And it's hard to believe, but it was only 60 years ago that the German Empire was in the saddle and the dastardly campaign to quite literally attempt to exterminate the Jewish People was being finalized at The Wannsee Conference. It's a necessary reminder how much real evil there is in the world from so many places; and a reminder how fast things change in our "modern" world. It's also important to remember that today's powerful Jewish communities -- both in Israel and the U.S. -- use "The Holocaust" -- however misguidedly and erroneously -- as their psychological justification for their "never again" approach to their policies of today; even while others among them loudly question how a people who suffered such oppression and death could themselves now visit today's different forms of oppression and death upon another innocent people.

A senior Saudi Arabian former diplomat has charged the United States with seeking to control Afghanistan and contain Pakistan's nuclear program and Iran, as speculation grows that Washington could lose its most vital Arab support base.

In an almost unprecedented criticism of US foreign policy, Mohammad al-Oteibi, the former Saudi ambassador to Kabul, said Osama bin Laden "is only a card in the game played by the United States and of which it has convinced the world to justify intervention in Afghanistan".

"If the United States had wanted to arrest bin Laden, they could have done so easily without taking the trouble to launch this fanciful war ... they could have caught him long ago," he said.

The response to the September11 attacks in the United States was intended "to impose [American] hegemony on [Afghanistan] and to set [Americans] up there to achieve their objectives" in Asia, the former envoy said.

These objectives included containing "the threat of the Pakistan nuclear program and Iran", as well as "the exploitation of the riches of Afghanistan and the republics of central Asia", Mr Oteibi told a London-based Saudi-owned newspaper.

His comments followed reports that Saudi Arabia's rulers were preparing to ask the US to pull its forces out of the kingdom because they have become a political liability. Any such move would throw US strategy in the Middle East into disarray.

The White House and the US State Department insist the military arrangement between the two countries is still working. The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said President George Bush "believes that our presence in the region has a very helpful and stabilising effect".

Relations between the US and Saudi Arabia, its closest Arab ally but also with close ties to bin Laden, have been severely strained since September 11.

The US is reluctant to withdraw its 4500 troops from the Prince Sultan air base, south of the capital, Riyadh, because it could be perceived as a propaganda victory for bin Laden, who often protested at the presence of non-believers so near the main Muslim holy sites.

But the increasingly brittle and vulnerable ruling House of Saud is nervous about an internal revolt by bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network and other extremist militants, and has been publicly loosening its links with Washington.

The huge Prince Sultan air base played a crucial logistical role in the bombing of Afghanistan. Withdrawal would upset the military balance in the Middle East by providing a boost to the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein. US aircraft based in Saudi Arabia regularly bomb along the Iraqi border as part of its policy of containment of Saddam.

Many Americans have been upset with Saudi Arabia because it is bin Laden's home country and 15 of the 19 terrorists involved in the September11 attacks were from the kingdom. Saudi media have reported that about 200 Saudis have been captured in Afghanistan fighting with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The kingdom is volatile, with a stagnant economy, high unemployment, no democratic outlets and King Fahd unable to crack down on militant clerics. ((Sydney Morning Herald, Australia)

In an elegant lakeside villa framed by frosted shrubbery and falling snow, 15 high-ranking Nazis sorted out the bureaucratic details for exterminating Europe's 11 million Jews.

It took only 90 minutes for Adolf Hitler's henchmen to transform the scattered arrangements for his "final solution" into a state-run program for mass deportations and indiscriminate slaughter - the Wannsee Protocol - that was all in a morning's work 60 years ago yesterday.

The Wannsee Conference, named after the lake on which the villa is situated, was a watershed event in Third Reich history, as it elevated the unspoken plot to annihilate European Jewry into the machinery of the state.

The 15 participants, all later killed or imprisoned except for the fugitive Heinrich Mueller, of whom no trace was found, were chosen by the host, Reinhard Heydrich, for the broad swath of expertise and resources they commanded. They were deputy ministers for police, security, justice and planning. They were the ones who could put ideas into action. Three years and one bloody springtime later, 6 million Jews had been slaughtered.

"There has never been a bleaker rendition of the orderly governance of murder," a British historian, Mark Roseman, writes in a newly released account of the conference, The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution.

"To this day the Wannsee Protocol remains the most emblematic and programmatic statement of the Nazi way of doing genocide."

The anniversary was observed with memorial events throughout Berlin and the first extensive exhibition on the Holocaust at the German Historical Museum. The date also rekindles Germany's debate over the culture of memory, a discussion of how much guilt and responsibility should encumber a nation where the perpetrators have long since died.

Not a word of dissent was mentioned in the 15 pages of minutes from the meeting taken down by Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi security chief and expert on the "Jewish question". The protocol left itself open to amendment, letting the Nazis later add homosexuals, communists, the handicapped and the Sinti and Roma to the list of authorised victims.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in a statement:

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2002/1/580.htm