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●米英は対イラク戦争を正当化するための“証拠”として半年前に「イラクのファルジャー２塩素ガス製造プラントは化学兵器生産施設で、インドがそれを建設した」と宣伝していました。先月には米国のパウエル国務長官が「イラクはファルジャー２施設を使って化学兵器製造を再開しようとしている」と宣伝をエスカレートしていたのでした。
●ところがこの施設は、イラン・イラク戦争さなかの1985年に、すでにイラクが国内外の“敵”に化学兵器を使っていたことを知りながら、サッチャー政権の肝煎りで英国企業ががこれを建設していたことが先日の英国『ガーディアン』紙で暴露されました。
●つまり、生物化学兵器や核兵器を「大量破壊兵器」と“定義”し、それを持っている国が「ならずもの国家」だというのなら、やっぱり英米が「ならずもの国家」の大将だということが、あらためて確認されたのでした。（笑）
●小猿の遠吠えみたいに「世界からならずもの国家を一掃」したいのなら、まず英国と米国がたがいに叩き合ってください。（苦笑）
●この事件を報じたインドのメディア、社会主義者ウェブ、そしてこの“恥ずかしい秘密”を暴露した『ガーディアン』のオリジナル記事と同紙がこれまで報じた「ファルジャー２
」関係の記事のリストを下記に貼っておきます。
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India Monitor（インディア・モニター）
http://www.indiamonitor.com/
UK initiated Iraqi chemical plant: Report
LONDON: In a damning revelation of alleged Western hypocrisy over arming and now disarming Saddam Hussein, Britain stands accused of originally building the dangerous Iraqi chemical plant that was subsequently rebuilt by an Indian company and is now the prime reason the US and UK want to go to war.
Just under six months ago, a key British dossier in the Western propaganda case for war on Baghdad had alleged Saddam’s Iraq possessed missile infrastructure produced with the "illicit" help of Indian companies. The Indians were supporting the Fallujah 2 chlorine plant, the dossier indicated.
No mention was made of the facts exclusively reported in Thursday's Guardian that Fallujah was secretly built by Britain in 1985, only to be re-built as Fallujah 2 14 years later. British ministers at the time, says the paper, knew full well that the plant, 50 miles outside Baghdad, was likely to be used for mustard and nerve gas production.
The US has consistently described Fallujah 2 as an example of a factory rebuilt by Saddam to regain chemical warfare capability. The plant’s current capabilities are very much a product of Indo-British collaboration, admit experts.
This is because the original British-built Fallujah plant was destroyed in the Gulf War, bombed again in 1998’s Operation Desert Fox and re-built and repaired by Indian firm NEC Engineers Pvt Ltd in 1999. Late on Thursday, Guardian investigative journalist David Leigh admitted as much to TNN, hours after his bombshell hit news stands. Leigh said the official British dossier that listed "illicit Indian companies’" help to Saddam was only half the story.
"They might have mentioned our company too," said Leigh referring to Uhde Limited, the Anglo-German firm that was secretly backed by the Thatcher government in 1985 to build Saddam’s deadly chemical weapons infrastructure.
But Tony Blair’s 55-page British dossier, pinpointed India as part of the supply chain for banned propellant chemicals destined for ballistic missiles. One of these, ammonium perchlorate, the dossier had said, was "illicitly" provided by NEC Engineers Private Limited, which had "extensive links in Iraq", particularly to its al-Mamoun missile production plant and Fallujah 2 chlorine plant.
Analysts say the secret and complicit British involvement in creating Saddam’s chemical capability was likely to embarrass Blair’s assumed moral stance about a "just war". Indian observers said Thursday’s revelation merely underlined the West’s history of complicity and support to Saddam. But sources said it was given added authority by news that Margaret Thatcher’s then trade minister Paul Channon concealed the existence of the chlorine plant contract from the US administration.
Channon, according to The Guardian, had refused to ban British support for Saddam saying, "A ban would do our other trade prospects in Iraq no good". The paper quotes Channon as saying on Wednesday night that he couldn’t "object to the story".
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World Socialist Web （世界の社会主義者のウェブ）
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/chem-m13.shtml
Thatcher backed British firm in building “chemical weapons” plant in Iraq
By Paul Bond
13 March 2003
US Secretary of State Colin Powell last month cited the Falluja 2 chemical plant, headquarters of the Tariq state company, as an example of the Iraqi government rebuilding its chemical weaponry programme through civil establishments.
The CIA identified the Falluja 2 plant last October as a facility “designed specifically for Iraq’s chemical weapons programme”. This view was endorsed by a report from the British government’s joint intelligence committee, which stated, “Plants formerly associated with the chemical warfare programme have been rebuilt. These include the chlorine and phenol plant at Falluja 2.”
Documents newly disclosed by the Guardian newspaper in relation to the Falluja 2 plant are therefore extremely embarrassing for both the British and by extension the US government. They reveal that the plant’s building was undertaken by a British company and underwritten through insurance guarantees by the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. This information was withheld from the US government at the time. Concerns that the plant would be used to manufacture chemical weapons were raised, but played down by the Tory government because they would impinge on trade relations.
The £14 million plant for the production of chlorine and caustic soda was built in 1985, during the Iran-Iraq war, when it was already known that the Iraqi regime was using chemical weaponry against the Iranians and the Kurds.
The imperialist powers funded both sides of the Iran-Iraq conflict, to some extent in the belief that they would exhaust themselves and possibly even eliminate two troublesome presences in the region. Iraq was supplied with weapons by France but funded by regimes that were close to Washington, such as Saudi Arabia.
By 1984 the Iraqi State Enterprise for Pesticide Production (SEPP) was experiencing difficulties in buying precursor chemicals, largely as a result of pressure being brought to bear by the US government on German chemical companies. SEPP attempted instead to establish plants within Iraq capable of producing the same precursors. As part of this process it commissioned a chlorine plant at Falluja.
SEPP insisted that the plant was required for water treatment, although the CIA suggested that the three such plants Iraq already had were sufficient for the country’s requirement. Sections of the US and British military were concerned that the plant could be adapted to treat the chlorine further to produce epichlorohydrin (a precursor for mustard gas) and phosphorus trichloride (a precursor for nerve gas).
The contract was awarded in December 1984 to British-based company Uhde Ltd., which in turn was wholly owned by German company Uhde gmbh (a subsidiary of Hoechst at the time, now owned by ThyssenKrupp). Uhde Ltd. also acted through an intermediary company, to which it paid approximately £1 million in commission. The Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD) of the Department of Trade (the department which insures and approves such aspects of foreign trade) expressed its anxieties at this complicated network of parent companies. A memo published by the Guardian reads: “[this arrangement’s] very nature creates suspicions and there are some unusual circumstances concerning the contract which reinforce those.”
The Foreign Office suggested that these arrangements had been created by the parent company to avoid problems with approval from the German government. When approached informally, the West German government suggested instead that the deal had been split into two contracts as the German equivalent of the ECGD would be unwilling to underwrite such a large contract. Then Foreign Office minister Richard Luce (now Lord Chamberlain) expressed his disappointment that the “West German authorities seem to have avoided giving any formal judgement on the end-use of the plant.
At the time Luce was engaged with the US government in attempts to ban the export of precursors for mustard gas and nerve gas. He was the British government’s spokesman at a disarmament conference in Geneva, speaking about Britain’s “leading role” in preventing the use of chemicals in warfare. Given advice from the Ministry of Defence that the Falluja plant could be used to manufacture precursors, Luce sought to minimise any potential embarrassment to the government. He appealed to the Trade Minister Paul Channon (now Lord Kelvedon) to oppose ECGD cover being given to the contract, and explicitly stated that there was a possibility that the plant could be used towards the manufacture of chemical weaponry.
Other civil servants were making similar points. Stephen Day, head of the Middle East desk at the Foreign Office, sent a note to the Department of Trade advising them that intelligence suggested a strong possibility of the plant being used for the production of mustard gas. “Mr Channon and Mr. Luce,” he went on, “have given assurances in the House of Commons that no items of equipment would be authorised for Iran or Iraq which it was thought would in any way contribute to the manufacture of chemical weapons.... Hostile critics would undoubtedly make much of any British involvement in such a project (particularly the provision of ECGD cover).”
Luce repeated the point at several meetings with Channon, the minutes of which show clearly that concerns were expressed about the possibility of the plant’s use for chemical warfare purposes. Channon, however, refused to block any trade development which would cut across the British government’s position of courting Saddam Hussein’s regime. Uhde have suggested that without the provision of ECGD cover they would not have been able to finance the project, and have now hinted that the ECGD cover proved that this was a legitimate civilian operation. (“This was a normal plant for the production of chlorine and caustic soda. It could not produce other products. The ECGD provided our English subsidiary company with insurance cover.”)
When Luce finally agreed to the contract proceeding, notes prepared for Channon explain the thinking behind the decision:
“British industry would resent a unilateral ban as an unreasonable commercial restraint.... A ban would do our other trade prospects in Iraq no good.”
Confirmation of the true character of “morality” in imperialist politics can be seen from Luce’s agreement to the contract. The concession he won from Channon in exchange for the agreement was that negotiations should continue with the US over a general ban on export of precursors. However it was agreed between the two departments that they should avoid doing anything which might draw US attention to the contract. One of Channon’s aides wrote that “since the Americans were not involved in this contract it would be unwise to draw their attention to it.”
Luce agreed, replying, “Officials here are in touch with the Americans on the question of further controls on chemicals ... (though for obvious reasons we do not wish to draw attention to chlorine plants).” It was agreed that any specific questions on the project would be obscured behind the ECGD’s refusal to discuss individual cases.
With the contract covered by the ECGD, work began on shipping parts to Falluja 2. But by this time the situation in the Middle east had undergone a dramatic shift. The US had decided to target Saddam Hussein’s regime for destabilisation, in order to ensure America’s hegemony over the oil riches of the region?a decision that was to culminate in the Gulf War of 1991 launched on the pretext of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
The SEPP signed to accept the complete chlorine plant in May 1990 and Uhde Ltd’s final accounts made clear that their continued involvement was at an end by the commencement of hostilities between Iraq and Kuwait. But when the final checks were halted by the start of the Gulf War, Uhde in fact successfully claimed £300,000 compensation from the ECGD. (This underwriting is mentioned in the final accounting: “associated trade debtors have been written down to the amount recoverable from the ECGD”.)
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●●英国『ガーディアン』紙のスクープ記事
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,908211,00.html
The strange case of Falluja 2
Confidential files reveal Tory ministers' roles in approval of gas-producing facility and plans to hide it from US
David Leigh
Thursday March 6, 2003
The Guardian
Falluja 2 is one of the reasons Britain is planning to go to war. Listed as the headquarters of the Tariq state company, this £14m chemical plant was purchased from abroad in the 1980s to make chlorine, part one in a process from which outlawed chemical weapons such as mustard gas and the nerve gases tabun and sarin can be produced.
US satellite photos have pinpointed the vats and piping of the installation 50 miles outside Baghdad as a key part of the dictator's rebuilt armoury of potential chemical weapons.
Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, zeroed in on it last month. "Iraq has embedded key portions of its illicit chemical weapons infrastructure within its legitimate civilian industry," he told the security council in his dossier justifying war against Saddam.
"Iraq has rebuilt key portions of the Tariq state establishment. Tariq includes facilities designed specifically for Iraq's chemical weapons programme and employs key figures from past programmes. That's the production end of Saddam's chemical weapons business."
And last October the CIA claimed: "The best examples are the chlorine and phenol plants at Falluja 2. Falluja 2 was one of Iraq's principal CW production facilities. Iraq ... is trying to hide the activities of the Falluja plant."
Britain's top intelligence analysis body, the joint intelligence committee, chimed in with a heavyweight report published by Tony Blair around the same time: "Plants formerly associated with the chemical warfare programme have been rebuilt. These include the chlorine and phenol plant at Falluja 2."
The UN's weapons inspectors, led by Hans Blix, duly trawled through Falluja 2 last December. Mr Blix told the security council on January 27: "Iraq ... has repaired chemical processing equipment ... and had installed it at Fallujah for the production of chlorine and phenols."
What no one has yet reported on, however, is the secret of who built Falluja 2. It is a secret that has been hidden for 18 years, and one that some in Britain and around the world will regard as shameful.
We have discovered that the plant was sold and installed by a British company in Hounslow, Uhde Ltd.
British ministers in the Thatcher government knew there were clear signs of chemical warfare purpose, but gave it UK government financial backing. This support was provided on the instructions of the then Conservative trade minister Paul Channon, who told his officials to keep the deal secret.
Whitehall files obtained by the Guardian reveal that Mr Channon was undeterred by the prospect that the Falluja plant's products would contribute to the gassing of Iranians, whom Saddam was fighting. The files show he was informed about - as one senior Foreign Office civil servant wrote - "the strong possibility that the Iraqis wish to use it for the manufacture of mustard gas".
Mr Channon and his officials concealed the existence of the Falluja contract not only from the British public, but also from the US administration, which was trying to curb sales of chemical warfare equipment.
What is perhaps even more remarkable is that when final checks on the completed chlorine plant were interrupted in 1990 by the outbreak of the first Gulf war, the company successfully claimed £300,000 compensation from Britain's export credits guarantee department (ECGD), part of the Ministry of Trade.
As horribly burned and gassed Iranian troops were shipped to London for medical treatment in 1985, one Conservative politician, the junior Foreign Office minister Richard Luce, vainly tried to make a stand against allowing the Falluja chlor-alkali electroysis plant to be built.
He wrote to Mr Channon on March 8: "I consider it essential that everything possible be done to oppose the proposed sale and to deny the company concerned ECGD cover." He added: "We understand from the experts in the Ministry of Defence that production from such a factory could be used ... to manufacture chemical warfare agents."
Mr Luce said he was about to address a Geneva disarmament conference on Britain's "leading role" in trying to stop chemicals being used for warfare: "This makes it particularly important that we should avoid authorising the export of a plant which could be adapted for military purposes."
His letter followed a note about the chlorine plant from the head of the Middle East desk at the Foreign Office, Stephen Day, to his civil servant opposite number in the Department of Trade. Mr Day said: "A number of factors point to the strong possibility that the Iraqis wish to use it for the manufacture of mustard gas".
He added: "Mr Channon and Mr Luce have given assurances in the House of Commons that no items of equipment would be authorised for Iran or Iraq which it was thought would in any way contribute to the manufacture of chemical weapons ... Hostile critics would undoubtedly make much of any British involvement in such a project (particularly the provision of ECGD cover)."
At a meeting with Mr Channon on March 18, Mr Luce renewed his pleas. A minute by Mr Channon's private secretary records him arguing that "the Americans had appealed for us to stop" such exports. He added: "There were indications that the Iraqis were using chemicals again in their conflict with Iran."
But Mr Channon refused. On March 25 Mr Luce wrote to him finally saying: "I ... reluctantly agree" to the contract going ahead. Mr Channon's speaking notes for the meeting prepared for him by officials stressed: "British industry would resent a unilateral ban as an unreasonable commercial restraint ... A ban would do our other trade prospects in Iraq no good."
There remained two problems for Conservative ministers - the Americans and the British public. Mr Luce insisted as the price of his acquiescence that negotiations continue with the US to get a general ban on export of precursors, the chemicals made from chlorine which could be used to make mustard gas and nerve gas.
But both ministers agreed to conceal the existence of the Falluja 2 contract from the US. Mr Channon decided this at a meeting with his own officials on March 14, the records show. "The only way of being certain [about US regulations] is to ask the Americans; and we agreed not to do this at the minister's meeting yesterday".
A further "confidential" note from one of Mr Channon's officials after the two ministers met on March 19 also confirms: "It was agreed at the meeting that since the Americans were not involved in this contract it would be unwise to ask questions which drew their attention to it."
Mr Luce agreed, writing: "Officials here are in touch with the Americans on the question of further controls on chemicals ... (though for obvious reasons we do not wish to draw attention to chlorine plants)".
Mr Channon added: "If there are any immediate questions to ECGD, the latter will say that it is their practice not to comment on individual cases".
The old Etonian and Guinness heir Paul Channon has since become a Tory peer, Lord Kelvedon, of Kelvedon Hall in Essex.
Richard Luce has become Lord Chamberlain, a senior member of the Queen's household.
Saddam Hussein, having gassed an estimated 8,600 Iranians and Kurds by the time of the secret approval of this British contract, went on to gas another 18,000 of his opponents with mustard and nerve agents, including hundreds of Kurdish villagers at Halabja in March 1988.
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●ファルジャー２化学工場について言及した
『ガーディアン』紙の過去記事
（2003年３月13日現在、ぜんぶで13件見つかりました。）
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【1】The strange case of Falluja 2
David Leigh
March 06 2003
Falluja 2 is one of the reasons Britain is planning to go to war. Listed as the headquarters of the Tariq state company, this £14m chemical plant was purchased from abroad in the 1980s to make chlorine, part one in a process from which outlawed chem...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,908211,00.html
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【2】Is Saddam hiding something? Blix gives his verdict on Iraqi weapons
Ewan MacAskill, Jonathan Steele, Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Traynor
January 28 2003
In 60 days the UN inspectors charged with hunting down Iraq's chemical and biological weapons have carried out 300 inspections to more than 230 different sites, including universities, military bases, presidential sites and private homes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,883756,00.html
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【3】Statement by Hans Blix to the UN security council
January 27 2003
The governing security council resolutions...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,883535,00.html
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【4】Cautious Saddam pins his hopes on delaying tactics
Brian Whitaker in Cairo and Ewen MacAskill
December 09 2002
All the actions of Saddam Hussein over the last few months suggest he is anxious to avoid confrontation. He knows that the US president, George Bush, needs only the slightest excuse to set out on the road to war, and the Iraqi president appears intent on...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,856398,00.html
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【5】Analysts seek answers on arms and sites
Brian Whitaker in Cairo
December 09 2002
Experts beginning their analysis of Iraq's declaration document will have two key tasks.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,856397,00.html
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【6】Inspectors' mission faces long odds
Ed Vulliamy in New York and Peter Beaumont
November 17 2002
In their rooms at the Flamingo Hotel in Cyprus the first team of UN weapons inspectors are making preparations for their flight to Baghdad tomorrow.
http://www.observer.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,841733,00.html
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【7】Inspectors can go anywhere, anytime, any palace. But will they will find anything?
Ewen MacAskill, and Ian Traynor in Vienna
November 15 2002
Iraqi minders showing journalists around Tikrit, the birthplace of the country's president, Saddam Hussein, recently promised them in English that they could go wherever they wanted, even the enormous presidential palace. But, in Arabic, the minders said...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,840337,00.html
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【8】Can Blix nix Iraq's tricks?
Oliver Burkeman
November 08 2002
There are many glamorous jobs in international diplomacy, but being a UN weapons inspector is not one of them. Those who took part last time remember a life of endless frustrations thrown up by their reluctant Iraqi hosts - the bugged hotels, the hostile...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,835856,00.html
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【9】Sifting the old claims from new and suspicions from assertions of fact
Nicholas Watt and David Pallister
September 25 2002
Nuclear weapons ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,798522,00.html
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【10】Blair: Why Saddam and his weapons have to be stopped
September 25 2002
This is a summary of the government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,798369,00.html
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【11】Secrets of Saddam's hidden arsenal
Richard Norton-Taylor and Julian Borger in Washington
September 05 2002
A dossier on Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical warfare capabilities was drawn up in March by the Cabinet Office's joint intelligence committee, chaired by the former MI6 officer John Scarlett, after intense discussions within the intelligence commun...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,786212,00.html
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【12】Go on, call Bush's bluff
Hans von Sponeck
July 22 2002
During the 17 months of the Bush administration just about everything has gone wrong for the US government in preparing the public for military strikes against Iraq. Convincing friendly governments and allies has not fared much better. Acts of terrorism...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,759446,00.html
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【13】Chasing shadows
November 24 1998
Ten minutes before 300 Cruise missiles were due to hit strategic sites on the afternoon of November 14, Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq was willing to concede to all the demands made by the United Nations concerning weapons inspections.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/World_Report/Story/0,2867,324829,00.html
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題名には必ず「阿修羅さんへ」と記述してください。