Ambassador accused after criticising US

[ze_dscherman]

Britain's ambassador in Tashkent, who mysteriously returned to this country last month on temporary sick leave, was the victim of threats from Downing Street related to his outspoken views on US foreign policy in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

Inquiries by the Guardian have discovered that Craig Murray, one of Britain's youngest ambassadors, was subsequently called back from his Uzbekistan post, threatened with the loss of his job, and accused of a miscellaneous string of diplomatic shortcomings in what his friends say is a wholly unfair way.

SNIP

A senior source said the former ambassador had been put under pressure to stop his repeated criticisms of the brutal Karimov regime, accused among other things of boiling prisoners to death. The source said the pressure was partly "exercised on the orders of No 10", which found his outspokenness about the compromises Washington was prepared to make in its "war on terror" increasingly embarrassing in the lead up to the Iraq war.

"He was told that the next time he stepped away from the Ameri can line, he would lose his post," said the source. During a visit earlier this year at the height of the political tensions prior to the Iraq invasion, the former development secretary, Clare Short, is reported to have said to him: "I love the job you are doing down here, but you know, don't you, that if I go, you go." She eventually resigned over the Iraq war.

MOre: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,1065839,00.html

[MaineDem]

1. Most interesting

I'm curious to see how this situation plays out.

[Guaranteed]

2. Boiling prisoners? Jesus Christ.

I'd hate to see what they do to the ones on Death Row. (that's a joke)

[revcarol]

3. We are now supporting a bunch of dictators just as evil as Saddam,

former communist dictators and minions, just because we want military bases in their countries. Check it out.

And WHY do we want military bases? Check that one out too.

This President is destroying the world!! Freedom and democracy my a**.

[kayell]

5. I'm assuming you are refering to the oil pipeline?

http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/uzbekistan.htm

Uzbekistan is the eighth-largest producer of natural gas in the world, but lacks the ability to export most of it. Uzbekistan currently serves as a crucial link in the gas transport chain linking Turkmenistan's enormous gas deposits with Russia.

Uzbekistan is party to the Central Asia Oil Pipeline agreement with Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. If completed, the pipeline would transport oil from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and other Central Asian states via Afghanistan to Gwadar on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast. Uzbekistan is also party to the parallel Central Asia Gas Pipeline project, which would bring gas from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to Pakistan and India, via Afghanistan. Likewise, Uzbekistan could contribute to a proposed pipeline linking Kazakhstan and China, and has actively been seeking to participate in the project.

and

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12548
The Russian campaign served to maintain Russian control of all pipelines bringing oil and gas out of the Caspian basin. It seems clear that in the current decade the Bush administration is willing to send troops, from Georgia to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, to neutralize Russian influence. The United States has already stationed 1,000 troops in Uzbekistan, and 300 close to the Chinese border in Kyrgyzstan, with more scheduled to arrive.


This apparent military strategy complements the explicit U.S. energy strategy, which since the mid-1990s has focused on pipelines either south through Afghanistan or west through the Caucasus to gain access to Central Asian petroleum without depending on Russian pipelines.

snip

Vice-President Dick Cheney, as former CEO of the oil-services company Halliburton, is himself a veteran of the U.S. oil presence in Central Asia and has often spoken in public about the importance of the Caspian basin. He met last spring with many of the companies whose oil investments in the Caspian basin are now languishing. One wonders if Bush's current military strategy was discussed at Cheney's Energy Task Force meetings, by the U.S. oil companies whose current investments in Central Asia are stymied by the exorbitant rates charged by Russian pipelines.


Supporters of the U.S. presence on Russia's borders argue that it will benefit both the region and the United States by increasing the new nations' autonomy from Russia and facilitating the export their of oil and gas.

[Flying_Pig]

4. It appears Blair is leading a....

resurgence of PNAC-Neocon style fascism in Britain. Smarmy bastard. It this what Britain has come to? Protecting fellow fascists who boil people they don't care for? My God! I am surprised that democracy loving Brits don't march to #10, grab Poodle's ass, and throw HIM in a pot!!

:grr:

[kayell]

6. I wonder how the Brits are enjoying being a colony

of the neo-con American empire?