[JNV Announce] Allawi at the Labour Party Conference

[Milan Rai]

1) Allawi to visit Labour Party Conference
2) Anti-war public meeting at Labour Party Conference
3) Newspaper reports of Allawi visit
4) Allawi profile - Seymour Hersh
5) Allawi executes six prisoners - links

Dear friends,


1) Allawi to visit Labour Party Conference


Yesterday's Sunday Times and today's Financial Times report that Iyad 
Allawi, interim prime minister of Iraq, is being invited to address the 
Labour Party Conference in Brighton at the end of September.

Allawi is a former Ba'athist thug who helped Saddam get into power, 
conducted a car bomb terrorist campaign in Baghdad in the mid-90s, and was 
recently reported by one of Australia's top journalists to have shot dead 
six prisoners in police custody. He's also a former agent of MI6 and the 
CIA. (See 4 and 5 below.) (JNV is putting together a profile of Allawi and 
his rise to power.)

The fact that this invitation has been reported means that it is very 
likely to happen. (A) Often these things are reported as 'being thought 
about' when they have actually been decided. (B) If it doesn't happen now, 
they will look scared of the anti-war movement.

Allawi's visit is an opportunity for the anti-war movement to mobilise 
against the continuing war against the people of Iraq. Please ask any 
national anti-war/peace organisations you are connected with to 
hold/coordinate an anti-war protest at the conference.


2) Anti-war public meeting at Labour Party Conference


Labour's Annual Conference takes place this year at the Brighton Centre, 
Brighton from 26-30 September 2004.
So far, the only visible anti-war event we've found is a public meeting:

Sunday 26 September 2004 (7.30 – 9pm)
LABOUR AGAINST THE WAR at Labour Party Conference Fringe.
Venue: Friends Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton.
Speakers: Alan Simpson MP, Tony Benn, Dr Glen Rangwala, Jo Wilding (Iraq 
eye witness).

For activists in the south-east the least we can do is support this event.


3) Newspaper reports of Allawi visit


> Blair defies party critics with invite to Iraqi PM
Andrew Porter and Hala Jaber, The Sunday Times, August 15, 2004
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1217429,00.html>
	
TONY BLAIR plans to invite Iyad Allawi, Iraq’s new prime minister, to 
address the Labour conference next month, in a move that will defy critics 
of the war in his own party.

It had been expected that Labour strategists would try to skirt round the 
issue of Iraq, which has left many of the party’s rank and file 
disillusioned with their leader.

Allawi’s presence in Brighton will be seen as a signal that Blair intends 
to tackle the most difficult crisis of his 10-year leadership head on.

If he accepts the invitation from Blair, it is expected that he will be a 
keynote speaker at either the debate on foreign affairs or at the final 
session on September 30.

Blair is keen to convince sceptics that he was right to sanction military 
action to get rid of Saddam. A senior Labour party source said: “We are 
trying to get Allawi, although no final decision has been taken. There are 
a number of factors still at play but he is at the top of our list to 
speak.

“It will surprise many people both inside and outside the party, but it is 
something that has been thought about a lot.”


> Iraqi PM may address Labour
Jean Eaglesham, Political Correspondent, Financial Times, 16 August 2004, 
p. 2

... The move is being considered by Labour's leadership in spite of calls 
for the prime minister to appease his critics for the sake of party unity 
in the run-up to the general election.

...the plan to invite Mr Allawi to next month's conference shows the prime 
minister's determination to confront the issue of Iraq head-on.

A decision on the invitation has not yet been taken, reflecting in part 
the logistical and security issues involved.

But insiders confirmed the conference organisers hoped to secure Mr Allawi 
as a keynote speaker.


4) Allawi profile


'PLAN B', Seymour Hersh, New Yorker, 28 June 2004
<http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?040628fa_fact>


The White House has yet to deal with Allawi’s past. His credentials as a 
neurologist, and his involvement during the past two decades in 
anti-Saddam activities, as the founder of the British-based Iraqi National 
Accord, have been widely reported. But his role as a Baath Party operative 
while Saddam struggled for control in the nineteen-sixties and seventies— 
Saddam became President in 1979—is much less well known.


“Allawi helped Saddam get to power,” an American intelligence officer told 
me. “He was a very effective operator and a true believer.” Reuel Marc 
Gerecht, a former C.I.A. case officer who served in the Middle East, 
added, “Two facts stand out about Allawi. One, he likes to think of 
himself as a man of ideas; and, two, his strongest virtue is that he’s a 
thug.”


Early this year, one of Allawi’s former medical-school classmates, Dr. 
Haifa al-Azawi, published an essay in an Arabic newspaper in London 
raising questions about his character and his medical bona fides. She 
depicted Allawi as a “big husky man . . . who carried a gun on his belt 
and frequently brandished it, terrorizing the medical students.”


Allawi’s medical degree, she wrote, “was conferred upon him by the Baath 
party.” Allawi moved to London in 1971, ostensibly to continue his medical 
education; there he was in charge of the European operations of the Baath 
Party organization and the local activities of the Mukhabarat, its 
intelligence agency, until 1975.


“If you’re asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in 
London, the answer is yes, he does,” Vincent Cannistraro, the former 
C.I.A. officer, said. “He was a paid Mukhabarat agent for the Iraqis, and 
he was involved in dirty stuff.”


A cabinet-level Middle East diplomat, who was rankled by the U.S. 
indifference to Allawi’s personal history, told me early this month that 
Allawi was involved with a Mukhabarat “hit team” that sought out and 
killed Baath Party dissenters throughout Europe. (Allawi’s office did not 
respond to a request for comment.)


At some point, for reasons that are not clear, Allawi fell from favor, and 
the Baathists organized a series of attempts on his life. The third 
attempt, by an axe-wielding assassin who broke into his home near London 
in 1978, resulted in a year-long hospital stay.


LINKS FOR
1) Allawi executes six prisoners: 
<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/16/1089694568757.html?oneclick=true>
or <http://tinyurl.com/3lhnx>
2) Allawi profile by Sydney Morning Herald: 
<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/16/1089694565543.html?from=moreStories&oneclick=true>
or <http://tinyurl.com/5xnjp>











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Justice Not Vengeance
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