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Информация о материале
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Автор: Rachel Ehrenfeld
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Категория: english
TODAY'S COLUMNIST
December 21, 2006
To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter's anti-Israeli
frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business.
Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout
in the form of a $4.6 million, "poorly managed" and highly irregular loan
from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack
Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank's biggest borrower was
Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter's confidant, and
later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.
At that time, Mr. Lance's mismanagement of the NBG got him and the
bank into trouble. Agha Hasan Abedi, the Pakistani founder of the Bank
of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), known as the bank "which would
bribe God," came to Mr. Lance's rescue making him a $100,000-a-year consultant.
Abedi then declared: "we would never talk about exploiting his relationship
with the president." Next, he introduced Mr. Lance to Saudi billionaire
Gaith Pharaon, who fronted for BCCI and the Saudi royal family. In January
1978, Abedi paid off Mr. Lance's $3.5 million debt to the NBG, and Pharaon
secretly gained control over the bank.
Mr. Anderson wrote: "Of course, the Saudis remained discretely silent...
kept quiet about Carter's irregularities... [and] renegotiated the loan
to Carter's advantage."
There is no evidence that the former president received direct payment
from the Saudis. But "according to... the bank files, [it] renegotiated
the repayment terms... savings... $60,000 for the Carter family... The
President owned 62% of the business and therefore was the largest beneficiary."
Pharaon later contributed generously to the former president's library
and center.
When Mr. Lance introduced Mr. Carter to Abedi, the latter gave $500,000
to help the former president establish his center at Emory University.
Later, Abedi contributed more than $10 million to Mr. Carter's different
projects. Even after BCCI was indicted — and convicted -— for drug money
laundering, Mr. Carter accepted $1.5 million from Abedi, his "good friend."
A quick survey of the major contributors to the Carter Center reveals
hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi and Gulf contributors. But it
was BCCI that helped Mr. Carter established his center.
BCCI's origins were primarily ideological. Abedi wanted the bank to
reflect the supra-national Muslim credo and "the best bridge to help the
world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists."
Shortly after assuming office, in March 1977, Mr. Carter made his first
public statement regarding a Palestinian "homeland." Since then, he has
devoted much of his time to denouncing Israel's self-defense against Palestinian
terrorism, which he claims is not only "abominable oppression and persecution"
of the Palestinians, but also damages U.S. interests in the region.
By the time BCCI was shut down in July1991, it operated in 73 countries
with a deficit of $12 billion, which it had managed to hide with wealthy
Arab shareholders and Western luminaries. Among them Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan
al-Nahayan of Abu Dhabi, who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Yasser
Arafat and Palestinian terrorist groups, and who branded the United States:
"our enemy number one"; Former head of Saudi foreign intelligence service,
and King Faisal's brother-in-law, Kamal Adham — who with another Saudi,
the banker of the royal family, Khaled bin Mahfouz, staged BCCI's attempt
to illegally purchase the Washington-based First American bank, in the
early 1980s.
True to its agenda, BCCI assisted in spreading and strengthening the
Islamic message; they enabled Pakistan's nuclear ambitions, and helped
the Palestinian leadership to amass a $10 billion-plus fortune, used to
further terrorist activities and to buy more influence in the West. BCCI
founders also supported the Islamic fundamentalist opposition to the Shah
of Iran, and saw it as an opportunity to undermine Western influence in
the Gulf. They assisted the revolution financially, reinforcing their position
within the leadership of the Iranian revolution. Ironically, the success
of that revolution cost Mr. Carter his presidency.
BCCI's money also facilitated the Saudi agenda to force Israel to recognize
Palestinians "rights," convincing Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to sign
the Camp David Accords in September 1978. Since then, Mr. Carter repeatedly
provided legitimacy to Arafat's corrupt regime, and now, like the Saudis,
he even sides with homicidal Hamas as the "legitimate" representative of
the Palestinian people.
In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Carter again
laid responsibility for U.S. bias against the destitute, depressed and
(consequently) violent Palestinians on American policy makers' helplessness,
over the last 30 years, against the menacing tactics of the powerful American-Israel
Political Action Committee (AIPAC).
However, it seems that AIPAC's real fault was its failure to outdo
the Saudi's purchases of the former president's loyalty. "There has not
been any nation in the world that has been more cooperative than Saudi
Arabia," the New York Times quoted Mr. Carter June 1977, thus making the
Saudis a major factor in U. S. foreign policy.
Evidently, the millions in Arab petrodollars feeding Mr. Carter's global
endeavors, often in conflict with U.S. government policies, also ensure
his loyalty.
Rachel Ehrenfeld is the director of the American Center for Democracy.
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20061220-092736-
3365r.htm
December 21, 2006
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