Who
Is Negroponte?
By Ghali Hassan
03 June, 2004
Countercurrents.org
"Their
[Negroponte and his aides] attitude was one of tolerance and silence.
They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned
about innocent people being killed". Efrain Diaz, aforrmer Honduran
congressman.
The
White House has just approved the appointment of John Dimitris Negroponte
to be United States ambassador to Iraq. He will preside over the largest
embassy in the world, and housed in the Republic Palace (misleadingly
named Saddam's Palace by the U.S. occupation). He will be protected
by high concrete walls, barbed wires and more than 150,000 occupation
force, including several thousands of foreign mercenaries armed to the
teeth with the most violent tools. Mr. Negroponte is Greek-American
diplomat. He is currently leading the diplomatic war against the people
of Iraq as the U.S. envoy at the United Nations (UN) in New York. Negroponte
is Jewish. A friend in Spain expressed his deep concern to me recently:
" to appoint a Jew as ambassador to the Arab country that has been
devastated because of the will of a cabal of Jewish neocons headed by
Wolfowitz - Bush is just an accessory -, is like trying to put off a
fire using buckets of gasoline".
Mr. Negroponte has
served as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985; a period during
which the U.S. military aid to Honduras grew from $5 million to nearly
$100 million, and more than $200 million in economic aid, making Honduras
the largest aid recipient in the region. Honduras was the launching
pad from which the Reagan administration ran its violent "war on
terror" in Central American. The U.S-backed atrocities and terror
were condemned by the International World Court in the Hague (1). Like
most of his colleagues in the Bush administration, Mr. Negroponte is
a "recycled reaganites".
At the time Mr.
Negroponte was in Honduras, Honduras was a military dictatorship. Kidnapping,
rape, torture and executions of dissidents was rampant. The military
top and middle ranks were U.S-trained at the School of the Americas
(SOA), the Harvard version of the CIA, based in Fort Benning, Georgia.
According to Human Rights Watch, graduates of the SOA are responsible
for the worst human rights abuses and torture of dissidents in Latin
America. Some of its 60,000 graduates are notorious Manuel Noriega and
Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina,
Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, Hugo
Banzer Suarez of Bolivia and Gustavo Álvarez Martínez,
Honduras security police chief and later Honduran top military commander.
In Honduras the
army intelligence unit, Battalion 3-16, which was involved in kidnappings,
rape, torture and killing of suspected dissidents. In 1995 Gary Cohn
and Ginger Thompson of The Baltimore Sun unearthed massive and substantiated
evidence from various sources pointing the finger at Mr. Negroponte
knowledge of the crimes. The reporters also found that hundreds of Hondurans
"were kidnapped, tortured and killed in the 1980s by a secret army
unit trained and supported by the CIA"(2). Reliable evidence from
the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Honduras alleged that
Negroponte oversaw the expansion of U.S training camp and military base
on Honduran territory, where US-trained Contras terrorists, and where
the military secretly detained, tortured and executed Honduran suspected
dissidents.
During his years
in Honduras, Negroponte acquired a reputation, justified, as an old-fashioned
imperialist, and devoted to Realpolitik (3). Mr. Negroponte will bring
to Iraq his version of "democracy" à la Latin America,
where the people vote for one of two candidates every half decade, in
which civilian leaders have to obey U.S-controlled militaries or face
dismissal by military force. Mr. Negroponte will find the Iraqi soil
fertile for his version of democracy and human rights. The U.S. administration
turn blind eye to violations of human rights by their own troops and
mercenaries. Nazi's methods of torture, sexual abuses and murder of
Iraqi prisoners by the racist soldiers of the occupying forces are in
use immediately after the invasion and occupation of the Iraq. The occupying
powers ignores the criminal activities of four militia bands, which
according to exile Iraqis have murdered many Iraqi academics and intellectuals.
The Iraqi-born novelist and artist Haifa Zangana wrote in the Guardian
of London: "the peshmergas of the two Kurdish parties; the Badr
brigade of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq; Ahmed
Chalabi's troops; and the ex-Ba'athist Mukhabarats under Iyad Alawi's
national accord. These militias are run by members of the IGC and no
one can touch them"(4). The occupying powers have not put an end
to these violent crimes. These are the same issues faced Negroponte
when he was U.S. ambassador to Honduras.
Recently, Mr. Negroponte
talked about: "real dialogue between our military commanders, the
new Iraqi government and, I think, the United States mission as well".
He said: "the American military is going to have the freedom to
act in their self-defence, and they are going to be free to operate
in Iraq as they best see fit". Negroponte stint at the UN was to
shield Israel crimes against the Palestinians, and to coerce smaller
nations at the Security Council exercising the threat of U.S. power.
Negroponte diplomatic
responsibilities were appalling. Democracy and human rights are not
on Negroponte preferred menu. Negroponte will be serving the interests
of U.S. tyranny and U.S. Corporations in Iraq. Negroponte will bring
to Iraq the atrocities and the economic disasters inflicted on the people
of Latin America by the U.S. and U.S-backed corporations. Negroponte
is not suitable to serve in the current political environment of Iraq.
[1]. Noam Chomsky, Terror and Just Response,
www.chomsky.info/articles/20020702 .
[2]. Gary Cohn & Ginger Thompson, Former envoy to Honduras says
he did what
he could, The Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1995.
[3]. Stephen Kinzer, Our Man in Honduras, The New York Review of Books,
48(14), September 2001.
[4]. Haifa Zangana, The Enemy within, The Guardian, 10 April 2004.
Ghali Hassan is in the Science and Mathematics Education Centre, Curtin
University, Perth, Western Australia. [email protected].