Former OPCW Director-General Bustani Banned From Speaking At UN Security Council
October 5: Western Delegations Oppose Presentation of Evidence that OPCW Report Of Chemical Weapons Attack on Douma, Syria May Have Been Falsified.
October 21: In New York Post Article, US Ambassador Falsely Accuses China of Precisely the Same Tactics that the US Has Used for 75 Years at the UN.
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Introduction
US Ambassador publishes article in New York Post, October 21, 2020 accusing China of precisely the tactics the US has been using at the UN since its inception.
China replies today:
“On 21 October the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations published an article, viciously attacking cooperation between China and the UN. The article disregards facts, and features lies, twisted logic, ideological bias and a cold war mentality. It is an embodiment of McCarthyism in the new era. We firmly reject it.”
The Security Council meeting on October 5th, 2020, during the Russian Presidency, is a dramatic demonstration of US and allied manipulations and falsifications, the very manipulations and falsifications they accuse China of.
Background
The scandalous pattern of deceit:
On February 5, 2003, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell knowingly lied to the UN Security Council, insisting that the U.S. possessed irrefutable proof that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, although there was no such proof, and he knew that.
This falsification, which Powell, in shame now admits was the lowest point in his career, was used in an attempt to justify the US attack on Iraq the following month, in March, 2003, which resulted in more than 100,000 civilian deaths, and the complete destruction of the Iraqi state, leaving it an incubator of terrorism to this very day.
Prior to this Bush Administration engineered war, on July 6, 2003, Ambassador Joseph Wilson published an op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled:
“What I Did Not Find in Africa,” refuting allegations that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium tubes in Niger to restart his nuclear program.
In retaliation for Wilson’s exposure of the falsity of Bush’s numerous allegations, the Bush Administration revealed the fact that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA operative, henceforth “Fair Game,” endangering her life, and the lives of all her contacts and associates.
Wilson’s refusal to support the Bush administration’s false allegations against Iraq led to escalating harassment of him and his wife, threats to their lives and their children’s lives, until, ultimately, at the National Press Club Wilson and Plame announced their lawsuit against Vice-President Cheney and the CIA, and fearful for their lives, ultimately left Washington, D.C.
In 2002, The Washington Post had headlined complaints by CIA intelligence staff that they were being forced to politicize intelligence, and, indeed, CIA Chief John Tenet had written a letter to Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Congressional Committee on Intelligence, stating that Saddam Hussein would not attack the U.S. unless the U.S. initiated an attack against Iraq.
Left: Tenet, Cheney, Bush
The facts did not demonstrate that Iraq was a threat to the U.S. and the facts did not justify a U.S. attack against Iraq, but the facts were ignored in the U.S. obsession with regime change. The unconscionable lies and falsification of evidence were scandalous, but the warhawks were undeterred. The famous British “Downing Street Memo” confirmed that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of war against Iraq.
Less than a decade later, in March, 2011 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1973 on Libya, based on similar falsification of reality, and resulting in the destruction of the Libyan state, and another incubator of terrorism in the Middle East.
Soon after the US, UK and France had collaborated to destroy Iraq and Libya, in 2011 Syria erupted in demonstrations, resulting in chaos, and the US, UK and France tried repeatedly to force through the UN Security Council another “war resolution to ‘protect the civilians of Syria’.”
This time, however, Russia and China were wise to the ploy, and both countries vetoed efforts to obtain Security Council authorization for military or “humanitarian” intervention in Syria, recognizing that this would ultimately consign Syria to the horrific fate of Iraq and Libya, and this Western covert and overt strategy might ultimately be used to destroy Iran, as well. These famous “double-vetoes” by Russia and China, however, seem in hindsight to have only slowed down the Western powers’ inexorable determination to destroy the independent government of Syrian President Assad, using the most corrupt and venal means. Colin Powell’s deceitful performance at the Security Council in 2003 appears to be repeating itself in variations, culminating on October 5, this month.
Today
The official OPCW report on Douma alleges that the Syrian Government attacked its own people in Douma on April 7, 2018, using chemical weapons, specifically chlorine. Veteran OPCW inspector Ian Henderson, ultimately a whistleblower, was present on the ground in Douma, interviewed numerous witnesses living in Douma, and found no evidence of any attack by the Syrian government on Douma, and strong evidence that an appearance of an attack had been staged, and this fabrication was ultimately used as an attempt to justify the bombing of Syria by the U.S. immediately afterward. Little by little, Syria is deteriorating under these stealthy and relentless hostile actions by the West, covert and overt, as terrorists from countries throughout the world are arriving in Syria to continue the destabilization of one of the most progressive countries in the Middle East.
OPCW inspector Ian Henderson, who headed the team initially investigating the Douma incident, and present, himself in Douma during this initial investigation, attempted to expose the fraudulence of the final official report by the OPCW, which states the the Syrian government had attacked its own people in Douma, using chemical weapons in violation of its pledge to the OPCW. Henderson’s repudiation of the final report, and the repudiation by another OPCW inspector who, fearful of the consequences, has remained anonymous, is credible and a serious indication that the OPCW has been compromised, and has capitulated under the pressure of Western countries to issue a fraudulent report condemning the Syrian Government, with no legitimate proof.
Credible OPCW inspectors repudiating the report are being silenced, and their alarm at the corruption of the OPCW is being, at best, ignored. The OPCW’s final and official report, used to justify the U.S. bombing of Syria soon after the alleged events in Douma, which were, according to Ian Henderson, events which never occurred, is no different than Colin Powell’s presentation of falsified “evidence” to the UN Security Council in 2003, just prior to the Bush Administration’s devastating “shock and awe” attack on Iraq. This now seems to be the pattern: falsely accuse the target government of a heinous crime, a “false flag,” then used as justification for military attack against the falsely accused government. This bears ominous similarity to Hitler’s use of the Reichstag fire to justify his extermination of the Jews.
On October 5, 2020, the Russian President of the UN Security Council, Ambassador Nebenzia, had invited former Director-General of the OPCW, Jose Bustani, to brief the Security Council, providing additional information about the so-called chemical attack in Douma, and discussing Ian Henderson’s allegations that the OPCW had been corrupted under pressure by Western powers. The UK, France and the US ferociously banned Bustani from the Security Council meeting, claiming that he was not “qualified” to speak on the issue!!!! This was the UK’s objection, quite preposterous, considering that Bustani had been Director-General of the OPCW at its inception, and had been forced to resign by John Bolton. According to Business Insider,
“The retired Brazilian diplomat, Jose Bustani, who was then serving as the Director General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was trying to negotiate with Iraq and Libya to allow chemical weapons inspectors into their borders and to have them agree to destroy their chemical weapons. But the US was reportedly not fond of Bustani’s outreach to these countries, and Bolton, who was one of the primary architects of the Iraq War that began in 2003, himself visited Bustani to pressure him to step down from his post.
‘We can’t accept your management style,’ Bolton told Bustani in 2002. ‘You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don’t comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you,’ he continued.
Bolton reportedly said, ‘We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York.’ Bustani was taken aback by Bolton’s directness, but did not back down.
‘John Bolton is a bully.’ Bustani told his colleagues at the OPCW about the encounter, and one former official who was in the room at the time, Gordon Vachon, said Bolton had made another threat to Bustani as well. Vachon told The Intercept that he recalled Bolton saying Bustani ‘could go quietly, with little fuss and restraint on all sides, and without dragging your name through the mud.’ Bustani eventually was forced to step down after the US convinced its allies in the OPCW to rally against him, according to the Times. He was forced out by a stunning vote of 48 to 7 and 43 abstentions.”
The ILO subsequently ruled that the ouster of Bustani was illegal.
After this disposal of its Director-General, Bustani, who was forced out because he showed integrity, the OPCW cannot claim impartiality, as it is so obsequious to the Western countries: this may explain why it won the Nobel Peace Prize, which is becoming something of a political award for obedience to interests other than peace.
On October 5, 2020, the UK, the US, France, Belgium and Estonia spearheaded the banning of Bustani from testifying before the Security Council, attempting to deprive its members of information that may be crucially important in its decisions on war and peace. Their intellectual and moral cowardice in suppression of inconvenient facts disputing their false narrative was vividly exposed by their infantile performance. The Chinese delegation brilliantly defended the right of the members of the Security Council to hear Bustani, whom it identified as far more qualified to address the council than many other briefers who had been permitted to speak.
The Chinese arguments were excellent, but to no avail. Once again the lies of the OPCW prevail, and Bustani, personally, was muzzled. Fortunately, nevertheless, in his capacity as Representative of the Russian Federation, the President of the Council, Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia read aloud Bustani’s complete statement, with the emphatic instruction that this be entered into the official record of the Security Council meeting. Obviously, the clique that prohibited Bustani’s presence were infuriated by Russia’s determination that Bustani’s words be heard.
Tragically for the world, the hijacking of the UN Security Council continues, from its complicity in the Korean War in the 1950’s through today, 75 years later.
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Carla Stea is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Global Research’s Correspondent at UN headquarters, New York.
Featured image is from Syria News
