diplomacy programs directed at Cubans.
This will include $18 million for the relay into Cuba by specially-equipped U.S. military transport planes of U.S. funded Radio and TV Marti broadcasts, which are heavily jammed by Cuban authorities.
The plan aims at reducing the hard currency available to the Castro government by restricting dollar remittances and gift parcels by Cuban-Americans to only their immediate family members in Cuba and barring such transfers altogether to Cuban communist party members and some government officials.
Family visits to Cuba by Cuban-Americans would be limited to one trip every three years and the amount of money they can spend in Cuba would be cut by two-thirds, to $50 a day.
Additionally, the plan would impose tighter restrictions on so-called "educational travel" to Cuba by American groups, which have increased in recent years and are widely considered de facto tourism.
At a news briefing, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega said Cubans are well-aware that tourism money has become a major prop for the Castro government.
"They're worried about the repressive apparatus which is supported by people who do trade and travel to Cuba and go and enjoy the beaches in Cuba, beaches which by the way Cuban people don't even have access to. That money is ploughed into a system or vacuumed up by a regime that pays a policeman four times what it pays a teacher."
Some of the funds would support planning for a political transition in Cuba after Mr. Castro's departure and be aimed specifically at preventing a hand over of power from the Cuban leader to his younger brother, Raul, the country's longtime defense minister.
The Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba was set up last October with a mandate to, among other things, formulate a response to Cuba's crackdown on dissent, earlier in 2003, that resulted in long prison terms for more than 70 leading political opponents of Mr. Castro.
Democrats have said the new White House strategy is aimed at currying favor with Cuban-American voters, who wield heavy political power in the key state of Florida.
New Jersey Democratic House member Robert Menendez said earlier this week, setting the commission's reporting deadline for May 1, during the U.S. Presidential campaign, is so politically-transparent as to be laughable.
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