News & Politics - Security Council Members Deny Meeting Kerry

Ambular · 10-25-2004, 08:01 PM

Thought I'd share.

Quote:

Security Council members deny meeting Kerry

By Joel Mowbray
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred.

At the second presidential debate earlier this month, Mr. Kerry said he was more attuned to international concerns on Iraq than President Bush, citing his meeting with the entire Security Council.

"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator.

Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."

But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.

The former ambassadors who said on the record they had never met Mr. Kerry included the representatives of Mexico, Colombia and Bulgaria. The ambassador of a fourth country gave a similar account on the condition that his country not be identified.

Ambassador Andres Franco, the permanent deputy representative from Colombia during its Security Council membership from 2001 to 2002, said, "I never heard of anything."

Although Mr. Franco was quick to note that Mr. Kerry could have met some members of the panel, he also said that "everything can be heard in the corridors."

Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico's then-ambassador to the United Nations, said: "There was no meeting with John Kerry before Resolution 1441, or at least not in my memory."

All had vivid recollections of the time frame when Mr. Kerry traveled to New York, as it was shortly before the Nov. 7, 2002, enactment of Resolution 1441, which said Iraq was in "material breach" of earlier disarmament resolutions and warned Baghdad of "serious consequences as a result of its continued violations."

Stefan Tafrov, Bulgaria's ambassador at the time, said he remembers the period well because it "was a very contentious time."

After conversations with ambassadors from five members of the Security Council in 2002 and calls to all the missions of the countries then on the panel, The Times was only able to confirm directly that Mr. Kerry had met with representatives of France, Singapore and Cameroon.

In addition, second-hand accounts have Mr. Kerry meeting with representatives of Britain.

When reached for comment last week, an official with the Kerry campaign stood by the candidate's previous claims that he had met with the entire Security Council.

But after being told late yesterday of the results of The Times investigation, the Kerry campaign issued a statement that read in part, "It was a closed meeting and a private discussion."

A Kerry aide refused to identify who participated in the meeting.

The statement did not repeat Mr. Kerry's claims of a lengthy meeting with the entire 15-member Security Council, instead saying the candidate "met with a group of representatives of countries sitting on the Security Council."

Asked whether the international body had any records of Mr. Kerry sitting down with the whole council, a U.N. spokesman said that "our office does not have any record of this meeting."

A U.S. official with intimate knowledge of the Security Council's actions in fall of 2002 said that he was not aware of any meeting Mr. Kerry had with members of the panel.

An official at the U.S. mission to the United Nations remarked: "We were as surprised as anyone when Kerry started talking about a meeting with the Security Council."

Jean-David Levitte, then France's chief U.N. representative and now his country's ambassador to the United States, said through a spokeswoman that Mr. Kerry did not have a single group meeting as the senator has described, but rather several one-on-one or small-group encounters.

He added that Mr. Kerry did not meet with every member of the Security Council, only "some" of them. Mr. Levitte could only name himself and Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of Britain as the Security Council members with whom Mr. Kerry had met.

One diplomat who met with Mr. Kerry in 2002 said on the condition of anonymity that the candidate talked to "a few" ambassadors on the Security Council.
The revelation that Mr. Kerry never met with the entire U.N. Security Council could be problematic for the Massachusetts senator, as it clashes with one of his central foreign-policy campaign themes — honesty.

At a New Mexico rally last month, Mr. Kerry said Mr. Bush will "do anything he can to cover up the truth." At what campaign aides billed as a major foreign-policy address, Mr. Kerry said at New York University last month that "the first and most fundamental mistake was the president's failure to tell the truth to the American people."

In recent months, Mr. Kerry has faced numerous charges of dishonesty from Vietnam veterans over his war record, and his campaign has backtracked before from previous statements about Mr. Kerry's foreign diplomacy.

For example, in March, Mr. Kerry told reporters in Florida that he'd met with foreign leaders who privately endorsed him.

"I've met with foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly," he said. "But, boy, they look at you and say: 'You've got to win this. You've got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.' "

But the senator refused to document his claim and a review by The Times showed that Mr. Kerry had made no official foreign trips since the start of 2002, according to Senate records and his own published schedules. An extensive review of Mr. Kerry's domestic travel schedule revealed only one opportunity for him to have met foreign leaders here.

After a week of bad press, Kerry foreign-policy adviser Rand Beers said the candidate "does not seek, and will not accept, any such endorsements."

The Democrat has also made his own veracity a centerpiece of his campaign, calling truthfulness "the fundamental test of leadership."

Mr. Kerry closed the final debate by recounting what his mother told him from her hospital bed, "Remember: integrity, integrity, integrity."

In an interview published in the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Mr. Kerry was asked what he would want people to remember about his presidency. He responded, "That it always told the truth to the American people."

Story.

AuburnGrad · 10-25-2004, 09:35 PM

What a liar, that Kerry.

Right.

This is old news (nearly three months).

Personally, I find 380 tons of missing explosives under America's watch and the coverup of it more of a threat than Kerry's quote. Yet no one questions the Bush Administration's stance on truthfulness and honesty (except the "liberals", of course). I trust Kerry a heck of a lot more than I do the Bush camp, especially now.

mh67511 · 10-25-2004, 10:56 PM

Explosives...as in dynamite...fireworks...WMD's....?? What kind of explosives were they?

AuburnGrad · 10-25-2004, 11:07 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by mh67511
Explosives...as in dynamite...fireworks...WMD's....?? What kind of explosives were they?

Not, WMDs....

Quote:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."

Administration officials said Sunday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings.

The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. The other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain.

"This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk," one senior Bush administration official said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said Sunday evening that Saddam Hussein's government "stored weapons in mosques, schools, hospitals and countless other locations," and that the allied forces "have discovered and destroyed perhaps thousands of tons of ordnance of all types." A senior military official noted that HMX and RDX were "available around the world" and not on the nuclear nonproliferation list, even though they are used in the nuclear warheads of many nations.

The Qaqaa facility, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, was well known to American intelligence officials: Mr. Hussein made conventional warheads at the site, and the I.A.E.A. dismantled parts of his nuclear program there in the early 1990's after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In the prelude to the 2003 invasion, Mr. Bush cited a number of other "dual use" items - including tubes that the administration contended could be converted to use for the nuclear program - as a justification for invading Iraq.

After the invasion, when widespread looting began in Iraq, the international weapons experts grew concerned that the Qaqaa stockpile could fall into unfriendly hands. In May, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum warned that terrorists might be helping "themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."

Source:
New York Times

alli balli · 10-26-2004, 12:11 AM

from atrios.blogspot.com:

Quote:

What Kerry said was:

So I sat with the French and British, Germans, with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein.

Most likely what he meant was that he met with the permanent Security Council, plus who knows who else. Permanent SC=US+French, British, Russians, China.

So here we have yet another Kerry quote that is most likely misinterpreted. I guess you do have to give Bush some credit for that...he speaks clearly enough so that we KNOW he's lying.

Ambular · 10-26-2004, 12:49 AM

I don't see how that quote is any different from the original one.

I also can't find that in the article.

Enigma, I.C. · 10-26-2004, 03:10 AM

Drudge and the Washington Times are really scraping the bottom of the barrel aren't they?

WalkingOnSunshine · 10-26-2004, 03:42 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by AuburnGrad
What a liar, that Kerry.

Right.

This is old news (nearly three months).

Personally, I find 380 tons of missing explosives under America's watch and the coverup of it more of a threat than Kerry's quote. Yet no one questions the Bush Administration's stance on truthfulness and honesty (except the "liberals", of course). I trust Kerry a heck of a lot more than I do the Bush camp, especially now.

Then start a thread for that.

I find this news about Kerry quite interesting.

Especially this part:

Quote:

At the second presidential debate earlier this month, Mr. Kerry said he was more attuned to international concerns on Iraq than President Bush, citing his meeting with the entire Security Council.
"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator.

And this part...

Quote:

Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."

AuburnGrad · 10-26-2004, 04:43 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by WalkingOnSunshine
Then start a thread for that.

Thanks for the advice, but I think my point in bringing up the other was quite clear and relevant to the topic.

Both candidates have had their share of exaggerations. What makes this any worse or more interesting? I'm not trying to be argumentative, but this "lie" doesn't seem any more damning than some of the other misstatements made previous by either candidate.

It just seems to me the Washington Times dug up this old story in the hopes of making Kerry look bad in the final stretch of the election. Well, given my point earlier, a bigger story involving Kerry will have to surface to do that kind of damage.

Ambular · 10-26-2004, 10:14 AM

I'm not sure anyone would care if the Post had brought up an "old story" about one of Bush's lies and decided to put it up here. I doubt anyone would pass up an opportunity to point out the failings of our existing president. And that's not my point; everyone who supports Kerry here complains that we don't look into it enough, we don't research Kerry, we don't know what he's about, etc., and when we find something we find particular interesting that doesn't support him, then it's deemed useless information. And I wasn't aware of it being "old news" in the first place because there isn't a date on the article, and I simply had not heard it before. Not that it really matters.

ceilirose · 10-26-2004, 10:40 AM

This was supposed to be the Republican's big October surprise to doom Kerry's candidacy.

Unfortunately it's non news when compared to the Iraqi's who were massacred on Sunday and the missing ammunition disappearance in Iraq and the resulting confusion as to who knew what when.

Seven more days and counting to come up with another one.

Ambular · 10-26-2004, 12:43 PM

To think that I posted this to try and bring down the Kerry campaign is pretty silly. I'm aware that it would take much more than this to do so, nor was I trying to anyway. I just wondered what people's response to this was.

mh67511 · 10-26-2004, 04:18 PM

These missing explosives were reported by NBC in April of 2003.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/me...aq.explosives/

Ambular · 10-26-2004, 05:04 PM

Wow......

ceilirose · 10-26-2004, 06:08 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by MH67511
These missing explosives were reported by NBC in April of 2003.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/m...raq.explosives/

The embedded NBC reporter is now saying that she doesn't know how much of a search was done on al Qaqaa:

Quote:

MSNBC, 10/26/04 (Transcript):

Amy Robach: And it's still unclear exactly when those explosives disappeared. Here to help shed some light on that question is Lai Ling. She was part of an NBC news crew that traveled to that facility with the 101st Airborne Division back in April of 2003. Lai Ling, can you set the stage for us? What was the situation like when you went into the area?

Lai Ling Jew: When we went into the area, we were actually leaving Karbala and we were initially heading to Baghdad with the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. The situation in Baghdad, the Third Infantry Division had taken over Baghdad and so they were trying to carve up the area that the 101st Airborne Division would be in charge of. As a result, they had trouble figuring out who was going to take up what piece of Baghdad. They sent us over to this area in Iskanderia. We didn't know it as the Qaqaa facility at that point but when they did bring us over there we stayed there for quite a while. We stayed overnight, almost 24 hours. And we walked around, we saw the bunkers that had been bombed, and that exposed all of the ordinances that just lied dormant on the desert.

AR: Was there a search at all underway or did a search ensue for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?

LLJ: No. There wasn't a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to
secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was - at that point the roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.

AR: And there was no talk of securing the area after you left. There was no discussion of that?

LLJ: Not for the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. They were -- once they were in Baghdad, it was all about Baghdad, you know, and then they ended up moving north to Mosul. Once we left the area, that was the last that the brigade had anything to do with the area.

AR: Well, Lai Ling Jew, thank you so much for shedding some light into that situation. We appreciate it.

LLJ: Thank you.

So yesterday one unnamed Pentagon official said the Military knew about the ammunitions there and Larry DiRita (another Pentagon official) said it wan't there.

It's all still very murky as to who knew what when.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6323933/


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