The Intelligence Summit

Thursday, November 30, 2006

EXCLUSIVE: Iranian Weapons Arm Iraqi Militia

By JONATHAN KARL AND MARTIN CLANCY

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2006 — - U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.

This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market. "There is no way this could be done without (Iranian) government approval," says a senior official.

Iranian-made munitions found in Iraq include advanced IEDs designed to pierce armor and anti-tank weapons. U.S. intelligence believes the weapons have been supplied to Iraq's growing Shia militias from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is also believed to be training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran.

Evidence is mounting, too, that the most powerful militia in Iraq, Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, is receiving training support from the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah.

Two senior U.S. defense officials confirmed to ABC News earlier reports that fighters from the Mahdi army have traveled to Lebanon to receive training from Hezbollah.

While the New York Times reported that as many as 2,000 Iraqi militia fighters had received training in Lebanon, one of the senior officials said he believed the number was "closer to 1,000." Officials say a much smaller number of Hezbollah fighters have also traveled through Syria and into Iraq to provide training.

U.S. intelligence officials believe the number of Al-Sadr's Mahdi army now includes 40,000 fighters, making it an especially formidable force.

ABC News

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Traces of Radiation Found on 2 Jetliners

Authorities found traces of radiation on two British Airways jets, and the airline appealed Wednesday to tens of thousands of passengers who flew the aircraft to or from Moscow to come forward as investigators widened the search for clues into the poisoning death of a former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

The airline said the "risk to public health is low," adding that it was in the process of contacting tens of thousands of passengers who flew on the jets.

Two planes at London's Heathrow Airport tested positive for traces of radiation and a third plane has been taken out of service in Moscow awaiting examination, British Airways said in a statement.

Natalia Remnyova, administrator at Domodedovo Airport, the Moscow airport used by British Airways, said she knew nothing of a plane grounded there. Russian Transport Ministry and other government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

The airline said it was contacted by the British government Tuesday night and told to ground the planes and allow investigators looking into Litvinenko's death to test them for radiation.

High doses of polonium-210 _ a rare radioactive element usually manufactured in specialized nuclear facilities _ were found in Litvinenko's body, and traces of radiation have been found at sites in London connected with the inquiry into his death.

All three planes had been on the London-Moscow route, British Airways said. In the last three weeks, the planes had also traveled to routes across Europe including Barcelona, Frankfurt and Athens. Around 30,000 passengers had traveled on 220 flights on those planes, said Kate Gay, an airline spokeswoman.

"The airline is in the process of making contact with customers who have traveled on flights operated by these aircraft, which operate within Europe," British Airways said in a statement.

"British Airways understands that from advice it has been given that the risk to public health is low," the airline's statement said.

The airline has published the flights affected on its Web site, and told customers on these flights to contact a special help-line set up by the British Health Ministry.

Litvinenko, a former colonel with Russia's Federal Security Service _ the successor agency to the KGB _ had been a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin before his death from radiation poisoning on Nov. 23. From his deathbed, he blamed Putin for his poisoning. Putin has strongly denied the charge.

Britain's Home Secretary John Reid, who chaired a meeting of COBRA, the government's emergency committee, said that the tests on the planes were part of a wider scientific investigation into sites that could be linked to Litvinenko's death.

Meanwhile, Italian security expert Mario Scaramella, who was one of the last people to meet with Litvinenko before the former spy fell ill, said tests cleared him of radioactive contamination.

Scaramella came from Rome and met Litvinenko at a sushi bar in London on Nov. 1 _ the day the former intelligence agent first reported the symptoms.

"I am fine," Scaramella told The Associated Press by telephone. "I am not contaminated and have not contaminated anybody else."

Scaramella returned to London to undergo tests and talk with the police Tuesday. He said he is in security protection and refused to say where he was.

More than three dozen staff at the two hospitals that treated Litvinenko will be tested for radioactive contamination, Britain's Health Protection Agency said.

The agency said 106 staff at Barnet General Hospital and University College Hospital had been assessed for possible exposure, and 49 would have their urine tested.

The mysterious death has clouded Anglo-Russian relations. Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday that police were determined to find out who was responsible for Litvinenko's death.

"The police investigation will proceed, and I think people should know that there is no diplomatic or political barrier in the way of that investigation," Blair said in Copenhagen, Denmark. "It is obviously a very, very serious matter indeed. We are determined to find out what happened and who is responsible."

Media reports in Britain and Russia on Wednesday said that Litvinenko had been engaged in smuggling nuclear substances out of Russia.

The Independent newspaper reported that Litvinenko told Scaramella on the day he fell ill that he had organized the smuggling of nuclear material for his former employers at Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB. The newspaper reported that Litvinenko said he had smuggled radioactive material to Zurich in 2000.

But Scaramella told the AP that he had been misquoted by the newspaper.

"He (Litvinenko) wanted to see me because he knew about smuggling of nuclear material, but as far as I know he was never involved in nuclear smuggling," he said.

London police say they are investigating the case as a "suspicious death" rather than murder, although they have devoted a large anti- terrorist force to the investigation.

Scaramella said he had been cleared of any involvement in the 43-year- old former spy's death.

"Let me take the opportunity to say that I'm not under investigation by any British authority," he said. "I am cooperating with them (the police)." Police declined to say whom they had spoken to.

Scaramella said he showed Litvinenko e-mails from a confidential source identifying the possible killers of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and listing other potential targets for assassination _ including himself and Litvinenko.

Following Litvinenko's death, more than 1,100 people called a health hot line over concerns they might be at risk from polonium poisoning, which is deadly in tiny amounts if ingested or inhaled. Sixty-eight have been referred to health authorities, the Health Protection Agency said _ including the 49 hospital staff.

Eight have been referred to a special clinic as a precaution. The tests should take about a week.

Traces of radiation have been found at six sites visited by Litvinenko.

A coroner will perform an autopsy on Litvinenko on Friday, "subject to appropriate precautions," said the local authority responsible, Camden Council. Doctors had sought expert advice on whether Litvinenko's radioactive body posed a threat to those performing the post-mortem.

A coroner's inquest will be opened Thursday and then adjourned until the police investigation is complete, the council said.

AP

IDF to establish Hizbullah enemy training units

Syrian Special Forces and Hizbullah guerrilla cells will begin playing a prominent role in IDF training sessions for its infantry units in the near future.

According to a plan developed by Brig.-Gen. Uzi Moskowitz, commander of the Ze'elim Training Base in southern Israel, the IDF will establish a "Red Unit" which will study enemy tactics and impersonate Hizbullah guerrillas, Hamas fighters or Syrian ground troops during exercises.

Until now, every battalion that arrived at Ze'elim for training would set aside a company assigned the enemy role for the duration of the exercise. The company however was not trained in enemy tactics and as a result the soldiers they fought against did not experience the real enemy. In addition, the company impersonating the enemy missed out on essential parts of the exercise.

jpost

Iran-Venezuela joint car factory inaugurated

LONDON, November 29 (IranMania) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, together with Iran's minister for industry, inaugurated a joint venture car factory in central Venezuela, RTT News reported.

The car factory is expected to produce around 20,000 cars every year. Many of the cars produced in the factory will be exported to other South American countries. The joint venture with Iran is intended to produce low cost cars that will be within reach for most Venezuelans.

Though rich in oil, Venezuela depends heavily on imports from the United States for its industrial requirements. President Chavez, an outspoken critic of US President George Bush, is trying to reduce Venezuela's dependence on US imports by setting up a large number of industrial projects in Venezuela in partnerships with other countries such as China, Iran and Russia. He wants Venezuela to manufacture cars, tractors, computers and other high-tech products for its internal use and exports.

Pakistan's Chitral District: A Refuge for al-Qaeda's Top Leadership?

By Hassan Abbas

In the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders, security services continue to focus on Pakistan's Chitral district in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). Chitral became a concern after the release of a bin Laden videotape from September 2003 in which trees native to the Chitrali mountain range were evident. Extensive search operations for the al-Qaeda leader and fellow operatives by Pakistani and U.S. forces were conducted in the area in February-March 2003 (Dawn, March 7, 2003). More recently, in May there were claims that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had established an office in Chitral to monitor militant activities in the district (The Nation, May 1). Other links to the district include Abu Khabaib, an Arab explosives expert who has been spotted several times in the hills of Chitral. He is known to have helped Sheikh Ahmed Saleem, an Arab member of al-Qaeda. Saleem has been giving money to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi for recruiting militants for al-Qaeda in Pakistan (Daily Times, October 2). Finally, because Chitral is adjacent to Afghanistan's Nuristan province, there is concern that Taliban and al-Qaeda militants are crossing the border between the two countries.

Chitral, with its rich cultural heritage and changing religio-political trends, is a fascinating area in the NWFP. It is caught between diverse traditions and rumors of al-Qaeda involvement. In the backdrop of the turmoil created by pro-Taliban elements in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area and the rising influence of religious political parties in the district, Chitral has become an important focus in the war on terrorism. For centuries, the people of Chitral have lived in relative isolation in their mountain kingdom. They have experienced various political phases, beginning with their involuntary association with the British Empire (1895), their voluntary association with the new state of Pakistan (1947) and finally their incorporation into Pakistan's NWFP (1969). The Katur dynasty that ruled the area collapsed in 1949-50, and the federal government of Pakistan took direct control of the Chitral administration.

Geographically, Chitral is bordered by Afghanistan in the north, south and west. A narrow strip of Afghan territory, the Wakhan strip, separates it from Tajikistan. It has always been a very important route for invaders on their way to South Asia, including Alexander the Great and the Mongols. The Chitral Valley, at an elevation of 1,100 meters, is popular with mountaineers, hunters, hikers and Western anthropologists. Imposing mountains dominate the landscape of Chitral, forging a rugged terrain that is home to approximately 325,000 people comprising an area of 243,818 acres. The topography of the district is varied, with 30% of the region covered in glaciers, snow-clad mountains, bare rock and barren ground, and with about 65% of the land supporting pastures with only sparse vegetation. Chitral is cut off from the rest of Pakistan during the winter. Sunnis compose 65% of Chitral, while Ismaili Shiites comprise 35% of the population. A small population of the non-Muslim Kailash community—known for their beautiful dresses and traditional dance—are based in the south of the district.

While located in a Pashtun region, the Chitrali people are ethnically different than Pashtuns. They are called Kho and their primary language is Khowar, although about 10 other languages are spoken in the area. One might expect that Pashto would be a natural choice as a second language for many Chitralis, but that is not the case. In fact, Chitralis dislike Pashtuns and their language. Their dislike is in part an outcome of economic factors—for instance, since 1979-80, a large number of Afghan refugees (predominantly Pashtuns) moved into the area and competed quite successfully with the local Chitrali businessmen. Business in the region is predominately agricultural.

Chitralis have a reputation for being civilized and peace-loving. Their folk singers are popular in various parts of Pakistan. There is a fairly sizeable seasonal migration of Chitrali men to Peshawar and to other cities of Pakistan for winter employment. Additionally, many have found employment in the Gulf States. Relations between Sunnis and Shiite Ismailis have been cordial historically, but have recently become more heated now that Wahhabis have more influence in the area.

In terms of political orientation, however, Chitral has been steadily becoming more conservative. For instance, its current representative in the National Assembly of Pakistan, Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali, belongs to Jamaat-e-Islami (part of the religious MMA alliance) and is a chief administrator of a seminary in Peshawar named Jamia Arabia Hadiqatul Uloom. Interestingly, he is best known for leading a mob that burned down the offices of the Frontier Post newspaper in Peshawar three years ago after it published a "Letter to the Editor" with controversial religious connotations.

More troubling signs emerged in late 2004 when the offices of a progressive Pakistani NGO, Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP), sponsored by Ismaili leader Prince Karim Aga Khan, were attacked by religious extremists. Developments came to a head on December 27, 2004 when two workers of the Aga Khan Health Services Office in Chitral were killed in a terrorist attack and four vehicles owned by the charity organization were destroyed. The culprits turned out to be two men associated with the declared terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has links to al-Qaeda (Dawn, January 5, 2005). In a December 29, 2004 Daily Times editorial titled "Chitral Trouble is Symptomatic of Deeper Malaise," the paper maintained that this development was an outcome of sectarianism and that "in Chitral, the Shiite-Sunni tension dates back to 1988 when the Northern Areas were attacked by Pashtun lashkars."

In conclusion, due to Chitral's location on the border with Afghanistan, elements of al-Qaeda may find refuge there. The mountains potentially provide a good cover. Yet, another potent factor has to be kept in perspective—because much of the district's population is not friendly to Pashtuns, they may be less willing than other areas of the NWFP to provide sanctuary. Pashtunwali has very limited appeal in this area and Ismaili Shiites (35% of the population) are anti-al-Qaeda to their core for sectarian reasons. Therefore, one can speculate that the al-Qaeda leadership may have passed through this area during their "travels" in the region, but are unlikely to consider Chitral a place where they can find safe refuge for a long period of time.

Calderón under fire for security chief pick

Financial Times: Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s president-elect, drew fierce criticism on several fronts on Tuesday after he chose a highly controversial figure to fill a pivotal cabinet position.

The criticism came as Mr Calderón, who begins his six-year term on Friday, revealed the final six names of his cabinet. Yet attention immediately focused on Francisco Ramírez Acuña, who as government secretary will be responsible for implementing security policy, among other things.

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Tamara Taraciuk of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Washington said on Tuesday: “This appointment sends a terrible signal both to the domestic and international communities.”

HRW and other human rights groups say that Mr Ramírez, who comes from Mr Calderon’s centre-right National Action party (PAN), believes in “firm-hand” policies to deal with issues of public order, and that he has an unenviable record on human rights.

They argue that Mr Ramírez bears much of the responsibility for the detention and subsequent physical and psychological abuse of dozens of anti-globalisation protesters in Jalisco in 2004.

The incident, considered one of the most prominent cases of human rights abuses in Mexico’s recent history, occurred when Mr Ramírez was state governor, and human rights defenders claim he did little or nothing to stop the violations.

HRW, for example, says there was never any serious attempt to investigate the incident and no police officers were ever sanctioned in spite of many testimonies from the detainees describing beatings, humiliation and death threats while in police custody.

Political analysts on Tuesday said Mr Ramírez’s appointment was almost certainly motivated by paybacks and rewards within Mr Calderón’s PAN party. Mr Ramírez was the man who first announced Mr Calderón’s presidential candidacy in 2004, and was instrumental in handing the president-elect a crucial victory in his state of Jalisco.

But they also say the appointment could be a signal that Mr Calderón is willing to adopt a zero-tolerance approach to civil unrest and conflict at a time when Mexico finds itself deeply divided along political, social and regional lines.

The most immediate concern is the southern state of Oaxaca, where what initially started out as a teachers’ strike over pay has turned into a bloody confrontation between social organisations and unions on one side and state authorities on the other.

Last month increasing levels of violence – a US journalist was shot dead while filming street clashes – forced Vicente Fox, the outgoing president, to send in federal forces.

Dan Lund of Mund Americas, a consultancy in Mexico City, said on Tuesday: “With Ramirez’s appointment there is now a much greater worry among different groups and political parties that Oaxaca will be handled by repression not negotiation.”

Mystery illness hits former Russian PM

Financial Times: Yegor Gaidar, Russia’s former prime minister and the architect of the country’s market reforms, last week suffered a sudden, unexplained and violent illness on a visit to Ireland, a day after Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB spy, died in London from an apparent radiation poisoning.

Mr Gaidar is now in a stable condition at an undisclosed Moscow hospital, undergoing tests. In a telephone interview with the FT, Mr Gaidar said the doctors had so far been unable to identify the cause of the violent vomiting and bleeding that he suffered during a conference in Ireland.

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Anatoly Chubais, his former associate and the head of Russia’s electricity monopoly, said he suspected Mr Gaidar may have been poisoned. However, he strongly ruled out that either Russia’s security services or the Kremlin could have had any involvement. There is no indication of radiation being the cause of his illness.

Mr Gaidar is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s softer critics and his daughter is a leader of an opposition movement. Mr Gaidar, who heads an economic think-tank in Moscow, has close connections with the government and occasionally advises them on economic matters.

“I have suffered sudden problems with my health on November 24 which posed a threat to my life. This threat has not been realised. After a few hours the situation stabilised,” Mr Gaidar said.

Mr Chubais and Mr Gaidar said the doctors could not explain the symptoms he had suffered.

Mr Gaidar said he felt ill after eating a simple breakfast where he was staying near Dublin. He said he could barely move any of his limbs and had to lie down for most of the afternoon.

Ekaterina Genieva, who helped to organise the conference at National University of Ireland, Maynooth, said Mr Gaidar looked pale and unwell when a few hours later he came down to answer questions about his book The Death of the Empire: Lessons for Contemporary Russia. After about 10 minutes, Mr Gaidar said he had to leave the room.

“I rushed after him and found him lying on the floor, unconscious. He was vomiting blood and also bleeding from the nose for about 35 minutes,” Ms Genieva said. Mr Gaidar was taken to James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown, where he was treated overnight. The following morning, Mr Gaidar had asked to be discharged and, after a visit to the Russian embassy, was put on a flight back to Moscow.

Mr Gaidar declined to comment about whether he believed he had suffered a poisoning attack. The news of his illness comes after a series of mysterious incidents involving Russian public figures over the past month. It emerged as the Kremlin and state-run television continued to suggest the murky world of Russia’s recent émigrés was behind the death of Mr Litvinenko.

Sources in Dublin said they did not suspect anything untoward in Mr Gaidar’s illness.

EU Commission Urges Suspension of Turkish Entry Talks

Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The European Union's executive body urged a suspension of accession talks with Turkey because of its embargo on EU member state Cyprus, a step that may kill the Turkish entry bid.

The European Commission recommended freezing about a quarter of the accession program to punish Turkey for barring ships and planes from Greek-speaking Cyprus. The proposal would also prevent entry negotiations on issues including trade, transport and agriculture.

``Failure to meet legal obligations cannot remain without consequences,'' Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said at a news conference in Brussels today. Foreign ministers from the EU's 25 nations, which have the final say over negotiations with aspiring members, will discuss the recommendation on Dec. 11.

EU anger is growing after Turkey backtracked on a pledge to end the curbs on Cyprus in return for winning the go-ahead to start accession negotiations 13 months ago. The Turkish government now says this step requires the bloc to allow trade with a part of Cyprus occupied by Turkey for three decades.

The commission's recommendation reflects broader anxieties about admitting Turkey, which would be the first Muslim member and one of the bloc's most populous nations. The Turkish embargo is a lightning rod for criticism that extends to demands for more Turkish media and religious freedoms.

Eight Chapters

Both sides have completed one of 35 regulatory ``chapters'' due to be covered by the negotiations over the coming decade, sealing an accord on Turkish research laws in June.

The commission recommended the suspension of eight chapters on issues that also include customs, fisheries, financial services, other services and external relations. The commission also recommended that no chapter be completed before Turkey lifts the curbs against Cyprus.

``The recommendation is both clear and measured,'' commission President Jose Barroso said in a statement.

Turkey has occupied northern Cyprus since a 1974 invasion after a coup by Greek Cypriot supporters of union with Greece. Turkey, which refuses to recognize the Mediterranean island republic, has 30,000 soldiers in the occupied region.

The EU says Turkey has a legal obligation to open its ports to Cyprus while working toward a political settlement on the island. ``The European Union is a community of law,'' Rehn said.

`Golden Goal'

The commission recommendation will slow Turkey's accession process while avoiding a ``train crash,'' Rehn said. He pressed the Turkish government to meet the EU's demands over Cyprus before the Dec. 11 foreign ministers' meeting, saying ``Turkey can still score a golden goal.''

The recommendation seeks to balance the demands of EU skeptics of Turkish entry including France, Germany and Austria and U.K.-led supporters who say the bloc should push harder for Turkish accession. Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI reversed his stance and expressed support for Turkish entry into the EU.

Cyprus joined the EU in May 2004 without the occupied northern region because voters in the Greek-speaking south rejected a United Nations-backed unification plan. The Turkish- speaking north endorsed the plan, leading Ankara to blame the Cypriot government for the island's continuing division.

In February, EU governments approved 139 million euros ($183 million) in aid for northern Cyprus as a reward while refusing to let the region trade with the bloc.

The debate about opening commercial ties with northern Cyprus raises intractable issues linked to unification. The Cypriot government says it would veto any EU plan for trade with the Turkish-occupied region without the return of a town called Varosha that Greek-speaking Cypriots abandoned after Turkey's invasion.

The Finnish government, current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, has failed over the past several weeks to find a diplomatic solution to the trade dispute.

Japan Raps Firm for Missile-Related Sale to Iran

Japanese authorities have banned a Tokyo-based firm from exporting any goods for the next two years as punishment for its sale to Iran of machinery that could be used to enhance Tehran’s ballistic missile capability, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, Oct. 15, 2004).

The Seishin Enterprise Corp. shipped a jet-mill grinder to Iran in 1999 and another in 2000 without getting government approval. The equipment requires an export license because it can be used to produce fine powders, a process that improves solid rocket fuel, AFP reported. The penalty ban will take effect Dec. 5.

Two top company executives were convicted in 2004 for breaking Japanese export laws and received suspended sentences (Agence France-Presse/Middle East Times, Nov. 28)

Fighting continues in Congo for 4th day

SAKE, Congo - U.N.-backed government forces battled renegade troops loyal to a local warlord in a fourth day of fighting Tuesday in eastern Congo, where a U.N. helicopter strafed hills and gunfire echoed as hundreds of people fled the area.

Ending such violence in the country's lawless east is a major challenge for President Joseph Kabila, who was declared winner of Congo's landmark presidential ballot on Monday by the Supreme Court.

Kabila's challenger, Jean-Pierre Bemba, conceded defeat but denounced the verdict and said he would continue his struggle politically through the opposition to "preserve peace and save the country from sinking into chaos and violence."

The latest skirmish began Saturday after forces loyal to former army general Laurent Nkunda attacked Sake, a small town on the northern tip of Lake Kivu about 18 miles west of Goma.

By Monday, Nkunda's fighters were pushed back into hills a few miles east of the town, but gunfire still echoed through the area Tuesday as sporadic battles continued. A U.N. helicopter fired into the hills at Nkunda fighters dug in there.

Hundreds of people carrying mattresses and suitcases filled the road between Sake and Goma. Sake's population is estimated at 12,000, but the town was mostly deserted.

The Congolese army said at least three of its soldiers died and about 50 were wounded. The body of one Congolese soldier was seen in Sake, and those of three fighters identified by army troops as Nkunda's men were seen outside town.

U.N. spokesman Kemal Saiki said a delegation of Congolese and U.N. officials had arrived in Goma and was headed to Sake to broker a cease-fire.

Nkunda, a former general, quit Congo's army and launched a low-level rebellion after the war ended, alleging the transition to democracy was flawed and excluded the minority Tutsi community. Nkunda controls thousands of fighters and claims the loyalty of two army brigades.

The U.N., which now has about 800 peacekeepers in Sake, entered the conflict Monday after coming under fire by Nkunda's troops as they attempted to advance toward Goma. The U.N. has about 17,500 peacekeepers in the Central African country trying to maintain calm as Congo tries to make the transition to democracy after a 1998-2002 war and decades of dictatorship.

Although a peace deal ended the broader war, the government has struggled for years to gain control of the vast, lawless east, which has been periodically wracked by violence from Congolese militiamen and Rwandan rebels who fled the 1994 genocide.

In Kinshasa on Monday, the Supreme Court confirmed provisional results from the Oct. 29 presidential runoff that gave Kabila 58 percent of votes, compared with about 42 percent for former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba. The court rejected charges of vote fraud brought by Bemba.

Congo has been on a bumpy four-year transition toward democracy.

Kabila will become Congo's first freely elected president since independence from Belgium in 1960.

In eastern Congo, meanwhile, the Mount Nyamulagira volcano spewed lava Tuesday for a second day, but did not appear to threaten the provincial capital, Goma, which was destroyed by another volcano four years ago.

Russia Must Remain A Major Nuclear Power

Sergei Kortunov, RIA Novosti
Nov 29, 2006 - 3:56:32 AM

Moscow, Russia: An all-out war or armed conflict between the great powers no longer seems possible. However, the five official nuclear powers are in no hurry to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their policy, a fact attested to by the US's new nuclear doctrine, loose rules of engagement for using nuclear weapons in the event of a crisis and greater regional tensions.

Russia therefore has no choice but to remain a major nuclear power in the foreseeable future.

It is our opinion that, depending on the global military-political situation, by 2012 Russia's strategic nuclear forces should have

- about 600 ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles;

- ten to 12 SSBNs (ballistic missile submarines);

- 50 strategic bombers for carrying nuclear and conventional weapons;

- 1,000 to 1,200 nuclear warheads on ICBMs and SLBMs (submarine launched ballistic missiles).

Moscow would therefore be able to maintain its special strategic relationship with the United States and preserve its global political role.

Russia and the United States have managed to conclude the legally binding Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions stipulating a ceiling of 1,700-2,200 warheads in the next decade.

But the Russian side had initially insisted on a more comprehensive treaty that would call for irreversible and controlled strategic arms reductions. Moreover, Washington has refused to formalize its assurances that the National Missile Defense (NMD) system will only be able to intercept several dozen warheads.

Consequently, the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions does not stipulate irreversible and controlled reductions; nor does it place any limitations on the potential of ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) systems.

In effect, this treaty merely reduces the combat readiness of strategic offensive arms and does not provide for disarmament or arms control measures. The United States will not scrap any strategic delivery vehicles or their warheads, meaning that Washington can beef up its strategic forces anytime.

But Russia has to spend a lot on scrapping its aging strategic offensive arms because of their specific features, as well as the lack of co-production arrangements between post-Soviet republics and some other factors.

Moscow, which has no alternative but to fulfill the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions, must also modify its nuclear policy. We must face the facts: the United States will create the NMD system in the near future and completely dominate the world unless Russia's nuclear policy adapts to the above-mentioned priorities.

If possible, Moscow should continue to negotiate with Washington and suggest a joint search for ways of minimizing risks that stem from the current mutual nuclear deterrence situation. However, given the current attitude of the Bush Administration towards bilateral and multilateral strategic offensive arms control, such agreements seem unlikely.

Under these circumstances, we should study the possibility of resuming work on weapons and systems that can effectively breach or neutralize the US ABM system.

In his state of the nation address, Russian President Vladimir Putin said "work is already under way on creating ... maneuverable combat units that will have an unpredictable flight trajectory for the potential opponent."

But this is not enough, because such weapons were contemplated during the Soviet period. Experts believe the cheapest option is to implement a set of active and passive measures for protecting Russia's strategic nuclear forces.

The most likely scenario involves parallel unilateral reductions in both the US's and Russia's nuclear arsenals without any mutual agreement or prior consultations. These cuts will depend on technical and economic expediency factors.

Such a situation would mean the end of arms control as we know it, and politicians, diplomats, military leaders and the general public might find it disorienting.

Saudi will intervene in Iraq if US withdraws-aide

WASHINGTON, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Using money, weapons or its oil power, Saudi Arabia will intervene to prevent Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias from massacring Iraqi Sunni Muslims once the United States begins pulling out of Iraq, a security adviser to the Saudi government said on Wednesday.

Nawaf Obaid, writing in The Washington Post, said the Saudi leadership was preparing to revise its Iraq policy to deal with the aftermath of a possible U.S. pullout, and is considering options including flooding the oil market to crash prices and thus limit Iran's ability to finance Shi'ite militias in Iraq.

"To be sure, Saudi engagement in Iraq carries great risks -- it could spark a regional war. So be it: The consequences of inaction are far worse," Obaid said.

The article said the opinions expressed were Obaid's own and not those of the Saudi government.

"To turn a blind eye to the massacre of Iraqi Sunnis would be to abandon the principles upon which the kingdom was founded. It would undermine Saudi Arabia's credibility in the Sunni world and would be a capitulation to Iran's militarist actions in the region," he said.

U.S. President George W. Bush will meet Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan on Wednesday to discuss a surge in Sunni-Shi'ite violence in Iraq.

Bush has said he does not support calls for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, but he is expected soon to receive proposals for possible changes in U.S. policy in Iraq from a bipartisan panel.

Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer and exporter and a close U.S. ally, fears Shi'ite Iran has been gaining influence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein's government.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney held talks with Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh on Saturday. Details were not disclosed.

Obaid said Cheney's visit "underlines the pre-eminence of Saudi Arabia in the region and its importance to U.S. strategy in Iraq."

He said if the United States begins withdrawing from Iraq, "one of the first consequences will be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis."

Obaid listed three options being considered by the Saudi government:

- providing "Sunni military leaders (primarily ex-Baathist members of the former Iraqi officer corps, who make up the backbone of the insurgency) with the same types of assistance", including funding and arms.

- establishing new Sunni brigades to combat the Iranian-backed militias;

- or the Saudi king "may decide to strangle Iranian funding of the militias through oil policy. If Saudi Arabia boosted production and cut the price of oil in half ... it would be devastating to Iran ... The result would be to limit Tehran's ability to continue funnelling hundreds of millions each year to Shi'ite militias in Iraq and elsewhere."

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Terror's Playground

By SAM DEALEY / MOGADISHU

More than a decade after U.S. troops pulled out, Somalia has fallen to Islamic fundamentalists. Here's why it could become the world's next nightmare

On a dusty side street in Somalia's former capital, there's little that distinguishes Mohammed's stall from the others. A grenade rests against a box of ammunition next to a row of AK-47s, and still more rifles hang from nails beneath a patch of tin roofing. His booth occupies prime real estate in the center of Mogadishu's Bakaraaha Arms Market, and he obsessively polishes his guns with an oil-stained rag in a battle against sand and grit. But few passersby show interest. Once one of the most bustling, bristling arms bazaars in the world, the Mogadishu weapons market is weathering a down cycle, with business a mere fraction of what it was in the days when warlords settled internecine grudges in the city's streets. Mohammed's average daily sales have dropped from 15 AKs to just three--and prices have fallen by almost half, to $300. "The only good job was selling guns," says Mohammed, 24. "Now I don't know what I'll do."

In most strife-torn parts of the world, a bear market for weapons would be cause for relief. But tranquillity rarely lasts long in Somalia. Since the overthrow of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, the country has been a byword for dysfunction, less a nation-state than a destitute, unremittingly violent land ruled by the barrel of a gun. Last June the warlords' grip on power was finally broken by a dedicated confederacy of fundamentalist Muslim militias that fought their way into the former capital and sent the warlords fleeing.

Since then, the Muslim militias, which call themselves the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), have consolidated their claim to Mogadishu and expanded their control to include most of Somalia, particularly the fertile lands and strategic ports in the country's south. Meanwhile, the U.N.-backed transitional government is unraveling. Confined to the squalid town of Baidoa near the Ethiopian border, the government is dependent on foreign money and security and crippled by internal dissent and mass resignations.

The fear is that Somalia, a country with nearly 9 million Muslims and one that the U.S. has long suspected is a haven for al-Qaeda, may fall further into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists sympathetic to terrorist organizations. A report by the U.N.-chartered watchdog group on Somalia, which was submitted to the U.N Security Council last week, says the ICU has developed extensive ties with groups and states steeped in terrorism.

The report states that the ICU sent "approximately a 720-person-strong military force to Lebanon to fight alongside Hizballah against the Israeli military" during this summer's monthlong war. In exchange, Hizballah's leadership "has made arrangements" for governments like Iran's and Syria's to contribute arms and supplies to the ICU. And senior leaders within the ICU, including co-leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, allegedly have direct ties to al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a radical group suspected of links to al-Qaeda.

Leaders of the ICU deny such allegations, but it's telling that they don't seem particularly bothered by them. "We believe the war against terrorism is a war against Islam," says the hard-line ICU national security chairman, Sheik Yusuf Indahaadde. "Those who are making trouble are not based here." Then, in English, the sheik adds forcefully, "Bush is the mother and father of terrorism."

And yet, in spite of the Islamists' disreputable allies, many Somalis cannot remember a time when they felt safer. For Americans, the single, searing image of Somalia was formed in October 1993, after two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters--part of a U.S. mission to provide humanitarian relief and restore order--were felled by militias loyal to warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid. Eighteen U.S. special forces were killed, and the world community's involvement in Somalia effectively ended. What followed was a decade and a half of intermittent war that reduced Mogadishu to rubble. Along the "green line," the architectural gem of the former Italian colony that bore the brunt of the warlords' reign, the once proud edifice of the National Bank is obliterated, and only a stone shard remains of the cathedral's twin bell towers.

But over the past few months, there have been glimpses of progress. In the clearings between bullet-pocked buildings and along the city's broad, leafy avenues, children play soccer and a decade's worth of trash is slowly being hauled away. Extortionate militia checkpoints and roving bands of technicals--pickups mounted with heavy artillery and carrying armed thugs--have been replaced by disciplined Islamic troops. The city's ports have reopened, buses travel the roads by day, and Somali families stroll the sidewalks by night. Barring the notable exceptions of a Swedish journalist and an Italian nun who were recently murdered, there's no denying Mogadishu's new semblance of order. "This is an area of the world that we would obviously like to see stable, and [the Islamists] are doing that to some extent," says a Western diplomat. "So if what you see is what you get, then maybe it isn't the worst thing in the world."

The Islamists who control the city occupy a whitewashed compound in Mogadishu. They are eager to present their domination as a fait accompli. "We are ready to be a nation," says Foreign Minister Ibrahim Hassan Addou. "We want Somalia to be peaceful, and we want to establish good relations with the rest of the world." With both hands, he beckons toward the open window in his office. "Feel free to look around," he says. "You can go where you want to go and see what you want to see."

Well, not quite. The Islamists have instituted Taliban-style rules banning drinking, cinemas, dancing and women swimming, as well as curbing the press. Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, the ICU's co-leader, insists these restraints are the product of spontaneous acts of piety by the public. "We don't have any rules issuing from the Islamic Courts to stop any of this," he insists. "The people are doing this by themselves without intervention by us." That seems open to dispute. Just last week, after protests erupted over the shortage of khat, the seemingly ubiquitous narcotic chewed in Somalia, the Islamists ordered a ban on the drug. It's unlikely to go over well. "It's good to stop hashish and harder things," says a man at a khat stall in Mogadishu, "but cigarettes and beer? There will be a day when people say, Wait, they have gone too far. I am sure of it."

The Islamists' takeover is a parable of the unintended consequences of the U.S.'s war on terrorism. After Sept. 11, the U.S. intelligence community, acting on concerns that Somalia's lawlessness could be exploited by al-Qaeda, initiated the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, a covert program that funneled aid to warlords in return for their assistance in capturing suspected terrorists. One of those warlords approached by U.S. operatives was Osman Hassan Ali Atto. Once a top financier of warlord Aidid--Atto was captured just a week before the downing of the Black Hawks in 1993--he is the last independent warlord in Mogadishu, a testament to his ability to play both sides of the net. Blunt-spoken and avuncular, Atto disparaged the U.S. cash-for-warlords program. "It was a waste of money," he says at his junkyard in Mogadishu, where the rusting hulks of dozers and pavers are still scarred by flak from U.S. missiles some 15 years ago. "I always told them that America's interests [should be] a government that is put in place without the pressure of money. They had their own ambitions to capture certain individuals. But I told them to f___ off. We are not for sale."

But other warlords were. Payments totaling several hundred thousand dollars were funneled to various militia groups, according to U.N. sources. The program was an open secret in Somalia and among the African diplomatic corps, but its only success was to bolster support for the Islamic Courts among a population weary of anarchy and opposed to foreign meddling. "It was a spectacular disaster," says John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group. "Not only were the militia leaders routed, but the U.S. and CIA support for these militias led to strengthened support for the Islamic Courts."

Poorly trained and addled by khat, Mogadishu's bands of thugs were no match for the highly regimented and dedicated Islamic soldiers. After just three months, the warlords were decisively routed this summer. "The warlords, they did not know how to fight," an ICU militia trainer says during a tour of his training camp just outside Mogadishu. "They had the guns and the money and the khat, but they did not have the heart. For many months we have not been paid to fight, whether in money or in khat. We fight with our hearts."

Those aren't their only weapons. The U.N. watchdog report circulated to the Security Council last week says Syria has equipped and trained the ICU military. On July 27, the report says, "200 fighters from the ICU were transported by aircraft to Syria to undergo military training in guerrilla warfare." The report also says a Syrian plane delivered a "large quantity" of arms, including surface-to-air missiles, to the ICU in early September. On at least two occasions, Iran supplied the ICU with arms, including a shipment on July 25 of 1,000 machine guns and grenade launchers, an unknown quantity of mines and ammunition, and 45 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.

In mid-August, a large dhow originating in Iran and carrying arms, medical supplies and food arrived at a Mogadishu seaport. Included in the shipment were 80 man-portable surface-to-air missiles and launchers. The U.N. also charges that "at the time of writing of this report, there were two Iranians in Dhusa Mareb engaged on matters linked to the exploration of uranium in exchange for arms to the ICU." In separate letters written to the U.N., Syria and Iran denied having any involvement.

Foreign diplomats warn that the arms buildup may be a prelude to a wider war. Despite being sidelined by the Islamists, the transitional government still enjoys the full-throated backing of the international community and is being armed to the teeth by neighboring Ethiopia--a necessary violation of the country's arms embargo if the transitional government is to survive, but hardly endearing to most Somalis, for whom Ethiopia is a blood enemy. Meanwhile, Ethiopia's main rival in the region, Eritrea, has funneled arms and forces to the ICU. Peace talks between the Islamists and the transitional government have largely collapsed, and skirmishes are increasing.

The African Union plans to deploy some 7,000 African peacekeepers to keep the two sides at bay. But the Islamists have made clear they will consider this an act of war. "If they come, we will view them as invading troops," said Ahmed. "And we are ready to defend ourselves because we are not ready to be colonized again by any sort of troops in the world." Without those peacekeepers, however, the two sides seem destined to clash. A face-off would surely drag Ethiopia and Eritrea into a proxy--if not outright--war. The Islamists' stated aim to unite all of Somalia is believed to include the secular breakaway territories of Puntland and Somaliland, as well as portions of Kenya and Ethiopia. Once fighting has begun, there's little to prevent Somalia from becoming a conflict that could engulf the Horn of Africa, cause horrific loss of life and create the continent's next major humanitarian crisis.

With those storm clouds gathering, the Islamists in Mogadishu are intent on solidifying their hold on power, dispensing their harsh brand of justice and leaving no doubt about who's in control. A reminder of that came on a clear blue morning in mid-October, when thousands of Somalis gathered at the parade ground of the old police barracks on the city's battered coast. Guards led a tall, undernourished man, condemned to death for killing another man, to a clearing in the center. After a reading from the Koran, the man conducted his ablutions, said a prayer and was led to a post facing eight soldiers in balaclavas and armed with AKs. His hands and feet were tied and his eyes blindfolded. With the bright blue sea behind him and puffy white clouds above, and to the jubilant shouts of Allahu akbar (God is great) from the crowd, the man's head and stomach were ripped by bullets.

Time

Houston men accused of conspiring to help terrorists

Two Houston men have been charged with planning to aid the Taliban, U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle announced Tuesday.

Adnan Babar Mirza, 29 and 33-year-old Kobie Diallo Williams, also known as Abdul Kabeer and Abdul Kabir, are both in federal custody.

They are charged with conspiring to train with firearms with a goal to fight with the Taliban against coalition forces in the Middle East and providing approximately cash to support terrorist groups.

Mirza is also charged with three violations of federal firearms law.

To hone their skills in anticipation for battlefield jihad, the indictment alleges, Williams and Mirza agreed to train with firearms at various locations located in Harris and surrounding counties.

The four count indictment was returned under seal by a Houston grand jury last week and unsealed Tuesday after the appearance of both men before a U.S. magistrate judge.

“In this post 9/11 era, threats against our international security efforts are taken most seriously,” said U.S. Attorney DeGabrielle.

“While these subjects did not operate at a high level of sophistication in comparison with the 9/11 hijackers, the expressed goal was to aid the Taliban by training to carry out jihad against coalition troops in the Middle East,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Roderick Beverly.

Kobie Diallo Williams surrendered to members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force Tuesday.

Adnan Babar Mirza, who has been in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement on related immigration violations, was transferred into the custody of JTTF agents this morning.

Both Williams and Mirza have been ordered to remain in federal custody without bond pending further criminal proceedings.

According to allegations in the indictment, Williams and Mirza, a citizen of Pakistan who entered the United States on a student visa on Aug. 15, 2001, allegedly viewed the United States and coalition military forces on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq as invaders. In April 2005, they agreed that they should travel to the Middle East to fight with the Taliban to engage in battlefield jihad.

On at least eight occasions between May 20, 2005, and June 17, 2006, the men engaged in firearms training, and at times in reconnaissance training.

As part of and during the alleged conspiracy, Williams and Mirza are accused of agreeing to offer financial support to Taliban fighters and their families.

Federal law prohibits contributions of goods or services to the Taliban.

As a student visa holder, Mirza is prohibited from possessing firearms. Furthermore, once his student visa expired on Dec.12, 2005, Mirza’s status changed to that of being illegally in the United States. Illegal aliens are also prohibited from possessing firearms.

The indictment charges Mirza in three counts of unlawfully possessing firearms during three firearms training sessions occurring in May 2005, March 2006 and May 2006.

If convicted of the conspiracy charge, Williams and Mirza face a maximum punishment of five years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000 and three years supervised release.

Each of the three firearms alleged against Mirza in Counts Two through Four carry a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000 and three years supervised release, upon conviction.

The investigation resulting in the charges was led by the Houston Division of the FBI and the agency’s JTTF with participation by: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Houston Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Sheriff’s Offices of San Jacinto and Montgomery Counties.

Kvue.com

Iran offers to share nuclear know-how with Algeria

TEHRAN, Nov 28, 2006 (AFP) - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has offered to share Tehran's nuclear expertise with Algiers, in a meeting here with Algerian energy minister Shakib Khalil, the press reported Tuesday.

"We are ready to share our experience in different domains including peaceful nuclear technology with Algeria," the government daily Iran quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in a Monday meeting with Khalil.

Algeria is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, which supports Iran's civilian nuclear activities -- feared by the West to be a cover for secretly developing nuclear weapons.

Oil-rich Iran denies the allegations, saying it only wants to generate electricity.

World powers have been debating a draft UN resolution that would impose limited sanctions on Iran over its failure to comply with an earlier UN resolution on halting uranium enrichment.

Security developments in Iraq, Nov 28

Nov 28 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq as of 0930 GMT on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD - Two car bombs close to west Baghdad's main Yarmouk hospital killed four people and wounded 40, a source at Baghdad police headquarters said. An Interior Ministry source gave the same figure of casualties but they said it was one car bomb.

BAGHDAD - U.S. forces raided a Shi'ite mosque and exchanged fire with the guards, wounding four and arresting 14 on Monday in the southern Doura district, an Interior Ministry source said. They found a car bomb factory, weapons and army uniforms. The U.S. military said it was checking the report.

KIRKUK - A man wearing an explosive vest blew himself up next to the convoy of the governor of the northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk, killing a passerby and wounding 12 people, the governor and health officials said.

BAGHDAD - Forty bodies with gunshot wounds and some with signs of torture were found in different parts of Baghdad on Monday, an Interior Ministry source said.

MOSUL - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded two policemen in the northern city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

TAL AFAR - Two policemen were wounded when they entered a house booby-trapped with explosives in the town of Tal Afar, about 420 km (260 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

Chad politics: Emergency measures

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

In an announcement which took both domestic and international observers by surprise Chad's prime minister, Pascal Yoadimnadji, declared a state of emergency across most of the country in November. The measure covers all of the provinces bordering Sudan and the Central African Republic--Biltine, Ouaddai, Salamat and Moyen-Chari--as well as the Borkou, Ennedi, Tibesti, Chari-Barguini regions and the capital, N'Djamena. According to Mr Yoadimnadji, the primary reason for imposing emergency measures is the flare-up in violence in Ouaddai and Salamat provinces in recent months. Calling for international action to prevent cross-border raids allegedly sponsored by the Sudanese government, the prime minister described the violence--in which hundreds have been killed, entire villages burned and herds of livestock slaughtered--as "inter-ethnic". In truth, however, it is increasingly difficult to differentiate between political and inter-communal violence, given that tensions in the region are simultaneously inflamed by the government’s arming of local militia, and the acute dislocation of both pastoral and sedentary livelihoods by the fighting.

The immediate practical impact of the state of emergency has been the nomination of regional military rulers, and imposition of systematic media censorship. In announcing the suspension of media freedom, the Mr Yoadimnadji accused the private media of being apologist for rebel forces, and of having systematically ignored government warnings. Unsurprisingly, the private press association, Association des editeurs de la presse privee au Tchad, has denounced the censorship as “unjustified”. The sweeping geographic scope of the measures, coupled with the official targeting of both the Sudanese government and domestic journalists, certainly heighten suspicions that the measure is in part designed to distract attention from the problems of the president, Idriss Deby Itno, who lacks leverage over the Sudanese government in Khartoum. Amid a growing number of counter-accusations, it appears there is mounting evidence of punitive Janjaweed (Sudanese Arab militia) devastation of eastern Chadian settlements, whose mixed ethnic profiles mirror those of neighbouring Darfur region in Sudan. The clear risk is that the patterns of fear, violence and reprisals that are well-established in Darfur are being extended into Chad. In addition, there is evidence of Sudanese logistical support for the Chadian rebel groups, although liaison between them and Sudanese Janjaweed irregulars has yet to be proved.

The situation in Ouaddai and Salamat adds to the feeling of uncertainty in the country, and suggests that Chad's president will struggle to maintain his grasp on power. Mr Deby Itno faces increasing threats from several armed opposition groups, overshadowing the civilian opposition, which will remain largely ineffective. Divisions and defections from within his own military and political entourage and his Zaghawa clan are expected to grow, while the rebel assaults in the east of the country will continue. Meanwhile, mounting casualties among senior military ranks will weaken military morale and motivation. Attempts to head off further internal military dissent will continue to focus largely on promises of rapid promotions and large cash bonuses. This may halt short-term defections, but such overt patronage-based promotion is in the long term likely to weaken army cohesion further, so undermining effectiveness.

New NATO Intelligence Technology on Trial in Greece

NATO
Nov 28, 2006 - 6:22:24 AM

NATO tested new methods for conducting joint intelligence operations in Trial Spartan Hammer in Greece, 2-16 November 2006. Over 2 000 air, sea, and ground personnel from 14 NATO countries, including four special operations units, participated in the exercise.

The trial coupled NATO countries’ unique equipment with common standards in order to build a more effective intelligence capability against threats ranging from suicide bombers to surface-to-air missiles. The chief objective of the trial was to test new methods for conducting cooperative intelligence operations, in order to obtain more refined actionable intelligence for commanders.

Over 35 ground systems were used, along with 37 aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and seven warships.

Better intelligence for NATO commanders

“Trial Spartan Hammer was a milestone for NATO. It was the largest joint signals intelligence and electronic support measure trial in NATO’s history, making significant advances in bringing actionable intelligence to the military commander in the field,“ said Mr. Marshall Billingslea, NATO's Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment.

The management of sensor information was coordinated by a new operational entity called the Signals and Electronic Warfare Operations Centre (SEWOC). The SEWOC intelligence provided critical support to the Commander.

"In Afghanistan, NATO faces an adversary who is quick to adapt, and who operates in small units that are hard to detect and accurately identify. The need for timely, accurate location and identification of threats is crucial," said Mr. Billingslea, "Trial Spartan Hammer 06 proved a major success in this respect, as we practised new ways to work together in the intelligence fields to counter the terrorist threat."

The standards and interoperability procedures tested during Spartan Hammer ’06 streamline the NATO information sharing process, allowing intelligence information to be rapidly shared via a network.

This speeding up of the process improves the situational awareness of NATO forces, allowing NATO commanders to make better informed decisions.

Signals Intelligence/Electronic Support Measures Working Group

Trial Spartan Hammer ’06 was organized under the auspices of NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment and the Conference of National Armaments Directors. The trial was conducted by the NATO Signals Intelligence/Electronic Support Measures Working Group, a unique group of experts – including industry representatives, NATO specialists, and operational personnel - which has been created to address critical intelligence sharing requirements within the Alliance. This group received extensive support from Greece, the host nation.

This was the second in a series of trials, the first – Trial Hammer took place in April 2005.

Missiles, Missiles Everywhere

Andrei Kislyakov, RIA Novosti
Nov 28, 2006 - 7:09:54 AM

Moscow, Russia: Looking at things from a broad perspective is often very useful. For example, consider the following: Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov tells us that the country's armed forces will buy 17 intercontinental ballistic missiles next year; a reporter peers intently into a hole made in the pavement of an Israeli town by a rocket fired from a neighboring quarter; or two former U.S. defense secretaries say Tridents can be fired with non-nuclear warheads.

All three examples share one common theme: rocket weapons.

Anticipating possible objections, I will remark that today, from a practical point of view, there is little difference between strategic and tactical missiles. A military man seeks to make the most of jet propulsion in armed conflicts, but one must pay a high price for that. Also, unlike other weapon systems, such as armor or artillery, missile systems, regardless of their type, give rise to countermeasures that are themselves in effect unpredictable strategic weapons.

Already dozens of countries with different levels of development and political orientations have a large stock of ballistic missiles purchased elsewhere or the capability to manufacture them. Meanwhile, the world abounds in regions with smoldering military conflicts. Today we constantly see warring sides use their rocket weapons without hesitation.

Over the past 30 years or so, this has happened with alarming frequency, starting, say, from Egypt in 1973 and ending with the massive launches of Qassam projectiles on the Promised Land this fall.

It therefore emerges that fighting in the air and in space is becoming one of the key components of military confrontation at all levels. So, in today's armed struggles, not to mention tomorrow's possible clashes, one cannot do without developing and deploying either a strategic (or mostly non-strategic) missile defense or a theater missile defense system.

Yet one should not expect the latter to be safer or better than its strategic cousin. The last war in Iraq has shown how difficult it is to intercept short-range missiles because of their short approach time and maddening speed of about three kilometers a second. In the case of BM-21 rockets, which are plentiful in the Middle East and which local artisans have been able to configure into mini-missile systems, countering them in military-technical terms is impossible without resorting to high-precision weapons on a massive scale, moreover in real time.

High-precision weapons are above all space-based reconnaissance and target-designation facilities - in other words, command and control. It is likely that any day now general staffs meetings will recommend destroying short-range missiles directly from orbit. In view of the possible scale of use of such missiles, it is easy to imagine how densely near-Earth space will be packed with killer weapons.

And even this is not all the trouble. Supposedly peaceful reconnaissance, weather and other support systems, which must exist in large numbers and which are vital to a country's survival, need to be protected. In this connection, the launch of ground- and space-based anti-satellite programs is only a matter of time.

The above suggests that developing an anti-intercontinental ballistic missile system is no more challenging than building a more ramified network to counteract tactical and shorter-range missiles. In any case, regardless of what the weapons are called, it means deploying them in the Earth's orbit.

Russian Air Force Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Mikhailov bluntly said in mid-November that "given modern large-scale anti-missile defense models, the best way to make them more effective would be a space-based echelon capable of engaging most of the missiles in their boost and post-boost phases regardless of where they are launched ... "

The general's next comment was that there must be a control regime for weapons in space. This is hard to deny. It would be good to devise at least the general outline of such a regime that could break the vicious circle. So far there are only good intentions. But a nuclear missile club is open next door around the clock and does not charge admission fees.

Fraud Probe May Jeopardize Saudi-UK Eurofighter Deal: Report

AFP: Saudi Arabia may pull out of a contract to buy 72 new Eurofighter aircraft from British firm BAE Systems because of a row over an investigation into an alleged slush fund, the Daily Mail reported Nov. 25.

The Saudis could pull out of the $147 billion contract and take their business to France, with the potential loss of up to 50,000 jobs, the paper said.

The row has flared over a three-year investigation by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into claims that BAE Systems established a 60 million pound slush fund for some members of the Saudi royal family.

This allegedly provided perks including luxury cars to ensure that the Saudis kept doing business with BAE, the Mail said.

The paper added that Saudi Arabia is holding talks with France about the possibility of buying 24 Rafale jets.

“The Saudis are threatening to go elsewhere and you can’t blame them. They keep being insulted,” the Mail quoted an anonymous senior BAE Systems executive as saying.

And Mike Turner, the company’s chief executive, told the Sun that the investigation had “been going on long enough”.

Saudi Arabia threatened to suspend diplomatic links with Britain over the affair after SFO lawyers persuaded a Swiss magistrate to force disclosure of details about confidential Swiss bank accounts, this week’s Sunday Times reported.
BAE Systems has sealed a series of lucrative deals with Saudi Arabia since 1985.

“We continue to co-operate with the inquiry and believe we have done nothing wrong,” company spokesman John Neilson told AFP.

INDONESIA: YUDHOYONO IN RUSSIA FOR ARMS AND NUCLEAR ENERGY

Jakarta, 28 Nov. (AKI) - Defence, nuclear energy, space exploration and the economy - these are items on the agenda of Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono when he begins his visit to Russia. The Indonesian leader will be in Moscow on Wednesday and is currently in Japan on an official visit. While in Russia, Yudhoyono will be meeting president Vladimir Putin, various local politicians and will be speaking at a meeting of Russian business leaders at the Kremlin.

According to a statement released by Eddhi Hariyadi, the director general for Europe and America at the Indonesian foreign minister, Yudhoyono and Putin will be signing 12 bilateral agreements. Particularly relevant among them is the accords on military and nuclear cooperation.

The agreement on military cooperation will allow Indonesia to purchase from Russia a total of one billion dollars worth of arms from 2006 till 2010. This will allow Jakarta to diversify its sources of arms supplies and avoid the problems it faced of a decline in its arms supplies following the American embargo on Indonesia.

The United States was for a long time the principle arms supplier to Indonesia. But Washington imposed an embargo following the crimes commited by the Indonesian armed forces in East Timor in 1999. The embargo was subsequently lifted in 2005.

The agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear enenrgy could also result in cooperation between the two countries for the construction of a nuclear plant in Indonesia.

Jakarta recently confirmed its intention to restart its nuclear programme, which it first began in the 1960s and set aside in the 1990s.

According to the Indonesian minister for energy and mineral resources, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, Jakarta will have its first nuclear plant by 2015.

Yudhoyono and Putin will also be signing an accord for the construction of a launching pad for communication satellites on the island of Biak in Papua.

Most of the other agreements are for greater economic cooperation to improve bilateral trade between the two countries.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Security developments in Iraq, Nov 27

Nov 27 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq as of 1130 GMT on Monday.

* TAL AFAR - Clashes erupted between gunmen and police during the night, killing three policemen and one gunman in Tal Afar, about 420 km (260 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

* BAGHDAD - The bodies of five people were found with gunshot wounds and bearing signs of torture just north of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.

* BAIJI - A police major was killed while he was trying to dismantle a roadside bomb in the oil refinery city of Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

* BAGHDAD - Gunmen attacked a Baghdad municipal office in central Baghdad and killed a guard and abducted three others, an Interior Ministry source said.

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military said three of its soldiers were killed and two others wounded by insurgents in Baghdad on Sunday.

RAMADI - U.S. forces killed two suspected insurgents on Sunday after observing them loading weapons from a cache into a vehicle in the insurgent stronghold city of Ramadi, 110 km (70 miles) west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

DUJAIL - Gunmen attacked a checkpoint near Dujail, 90 km (55 miles) north of Baghdad, and kidnapped eight policemen, police said. A ninth policeman was wounded but managed to escape. One policeman was killed and another wounded when their patrol arrived at the scene and was ambushed.

RAMADI - The U.S. military said four Iraqi civilians were wounded, including three boys aged 6, 13 and 16, when mortar bombs fired by U.S. forces against insurgents hit them. The wounds were not life-threatening, a statement said.

Hezbollah issues warning

BEIRUIT (Globe & Mail)-- The Shia movement Hezbollah warned yesterday that Lebanon was headed into a "dark tunnel" unless the country's pro-Western government soon gives in to its demands for more power.

The warning came one day after Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and his cabinet ratified a proposed United Nations tribunal that will investigate a string of political assassinations in the country that many Lebanese blame on neighbouring Syria.

The move was slammed as unconstitutional by Hezbollah, which pulled its allies out of the cabinet two weeks ago to support its demands for an effective veto over government decisions. The tribunal decision now goes to President Émile Lahoud for approval. Mr. Lahoud, a pro-Syrian figure who owes his position to Syrian President Bashar Assad, is expected to refuse to sign it into law.

Hezbollah has been locked in a power struggle with the government since the end of this summer's war with Israel, when the government did little to support the militia in its fight. The Shia movement, backed by Syria and Iran, accuses the government of collaborating with Israel and being a U.S. puppet.

Hezbollah, along with other political forces allied with Syria, is expected to launch street demonstrations this week, aiming to force the resignation of Mr. Siniora and his cabinet.

Pro-Western groups have said they will respond with protests of their own, leading to worries that duelling street demonstrations could devolve into violence.

Mohammed Raad, the head of Hezbollah's parliamentary caucus, said that out of respect for Pierre Gemayel, a Christian leader who was assassinated last week, pro-Syrian forces would give the government several more days to meet its demands.

"The ruling majority has a chance until the mourning period ends, and it should seize that opportunity, or else they will get themselves into a dark tunnel," he said.

John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, upped the stakes over the weekend, saying that Lebanon was locked in a battle between "democracy and terrorism" that could decide the course of the entire region. "The future of the Middle East . may well be decided in the next several days."

Plane crash kills 36 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards: TV reports

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian state television reported that a plane crashed in Tehran early Monday, killing 36 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, including high-ranking officers.

The plane crashed shortly after taking off from an airport in Tehran, headed for Shiraz, about 1,000 kilometres south of Tehran, the capital, the TV said. "Some 30 members of the elite Revolutionary guards and six crew members were killed in the crash while they were heading for a military site in southern Iran," state-run television said, reading a statement from the Guards.

Two others were injured in the crash, the TV said.

Earlier, the television had said the number of victims was 38. It did not give any details on the names or ranks of the victims of the crash - the third military air plane crash this year.

Another official, Gen. Eskandar Moemeni, a deputy police chief, told reporters that the number of dead had increased to 39 after three injured people died in a hospital.

There was no immediate way to determine which number was accurate.

In January, a small military passenger Falcon jet crashed in northwestern Iran, killing the commander of the ground forces of the elite Revolutionary Guards. That happened just one month after a military transport, a U.S.-made C-130 plane, crashed into a 10-storey building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport, killing 115 people.

In Iran, the Revolutionary Guards are a separate organization from the regular armed forces. Founded after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Guards have their own air, naval and ground components. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a former commander in the Guards.

Iran has a history of aircraft accidents involving a heavy loss of life. The government has blamed a U.S. trade embargo, which makes it impossible for Iran to buy parts for its old U.S.-built aircraft. But critics have also said planes are poorly maintained.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Mexican president collapses

MEXICAN President Vicente Fox collapsed at his ranch today, the national daily Reforma reported.

Mr Fox, whose six-year term ends next week, fell at an event in front of congressmen, the online version of the newspaper said.

Politicians had been told he was conscious and stable.

A government press official was unable to confirm the report.

Mr Fox, 64, hands power to president-elect Felipe Calderon on December 1.

Jordanian Chechen Chief Dies in Gunfight

MAKHACHKALA, Russia -- A Jordanian who commanded foreign mercenaries in Chechnya and was reportedly al-Qaida's top emissary in the troubled North Caucasus died Sunday in a shootout with police, security officials said.

Abu Khavs was killed in a four-hour gunbattle in the Dagestani town of Khasavyurt, near the Chechen border, along with four other militants, said Mikhail Merkulov, deputy director for the Dagestani branch of the Federal Security Service, or FSB.

Merkulov called Abu Khavs "a foreign mercenary of Jordanian origin" who was the main al-Qaida contact for the North Caucasus.

State-run television showed a house apparently ravaged by gunfire, along with the bodies of at least five alleged militants. One FSB officer was wounded, said Irina Volkova, a spokeswoman for the service.

In Moscow, the FSB's central headquarters said in a statement that Abu Khavs' presence in Dagestan signaled that he may have been trying to flee Russia and called his death a "telling psychological blow to all the fighters remaining in the North Caucasus mountains."

At least one rebel-linked Web site, daymonk.org, said five militants were killed in Khasavyurt, but made no mention of Abu Khavs.

According to Russian security officials, Abu Khavs _ whose name has also been spelled Havs or Hafs _ was a commander of foreign mercenaries once active in Chechnya.

As large-scale fighting has died down in Chechnya, the number of foreigners fighting there has dropped. In recent years, violence in the Russian region has mainly taken the form of hit-and-run attacks against federal forces and local allied paramilitaries.

Russian forces have killed or captured a number of Chechen rebel leaders in recent years, including the notorious warlord Shamil Basayev and Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, who was the one-time president of the separatists' self-declared government.

Russian security officials say Abu Khavs took over as al-Qaida's top emissary in Chechnya in 2004 after the death of Saudi-born rebel chief Abu Walid.

In an interview with a Turkish newspaper that was posted on the rebel-allied Web site Kavkaz Center, Khavs maintained that separatist fighters were seeing new successes in their war against Russian forces, and he asserted that few fighters had responded to the amnesty offered by federal officials earlier this year.

"The mere fact that the Russian authority has taken such an action testifies to the strength of the Chechen Resistance, and weakness and feebleness of the Russian army," he said according to the interview, dated Nov. 12.

The origin of Khavs' alias is unclear. One of several independent militias now operating in Iraq is called the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade _ named after former Osama bin Laden lieutenant Mohammed Atef, who used the nom de guerre Abu Hafs. Atef was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan in 2001.

U.S. worries about Chinese espionage

Concern focuses on non-traditional agents like students, businessmen

WASHINGTON - University professor Gao Zhan, a human rights activist once celebrated in Washington, is today in U.S. custody, convicted of selling sensitive U.S. technology to China — microprocessors that could be used in missiles.

Gao's activities are part of what senior U.S. officials say is an intensified campaign by the People's Republic of China to steal military and civilian technology.

"Right now I would say that China is the No. 1 counterintelligence threat to the United States," says Dave Szady, the FBI's former top counterespionage official. "It's a very large threat, it's pervasive and it's extremely effective."
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U.S. officials say there are now 400 active investigations here involving illegal exports to China — more than any other country.

"We've seen a significant spike in attempts to illegally acquire U.S. technology," says Stephen Bogni, with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

Undercover video — obtained exclusively by NBC News — shows Bill Moo, an employee of a U.S. defense contractor, inspecting a military jet engine that he planned to secretly buy for China.

Unbeknownst to him, Moo had made the deal with undercover U.S. agents and was later arrested. He pleaded guilty to being an unregistered foreign agent for China.

But officials say not everyone who steals technology is a traditional spy working for the Chinese government. Some are students, businessmen and academics.

"We're finding freelancers all over the country," says ICE Assistant Secretary Julie Myers, "and people are going to their friends and asking them, 'Do you know where we can get this microchip or this helicopter engine, or an air-to-air missile system?'"

"The Chinese are very good at using multiple redundant collection platforms," says former FBI Assistant Director Szady, "and by that I refer to students, delegations, visitors, researchers, development, partnerships, business deals and false front companies."

The Chinese government tells NBC News that it does not engage in espionage in the U.S., calling such accusations irresponsible.

But U.S. intelligence sources say China has a very specific shopping list here, focused on upgrading its Navy and Air Force.

"China really seeks technology across the board," says Szady. "But the primary target is the technology, the research and development that goes into developing their military."

And officials warn that U.S. corporations and universities are not sufficiently on guard to protect against this growing and pervasive threat.

Spy arrested by State Intelligence Agency

The State Intelligence Agency has detained a man suspected of spying for Belarus. The man was detained in Lithuania during a joint action of the Polish Intelligence Agency and Lithuanian special services. The Polish prosecutor general Janusz Kaczmarek said the suspect will be interrogated under the accusations of spying against Poland. The Baltic news agency BNS has said that the man could have been gathering information before the oncoming NATO summit due to start in the Latvian capital of Riga.

Source: Polskie Radio

Iran reportedly smuggling arms to Hezbollah via Syria

Beirut - Weapons smuggled from Iran through Syria to Lebanon have rearmed Hezbollah, Time magazine reported Friday.

Western diplomats in Beirut say Hezbollah has received 20,000 short-range missiles, bringing its armaments back to around their level before last summer's war with Israel. Israeli military officials say Hezbollah has about half the arms that were stockpiled when the war began.

"The Iranian pipeline through Syria was already working during the war," one diplomat told Time.

A Saudi official said the Iranians have been operating out of a military base outside of Damascus that serves as a transshipment point for arms. Arms convoys reportedly use mountain passes into Lebanon to bypass forces stationed on the border.

The Saudis are concerned about the spread of Iranian influence, Time said.
Saudi adviser Nawaf Obaid said that during a meeting between Saudi King Abdullah and US VP Dick Cheney, the king told his guest that the Saudi's will not allow the Iranians and Syrians through their ally in Lebanon , Hezbollah to take over the Lebanese government.

The middle eastern countries are becoming extremely nervous about the increasing of Iranian influence in the region.

Picture: Saudi Crown Prince Sultan, seated, right, meets with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, left, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2006

Source: UPI, Al Seyassah

Russian arms dealer tied to Wilkes-Barre

Firm sells restricted items to Bout, banned from U.S. trading

WASHINGTON -- A sporting-goods store in a small northern Pennsylvania town is the unlikely focus of a federal investigation into the suspected re-emergence of the global arms transport network controlled by Russian businessman Victor Bout.

Federal officials this week said a recent search of the store near Wilkes-Barre, Pa., sought to learn whether a Bulgarian firm in Mr. Bout's business empire was being used to buy restricted paramilitary items for a company tied to Russia's intelligence agency.

According to a federal affidavit, the equipment allegedly sold included telescopic rifle scopes, binoculars and optics that can only be exported under State Department authorization.

The search of D & R Sport Center in Nanticoke, in Luzerne County, Pa., coincided with an effort by U.S. Treasury officials to broaden stiff financial sanctions against Mr. Bout and his organization. In late October, under an order signed by President Bush, Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control banned all U.S. firms from doing business with Mr. Bout because of the Russian's history of arms dealing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mr. Bout, several associates and 30 companies were covered by a similar ban and a Treasury assets freeze that was ordered in 2004 and expanded in 2005 because of financial dealings with deposed Liberian dictator Charles Taylor.

Heading a private air fleet of several dozen cargo planes and commercial airliners, Mr. Bout runs an operation that is considered to be the world's largest transporter of contraband weapons. He has a documented history of supplying arms and other cargo to any side in any conflict for the right price.

His planes have been linked to weapons deliveries to warlords in Africa and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and they later carried reconstruction supplies for the U.S. military and private contractors in Iraq.

"That's not the first time America is freezing or blocking so-called assets, although I don't have any assets in the U.S.," Mr. Bout said in an interview on the Moscow television program "Russia Today." "Nevertheless, every time it is the same story, the same repetition. I can even call it a witch hunt."

John Hageman, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Philadelphia, confirmed this week that firearms agents armed with a federal search warrant inspected documents at the Nanticoke sporting-goods outlet Nov. 8.

An unsealed federal warrant and an accompanying affidavit indicated that ATF investigators sought shipping and wire-transfer documents, phone records, government licenses and computer and other electronic files from the Nanticoke store and a sister outlet in Bloomsburg, Columbia County, Pa.

According to an affidavit prepared by firearms agents Mitchell A. Worley and Michael A. Culp, investigators are looking into allegations that the D & R sports outlet "illegally shipped restricted items to Russia, Kuwait, Germany and Japan in violation of United States export laws." The sports outlet reaped more than $248,000 for the sales, the federal agents said.

The investigation centers on paramilitary equipment purchases made from D & R in early 2005 by Tactica Ltd., a Moscow firm that was described by investigators as "a member of the 'Vympel Group,' which is a known identifier for an elite counterterrorism unit that is controlled by the Russian Federal Security Service (formerly KGB)."

Mark Komoroski, who owns D & R with his brother, Theodore, acknowledged this week that his outlet had sold gun sights and other items to Tactica, and that he was aware of Tactica's "contract with the Russian special forces." But Mr. Komoroski denied that his store had broken any U.S. export laws. Tactica "never got anything that wasn't State Department licensed," Mr. Komoroski said.

Federal agents found that at least $60,000 that paid for Tactica's purchases had come from wire transfers sent in February and March 2005 by Rockman Ltd., a firm based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Rockman has been identified by U.N. investigators as a holding company owned by Sergei Bout, the brother of Victor Bout and a key associate in the Russian's arms operation.

According to the federal agents, an additional $44,000 for Tactica's equipment was routed in wire transfers from Ibrahim Haiji, a Pakistani man accused on federal charges of heroin trafficking. The affidavit does not detail any connection between Mr. Haiji and Victor Bout's organization.

In April 2005, as part of the sweeping U.S. sanctions against Victor Bout, Treasury officials banned any U.S. firm from doing business with either Sergei Bout or with Rockman Ltd.

The wire transfers showing an alleged financial relationship between Victor Bout's organization and Russian intelligence marks the first time the United States has found contemporary evidence that the two entities work in concert.

After living abroad for more than a decade, Victor Bout retreated to Moscow in 2002, after Belgian and Interpol officials issued an international warrant for his arrest on money-laundering charges. Despite Interpol's global law-enforcement authority, Russian officials refused to extradite Victor Bout, and Western officials complained that he had been given official protection.

In the affidavit, the federal agents said they were concentrating on Victor Bout's involvement in the Tactica sales because he "and his numerous shell companies around Eastern Europe and the world were also identified as significant participants in providing weapons to the dictator Charles Taylor in Liberia, rebel groups in Rwanda and the Taliban, as well as subsequent war crimes that were committed by those regimes."

The recent presidential order targeting Victor Bout in the Congo used similar strong language describing his illegal activities. Victor Bout was one of "seven individuals that have destabilized the Congo by impeding disarmament activities, violating international laws involving the targeting of children or violating a United Nations arms embargo," State Department spokeswoman Nancy Beck said.

Iran invites Sinopec head to sign $100 billion oil, gas deals

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Iran has invited the managing director of China Petrochemical Corp. to Tehran to sign the development contract of Iran's Yadavaran oil field as well as oil and gas purchases worth as much as $100 billion.

A deal for China's Sinopec Group, as China Petrochemical is known, to develop Yadavaran has been completed, National Iranian Oil Co. President Gholamhossein Nozari told Iran's oil ministry press agency Petroenergy Information Network yesterday.

"All elements of the contract have been finalized and it is in the final process for signing by Sinopec,'' Nozari told Petroenergy. Sinopec has been negotiating to buy a 51 percent stake in the project since an initial agreement was reached in October 2004.

Iran, under U.S. economic sanctions and at odds with the U.S. and the European Union over its nuclear program, is seeking friendlier markets. China and Russia said on Oct. 26 they would oppose a draft resolution imposing United Nations sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program as the Security Council's five permanent members held their first meeting on the text. No resolution has been passed since.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, which has worked as a technical consultant for Sinopec on the Yadavaran oil field, will participate in the field's development, Iran's oil ministry said in September. Shell officials have said the company is seeking a 20 percent stake in the field.

If completed, the deal will allow China to buy 150,000 barrels of Iranian crude a day at market rates for 25 years as well as 250 million tons of liquefied natural gas. Under an initial agreement signed by the Sinopec Group in October 2004, China could pay Iran as much as $100 billion for the stake and the purchases of oil and gas over 25 years.

Yadavaran, with estimated reserves of 3 billion barrels, is expected to produce 300,000 barrels per day -- or about the same volume China currently imports from Iran, Petroenergy said.

Yadavaran is located in Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan province near its border with Iraq.

China Petrochemical is parent of overseas listed China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., Asia's largest refiner.

Security developments in Iraq, Nov 26

Nov 26 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq as of 1200 GMT on Saturday.

* Indicates new or updated item

* HAQLANIYA - U.S. forces said they found 11 bodies near the town of Haqlaniya, west of Baghdad. A U.S. statement said the 10 men and one youth died from gunshots and a burned-out van was found close to the bodies.

* DIYALA PROVINCE - A U.S. soldier was killed and two more wounded when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, on Saturday, the military said.

* AZIZIYA - Clashes between insurgents and police on Saturday killed two people and wounded eight more in Aziziya, a town southeast of Baghdad, police said.

CAMP BUCCA - The U.S. military said a detainee died on Saturday at Camp Bucca, in southern Iraq, of what appeared to be natural causes. The statement said the man had complained of chest pains and was under medical care when he died.

HASWA - A car bomb killed five people and wounded 23 in a crowded market in Haswa, a small town 50 km (30 miles) south of Baghdad, an interior ministry source said. Police in the regional capital Hilla said six or seven were killed and up to 27 wounded.

RAMADI - The U.S. military said it launched air strikes and fired artillery to help a tribe in western Anbar after an attack by al Qaeda. "Al Qaeda burned homes and killed members of the tribe using small arms fire and mortars," the military said in a statement, adding it had no casualty figures.

Sattar al-Buzayi, head of the Anbar Salvation Council, an umbrella group of tribes in Anbar, said tribal fighters had raided an al Qaeda stronghold and killed 55 militants and arrested 25. He said nine tribal fighters were killed.

BASRA - Three men and one woman were shot by gunmen who attacked their car at a road junction in central Basra, a police official said.

MOSUL - An office worker for Iraqiya state television in the northern city of Mosul was killed by gunmen on her doorstep, police said.

FALLUJA - Two U.S. marines died on Saturday from wounds sustained in combat in Iraq's western Anbar province, the U.S. military said. One of them was killed when a suicide car bomber attacked a checkpoint in Khaldiya, about 80 km (50 miles) west of Baghdad, killing three Iraqi civilians, including two children. Nine civilians were also wounded.

BAQUBA - The U.S. military said its forces killed four suspected insurgents linked to al Qaeda in Iraq and detained 11 more during a raid near Baquba, north of Baghdad. "One of the (detained) terrorists was hiding in a house dressed as a woman, pretending to nurse a baby," the statement said.

MAHAWEEL - Two members of the local town council were dragged from their car and killed by gunmen in Mahaweel, 75 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, on Saturday night, police said.

BAGHDAD - Baghdad was under a vehicle curfew for the third day. It was imposed after Thursday's bombings in the Shi'ite stronghold of Sadr City that killed 202 people.

Pakistan emerging arms market in world

Press Trust of India

After enduring two decades of international arms embargo, Pakistan is set to emerge as one of the most active new players in the $3 trillion world arms market.

Its arms export last year amounted to $200 million - a small sum in comparison to the US and Russia, nonetheless a huge earning for Pakistan considering that the arms sanction against it was lifted just five years ago.

The sanction was imposed by the US and its European allies to punish Pakistan for embarking on its nuclear weapons programme.

However, following the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pakistan's support for the US-led war on terrorism, the US has designated the populous Muslim nation as a major non-NATO ally - one of the few Muslim countries to be accorded the privilege.

The designation meant that Pakistan now has access to weapons, from aircraft to missiles, which were denied to it five years ago.

During the period of embargo, Pakistan turned to its long-time ally, China for cooperation in arms trade, which according to defence experts, was limited to conventional weapons only.

However, with its "new status" in the world arms market, Pakistan's arms exhibition, International Defence Exhibition and Seminar (IDEAS) 2006, is being viewed as one of the leading defence events in the South Asia region.

A total of 231 companies, including those from the US, Europe, Russia and China took part in the four-day event which showcased five long-range surface-to-surface missiles, in service with the Pakistan Army Strategic Forces Command (ASFC)

Among the missiles were the intermediate range ballistic missiles, the Ghauri and Shaheen II. The Ghauri has a 1,500 km range, and the Shaheen II, 2,000 km.

On November 16, witnessed by Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, a Ghauri missile was test fired from an unspecified location.

Pakistan has neither confirmed nor denied that its ballistic missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Growing Export Market

Pakistan is exporting arms and munitions to 50 Asian and Europeans countries, the US, UK and New Zealand.

Its sales are not limited to small arms and ammunition; they also included big-ticket items, such as the Super Mushak training aircraft to Middle East, gunboats to Bangladesh and man portable air defence missiles to Malaysia.

These sales have wetted Pakistan's appetite to further penetrate the international arms market.

It recently demonstrated the capability of its Al-Khalid main battle tank (MBT) in Saudi Arabia with a hope to clinch a deal for the sale of 150 tanks to beef up the Kingdom's defence forces.

The Al-Khalid MBT, manufactured by Pakistan's Heavy Industries Taxila, was the result of Pakistan-China collaboration.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Ethiopia Says Preparations Complete for Possible War With Somali Islamists

In a motion put forth to parliament Thursday, Ethiopia's prime minister indicated that his country could use force to defend Ethiopia against Somali Islamists if negotiations with them are unsuccessful. Officials of the Islamic Courts Union had earlier declared a jihad, or Holy War, against Ethiopia over the presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia. Cathy Majtenyi reports for VOA from Nairobi.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told the lawmakers that the Islamists who declared Holy War against Ethiopia are a "clear and present danger" to Ethiopia, and that Ethiopians need to be defended against such a threat.

Minister of Information Berhane Hailu insists that Meles' comments were not a declaration of war.

"I'm hearing that the prime minister's message is going to be misinterpreted, that the country of Ethiopia has declared war against Somalia," said Hailu. "That is completely wrong. What the prime minister said is that we are trying to solve the problem peacefully. If this option is not successful, the parliament should allow the government to use its legal right to defend the country."

But officials of the Islamic Courts Union, who reportedly met in the capital Mogadishu to discuss the issue shortly after the motion was put forward, say otherwise.

The French news agency, AFP, quoted an Islamic Courts Union spokesman as saying Meles' motion is a threat to regional peace and that Ethiopia was showing what he called "reckless, war-thirsty behavior."

The spokesman was quoted by the French news agency as saying "we are not a threat to Ethiopia, but the presence of its troops in our homeland is a serious security risk to Somalia as well as Ethiopia."

Lawmakers in Ethiopia's parliament ended up rejecting Meles' motion.

Beyene Petros, the head of the opposition United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, explains why.

"It's an overreaction, and I do not think the government, and for that matter the Ethiopian military or the armed forces, need any clearance to stop whatever intrusion at the border," Petros said.

Beyene says there is no need for the prime minister to give the military advanced permission to ward off an attack by the Islamists, as it is the military's job to defend the country against external attack.

Such a motion is dangerous, says Beyene, because it can be interpreted as a declaration of war against the Somali Islamists and it can inflame already heated tensions in the region.

The Islamic Courts Union vehemently opposes the presence of foreign peacekeepers in Somalia, especially those from neighboring Ethiopia.

After much denial of the presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia, the Ethiopian government recently admitted the existence of a small number of troops, but only acting in a training capacity.

Eyewitnesses and other maintain that Ethiopian soldiers are fighting alongside their Somali counterparts.

The Islamic Courts Union first started its expansion back in June, when it took control of the capital Mogadishu. It has since captured much of southern Somalia.

Ever since civil war broke out in 1991, militias loyal to clan and sub-clan-based factions have controlled different parts of the country, with no central authority to provide law and order and even basic services to the population.

A transitional Somali parliament was formed in Kenya more than a year ago following a peace process.

VOA

Report: Hezbollah replenishes half of missile stock with Iran's help

Time Magazine has reported that Saudi and Israeli intelligence sources believe that with Iran's assistance, Hezbollah has succeeded in replenishing about half of its pre-war stockpiles of short-range missiles and small arms.

According to the report, Western diplomats in Beirut say the extent weapons-smuggling is even greater, with Hezbollah restoring about 20,000 short-range missiles to date - an amount similar to the organization's stockpiles before the Lebanon war.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers have been operating out of a secret military base outside Damascus, Time claims, where the weapon shipments from Iran are received. Trucks then transfer the weapons to Lebanon.

A Hezbollah spokesman told the magazine that the organizations has "more than enough weapons if Israel tries to attack us again."

Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi security advisor, told Time the Iran was using its embassies in Damascus and Beirut as command and control centers through which direct orders are conveyed to Hezbollah guerrillas.

Haaretz

Russian officials point to tycoon in spy's death

Poisoned former spy Alexander Litvinenko's deathbed message may have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin, but pro-Kremlin lawmakers and state-controlled television networks pointed the finger at a prominent Putin enemy in Britain - tycoon Boris Berezovsky.

Legislators seconded a top Putin aide's suggestion that Litvinenko's death in a London hospital Thursday was part of a plot against Russia and claimed that Berezovsky, a major critic whose asylum in Britain has enraged the Kremlin, was involved in the killing.

"The death of Litvinenko - for Russia, for the security services - means nothing," Valery Dyatlenko, a deputy head of the security committee in the lower parliament house, said on state-run Channel One television Friday, contending that neither the Kremlin nor Russia's intelligence agencies would have reason to kill him. "I think this is another game of some kind by Berezovsky."

Berezovsky amassed a fortune in dubious privatization deals after the 1991 Soviet collapse and became an influential Kremlin insider under President Boris Yeltsin, but fell out of favor with Putin and fled for Britain in 2000 to avoid a money laundering probe which he said was politically motivated.

He has been a thorn in Putin's side for years, assailing him for backtracking on democracy and accusing Russian security services of organizing the 1999 apartment-building bombings that helped stoke support for the Chechen war.

AP

Iran's Suicide Brigades

by Ali Alfoneh
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2007

More than five years after President George W. Bush's declaration of a global war against terrorism, the Iranian regime continues to embrace suicide terrorism as an important component of its military doctrine. In order to promote suicide bombing and other terrorism, the regime's theoreticians have utilized religion both to recruit suicide bombers and to justify their actions. But as some factions within the Islamic Republic support the development of these so-called martyrdom brigades, their structure and activities suggest their purpose is not only to serve as a strategic asset in either deterring or striking at the West, but also to derail domestic attempts to dilute the Islamic Republic's revolutionary legacy.

uch strategy is apparent in the work of the Doctrinal Analysis Center for Security without Borders (Markaz-e barresiha-ye doktrinyal-e amniyat bedun marz), an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps think tank.[1] Its director, Hassan Abbasi, has embraced the utility of suicide terrorism. On February 19, 2006, he keynoted a Khajeh-Nasir University seminar celebrating the anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa (religious edict) calling for the murder of British author Salman Rushdie. As Khomeini often did, Abbasi began his lecture with literary criticism. He analyzed a U.S. publication from 2004 that, according to Abbasi, "depicts the prophet of Islam as the prophet of blood and violence." Rhetorically, he asked, "Will the Western man be able to understand martyrdom with such prejudice? [Can he] interpret Islam as anything but terrorism?" The West sees suicide bombings as terrorism but, to Abbasi, they are a noble expression of Islam.

So what is terrorism if not suicide bombing? To Abbasi, terrorism includes any speech and expression he deems insulting to Islam. According to press coverage of his lecture, Abbasi noted that "[German chancellor] Merkel and [U.S. president] Bush's support of the Danish newspaper, which insults Islam's prophet, has damaged their reputation in the Islamic world and has raised the question of whether Christianity, rather than Islam, is of terrorist nature."[2] From the Iranian leadership's perspective, therefore, Jyllands-Posten's cartoons are evidence of Christian terrorism.

By Abbasi's definition, Iran may not sponsor terrorism, but it does not hesitate to promote suicide attacks. He announced that approximately 40,000 Iranian estesh-hadiyun (martyrdom-seekers) were ready to carry out suicide operations against "twenty-nine identified Western targets" should the U.S. military strike Iranian nuclear installations.[3]

Such threats are not new. According to an interview with Iran's Fars News Agency released on Abbasi's weblog, he has propagated haras-e moghaddas (sacred terror) at least since 2004. "The front of unbelief," Abbasi wrote, "is the front of the enemies of God and Muslims. Any deed which might instigate terror and horror among them is sacred and honorable."[4] On June 5, 2004, he spoke of how suicide operations could overcome superior military force: "In ‘deo-centric' thought, there is no need for military parity to face the enemy … Deo-centric man prepares himself for martyrdom while humanist man struggles to kill."[5]

Abbasi's rise to prominence in the state-controlled Iranian media coincides with the growth of a number of organizations that have constrained those prone to moderation within the Islamic Republic. Take, for example, the Headquarters Commemorating the Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement (Setad-e Pasdasht-e Shohada-ye Nehzat-e Eslami), an organization founded in 2004 as a protest against President Mohammad Khatami's attempts at improving Iran's relations with Egypt.[6]

The organization's prominence continued to grow throughout the year. On June 5, 2004, the reformist daily Shargh granted Mohammad-Ali Samadi, Headquarters' spokesman, a front page interview.[7] Samadi has a pedigree of hard-line revolutionary credentials. He is a member of the editorial boards of Shalamche and Bahar magazines, affiliated with the hard-line Ansar-e Hezbollah (Followers of the Party of God) vigilante group, as well as the newspaper Jomhouri-ye Eslami, considered the voice of the intelligence ministry.[8] Samadi said he had registered 2,000 volunteers for suicide operations at a seminar the previous day.[9] Copies of the registration forms (see Figure 1) show that the "martyrdom-seekers" could volunteer for suicide operations against three targets: operations against U.S. forces in the Shi‘ite holy cities in Iraq; against Israelis in Jerusalem; and against Rushdie. The registration forms also quote Khomeini's declaration that "[I]f the enemy assaults the lands of the Muslims and its frontiers, it is mandatory for all Muslims to defend it by all means possible [be it by] offering life or property,"[10] and current supreme leader Ali Khamene'i's remarks that "[m]artyrdom-seeking operations mark the highest point of the greatness of a nation and the peak of [its] epic. A man, a youth, a boy, and a girl who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the interests of the nation and their religion is the [symbol of the] greatest pride, courage, and bravery."[11] According to press reports, a number of senior regime officials have attended the Headquarters' seminars.[12]

Suicide Units

The Iranian officials appeared true to their word. During a September 2004 speech in Bushehr, home of Iran's declared nuclear reactor, Samadi announced the formation of a "martyrdom-seeking" unit from Bushehr while Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the official daily Keyhan, called the United States military "our hostage in Iraq," and bragged that "martyrdom-operations constitute a tactical capability in the world of Islam."[13]

Then, on November 23, 2004, in response to the U.S. campaign against Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah,[14] Samadi announced the formation of the first suicide unit. Named after the chief bomb-maker of Hamas, Yahya Ayyash, also known as Al-Muhandis (The Engineer) assassinated on January 5, 1996, it consisted of three teams of unknown size: the Rim Saleh ar-Riyashi team, named after Hamas's first female suicide bomber; the Mustafa Mahmud Mazeh team, named after a 21-year-old Lebanese who met his death in a Paddington hotel room on August 3, 1989, priming a book bomb likely aimed at Salman Rushdie; and the Ahmad Qasir team, named after a 15-year-old Lebanese Hezbollah suicide bomber whose operation demolished an eight-story building housing Israeli forces in Tyre, southern Lebanon, on November 11, 1982.[15] Samadi said there would be an additional call for volunteers at Tehran's largest Iran-Iraq war cemetery, the Behesht-e Zahra, the following week,[16] and even promised to consider establishing special elementary schools to train for suicide operations.[17]

He kept his word. On December 2, 2004, the Headquarters gathered a crowd in the Martyr's Section of Behesht-e Zahra,[18] where those who conducted suicide operations are honored. According to the Iranian Mehr News Agency, the organization unveiled a memorial stone commemorating the "martyrs" killed in the 1983 Hezbollah attacks on the U.S. Marine and French peacekeepers' barracks in Beirut. They set the stone next to one commemorating Anwar Sadat's assassin. Samadi concluded the ceremony with a raging speech, declaring, "The operation against the Marines was a hard blow in the mouth of the Americans and demonstrated that despite their hollow prestige and imagined strength … they [have] many vulnerable points and weaknesses. We consider this operation a good model. The cemeteries in which their dead are buried provide an interesting view and cool the hearts of those Muslims who have been stepped upon under the boots of the Yankees while they were ignored by the international community."[19]

The suicide corps continued to expand even though there is no evidence that their patrons have made them operational. In April 2005, the semi-official daily Iran announced convocation of a unit of female suicide bombers nicknamed the Olive Daughters.[20] The Baztab news website, which is associated with Mohsen Rezai, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from 1981 to 1997 and since secretary of the Expediency Council, cited one Firouz Rajai-Far, who said, "The martyrdom-seeking Iranian women and girls … are ready to walk in the footsteps of the holy female Palestinian warriors, realizing the most terrifying nightmares of Zionists."[21] Rajai-Far, a former hostage taker at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, holds the license for Do-Kouhe (Two Mountains, referring to one of the fiercest battlegrounds of the Iran-Iraq war) magazine, which is affiliated with the vigilante organization Ansar-e Hezbollah.[22]

Ayatollah Hossein Nouri Hamedani bestowed theological legitimacy upon such suicide terror operations in a written message to the gathering.[23] Attendance at the rally indicates some endorsement and a support network for suicide operations. Attending the rally were Palestinian Hamas representative Abu Osama al-Muata; Muhammad Hasan Rahimian, the supreme leader's personal representative to the powerful Bonyad-e Shahid (The Martyr Foundation); Mehdi Kuchakzadeh, an Iranian parliamentarian; Mustafa Rahmandust, general secretary of the Association for Support to the People of Palestine; and model female fighter Marziyeh Hadideh Dabbagh.[24]

More vocal expressions of solidarity are limited, however. The Mehr News Agency reports only a single declaration of solidarity from the spokesman of the University Basij at the Tehran branch of Islamic Azad University, who compared contemporary suicide operations with the "revolutionary deeds" of Mirza-Reza Kermani, the assassin of Nasser al-Din Shah, a nineteenth-century king vilified by the Islamic Republic, and with Navvab Safavi, founder of the Fadayian-e Islam and famous for assassinating the liberal nationalist author and historian Ahmad Kasravi.[25] Still, that a group at the Islamic Azad University endorsed the organization is significant. Founded to broaden the reach of education after the Islamic Revolution, the university has several dozen satellite campuses across the country and today is the largest higher education system in Iran.

On May 13, 2005, officials declared the second suicide terror unit, the so-called "Martyr Shahada unit," consisting of 300 martyrdom-seekers, to be ready.[26] Some months later, there was a gathering of the "martyrdom-seekers" at Shahrud University. While the invited Hamas representative did not attend, they watched Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech from the "World without Zionism" conference on screen.[27] While the status of the third and fourth suicide brigades remains unclear, new suicide units continue to declare their readiness. In May 2006, a fifth "martyrdom-seeking" unit, named after Commander Nader Mahdavi, who died in a 1988 suicide mission against the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, declared itself ready to defend Iran. The Headquarters even claims to have recruited "thirty-five foreign Jews" for suicide attacks.[28]

Lebanese Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers on July 12, 2006, provided another press opportunity for Iranian suicide brigades. On July 17, 2006, Arya News Agency reported an expedition of two "martyrdom-units," one consisting of eighteen and the second consisting of nine "martyrdom-seekers," to Lebanon.[29] At demonstrations in Tehran and Tabriz ten days later, sixty Iranian volunteers declared their readiness for holy war.[30] There was also a rally in Rasht, capital of the Caspian province of Gilan, on July 29.[31] But despite the bravado, Iranian police stopped a caravan of self-described "martyrdom-seekers" at the Turkish border. A leftist weblog quoted the governor of the West Azerbaijan province in which the border crossings with Turkey lie as saying he received a telephone call from Ahmadinejad asking him to stop the suicide units.[32]
Training and Command

While the Iranian government seeks propaganda value out of announcements of new suicide units, it remains in doubt just how committed recruits are. When an Iranian youth magazine interviewed Rajai-Far, an organizer of the Olive Daughters, she remained elusive about how serious her recruits were about suicide.[33]

Despite its rhetoric and the occasional rally, there is little evidence that the Iranian government has established camps to train suicide terrorists. While the Revolutionary Guards operate a network of bases inside Iran, there is little coverage—at least in open source newspapers and Iranian media—of actual training of those recruited by the Headquarters. There have been two mentions of a military exercise for the suicide brigades around the Karaj Dam. Muhammad-Reza Ja'afari, commander of the Gharar-gah-e Asheghan-e Shahadat (Congregation of the Lovers of Martyrdom) training camp, referred to one exercise as the "Labeik Ya Khamene'i" (We are responding to your call, Khamene'i).[34] With the exception of the representation of Hamas in the early development of the Iranian "martyrdom-seekers," there is little proof of organizational links to external terrorist organizations.

Nor does the training of any unit mean that the Iranian government is prepared to deploy such forces. In June 2004, Samadi explained that the "activities of the Headquarters will remain theoretical as long as there is no official authorization, and martyrdom-seeking operations will not commence unless the leader [Khamene'i] orders them to do so."[35]

But command and control remain vague. Hussein Allah Karam, a well-known figure from Ansar-e Hezbollah without formal ties to the "martyrdom-seekers," stresses that Khamene'i need not grant permission for any exercises since the trainees are not armed. Evading the question of what need there is to create "martyrdom-seeking" units parallel with the Basij, Karam responded, "Martyrdom-seeking groups are nongovernmental organizations," [36] not part of Iranian officialdom.

The Basij, a paramilitary militia of irregulars loosely charged with defending the revolution, has not been happy with the competition. Basij Commander Mohammad Hejazi condemned the Headquarters' declaration that it sought to dispatch suicide units to Lebanon. "Such actions have absolutely no link to [Iran's] official apparatus and only serve propaganda aims," he declared. In an indirect critique of the suicide units' leadership, he added: "Some seemingly independent groups are trying to attract … the youth with no coordination with official institutions and without the approval of the command structure for propaganda purposes. Their goals might be noble, but their means are not correct."[37] Government spokesman Gholam-Hussein Elham underlined this argument.[38]

The nongovernmental status of the Headquarters and the "martyrdom-seekers" was reinforced in comments of an anonymous Revolutionary Guards commander to Shargh. He explained, "Since the Headquarters … is a nongovernmental organization, the organization does not look for orders from the military in case they should take action. Their operations are to be compared with the martyrdom-operations of the Palestinians which are not related to the government of Iran." [39] The foreign ministry, which under Khatami was more reformist than the hard-line Revolutionary Guards, referred to the Headquarters members as "irresponsible elements" who did "not reflect the line of government,"[40] and, on August 3, 2006, Iranian parliamentarian Mehdi Kuchekzadeh called the Headquarters an NGO during a rally at Behesht-e Zahra.[41]

Baztab reacted angrily to the publication of advertisements for "martyrdom operations" in Partov, the hard-line monthly of the Imam Khomeini Research Institute in Qom, accusing the publication, the Headquarters, and the director of the institute, Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi—perhaps the most radical of the Islamic Republic's religious theoreticians—of enabling outsiders more easily to label Iran as a terror sponsor.[42] Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi expressed similar sentiments. "Martyrdom-operations against the interests of other states must remain secret … The public exposure of such gatherings is the very proof that they are not going to do anything," he wrote. Abtahi accuses Yazdi of harming the national interests of Iran, and more seriously, of attempting to create parallel institutions in the Islamic Republic in order to eliminate internal opposition to his political interests.[43] Such attacks called member of the parliament Shokrollah Attarzadeh to the defense of Mesbah Yazdi. Attarzadeh said that volunteers without connection to the ayatollah organized the "martyrdom operations," which he claimed, at any rate, to be purely defensive.[44]
An Instrument for Power Struggles

Baztab's hostility toward Mesbah Yazdi is significant. The Islamic Republic of Iran has long sanctioned widespread use of terror and vigilante justice to keep its citizens in line. Perhaps the most prominent example was the 1997-99 serial killings in which the Iranian secret services systematically liquidated Iranian intellectuals with the aim of intimidating dissidents. This case has been subject to extensive debate, causing a considerable uproar among the Iranian public. The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and National Security claims that the murders were committed by rogue cells in the ministry. However, Iran's most famous journalist and political dissident, Akbar Ganji, accuses the former minister of intelligence, Ali Fallahian, and Khamene'i of responsibility for the killings.[45]

During the 2005 presidential campaign, the reformist daily Rooz warned of the formation of a new Forghan,[46] a radical Islamist group from the early days of the Islamic Revolution.[47] Ali Yunesi, minister of intelligence, and Abtahi both seconded such concerns.[48] Baqir Nobakht, spokesman for ‘Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's election campaign, criticized Yazdi by suggesting that he sought to use the "army of martyrdom-seekers" for operations against his political enemies inside Iran.[49]

For more than a century, hard-line officials have turned to vigilante groups during periods of political upheaval.[50] Their political influence is noticeable.[51] The 1979 Islamic revolution only strengthened such tendencies, and there is no doubt that the patrons of the "martyrdom-seekers" have used the Headquarters as a tool to maintain revolutionary values against those that might ameliorate them.

Here, the crisis regarding the change in Iran's policy towards Egypt is instructive. From almost the start of the Islamic Republic, there has been considerable tension between Tehran and Cairo. Ayatollah Khomeini objected to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat's recognition of and peace treaty with Israel. After Sadat's assassination, Iranian authorities named a street after his assassin, Khaled Islambouli. For years after, this action has been an irritant in Egyptian-Iranian relations.[52] But in January 2004, toward the end of Muhammad Khatami's presidency, the Mehr News Agency reported that the Iranian government had asked Tehran's city council to change the street name.[53] The city council acquiesced, renaming it "Intifada Street." Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi attributed the decision to improving Egyptian-Iranian relations.[54]

The Headquarters protested, sending a letter to then-mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[55] Ahmadinejad defended the decision in the name of promoting unity among Muslim countries "in order to face the global Zionist front."[56] The Headquarters responded with a press release,[57] and a demonstration against the decision.[58] Mehdi Chamran, the Tehran city council chairman and brother of the late commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Mostafa Chamran, said that the foreign ministry had imposed the decision but that he preferred to honor Islambouli.[59] In an Iranian-style compromise, the street was finally called Mohammad al-Durrah Street after a 12-year old boy who was caught in crossfire and killed in the opening days of the second intifada.[60] But the Headquarters was successful in scuttling rapprochement with the largest Arab state to make peace with Israel. On January 28, 2004, the London-based Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat announced that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak would not visit Iran due to the presence of a picture of Khaled Islambouli on public display in Tehran.[61]

Those associated with the Headquarters appear willing to use irregular forces against enemies not only foreign but also domestic. Groups connected to Mesbah Yazdi roughed up Rafsanjani on June 5, 2006, in Qom.[62] In the past, vigilantes directed such attacks against reformers or free thinkers, but now the first generation of the Iranian revolutionaries such as Rafsanjani receive the same treatment.

And as in the past, the violence is connected to the same groupings in Iranian politics: the Keyhan editor Shariatmadari, now close to the Headquarters, as the intellectual proponent of violence against liberal elements,[63] and Hussein Allah Karam of Ansar-e Hezbollah, now also linked to the "martyrdom-seekers"[64] and, more directly, with Ansar-e Hezbollah itself, which publishes advertisements for the Headquarters and interviews with their spokesmen.[65]
Conclusions

Since 9-11, the increased focus on international terror has amplified fear of terrorism. By forming suicide terrorists units, Tehran can, at a minimum, exploit such fear. Already, Western policymakers warn that any strike against Iran could spark a resurgence of Iranian-backed terror. That the Islamic Republic has already formed suicide bomber brigades underscores that point. But the fact that the Iranian leadership must embrace such nonconventional deterrents may suggest that Tehran recognizes that the Iranian military is weaker than Iranian figures admit.

However, the suicide units may serve a dual function. They are, in effect, the most radical factions' guns-for-hire, unquestioning loyalists who are willing to die to preserve revolutionary values. As such, Iranian hard-liners can use them to saber-rattle as well as to keep reformers and liberals at bay. This may pose the more immediate threat since the willingness of Iranian hard-liners to use violence against their internal political opponents, could pose an almost insurmountable impediment to those who might seek to liberalize the Islamic Republic from within.

Ali Alfoneh is a Ph.D. fellow in the department of political science, University of Copenhagen, and a research fellow at the Royal Danish Defense College. He thanks Henrik Joergensen and Thomas Emil Jensen, both from the Institute for Strategy at the Royal Danish Defense College, for their input.

[1] Doctrinal Analysis Center for Security without Borders website, accessed Aug. 8, 2006.
[2] Shargh (Tehran), Feb. 20, 2006.
[3] Shargh, Feb. 20, 2006.
[4] Hassan Abbasi weblog, June 5, 2004, accessed Aug. 6, 2006.
[5] Abbasi weblog, June 5, 2004.
[6] Mehr News Agency (Tehran), Jan. 5, 2004.
[7] Shargh, June 5, 2004.
[8] Shargh, June 5, 2004.
[9] Shargh, June 5, 2004.
[10] Ruhollah Khomeini, Tawzih al-Masa'il, 9th ed. (Tehran: Entesharat-e Iran, 1999), pp. 454-5.
[11] Ali Khamene'i, May 1, 2002 speech.
[12] Mehr, Oct. 16, 2004.
[13] Iran (Tehran), Sept. 11, 2004.
[14] Iran, Nov. 20, 2004.
[15] Mehr, Nov. 29, 2004.
[16] Mehr, Nov. 23, 2004.
[17] Iran, Sept. 11, 2004.
[18] For a pictorial report, see Mehr, Dec. 2, 2004.
[19] Mehr, Dec. 3, 2004.
[20] Iran, Apr. 19, 2005.
[21] Baztab (Tehran), Apr. 21, 2005.
[22] Shargh, June 5, 2004.
[23] Baztab, Apr. 21, 2005.
[24] Baztab, Apr. 21, 2005; Shargh, Apr. 23, 2005.
[25] Mehr, Dec. 5, 2004.
[26] Mehr, May 13, 2005.
[27] Rooz (Tehran), Nov. 18, 2005.
[28] Shargh, May 27, 2006.
[29] Arya News Agency, July 17, 2006.
[30] CNN, July 27, 2006.
[31] Shargh, July 30, 2006.
[32] Peik Net (Tehran), Aug. 3, 2006.
[33] Javan (Tehran), July 9, 2005.
[34] Javan, Aug. 16, 2005.
[35] Shargh, June 5, 2004.
[36] Iran, Sept. 5, 2005.
[37] Shargh, July 22, 2006.
[38] Jahan-e Eghtesad (Tehran), July 25, 2006.
[39] Shargh, June 5, 2004.
[40] Shargh, Aug. 17, 2004.
[41] E'temad (Tehran), Aug. 3, 2006.
[42] Baztab, July 24, 2005.
[43] See Mohammad Ali Abtahi, Webnevesht website, July 27, 2005.
[44] Shargh, July 31, 2005.
[45] Akbar Ganji, Tarik-khaneh-ye ashbah. Asibshenasi-ye gozar be dowlat-e democratic-e tosé-gara (Tehran: Tarh-e No, 1999), pp. 408-10; idem, Alijenab-e sorkhpoush va alijenaban-e khakestari: Asibshenasi-ye gozar be dowlat-e demokratik-e tose'e-gara (Tehran: Tarh-e No, 2000), pp. 210-8.
[46] Rooz, June 21, 2005.
[47] For more information, see Rasoul Ja'farian, ed., Jaryan-ha va sazeman-ha-ye mazhabi-siyasi. Sal-ha-ye 1320-1357 (Tehran: Markaz-e Asnad-e Enghelab-e Eslami, 2004), pp. 568-82; Michael Rubin, Into the Shadows. Radical Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington, D.C.: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001), pp. 21-2.
[48] Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA), July 16, 2005 ; Abtahi, Webnevesht, July 27, 2005.
[49] Iran, June 22, 2005.
[50] Richard Cottam, Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964), pp. 37-8; Marvin Zonis, The Political Elite of Iran (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 348.
[51] Rubin, Into the Shadows, p. xviii.
[52] Shahrough Akhavi, "Egypt: Political and Religious Relations in the Modern Period," Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, accessed Aug. 23, 2006; William Millward, "Egypt and Iran: Regional Rivals at Diplomatic Odds," Commentary, May 1992; Neshat Daily (Tehran), June 6, 1999, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, June 8, 1999; Al-Hayat (London), June 7, 1999, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, June 9, 1999.
[53] Mehr, Jan. 5, 2004.
[54] Mehr, Jan. 6, 2004.
[55] Mehr, Jan. 7, 2004.
[56] Mehr, Jan. 7, 2004.
[57] Mehr, Jan. 9, 2004.
[58] Mehr, Jan. 9, 2004.
[59] Mehr, Jan. 9, 2004.
[60] BBC News, Jan. 5, 2004.
[61] Mehr, Jan. 28, 2004.
[62] For a pictorial account of the attack against Rafsanjani, see ISNA, June 5, 2006.
[63] Iran, Sept. 11, 2004.
[64] Iran, Sept. 5, 2005.
[65] Firouz Rajai-Far, interview, Ya Lesarat al-Hossein (Ansar-e Hezbollah, Tehran), May 10 and 17, 2006; see advertisements for "martyrdom operations," Ya Lesarat al-Hossein, Apr. 12, 2006.

China confirms PLA sub with 'silencing technology' stalked U.S. aircraft carrier

A China press report confirmed that a Chinese submarine did shadow the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier undetected.

The PRC-owned Zhongguo Tongxun She in Hong Kong said PLA Navy Deputy Commander Ding Yiping commanded the submarine. Quoting well-informed sources, the news agency reported that Song-class submarine, identified by the Chinese as a Type 039A, is part of the 32d Detachment of the South China Sea Fleet.

east-asia-intel.com

300 Thai schools to close amid attacks

Hundreds of schools in Thailand's restive south will shut their doors in response to increasingly vicious attacks by suspected Muslim insurgents against teachers and schools, a regional education representative said.

The closure, which begins Monday, affects all 336 primary and secondary schools in the province of Pattani, where two teachers were shot and killed by suspected insurgents in the past two days. In one of the killings, attackers shot a school principal Friday, and then set his body on fire.

"Teachers can't bear what has happened," said Bunsom Thongsriprai, president of Teachers' Association in Pattani. "They are paranoid, worried and afraid." He said the schools will reopen when teachers feel safe.

More than 1,800 people have died from violence in Thailand's three southernmost, Muslim-majority provinces — Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat — since an Islamic insurgency flared up in January 2004.

Teachers have always been occasional targets, seen by insurgents as representatives of the government they oppose and easy targets. But recently, attacks have been aimed at teachers and schools on an almost daily basis.

On Thursday, 96 schools across Yala were ordered closed as a safety precaution after a school was burned down the day before in broad daylight. It was one of several schools in the province recently targeted by arsonists.

The Yala schools were initially scheduled to reopen Monday but school authorities have decided to keep them closed until further notice, said Sanya Suwannapho, head of the Association of Teachers in Yala province.

Thailand's new military-installed government has pledged to make peace in the south a priority, and reverse hardline policies of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawtra, who was deposed by a coup Sept. 19.

Defense Minister Boonrawd Somtat said Friday that insurgents had stepped up violence to keep residents from accepting new peace overtures from the authorities.

"They have intensified violent attacks to intimidate and terrify people," Boonrawd said, adding that the shadowy groups behind the violence have not accepted government offers to hold talks.

AP

Fighting reported on outskirts of east Chad city

N'DJAMENA, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Heavy gunfire broke out early on Saturday on the outskirts of Chad's eastern city of Abeche, humanitarian workers based there said.

They said they could hear intense automatic rifle fire, and the sound of heavier weapons. Abeche is the base for humanitarian organisations in the east of the landlocked country, which has seen a a wave of armed attacks in recent weeks.

First Moves to Form a National Security Council

Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has just set up a 14-member task force to examine forming a National Security Council next spring.

Against the backdrop of North Korean nuclear tests, Shinzo Abe seems determined to quickly form a National Security Council (NSC) that will answer directly to his staff and enjoy real decision-making powers on security problems in the broadest sense: military and diplomatic questions, disaster prevention, security of energy supply and the fight against terrorism. At present Japan has no organization to dovetail intelligence coming from different agencies and ministries.

Between now and February a 14-member task force chaired by the prime minister (see graph below) will study the ways and means of cooperation between the future NSC, the foreign ministry (Gaimusho) and the Japanese Defense Agency (JDA), which don’t want to lose their decision-making powers. As a result, the form that NSC takes will be decisive. The British model of a Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) seems more appropriate than a U.S. type National Security Council: decisions in JIC are adopted by consensus between representatives of each ministerial department.

The National Security Council will be headed by a woman, Yuriko Koike, a member of the task force who was recently appointed special advisor for national security to Abe. A former journalist and ex environment minister, Koike has taken a close interest in the safety of Japan’s nuclear power stations. Elsewhere, she is familiar with the Arab world. Speaking Arabic, she studied at the American university in Cairo and has headed the Japan-Arab Association.

INTELLIGENCE ONLINE N° 535

Information Sharing Environment

The chairman of the Information Sharing Council, U.S. ambassador Thomas McNamara plans to set up an Information Sharing Environment (ISE) by June, 2009 to fight more effectively against the terrorist threat.

Presented to Congress on Nov. 16 by John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a 160-page report provides for the inclusion of the notion of terrorism information, homeland security information and law enforcement in the ISE. If the draft bill is written into American law - it raises a certain number of questions concerning personal freedoms- it would remove a serious obstacle to information sharing between intelligence agencies and numerous federal and local agencies. But exchanges will only become a reality if standards and the right infrastructure are created to allow them to take place.

INTELLIGENCE ONLINE N° 535

Open Source News Articles

OSINT articles for Nov. 22-24:

November 24, 2006

Lebanon: Huge Crowds Gather For Politician's Funeral

Over 150 Dead in Sadr City Bombings

IAEA Board Rejects Iran Bid for Assistance in Building Reactor

U.S., Turkish forces team up in Anatolian Eagle

18th Wing key component in war on terrorism

Gen Craddock to replace Gen Jones as head of US European command

Russia completes delivery of S-300 air defense systems to Belarus

Second trainload of equipment leaves Russian garrison in Georgia

Israelis Continue Gaza Offensive

November 23, 2006

DoD News: DoD Announces Installation Realignment in the United Kingdom

Ops Tempo May Require Larger Marine Corps, Commandant Says

IAEA board to make decision on Arak heavy water reactor

Afghanistan could return to being a ‘failed State,’ warns Security Council mission chief

NATO Must Honor Troop Pledges for Afghanistan, U.S. General Says

USS John C. Stennis Returns to Bremerton “Ready to Deploy”

Scores of Suspected Terrorists Detained in Iraq Operations

CHAD: Thousands newly displaced

UN aid chief says more needed to spur Ugandan rebels to take steps towards peace

Nepal celebrates end of decade-long civil war

Thai Leader: Muslim Militants Funded by Restaurants in Malaysia

LEBANON: Crisis looms after assassination of minister

Lebanon: Assassination Brings Government To Brink Of Collapse

French Judge to Sign Arrest Warrants for Death of Former Rwandan President

Merkel: No Plans to Shift German Troops to Southern Afghanistan

LCAC Fliers Provide Big Lift for Essex

Boeing Awarded $296 Million JDAM Contract

November 22, 2006

Raid Targets Suspect Believed to Know Missing Soldier’s Whereabouts

Ronald Reagan Strike Group Returns Following Successful Sustainment Training Period

U.S., China Complete 2nd Phase SAREX Off Southern China

Juneau, 31st MEU Zhanjiang Port Visit Builds American-Chinese Friendships

Blue Ridge Celebrates 36th Birthday

Ohio Makes First SSGN Visit to Pearl Harbor

NATO Leaders To Discuss Global Missions at Riga Summit

Magal Receives an Additional $4.5 million Order for the Perimeter Intrusion Detection System along the Northern Border of Israel

Northrop Grumman to Supply Laser Designators to U.S. Forces Under U.S. Navy Contract

Nepal government, Maoist finalize peace accord

Nepal Maoists reject Pak's ISI offer to help

US, Afghanistan Plan Acceleration for Afghan Forces

Nepalese deal can translate into ‘long-term peace,’ says UN envoy

Senior UN envoy to Somalia welcomes Government’s pledge for renewed peace talks

Annan describes Sudanese agreement to hybrid force in Darfur as ‘turning point’

Nepal Government, Maoist Rebels Strike Landmark Peace Deal

International Donors Condemn Sri Lanka Cease-Fire Violations

DR Congo: UN soldiers intervene after demonstrators set fire to Supreme Court

Palestinian Rockets Land Near UN Official

French Judge: Rwanda's Kagame Should Be Tried for Triggering Genocide

DRC: Part of the Supreme Court burnt amid gunshots

Rumsfeld Expresses Regret Over Lebanese Assassination

Afghan Defense Minister Thanks U.S., Praises Troops, Rumsfeld

Lebanese Minister Assassinated

Annan and Security Council condemn assassination of Lebanese Government minister

Security Council backs special tribunal for Lebanon to deal with Hariri assassination

Gemayel's Death One More Blow to Lebanese Political Dynasty

Bush Condemns Gemayel Assassination

Anti-Syrian Lebanese Cabinet Minister Gemayel Shot and Killed

IAEA to Postpone Decision on Iran Reactor Aid

Afghan Official Urges Faster Timetable for Training, Equipping Afghan Forces

Afghan Defense Minister Calls For More Help

Aircrews fly scientists, equipment to Antarctica

AFRL awards 'MAJIIC' research contract

Maintainers turn Rivet Joint

Bush: Asia, U.S., Share Common Threats, Interests

Friday, November 24, 2006

Russian rocket deliveries to Iran started

Russia has begun deliveries of the Tor-M1 air defence rocket system to Iran, Russian news agencies quoted military industry sources as saying, in the latest sign of a Russian-US rift over Iran.

Deliveries of the Tor-M1 have begun. The first systems have already been delivered to Tehran," ITAR-TASS quoted an unnamed, high-ranking source as saying Friday.

The United States has pressed Russia to halt military sales to Iran, which Washington accuses of harbouring secret plans to build a nuclear weapon.

Moscow has consistently defended its weapons trade with Iran. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said the contract for 29 rocket systems, signed in December last year, was legitimate because the Tor-M1 has a purely defensive role.

ITAR-TASS reported that the rockets were to be deployed around Iran's nuclear sites, including the still incomplete, Russian-built atomic power station at Bushehr.

In August, Washington announced sanctions against several companies, including Russian arms exporter Rosoboronexport, for supplying technology to Iran that could allegedly be used to develop missile technology and weapons of mass destruction.

Under the sanctions no US company can deal with foreign companies on the sanctions list for two years.

A spokesman for Rosoboronexport contacted by AFP would not confirm or deny the reports about the Tor-M1 delivery, which were also issued by the Interfax news agency.

The Tor-M1 is a low to medium-altitude missile fired from a tracked vehicle against airplanes, helicopters and other airborne targets.

The news came as the UN Security Council continued to consider possible sanctions against Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity in response to the Islamic republic's suspect nuclear programme.

The major powers have been debating a draft resolution drawn up by Britain, France and Germany that would impose limited sanctions on Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile sectors for Tehran's failure to comply with an earlier UN resolution on halting enrichment.

China and Russia, both close economic partners with Iran, argue the measures are too extensive, while Washington has pressed for tougher action.

AFP

Security developments in Iraq, Nov 24

Nov 24 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq as of 1300 GMT on Friday.

* denotes new or updated item

BAGHDAD - The death toll in Thursday's multiple car bombings in Sadr City, a Shi'ite slum district of Baghdad, rose to 202 after around 40 of the wounded died overnight, police said. Another 250 were wounded and Baghdad was under a curfew.

TAL AFAR - A double suicide attack killed 22 people and wounded 45 at a market in a Shi'ite district in the northern city of Tal Afar, near the Syrian border, police said.

BAQUBA - Gunmen blew up an office of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's movement in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, after U.S. troops raided the building to arrest Sadr supporters inside, police said. They also reported sporadic clashes and said the situation was tense in the religiously mixed town which has been a frequent scene of sectarian violence.

BAGHDAD - Residents in Shula, a Shi'ite enclave in mainly Sunni west Baghdad, said at least two mortars hit the neighbourhood. There were no reports of any injuries.

*ISKANDARIYA - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed one policeman and wounded another in the town of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, on Thursday, police said. In a separate incident gunmen attacked a police checkpoint, killing one civilian and wounding a policeman.

*MOSUL - Three bodies with gunshot wounds were found in different parts of the northern city of Mosul on Thursday, the local hospital said.

*TAL AFAR - Gunmen pulled a man off a bus in central Tal Afar on Thursday and shot him dead, police said.

Mexican drug gang runs newspaper ads

MEXICO CITY - A violent Mexican drug gang took out a rare, half-page ad in newspapers in which they claimed to be anti-crime vigilantes who wanted to stop kidnapping, robbery and the sale of methamphetamine in the western state of Michoacan.

The Family, a shadowy group believed to be allied to Mexico's Gulf drug cartel, has claimed responsibility in the past for bloody killings, such as a Sept. 6 attack in which gunmen dumped five severed human heads into a bar in the Michoacan city of Uruapan.

Those and other heads discovered since have been accompanied by hand-lettered, poorly spelled notes, but it was apparently the first time the group had taken out newspaper ads.

The newspaper El Sol of Morelia, 135 miles west of Mexico City, confirmed that the half-page ad ran in Wednesday's editions.

"Our only reason for being is that we love our state, and we are not willing to allow the dignity of our people to be trampled on," according to the ad, signed "Sincerely, The Michoacan Family."

"This organization was formed with the firm intention of fighting the uncontrolled crime in our state," it said, claiming the group was "growing, and now covers the whole state."

The ads blamed the violence and crime in largely rural Michoacan on "the Milenio cartel, and some people named Valencia, and some gangs like the '30 Gang,' who have terrorized much of the state since the 1980s up to the present day."

The Family appears to be fighting the Milenio Cartel — which in turn is believed to be allied with the Sinaloa Cartel — for control of drug trafficking routes in Michoacan.

But the Family's advertisement said it was against the sale of "ice," or methamphetamine, "because it is one of the worst drugs doing irreversible damage to our society."

Local media reports said thousands of leaflets were left in Morelia with the group's message.

The ad seemed to acknowledge that its brutal tactics had alienated many people.

"Perhaps at this time people don't understand us, but we know that in the most affected regions, they understand our actions," it said, adding "people who work at any decent activity have no reason to worry."

Another Morelia newspaper, La Voz de Michoacan, confirmed it ran a similar ad from the group.

It's not the first time that the group has used strange rhetoric to depict itself as the good guys. The sign left with the five severed heads on Sept. 6. read "The family doesn't kill for money. It doesn't kill women. It doesn't kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die."

The area is frequently used by drug traffickers, and dozens of suspected traffickers and Michoacan police officers have been killed in recent months amid gang turf battles. The battles involve leadership struggles within and among gangs after authorities captured some of their leaders.

Somalia: Ethiopia, Islamists trade threats

MOGADISHU, Somalia Nov 23 (Garowe Online) - On the day Ethiopia’s prime minister introduced a war bill to parliament, Somali Islamists have announced that they are “ready” to defend against any military strike from Ethiopia.

The spokesman for the Mogadishu-based Islamic Courts movement, Sheikh Abdirahim Ali Mudey, said on Thursday that Islamist militia have fortified their positions to defend against what he termed as “Ethiopian aggression.”

Mudey’s comments came two hours after Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian leader, introduced a bill to Ethiopian legislators that would essentially declare war on Somalia’s Islamists.

Premier Zenawi said that the Islamists are a “real threat” to Ethiopia and that every country has a “right to defend itself” against such threats.

Mudey: Islamists "ready" to defend against Ethiopia
Mudey dismissed Zenawi’s allegation that the Somali Islamists are tied to wanted international terrorist Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.

Furthermore, Mudey invited American officials to visit Mogadishu, promising that they would be personally welcomed by the group’s Somali-American foreign affairs chief, Prof. Ibrahim Hassan Addow.

Ethiopia, a regional power, backs the Baidoa-based interim Somali government, whose authority within the country has been significantly limited by the rise of the Islamists.

Analysts fear that the civil war in Somalia could transform into a regional conflict, as foreshadowed by the presence of thousands of troops from Ethiopia and its rival, pro-Islamist Eritrea.

Text of Statement Made by Former Spy

Litvinenko before he died and released by his friends on Friday:

I would like to thank many people. My doctors, nurses and hospital staff who are doing all they can for me; the British police who are pursuing my case with vigor and professionalism and are watching over me and my family. I would like to thank the British government for taking me under their care. I am honored to be a British citizen.

I would like to thank the British public for their messages of support and for the interest they have shown in my plight.

I thank my wife, Marina, who has stood by me. My love for her and our son knows no bounds.

But as I lie here, I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like. I think, therefore, that this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition.

You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed.

You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value.

You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilized men and women.

You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.

AP

Thursday, November 23, 2006

A Profiling In Courage

Homeland Security: Kudos to US Airways. Risking fines and a boycott, it did the right thing this week by removing a group of Muslim men from a flight to protect its crew and passengers.

By most accounts, the six bearded men were behaving suspiciously at a time when airports were on high alert for sky terror during the holidays. "There were a number of things that gave the flight crew pause," an airline spokesman said. According to witnesses and police reports, the men:

• Made anti-American statements.

• Made a scene of praying and chanting "Allah."

• Asked for seat-belt extensions even though a flight attendant thought they didn't need them.

• Refused requests by the pilot to disembark for more screening.

Also, three of the men had only one-way tickets and no checked baggage.

Police had to forcibly remove the men from the flight, whereupon they were taken into custody. A search found no weapons or explosives, and they were released to continue on their journey.

Within hours, the men enlisted a Muslim-rights group to make a stink in the press, insisting they were merely imams returning home from an Islamic conference in Minneapolis. They say they were "harassed" because of their faith.

But were they victims or provocateurs?

All six claim to be Americans, so clearly they were aware of heightened security. Surely they knew that groups of Muslim men flying together while praying to Allah fit the modus operandi of the 9/11 hijackers and would make a pilot nervous. Throw in anti-U.S. remarks and odd demands about seat belts, and they might as well have yelled, "Bomb!"

Yet they chose to make a spectacle. Why? Turns out among those attending their conference was Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who will be the first Muslim sworn into Congress (with his hand on the Quran). Two days earlier, Ellison, an African-American convert who wants to criminalize Muslim profiling, spoke at a fundraiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim-rights group that wasted no time condemning US Airways for "prejudice and ignorance."

CAIR wants congressional hearings to investigate other incidents of "flying while Muslim." Incoming Judiciary Chairman John Con-yers, D-Mich., has already drafted a resolution, borrowing from CAIR rhetoric, that gives Muslims special civil-rights protections.

While it's not immediately clear whether the incident was a stunt to help give the new Democratic majority cover to criminalize airport profiling, it wouldn't be the first time Muslim passengers have tried to prove "Islamophobia" — or test nerves and security.

Two years ago a dozen Syrian men caused panic aboard a Northwest Airlines flight by passing bags to each other as they used the lavatory. As the plane prepared to land, they rushed to the back and front of the plane speaking in Arabic.

Then there's the case of Muhammed al-Qudhaieen and Hamdan al-Shalawi, two Arizona college students removed from an America West flight after twice trying to open the cockpit. The FBI suspected it was a dry run for the 9/11 hijackings, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. One of the students had traveled to Afghanistan. Another became a material witness in the 9/11 investigation.

Even so, the pair filed racial-profiling suits against America West, now part of US Airways. Defending them was none other than the leader of the six imams kicked off the US Airways flight this week.

Turns out the students attended the Tucson, Ariz., mosque of Sheikh Omar Shahin, a Jordan native. Shahin has been the protesters' public face, even returning to the US Airways ticket counter at the Minneapolis airport to scold agents before the cameras.

In an Arizona Republic interview after 9/11, he acknowledged once supporting Osama bin Laden through his mosque in Tucson. FBI investigators believe bin Laden set up a base in Tucson.

Hani Hanjour, who piloted the plane that hit the Pentagon, attended the Tucson mosque along with bin Laden's onetime personal secretary, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. Bin Laden's ex-logistics chief was president of the mosque before Shahin took over.

"These people don't continue to come back to Arizona because they like the sunshine or they like the state," said FBI agent Kenneth Williams. "Something was established there, and it's been there for a long time." And Shahin appears to be in the middle of it.

CAIR asserts the imams are peace-loving patriots. "It's inappropriate to treat religious leaders that way," a spokesman said.

Yeah, they all wear halos. Omar Abdul-Rahman, a blind sheikh, is serving a life term for plotting to blow up several New York landmarks. Imam Ali al-Timimi, a native Washingtonian, is also behind bars for soliciting local Muslims to kill fellow Americans. Imams in New York were recently busted for buying shoulder-fired missiles. Another in Lodi, Calif., planned an al-Qaida terror camp there.

We could go on and on. Imams or not, US Airways did right by its customers. Shahin is calling on Muslims to boycott the airline; that might actually work in its favor. US Airways has been flooded with calls from Americans saying it just became the safest airline.

Investors Business Daily

Venezuela: Chavez leading in election polls

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez holds a wide margin over his main challenger as he seeks a third term in Dec. 3 elections, according to an AP-Ipsos poll that also revealed many government opponents are worried they could face reprisals for how they vote.

About 59 percent of likely voters said they would vote for Chavez for a third term, while 27 percent said they would support opposition candidate Manuel Rosales. Thirteen percent of those surveyed by the polling firm Ipsos for The Associated Press said they were undecided or wouldn't answer.

Since Chavez was first elected in 1998, the leftist president has become perhaps Latin America's most controversial leader while gaining notoriety worldwide as an outspoken critic of the US government and an ally of Iran.

AP

'The bastards got me, they won't get us all'

The poisoned Russian spy breathed defiance at the Kremlin as the effects of a mystery cocktail pushed him towards his death last night.

“I want to survive, just to show them,” Alexander Litvinenko said in an exclusive interview given just hours before he died.

Too weak to move his limbs and visibly in great pain, the former Russian intelligence officer suggested that he knew he may not win his struggle against the lethal chemicals destroying his vital organs. But he said the campaign for truth would go on with or without him.

“The bastards got me,” he whispered. “But they won’t get everybody.”

Mr Litvinenko, 43, uttered his last defiant words to Andrei Nekrasov, a friend and film-maker, who had visited him in University College Hospital in London every day this week. Last night Mr Nekrasov described the extraordinary scenes in hospital, where one ward looks like a scene from The Godfather.

“Sasha was a good-looking, physically strong and courageous man,” Mr Nekrasov told The Times. “But the figure who greeted me looked like a survivor from the Nazi concentration camps.”

Moments after he saw his friend pass away, Mr Nekrasov said: “I have been through a few things in Russia and Chechnya, but this is one of the most horrible crimes I have witnessed in my my life.”

“It was sadistic, slow murder. It was perpetrated by somebody incredibly cruel, incredibly heartless. It had no meaning whatsover.”

Although Mr Nekrasov had seen Mr Litvinenko sometimes more than once a day, Tuesday was the last occasion on which his friend could communicate properly. Yet in his final remarks, the former spy remained defiant in his battle against President Putin and the Russian security services.

He also managed a joke at his own expense, suggesting that his poisoning was proof that his campaign against the Kremlin had targeted the right people. “This is what it takes to prove one has been telling the truth,” he said.

He was referring to allegations he made in a book, The FSB Blows up Russia, which accuses the Russian security services of causing a series of apartment block explosions in Moscow in 1999 that helped to propel Mr Putin into the presidency.

Last night in Moscow, Andrei Lugovoi, the former Kremlin bodyguard who has been accused of carrying out the poisoning, told The Times that he was not involved and that he was prepared to travel to London to prove his innocence.

Doctors remained baffled about what Mr Litvinenko ingested on November 1, at one of two meetings with Russian contacts. Geoff Bellingan, director of critical care at University College Hospital, said that doctors were now convinced that the cause was not a heavy metal such as thallium, as originally suspected. Nor had he swallowed any mystery objects. “Radiation poisoning is also unlikely,” he said.

Andrea Sella, a chemistry expert at University College, said that it had become increasingly difficult to identify the poison. “They have to find some unspecified poison. They don’t know whether it is a single substance or a mixture.”

Mr Nekrasov revealed that Mr Litvinenko’s British citizenship had come through on the day of a service at Westminster Abbey for Anna Politkovskaya, a friend and critic of the Kremlin murdered in Moscow.

“We discussed the likelihood of another killing. Sasha warned me not to go back to Russia because it was too dangerous,” Mr Nekrasov said. “Very sadly he turned out to be the next victim, attacked in the perceived safety of Central London.”

Last night, Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB agent who defected to Britain, told Sky News: “It’s very sad news because he was a hero to Russia and a hero to Great Britain. He loved Britain as much as he loved Russia.”

An aide to Mr Putin said: “Of course it’s a human tragedy. A person was poisoned. But the accusations against the Kremiln are so incredible, so silly, that the President cannot comment.”

The Times

China deal for Iran oilfield being finalised-report

LONDON, November 23 (IranMania) - A deal for China's Sinopec to develop Iran's Yadavaran field is being finalised for signing, the managing director of state-owned National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) was quoted as saying, Reuters reported.

Sinopec Group, the state-owned parent of listed Sinopec Corp. , agreed in October 2004 to take the lead in developing the Yadavaran oilfield and to buy 10 mln tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) a year for 25 years.

But completion of the deal, like other Iranian energy contracts with foreign firms, has been subject to protracted negotiations and several delays.

"All elements of the contract have been finalised and it is in the final process for signing by Sinopec," Gholamhossein Nozari, managing director of NIOC, was quoted by the Oil Ministry's Web site SHANA as saying.

SHANA said the managing director of Sinopec had been invited to Iran to sign the contract.

In September, an Iranian official had said talks between Iran and Sinopec would be completed within two months.

Disagreements over pricing for the deal, which could be worth as much as $100 bln, were behind a previous delay, an industry source said earlier this year.

Yadavaran has estimated reserves of about 3 bln barrels and is expected to produce 300,000 barrels per day (bpd), roughly the same volume of crude that China now imports from Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter.

If China, the world's second biggest oil consumer, does sign a deal, it could draw fire from the United States.

Washington has already penalised Chinese firms for working in Iran, which it accuses of seeking nuclear arms and funding anti-Israeli militia. Tehran denies the charges.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq picked a new leader: Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi

Tactical Report: Last week, Al-Qaeda leader in Mesopotamia Abu Hamza Al-Muhajer or Egyptian-born Abu Ayyub Al-Masri pledged support to Sheikh Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, and put his 12,000 men at his disposal.

Sheikh Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi is believed to be Abdullah Rashid Al-Baghdadi, leader of Shura Al-Mujahideen in Iraq. He now acts as the Emir of the Islamic State in Iraq proclaimed on 15/10/06. This State includes the Sunni areas of Baghdad and the provinces of Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, Salahuddeen, Nineveh and parts of Babel and Waset.

Iraqi Salafi sources agree that Al-Qaeda leader number 2 Ayman Al-Zahawiri chaired a meeting in Pakistan two weeks ago to discuss the Al-Qaeda leadership issue in Iraq. The delegates who represented Bin Laden at the meeting insisted that an Iraqi Emir takes over the leadership in Iraq to avoid more cracks in Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Note that two days before proclaiming the Islamic State in Iraq, an Al-Qaeda figure named Abu Osama Al-Iraqi called Bin Laden to disown Al-Masri and delegate an Iraqi to lead Al-Qaeda in Iraq as he delegated an Afghani to lead Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Iran military threatens U.S. troops in region

Tehran, Iran, Nov. 23 – The supreme commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps issued a daring threat to the United States that its troops in the Middle East faced peril if the U.S. showed aggression against the Islamic Republic.

“If the United States was to attack Iran, its 200,000 forces and its 33 bases would be extremely vulnerable. Both America’s policy-makers and military commanders are aware of this”, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi told hard-line Islamists. His comments were reported by the government-run news agency Fars on 21 November.

“The global arena in which we live today is one of uncertainty and distrust. It is a sensitive, determining, and complicated period for the region and the world”, General Safavi said.

He warned that Tehran had the military muscle to impose a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz on Iran’s southern shores.

“Whenever Iran chooses, it can control the Strait of Hormuz, in which 17 millions barrels of oil travel through each day”, Safavi said.

About two-fifths of the world's oil supplies pass through the 50-kilometre-wide entrance to the Persian Gulf.

Earlier this year, the IRGC commander had described the strait as “the economic lifeline” of the West, saying it could be used to put pressure on Iran’s “enemies”.

The IRGC held a series of war-games in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman earlier this month.

D.P.R.K. Not Ready to Give up Nuclear Arms, Official Says

Comments from a senior North Korean official indicate that the regime might not be prepared to give up its nuclear weapons, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Nov. 21).

“Why would we abandon nuclear weapons?” Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju told reporters in Beijing. “Are you saying we conducted a nuclear test in order to abandon them?”

Kang called on the United States to lift sanctions levied against Pyongyang. North Korea plans to make that demand at preparatory meetings that would be conducted before the next round of six-party talks, according to NHK television in Japan.

The multilateral negotiations could resume in December, AP reported.

“North Korea has an obligation to give up all nuclear weapons and all existing nuclear programs,” said Japanese Deputy Cabinet Secretary Hiroshi Suzuki. “The whole purpose of resuming the six-party talks is to make sure that we have tangible progress or concrete results” (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Nov. 22).

Meanwhile, France yesterday released a North Korean ship after 10 days of weapons inspections, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Nov. 16).

A U.N. Security Council resolution approved in the wake of Pyongyang’s Oct. 9 nuclear test allows for inspections of ships entering or leaving North Korea.

Inspectors found no weapons on board the cement freighter An Nok Gang, which arrived Nov. 11 from Indonesia at the French-administered island of Mayotte (Agence France-Presse/The Tocqueville Connection, Nov. 21).

SYRIA: DISSIDENTS SAY DAMASCUS BEHIND LEBANESE MINISTER'S SLAYING

Damascus, 23 Nov. (AKI) - Former Syrian government minister Ahmad Abu Daleh and one of the country's more prominent dissidents makes no secret of who he thinks was behind the assassination of Lebanese Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel. Wednesday's killing "is a fundamental component of the Syrian regime's hegemonic attitude," Abu Daleh said in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI). Abu Saleh, who currently lives in the Czech Republic, accuses Syrian president Basher al-Assad's government of having a hand in the murder of other anti-Syrian Lebanese political figures.

These include former prime minister Rafik Hariri, (murdered in Feb 2005), journalist Samir Kassir (June 2005), ex-Communist leader George Hawi (June 2005) and Parliamentarian Gebran Tueni (December 2005).

Abu Saleh a Baath Party leader during Syria's shot-live union with Egypt (1958-1961) told AKI he has survived three attempts by Syria's current rulers to kill him.

Other Syrian dissidents have also pointed the finger against the government for Gemayel's murder.

The National Salvation Front's deputy president Abd al-Halim Khaddam and the observer-general of the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood Ali Sadr al-Din al-Bayanuni have both blamed the authorities in Damascus for the murder.

The killing is "a link in the chain of murders that aim to detabilise Lebanon and hence prevent the stting up of an international tribunal to try those [included Syrian security officials] suspected of having killed Hariri," Khaddam said.

A foreign-based group representing six dissident political parties the Syrian Democratic Alliance in a statement released in Washington also added its voice to those blaming Damascus.

Lebanese crowds defy Syria at Gemayel's funeral

BEIRUT, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Lebanese paid tribute to assassinated Christian politician Pierre Gemayel on Thursday, turning his funeral in central Beirut into a display of defiance towards Syria and its Hezbollah allies.

In a sign of how quickly factional and religious divisions in Lebanon can erupt into mass action, hundreds of angry Shi'ite Muslims later took to the streets in Beirut to protest what they said were insults against Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah at Gemayel's funeral.

"Nasrallah don't worry, your Shi'ites can drink blood," they chanted as they marched in the southern suburbs, blocking the main road to the airport.

As the protests spread to other districts, Nasrallah appealed to his supporters to end the demonstrations.

"I urge them to leave the streets, more than urge, I beg them to leave the streets. We don't want anyone on the streets at all," Nasrallah said in a telephone call to Hezbollah's television station.

"The situation in the country is very delicate, very sensitive ... we have to act responsibly."

Shortly afterwards protesters dispersed.

Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, had threatened to take to the streets to topple the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora but Gemayel's assassination on Tuesday forced it to put its plans on hold.

Hezbollah officials said the Shi'ite protest was not part of the campaign but a spontaneous act.

Six ministers from Hezbollah and its allies quit the cabinet this month after all-party talks on giving the opposition effective veto power collapsed.

Earlier in the day, raucous crowds carrying Lebanese flags and those of Christian factions, including Gemayel's Phalange Party, swarmed around Beirut's St George Cathedral, where top Maronite cleric Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir conducted the rites.

Sunni Muslim, Druze and Christian leaders, standing together behind bullet-proof glass, called for solidarity in the struggle against the influence of Syria and its allies in Lebanon.

The leaders had accused Syria of killing the industry minister, the 34-year-old scion of one of Lebanon's most prominent Maronite clans. Damascus condemned the assassination.

"We will not rest until all the criminals are brought to justice," Gemayel's 64-year-old father, Amin, told mourners.

Gemayel was shot dead on Tuesday in the sixth killing of an anti-Syrian figure in less than two years in Lebanon.

The government says its Syrian-backed opponents, led by Hezbollah, want to weaken it and to scupper an international tribunal under U.N. auspices that is being set up to try suspects in the suicide truck bombing that killed Hariri.

Official sources said Siniora called his depleted cabinet for a meeting on Saturday to approve plans for the court. He also appealed to the resigned ministers to return to cabinet.

Hezbollah rejected his offer.

SECTARIANISM

"Our suspicions are big that Syria is behind this (killing) to destroy national unity, to destroy us living together and to fuel sectarianism," Sunni mourner Ghada Hakim, 63, told Reuters at the funeral.

Anger at Syria and resolve to support Lebanon's anti-Syrian majority coalition swept through the crowd. Inside the cathedral, family members wept and prayed over Gemayel's coffin.

Mourners turned out in force but not in the vast numbers of March 14 last year after Hariri's killing, when an outpouring of anti-Syrian anger coupled with international pressure forced Damascus to withdraw its troops from Lebanon after 29 years.

"They will not suppress our demands for the truth, justice and the international court," said Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.

Troops and police ringed the cathedral which is next to a huge mosque built by Hariri. His tomb abuts Martyrs' Square.

After the funeral, Gemayel's coffin was driven back to his hometown of Bekfaya in the mountains above Beirut, where it was laid to rest in the family vault.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, whose country has been a strong opponent of Syrian influence in Lebanon, was the most prominent foreign dignitary to attend the funeral along with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, whose Amal faction is allied to Hezbollah, was the most senior pro-Syrian figure there.

The government, keen to ensure the international tribunal is established, would fall if it lost two more ministers.

The U.N. Security Council approved on Wednesday a Lebanese government request to add Gemayel's killing to the string of previous attacks being investigated by a United Nations inquiry into Hariri's assassination.

U.N. investigators met Lebanese prosecutors and visited the site of Gemayel's assassination where they began initial investigations, Lebanon's government news agency reported.

Early reports by the U.N. inquiry into Hariri's death implicated Syrian security officials and their Lebanese counterparts. Syria denies involvement.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Reports Differ on Possible China-India Nuclear Talks

As Hu Jintao makes the first visit by a Chinese president to India in a decade, there are conflicting reports about a possible nuclear trade deal between the two nations, similar to a deal that New Delhi is seeking with the United States (see GSN, Nov. 20).

The Boston Globe reported Monday that China and India could sign an agreement during Hu’s four-day visit.

The Globe, citing two anonymous sources familiar with the pending agreement, reported that the deal enabling the exchange of nuclear technology between China and India would be announced Thursday at the conclusion of Hu’s visit.

However, the Associated Press reported today that no significant agreements are expected during Hu’s visit.

“I am visiting India to enhance friendship, increase mutual trust, strengthen cooperation and chart the future course for our relations,” Hu said in a statement.

New Delhi might, though, seek China’s backing for the U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear agreement, the AP reported (Rajesh Mahapatra, the Associated Press/phillyBurbs.com, Nov. 21).

The reported China-India deal could mark a new stage of aggressive jostling between Beijing and Washington for India’s friendship.

“The U.S. always said it wants to use India to balance China,” Sun Shihai, deputy director of the Institute for Asia Pacific Studies at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told the Globe. “China feels it needs to engage India more (and) develop some kind of Russia-China-India cooperation” that can offset U.S. hegemony. “So there is some kind of competition happening.”

Some in New Delhi see the potential deal with China as a way to inject some balance into Indian foreign policy and tilt it away from the United States.

“Traditionally, India’s always been nonaligned and had an independent foreign policy,” an Indian official familiar with negotiations told the Globe. “Recently, India had been moving very close to the U.S., and with this deal India will become equidistant between the U.S. and China” (Jehangir Pocha/The Boston Globe, Nov. 20).

Hu is traveling to Pakistan following his trip to India, and he also expected to sign a nuclear agreement with Islamabad.

Pakistan has asked China to build as many as six nuclear reactors with at least 600 megawatt capacities although precise details of the expected agreement remain veiled, Reuters reported.

“The political intent is quite certain. The specifics are less certain, but this will be a political gesture above all,” one diplomatic observer in Beijing told Reuters.

Pakistan, a nation that like India developed nuclear weapons outside the bounds of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, has a checkered proliferation history. Former chief Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, now under house arrest in Karachi, has been accused of running a veritable nuclear Wal-Mart, selling technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya.

As the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal has moved forward, Pakistan has called for a deal of its own with the United States. Washington to date has rejected Islamabad’s requests (Reuters/Express India, Nov. 16).

“With the U.S. using India to checkmate China, China will counter by supporting Pakistan,” Kaiser Bengali, an analyst in Karachi, told the Christian Science Monitor.

Forging links through nuclear technology and trade is a new tack, however. “Using the nuclear card is a new phenomenon,” he said.

Critics caution that softening nuclear trade controls could throw the nonproliferation regime into disarray.

“This is a sign of chaos,” said Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution. “There is no game plan” (Sappenfield/Montero, The Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 21).

Ex-Russian spy may have been poisoned with radioactive thallium

A former Russian spy may have been poisoned with radioactive thallium, the toxicologist treating him has said, after British counter-terrorism police took over the probe into what happened to him.

Alexander Litvinenko, fighting for his life in intensive care, has seen his white blood cell count drop to zero, a symptom of radioactive thallium, Doctor John Henry said Tuesday outside University College Hospital (UCH) in London.

"It could be radioactive thallium," Henry told reporters, cautioning that all traces of the poison may have disappeared from his body three weeks after he became ill.

Litvinenko, who fell ill on November 1, has been placed under police surveillance at the hospital, officers said Monday, and his case has been transferred to SO15, the Counter-Terrorism Command, indicating the high level of importance given to the case.

Police have been interviewing possible witnesses, including the victim, examining his movements around the time of the poisoning, and closed-circuit television footage.

They were also awaiting the results of toxicology tests.

Litvinenko has been speaking with the detectives investigating what they call a "suspected deliberate poisoning" but Henry angrily refused to speculate on whether it was deliberate, saying it was a political issue.

Though Litvinenko, who has lost his hair and is extremely weak, is talking and occasionally making jokes, it may not be known for a while whether he will survive, Henry warned.

He said radioactive thallium poison would be harder to treat than regular thallium, a toxic metal once used in rat poison, because it damages cells and he may require a transplant of bone marrow, which produces white blood cells which are key to fighting infection.

Friends of Litvinenko, a former lieutenant colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the Soviet KGB, suspect that the FSB was out to get the outspoken defector.

In Moscow, a spokesman for the foreign intelligence service, the SVR, on Monday denied Russian involvement in the case.

Litvinenko was admitted to Barnet Hospital in north London after taking ill on November 1. He was sent to UCH, which moved him into intensive care late Sunday after his health deteriorated slightly.

He is listed in serious condition.

Pictures from UCH showed him looking gaunt and weak, propped up on pillows wearing a green robe, his bald head tilted slightly and his eyes half open.

He was surrounded by machines and tubes and patches were stuck on his chest.

Alexander Goldfarb, a friend who helped Litvinenko defect to Britain in 2000 and become a British citizen, told reporters that the former spy was in "high spirits" after seeing how much coverage the media was giving his case.

Goldfarb has said Litvinenko had confirmed to him that he had "briefly" met two Russian men for tea in a hotel in central London on November 1 before meeting an Italian academic, Mario Scaramella, a consultant to an inquiry set up by the Italian parliament to investigate KGB activities in Italy.

After meeting the Italian, he began to feel ill. Litvinenko's friends have dismissed suggestions that the Italian was involved.

One of the two Russian men who met with Litvinenko was Andrei Lugovoy, a one-time head of security at a television station owned by controversial Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky, according to The Daily Telegraph.

The newspaper reported that Litvinenko met with Lugovoy, whom he knew from Moscow, and another man, identified only as Vladimir, whom he did not.

Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen separatist spokesman living in London, told Tuesday's edition of The Guardian newspaper that he had met Litvinenko on November 1 after his meeting with the Italian.

"He called me and told me over the phone that he will have very important information about who killed Anna Politkovskaya," Zakayev was quoted as saying. "Then I gave him a lift home half an hour after the meeting.

The Sunday Times newspaper said that over lunch in a London sushi bar the Italian academic gave Litvinenko a document with information on the murder of Politkovskaya, a journalist who was reportedly a friend of his.

Berezovsky, after visiting Litvinenko late on Monday, said that the former spy "personally thinks that it was organised in Moscow and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin gave the order to poison him because he is former KGB."

US could bomb Iran nuclear sites in 2007: analysts

President George W. Bush could choose military action over diplomacy and bomb Iran's nuclear facilities next year, political analysts in Washington agree.

"I think he is going to do it," John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a military issues think tank, told AFP.

"They are going to bomb WMD facilities next summer," he added, referring to nuclear facilities Iran says are for peaceful uses and Washington insists are really intended to make nuclear bombs, or weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

"It would be a limited military action to destroy their WMD capabilities" added the analyst, believing a US military invasion of Iran is not on the table.

US journalist Seymour Hersh also said at the weekend that White House hawks led by Vice President Dick Cheney were intent on attacking Iran with or without the approval of the US Congress, both houses of which switch from Republican to Democratic control in January after the November 7 legislative elections.

The New Yorker weekly published an article by Hersh saying that one month before the elections, Cheney held a meeting on Iran in which he said the military option would never be discarded.

The White House promptly issued a statement saying the article was "riddled with inaccuracies."

Joseph Cirincione, Senior Vice President for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress, a Democrat-friendly think tank, also believes the US government could decide to attack Iran.

"It is not realistic but it does not mean we won't do it," he told AFP in an interview. "It is less likely after the elections but it is still very possible."

"If you look at what the administration is doing, it seems that it is going to inevitably lead us to a military conflict," he said, adding that no alternative solution was being sought, including discussions with Iran on Iraq, which could lead to talks on Iran's nuclear program and role in the region.

"Senior members of the (Bush) administration remain seized with the idea that the regime in Iran must be removed," Cirincione said.

"The nuclear program is one reason, but their deeper agenda is this belief that American military power can be used to fundamentally transform the regimes in the Middle East," he added.

With the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, hardliners in the government have lost one of their leading advocates, and his replacement, former former Central Intelligence Agency chief Robert Gates, has in the past favored direct talks with Iran, said the expert.

"But they remain within the administration at the highest level, the office of the vice president, the national security council staff, perhaps the president himself," Cirincione added.

He also accused neoconservative circles of promoting the military option against Tehran.

In a Sunday op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, Joshua Muarvchik, resident scholar at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, called for getting tough with Iran.

"We must bomb Iran," he said. "The path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere ... Our options therefore are narrowed to two: we can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it."

Israel has also been pushing Washington to get tough on Iran.

Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh did not rule out preventive military action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, in a recent interview with the English-language Jerusalem Post.

However, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems unperturbed. On Monday he said Israel was incapable of launching a military attack on Iran's nuclear sites and called Israeli threats "propaganda."

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

KOSOVO: BOMB EXPLODES IN SERBIAN SCHOOL

Pristina, 21 Nov. (AKI) - An explosive device went off early on Tuesday morning in a Serbian elementary school in the central Kosovo village of Ropotovo, but there were no casualties, police said. Kosovo police spokesman Veton Elsani said the device was placed in a storage cupboard. Fortunately, the classroom, which can hold up to 200 pupils, was empty, because the teacher didn’t show up for the classes and, apart from material damage, there were no injuries, he said.

“By chance, due to the teacher’s absence, the fifth grade classroom in which the explosion took place was empty and the tragedy was avoided,” said a school official Zivorad Tomic. He said the school is usually attended by 450 ethnic Serb pupils, but all classes were later cancelled.

Violent incidents have lately increased in the breakaway Kosovo province, where majority ethnic Albanians demand independence, as the international community nears a decision on the final status of Kosovo. The province, in which ethnic Albanians outnumber the remaining Serbs by 17 to one, has been under United Nations control since 1999, but Belgrade opposes independence and reaffirmed Serbia's sovreignty over the area in its new constitution, approved recently.

Violence flared in the province when the Kosovo Liberation Army, supported by ethnic Albanians, came out in open rebellion against Serbian rule in the mid-1990s, sparking a brutal Yugoslav military crackdown.

Serbian forces began an 'ethnic cleansing' campaign against up to half of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians in 1999 triggering a NATO bombing campaign that drove Serb forces from the province. Some 800,000 people fled to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro and approximately 10,000 died in the conflict.

Over 200,000 Serbs have fled Kosovo since it was put under UN control and some 3,000 have been killed or listed as missing, according to the International Red Cross. It believes about 1,500 have been murdered.

The latest murder of Christian Lebanese Minister Gemayel is pushing Lebanon closer to civil war

By Olivier Guitta

In fact, the timing and the murder of anti Syrian Christian Minister Pierre Gemayel should not be any surprise. Indeed for months now, anti Syrian Lebanese personalities have been under heavy physical threat. Some of them have been even shuttling between Paris and Beirut to lessen the odds of them being killed. Even French President Chirac has been pointing out about the imminent dangers and offered in some cases protection for top leaders. Also recently a list has been circulated with the names of the potential victims of Syrian terror. The most prominent politicians including Saad Hariri, Walid Jumblatt, Fuad Siniora, Samir Gegea are rounding the top spots on the list.

While there's no doubt that Syria is all over this latest murder as it was in the 2005 targeted assassinations of anti Syrian activists, intellectuals and journalists, the operatives might turn out to be pro Syrian Lebanese, including potentially Hezbollah members. Indeed it's no coincidence that Hezbollah left the Siniora government ten days ago and is preparing massive street demonstrations for Thursday; Jumblatt actually thinks it's going to be part of a coup. Also since the Siniora government just approved the installation of an international tribunal to find out the truth about the murder of Rafik Hariri which will likely prove Syria's central role, Syria wanted to send a clear and loud message. Today's murder of Pierre Gemayel and also today's attempt on the life of anti Syrian Minister Michel Pharaon are the signs of Syria's strategy of escalation to plunging the country in chaos and if possible into a civil war.

Two years ago, Syrian President Bashir Assad warned that if his army was to leave Lebanon it will burn and destroy the country beyond recognition. Since Syria supposedly left Lebanon in 2005 (they really did not Syrian troops joined the Lebanese army and Syrian secret service is still infiltrated in top positions), it had one goal: come back.

Using its proxy Hizbullah is one of the ways for Syria to reach that goal.
What remains still the most striking is that very recently, US, French and British top leaders have warned very clearly Syria not to meddle into Lebanese affairs even stating that Syria was the biggest destabilizing factor. If the West and these countries in particular are serious about protecting Lebanon and facing heads on Syria, it's high time they act now because Syria for the moment could not care less about the West's warnings.

www.counterterrorismblog.org

Election-related civil unrest hits Congo

KINSHASA, Congo - Gunfire and street brawls broke out Tuesday and a blaze swept through the supreme court building as authorities considered an ex-rebel leader's legal challenge to his loss in Congo's landmark presidential elections.

The latest election-related civil unrest to roil the capital of Kinshasa came when 200 supporters of runner-up Jean-Pierre Bemba massed outside the court while it considered his legal challenge to incumbent President Joseph Kabila's victory.

Fights broke out and sporadic gunfire was heard for about 45 minutes as U.N. peacekeepers sped to the scene in armored vehicles, then fired in the air to disperse the crowd. About 17,500 U.N. peacekeepers — its largest force in the world — are in Congo to maintain calm as the country attempts to move toward democracy.

Officials said gunmen in the crowd had fired on security forces, but no injuries were immediately reported.

"Armed men were mixed in with the civilians and shot at the police," Interior Minister Denis Kalume said.

At least two cars were set ablaze in the fighting and several offices in the two-story court building caught fire, along with furniture and documents. U.N. soldiers evacuated the building and firefighters worked through the afternoon to contain the flames.

A spokesman for Bemba's party, Moise Musangana, said it "condemns these acts of vandalism," adding that Bemba would have no reason to try to derail the court proceedings.

Government officials said they would evaluate the damage Wednesday before deciding how to continue with the court proceedings.

Last week, Kabila was declared the winner of a runoff vote to select Congo's first democratically elected leader after more than four decades of conflict and corrupt rule.

Meanwhile, officials in neighboring Republic of Congo said more than 2,000 people have arrived there in the past four days after fleeing election-related fighting in Congo. Many of the refugees were described as supporters of Kabila who were running from violent backers of Bemba.

When Bemba disputed the results of the first round of presidential voting in August, supporters of both men battled in Kinshasa for three days, leaving 23 people dead before U.N. peacekeepers restored order.

More clashes erupted in recent days as Bemba's camp first disputed the latest vote count, but the U.N. peacekeeping mission acted swiftly to negotiate a cease-fire. Three civilians and a soldier were killed during three hours of machine gunfire and mortar explosions around Bemba's house.

Bemba, who ruled his own private fiefdom in northern Congo during a 1998-2002 civil war and became one of four vice presidents in Kabila's postwar, transitional government, showed strong support in Kinshasa and western Congo but he gained only 42 percent of the overall vote, according to the Independent Electoral Commission. Kabila won 58 percent.

A coalition of some 50 parties supporting Bemba claim that votes counted at ballot stations Oct. 29, the day of the runoff, did not conform with the published results. The process was generally deemed fair by international election monitors.

Rich in cobalt, diamonds, copper, gold and other minerals, Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960 and was ruled for 32 years by Mobutu Sese Seko, a dictator who plundered the wealth, pocketing billions and doing little to develop the giant nation. Kabila's father, Laurent, helped depose Mobutu, but was then assassinated, leaving his son in power.

The younger Kabila signed peace accords to end Congo's war, which drew in the armies of at least six countries, and established the national-unity government he heads.

The new president will have to establish a unified army and regain control over lawless borderlands in the east, thousands of miles from Kinshasa, where rebels and militiamen accused of raping and pillaging residents collect their own taxes. Aid groups estimate Congo's wars and ongoing violence has left 4 million people dead, most through strife-related hunger and disease.

AP

Pakistan hopes to boost arms exports at exhibition

KARACHI (Reuters) - Pakistan, whose defense-related exports exceeded $200 million in the last fiscal year, is touting locally built tanks and other weapons to carve a niche for itself in the global arms market, a top army official said on Tuesday.

Pakistani military is showcasing domestically produced arms and defense equipment at a four-day exhibition -- IDEAS 2006 -- in the city of Karachi.

"Our target is to get a major deal and sell Al-Khalid (a tank), Al-Zarar (a tank) or K-8 trainer (aircraft)," said Major General Absar Hussain, director general of the Defence Export Promotion Organisation.

A deal for any one of the systems would be seen as a success, he said.

More then 230 companies from about 50 countries, including the United States, France, Germany, China and Turkey, are taking part in the exhibition. Companies from Pakistan's old rival, India, have not been invited, officials said.

"It is the kind of response which is very encouraging for us," Hussain said, referring to the number of participants.

"We are hoping that our big-ticket items will fetch good deals and prices."

Pakistan mostly exports defence equipment and arms to countries in the Middle East and South Asia, and its defence officials are hopeful that these exports will surpass $500 million a year within the next five years.

Hussain said while Pakistan saw its main markets in the Middle East and South Asia, it would not ignore Southeast Asia and Africa.

Tracked vehicles, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missile systems, as well as a wide range of small arms and ammunition are on display at the show.

Among the displays were models of Agosta submarines, which are being built in Pakistan under a transfer of technology agreement with France, and models of the JF-17 Thunder aircraft, being jointly manufactured by Pakistan and China.

Security is tight with about 15,000 police and paramilitary troops deployed in Karachi, especially around the exhibition venue.

"They are guarding the exhibition centre, hotels and all the routes leading to the venue," said provincial government spokesman Salahuddin Haider.

Fourteen people, including 11 French naval engineers working on the submarine project, were killed in a bomb attack in Karachi in May 2002.

39 suspected Taliban jailed in Pakistan

QUETTA, Pakistan - Police arrested 39 Afghans suspected of being Taliban fighters in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, an official said Tuesday, though an Islamist group insisted the detainees were only students.

The arrests late Monday and early Tuesday came in separate raids on rented houses in areas with large Afghan refugee populations, said Chaudhry Mohammed Yaqoob, chief of police in Baluchistan province, whose capital is Quetta.

Pakistan is under pressure from the U.S. and neighboring
Afghanistan to do more to detain Taliban militants or extremists allied with the toppled Afghan regime. The Pakistani government denies turning a blind eye to such activities, saying it is doing its best to crack down on militants.

Police are interrogating the suspects to learn if any senior Taliban figures were among them, Yaqoob said. Afghan officials have alleged Taliban leader Mullah Omar is in Quetta, but Pakistan has rejected the claim.

A spokesman for a pro-Taliban Islamic group protested the arrests, claiming the men were Islamic students and not fighters.

"They came here to study. They have no link with fighting," said Abdul Sattar Chisti of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, a key member of a six-party Islamic political coalition.

Dozens of Taliban suspects have been arrested in the city in recent months, with many handed over to Afghan authorities, Yaqoob said. Among them are militants being treated at Quetta hospitals after being wounded in clashes with
NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, he said.

Pakistan had supported the Taliban before severing ties with the militia and backing the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

AP

Reno Files Challenge to Terror Law

Former Attorney General Janet Reno and seven other former Justice Department officials filed court papers Monday arguing that the Bush administration is setting a dangerous precedent by trying a suspected terrorist outside the court system.

It was the first time that Reno, attorney general in the Clinton administration, has spoken out against the administration's policies on terrorism detainees, underscoring how contentious the court fight over the nation's new military commissions law has become. Former attorneys general rarely file court papers challenging administration policy.

Suspected al-Qaida sleeper agent Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is the only detainee being held in the United States.

The former prosecutors challenged the Justice Department's right to bring al-Marri before a military commission.

A citizen of Qatar, he was arrested in 2001 while studying in the United States. He had faced criminal charges until authorities designated him an enemy combatant and ordered him held at a naval base in South Carolina.

The Justice Department said in court papers last week that a new anti- terrorism law strips detainees such as al-Marri of the right to challenge their imprisonment in court.

"The government is essentially asserting the right to hold putative enemy combatants arrested in the United States indefinitely whenever it decides not to prosecute those people criminally _ perhaps because it would be too difficult to obtain a conviction, perhaps because a motion to suppress evidence would raise embarrassing facts about the government's conduct, or perhaps for other reasons," the former Justice Department officials said.

Some of the eight attorneys named in the document are now in private practice and represent detainees at the military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Most served under President Clinton, though the list includes former U.S. Attorneys W. Thomas Dillard and Anton R. Valukas, who served under President Reagan.

"The existing criminal justice system is more than up to the task of prosecuting and bringing to justice those who plan or attempt terrorist acts within the United States _ without sacrificing any of the rights and protections that have been the hallmarks of the American legal system for more than 200 years," the attorneys wrote.

The al-Marri matter is before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., and is one of three appeals court cases that will help determine the scope of the new military commissions law. That law allows the CIA to use tough _ but undefined _ interrogation techniques and says detainees may not use civilian courts to challenge their imprisonment.

Human rights groups have challenged the law. The former prosecutors wrote that they worried the government would increasingly use the law to avoid criminal trials "and the rights associated with them, such as the defendant's right to counsel and the government's obligation to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."

Last weekend, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the nation's handling of the detainees. He said they are afforded more rights than required.

"What is extraordinary, in other words, is how much _ not how little _ our law protects enemy combatants," he said.

AP

Radioactive Agent Eyed in Spy Poisoning

Doctors examining a former Russian spy said Tuesday that radioactive substances might have been used in the poisoning of Col. Alexander Litvinenko, who lies critically ill in an intensive care ward.

Doctors had earlier identified thallium _ a colorless, odorless heavy metal lethal in doses of as little as one gram _ as the likely cause of Litvinenko's illness. Dr. John Henry, an eminent toxicologist who has visited Litvinenko several times in the hospital, said a radioactive substance may have been involved.

University College Hospital, which is treating Litvinenko, said a poison other than thallium may have caused his illness, and also suggested that a radioactive substance might be responsible.

Dr. Amit Nathwani, a member of the team treating the former KGB officer, said "the levels of thallium we are able to detect are not the levels we expect to see in toxicity."

Henry, who is not affiliated with University College Hospital but who treated the dioxin poisoning of Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko, offered a number of possibilities to explain Litvenenko's symptoms, which include hair loss and damage to the immune system and vital organs.

Henry said Litvinenko may have been given thallium alongside a second drug or in combination with a radioactive substance, or poisoned with radioactive thallium. Radioactive thallium is commonly used in hospitals, injected into the bloodstream to act as a tracer during heart scans.

The Metropolitan Police, whose anti-terrorist unit is leading the investigation into the poisoning of Litvinenko, 43, said they were continuing to piece together his movements Nov. 1, the day he became ill.

Litvinenko remained under armed guard Tuesday, the victim of what his friends and fellow dissidents called an assassination attempt by the Russian government and the KGB's successor organization the FSB, which he has accused of human rights abuses and corruption.

On the day he claims to have been poisoned, he met with two Russians before dining at a sushi restaurant with an Italian security expert. The Italian, Mario Scaramella, said Tuesday he had met Litvinenko to show him e-mails from a confidential source identifying the killers of Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist and Kremlin critic who was gunned down Oct. 7 at her Moscow apartment building.

Scaramella said the e-mails listed other potential targets for assassination _ including himself and Litvinenko.

Russia's foreign intelligence agency have strongly denied involvement in the attack on Litvinenko and a Kremlin spokesman dismissed allegations against Russia as "nothing but sheer nonsense."

Doctors earlier gave Litvinenko a 50 percent chance of survival. Nathwani said he was "seriously ill but stable" in the hospital's intensive care unit.

Litvinenko left Russia for Britain six years ago and has been an outspoken critic of the Kremlin ever since, most recently investigating the death of Politkovskaya.

"Somebody has asked me directly, who is guilty of Anna's death? And I can directly answer you: It is Mr. Putin, president of the Russian Federation," Litvinenko told the Frontline media club in London in October.

AP

'Hand of Syria' behind Gemayel killing -Hariri

WASHINGTON, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Syria played a part in the assassination of Lebanese Christian minister Pierre Gemayel, Lebanese parliamentary majority leader Saad al-Hariri told CNN on Tuesday.

"We believe the hand of Syria is all over the place," Hariri, son of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, said from Beirut shortly after Gemayel was shot dead near the city.

Russia business: Buying American

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT

Russia’s leading steel producer, Evraz, and nickel giant Norilsk Nickel have announced major US acquisitions. With further domestic consolidation not on the cards, and much of the work to secure raw materials already done, Russia’s leading metals firms are now focused increasingly on acquisitions in developed markets. Yet for the foreseeable future, their growth is likely to be hindered by Russia’s murky reputation.

Evraz, Russia’s leading producer of steel, announced on November 20th that it had agreed to buy Oregon Steel Mills—the fifth-largest steel producer in the US—for US$2.3bn. The Oregon board unanimously recommended the bid, which will enable Evraz’s to produce 16.8m tonnes of crude steel per year and 17.4m tonnes of products. Also on November 20th, Norilsk Nickel—the world’s largest producer of nickel—announced a US$408m deal to buy the nickel assets of OM Group (US); this will increase Norilsk’s annual output by around 15% or 35,000-45,000 tonnes, through the addition of refining and mining operations in Finland and Australia.

Russian steel firms have been active in the US market before. In 2004 Severstal, Russia’s second-largest steel company, bought eighth-largest US producer Rouge Steel for US$286m. In 2006 Evraz bought the Strategic Minerals Corporation for US$110m. Evraz has also been active in other developed markets, buying Italian counterpart Palini e Bartoli for US$678m in 2006. Severstal too has made an acquisition in Italy, while Norilsk Nickel in 2006 bought a 20% stake in Goldfields of South Africa for US$1.2bn.

Targeting America

Until recently, the expansion of Russia’s leading metals players has been directed mainly towards one or two objectives: securing raw materials or expanding production capacity. Aluminium giant Rusal, for instance, has cut deals in Guinea, Nigeria, Guyana and Australia in a bid to become more self-sufficient in bauxite. Evraz bought the US-based Strategic Metals Corporation partly to secure more vandium, which is used to fortify steel, and to gain the ability to process it.

Norilsk Nickel’s deal with OM fits into the other headline objective—the expansion of production capacity. So also does Evraz’s acquisition of Oregon Steel Mills. However, these deals also point to a third strategic objective: the growth of market share in developed economies. Via Oregon Steel Mills, Evraz will find a market for its semi-finished products in the US market: the Russian company will supply slabs to the North American plant, which will roll them into steel plate. In addition, Oregon will give Evraz exposure to the steel pipe market in the US. Poor access to the US market is a key factor behind acquisitions of the kind that Evraz has just agreed. Because Russia remains outside the WTO, it is particularly vulnerable to anti-dumping actions that are difficult to challenge successfully. Until Russia enter the WTO, therefore, the best way around the hurdles is via US acquisitions. A similar logic informed Severstal’s purchase of Rouge Steel in 2004, as this was the Russian company’s best chance of supplying the US auto industry with high-quality steel.

Coming on strong

In pursuing expansion through acquisitions, Russian metals companies have relied on four core strengths. First, they have been able to act swiftly and decisively, because of their concentrated ownership. Most big Russian steel firms are majority owned (and often run) by one or a very few owners who built the business from scratch. Second, they are cash-rich as a result of several years of high world commodity prices and strong growth in Russia and other emerging markets where they operate. Third, they have access to low-cost raw materials. And fourth, as Russian companies, they are well suited to operating in emerging markets in eastern Europe, Asia and Africa—and these have been the prime growth area for many metals firms in recent years. Now, as Mittal Steel’s takeover of Arcelor has demonstrated, some emerging-market multinationals feel able to take on Western giants in their home markets.

The aggressive approach to foreign acquisitions taken by Russia’s metal giants is a result of historical factors and contemporary trends towards global consolidation in their sectors. Russia’s steel complex was built up during the Soviet Union as an integral part of an economic area embracing the entire Soviet bloc, including east-central Europe. As a result, it was endowed with production capacity far in excess of domestic demand in post-Soviet Russia. The transition disrupted supply chains as well as trading relations with markets. So as the consolidation of metallurgy enterprises within Russia gathered pace, it was natural for these firms to look abroad—in the first instance, to other former Soviet states—to secure raw materials, and soon after to find new markets.

The consolidation process also contributed to the proactive stance of Russia’s steel giants today. The owners of Russia’s atomised metallurgy businesses during the 1990s faced a stark choice—acquire or be acquired. Those who now lead the big metallurgy firms have an inclination for acquisitions and plenty of experience. Today, the bias towards takeovers is enforced by a global wave of consolidation, particularly in the steel industry, exemplified by the merger between Mittal Steel and Arcelor, and more recently the battle to acquire Anglo-Dutch Corus.

Maligned metallurgists

Because of their bargaining strengths and outlook, Russian companies are likely to seek further acquisitions in developed markets. Few other avenues are open. Further consolidation within Russia is not in prospect for the foreseeable future, and growth possibilities in the domestic market have been exhausted.

In some quarters, the expansion drive is a cause for concern. Russia’s state-controlled oil firms have become increasingly assertive in Russia in the last two years, to the detriment of foreign investors. Gas monopoly Gazprom, meanwhile, has used its strength as a supplier to enter downstream markets in Western Europe—and has threatened, on occasion, to redirect gas supplies if its expansion plans are thwarted. Elsewhere, the state-run arms export agency is busy consolidating large parts of the military industrial complex and has very recently taken a majority stake in the company that controls a third of the world’s supply of titanium.

However, to group Russia’s steel firms together with these state-run corporations is a mistake. Metallurgy is an area of government interest, to be sure, but steel and aluminium, and even nickel and platinum-group metals, are not as politically sensitive in Russia as oil and gas. These companies are privately run and commercially driven, even though the owners need to keep President Vladimir Putin happy. Unlike Gazprom, no major steel company has acted as a government proxy to buy media outlets, nor has one bankrolled a government vanity project such as the construction of an Olympic village near Sochi. Nevertheless, one of the major hurdles for these companies in expanding abroad is the perception that they are too closely linked to the Russian government.

A further concern, and one that is more valid, centres on the lack of transparency with regard to finances and ownership of these companies, as well as concerns over corporate governance and environmental responsibility. These shortcomings counted against Severstal when it sought to compete with Mittal Steel for Arcelor. However, Severstal’s subsequent London IPO was a clear sign of the Russian metallurgy firms’ willingness to address these concerns head on. Although all need to do more on this front, the perception of outsiders often lags reality. While it continues to do so, Russian firms—regardless of their ownership, management and commercial credentials—will be at a disadvantage in competing for assets in developed markets.

The Economist Intelligence Unit
Source: ViewsWire

Iran invites Syrian president for talks-officials

TEHRAN, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Iran has invited Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for talks in Tehran and, if he visits, he could join a summit between the Iranian and Iraqi presidents, Iranian and Iraqi officials said on Tuesday.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is due to visit Tehran at the weekend for a long-planned bilateral summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

That meeting comes amid increased talk of diplomatic efforts to involve Iraq's neighbours Syria and Iran in helping to curb violence in Iraq and prevent a plunge into civil war.

Iraq and Syria agreed on Tuesday to restore full diplomatic relations in an accord in which Syria accepted that U.S. troops should stay in Iraq while the Iraqi government needed them.

Washington, struggling to control violence in Iraq, sees both Iran and Syria as sources of instability in the country.

"Ahmadinejad has invited him (Assad). But nothing has been scheduled yet," an Iranian official, who asked not be named, told Reuters without giving further details.

In Baghdad, a senior Iraqi government source said Assad might join the Iraqi-Iranian talks in Tehran but nothing was certain and, with the involvement of the United States in the process, last-minute changes of plan were possible.

"It's possible but not finalised. There's lots of debate and postponement on either side. I think the chances are greater that it won't happen," the senior source told Reuters.

U.S. SCEPTICISM

A Syrian official with knowledge of his president's schedule had said in Damascus on Monday there were no plans for a tripartite summit.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman voiced scepticism that any meeting between Iran, Syria and Iraq could help to reduce the violence and said similar meetings in the past had not resulted in that happening.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Tuesday urged Iran and Syria to be "part of the solution" in Iraq and help the Baghdad government end sectarian fighting.

Annan said he had spoken with both the Syrian and Iranian presidents in recent days to prod them to help ease the conflict in Iraq.

Russia’s 2007 Defense Budget Focuses on Rearmament: Minister

Agence France-Presse
Nov 21, 2006 - 5:27:42 AM

Russia is due to set aside more than a third of its $30.7-dollar 2007 military budget for rearmament, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Nov. 19.

“In 2007, 300 billion rubles ($11 billion) will be allotted to rearmament, which means massive acquirements of everything from submarines to bullets, and also research and construction,” Ivanov said in an interview broadcast on Russian television.

“A great part of the resources we would set aside for rearmament would go to our navy, with at least 50 percent going to submarine corps,” Ivanov said.

Also, “The military industrial complex is one of our economy’s successful sectors, with high technology and innovations, and jobs for hundreds of thousands of people,” the minister said.

“It is in a certain sense one of the economy’s driving forces, and allows the state to export military equipment,” Ivanov said, adding that it also should contribute to “innovative production” in the civilian area.

“We cannot remain forever addicted to gas and oil production,” he said.
In 2005, Russia sold arms to 61 countries for a record sum of more than $6billion, President Vladimir Putin said in March.

Colombia arrests news correspondent

BOGOTA, Colombia - A reporter for news channel Telesur, majority owned by the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez, was arrested in Bogota on charges of terrorism and rebellion, authorities said Monday.

Fredy Munoz, a Colombian national, was taken into custody at the capital's airport after arriving on a flight from Caracas Sunday, said a statement by the Department of Administrative Security, or DAS, the Colombian equivalent of the
FBI.

The arrest warrant was issued by a prosecutor on Nov. 10 for charges of terrorism and rebellion relating to a series of bombings along the Caribbean coast in 2002. No one was killed in the attacks. No further details were given.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC, was blamed for a number of attacks across the coastline in 2002.

"This type of accusation undoubtedly surprises us. We think this is an attack against freedom of the press, against the right to information," Andres Izarra, Telesur president, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "We are analyzing our legal options for the defense of Fredy Munoz' rights".

Chavez, whose government supports the Caracas-based Telesur, has touted the news channel as an alternative to what he calls the Washington-friendly coverage of other large media outlets.

The Venezuelan government holds a 51 percent stake in Telesur, with Argentina owning 20 percent, Cuba 14 percent, Uruguay 10 percent and Bolivia 5 percent, the station says.

Chavez' critics in Colombia have expressed concern the station would tilt its coverage toward the country's leftist rebels and against the right-wing government of President Alvaro Uribe.

"I want to point out that ever since Telesur was born, the biggest attacks against us have come from Colombia. We see this as one more attack," Izarra said.

Protesters, police clash in Oaxaca

OAXACA, Mexico - Masked protesters armed with sticks, rocks and homemade gasoline bombs clashed with police and raided a downtown hotel Monday during a march by leftists seeking the governor's resignation.

The protesters began attacking police as they marched to the city's main central plaza, prompting the officers to fire back with tear gas and pepper spray.

There were no immediate reports of injuries from the clashes.

The demonstrators were then seen taking vehicles away from motorists in the center of town, including a passenger bus, which they later set on fire. They also raided a hotel, breaking the windows and spraying graffiti on its walls.

The Camino Real hotel closed its doors shortly thereafter. In September, about 300 demonstrators armed with machetes, knives and pipes descended on the same hotel searching for Gov. Ulises Ruiz, whom they accuse of rigging the 2004 election to win office and violently repressing dissent.

Protest leader Cesar Mateos said police detained some of the demonstrators Monday, but couldn't say how many. Police did not release any information on the detentions.

In Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, meanwhile, thousands of Indian sympathizers blocked highways throughout the state in support of the Oaxacan protesters.

Last month, Fox sent more than 4,000 federal police in an attempt to end a five-month siege of the city, once one of Mexico's top tourist destinations. The protests have led to at least nine deaths, mostly of leftists who have been shot dead by gangs of gunmen.

U.S. prepared to move to 'Plan B' on Sudan

WASHINGTON (AP)- The United States is prepared to move to a "Plan B" for dealing with Sudan if no agreement is reached by Jan. 1 on sending U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur and other steps to end the suffering there, presidential envoy Andrew Natsios says.

"We need to put a time limit on where this is going," Natsios said Monday, declining to describe what consequences Sudan would face if the deadline is not met.

"Making threats is not a wise thing to do," he said.

Natsios told a news conference the deadline is not arbitrary because the mandate for the 7,000-member African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur expires on that date. He also noted that U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, who has made peace in Darfur a top priority, is stepping down on Jan. 1.

Official optimism about a final settlement has risen somewhat since the Sudanese government joined with the
United Nations and the African Union in a framework agreement that included some concessions by the Sudanese, including support for U.N. assistance proposals.

But Sudan has yet to agree to the proposed deployment of a "hybrid" force of 20,000 United Nations and AU peacekeepers and police officers.

Undiscouraged, Natsios said he knows how the Sudanese operate after 17 years of dealing with them. "You frequently will take two steps forward and one step back," he said. The framework agreement was reached last Thursday at a meeting in Ethiopia.

"Our goal here is to get the Sudanese government to negotiate an agreement that they will then carry out with the United Nations that will result in a force, a hybrid force, going to Darfur," Natsios said.

The one issue that is not subject to negotiation is perceived Sudanese government participation in atrocities in Darfur, Natsios said.

"Human rights abuses are not negotiable," he said. "There is no compromise on that."

Susan Rice, a top Africa aide in the Clinton administration, has assailed the U.N.-AU plan as a "colossal sellout."

"We have a fig leaf here that won't solve the problem," Rice said last week. She added that it was unseemly for the international community to be "negotiating with the perpetrators of genocide."

Sudanese refusal to accept a "robust" international force should be met with a U.S.- and European-led bombing campaign against Sudanese airfields and other targets, Rice said.

Natsios said he was especially pleased by the "very helpful" role played by Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya in Ethiopia. Since the United Nations first became involved in the Darfur crisis in 2004, China has been widely seen as an advocate of the Sudanese position on Darfur, based on commercial ties.

Natsios, who attended the meeting in Ethiopia, also said Arab League delegates and Egyptian Foreign minister Abul Geit made positive contributions.

A former chief of the U.S. foreign aid program, Natsios has remained relatively silent about his Darfur duties since his appointment by
President Bush in September.

On Monday, however, he was very much in the spotlight, appearing at a two-hour think tank forum in the morning, meeting with reporters in the afternoon and presiding at the official opening of an exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in the evening.

The museum planned to project wall-sized images of what it described as the "escalating genocide" in Darfur, where more than 400,000 people have died and more than 2 million have been uprooted from their homes in sectarian violence since 2003.

North Korea Cannot Miniaturise Nuclear Weapons

Agence France-Presse
Nov 21, 2006 - 5:09:43 AM

Seoul: North Korea's nuclear test last month was only partially successful and it cannot yet miniaturise atomic warheads, South Korea's next spy chief said Monday. "It succeeded in making a nuclear explosion but did not succeed in (conducting) a complete nuclear test," Kim Man-Bok, director-designate of the National Intelligence Service, told parliament.

The North conducted its first nuclear test on October 9, hailing it as a historic success. The United States later said air samples confirmed the test but it was less than one kiloton.

A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the working assumption in the US intelligence community was that the test did not go as planned.

Kim also told legislators that North Korea "has to make (nuclear weapons) smaller and lighter, but it has not advanced to that level."

He confirmed the communist state has a programme to produce highly-enriched uranium, as the US alleges, "but it is estimated that the development has not been completed."

Defence Minister Yoon Kwang-Ung said on October 13 that North Korea was believed to be developing nuclear warheads for its missiles but needs "a few more years" before it can produce them.

China says the North has told it that there are no plans for a second test. The North has since announced its willingness to resume stalled six-nation talks on scrapping its nuclear programme.

But some experts believe it will be obliged to test again to validate the results of the first underground explosion, which sparked international condemnation and UN sanctions.

Suspicious airline passenger to stay locked up

A federal judge overturned a lower ruling Monday and ordered detention for a man stopped at Detroit Metropolitan Airport with articles about nuclear plants and suitcase bombs and the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

U.S. District Judge Paul D. Borman ruled Sisayehiticha Dinssa, 34, was both a flight risk and a danger to the community. He overturned a ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge R. Steven Whalen, who earlier on Monday ordered Dinssa released under strict supervision.

Dinssa, an Ethiopian-born U.S. citizen who lists his address as Dallas, Texas, was arrested Tuesday at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after arriving from Kenya by way of Amsterdam.

He is charged with currency smuggling after telling Customs agents he was only carrying about $18,000 before a search of his luggage turned up nearly $80,000.

Though he faces no terrorism charges to date, Assistant U.S. Attorney Leonid Feller told Borman that evidence found in Dinssa's luggage and inside his laptop computer makes him a potential threat to national security.

Agents found articles about nuclear plants, suitcase bombs and a hard-copy commemorative edition of the Dallas Morning News from Sept. 11, 2002 -- the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Feller said.

Agents also found a hand-written note saying: "This community is angry. Something is going to happen. We are going to see justice. This is a powder keg waiting to go off."

Paul Egan / The Detroit News

Federal investigators questioning six Middle Eastern men removed from flight at MSP

U.S. Airway officials tell 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS' Aviation Expert Bob McNaney that Monday while Flight 300 was preparing to take off from Minneapolis to Phoenix, a passenger passed a note to a flight attendant saying they noticed 'suspicious behavior,' among the men.

The men would not get off the plane when asked, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned, and had to be removed by police.

Sources tell 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that the men were chanting 'Allah, Allah, Allah,' as they were transported down the jetway.

Late Monday, federal investigators were still trying to determine exactly who the men are. One source tells 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that the men said that they were in town for the weekend for a religious conference.

The other passengers on the flight, which was carrying 170 people, were re-screened for boarding, and it took off about three hours late.

KSTP Minneapolis

Monday, November 20, 2006

Twin bomb blasts hit Indian train

At least five people have been killed and 40 injured after two bombs exploded on a passenger train in the Indian state of West Bengal.

The blasts ripped apart two carriages of the Haldibari passenger train near Belakova village, in north-west Bengal.

Police say some passengers are trapped in the wreckage. It is not yet clear who was responsible for the attack.

However, police say they suspect the involvement of separatist groups active in West Bengal and Assam.

Railway officials said the two carriages were to be joined with another train - the Darjeeling Mail, which links northern West Bengal with the capital, Calcutta.

They said the blast took place just before the carriages were to be connected.

This is the first major explosion in this area since 1999, when a blast hit a military train carrying Indian soldiers to the Kargil front in Kashmir. Ten soldiers were killed in the attack

Open Source News

OSINT news articles for November 20:

November 20, 2006

US Plans Massive Court Complex at Guantanamo

Momentum Builds For Ban On Cluster Bombs

DoD News: DoD Announces Units for Next Operation Iraqi Freedom Rotation

Humanitarian Missions Have Lasting Impact, Officials Say

Air Force, industry must partner to create synth-fuel demand

Bell-Boeing Team Begins CV-22 Support at Hurlburt Field

DoD News: DoD Announces Unit for Next Afghanistan Rotation

DoD News Briefing with Marine Col. Larry Nicholson Live from Camp Fallujah, Iraq

SUDAN: Government 'accepts' UN troops in Darfur

SUDAN-UGANDA: Jungle boost for peace process

DRC: Ugandan ‘infiltrators’ left Ituri, official says

CHAD: Embattled Chad offers assistance of stretched army

Sri Lanka president invites Tamil Tigers for talks

Exercise Island Response Concludes in Seychelles

New aggressor units expand training capabilities

Navy, JMSDF Medical Teams Train Together During Mass Casualty Drill

Dynamic Remains Active, Unloads LCU

Tbilisi calls off inspection in Georgia-S. Ossetia conflict zone

UN rights chief warns of crisis in Chad as Darfur atrocities spill over

Senior UN envoy to visit Somalia next week to push for early resumption of peace talks

Security Council urges DR Congo presidential candidates to use law for any challenges

UN aid chief cuts Darfur visit short after being denied travel permission due to insecurity

Middle East is single greatest challenge facing world – UN Deputy Secretary-General

General Assembly considers draft resolution on Israeli attacks at Beit Hanoun

Lebanon: UN mission protests Israeli air violations

Unmanned vehicle provides reusable test capabilities in space

Afghanistan Food Shortage Threatens Regional Security

UN Says Sudan Agrees in Principle to UN-AU Force

UN Refugee Chief Expresses Fears Over Darfur and Its Neighbors

Sudanese Rebel Commander Confirms Spiraling Violence in Northern Darfur

Nominee to Replace U.S. Defense Secretary Meets With Senators

"Big E" Comes Home

CVW-7 Continues OEF Missions Over Afghanistan

Karzai Says Afghan Violence Threatens Regional Stability

Iraqi, US Forces Search for Kidnap Victims

Heritage to Horizons celebration highlights CV-22 Osprey

Top US General: Islamic Extremism Could Trigger World War III

Palestinian Factions Make Progress on Unity Government

UN's Egeland Says Darfur Violence a 'Powder Keg'

Pakistan Calls For Marshall Plan For Afghanistan

Iraqi, US Forces Search for Kidnap Victims

Israeli Airstrike Wounds 9 in Gaza

Sudanese Official Says Disagreement Continue Over Proposed Darfur Force

Keating: Katrina Lessons to Ensure Better U.S. Disaster Response

Bush: Terrorism Threatens U.S., Asia

Iraqi Forces Capture Terrorist Cell Leader, Seize Weapons

On-orbit checkout of SBIRS payload confirmed

Air Force launches Delta II/GPS Mission

New Satellite Improves Global Navigation System Accuracy

N. Korea must settle its $5 billion debt to Russia - official

Bush to Discuss North Korea on Sidelines of Asia-Pacific Summit

Blix: Verification Key to Nuclear Agreement with N. Korea

Asia: APEC Leaders Agree On Trade, Discuss North Korea

Russia, China agree to promote resumption of N.Korea talks

APEC to Issue Statement on North Korea

Iran Calls For Nuclear-Free Korean Peninsula

DoD Announces Troop Rotations for Iraq, Afghanistan

US Govt to work to achieve further progress on Indo-US deal

US Senate Approves Civilian Nuclear Pact With India

Spokesman: Iran Building Reactor With or Without Foreign Aid

Pakistani secret service not supporting Taliban: Musharraf

U.S. lifts sanctions against Russian military aircraft maker Sukhoi

Blair 'in rush' to approve new generation of nuclear missiles

Guard, Reserve Troop Rotations Haven’t Changed, Official Says

Boeing Receives CMMI Level 3 for Special Operations Program Efforts

Security developments in Iraq, Nov 20

Nov 20 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq as of 1130 GMT on Monday:

* indicates new or updated item.

* RAMADI - A suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle near a police check point and killed two people, including a policeman, and wounded six others, including four policemen, in Ramadi, police and hospital sources said.

* RAMADI - A mortar round landed near a court and wounded three people in Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, a hospital source said.

* NEAR MOSUL - A suicide car bomber rammed his car into a joint Iraqi police-army patrol and killed three soldiers and wounded four others, including a policeman, on Sunday in a town west of Mosul, police said.

* ISKANDARIYA - A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed two civilians and wounded three others in the town of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

* BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb in a crowded food market killed three people and wounded five others in Jamila district in eastern Baghdad, police said. An interior ministry source put the death toll at two, with seven wounded.

FALLUJA - A U.S. Marine died on Sunday from wounds suffered in combat in the western province of Anbar, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi special forces backed by U.S. advisers raided a group suspected of kidnapping, torturing and murdering Iraqi civilians and soldiers, the U.S. military said. The raid was in Sadr City, a Shi'ite militia stronghold in Baghdad. The U.S. statement said Iraqi forces searched a mosque. No one was detained and there was "minimal damage" to the mosque, it said.

NEAR BAGHDAD - The bodies of 14 people, with gunshot wounds and bearing signs of torture, were found dumped south of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.

RAMADI - U.S. forces conducted an air strike and killed two suspected insurgents on Sunday in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, the U.S. military said in a statement.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol and wounded two civilians near a highway in central Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.

BAQUBA - Gunmen killed a police officer from the Facility Protection Services (FPS) along with his driver in the religiously mixed city of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

Yemen's Al-Iman University: A Pipeline for Fundamentalists?

By Gregory Johnsen

The recent arrests of 23 men, including four Europeans and three Australians, have once again raised questions about Yemen's al-Iman University and its possible links to extremism. Initial reports suggested that the European and Australian suspects, who were accused of smuggling weapons to Islamist militias in Somalia, were students at al-Iman; this claim, however, was quickly denied by the university's president and founder Sheikh Abd al-Majid al-Zindani (al-Sharq al-Awsat, November 1). Al-Zindani, who was listed as a "specially designated global terrorist" by both the United States and the United Nations in 2004, has often used this ploy to distance himself and the university from students suspected of terrorist activities [1]. This time, however, his claim was defended by Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who paid a surprise visit to al-Iman on November 12 (Saba News, November 12). An analysis of the university itself displays how it is both an institution of higher learning and a pipeline for fundamentalist activity.

President Saleh's Defense of al-Iman

Saleh's recent comments marked the second time in three months that he has publicly defended the university against its critics. The first time was on August 21, when Saleh was the keynote speaker at the graduation ceremony of al-Iman's third group of graduates. He claimed on that occasion that Western governments had been sending students to the university in an attempt to ascertain the university's curriculum, but that they had "failed because the university taught only the Quran and Sunna" (al-Sharq al-Awsat, August 22). He said that this sort of behavior has caused the university's students to "live in a corner of fear" from Western security infiltration (al-Sharq al-Awsat, August 22). Saleh went further in his November defense of the university, not only claiming that al-Iman did not produce extremists, but also praising al-Zindani as a "leading soldier in the Yemeni Revolution and an enlightened academic soldier" (al-Hayat, November 13). Saleh flatly denied the allegation that al-Iman produced terrorists. "That is a lie," he said in his speech. "If this is a nest of terrorists, then what is the president of the country doing here?" (al-Hayat, November 13).

Saleh has defended al-Zindani before, most notably in March of this year, when he told U.S. Ambassador Thomas Krajeski: "Sheikh al-Zindani is a rational, balanced and moderate man and we know him well and the Yemeni government guarantees [his actions] and I guarantee his character" (al-Quds al-Arabi, March 12). His speech at al-Iman came only days before Saleh was scheduled to head a delegation to a donor's conference in London, signifying once again that Saleh is not willing to trade al-Zindani for economic aid.

Regardless of Saleh's defense, al-Iman University is not the terrorist producing institute that the United States thinks it is, but then neither is it the misunderstood religious college that Yemen claims it to be; the problem is that the university is a complex mix of the two, which is what makes it so difficult to define. The university, which sits on the outskirts of Sanaa, is best known in the United States as the place where American Taliban John Walker Lindh studied before leaving for Pakistan and later Afghanistan. In Yemen, it is famous for producing students such as Ali al-Jarallah and Abed Abdul al-Razak Kamal, who were responsible for the murder of an opposition politician and three Baptist missionaries in late 2002. Over the years, al-Zindani has issued separate statements claiming that none of these students, except for al-Jarallah, ever attended the university. In a 2005 interview with the Lebanese journalist Hazim al-Amin, al-Zindani said that al-Jarallah only studied at al-Iman for a year and a half before leaving out of frustration over the lack of religiosity at the university (al-Hayat, October 12, 2005). Nevertheless, like his carefully worded and ambiguous statements about the nature of his relationship with Osama bin Laden, al-Zindani's denials appear more contrived than concrete.

The Makeup of the University

Al-Zindani established the university in 1993, the same year that he took up a post on the five-man presidential council, although the university did not start classes until 1994. The university, which initially operated outside of government control, relied on donations and the support of wealthy benefactors. The Yemeni government, under Saleh's instructions, donated the land, while Saudi Arabia and a host of private groups from around the Islamic world contributed financial capital. It is often assumed that bin Laden was among these donors, as he was fairly close to al-Zindani during the 1980s when both men spent a great deal of time in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Musa al-Qarni, a Saudi scholar, told al-Hayat in March that the two, along with Abdullah Azzam, were the most prominent men at the absentia trial of Ahmad Shah Masoud (al-Hayat, March 8). Despite these ties, however, al-Zindani has denied that bin Laden was a source of funding for al-Iman (al-Sharq al-Awsat, June 3, 2001). Ever since al-Zindani was listed as a "specially designated global terrorist," he has become even more reticent to discuss the university's sources of funding. In his interview with al-Amin, al-Zindani said that if he revealed the university's donors, they would come under international pressure to end their support for al-Iman (al-Hayat, October 12, 2005).

Despite government support—Saleh laid the cornerstone for the university—al-Iman has not led a trouble-free existence. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the university was closed down temporarily and scores of foreign students were deported. It has also been accused of fostering a military wing by the ruling General People's Congress' newspaper, al-Mu'atammar. Al-Zindani wasted little time in putting out a statement emphatically denying this, saying that the very claim was designed to help foreigners accuse al-Iman of supporting terrorism (al-Jazeera, January 6, 2005). This denial, like his many others, did little to convince al-Zindani's numerous critics within the government. Yet while al-Zindani's enemies maintain a significant amount of power, he has always been protected, when it mattered most, by President Saleh.

On a number of occasions, the United States has, in fact, made a similar claim that the university has a military wing, but the accusation is usually dismissed out of hand by the Yemeni government. In 2005, Mansur al-Zindani, Abd al-Majid's brother and a member of parliament, laughed off the suggestion in his interview with al-Amin, saying that maybe the U.S. government could not read their own satellite pictures. "There is a military camp (the 1st Armored Division) next to the university, and maybe the Americans can't see the border, and maybe they think the soldiers are actually on university grounds" (al-Hayat, October 12, 2005).

Given al-Zindani's status and the rumors about al-Iman, it has always been extremely difficult to get inside the walls of the university. Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times, was turned away at the gate by armed soldiers in 2002. Even the Arabic press has had difficulties getting access, but in the past two years al-Zindani has granted passes to two journalists, al-Amin for al-Hayat and Arafat Madabish, a Yemeni stringer writing for al-Sharq al-Awsat. Both men have published lengthy reports on the university, which represent a great deal of what outsiders know about the institution. Al-Amin describes the university center as a "town within a town," as it has an internet café, restaurant, laundromat, grocery store, telephone center and other small shops. He divides the students at al-Iman into two categories according to their dress. Some of the students wear traditional Islamic clothes, while others wear normal street clothes (al-Hayat, March 12, 2005). This division of the students can also be seen in their political inclinations. The vast majority of them are quietists, but there is a significant group that tends toward extremism and violence.

The university currently has an enrollment of 4,650 students; 3,750 males and 800 females (al-Sharq al-Awsat, July 21). Like other universities, there are dorms available for the students, although no women live on campus and most Yemeni students live with their families or stay with friends in Sanaa. The vast majority of these students are serious-minded young scholars; they almost have to be, as a full course of study in one of al-Iman's four schools takes seven years, which is why the university has only graduated three groups of students since it started offering classes in 1994. Al-Iman offers degrees in the schools of Sharia (or Islamic jurisprudence), Arabic, Islamic Preaching and Human Sciences. There is a small contingent of students that veer away from the quietist trend of their colleagues. They tend to be foreign students that are drawn to al-Iman by al-Zindani's radical reputation, while the Yemeni students are attracted by the overt religiosity of the university. These categories are not, of course, concrete. Some Yemeni students are inclined toward political violence, while some foreigners are interested only in knowledge. Yet, generally speaking, the categories hold true.

Al-Iman's enrollment numbers and experience bear this out. While the university has students from more than 50 countries—including the United States, Somalia, Kosovo, Indonesia, Albania and most European countries—the actual number of these students is quite small, hovering around 150. These students are also inclined to be more interested in contemporary politics than in completing their studies, which is why al-Zindani has some wiggle room in refusing to call people like Lindh and Kamal students, as neither of them ever finished a degree. The foreign students also work as a convenient scapegoat for the Yemeni government. They can be expelled from the university at a much greater rate than the Yemeni students, partly out of their self-selecting nature as being more politically active, and partly because the government does not have to deal with the tribes and families of these students. This allows Yemen to look like it is being tough on potential terrorists at al-Iman, while not suffering domestically for its actions.

Conclusion

Al-Iman will continue to straddle this divide as a legitimate religious institution and as a fundamentalist pipeline for as long as it is given cover by the Yemeni government. Saleh's recent speeches at al-Iman suggest that this support will not end soon. Periodically, the government will be forced to crack down on extremists attending the university, but this will continue to be tempered by al-Zindani's denials, which will be supported by Saleh. Al-Iman's legitimate practices will allow the Yemeni government to defend it, which will provide the university with the political space to carry out its more nefarious actions.

Notes

1. For a detailed profile of Sheikh al-Zindani, see Terrorism Monitor, April 6, 2006.

PHILIPPINES: TERRORISTS TRAINED MUSLIM REBELS, SAYS INTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL

Cotabato City, 20 Nov. (AKI) - A Filipino intelligence official has said that al-Qaeda affiliated Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militants trained four local Muslim rebel commanders to carry out a series of bomb attacks in the southern Philippines. Army Captain Carlos Sol told Adnkronos International (AKI) that the four rebels, Manap Medtang, Abdul Nasser, Jabidi Abdul and Basit Usman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)'s 105th Base Command in Maguindanao, about 590 kilometres south of Manila, were trained by JI bomb experts, Dulmatin and Omar Patek, on bomb-making in the mountains of Lanao del Sur.

"The training happened in 2003. They have ten other Malaysian and Indonesian companions in the training. Despite their MILF leaders' repeated denials, they know in the first place that these commanders have direct links with terrorists," Sol told AKI, on Monday.

Dulmatin and Patek allegedly masterminded the 2002 Bali bombings that killed over 200 people, mostly western tourists.

Medtang's first mission was the bombings in 2003 at the international airport and the Sasa wharf, both in the southern Filipino city of Davao where 49 people were killed and several others wounded.

Nasser and Abdul planned the explosion that ripped through the public market of General Santos City on 13 December, 2004. Fourteen people were killed and several others wounded in that bombing.

Usman, on the other hand, carried out the 10 October, 2006 bomb attack in Makilala town where eight people died and 30 others were wounded.

Makilala, Davao and General Santos are progressive towns and cities on the southern island of Mindanao, which has been troubled by decades of Muslim separatist rebellion as well as Islamic militancy.

"Patek and Dulmatin could not do the bombings alone,” Sol said.

“But because they manage to build friendship with them, they [the four local militants] are doing whatever Patek and Dulmatin want them to do. They are paid per project. And the money would only be deposited in their bank accounts," Sol added.

Eid Kabalu, spokesperson for the MILF, neither denied nor admitted the four commanders are members of his organisation.

"We will verify it because their names are suspicious. Such revelations about our men's links with JI militants might be a move aimed to disrupt the peace talks," Kabalu told AKI.

Kabalu's group and Manila have been engaged in peace talks that have recently been bogged down over the rebels demand to include close to 1,000 villages as part of their future homeland.

JI, a terrorist organization fighting to unite most of Southeast Asia in an Islamic caliphate and believed to have been established by radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, is deemed responsible for several bombings in the region including the 2002 Bali bombings.

Active in Mindanao, the JI along with Abu Sayyaf militants, are on the European Union and United States lists of terrorist groups.

Washington put a 10 million-dollar bounty on Dulmatin and offered one million dollars for Patek.

The reward offered for Dulmatin is the second highest award offered under the US's Rewards for Justice Program, exceeded only by the 25 million dollar award offered for al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Russia Implementing Arms Contract With Iran: Official

Agence France-Presse
Nov 20, 2006 - 6:11:23 AM

Russia is going ahead with a contract to deliver sophisticated air defense systems to Iran, a Russian Defense Ministry official said Nov. 17, despite appeals from Washington to reconsider.

“The contract with Iran is being implemented. Everything is going well. We will honor the terms fully,” said Mikhail Dmitrev, head of the federal service for military-technical cooperation, ITAR-TASS reported.

“There is no reason to review this contract,” Dmitrev said.

At the end of 2005, Russian media reported that Iran signed a contract with Moscow for the purchase of 29 Tor-M1 air defense systems for $700 million.
The United States called on Russia in May to scrap the contract.

In August, Washington announced sanctions against Russian jet-maker Sukhoi and state arms exporter Rosoboronexport for providing Iran with equipment that could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Turkey and Central Asia Eye Closer Security Ties

Reuters
Nov 20, 2006 - 6:33:09 AM

Turkey called on Central Asian states on Nov. 17 to form a united front with Ankara in fighting terrorism and cross-border crime.

Turkey, hosting a gathering of Turkic-speaking countries in its Mediterranean resort of Antalya, also pledged continued strong support for Muslim ally Azerbaijan in its long dispute with Armenia over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

“The development and stability of the Eurasian region are threatened by international terrorism, religious fundamentalism, separatist and extremist currents, illegal migration and other organized crimes such as drug and weapons smuggling,” President Ahmet Necdet Sezer told his fellow leaders in televised remarks.

“We attach great importance to multi-level cooperation in the struggle with terrorism and on issues which pose a threat to the region’s development,” he said, adding that Turkish business should step up investment in energy-rich Central Asia.

Turkish firms are already active across the region, especially in construction, though Ankara has abandoned the ambitious hopes of building a pan-Turkic commonwealth that it nurtured in the early 1990s after the Soviet Union’s demise.

The presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan were in Antalya for the two-day summit.

But President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan stayed away in protest at Turkey’s support for a U.N. report critical of his autocratic rule, Turkish media said. Turkmenistan’s reclusive leader also did not show up, sending an envoy instead.

Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev called for more joint transport and communications projects to help bind together a vast, mostly under-developed and poor region that stretches from the Balkans to China’s western border.
Azeri President Ilham Aliyev sought political support for his country’s efforts to regain Nagorno-Karabakh, controlled by Armenian separatists since armed conflict erupted in the early 1990s which killed an estimated 35,000 people.
A major pipeline linking Caspian Sea oil fields to world markets passes a few km from the conflict zone to Turkey.

Sezer made clear Ankara’s continued solidarity with Azerbaijan despite concerns that Turkey’s poor relations with Armenia — their shared border is closed due to the Karabakh dispute — could hurt its efforts to join the European Union.

“I want to stress our continued resolve to support fraternal Azerbaijan on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue,” Sezer said.

Pentagon panels sees three options in Iraq

WASHINGTON: A Pentagon panel has outlined three basic options for improving the situation in Iraq -- pull out, send more U.S. troops or reduce the size of the force but stay longer, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

The group was likely to recommend a combination of a small short-term increase of U.S. troops and long-term training for Iraqi forces, the newspaper reported, citing senior defence officials.

The options have been dubbed "Go Home," "Go Big" and "Go Longer" by insiders.

Sources who have been briefed on the review, led by Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the group had concluded there were not enough U.S. forces to "Go Big," sending in thousands more troops, the Post said.

"Go Home," the quick pullout option, was rejected as likely to push Iraq directly into a full-blown civil war, the Post said.

The Pentagon group devised a hybrid plan, "Go Long," which calls for cutting the U.S. combat presence combined with a long-term expansion of the training and advising of Iraqi forces, the newspaper said.

The officials said that under the mixture of options, the U.S. presence in Iraq would be boosted by 20,000 to 30,000 for a short period, the newspaper said. Currently there are around 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Democrats, who won control of the U.S. Congress this month, have vowed to push for a withdrawal from Iraq in the next few months.

President George W. Bush has insisted U.S. troops would not leave until Iraqis can take over security and has repeatedly rejected setting a timetable for withdrawal. However, the White House has said that Bush is open to new ideas.

In addition to the Pentagon, other U.S. national security agencies will review Iraq strategy. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group is considering alternative approaches as well.

Political-paramilitary links threaten Colombian head of state

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)– A widening scandal in which three federal lawmakers have been jailed for allegedly organizing and benefiting from murderous right-wing militias is now implicating one of President Alvaro Uribe's closest political allies.

Sen. Alvaro Araujo, brother of Uribe's foreign minister, acknowledged in a radio interview Friday that he attended a 2004 party at which one of the country's most feared paramilitary leaders was present.

Araujo denied that his "marginal contact" with Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, better known as Jorge 40, implied he had any political dealings with the paramilitary commander, who is wanted in the United States for being among Colombia's biggest drug traffickers.

Uribe sought Friday to defuse what many Colombians think could become more damaging than the scandal involving drug cartel-financing of politicians in the mid-1990s that nearly toppled then-President Ernesto Samper.

He said that any member of Congress found to be conspiring with illegal armed groups should be jailed and "punished with extra severity."

Uribe called upon "all congressmen to tell the country the truth and reveal whatever contacts they had with the paramilitaries."

Evidence is mounting that politicians across Colombia's Caribbean coast funneled public funds to the paramilitaries in exchange for election wins aided by paramilitary intimidation.

Despite having disarmed as part of a 2004 peace deal, paramilitaries are still believed to hold sway over huge parts of the country after killing hundreds and forcibly displacing tens of thousands of mostly poor Colombians in a nearly dec- ade-long reign of terror.

Evidence of a long-running paramilitary-political mafia appeared to be confirmed last week when the Supreme Court ordered the arrest of four former and current members of Congress.

All four are all solid supporters of Uribe from the Caribbean state of Sucre and have either been arrested or turned themselves in.

Sen. Jairo Merlano surrendered to police in Zipaquira, a town just north of Bogotá, on Friday evening.

A U.S.$30,000 (euro 23,500) reward had been issued for information leading to his capture.

Araujo, whose powerful political family hails from the Caribbean state of César, said he had spoken with Tovar on at least two occasions since 2002, including at the birthday party for an ex-congresswoman long suspected of paramilitary ties. But he denied any improper dealings.

"I've never made any political agreement with the paramilitaries," said Araujo, who vowed to cooperate fully with the Supreme Court investigation.

Although no charges have been filed against Araujo, opposition politicians have long tried to dig up evidence linking his fledgling Alas Equipo Colombia movement to the paramilitary groups.

Germans Foil Plan to Bomb Jet

Spiegal Online: Six terror suspects have been arrested in Germany after a plot to bomb a passenger plane is allegedly foiled.

Germany's Federal Prosecutor's Office said on Monday a terrorist plot had been foiled and six people were temporarily taken into custody over an alleged plan to bomb a passenger jet here over the summer.

The suspects were believed to have been preparing explosives to be used in an attack on a passenger plane, the prosecutor's office stated.

So far, details are vague. Prosecutors claim that several of the suspects met in summer 2006 with a person who had access to the security area of an airport. The individual, prosecutors claim, had been prepared to smuggle a suitcase or bag packed with explosives onto a plane for a fee.

Prosecutors said the accused had made contact with their terrorist backers, but they had been unable to reach a final agreement on the amount they would pay the smuggler.

On Friday, investigators with Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) searched nine apartments in the states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse. Police took six suspects into temporary custody and interrorgated them. With the exception of one suspect, who was wanted on unrelated charges, all were released on Saturday. Prosecutors have not released any information about the nationalities or backgrounds of the suspects.

However, officials did say the measures taken on Friday and Saturday had enabled them to garnish "evidence about the status of planning, the people ... and terrorist groups involved."

Bush to China: help us on N Korea

The Australian: GEORGE W. Bush appealed to China yesterday to assist in pressuring a defiant North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

The US President met Chinese President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of a summit in Vietnam ahead of an expected resumption of six-country nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman after the meeting said the two leaders had agreed that "North Korea should get the message that possessing a nuclear bomb will not have the support of the international community, but rather will meet opposition".

Last night the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum issued a statement expressing "strong concern" over North Korea's July missile launches and the October 9 nuclear test.

During the summit the US also offered an olive branch to North Korea and Burma, with the promise of peace and opportunity if their regimes made the right "strategic choices".

Washington's overture to the two most hostile regimes in the region was interpreted by some as an acknowledgment that Mr Bush has been weakened by election defeats in the US mid-term polls and by the continuing violence in Iraq.

"If you get to a point where the North Koreans not only renounce but dismantle nuclear capabilities, we've indicated a willingness to talk about a lot of things," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

Speaking in Hanoi, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the US experience with Vietnam showed former enemies could be friends and partners.

She said Vietnam's communist leaders had opted to restore relations with the US, reform the country's economy and join the global trading system.

"There are other nations with which we hope to overcome differences, too," Dr Rice said yesterday, singling out North Korea and Burma.

Dr Rice's speech was warmly applauded, but behind the scenes at the Asia-Pacific summit US diplomats were struggling to win support from other countries for the Bush administration's tough policies against both regimes.

US national security adviser Stephen Hadley said Washington was pleased with a declaration that was expected to strongly urge Pyongyang to return to nuclear disarmament talks and abide by UN resolutions.

But the Americans have failed to win consensus for strong measures against North Korea after its test explosion of a nuclear device on October 9. Even South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun rebuffed Mr Bush's appeals on the issue.

The difference in treatment and perceptions between Mr Bush and Mr Hu has been conspicuous in Hanoi.

The Chinese leader arrived several days before the summit for a flower-strewn schedule of smiles and ribbon-cutting intended to show Asians that Beijing, not Washington, is now the capital that counts.

A Chinese diplomat said his country had prepared for Mr Hu's trip months in advance, resulting in the announcement of a dozen economic agreements, promises to resolve border disputes with Vietnam and an agreement to share offshore exploration for oil and gas. By contrast, Mr Bush's Vietnam schedule was abruptly cut back after the US election defeat, diplomatic sources said.

Heavily protected by thousands of elite troops and police, his few public engagements have been tightly controlled. He and his wife Laura attended services yesterday at Cua Bac Church, a concrete basilica built by the French more than a century ago.

They spent about 30 minutes at the service before shaking hands with a few dozen choir members.

Security for the US President will be just as tight when he flies today to Indonesia.

The Indonesian Government has mobilised thousands of security personnel to seal off the hill town of Bogor, in Java, where the US President will stop briefly.

About 50 Islamist groups are planning a mass demonstration in central Jakarta and are promising to send crowds of the faithful to Bogor to protest at the visit.

A spokesman for the militant Indonesian Mujaheddin Council, alleged to have been behind the 2002 Bali bombing, said it was legitimate for Muslims to take violent action against Mr Bush.

"His blood is halal to shed," said Fauzan, referring to the Arabic term for religious approval. "How many people have died or suffer because of his policy in the Middle East?"

Man dead after storming German school: police

BERLIN (Reuters) - A masked man who stormed an elementary school in the small German town of Emsdetten on Monday, firing shots and wounding people, is dead and all pupils have been cleared from the school, German police said.

A police spokesman from the nearby town of Steinfurt said a teacher, janitor and several students had been lightly wounded.

Another police spokesman from the city of Muenster said the man had an explosive device attached to his body, which experts were attempting to defuse.

Police said the man, whom German television reports identified as a former pupil, entered the building at 9.30 a.m. and immediately opened fire.

Police commando forces had control of the school. Emsdetten is a town of 35,000 near the Dutch border.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Russia prioritizes strategic forces on security agenda

MOSCOW: Russia's president and defense minister said Thursday that developing the strategic forces is the main priority for the country's defense agenda.

President Vladimir Putin told a meeting with top military officials, "Maintaining a strategic balance will mean that our strategic deterrent forces should be able to guarantee the neutralization of any potential aggressor, no matter what modern weapons systems he possesses."

He called for the creation of cutting-edge strategic weapons, and emphasized the importance of quality.

"We must meet schedules to create new strategic weapons to secure a balance of forces in the world. This means that we will not indulge in comparisons of quantitative data of our strategic nuclear deterrent forces as we did previously," the president said.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told the meeting that Russia's Armed Forces will buy 17 intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2007, as well as four spacecraft and four carrier rockets.

* Russia's modernization plans for its strategic forces

According to a new doctrine for the development of the armed forces, Russia will completely modernize the naval component of its nuclear triad by 2016, deploying new Bulava ballistic missiles on Project 955 Borey-class nuclear-powered submarines and equipping land-based strategic missile units with silo-based and mobile Topol-M (SS-27) ballistic missiles.

Russia's Missile Forces regularly launch missiles to test their performance characteristics and decide whether they can remain in service. About 360 silo-based RS-18 (SS-19 Stiletto) missiles, which have been in service for 29 years, are currently in operation in the forces.

The R-30 Bulava (SS-NX-30) ballistic missile was developed at the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology. It can carry up to ten nuclear warheads, and has a range of 8,000 kilometers (about 5,000 miles).

Bulava missiles, a sea-based version of the Topol-M, could be deployed on Borey-class nuclear submarines as early as in 2008, according to missile designers.

Last year, Russia conducted two successful test launches of the Bulava. The first in-flight test launch was conducted on September 27, 2005, from the Dmitry Donskoi, a Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine. But this year two of test launches had failed.

The defense minister earlier said Russia is planning to purchase 69 silo-based and mobile Topol-M ballistic missile systems in the next decade.

Russia currently has five missile regiments equipped with silo-based Topol-M missiles, and the first regiment equipped with mobile Topol-M systems is set to be put on combat duty in 2006.

* Modernizing the Navy and Air Force

Russia's Navy Commander earlier said that replacing outdated strategic submarines should be made a military shipbuilding priority for the next five years.

President Putin said in his state of the nation address on May 10 that Russia would commission two new strategic nuclear submarines in 2006.

Russia is also planning to modernize the air component of the nuclear triad by modernizing its fleet of strategic bombers.

Ivanov said on July 5 that Russia's Air Force had commissioned a modernized Tu-160 Blackjack strategic bomber and could receive a new Tu-160 bomber by the end of the year.

* Russia's nuclear capability

As of January 1, Russia possessed 927 nuclear delivery vehicles and 4,279 nuclear warheads for strategic offensive weapons, while the United States owns 1,255 and 5,966, respectively, according to the Russian Defense Ministry's department for contract compliance control.

US Panel Seeks Broader Sanctions Against China

Washington DC: A US Congress-appointed panel on Thursday sought broader sanctions against Chinese firms proliferating unconventional weapons and wanted Beijing to inspect ships plying to or from nuclear-armed North Korea's ports.

The United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in its annual report that current sanctions against Chinese companies that proliferate equipment and technology related to weapons of mass destruction should be "broadened and harmonized for increased effectiveness."

The 12-member bipartisan panel wanted Congress to urge the government "to seek agreement with China to carry out inspections at sea of ships bound to or from North Korean ports, and establish a US-China joint operation to inspect for contraband shipping containers" to or from the Stalinist state.

They were among 44 recommendations in the commission's 234-page report to Congress. It was written after eight hearings this year and a flurry of meetings, including with US defense and Chinese government and Communist Party officials and scholars.

Noting that China had contributed at least indirectly to North Korea's nuclear weapons program and aided Iran's atomic activities, the commission warned that "Chinese proliferation threatens US security and potentially could place at risk US troops" operating in East Asia and the Middle East.

In June, the United States imposed sanctions on four Chinese companies linked to providing support for Iran's Aerospace Industries Organization, a key actor in developing Iran's missile program.

All of the firms had been sanctioned previously under US laws.

"Chinese companies and government organizations continue to proliferate weapons, weapons components and weapons technology," the report said.

"Some of these transfers violate China's international nonproliferation agreements, harm regional security in East Asia and the Middle East, and are a measure of China's failure to meet the threshold test of international responsibility in the area of nonproliferation," it said.

Following UN Security Council sanctions in October against North Korea for a nuclear weapons test, China said it would not be involved in interdicting North Korean ships on the open seas, but did agree to inspect cargo passing through its territory.

Washington has acknowledged that China has begun inspecting trucks traveling across China's border to North Korea.

The commission's chairman, Larry Wortzel, in releasing its report Thursday, said that "while China is a global actor, its sense of responsibility has not kept up with its expanding power.

As the world moved to address problems such as proliferation of ballistic missile technology and weapons of mass destruction, "the Chinese government has, at the least, stood in the way, and in some cases actively contributed to the underlying problems," said commission vice chairman Carolyn Bartholomew.

The commission urged Congress to instruct the US government to insist that China take "more significant measures" to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and counter North Korean proliferation activities.

China is the major source of aid and trade for impoverished North Korea.

The commission also asked the US director of national intelligence to establish a more effective program for assessing the implications of China's military modernization and development.

The report said that notwithstanding China's "commendable efforts" to persuade North Korea to remain involved in multilateral talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, Beijing has "refused to use its leverage effectively."

It said that China also had refused to cooperate in efforts by a number of nations to persuade or force Iran to halt its military nuclear program.

Classified 'terrorist' groups hold conference in Denmark

COPENHAGEN: Movements from around the world, including some classified as terrorist organisations by the European Union, came together here on Saturday for a conference on anti-terror laws, organisers said.

The two-day event, entitled "Anti-terrorism legislation, political rights and international solidarity", was to "discuss the supposed war against terror which we see as a global menace against democratic rights," conference spokesman Jens Henneberg Andersen said.

Among the groups present were Batasuna, the political wing of armed Basque separatist group ETA, which is on the EU's blacklist, the Palestinian National Council, the Prensa Rural from Colombia, the Bayan Muna from the Philippines, and Sweden's Demokratiuppropet.

The Danish non-governmental organisation Rebellion was the host.

In October, a Rebellion spokesman was indicted under the 2002 Danish anti-terrorist laws for giving money to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), both classified as terrorist organisations by the EU.

"Violent conflicts... should be resolved with dialogue and by negotiation and not just by putting one of the other party into the terrorist category," Henneberg Andersen said.

Militants kill "U.S. spy" cleric in Pakistan

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Suspected pro-Taliban militants killed an Afghan cleric in Pakistan's North Waziristan border region after accusing him of being a U.S. spy, the latest such killing in the area, officials said on Sunday.

Dozens of people have been killed in the regions of North and South Waziristan after being accused of spying for the Americans since Pakistani security forces launched a hunt for Islamist militants there in late 2003.

Residents found the body of the cleric, Maulana Mohammad Hashim, early on Sunday in Razmak, 75 km (45 miles) south of Miranshah, North Waziristan's main town.

"He was shot in the head twice and a note was found near the body saying he was a U.S spy," said Zafar ali, the deputy administrator of Razmak.

The note said whoever spied for the United States would be killed.

The headless body of another cleric, Maulana Salahuddin, was found this month on a road linking North and South Waziristan. Residents said Salahuddin was a friend of Hashim.

Killings have been going on in North Waziristan despite a peace deal struck with militants in September to end violence there.

Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt has been a haven for Islamist militants for decades.

Many al Qaeda militants and their Taliban allies have taken refuge with sympathetic ethnic-Pashtun tribesmen since fleeing the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

Naval intelligence director Shapiro, rear admiral, warned about spy

WASHINGTON – Sumner Shapiro, a Navy rear admiral who served as director of naval intelligence from 1978 to 1982 and expressed early warnings about Jonathan Pollard, a Navy intelligence analyst later revealed to have spied for Israel, died Tuesday at his home in suburban McLean, Va. He had cancer.

Shapiro, 80, a Russian specialist, was among the longest-serving directors of naval intelligence. His most enduring influence was rethinking how the Navy approached its Soviet counterparts.

He concluded the Soviet navy would, in a wartime scenario, protect the country’s seaboard approaches and its ballistic missile submarines. This view was strikingly different from the Soviets’ World War II strategy of hunting enemy vessels.

David Rosenberg, a researcher at the Institute for Defense Analyses, said Shapiro’s oversight role greatly shaped the U.S. Navy’s maritime strategy in the 1980s.

Pollard, a Navy civilian who pleaded guilty in 1985 to espionage charges and was sentenced to life in prison.

When Pollard, as a new analyst, went to Shapiro with a scheme to gain “back-channel” intelligence information from South Africa, Shapiro dismissed Pollard as a “kook” and reduced his clearance.

Pollard’s clearance was later reinstated by others.

Shapiro’s decorations include the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit and the Navy Commendation Medal. In retirement, he was vice president for advanced planning of BDM International Inc., a military research company. In 1989, he formed a national security consulting company that did work for national science laboratories.

German POW camp escapee

Lee “Shorty” Gordon, believed to be the first American prisoner of war to escape from a German camp during World War II, has died. He was 84.

He died Tuesday of complications from stomach and kidney surgery at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Menlo Park, said his daughter, Cherie Gordon.

Gordon had made two failed escape attempts from Stalag VIIA, including one on a bicycle while yelling the only German he knew, “Heil, Hitler.” He succeeded Oct. 13, 1943, according to historian Robert Doyle.

The Southern California native was serving as a ball turret gunner with the Army Air Corps’ 305th Bomb Group when his B-17 was shot down over Wilhelmshaven, Germany, on Feb. 26, 1943. He parachuted down and was quickly captured by German troops, his daughter said.

Gordon escaped after trading identification tags with an Australian POW to gain access to the outdoor work area of the Moosburg camp. There he bribed guards with coffee and cigarettes and hid in a bathroom stall until dark. He hopped a fence when a guard’s back was turned and walked out of the camp, according to Doyle.

Gordon rode freight trains to France, where he made contact with a Resistance group that helped him reunite with the Allied forces.

More than a year later, on Feb. 27, 1944, Gordon arrived safely in England.

After Gordon returned to the U.S., he became a minor celebrity, was awarded the Silver Star medal and sent around the country on a lecture circuit to boost morale and sell war bonds, his daughter said.

Cancer takes Foley’s father

Ed Foley, a longtime educator and father of former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, has died. He was 85.

Foley, who had been ill with cancer, died Tuesday, said Gale Schiffman, co-owner of Quattlebaum-Holleman-Burse Funeral Home.

A Massachusetts native, Edward Foley moved to Florida in the 1950s. He was a teacher and principal who frequently campaigned on his son’s behalf.

The younger Foley gained national attention this fall when, in the waning weeks of his campaign for re-election, the congressman was confronted with sexually explicit messages he sent to teenage pages who had worked on Capitol Hill.

Russian ex-spy 'poisoned' in London

LONDON, England (AP) -- British police have confirmed they are investigating the suspected poisoning of a former Russian spy who has accused his ex-colleagues of involvement in terrorism and assassinations.

Several British newspapers reported that Col. Alexander Litvinenko, 43, has been hospitalized since Nov. 1 with symptoms of near-fatal poisoning.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard confirmed to The Associated Press on Saturday that its detectives were trying to identify what was in his system -- and who put it there.

The Sunday Times reported that Litvinenko has suffered damage to his kidneys and bone marrow, is vomiting regularly and has lost his hair.

The newspaper said it interviewed him at his bedside in a London hospital, where he was registered under a false name. It said he fell ill after having a meal with an Italian man who claimed to have information on the killing of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down on Oct. 7 outside her Moscow apartment building. Her attackers have not been found.

Politkovskaya wrote articles criticizing abuses by Russian and pro-Moscow Chechen forces fighting separatists in Chechnya.

Litvinenko joined the KGB, the spy agency of the former Soviet Union, and rose to the rank of colonel in its successor, the Federal Security Service, or FSB.

He fled Russia and claimed asylum in Britain in November 2000, two years after publicly accusing his FSB superiors of ordering him to kill tycoon Boris Berezovsky, at the time a powerful Kremlin insider.

He also has accused FSB agents of coordinating 1999 apartment-house bombings that killed more than 300 people in Russia and sparked the second war in Chechnya.

In 1999 and 2000, Litvinenko spent nine months in jail awaiting trial on charges of abusing his office, but he was acquitted. He then fled to Britain.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

French authorities inspect North Korean ship in Indian Ocean

Authorities in the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte are carrying out a "complete and thorough" inspection of a North Korean ship under sanctions adopted against Pyongyang, the foreign ministry said.

"The customs services are currently proceeding with the complete and thorough examination of the cargo and crew of a North Korean ship which called at Mayotte," spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said Thursday.

He said the inspection was being carried out under UN Security Council Resolution 1718 declaring an arms embargo on North Korea in the wake of its October 9 nuclear test.

"We particularly exercise vigilance towards cargo transported by North Korean ships, as well as those coming from or going to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)," he said.

"France immediately took restrictive measures regarding the DPRK on visas and bilateral cooperation" after the nuclear test, Mattei said.

"This inspection shows France's determination in the area of surveillance of proliferation activities," added a French diplomat, requesting anonymity.

"This applies to North Korea as well as to other countries."

The diplomat said that the inspection of the North Korean freighter could last "a very long time".

Neither gave details of the vessel or its cargo.

The French foreign ministry underlined that the European Union was soon due to adopt a "common position" on restrictive measures being taken against North Korea.

Mayotte is the only island of the Comores archipelago that remained French after the former colony gained independence in 1975

Friday, November 17, 2006

U.S. must prove it's a staying power

BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist

On the radio a couple of weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt suggested to me the terrorists might try to pull a Spain on the U.S. elections. You'll recall (though evidently many Americans don't) that in 2004 hundreds of commuters were slaughtered in multiple train bombings in Madrid. The Spaniards responded with a huge street demonstration of supposed solidarity with the dead, all teary passivity and signs saying "Basta!" -- "Enough!"

By which they meant not "enough!" of these murderers but "enough!" of the government of Prime Minister Aznar, and of Bush and Blair, and troops in Iraq. A couple of days later, they voted in a socialist government, which immediately withdrew Spanish forces from the Middle East. A profitable couple of hours' work for the jihad.

I said to Hugh I didn't think that would happen this time round. The enemy aren't a bunch of simpleton Pushtun yakherds, but relatively sophisticated at least in their understanding of us. We're all infidels, but not all infidels crack the same way. If they'd done a Spain -- blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building -- they'd have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001. With another mound of corpses piled sky-high, the electorate would have stampeded into the Republican column and demanded the U.S. fly somewhere and bomb someone.

The jihad crowd know that. So instead they employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson -- that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia -- a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election -- you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked. You can rationalize what happened on Tuesday in the context of previous sixth-year elections -- 1986, 1958, 1938, yada yada -- but that's not how it was seen around the world, either in the chancelleries of Europe, where they're dancing conga lines, or in the caves of the Hindu Kush, where they would also be dancing conga lines if Mullah Omar hadn't made it a beheading offense. And, as if to confirm that Tuesday wasn't merely 1986 or 1938, the president responded to the results by firing the Cabinet officer most closely identified with the prosecution of the war and replacing him with a man associated with James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and the other "stability" fetishists of the unreal realpolitik crowd.

Whether or not Rumsfeld should have been tossed overboard long ago, he certainly shouldn't have been tossed on Wednesday morning. For one thing, it's a startlingly brazen confirmation of the politicization of the war, and a particularly unworthy one: It's difficult to conceive of any more public diminution of a noble cause than to make its leadership contingent on Lincoln Chafee's Senate seat. The president's firing of Rumsfeld was small and graceless.

Still, we are all Spaniards now. The incoming speaker says Iraq is not a war to be won but a problem to be solved. The incoming defense secretary belongs to a commission charged with doing just that. A nostalgic boomer columnist in the Boston Globe argues that honor requires the United States to "accept defeat," as it did in Vietnam. Didn't work out so swell for the natives, but to hell with them.

What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it "redeployment" or "exit strategy" or "peace with honor" but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation. Likewise, when it's announced on "Good Morning Pyongyang" and the Khartoum Network and, come to that, the BBC.

For the rest of the world, the Iraq war isn't about Iraq; it's about America, and American will. I'm told that deep in the bowels of the Pentagon there are strategists wargaming for the big showdown with China circa 2030/2040. Well, it's steady work, I guess. But, as things stand, by the time China's powerful enough to challenge the United States it won't need to. Meanwhile, the guys who are challenging us right now -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere -- are regarded by the American electorate like a reality show we're bored with. Sorry, we don't want to stick around to see if we win; we'd rather vote ourselves off the island.

Two weeks ago, you may remember, I reported on a meeting with the president, in which I'd asked him the following: "You say you need to be on the offense all the time and stay on the offense. Isn't the problem that the American people were solidly behind this when you went in and you toppled the Taliban, when you go in and you topple Saddam. But when it just seems to be a kind of thankless semi-colonial policing defensive operation with no end . . . I mean, where is the offense in this?"

On Tuesday, the national security vote evaporated, and, without it, what's left for the GOP? Congressional Republicans wound up running on the worst of all worlds -- big bloated porked-up entitlements-a-go-go government at home and a fainthearted tentative policing operation abroad. As it happens, my new book argues for the opposite: small lean efficient government at home and muscular assertiveness abroad. It does a superb job, if I do say so myself, of connecting war and foreign policy with the domestic issues. Of course, it doesn't have to be that superb if the GOP's incoherent inversion is the only alternative on offer.

As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.

It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.

Taiwan: China targeting island with 900 missiles on 5 bases

China continues its planning to invade Taiwan and now has more than 900 missile targeted on the island, Taiwanese officials said last week.

“Despite China's impressive economic rise, it has become more authoritarian, posing a grave threat to our sovereignty and abusing human rights like never before," Taiwanese President Chen Shuibian said.

Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Joseph Wu also said in Taipei that China is a threat and has supported some of the world’s most notorious violators of human rights.

Chinese missiles are located in five bases in nearby Fujian Province. Additionally, China now has 11 military satellites in orbit.

Noting calls for China to remove the missiles, Chen said it would not be enough. “If China one day removed the missiles from its east coast, they could just transport them all back the next day," he said.

China also is developing cruise missiles and other weapons. “China's acquisition of long-range bombers and mid-air refuelers from Russia means that it seeks to project its military power beyond Taiwan, because Chinese fighter jets wouldn't need to refuel mid-air in a cross-strait attack,” Chen said.

Wu said China seeks to take over Taiwan because it views the island as a "stumbling block to projecting power" throughout Asia.

Wu criticized the United States for mistaking Taiwanese efforts at further democratization as steps toward formal independence.

World Tribune.com

NYPD: Limo Bomb Favored by al-Qaida Op

An al-Qaida operative conducting surveillance on U.S. soil in 2000 favored using a limousine packed with explosives or a hijacked oil tanker truck to attack financial institutions in Manhattan and New Jersey, police officials said.

"The most obvious technique to utilize, that comes to mind ... would be a limousine in the VIP underground car park," the operative, Dhiren Barot, wrote in a memo about the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J.

Police say Barot was fixated on the black sedans regularly used by corporate executives in New York because they were given easy access to parking around corporate areas.

The memo was quoted during a New York Police Department briefing Thursday on terror threats for private security officials from Wall Street firms and other businesses. The memo and briefing shed more light on the designs of Barot, a 34-year-old British convert to Islam who was sentenced to life in prison in Britain last week after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit mass murder.

In the memo, Barot also suggested that "arson may be the best choice" and advised "ramming trucks (oil tankers, etc.) straight through the glass front entrance into the lobby area."

Hijacking a truck "will probably be much easier here in New Jersey than in New York since there is less security and no tunnels to pass through," added Barot, who spied on one location while sitting at a nearby Starbucks.

Prosecutors in Britain said Barot shelved the plan to attack the U.S. financial industry targets after Sept. 11, 2001, and instead focused on using limousines loaded with gas, napalm and nails to attack landmark London hotels and railway stations.

The proposals for the strikes in Britain and for those against the Prudential Building, the International Monetary Fund in Washington and the New York Stock Exchange and the Citigroup headquarters in New York were sent to al-Qaida leadership like "corporate reports going to head office," a British judge said.

Investigators said they uncovered some of the evidence stored on computers seized at the home of an al-Qaida computer expert in Pakistan in July 2004, prompting the NYPD to heighten security around the city.

AP

Blix: N. Korea Will Perfect Nuclear Bomb

Former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Friday that North Korea would one day master nuclear weapons technology despite its apparently less-than-successful atomic test, and he warned that the world must avoid striking a quick disarmament deal that lacks effective verification measures.

Blix said verification would be the key to ensuring compliance in any nuclear accord with Pyongyang, as the country returns to six-nation talks on its weapons program.

"I have no illusion it will be easy," he said.

President Bush, speaking Friday in Vietnam at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, urged other nations to take a tough line on enforcing U.N. sanctions against North Korea, adopted after the communist nation's Oct. 9 test that may have only partially detonated.

"It's important for the world to see that the Security Council resolutions which were passed are implemented" against North Korea, Bush said. "So part of my discussions will be how we fully implement those sanctions that the world has asked for."

North Korea is also taking a hard line in advance of the six-party talks on its nuclear arms programs, which will include the United States, Russia, China, the two Koreas and Japan. The North walked away from the negotiating table last year after the U.S. campaigned to cut off the North's access to foreign banks over alleged money laundering and counterfeiting.

Kim Myong Gil, deputy chief of North Korea's mission to the United Nations in New York, told The Associated Press that progress at the negotiating table depends on whether the United States "has a sincere attitude and has willingness to improve its relations" with his country, a signal North Korea is unlikely to make opening concessions.

Pyongyang's nuclear test triggered international condemnation and U.N. sanctions. Three weeks later, North Korea agreed to resume talks after Washington said it would discuss its financial sanctions.

Kim said that discussions on easing sanctions would make "a good start" for the talks, scheduled to resume in December.

Choe Thae Bok, the head of the North's rubber-stamp parliament, said in remarks reported Friday by the official Korean Central News Agency that Pyongyang remained committed to denuclearization through dialogue but that "it was compelled to conduct the nuclear test by the U.S."

Choe told a conference in Iran on Monday that the Bush administration bore the historic responsibility "for having torpedoed the process of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula."

Washington, meanwhile, has said it agreed to consider easing sanctions only as a side issue to North Korea's nuclear disarmament.

In Japan, Blix said verification of North Korea disarmament would be especially tough given the secretive nation's history of restricting access by foreigners to much of the country. North Korea has limited the activities even of U.N. officials distributing food aid, he noted, and foreign weapons experts would likely be far less welcome.

The former chief weapons inspector warned against the temptation to sign a deal that doesn't guarantee full cooperation.

"Cosmetic inspection is worse than none because that can lull states into a confidence that is false, and you can have very unpleasant surprises" he said.

Blix, who questioned the Bush administration's assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the war, noted that most experts believe North Korea's test was only a partial success because it produced a relatively small blast. But the world should not be "complacent" about North Korea's nuclear capability, he said.

"If they didn't succeed this time, how much time will it take them before they perfect it?" he said.

Blix called the Oct. 9 test was "a demonstration" of what the small, highly-militarized nation could ultimately achieve.

Blix was in Japan as part of an international tour to discuss recommendations from a report issued in June by the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, which he heads.

The 227-page report highlights the dangers of nuclear weapons and presented 60 steps that countries and disarmament organizations should take, mindful of a goal to one day ban and eliminate all nuclear arms.

AP

Israel developing anti-militant "bionic hornet"

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel is using nanotechnology to try to create a robot no bigger than a hornet that would be able to chase, photograph and kill its targets, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.

The flying robot, nicknamed the "bionic hornet", would be able to navigate its way down narrow alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies such as rocket launchers, the daily Yedioth Ahronoth said.

It is one of several weapons being developed by scientists to combat militants, it said. Others include super gloves that would give the user the strength of a "bionic man" and miniature sensors to detect suicide bombers.

The research integrates nanotechnology into Israel's security department and will find creative solutions to problems the army has been unable to address, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres told Yedioth Ahronoth.

The video game industry's own clash of the titans reboots this week with the midnight launch of Sony's PlayStation 3 and Sunday's debut of Nintendo's Wii.
Full coverage

"The war in Lebanon proved that we need smaller weaponry. It's illogical to send a plane worth $100 million against a suicidal terrorist. So we are building futuristic weapons," Peres said.

The 34-day war in Lebanon ended with a U.N.-brokered ceasefire in mid-August. The war killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

Prototypes for the new weapons are expected within three years, he said

'Al-Qaida' hits back in Yemen

Militant attacks on Yemeni oil facilities and the arrest of alleged foreign insurgents in the capital suggest al-Qaida has resurfaced in Yemen in the wake of a mass prison breakout.

By Dominic Moran in Tel Aviv for ISN Security Watch (17/11/06)

Four would-be bombers and a security guard died on 15 September as militants driving two explosives-laden vehicles attempted to force their way into two oil refineries at Hadhramout and Marib in eastern Yemen.

An internet message posted on 7 November on a website used by militant Islamic groups claimed responsibility for the failed attacks on behalf of a group styling itself "al-Qaida in Yemen."

"Those operations were only the first spark, and what is coming shall be harsher and more bitter," the statement warned.

Commentators pointed to the lack of sophistication displayed in the refinery attacks as a sign that the group had been recruiting new members after a mass prison break by al-Qaida inmates in the capital Sana'a on 3 February.

Two of the 23 escapees died in the refinery attacks and two prominent members of the group, jailed in connection with the 6 October 2002 al-Qaida attack on the Limburg tanker, were killed a fortnight later in a special forces raid on two houses in the capital.

The US and its European allies have steadily developed their strategic alliance with Yemen in recent years in response to militant attacks and regional and tribal insurgencies.

Jamal Amer, editor-in-chief of Yemen's prominent independent newspaper al-Wasat, told ISN Security Watch that "America's relationship with Yemen is more of a security relationship than a political, or other relationship. With regard to US aid, they offer Yemen about US$100 million a year."

Amer also said the US "trains many intelligence officers and also trains the Yemeni army and the Republican Guard."

The apparent resurgence of al-Qaida in Yemen in the wake of the prison break reflects the prior successes of the army and intelligence agencies in disrupting the group's cell structure. It also indicates that the organization is comprised of a small core group of insurgents.

Shifting affiliations and associations mark the Islamic militancy in Yemen.

Members of the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan were accused of involvement in the al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbor on 12 October 2000, following the execution of their leader El-Hassan El-Mohader in 1999. The Aden-Abyan group had announced its affiliation to both al-Qaida and Islamic Jihad, and members of the group are believed to have since joined al-Qaida.

Jamal al-Badawi, who allegedly planned the Cole attack, was among the al-Qaida escapees, raising fears for the safety of international shipping routes and vessels docking in Aden.
Al-Qaida 'hub'

Experts differ widely on the nature of the ties binding the increasing number of groups claiming affiliation to al-Qaida following the destruction of the organization's Afghan bases in 2001. Some envision a coherent global insurgent network, while others see only a nominal connection between groups acting with complete independence.

Al-Qaida in Yemen sought to portray itself as under the direct control of the al-Qaida leadership in claiming the oil refinery attacks. "These operations came in response to directives from our emir Sheikh Osama bin Laden […] in which he ordered Muslims to hit the Western economy and stop the robbing of Muslims' wealth."

The reference to bin Laden tapes calling for attacks on oil facilities appears to reflect a lack of direct coordination between al-Qaida in Yemen and bin Laden's coterie.

Al-Qaida has strong roots in Yemen, with bin Laden accused by some experts of personal involvement in the movement's first operation, the bombing of a hotel in Aden on 22 December 1992.

"Yemen is a natural hub for al-Qaida. It is not a country that al-Qaida spread into accidentally," Yemen expert Professor Joseph Kostiner from the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv told ISN Security Watch. "So I don't know if you have a weakening or attenuation of al-Qaida and now a re-emergence. I think that they always existed as such […] Whenever they [al-Qaida] can they get stronger and they hit."

"It [al-Qaida in Yemen] is probably just a matter of a new cell or group of cells that have been able to grow," Kostiner said.

The group identifying itself as al-Qaida in Yemen does appear to cohere as a small, unitary movement that shares a common ideology, worldview and operational style with other elements of al-Qaida.
Foreign recruits

Yemen's Interior Ministry confirmed on Monday that seven foreigners - a Dane, a Briton, a Somali, three Australians and a European of unknown nationality - arrested in a secret police raid in Sana'a on 17 October, had confessed their involvement in an al-Qaida ring smuggling weapons to Somalia and in fundraising for terror attacks.

Two of the three Australians - Mohammed Ayub and Abdullah Ayub - are sons of the former leader of Jemaah Islamiah in Australia, Abdul Rahim Ayub. The radical Southeast Asian Islamic group is held responsible for a series of bombing attacks on the island of Bali and in Jakarta, and is thought to have close ties to al-Qaida.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) interviewed the mother of the two brothers in the month before their arrest in Sana'a, while Sydney's Daily Telegraph reported that the Ayubs had been linked to a foiled 2005 plan to bomb Sydney's Kings Cross Station.

The interview and subsequent arrests indicate a degree of security coordination between ASIO and Yemen's National Security Agency, established in 2002 to liaise with foreign intelligence services.

If demonstrated in court, the involvement of the Ayubs in al-Qaida weapons smuggling - likely intended for Somalia's Islamic Courts militia - could be seen as proof of ongoing connections and communications between jihadi groups in the Middle East and worldwide.

This impression was further bolstered by a UN report released this week that accused Hizbollah of training and arming Islamic Courts fighters.
Accommodation

The controversial head of Sana'a's Al-Iman religious university, Sheikh Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, denied reports that the three Australian al-Qaida suspects attended his institution, accusing reporters of involvement in "a foreign campaign against [the] university and Yemen."

On 24 February 2004, the US Treasury Department branded al-Zindani a "specially designated global terrorist" for his alleged financing of al-Qaida in Yemen, describing the move as a step toward tightening the "financial noose around al-Qaida."

Kostiner believes it is likely that al-Zindani, who was with bin Laden in Afghanistan, still maintains links with the al-Qaida leadership "despite the fact that he is head of the university."

"In my opinion, he wouldn't be able to make official contacts, or meet him [bin Laden], but I'm sure that there are people that are go-betweens between them," he said.

The Yemeni government has refused to take action against the influential cleric, who leads the Salafist movement within the opposition Islah party.

"The Yemeni president [Ali Abdullah al-Saleh] a few days ago visited the university and denied the accusation that it was connected to terrorism. [He] said that his presence at the university was evidence that they were not connected to terrorism," Amer related.

"Before the [September presidential] election he also found government positions for all of the graduates from al-Iman. But the issue of whether or not al-Iman University supports terrorism is still present," he said.
'Hatchet man'

Islamic extremism and tribal violence in Yemen is fed by the slow pace of civil and political reform and by widespread poverty.

Ranked 151st of 177 countries on the UN Human Development Index, Yemen is the poorest Arab state.

"I think Ali Abdullah al-Saleh has been trying to get friendly relations with the United States for years. Because after the fall of the Soviet Union there was no other important force in the region, in his opinion, that could guarantee Yemen's safety and security, even against Saudi Arabia," Kostiner said. "After the hitting of the Cole, he [became] a hatchet-man against terrorism in Yemen."

"He [Saleh] cannot afford to fully alienate the religious and radical elements in Yemen by embarking on a full alliance with the United States," he added.

Al-Saleh was on hand for the opening of a donor conference in London on Wednesday in which officials from Arab states, the UN, EU and World Bank are expected to pledge up to US$5 billion for poverty relief efforts.

Al-Saleh has introduced limited democratic reforms in recent years, winning 77.2 percent in the September presidential election after initially signaling his desire to step down. Opposition parties believe that the president is seeking to secure the succession of his son Ahmed to the premiership.

Amer said the opposition alleged widespread fraud in the presidential poll and "was complaining about the president's use of the state apparatus or abilities [for electoral purposes]. But America was satisfied with the president's stance in fighting terrorism."

The freedom of the judiciary and press remain major issues. Amer was abducted and assaulted on 23 August 2005. "In the case of my kidnapping by armed men who were in an army vehicle, this was not investigated. Also some of my colleagues in journalism have been attacked."

"I was abducted because of al-Wasat paper's report about government scholarships for poor Yemeni students going to the children of government officials," Amer said.

With the Bush administration pre-occupied with Iraq and quietly ending its drive for the democratization of authoritarian Arab regimes, al-Saleh is unlikely to come under significant pressure to introduce substantial reforms that would break the hold of his General Peoples' Congress (GPC) on power.

Dr Dominic Moran is ISN Security Watch's senior correspondent and analyst in the Middle East.

KOSOVO: PREMIER TO VISIT MOSOW

Pristina, 17 Nov. (AKI) - Kosovo prime minister Agim Ceku will visit Moscow on 30 November, in an effort to soften Russian opposition to independence for the province which has been under United Nations control since 1999. The visit was officially confirmed in Moscow and Pristina on Friday, but Russian sources said that Moscow was in an embarrassing position, seeking not to offend Belgrade which opposes independence demanded by majority ethnic Albanians.

Meanwhile, two members of the Kosovo ethnic Albanian negotiating team on the status of Kosovo, Hasim Taci and Veton Suroi, said after talking to the United States officials in Washington that they got the assurances that the decision on Kosovo independence has already been made and that Washington was now “harmonizing its position with the European Union and other international factors”.

"From all American officials I talked to I got the assurances that the status decision has been made,” Taci told Pristina Television 21. “Kosovo will be an independent state with sovereignty on its entire territory, with an international civilian mission and NATO military presence,” Taci said.

Russia is the only member of a six-nation Contact Group for Kosovo that has publicly opposed the independence of the province in which ethnic Albanians outnumber the remaining Serbs by 17 to one. Other members of the group, which should make a final status proposal to the U.N. Security Council, are the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy.

Ceku has been on a tour of neighboring Balkan countries this week, including Greece, lobbying for independence. He visited Slovenia on Friday and will proceed to Italy. But Russia has remained the main obstacle to independence and has occasionally hinted it might use veto power in the Security Council to block it.

Political analysts in Moscow said there were more advantages than damage in approving Ceku’s three-day visit, but pointed out Russian officials were at pains how to treat him. "If he’s treated as prime minister of a country, then his visit could be interpreted as factual recognition of Kosovo as an independent country,” said Aleksandar Konovalov of the Moscow Institute for Strategic Studies. “Moscow is in a difficult situation and wonders what to do and how to treat Ceku’s visit,” he added.

A senior foreign ministry official, Mikhail Kaminin, said Ceku’s visit was in a “parliamentary line”, but parliament officials denied that such an invitation was extended to Ceku. In any case, analysts agree that Moscow has assessed it could strengthen its international negotiating position by receiving Ceku.

Eight rounds of UN-brokered talks on the Kosovo status yielded no results in the past eight months and chief U.N. negotiator Martti Ahtisaari was expected to make a status proposal to the Security Council in the end of January, immediately after parliamentary elections in Serbia.

Belgrade opposes independence of Kosovo, though it has no more authority there since 1999, when NATO bombing pushed Serbian forces out of the province, following an ethnic Albanian rebellion and mass exodus from the province.

Al Qaida 'challenges US interests'

Reuters

Washington: Al Qaida is reinvigorating its operations from havens on the Afghan-Pakistani border, American intelligence officials said.

It poses a growing challenge to US interests in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the officials said.

Five years after the September 11 attacks and the fall of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the network led by Osama Bin Laden has replaced leaders killed or captured by the United States and its allies with new seasoned militants.

"It has shown resilience," CIA Director Michael Hayden told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"The loss of a series of Al Qaida leaders since 9/11 has been substantial. But it's also been mitigated by what is, frankly, a pretty deep bench of low-ranking personnel capable of stepping up to assume leadership positions," Hayden said.

"These new leaders average over 40 years of age and two decades of involvement in global jihadism."

Hayden was testifying at a Senate hearing on Iraq and Afghanistan along with Army Lt Gen Michael Maples, director of the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency.

Sectarian fighting between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, and increasing attacks by Al Qaida-backed Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, worry lawmakers about the direction of US policy in the Middle East and South Asia.

Open-source info may help establish integrated intelligence community

KISSIMMEE, Fla. (GCP)— Douglas Naquin, director of the Open Source Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the audience attending the GeoINT 2006 conference that John Negroponte, director of National Intelligence, believes that "open source can be the first manifestation of an integrated community."

In fact, the development and sharing of open-source information may be the first area where real collaboration among agencies in the intelligence community — a requirement in the post-9/11 world — is accomplished.

The OSC was established just a year ago, incorporating as its foundation the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a division of the CIA. Its mission is to mine "the world's unguarded knowledge," from all the channels available — the Internet, print, broadcast media, podcasts, anything that contains information, in any language, from any country — and glean all the data contained there. The data is archived, and OSC analysts can then draw upon it in response to queries from all levels of government; Naquin said that in addition to the intelligence community, the center fields requests from the Defense Department, civilian agencies and state and local law enforcement.

In addition to fielding analytical requests, the center is looking to establish open-source "franchises" and providing training, technology guidance and best practices to other governmental operations that have their own needs for open-source information, Naquin said. There is such a large volume of information globally, this is one way to help cope with the magnitude of data, he said.

Historically, the intelligence community has not been that interested in publicly available information; the emphasis has been on developing covert information.

But "there just might be relatively — relatively — fewer secrets today," Naquin said. The advent of information channels such as blogs and YouTube increases the likelihood that something once considered secret will make its way into the public discourse, he said.

The center also has taken pains to establish metrics to validate its usefulness, Naquin said. For instance, he set a target for this year that 25 percent of all the analysts trained in using open source should come from outside the CIA.

"On Sept. 30 we met our target," he said.

Another measure is in information sharing. The center tracks how many datasets it buys on behalf of agencies, so the metric is the economy of scale — how many agencies are saved the expense of purchasing the commercial data because they can access it through OSC.

The upfront aim of measuring the center's success may be paying off.

"This year... we have a plus-up in our base" budget, Naquin said. "The stars are aligned as well as they've been in my lifetime for open source."

2006 incidents of radioactive materials trafficking

2006 articles on incidents related to radioactive materials:

1. ( 18.4% ) Unidenitified Number of Radioactive Sources Still Missing in Chechnya
Abstract: 20030214. Abstract Number:. 20060060. Headline:. Unidentified Number of Radioactive Sources Still Missing in Chechnya. Date:. 3 February 2006. Bibliography:. RIA Novosti-Yug (South) in Integrum Techno database, www.integrum.ru. Author:. Orig. Src.. Case:. Material:. Radioactive materials. Abstract: Chechen environ
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2. ( 6.8% ) Belgorod Customs Detain a Ukrainian Carrying Radioactive Devices
Abstract: 20030214. Abstract Number:. 20060050. Headline:. Radioactive Cargo Stopped at the Border. Date:. 7 February 2006. Bibliography:. Bel.ru; in Integrum Techno database, www.integrum.ru. Author:. Orig. Src.. Case:. Material:. Abstract: A Ukrainian citizen who attempted to transport two radioactive de
- size 3,891 bytes

3. ( 6.8% ) A Truck Emitting Radiation Detained in the Port of Vladivostok
Abstract: 20030214. Abstract Number:. 20060070. Headline:. A Radioactive Truck Detained in the Entry to the Port of Vladivostok. Date:. 21 February 2006. Bibliography:. Novyy Region (Dalniy Vostok) in Integrum Techno database, www.integrum.ru. Author:. Orig. Src.. Case:. Material:. Abstract: A truck was det
- size 3,576 bytes

4. ( 5% ) Radioactive Semi-precious Stones Seized in Belarus
Abstract: 20030214. Abstract Number:. 20060040. Headline:. Radioactive Cargo with Semi-precious Stone Charoit Seized in Belarus. Date:. 10 February 2006. Bibliography:. ITAR-TASS; in Integrum Techno database, www.integrum.ru. Author:. Orig. Src.. Case:. Material:. Scam/Contaminated materials. Abstract: A cargo contain
- size 3,303 bytes

5. ( 3.3% ) Fast Neutron Source Found in Scrap Metal in the Seaport of Vladivostok
Abstract: 20030214. Abstract Number:. 20060080. Headline:. Neutron Radiation Source Detected in the Port of Vladivostok. Date:. 24 March 2006. Bibliography:. ForUm; in Integrum Techno database, www.integrum.ru. Author:. Orig. Src.. Case:. Material:. Abstract: A radioactive source was discovered in a load of scrap metal that
- size 3,118 bytes

6. ( 3.3% ) Nautical Device Containing Radium-226 Found in the Port of Vladivostok
Abstract: 20030214. Abstract Number:. 20060020. Headline:. Powerful Radioactive Source Found in the Port of Vladivostok. Date:. 31 January 2006. Bibliography:. ITAR-TASS; in Integrum Techno Database, www.integrum.ru. Author:. Orig. Src.. Case:. Material:. Radium-226. Abstract: A nautical device emitting elevated leve
- size 3,123 bytes

7. ( 1.6% ) Police Detains 22 kg of Uranium Stolen from Elektrostal
Abstract: 20060110. Abstract Number:. Headline:. Machine Building Plant Employee Tried to Sell Low Enriched Uranium. Date:. 13 April 2006. Bibliography:. Moskovskiy komsomolets; in Integrum Techno database, www.integrum.ru. Author:. Orig. Src.. Case:. Material:. LEU. Abstract: Russian police detained two men during a
- size 3,432 bytes

8. ( 1.6% ) Radioactive Military Instruments Detained on the Ukrainian-Polish Border
Abstract: 20030214. Abstract Number:. 20060100. Headline:. Ukrainians Tried to Smuggle Military Equipment with Enhanced Radiation Level to Poland. Date:. 20 April 2006. Bibliography:. UNIAN. Novosti [News] in Integrum Techno database, www.integrum.ru. Author:. Orig. Src.. Case:. Material:. Abstract: A cargo with mi
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U.S. Arms Still Dominate International Market, Russia Leader to Developing World

On Oct. 23, 2006, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released the most recent version of its annual arms transfer report, “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1998-2005.” The report reveals that arms transfer agreements worldwide amounted to $44.2 billion in 2005, the largest total for arms agreements in the last eight years, and well above the 2004 sum of nearly $37 billion. Of the 2005 total, $30.2 billion, or 68.4 percent, of arms transfer agreements were made with developing countries, the highest total since 1998. In 2005, $17.7 billion out of $25.4 billion in worldwide arms deliveries (or 69.9 percent) went to developing nations.

The CRS report (also known as the Grimmett Report after its author, CRS Specialist in National Defense Richard Grimmett) defines developing nations as all countries except the United States, Russia, the European nations, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. The report examines 14 categories of conventional weapons: tanks and self propelled guns, artillery, armored personnel carriers and armored cars, major surface combatants, minor surface combatants, submarines, guided missile patrol boats, supersonic combat aircraft, subsonic combat aircraft, other aircraft, helicopters, surface to air missiles, surface to surface missiles, and anti ship missiles.

For the period from 2002 to 2005, the United States ranks as the world’s largest exporter of arms to developing nations, although in 2005, the United States fell behind Russia and France respectively to place third in terms of new arms export agreements concluded with developing nations; in 2005, the United States concluded $6.2 billion worth of agreements, or 20.5 percent of all arms transfer agreements with the developing world. The United States did remain at the top of the list for total amount of arms deliveries made to developing countries, delivering $8.1 billion worth of weapons, or 45.8 percent of the world total. Russia was the second largest arms exporter to the developing world from 2002 to 2005, but first in new arms agreements with the developing world in 2005, concluding $7 billion in new agreements (23.2 percent of the world total). Russia also placed second for total arms deliveries to the developing world in 2005, with $2.7 billion worth of deliveries, accounting for 15.2 percent of the world total. With $6.3 billion (or 20.9 percent of the world total), France moved into second place for new arms agreements with the developing world, whereas the United Kingdom was third in arms deliveries to the developing world with $2.4 billion, or 13.6 percent.

Much has been made of Russia’s current billing as the world leader in global arms agreements to the developing world. However, perhaps more significantly, the data show that all five permanent members of the UN Security Council (P-5) hold the top five positions for both global arms agreements and deliveries in 2005. World wide, the P-5 countries (the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom) together were responsible for approximately 75 percent of new arms agreements in 2005 (at a value of nearly $33 billion) and approximately 79 percent of arms deliveries, which totaled nearly $20 billion.

From the perspective of the largest recipients of weapons in the developing world in 2005, India completed the most arms transfer agreements in the developing world ($5.4 billion), followed by Saudi Arabia ($3.4 billion), and China ($2.8 billion). In terms of deliveries, however, Saudi Arabia ranked first with $3.5 billion in deliveries in 2005, and was followed by Israel ($1.7 billion), and India ($1.6 billion).

In addition to the raw data, the Grimmett report notes several trends in the developing world arms market, namely that purchasing is restricted by limited financial resources, and that few countries in Latin America and Africa can afford the major military modernization that yields high-valued arms agreements. Large-scale purchases of significant military equipment, therefore, are limited to a few countries, particularly China, India and a few others in the Near East.

The primary market for U.S. arms in the developing world continues to be the Near East, and the United States remains the largest arms exporter to that region (defined as Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen). Between 2002 and 2005, U.S. transfer agreements with the Near East came to $17.6 billion, or almost 56 percent of total U.S. agreements with the developing world, which marks a decrease from the period from 1998 to 2001, during which almost 74 percent ($26.1 billion) of U.S. agreements with the developing world were with Near East countries.

While the Near East continues to be a lucrative market for arms transfers, Asia has recently emerged as the primary overall destination for arms within the developing world, accounting for 48.4 percent of all arms transfer agreements between 2002 and 2005. India accounts in large part for Asia’s dominance of arms purchases, as it was ranked as the developing world’s leading purchaser of arms in 2005, accounting for nearly 18 percent of all arms transfer agreements to the developing world. China also contributed to the rise in Asian arms consumption, ranking third out of all developing countries, with $2.8 billion in arms transfer agreements concluded in 2005. Russia has typically dominated arms agreements and deliveries to the Indian market, but in recent years, India has made an effort to expand its supply base. In 2004, India purchased the Phalcon early warning defense system aircraft from Israel for $1.1 billion, and in 2005 it purchased six Scorpene diesel attack submarines from France for $3.5 billion. Despite the diversified Indian supply market, Russia is still the leading supplier of arms to Asia, being responsible for 36.7 percent (or $16 billion) of arms transfer agreements to that region.

Although challenged by Russia and China, the United States will continue its dominance in the global arms market for the foreseeable future. Even though Russia and China have emerged as major trading partners with the developing world, the demand for U.S. weapons and weapons technology remains quite high. Traditional U.S. allies in Europe and the Near East, as well as emerging military partners in Africa and Asia, will continue to prefer U.S. weapons to those produced by Russia or China, due to the perceived superiority of U.S. weapons and their interest in gaining U.S. favor. Moreover, the United States is continuing its troubling trend of providing substantial amounts of weaponry to countries that support the global war on terrorism. Indeed, in 25 countries noted as key allies in the war on terrorism that were receiving little or no U.S. military assistance prior to Sept. 11, 2001, over 50 percent made more agreements for U.S. arms in the four years since 2001 than they did in the preceding 12 years. As the United States continues to use arm sales as a key tool in its foreign policy toolbox, U.S. arms transfers will remain at record totals.

For more information, please see the CRS Report for Congress, “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1998-2005” by Richard F. Grimmett, available at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL33696.pdf, and CDI’s analysis of U.S. arms transfers to 25 key allies in the global war on terrorism at www.cdi.org.