The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Washington - In the months and days before U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq, officials claiming to speak for a frantic Iraqi government made a last-ditch effort to avert the war, but U.S. officials rebuffed the overture, Pentagon officials confirmed Thursday. An influential adviser to the U.S. Defence Department received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman indicating that President Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal, they said. "Iraq and Saddam had ample opportunity through highly credible sources over a period of several years to take action to avoid war and had the means to use highly credible channels to do that," said Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita. Moscow - Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, saw his arrest coming and even asked his mother to prepare a package of things he would need in prison, such as warm pyjamas, months in advance. Since Khodorkovsky was taken from aboard his private plane in a Siberian airport two weeks ago, most of Russia's dozen or so super-wealthy "oligarchs" have been looking anxiously over their shoulders and wondering which of them will be next. Prosecutors may have no difficulty finding charges against many top Russian tycoons involved in the quick-and-dirty privatizations of the mid-1990s, which created vast individual fortunes but also left the country bitter and impoverished.
