From: Margarita Lacabe <mailto:marga@derechos.org>marga@derechos.org
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 1:54 PM
Subject: [open-forum] Picasso's "Guernica" covered up at UN

<?bigger>Picasso Under Wraps, UN Under the Thumb
<?/bigger>By Ian Williams
GVNews.Net Crisis Capsule
Globalvision News Network, 2003
<http://www.gvnews.net>www.gvnews.net

NEW YORK, Feb 03, 2003 -- In the old days, busy housekeepers used to brush dirt under the carpet. But the modern UN has, so to speak, brushed the carpet under the debris. Outside the Security Council, where diplomats come to brief the world's media after meetings, is a huge tapestry reproduction of Guernica, Picasso's memorial to the horrors of air warfare on civilians.

In the old days, the one UNTV camera could be guaranteed not to embarrass, say, American Ambassador John Negroponte, by backdropping his statements with images of screaming w omen and children, but with the world's new interest in the UN, the hordes of outside TV crews there may be less discreet. So Guernica has joined the statue of Justice in Attorney John Ashcroft lobby, covered in blue drapes to hide her nakedness. Together they make a potent metaphor.

One almost wonders how long it will be before, disguised as an art project, someone wraps the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, shrouding it from toe to torch. After all it was a gift from "Old Europe," the French, and it promised a welcome to immigrants. The new > administration now has different ideas about the nation of Lafayette, which bankrolled American terrorists (sorry, freedom fighters) against
their legitimate government back in 1776.

And as for those immigrants: the weekend's news that INS staff had been shredding visa applications and passports, while other INS staff were interning and deporting immigrants for lack of the same paperwork really sums up the m erciless and xenophobic inefficiencies of the so called war on terror.

On Wednesday, the shrouded tapestry will be the backdrop for the diplomats who emerge from Secretary of State Powell's briefing in the "evidence" of Iraq's failure to meet the demands of resolution 1441.

The indications are that the evidence will be tenuous and tendentious. Even U.S. intelligence agencies are busily leaking their skepticism about connections between Baghdad and Al Qaeda, let alone between Saddam Hussein and September 11.

One hopes that this particular piece of the script is aimed at the American public -- which has shown a tendency not to be able to tell Arabs apart -- rather than at foreign governments. If not, we have to worry even more than we first thought about the rationality of decision making in Washington.

The rest of his show-and-tell session is likely to be slightly more convincing -- but not dramatically so. There will be evidence that Iraq is h iding... something. But what? It will add little to the convictions of Council members, most of whom already are pretty sure that Baghdad is being less than candid about its weapons programs.

To assure their own skeptical electorates they have to show what it is that the Iraqis are hiding and that it is a sufficiently horrifying threat for them to risk supporting military action.

Powell, as the rational wing of the administration, must know this. The suspicion is that what he is demonstrating is not evidence about Iraq, but about the United States and himself.

His message is that Washington is going to attack Iraq and there will be no more Mr. Nice Guy in the form of a reasonable Secretary State arguing Europe's multilateral brief in the White House.

It was always plain to those who did not delude themselves that Powell was like the tortoise, offering a slower, multilateral way to war, but while it was less frenetic and more sophisticated in i ts approach than that of the White House hares, its destination was the same.

His message to the Russians and the French in particular is that if they want to stay relevant to the United States -- and they truly, deeply and sincerely do -- then they had better come along with it.

The message to the rest of the Council is a toughened up version of George Bush's at the General Assembly, which certainly worked then. If they do not want to risk the UN Charter being ripped up, they had better deliver the resolution they all say is necessary. It is of course bullying and blackmail. It works.

Member states can if they wish, disguise their own self-interest behind a deep concern for the United Nations' integrity and relevance. It would not be too surprising if France itself moved the resolution the Americans want: after all their battle over 1441 was the need for a second resolution so they can claim vindication for their stand. They will hope for a defining excuse, such as an Iraqi refusal to allow the U2's to fly, or the failure to find an Iraqi scientist foolhardy enough to be interviewed without a secret police minder, but they may go ahead anyway.

There are also carrots for those who cooperate. The Foreign Minister of Bulgaria, which has already been the most compliant elected member on the Security, claims to have had assurances from the U.S. that Iraq's pre Gulf War debts will be honored.
One presumes that similar offers, either of past debts to be paid, or future contracts to be offered, explicit or with a nudge and wink, have been made to other members.

Short of Saddam Hussein having an attack of lucidity and public spiritedness and stepping down, the countdown to war begins on Wednesday February 5, in the chamber behind the shrouded Guernica.