There could be no more perfect evidence of the desperation among U.S. officials dealing with Iraq than the choice of veteran Baathist and CIA hireling Iyad Allawi as prime minister of the “sovereign” government due to take office after June 30. As one embittered Iraqi told me from Baghdad on Friday: “The appointment must have been orchestrated by Ahmed Chalabi in order to discredit the entire process.” He was not entirely joking, given the fact that Chalabi joined the rest of the Governing Council in voting for Allawi despite their long and vicious rivalry.
Though he is Shiite, Allawi was once upon a time an active Baathist, a member of Saddam Hussein’s political party, and is thought to enjoy much support among the officer corps of the old Iraqi army, and by extension among many former Baathists and influential Sunni. Indeed, there are reports that the reason Ahmed Chalabi, the neoconservative favorite, urged his friends in the White House to dissolve the army last year — a decision now acknowledged to be the most disastrous of the occupation — was Chalabi’s fear of the support enjoyed by his rival (and cousin — everyone in Baghdad is related) within the military.
Allawi cut his political teeth as a strong-arm Baathist student organizer before being dispatched by the party to London to run the Iraqi Student Union in Europe. Apart from the Iraqis he dutifully monitored, other Arab students with whom he came in contact were of considerable interest in Saddam’s Baghdad, since they tended to be drawn from elite circles in the Middle East. They were also of more direct value to Allawi personally, garnering him a fruitful array of connections in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, which he then used with great effect in various business enterprises in the region. By the late 1970s he had become wealthy.
However, Allawi never lost his taste for the intrigue of intelligence operations and the company of intelligence officers. Soft-spoken, eloquent and persuasive, always ready to hint at a powerful connection or make a promise, he proved adept at telling them what they wanted to hear in language they could understand. In 1978, this mutual affection almost proved fatal. By that time, Allawi had reportedly entered into a relationship with the British security services, who were naturally keen to have a willing and well-informed source in the large and faction-ridden Arab student community in London. Word of this relationship reached the suspicious ears of Saddam’s secret police, the Mukhabarat, who dispatched a team armed with knives and axes to Allawi’s comfortable home in Kingston-upon-Thames to deal with the problem in summary fashion. Bursting into his bedroom, the assassins hacked at him as he lay beside his sleeping wife and were prevented from finishing the job only by the fortuitous appearance of his father-in-law, who happened to be staying in the house. The would-be killers ran off and the badly injured Allawi lived to make more money and pursue his connections with British intelligence.
At the time of the 1991 war, Allawi scented the interest of Saudi intelligence and joined forces with his fellow ex-Baathist, Salih Omar, in producing the Voice of Free Iraq. The pair soon fell out, however, reportedly because of a dispute over a $40,000 check from their Saudi paymasters. Omar gradually faded from sight, while Allawi retained control of the group they had founded, the Iraqi National Accord (Al Wifaq), into which he steadily recruited former Baathist Sunnis, and was soon back in London, awaiting fresh clients. He found them among his old connections at British intelligence, MI6, and, a few years later, the CIA, which was simultaneously funding Ahmed Chalabi’s exile organization, the Iraqi National Congress (INC).
“The two were supported by different factions at the agency,” recalls one veteran of the Iraq program. “Iyad Allawi was the more likable of the two; he didn’t act the grand pasha like Chalabi used to. But there was no there there — he didn’t have anyone inside Iraq. It was like recruiting a White Russian [pro-Czarist] to overthrow Stalin in 1938.”
Nevertheless, in 1996 the CIA invested its hopes in a coup against Saddam plotted by Allawi and his INA group. It proved a total bust, perhaps because INA officials in Amman, Jordan, boasted of its imminence to a Washington Post reporter. Whatever the reason, Saddam rounded up all the conspirators he could get his hands on, while sending derisive messages to the CIA reporting his victory.
Licking its wounds, the CIA harbored dark suspicions that Chalabi had betrayed the coup to Saddam, while Allawi went unpunished for his failure. Though his public reputation suffered from the undiluted stream of abuse broadcast by Chalabi’s efficient propaganda machine, he retained his supporters both at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., and at MI6.
Just as Chalabi did, Allawi, in his quiet way, supplied the requisite quota of misinformation on Saddam’s WMD to justify the Bush-Blair war program. The infamous lie about Saddam’s ability to deploy biological weapons in 45 minutes that Blair put out in his dossier came from Allawi’s organization.
When Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer handed out patronage rewards to the motley group of expatriates assembled in the Governing Council last year, Allawi secured the important plum of chairmanship of the Defense and Security Committee. His nominee became minister of the interior (though there were some awkward questions asked when 19 billion dinars of ministry money mysteriously turned up in a private plane at Beirut airport, unencumbered by a satisfactory explanation as to what it was doing there.) Thus Allawi is well placed in the “power ministries” with oversight of the nascent military and police. (Ali Allawi, the current minister of defense, is a cousin of Iyad’s, as well as being Ahmed’s nephew, but is generally considered to be his own man.)
Behind the scenes, Allawi and Chalabi have been waging a ferocious struggle for the spoils of power, particularly in the oil sector. Although Chalabi was able to get control of key posts at the powerful ministry of oil, Allawi scored a significant victory when his nominee managed to secure the agency for the oil trading giant Glencore, which had formerly been on close terms with Chalabi. In response, the Chalabi forces swore to ensure that Glencore could not buy Iraqi oil, an embargo that may change now that Iyad Allawi is becoming prime minister.
In recent days, Allawi and Chalabi joined forces, along with other former expatriate politicians, to prevent the nomination of Hussein Shahristani to the post of prime minister. Shahristani, a devout Shiite, would have been an inspired appointment. A man of extraordinary courage and integrity, he once told Saddam Hussein to his face that Iraq should not build a nuclear weapon. Predictably, he was tortured and put on trial for espionage, in the course of which he blithely insulted Saddam’s parentage. He spent 10 years in solitary confinement in Abu Ghraib. “I probably survived execution because I was there on the direct orders of Saddam,” Shahristani once told me. “And he simply forgot to sign my death warrant.” He escaped disguised as a prison guard during the 1991 war after suborning a trusty who unlocked his cell and helped him flee.
Finding refuge in Iran, Shahristani refused to move on to comfortable exile in the West, preferring instead to stay in Iran and organize aid for otherwise friendless Iraqi refugees as well as the resistance inside Iraq itself. His unshakable independence eventually drove the Iranians to force him to move to London.
Returning to Iraq immediately after the war, Shahristani eschewed the trappings of power and cash rewards sought by other returning exiles and even refused to enter the U.S. Green Zone headquarters on the grounds it was occupied territory. He soon earned the trust and respect of Ayatollah Sistani. But that was not enough to protect him from self-interested intriguers like Allawi, Chalabi, and the representatives of the Islamist parties SCIRI and DAWA. “The Islamist Shia said they wouldn’t take someone who wasn’t one of them, which Shahristani is not, and the secular Shia said they wouldn’t have someone who is religious, meaning Shahristani,” explains a despondent Iraqi official and Shahristani supporter.
The United Nations, charged with coming up with the new government, was taken by surprise by Allawi’s selection. U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said he “respects” the decision and is willing to work with Allawi, according to U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard. But the world body was less than effusive about the choice. “Let’s see what the Iraqi street has to say about this name before we decide to write it off,” Eckhard said. Brahimi, who is not permitted to leave the U.S.-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad, has previously confided to friends that he feels immense pressure from the U.S. to endorse its choice.
Having settled on a prime minister, National Security Council aide Robert Blackwill, who has the Iraq portfolio, and Brahimi will soon announce the Iraqi president. As of Friday evening, the hot favorite was a senior member of the powerful Shammar tribe named Ghazi al Yawar, who is distantly related to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and who has spent many years in Saudi Arabia. However, the former favorite, courtly octogenarian Adnan Pachachi, who sat beside Laura Bush in her box at the State of the Union address, is reported to have edged back into the running and may still stand a chance. No one is asking the Iraqi people who they want, at least not yet.
In a resolution approved in January, the Republican National Committee characterized the United Nations’ Agenda 21 as “destructive strategies for sustainable development.” Included in this resolution was the RNC’s condemnation of the “insidious nature” of Agenda 21, and the recommendation by the RNC to adopt this resolution at the 2012 RNC Convention. An increasing backlash against this 19-year-old nonbinding U.N. plan shows how a conspiracy theory can become part of a major party’s platform.
How did a 40-chapter U.N. work plan on sustainable development, published in 1992, foster such a fervent backlash among conservative groups? Agenda 21, first revealed at the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, aimed to address environmental and development concerns through global partnership initiatives. While the plan covered everything from the sharing of educational resources to strategies for economic and environmental development, conservative groups have focused primarily on its fourth section — titled “the means for implementation” — as revealing Agenda 21’s true and, for them, insidious nature.
While a recent New York Times article described anti-Agenda 21 activism as emerging roughly two years ago, the roots of the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory go back at least a decade. As early as 2002 Dr. Stanley Monteith, a Santa Cruz County, Calif., physician, who runs the conservative Christian website Radio Liberty, hosted a series of lectures on the dangers of Agenda 21. An insurance salesperson named Joan Peros gave a nearly hour-long lecture on the perils of Agenda 21, warning, it “doesn’t matter which party is in power or control … some of our leaders totally understand and embrace the ushering in of a one-world order.”
The paranoia behind such fears was expressed by another guest lecturer on Monteith’s program, Jean Soderman, a self-professed former participant in Local Agenda 21 planning in Santa Cruz. When asked whether Agenda 21 would be worse than what Hitler did, she responded, “Yes. We are controlled by computers now and it has been said … that they have been trying this for two times already … first with Hitler, and it is going to be much, much worse.”
Michael Shaw, also from Santa Cruz and founder of the anti-Agenda 21 website Freedom Advocates, gave a lecture in 2006 at the Eagle Forum Conference in Santa Rosa, titled “Speaking of Agenda 21.” Shaw spoke about the loss of property rights through the ruse of “sustainable development,” and described Agenda 21 as “political globalists … moving toward a form of … state capitalism. It is an assault on land and that is where we have to stand up and protect our land.”
The anti-Agenda 21 critique entered the conservative mainstream in an October 2009 article in the American Thinker. Scott Strzelcky and Richard Rothschild charged that, through the implementation of “smart growth” initiatives, Agenda 21 would force people to relocate into highly urbanized areas — what anti-Agenda 21 activists commonly describe as “stack ‘em and pack ‘em” housing, evoking the image of Soviet-era East Berlin apartments. According to Strzelcky and Rothschild, Agenda 21 will ultimately lead to the demise of the suburban way of life.
Such concerns over the loss of private property rights are not a new phenomenon in the United States. The Wise Use movement in the West of the late 1980s brought together farmers, loggers, industries, religious groups, libertarians and conservatives to oppose the Endangered Species Act and other federal environment laws. According to investigative journalist Jeffery St. Clair, the Wise Use members saw themselves as players in “a high-stakes-chess game” against the environmental movement, whose members were “overtly carrying out a sinister master plan, a vast socialist experiment to depopulate the rural West.” When asked about the evolution of property rights movements, Jeffery St. Clair told me, “in the West, many of the Tea Party activists are the same old Wise Users in new hairstyles.”
But while the Wise Use movement centered around protecting rural and federal lands from perceived government encroachment, anti-Agenda 21 activists are concerned that private property, for them an extension of one’s liberties and freedoms, will cease to exist entirely.
The movement really took off in July 2011 after Glenn Beck devoted a show to those “who had mastered the art of hiding it in plain sight and then dismissing it as a joke.” Beck held up a copy of United Nations Earth Summit Agenda 21. “Sustainable development is just a really nice way of saying centralized control over all of human life on Planet Earth,” he stated. “Whenever you start unraveling this, it is like an onion … its real intentions are being masked with environmental issues.”
With his patented chalkboard, Beck drew the web of connections that has been fueling Agenda 21 panic ever since: the activities of a group called the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, known as ICLEI — or Local Agenda 21. Started in San Francisco in 1990, ICLEI’s primary goal is to provide consultation, training and information to support sustainable development at the local level. For Anti-Agenda 21 activists, ICLEI is the real enemy.
As Andrew Cohen wrote in a recent article for the Atlantic:
You would think that the Tea Party, with its disdain for large government, would be delighted with the ICLEI’s emphasis on “locally designed initiatives.” No. To the “Agender” crowd, as they are called, the ICLEI is the local instrument by which the UN forces its “sustainability” agenda upon the U.S.
It’s only within the last few months that the New York Times and the Atlantic have reported on this backlash by anti-Agenda 21 activists against local planning projects. Recently in Florida, a Tea Party group in Citrus County argued against the restriction of boating rights in Kings Bay (designed to protect the Kings Bay manatees). Edna Mattos, the leader of the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots, cited Agenda 21 as being behind this proposed restriction.
At the same time, Agenda 21 has become a talking point for presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich. Speaking in South Carolina on the perils of Agenda 21, Gingrich decried what he called “taking control of your private property and turning it into a publicly controlled property.” Gingrich has also proposed an executive order “to cease all federal funding of any kind of activity that relates to United Nations Agenda 21.” In addition, bills publicly condemning Agenda 21 have been introduced by Republican state representatives in Tennessee, New Hampshire and Georgia.
Anti-Agenda 21 rhetoric not only plays into fears over the declining suburban lifestyle, but has changed the vocabulary of city planners. Many of the planners that I have spoken with are taking to heart Andrew Whittemon’s recommendations to take the concerns of Agenda 21 more seriously and to speak more clearly.
Whittemon, a professor of planning at the University of Texas, Arlington, said, “Planners can avoid conflict by being explicit about the most direct harms coming to residents and businesses, giving attention to local solutions, and certainly dropping the jargon.”
The impact of the movement is already felt. One city planner I spoke with, who wished to remain anonymous, told me: “The Agenda 21 accusations that we hear in public meetings are the most counterproductive to reaching consensus or middle ground in land use planning. So we are staying away from using words like ‘sustainable development.’”
A top Palestinian official said Wednesday that President Mahmoud Abbas had no plans to agree to a delayed vote on his bid for membership in the United Nations, rejecting mounting pressure from the United States and France.
The Palestinians plan to submit their letter of application on Friday when Abbas is to speak to the U.N. General Assembly, but he faced a withering lack of support as the world body opened its annual meeting. President Barack Obama said there could be no “shortcuts” in the quest for Middle East peace, a message that was echoed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
“We will not allow any political manoeuvring on this issue,” said Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to Abbas and former chief of negotiations.
Erekat said Abbas had made that plain in discussions with all parties involved over the last three days of meetings in the lead-up to the annual UN global gathering of presidents, heads of state and ruling royalty.
Sarkozy proposed a one-year timetable Wednesday for Israel and the Palestinians to reach a peace accord, part of a concerted push with the United States to steer the Palestinians away from an application for U.N. membership.
Sarkozy spoke shortly after Obama warned against action on the Palestinian bid before there was a peace agreement. He said negotiations, not U.N. declarations, were essential to a lasting peace.
While Obama stopped short of calling directly for the Palestinians to drop their bid for full membership — an effort the U.S. has vowed to veto in the Security Council — Sarkozy sounded a more compromising tone and urged each side, and the international community, to approach the deadlocked process with new ideas and tactics.
“Let us cease our endless debates on the parameters and let us begin negotiations and adopt a precise and ambitious timetable,” Sarkozy told the leaders and officials gathered at the U.N. “Sixty years without moving one centimeter forward, doesn’t that suggest that we should change the method and the scheduling here?”
“Let’s have one month to resume discussions, six months to find agreement on borders and security, one year to reach a definitive agreement,” he said.
A senior European Union official said the proposal laid out by Sarkozy matched one by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton during a meeting with EU foreign ministers on Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions.
Abbas’ push for full membership, which he has said would be submitted on Friday, has dominated this year’s U.N. meeting, pushing the U.S. and Israel against a wall of international sympathy for Palestinians. While the full membership bid would meet with a certain U.S. veto in the Security Council, assuming the Palestinians muster enough votes to have it approved, they have succeeded in bringing the issue again to the forefront of the world’s political discussions after years of failed negotiations, bickering and sporadic outbreaks of violence.
Sarkozy said that by setting preconditions, “we doom ourselves to failure. … There must be no preconditions.”
It remained unclear whether the latest proposal would be enough to avert a showdown over statehood that has consumed the U.N. over the past few days and sparked a frenzy of last-minute diplomatic door-knocking by the Israelis and the Palestinians, as well as a flurry of discussions between the Quartet of Mideast negotiators — the U.S., the E.U., the U.N. and Russia.
But the proposal outlined by Sarkozy received a warmer welcome from the Palestinians than Obama’s comments.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Abbas aide, told The Associated Press that the Palestinians “appreciate the speech and the positions included in that speech.”
“The Palestinian leadership will study seriously the positions and the ideas in that speech,” he said.
Obama’s remarks, however, drew a lukewarm response, with the Palestinian delegation wearing stern and disapproving looks as the U.S. president spoke.
“Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations — if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now,” the president told U.N. delegates. “Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians — not us — who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them.”
Obama showed solidarity with Israel, not mentioning a return to the borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war in which Israel annexed territory. The remarks may rile some in the Arab world where mass uprisings against authoritarian regimes have also sparked a new measure of anti-U.S. sentiment. Obama’s words also stood in stark contrast to the image he left behind when he addressed the Muslim world from Cairo in 2009, pledging to improve relations and cooperation.
Senior Palestinian officials said Abbas will reiterate to Obama his decision to move forward with the application for membership that will be submitted to the Security Council. But they also said that the Palestinians seek to cooperate with the U.S. and will be ready to return to the negotiating table once a solid foundation for talks was in place.
Nabil Abu Redeineh said that “peace in the Middle East needs an immediate end of the Israeli occupation” and that the U.S. needs to pressure Israel to immediately withdraw from lands annexed in 1967. The Palestinians are ready to return to talks “the minute Israel accepts” those borders and stops settlement building, he said.
Obama was scheduled to meet later Wednesday with Abbas.
He met earlier in the day with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
With Obama at his side, the Israeli premier said the Palestinian bid to appeal directly to the U.N. was a short cut that “will not succeed.” Netanyahu also lauded Obama for speaking up on principle.
The issue of Palestinian statehood has gained new momentum in the Arab world amid the so-called Arab Spring uprisings that have ousted the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and laid the still rocky foundations for a new era of freedom and democratic nations in a region dominated by dictators, monarchs and other entrenched regimes.
Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh, Amy Teibel and Julie Pace in New York contributed reporting.
BOSTON — President Obama should not veto Palestinian national aspirations in the United Nations Security Council.
The president is not wrong in thinking that this would be better handled in negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel. It would be wonderful if Israel itself were to sponsor a Palestinian state, but this is not going to happen as long as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in power.
He has spent his entire career trying to avoid Palestinian statehood with delaying tactics and maneuvers — seemingly willing to negotiate everything anywhere, but in reality putting up every obstacle he can in the path of peace and permanent settlement with the Palestinians.
Not that the Palestinians are guiltless in this stand off. They have had offers and opportunities they have not taken. But the entire Middle East is now in a state of flux and transition, and, as a practical matter, to try to keep the Palestinians frozen in their status as an occupied people without political rights is to ask for serious trouble — both for Israel and the U.S. The next Intifada will be far more destructive than the last two.
As a moral matter it is simply time to let the Palestinians have their state just as Harry Truman recognized that the Jews, after all they had been through in Europe in World War II, should have their state in 1948.
Many Israelis understand this. Former Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told The New York Times that “the world is tired of this conflict and angry at us because we are viewed as conquerors, ruling over another people. If I were Bibi Netanyahu I would recognize a Palestinian State. We would then negotiate borders and security.” But Netanyahu comes from the so-called “Revisionist” wing of Zionism that is reluctant to give up any part of what they consider the biblical land of Israel.
When David Ben Gurion on May 14th, 1948, declared that the state of Israel would come into being at midnight, America responded with de-facto recognition almost immediately. But the Soviet Union came through first with de-jure recognition, something the U.S. did not grant until an elected government had been formed in January of 1949.
Even with the two superpowers onboard, the U.N. Security Council did not grant Israel U.N. membership until May 11, 1949 — a full year after the state was declared — and after a long fight to physically secure its borders.
Palestine might come into being in reverse order — declare sovereignty now, gain admittance to the U.N., and then negotiate the borders with Israel, as Ben-Eliezer suggested.
There are many who say there are dangers involved in a Palestinian state, and they are right, just as those in Truman’s State Department, including George C. Marshall, were right in warning that the creation of a Jewish state would cause a sea of troubles.
And there are those who say that the Palestinian problem is exaggerated, that it doesn’t really matter if they remain an occupied people, because giving them their freedom would not solve all the issues of the Middle East or placate Islamic extremists. And they, too, are right. Giving the Palestinians their state would not solve all the issues of the Middle East, but it would surely help. Again and again, year in and year out, the centrality of the Palestinian problem never goes away. Even General David Petraeus, from his command post in Afghanistan, recognized that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians was hurting America’s war efforts as far away as Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Richard Perle and David Frum, in their book, “An End to Evil, How to Win the War on Terror,” submit that “in the Arab and Muslim World, the Palestinian issue has never been about compassion, mercy, or even justice. First and always, this issue has been about vengeance…”, i.e., “the destruction of Israel and the re-conquest of the Holy Land.” This might be true of some, but this is akin to saying the Jews in Israel want to take over Jordan just because that was an original “revisionist” goal back in 1947, or because David Ben Gurion once put feelers out to the British and French in 1956 that Jordan should be divided up between Israel and Iraq. Yes, some Arabs still might want to destroy Israel, just as some Israelis want to expel all the Palestinians, but that does not represent the vast majority nor government policy in either Israel or the Arab world.
The Obama administration tried its best to talk the Palestinians out of going to the United Nations to legitimize their state but failed. Given the administration’s record, this failure was entirely predictable. Obama came into office seeming to promise a renewed energy toward trying to solve the Palestinian problem, following President Bush’s near-total support for whatever Israel wanted.
Obama went eyeball to eyeball with Netanyahu over settlements, and the Palestinians saw that Obama blinked first. It was obvious then that Obama might talk a good game, but that the Israeli tail was always going to wag the American dog. The sight of Netanyahu who, having defied and insulted the American president, addressing a joint session of Congress with congressmen and senators of both parties jumping to their feet like jack-in-the-boxes to show their support, was all anyone needed to understand Israel’s power in the American Congress.
The Democratic Party has to be mindful of pro-Zionist political support. But it is in America’s strategic interest, and ultimately in Israel’s interest too, to lance the boil of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
If it was the right thing to do to recognize the state of Israel when it was first born, it is time now to grant the same rights and privileges to the Palestinian people. The Obama administration is always talking about being on the right side of history in the Middle East. The United States could abstain, if it must, but vetoing Palestinian nationalist aspirations would put us on the wrong side of history.
The last fugitive sought by the U.N. Balkan war crimes tribunal was arrested by Serbian authorities Wednesday, answering intense international demands for his capture and boosting the country’s hopes of becoming a candidate for European Union membership.
Former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic was taken into custody as he met a man delivering him money in a forest in a mountainous region of northern Serbia where many of his relatives live, authorities said. He had dramatically changed his appearance and was armed but did not resist, they said.
Hours later, Hadzic was brought in for questioning at the war crimes court in the capital Belgrade, a key step toward his extradition to the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. His lawyer said Hadzic will not appeal the process, paving the way for a quick extradition, possibly within the next few days.
State TV footage showed Hadzic entering the courtroom escorted by guards. He walked slowly, slightly hunched, wearing a gray shirt, short hair and a mustache. His black beard had been shaved.
An unknown figure before the 1991-1995 ethnic war for control of Croatia, Hadzic suddenly rose to prominence through his links to Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s secret police. Put in charge of the self-styled Serb ministate in eastern Croatia, he was seen as a pawn of criminal gangs that collaborated heavily with the secret police and made huge profits from smuggled cars, gasoline and cigarettes.
The Hague tribunal indicted him in 2004 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including the murder, torture, deportation and forcible transfer of Croats and other non-Serbs from the territories he controlled.
Less than two months after the capture of Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, Serbia’s Western-leaning president announced live on national television that “Serbia has concluded its most difficult chapter in the cooperation with the Hague Tribunal.”
“It was our moral duty,” President Boris Tadic said. “We have done this for the sake of citizens of Serbia, we have done this for the sake of the victims amongst other nations, we have done this for the sake of reconciliation, we have done this for the sake of establishing credibility of all societies, not only Serbian society.”
In his indictment Hadzic is accused of responsibility for the 1991 leveling of Vukovar, said to be the first European city entirely destroyed since World War II.
In one of the worst massacres in the Croatian conflict, Serb forces seized at least 264 non-Serbs from Vukovar Hospital after a three-month siege of the city, took them to a nearby pig farm, tortured, shot and buried them in an unmarked mass grave.
A month before about 20 kilometers (12.43 miles) southwest of Vukovar, about 50 Croats who had been detained for forced labor were made to walk through a minefield to render it safe for the Serbs, according to the indictment.
“Upon reaching the minefield, the detainees were forced to enter the minefield and sweep their feet in front of them to clear the field of mines,” it said.
Hadzic worked with paramilitary forces that became notorious for their brutality, including the “Tigers,” led by Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan. In that same month of October 1991, Arkan’s men captured 28 civilians from a police facility in Dalj, tortured them and threw their bodies in the Danube. Arkan was assassinated in a Belgrade hotel in 2000.
Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said the arrests of Mladic and Hadzic “mark a long-awaited step forward in Serbia’s cooperation.”
EU leaders immediately welcomed the arrest and saluted “the determination and commitment” of Tadic’s government.
“This is a further important step for Serbia in realizing its European perspective and equally crucial for international justice,” said a joint statement by EU president Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barrios and foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
A tribunal statement said Hadzic will be transferred to The Hague as soon as judicial procedures are completed in Serbia. That normally takes several days.
He will then be brought before a judge to hear a reading of the 14 charges against him. He may enter a plea or delay for a month.
Tribunal president O-Gon Kwon said the arrest was a milestone in the history of the court, which has indicted 161 leaders from the former Yugoslavia since it was created in 1993 at the height of the fighting.
The tribunal has been under U.N. pressure to wind up its cases and close its doors.
Serbian security police found out that Hadzic was meeting a money courier and arrested him Wednesday morning outside the village of Krusedol, Serbian war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told reports.
Until this week, Tadic said, Serbian officials did not know where Goran Hadzic was, despite suspicions that he had been sheltered by former allies.
In the past, Hadzic had narrowly escaped arrest, apparently due to tips from within the Serbian security authorities. Serbia’s post-war authorities have for years faced accusations that they are not doing enough to hunt down the war crimes suspects.
Serbia, widely viewed as the main culprit for the wars in the Balkans, has been working to reintegrate into the international community following years of sanctions and pariah status in the 1990s.
Milosevic was extradited to the Hague tribunal in 2001 and died there in 2006, while on trial for genocide.
Along with Mladic, Serbia has also arrested war crimes fugitives Radovan Karadzic. Both are currently facing war crimes charges in the Hague.
Dusan Stojanovic and Slobodan Lekic contributed.
McMansions endangered from on high (Credit: iStockphoto/Dmitry Galanternik) 
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas holds his hands to his face as U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during the 66th session of the General Assembly at United Nations headquarters Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2011. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)(Credit: AP/Seth Wenig) 
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, left, meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Millennium Hotel in New York during the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Andrew Burton)(Credit: AP) 
A Palestinian waves a flag during a demonstration in the West Bank, Friday, Sept. 9, 2011 
FILE - In this Feb. 6, 1993 file photo, Goran Hadzic, who heads representatives of the Krajina Serbs, talks with reporters at the United Nations in New York, United States. It has been reported on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 by Serbian TV station B92 that authorities have arrested Goran Hadzic, the last remaining fugitive sought by the U.N. war crimes court. Hadzic has been on the run for eight years. He is wanted for atrocities stemming from the 1991-1995 war in Croatia. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)(Credit: AP) 
