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Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Seoul Times cites UAE Deputy Minister's response to MIM report on connection between Medicin Sans Frontieres and Zayed Center

Seoul Times cites UAE Deputy Minister's response to MIM report on connection between Medicin Sans Frontieres and Zayed Center

October 19, 2005

MIM: The Seoul Times article which cites the UAE Deputy Minister's response to a report on Militant Islam Monitor which was published on Oct. 25, 2005 and reiterated what was said in a January 2005 article (see below). The article fails to cite the response published by MIM in October 2005 to the UAE Deputy's Minister's accusations. Click on link or scroll down for excerpts: http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/399

The October 25th Seoul Times article appeared on Google News and did not indicate in what context the UAE issued what appears to be a new response to MIM, 9 months after the story first appeared on the MIM website.

Middle East & Africa

Clarification from UAE Office of Deputy Prime Minister
Zayed Centre Denies Funding MSF

http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=1423

ABU DHABI — Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up(ZFCF) had never given, before its closure, any kinds to Medicins sans Frontieres (MSF) and relations between the two were only limited to the hosting by the Centre of Dr.Roni Braumn in his capacity as a thinker, the Office of Deputy Prime Minister for Information Affairs of the United Arab Emirates has announced.

Clarification from the office came following the (Militant Islam Monitor) website posted a report in which it called for the USA to stop giving aid to Doctors Without Borders organization , mentioning that this organization had received funds from Zayed Centre.

"For years Medicins sans Frontieres has never missed an opportunity to denounce Israel or the United States to the media. The fact that they are being funded by the Centre shows that they are in fact a mouthpiece of their UAE handlers," the web site argued.

The Office of Deputy Prime Minister for Information Affairs states that what is cited in this report is baseless and contradicts the facts, as Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up had never given, before its closure, any kind of funds to Medicins sans Frontieres. The relations between the Centre and this organization were only limited to the hosting by the Centre of Dr. Roni Brauman in his capacity as a thinker, and after he resigned his post as a president of the organization, to participate in a conference on "Human Rights and War Victims in the International Law, a conference in which many world figures participated.

The aim of the conference was to highlight peace as a human value which contributes to establishing security and stability in the international community. In this conference neither Dr. Roni Brauman, nor any other participant, mentioned anything related to Israel or the United States, as the conference was devoted to humanitarian issues, according to the statement issued by the Office of Deputy Prime Minister for Information Affairs.

The United Arab Emirates decided in August 2003 to close Zayed Centre for Coordination and Followup" which was established in 1999 at a decision of the Arab league in order to enhance common Arab action.

The decision came after several articles criticizing the center were published accusing it of anti Semitism and anti US and of hosting research promoting for the theory of the conspiracy against the Arabs. One of them was the teacher at Cairo University Muhammad Ahmad Hussein who said in an intervention on the center that "the Jews, through their media machine, used the Holocaust to implant hatred against non Jews and cover crimes committed by the Israelis."

The center also hosted the French writer Terry Maison who published his famous book about September 11 incidents under the title "the big lie" in which he accuses American army officers of taking part in planning for the attacks.

The decision coincided with a campaign aimed not only at the center, but the then UAE president Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan al-Nahyan, which the center bears his name and described as one of Israel's first critics, and that it gives a material support to the Palestinian question.

On the other hand, Arab intellectuals dispatched a memorandum of solidarity with Zayed center in which they condemned the Israeli campaigns to close the center and called for it continuing its activity "in its being a minaret to defending Arab causes." The memorandum called on Sheikh Zayed and the chairman of the center Sheikh Sultan Bin Zayed as well as the secretary general of the Arab League Amr Mousa to continue supporting the activities of the center.

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This is the January 2005 article which appeared in the Khaleej Times http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2005/January/theuae_January678.xml&section=theuae UAE rejects false web site report on Zayed Centre
By Muawia E. Ibrahim

24 January 2005
ABU DHABI - The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for Information Affairs has rejected a report posted by a web site called Militant Islam Monitor, which called on the US to stop giving aid to Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) or Doctors without Borders as it has received funds from the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up, an Arab League think-tank closed down recently by the UAE. The report said: "For years, Medicins Sans Frontieres has never missed an opportunity to denounce Israel or the United States to the media. The fact that they are being funded by the ZCCF shows that they are in fact a mouthpiece of their UAE handlers."

A statement issued by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for Information Affairs and made available to your favourite No. 1 newspaper yesterday said the report was baseless and contradicts reality. "What is cited in this report is baseless and contradicts the facts, as the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up had never given, before its closure, any kind of funds to Medicins Sans Frontieres," the statement said. It said the relations between the centre and this organisation were only limited to the hosting of MSF Founder Dr Roni Brauman in his capacity as a thinker, and after he resigned his post as president of the organisation.

Mr Brauman was invited to participate in a conference on 'Human Rights and War Victims in the International Law', a conference in which many world figures participated, the statement added. It said that the aim of the conference was to highlight peace as a human value which contributes to establishing security and stability in the international community. In this conference, neither Dr Brauman, nor any other participant mentioned anything related to Israel or the US, as the conference was devoted to humanitarian issues.

For its part, the MSF-UAE denied receiving any funds from the former think-tank which closed down in 2002. "We haven't received any financial assistance from the centre. The only connection which we recall was that the founder of our organisation was hosted by the centre to speak as a thinker," Tahir Hani, Communication Officer, told your favourite No. 1 newspaper. He said the other issue that linked the organisation with the UAE was the UAE Health Foundation Prize for 2002, which was awarded to the MSF. The award was originally created with a donation of $1 million by the President, His Highness Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan for a special fund administered by the World Health Organisation (WHO). So far, the prize has been awarded to a number of individuals, organisations and institutions, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, former first lady of the US in 1998 for her work in the health and social welfare field. "We are an independent organisation, and we consider this report as baseless," said Mr Hani.

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http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/399

MIM Responds: As a preliminary response MIM will refute the UAE Officer for the Deputy Prime Minister for Information Affairs on several points.

1) The Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow- up did not close down in 2002 as is stated in the article above.

The ZCCF claims to have closed down in 2003 after protests by Harvard students and Faculty about the Divinity School keeping a donation from the organisation on the groups that it propagated 9/11 hoax theories, blood libel and Holocaust denial.

2)The ZCCF still exists in a different guise such as the Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahayan Charitable and Humanitarian Foundation which gives money to NGO's which would include groups like Medicins Sans Frontieres and related institutions.

3)Whether Rony Brauman was hosted by the ZCCF after he resigned his post as president of MSF is pure semantics. The ZCCR hosted him as founder of MCF and the article in Khaleej Times from 2002 which reported the event named Rony Braumann as the "director of research for the MSF" (see article below)

http://www.gm-unccd.org/FIELD/Multi/Arab/Zayen/Resource.htm

MIM: These two articles below were written about the two day conference organised by the ZCCF. . The so called conference on Human Rights, War Victims, and International Law, was used as a forum for anti American and anti Israel propaganda and shows that as was stated by MIM; "Medicins sans Frontieres never misses an opportunity to denounce the United States to the media".

MIM should also have stated that the same holds true of the IPO director Hans Koechler, who never misses a chance to denounce Israel to the media using the UN or some so called 'humanitarian endeavor' to propagandise against Israel and aid and abet Islamo facists.

The first articles quotes MSF founder and director of research Rony Bauman stating that "humanitarian intervention...has become entwined with military intervention".

The article below this cites the head of the ironically named International Progress Organisation ,Hans Koechler, demanding prosecution of what he calls "The Jenin killers" at the ZCCF conference. It is now a matter of public record that the' killings' at Jenin not only did not take place, but that a film maker who made a film which claimed to document 'atrocities'- was recently sued and signed a court affadavit admitting he fabricated the documentary footage and that the movie had been financed by the PA. Reports by many independent groups also proved that none of the claims of "massacres" had any basis in fact.

See "Jenin, Jenin filmaker admits fraud".http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16704

By Anupama V. Chand

THE UAE can serve a peace-keeper's role by providing a forum for the resolution of disputes in the region, with the office of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) playing a supportive role, visiting MSF Director of Research Rony Brauman said in the Capital yesterday.

Speaking to Khaleej Times on the sidelines of a two-day conference on "Human Rights, War Victims and International Law", which began yesterday at the Zayed Centre for Co-ordination and Follow-Up (ZCCF), Dr Brauman said that humanitarian intervention in any conflict or disaster had today become inextricably intertwined with military intervention.

"There is always an ulterior motive to the so-called peace-keeping initiatives by certain superpowers," he pointed out. Mr Brauman expressed confidence that the UAE office of MSF, which had been established to disseminate information about the activities of MSF and to raise funds, could play a much greater role if the need arose.

The MSF as a humanitarian organisation, often criticised military humanitarian action, through the only means at its disposal, i.e. public opinion, public expression and practical demonstrations of the effectiveness of peaceful and civilian humanitarian action, he said.

Dr Brauman, who spoke on "Military Humanitarian Intervention Operations", said the concept was age-old, with France and Britain having used diplomacy and humanitarian action to disguise their actual intentions of maintaining their hegemony, way back in the 19th century.

Dr Brauman noted that their humanitarian principles, before anything else, were nothing but expressions of power used for achieving imperialistic designs.

As examples of modern-day military humanitarian operations, which failed miserably as they did not have the greater good of 'humanitarian action' at heart, Dr Brauman mentioned the preliminary operations that the UN undertook in Congo in the sixties and France did in Nigeria during the Biafra Civil War in 1968-69.

He referred to the famine in Somalia, in 1992-93, the work carried out by the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and the American intervention at the request of UN Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali, which was supposed to bring succour to the people, but which turned into a man-hunt conducted by the army to capture General Aideed.

It only proves, he added, that humanitarian intervention today does not take place without military intervention or for some ulterior purpose. Commenting on the recent US military involvement in Afghanistan, Dr Braun said that MSF strongly criticised the American action of dropping food packets by air, while calling it a "humanitarian" action, which it believed was only intended for Afghani supporters of the US in those areas, where the aid was distributed.

The American bombardment of the Red Cross Warehouse, despite having known its identity, was a clear example of the politics involved in the whole exercise, he felt.

Stressing that every military intervention was a war, Dr Braun said that in politics, the issues of power balance and interests were at the core of any decision making. He hoped that humanitarian work could be liberated from the strategies of authority to make it a collective power with only one aim: solidarity for mankind.

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http://www.khaleejtimes.co.ae/ktarchive/160702/uae.htm

Call to prosecute Jenin killers

By a staff reporter

THE United Nations has proven incompetent and powerless in dealing with the situation in Palestine, said Professor Hans Koechler, President of the Vienna-based International Progress Organisation.

Delivering a keynote address to a conference on "Human Rights, Victims of War and International Law" which began in Abu Dhabi yesterday, Prof Koechler said: "Not only has the United Nations been unable to undertake credible and effective measures for the active protection of the Palestinian population, it has not even been in the position to undertake "passive" measures, namely sending a simple fact-finding team to the Jenin refugee camp".

In his address titled: "The United Nations Failure to enforce international law in Palestine and the need of effective mechanisms of international criminal law: The case of Jenin", he said that more than any other case in the recent history of war and occupation in Palestine, the atrocities - so far committed with impunity - in Jenin refugee camp had made it clear that only an independent entity such as the International Criminal Court would be able to prosecute such crimes in the future.

The total failure of UN system in undertaking an independent investigation of the grave violations of international human law by Israeli occupying forces in Palestine had highlighted once more the predicament of the UN organisation in all matters related to the Palestine issue in general and top the Palestinian right of self-determination and the continued hostile, illegal occupation of Palestinian land in particular.

"The Jenin tragedy may have been the catalyst of this development. It has exposed the total paralysis of the United Nations system when it comes to the protection of the civilian population in Palestine under the obligations resulting from the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949; it has made it clear beyond any doubt that effective, unbiased, mechanisms of international criminal law cannot be implemented by the Security Council, but only by an international entity that functions independently of the power constellation in the Security Council," Prof Koechler noted. "The UN has been condemned to follow a policy of double standards."

Justice for victims of war, whether in Jenin or in other areas of Palestine, would not be provided by an institution that is hostage to the most powerful member's bias in favour of the occupying power, but only a totally independent and impartial judicial institution.

The reasons for the extremely weak attitude on the part of the Security Council, vis-a-vis Israel was entirely political: any resolution with binding character, i.e. any resolution binding Israel to accept an independent international investigation of the atrocities committed in Jenin, would have been vetoed by at least one permanent member of the Security Council, namely the US.

Because of the traditional US bias in favour of Israel, the Security Council, if it adopts any resolution at all affecting Israeli interests, has been condemned to follow a policy of double standards, exempting the Israeli occupying power from measures adverse to Israeli interests.

Prof Koechler said that the early establishment of an internationally recognised sovereign State of Palestine would provide the possibility to accede to the Rome Statute of the ICC and thus warn all prospective perpetrators of war crimes in Palestine of the dire consequence of their behaviour.

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http://www.memri.de/uebersetzungen_analysen/laender/persischer_golf/saudi_zayedIII_11_09_03.html

The Think Tank of the Arab League:
The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up (ZCCF)
By Steven Stalinsky*

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