Sunday Telegraph: Army chief puts commanders on alert to attack Iraq [WWW.STOPNA

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HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- Sunday Telegraph Army chief puts commanders on alert to attack Iraq By Sean Rayment and Francis Elliott (Filed: 31/03/2002) BRITAIN'S most senior general has secretly instructed regimental commanders to prepare for an invasion of Iraq this autumn. General Sir Michael Walker, the Chief of the General Staff, effectively placed the Army on a war footing earlier this month when he addressed more than 30 senior officers in Warminster, Wiltshire. His speech, to the cream of the officer corps, warned them to prepare for a major offensive against Saddam Hussein later this year. All the officers are due to take command of armoured, infantry and artillery regiments in the next few weeks, the units that would spearhead the British contribution to a second Gulf war. The comments by the head of the Army, are the first unambiguous indication that defence chiefs are already formulating detailed plans to attack Iraq alongside American forces. One senior officer who was on the course said: "At the end of his speech he told us to go away and make sure we were ready for war by the autumn. We were quite surprised. Everybody left with the realisation that they had a very serious job to do and not a great deal of time to ensure their troops were going to be up to the task." Senior Ministry of Defence officials said Sir Michael's orders to his commanders would have been sanctioned by the Prime Minister. The disclosure will deepen unrest among Labour MPs and ministers opposed to action against Iraq. The Telegraph has also learnt that the US has been gathering intelligence about the position of Labour MPs on the proposed Iraqi campaign before Tony Blair's summit with President Bush in Texas this week. Diplomats at the US embassy in London have contacted senior Labour politicians to assess the opposition Mr Blair would face from within his own party if he supports an attack. Mr Blair is expected to urge the president to adopt a less bellicose tone when they meet on Friday and Saturday. The Prime Minister is certain to point out that the prospect of a military campaign has divided his Cabinet and angered MPs, even leading to speculation about a leadership challenge. Suspicions that Mr Blair is being drawn into a more aggressive policy towards Iraq will be heightened by the disclosure that he will hold a separate meeting with George Bush Snr, who fought the 1991 Gulf war. This will reawaken claims that the Bush dynasty intends to complete that "unfinished business".   Communists face trial for crushing Prague rebellion By Tony Paterson (Filed: 31/03/2002) TWO leading former Czechoslovak Communist Party members have been charged with treason for their role in allowing Soviet tanks to crush the country's 1968 "Prague Spring" rebellion. Milos Jakes, 79, who was general secretary of the Czechoslovak party until 1989, and Jozef Lenart, 78, a senior politburo member, now face the prospect of court action more than 12 years after they were ousted from power in the country's "velvet revolution". A decision by the Czech Republic's supreme court last week to suspend the immunity from prosecution claimed by Lenart has opened the way for the trials of both former top Communist officials to go ahead. Lenart and Jakes were both hardline pro-Moscow figures within the Czechoslovak party. They played leading roles in helping the Soviet Union to crush the reformist movement of the then party leader Alexander Dubcek in 1968 when Russian tanks invaded Prague. Both have managed to escape trial for more than 12 years, largely as a result of delays and procrastination by the Czech legal authorities. Two previous attempts to prosecute Jakes and Lenart in 1995 and 1997 were dismissed by the courts because of lack of evidence and on legal technicalities. Lenart claimed immunity from prosecution as he was a former member of the Communist government. The legal system inherited from the Communist era meant that prosecutions were thwarted until 1995 when the government agreed to set up a non-partisan commission, known as the UDV, to investigate Communist crimes. "The supreme court's decision to suspend Lenart's immunity removes one of the last obstacles that had hitherto blocked the prosecution of former Communist officials," a UDV spokesman said. The UDV's prosecution arm also disclosed that new evidence from party archives had enabled fresh charges of treason to be filed against Jakes. Both developments have reopened the way for prosecution of the highest-ranking former Communist officials. Jakes and Lenart are accused of signing a party document that invited the Warsaw Pact armies to invade the country in 1968. Under pressure from the Kremlin, Dubcek was subsequently forced to resign. He was replaced as Czechoslovak leader by the hardline Moscow supporter, Gustav Husak in 1969. Another senior former Communist official and one-time interior minister, Jaromir Obzina, 72, also faces trial as a result of last week's supreme court decision. Obzina is accused of heading the Communist Party's programme to suppress dissent in Czechoslovakia during the 1970s which was nicknamed "slum clearance". If convicted, Jakes and Lenart would face a maximum 15-year prison sentence which could be commuted only through an appeal for clemency from their former opponent, the dissident who became the Czech President, Vaclav Havel. Questioned last week about the treason charges, Jakes, who still lives in the Prague villa given to him by the party in the 1960s, insisted that his support for Moscow in 1968 was an act of patriotism. Jakes was one of the handful of Czech government officials still thought trustworthy enough by the Kremlin to be flown to Moscow in 1968 where the plans for a Soviet-backed putsch against Dubcek were drawn up. At least 150 people were killed trying to oppose the subsequent Soviet invasion. Jakes's role as head of the Moscow-backed regime's Revision and Control Commission meant he was also responsible for purging the Czechoslovak Communist Party of 71,000 liberal Dubcek supporters and suspending 391,000 others. During this period of so-called "normalisation", hundreds of dissidents - including Vaclav Havel - were rounded up and imprisoned or placed under house arrest. Others were forced into exile or given demeaning jobs such as stoking boilers or cleaning the streets. Jakes and Lenart pursued their Communist careers until the end of the regime. Lenart remained a senior politburo member until he was dismissed in 1989. Jakes became general secretary of the Czechoslovak party from 1987 onwards and met Mikhail Gorbachev on several occasions. Husak remained Czechoslovakia's leader until 1989. He died in November 1991 and never appeared before a court. Since the "Velvet Revolution" of 1989 the Czech courts have prosecuted only 52 members of the former 169 member-strong Communist Party leadership and only nine of these have been convicted. None have been sent to prison. Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, a number of former leading Communists have been brought to trial since 1989, including Erich Honecker, the former East German leader charged with complicity in the deaths of more than 200 East Germans killed while trying to escape to the West. Honecker's ailing health meant that he was allowed to live out his last few years with his wife, Margot, in Chile. Attempts to bring Gen Jaruzelski of Poland to trial for introducing martial law in 1980 to suppress Solidarity, eastern Europe's first free trade union, have so far failed to result in a sentence. Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were shot after the Romanian revolution.       --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================