U.S. Using Anti-terror War to Control World Oil Reserves

In an interview with a Russian paper, the former chief of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service Leonid Shebarshin said the United States is trying to establish a monopolizing control of the world's richest oil reserves using the pretext of it fighting "international terrorism".

Shebarshin who now heads the Russian National Economic Security Service consulting company, said that by using the anti-terrorist cause as a cover, the United States has occupied Afghanistan, Iraq and will soon move to impose their self-called "democratic order" on the Greater Middle East.

"The U.S. has usurped the right to attack any part of the globe on the pretext of fighting the terrorist threat," Shebarshin maintains.

Referring to a recent meeting between himself and an unnamed al-Qaeda expert at the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization in the U.S., Shebarshin said: "We have agreed that [al-Qaeda] is not a group but a notion."

"The fight against that all-mighty ubiquitous myth deliberately linked to Islam is of great advantage for the Americans as it targets the oil-rich Muslim regions," Shebarshin emphasized.

With military bases in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Shebarshin said, the United States has already established control over the Caspian region - one of the world's largest oil reservoirs.

The Village Voice
3/23/2005 7:00:00 PM GMT