Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Maledetto petrolio! (2)

"A dependence that's so strong it's almost like a narcotic."
~Robert Baer
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Mercenaries aimed to topple oil-rich despot
By: Paul Lashmar
Independent, The         Date: 03/14/2004
The tale of the 67 men of assorted nationalities now in a Zimbabwe jail
accused of being mercenaries continued to unfurl yesterday like the plot of
a lurid airport novel.
A bit too much like fiction, in fact, involving as it does a cast that
includes the despotic leader of a little-known West African state, the
Eton-educated son of an English cricket captain, fake passports, and a
shadowy company registered in the Channel Islands that is linked to SAS old
boys. All this, plus talk of CIA, MI6 and Spanish secret service activity,
and a plane now impounded at Harare airport that contained equipment more
suited to burglary than seizures of power.
Officially, it was announced yesterday that the men will be formally charged
on Monday. Unofficially, The Independent on Sunday has been told by security
sources that the men were intending to mount a coup in Equatorial Guinea and
were in Zimbabwe to buy the arms that would help accomplish that. But then
on Tuesday, tipped off by South African intelligence that the team led by
Briton Simon Mann was landing to pick up arms bought from Zimbabwe Defence
Industries, the Harare authorities arrested them.
But if who paid whom for what services has not yet been revealed, the
intended target is not in doubt: President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo,
leader of a country whose lack of renown belies its strategic significance.
And for "strategic" read oil. Not for nothing is this land known in US
government circles as the "Kuwait of the Gulf of Guinea". Not without reason
has President Bush welcomed President Obiang, a confirmed if not convicted
corrupt despot, to the White House. He may be a despot, but as presider over
an oil-rich state, he is their despot.
The sight and smell of oil is everywhere palpable in the port of Malabo.
From here you can see the flames shooting into the night sky from the
offshore oilrigs. Every day tens of thousands of barrels are extracted from
huge crude oil reserves underneath the seabed off Equatorial Guinea.It is
one of the oil-rich sub-Saharan countries that now supplies 15 per cent of
American oil. Experts predict that the amount of oil the US receives from
the prolific fields of Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Angola will double in
the next five years. Hence the succour that American companies - and, since
9/11, the American government - have given to Obiang. Vice President Dick
Cheney has said: "Along with Latin America, West Africa is expected to be
one of the fastest- growing sources of oil and gas for the American market."
.....................................
il resto della storia:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=501017
© Copyright 2004 Independent, The

 
Che voli di fantasia!!! :)
*LOL*
Ma dopotutto "The Indipendent" e' ben conosciuto per questo :)
-Stefano

 wrote in message
news:40576D6E...@people.it...

Hai provato se esiste qualcosa in tema nel tuo "Corrierino dei Piccoli"?
G.

Hai provato se
Ma non mi avevi plonkato 5 minuti fa? :)
*LOL*
-Stefano

 wrote in message
news:405788A4...@people.it...

Quando mai possa cancellare un'opportunità di farmi una risata in più !? :))
G.