Cuban officials delivered the papers for the suit to the US Interests Section in Havana. The Americans refused to accept them. The Cuban government subsequently announced plans to take the lawsuit to an international forum.4

Vietnam

On January 27, 1973, in Paris, the United States signed the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam . Among the principles to which the United States agreed was the one stated in Article 21: In pursuance of its traditional policy [sic], the United States will contribute to healing the wounds of war and to postwar reconstruction of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam [North Vietnam] and throughout Indochina.

Five days later, President Nixon sent a message to the Prime Minister of North Vietnam in which he stipulated the following:

(1) The Government of the United States of America will contribute to postwar reconstruction in North Vietnam without any political conditions. (2) Preliminary United States studies indicate that the appropriate programs for the United States contribution to postwar reconstruction will fall in the range of $3.25 billion of grant aid over 5 years. 5

Nothing of the promised reconstruction aid was ever paid. Or ever will be.

However-deep breath here-Vietnam has been compensating the United States. In 1997 it began to pay off about $145 million in debts left by the defeated South Vietnamese government for American food and infrastructure aid. Thus, Hanoi is reimbursing the United States for part of the cost of the war waged against it.6

How can this be? The proper legal term is extortion . The enforcers employed by Washington included the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Export-Import Bank, the Paris Club and the rest of the international financial mafia. The Vietnamese were made an offer they couldnt refuse: Pay up or subject yourself to exquisite forms of economic torture, even worse than the considerable maiming youVe already experienced at the hands of our godfathers.7

At the Vietnamese embassy in Washington (a small office in an office building), the First Secretary for Press Affairs, Mr. Le Dzung, told the author in 1997 that this matter, as well as Nixons unpaid billions, are rather emotional issues in Vietnam, but the government is powerless to change the way the world works.

Nicaragua

Under siege by the United States and its Contra proxy army for several years, Nicaragua filed suit in 1984 in the World Court (International Court of Justice), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, located in The Hague, Netherlands, for relief from

the constant onslaught, which included mining its harbors. The Court ruled in 1986 that the US was in violation of international law for a host of reasons, stated that Washington is under a duty immediately to cease and to refrain from all such acts [of hostility] and is under an obligation to make reparation to the Republic of Nicaragua for all injury .

Anticipating the suit, the Reagan administration had done the decent and right thing: it announced, on April 6, 1984, three days before Nicaraguas filing, that the US would not recognize the World Courts jurisdiction in matters concerning Central America for a two-year period.

Apart from the awesome arbitrariness of this proclamation, the courts ruling of June 27, 1986 actually came after the two-year period had expired, but the United States ignored it anyway. Washington did not slow down its hostile acts against Nicaragua, nor did it ever pay a penny in reparation.8

Libya

The April 1986 American bombing of Libya took the lives of scores of people and wounded another hundred or so. The dead included Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafis young daughter; all of Qaddafis other seven children as well as his wife were hospitalized, suffering from shock and various injuries. A year later, 65 claims were filed with the White House and the Department of Defense under the Federal Tort Claims Act and the Foreign Claims Act, on behalf of those killed or injured. The claimants, who were asking for up to $5 million for each wrongful death, included Libyans, Greeks, Egyptians, Yugoslavs and Lebanese. 9 Before long, the number of claimants reached to about 340, but none of their claims got anywhere in the American judicial system, with the Supreme Court declining to hear the case.10

Panama

For several years following the American invasion of 1989, with its highly destructive bombing and ground combat, many individual Panamanians tried in various ways to receive compensation for the death or injury of themselves or family members, or the wreckage of their homes or businesses. But their legal claims and suits were met by an implacable US government. One American law firm filed claims on behalf of some 200 Panamanians (all non-combatants), first in Panama with US military officials-under provisions of the Panama Canal treaty-who rejected the claims, then in two suits filed in US courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court, with each of the courts declining to hear the cases. 11

During the years 1990 to 1993, some 300 Panamanians petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS) for a finding that the United States had violated many of their rights and was liable for just compensation .

In 1993, the Commission ruled the petition admissible . But as of fall 1999, it was still pending as to its merits , which were being studied . 12 It should be borne in mind that over the years, the United States has wielded inordinate influence in the OAS, far more than any other member. Witness Washingtons success in getting Cuba suspended from the organization in 1962 and kept out to the present time despite repeated, growing and publicly-expressed support for Cubas reinstatement by other OAS members.

There was a report some years ago that a few small payments- seemingly somewhat arbitrary-had been made on the ground by US officials to Panamanians in Panama. But in December 1999, the State Department Press Office dealing with Panama stated that the United States has not paid any compensation for combat-related deaths or injuries or property damage due to Operation Just Cause (this being the not-tongue-in-cheek name given to the American invasion and bombing). 13 Some of the American aid given to Panama since 1989, the State Department added, has been used by Panama for such purposes. The State Department puts the matter thus, it would appear, to make it clear to the world that they do not feel any guilt or responsibility for what they did to the people of Panama and will not succumb to any kind of coercion to pay any compensation.

On December 20, 1999, the tenth anniversary of the American invasion, hundreds of Panamanians took to the streets to demand once again that the US pay damages to civilian victims of the bombing.

Sudan

The El-Shifa pharmaceutical plant had raised Sudanese medicinal self-sufficiency from less than five percent to more than 50 percent, while producing about 90 percent of the drugs used to treat the most deadly illnesses in this desperately poor country. But on August 20, 1998, the United States saw fit to send more than a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles screaming into the plant, in an instant depriving the people of Sudan of their achievement. Based on a covertly acquired soil sample, Washington claimed that the plant was producing chemical weapons. At the same time the US gave the world the clear impression that the factorys owner, Saleh Idris, was a close associate of terrorists and was involved in money laundering. Washington proceeded to freeze $24 million in Idriss London bank accounts. But the US was never able to prove any of its assertions, while every piece of evidence and every expert testimony that surfaced categorically contradicted the claim about chemical weapons. 14 The case fell apart completely, and in the meantime, Idris sued to recover his money as well as compensation for his pulverized plant.

Finally, in May 1999, the United States unfroze Idriss accounts rather than contest his suit because they knew they had no case. But as of the end of that year, the US had yet to apologize to Sudan or to Idris for the plants destruction, or for the serious harm done to his reputation, and had yet to compensate him for the loss of the plant and the loss of business, nor the plants employees for the loss of their jobs and income, or the ten people