Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

REVUE DE PRESSE-PRESS REVIEW-BERHEVOKA ÇAPÊ-RNISTA STAMPA-DENTRO DE lA PRENSA-BASlN OZETi
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, FRIDA Y, SEYfEMBER 10, 1993
A Bush-Clinton Pact to Keep Iraqgate Covered Up?
ASHINGTON - Oeor$.e
W Bush privately assured Bill
Clinton that he would not criticize
the new president during the first
year of his term. I cannot attribute
that to any source, but trust me.
And Mr. Bush has kept his word.
In what may be an unspoken
quid pro quo, the Clinton administration
has moved to quash any
revelations about Mr. Bush's Iraqgate
scandal.
You remember Iraqgate: the
White House corruption of the Agriculture
Department's loan guarantee
program to slip foreign aid bila
lions through an Italian bank to
Saddam Hussein, which he used to
finance his secret nuclear buildup.
The Bush Justice Department
sought to contain the scandal by
pretending that the Italian bank.
knew nothing of its Atlanta office's'
Iraqi dealings, despite suppressed
CIA evidence to the con trill}';
During the '92 campaign, tu
Gore accurately charged that "the
CIA reported to Secretary of State
James Baker ... that Iraq was
clandestinely procuring nuclear
weapons" while the State Department
was urging more loan guar.
antees to appease the dic~tor.
Candidate Clinton, asked if he
would favor a special Iraqgate
prosecutor under a new Independent
Counsel Act, replied unequivocally,
"Yes."
That was then. Last week, in Atlanta
federal court, Mr. Clinton's
Justice Department arranged for
the local Banca Lavoro manager !o
cop a plea on three minor charges of
what had been a 347-count indict.
roent, thereby blocking full disclosure
of Rome's corrupt involvement
- with guilty knowled$e of U.S.
officials - in a public tnal.
John Ho,-an, Attorney General
Janet Reno s longtime assistant in
Miami, is the prosecutor who insists
that the bank in Rome was
innocent, over the plea bargainer's
continued disputation.
Federal JudgeMarvin Shoob rejects
Mr. Hogan's contention as.
"absurd ... never-never land,"
He sees a "wider-rangin$ sophisticated
conspiracy that Involved
BNL-Rome ... and the governments
of the U.S., England, Italy
and Iraq,"
But Ms. Reno's man, who joined
the Justice Department on June 7,
has conducted what she falsely
calls "a thorough independent investigation,"
resulting in "no reason
to change our opinion."
Thus Clinton appointees at Justice
have closed ranks with prose-
....
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~ • Sincar's body moved to Klzlltepe, lai
~ to rest after religious service
~ • Murdered deputy buried without family,
~ relatives and colleagues
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Turkish Daily News
ANKARA- Turkish authorities on
Thursday buried a murdered Kur.
dish MP whose family and friends
were prevented for three consecutive
days from holding a 'prearranged
funeral ceremony for him in Ankara.
Democracy Party (D.EP) Depu~y
Mehmet Sincar was laId to rest m
his home town of KlZIltepe, Mardin,
by security forces but wit~out
the participation of any relatlves
and friends. Sources said Sincar's
family was a;skedto sign a paper saying
they dId not claIm the body
before hIS coffin was flown out of
Ankara to the burial site in the tet-
ror-ridden Southeast region under
heavy security measures.
Security forces prevented local
people and supporters from attending
the funeral and rushed Sincar's
body. through a religious ceremony
held In a KlzIltepe Mosque.
Turkish Human Rights Association
Chainnan Akm Birdal said in
statement that developments surrounding
Sincar's funeral were against
pnncipal human rights and condemned
the incident. Sincar and
another DEP provincial official were
shot dead last Saturday in the
Eastern refinery city of Batman by
gunmen said by the government to
belong to Hezbollah. The DEP sus-
cUlors and Î1xers desperate not to
be brought before a grand jury by a
truly independent counsel. Mr.
Bush's Justice Department appointed
the lawyer for Saddam's
main arms purchaser as U.S. attorney
in Atlanta; Mr. Clinton's Justice
Department is appointinJ a
lawyer from King & Spalding,
BNL's law firm, who had worked
on the case as a prosecutor to the
U.S. attorney there now.
Ms. Reno is unconcerned at how
her assertion of BNL-Rome's innocence
bolsters the Italian bank's
claim against the United States for
$380 million of the loans to Saddam
that James Baker persuaded
the Agriculture Department's
Clayton Yeutter to guarantee. If
the Criminal Division holds that
Rome was victimized, shouldn't
the United States pay up? "Apples
and oranges," Mr. Hogan tells me;
~at is the Civil Division's Job.
Mr. Hogan is familiar WIth Ital.
ian suits, having once been accused
Öl receiving stolen clothing in a Mi.
ami "hot suit" case; he earned a
*aight-arrow reputation by resign.
ßg as prosecutor despite his innotence.
But now he uses "ongoing
Utvestigation" to duck questions,
despite SI. Janet's claim of his work
having already been "thorough"; it
k \!1Iltentlv""lt'~ir:JdeDendent,"
peets that local security forces have
had a hand in the murders, as well
as in the killing of 52 other activists
and politicians affiliated with the
party over the past two years.
Neither the DEP nor the family
of Sincar were allowed in Ankara
to organize their own funeral ceremony,
which included placing the
coffin on a catafalque and marching
500 meters to a nearby mosque.
"This is a body s~izure," DEP
Chairman Ya~ar Kaya protested
earlier. Police at the hosRilal refused
to hand over Sincar s body to
his 15 parliamentarian colleagues
for two days as the governor's office
dictated to relatives its own
program for a ceremony. Neither
DEP nor Sincar's family agreed to
claim the lxxIy under these conditions.
Witnesses at Ankara's Hacellepe
Hospital on Thursday said a state
ambulance collected Sincar's coffin
!>id Mr. Hogan take testimony
under oath from ex-Attorney General
Dick Thornburgh about a
White House meeting with Ambas-
06ador Rinaldo P~rignani of Italy,
:directed by Rome to "raise the case
to a political level"? Or ask the
Criminal Division why an update
on the BNL investigation was prepared
for the attorney general just
three days before that meeting?
Did he convene a grand jury to
examine the Oct. 26, 1989, memo
to Mr. Baker, with attached talking
points and Baker notations,
showing how commodity credits
were abusC(d for Saddam's back-
Kloor finanting?
Is it not a blatant conflict of
interest for him to close out the
Atlanta case while purporting to
investigate the Atlanta prosecutors
on whose work he depended?
Ms. Reno's man s.ayeth not.
No wonder we hear not a peep
of criticism about Bill Clinton
from George Bush; the former
president and his men are being
well protected. The Congress
should pass the Independent
Counsel Act and demand that it
be used in this case.
The New York Times.
!Authorities bury Kurdish deputy
139