By Ahmed Elumami and Nigel Ash
Tripoli and London, 10 January 2014:
Ari Ben-Menashe, the Canadian-Israeli lobbyist who insists he was hired by . . .[restrict]the Political Bureau of Cyrenaica, has said that he fully expected that Jadhran would deny the relationship, as soon as US government filings became public.
“Once he found himself in the heat, he didn’t know what to do,” Ben-Menashe told the Libya Herald, “ Our advice is always to tell the truth”.
In two seemingly remarkably frank interviews, Ben-Menashe said that an initial approach by Cyrenaican federalists had come to nothing, but then he had then agreed to meet Usama Buera in Morocco in November last year. Buera is the son of Abubaker Buera, president of the federalist National Union Party.
“I suggested that we met again in Cairo. That meeting didn’t happen. So I went to Benghazi and spent two days with Jadhran at the beginning of December.”
It was on 5 December that the first agreement of two agreements was signed on behalf of the “Cyrenaica government” by Abdul Hamid El Kezza, Ben-Menashe said. He added that the fee for a one-year engagement was $400,000, because his firm, Dickens & Madson, was limited to mounting lobbying campaigns in Moscow and Washington.
However, by 17 December when a second agreement was signed, this time allegedly with Osama Buera, the consideration had risen to $2 million because the plan, said Ben-Menashe, was to launch a worldwide lobbying effort.
With both agreements, the fee was to be paid in advance upon signature. This, Ben-Menashe told this newspaper, did not happen.
“Money ? They have never paid us. They said they had no money. They tried to get someone to pay for them, but it didn’t work. The deal was not looking good for us. But we thought that we could work something out”. He said that he expected that his firm would be paid at a later date and mentioned the possibility of outside financial support.
Ben-Menashe not only took the view that he is still working for Jadhran, but he believed that people outside Libya are listening to the federalist argument. Moreover, on balance he thought that the publicity that has followed news of his relationship with Jadhran is a good thing. Though his engagement had only just started and Christmas had intervened in both North America and Europe, he insisted that he was already “making progress”.
The proposition, he explained, is that Cyrenaica and Fezzan should have autonomy within a federal Libya with the central government in Tripoli. He added of Jadhran: “Publicly he says he wants full autonomy, but privately Jadhran says he will settle for less. This is what we can sell to the international community, which means the Russians and the Americans”.
Ben-Menashe said that within the Political Bureau of Cyrenaica, “There are people that don’t believe in the same things that we do. There was a difference of opinion about the approach that has to be taken”. Ben-Menashe has deplored attempts by Jadhran to sell oil independently of the National Oil Corporation.
Despite the denials, the lobbyists insists that he is in contact with Jadhran’s people, talking to them every day and on Wednesday having three separate calls.
“I knew that they are going to deny that they have anything to do with us”, he said. “I did say to Jadhran that it could be a problem, the fact that I’m Jewish. I even gave him a copy of my book*”.
*Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network 1992 [/restrict]
