PARIS: France is being asked by the Bush administration to give its support to a new list of “Axis of Evil” countries that adds four more names, bringing the list to seven: Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Cuba and Sudan.
That is apparently one of the principal objectives of George W. Bush’s current trip to Europe. President Bush is likely to make a stopover in Paris on Sunday (May 26).
Foreign Ministry sources said that the French authorities have received a list, technically referred to as an “evaluation” from the US embassy in Paris, setting out the seven countries as “countries that support terrorism”, and who also allegedly are in the process of developing “doomsday weapons”.
Asked as to how France plans to react to the list, the Quai d’Orsay’s spokesman Bernard Valero said on Wednesday that the ministry has received the list, but refused to comment as to what would be its reaction.
The list, indeed, has been known to Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin ever since his arrival in his position on May 7, through a ‘secret defence’ document left behind by his predecessor Hubert Vedrine.
The White House has apparently seen fit since a long time to add to the list the central African state of Sudan, the country where the CIA has long operated, and which is considered to be one of the staging points of terrorism on the African continent.
Indeed, some US intelligence reports had it, a few weeks ago, that Osama bin Laden was alive and hiding in the southern parts of Sudan, not far away from the country’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he was said to be planning some “hits” against US interests in that part of the world.
US under-secretary of state for arms control and international security, John Bolton noted in his speech on May 6 that “beyond the ‘Axis of Evil,’ there are other rogue states intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, “particularly biological weapons”.
Syria, for one, Bolton says, “has considerable stockpiles” of a nerve agent, Sarin, and is in fact in the process of developing another, a “more dangerous variety,” called “VX”.
As for Cuba, notes Bolton, “it has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort, and has a technology that it has been sharing with other states.”
And, above all Libya, is charged by Bolton with having “produced at least 100 tons of different kinds of chemical weapons” at a facility located at Rabta.
It is at Rabta, as Washington already revealed on January 5, 1989, that Colonel Muammar Qadhafi is suspected of having constructed an important chemical arms facility. US intelligence reports indicate that an important fire broke out at the factory on March 14, 1990 — a deflagration perhaps “inspired” by the CIA itself, notes a French intelligence source.
The plant, which Libya says in its defence was used exclusively to produce fertilizer, was eventually closed down — this in reaction to CIA-inspired media reports, but Bolton now says that “chemical weapon production there may have been restarted.”
Bolton hinted that the United States “had not ruled out” using armed force against all three countries to force them to cease the alleged production of “weapons of mass destruction”, this because, he noted in his remarks, “diplomatic efforts might not suffice.”
Taking a more serious tone, Bolton noted that “China and Russia are, unquestionably, the two largest sources of proliferant behaviour internationally on a whole range of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic-missile technology.”
But, having said that, he also noted that “it is also the case, inevitably and understandably, that we have a wide range of interests to pursue with those countries.”
Also, he insisted, the Bush administration was “pursuing a number of diplomatic initiatives” with the two, and indicated that the upcoming US-Russia summit to be held in Moscow and St. Petersburg, “would provide a good framework for more effective counter-proliferation efforts.”
He did not specify, however, whether the summit would be used to discuss the new US charges against Libya, Cuba and Syria, all of which have important ties with Russia.