Powell: first lies, now arrogance

US Secretary of State full of preoccupations and demands

Colin Powell has some cheek. He comes to Moscow and publishes a letter in an important daily newspaper (Izvestia) claiming that the USA is worried about the legal basis of democracy in the Russian Federation, about Russia's military bases in CIS countries and about Russia's policy in Chechnya.

Here speaks the man who lied through his teeth to the United Nations Security Council, as he presented his detailed photographs of Saddam Hussein's factories of Weapons of Mass destruction and as he praised the "marvelous" intelligence which uncovered these programmes.

Here speaks the man who represents a regime which carried out the most blatant and shocking disregard for international law by committing its troops to Iraq, outside the UNSC, which under each and every document concerning the management of the crisis called Iraq, had to be consulted.

Here speaks a man whose government has sanctioned an act of butchery on an unprecedented scale in recent history, in which tens of thousands of innocent people have been murdered, left mutilated or destitute.

Here speaks a man whose government ordered its military forces to attack civilian targets with such savagery that today, nearly one year on, basic services are still not functioning.

Here speaks a man whose government sent its armed forces into a war without a legitimate cause.

Here speaks a man whose government disregarded the UNO and the UN Charter, deriding the organization as a League of Nations. Here speaks a man whose military forces broke the Geneva Convention time and again in Iraq.

Here speaks a man whose government sent its armed forces into Afghanistan - in retaliation, which is not a legitimate causus belli - to slaughter 3 000 civilians.

And this man - Colin Powell - has the audacity to present his preoccupations about Moscow's relations with its partners in the Commonwealth of Independent States? Colin Powell has the nerve to look Vladimir Putin in the eye and speak about Chechnya? Colin Powell has the barefaced cheek to publish a threatening letter in the Russian press as he is received as a guest?

Apart from being a liar and apart from belonging to a government which is responsible for mass murder and war crimes, Colin Powell demonstrates an absence of good manners and an excess of arrogance, which seems to have rubbed off on him from his partners in crime.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY
PRAVDA.Ru