Thoughts from London

Mohamed tells his story, relevant or not
The story might well be apocryphal. It could be true as well. True or not it captures neatly the twists and turns of politics as it does the hypocrisy that lies behind the sayings and doings of politicians.

The year was 1956. The place was Moscow. The person, Nikita Khrushchev.
At the death of Joseph Stalin almost three years earlier, Khrushchev had been appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party, a post that Stalin had held for 30 years.

In February 1956 at a secret session of the Russian Communist Party Congress, Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin for his abuse of power and a hundred other things setting in motion the process of de-Stalinisation.

While Khrushchev was on his feet cataloguing Stalin's blunders and repressive acts, a note was passed to him. He stopped and read the note which asked: "What were you doing while Stalin was up to all this?" The note was unsigned, a trait Sri Lankans might come to recognise as almost a national characteristic.

Khrushchev looked round the hall. "Who sent this note, he asked in a tone that was, needless to say, menacing. There was pin drop silence or as the late Lalith Athulathmudali would say, a deafening silence.

Khrushchev waited for a couple of minutes more. Then he said in a more conciliatory voice: "That was exactly what I was doing." I was reminded of this story that used to do the rounds in the early 1960s whenever journalists and Left politicians gathered at the late Senator Reggie Perera's private eatery "Sandella" near the Colombo Town Hall or at the Press Club where the Indian High Commission now sits cheek by jowl with the Galle Face Hotel.

My mind went back to those days on reading a news report in this newspaper on how Minister M. H. Mohamed "lashed out at Saddam Hussein" during the debate in parliament over the speech of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe at the United Nations.

Readers will recall that there was quite a ho ha-or is it ha ho- because somewhere in his speech the prime minister stated that there were "those of us" who supported the US intervention of Iraq.

Subsequently Ranil Wickremesinghe said that this was not what he intended to say and admitted that the speech was badly drafted. During the debate he claimed it was a matter of grammar, a newspaper reported without spelling out clearly what precisely he said about grammar- that is if he did expatiate on it.

The news reports said that Minister Mohamed claimed he was one of those nominated to mediate in and resolve the Iran-Iraq conflict. It was not clear from the reports whether Minister Mohamed said who nominated him, when and what efforts he made to end the war.

What we do know is that the war went on for almost 10 years and ended when both sides seemed to exhaust themselves and apparently not due to any success in conflict resolution on the part of the minister and the other unnamed mediators.
But Minister Mohamed had really driven his verbal knife into Saddam Hussein virtually calling him a despot who did not spare any critics.

"It was only due to Saddam Hussein's arrogance and indifference that we could not arrive at an acceptable solution. I have listened during my frequent visits to Iraq to the various problems imposed on the people of Iraq. The people have told me about the atrocities perpetrated by Saddam Hussein," The Sunday Times quoted him as saying.
I wish Mr Mohamed had said on whose behalf he made these frequent visits to Iraq. It is fair to conclude, I suppose, that the complaints of atrocities committed by or on behalf of Saddam came from Iraqi people during those frequent visits.

Now, if Iraqis could make such complaints to foreigners who apparently were trying to end the war with Iran, then it seems to belie all those stories of what happened to critics of the Saddam regime.

Still all this is irrelevant. The debate in parliament was not about the political and moral rectitude of Saddam, not on whether he was a paragon of virtue or another tin-pot dictator like many a politician who acquires a little power and then deludes himself that he is the king of all he surveys.

The debate was on whether Ranil Wickremesinghe's speech had created the impression that Sri Lanka had thrown in its lot with the United States which violated international law, misled the United Nations saying it had evidence that pointed to Saddam continuing his production of weapons of mass destruction and acted unilaterally in invading Iraq in violation of the UN Charter.

Had Sri Lanka, which to all intents and purposes seemed to be on the side of the invaders, thus come to accept that the invasion was legitimate and legally justified.
That was the crux of the issue before parliament. What Iraqis told M. H. Mohamed, what he found out on his frequent trips there and the mass graves discovered subsequently is at best immaterial and at worst totally irrelevant to the debate before the House.

Mr. Mohamed says that the Iran-Iraq conflict could not be resolved because of Saddam's "arrogance and indifference". If Minister Mohamed is still not aware of it, then perhaps it is still not too late to edify him of the fact that it was his American friends who egged Saddam on to attack Iran because by then Washington was seeing a new "evil state" and a danger to its interests in the Gulf and the Middle East.

As for his attacks on the Kurds, he forgets that shortly after that a British minister led a delegation to Baghdad and even extended military credits to Saddam.
I remember many years ago when M. H. Mohamed was transport minister in the J. R. Jayewardene government he made a misguided foray into foreign affairs and attacked Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi causing much chagrin among some of his colleagues.

His recent remarks appear to be in the same vein- an inappropriate exercise that would doubtless warm the hearts of the Washington wallahs. Khrushchev remained silent all those years because he feared the wrath of Stalin. Has M. H. Mohamed publicly recalled Saddam's inequities before? Or is he only doing it now? If it is the latter, one wonders whom he had to fear, like Khrushchev, all these years.

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