World economy: Exposing the risks
FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNITIf financial markets doubted China’s rising economic influence, they don’t any longer. A plunge in China’s stockmarket on February 27th triggered a chain reaction, punishing equities in most countries, unnerving currency markets and curbing investor appetite for risky assets. The surge in worldwide volatility brought together on one day nearly every major risk threatening the global economy: speculative investment in China, the yen carry trade, overvalued emerging markets, and fears of a sharp decline in the US dollar.
Nothing fundamental has changed in the global economy in the last day, and the equity sell-off will probably be short-lived. (China’s stockmarket opened lower on Wednesday.) But the sweeping reaction to events in China—and to other big risks, such as a slump in the US economy—says much about the precarious state of financial markets, and suggests volatility will increase. One closely watched indicator of US stock market volatility, the Chicago Board of Trade’s VIX index, soared by more than 60% on Tuesday.
China’s Shanghai and Shenzen 300 Index fell 9.2% yesterday, the most in 10 years, after the government a day earlier said it approved a task force to clamp down on illegal share offerings and rampant stockmarket speculation. The Shanghai and Shenzen index has risen by 135% in the last 12 months and Chinese officials openly worry about an equity bubble. A few years ago, a sharp fall in China’s murky stockmarket would have meant little internationally; today, with China increasingly driving global growth, any disturbance in the world’s third-largest economy has the potential to create contagion in both rich countries and emerging markets. Other factors, though, also contributed to Tuesday’s global panic: January US durable goods orders, a measure of business investment, fell by the most in three years.
Just a sell-off?
Yesterday’s global stockmarket retreat was probably just that; a much-needed sell-off after a period of strong gains. The US Dow Jones Industrials fell 3.3% and the European DJ Stoxx 50 dropped 2.6%. The carnage was worse in emerging markets: Brazil’s stock exchange fell by more than 6% and Mexico’s by almost that amount. Equities also declined in Russia, Turkey and most other emerging markets. But this has happened before—notably in April/May 2006, and the markets soon recovered. Nothing in China’s stockmarket rout, in particular, suggests deeper weakness in the economy. Global investors were looking for an opportunity to take profits, and an equity slump in China was a suitable excuse. The sell-off was also a boon for bonds in the US and Europe, as nervous investors sought a safe haven. The price on the benchmark US Treasury note rose by two-thirds of a percentage point and the yield fell by 9 basis points.
That said, Tuesday’s turmoil exposes deeper fissures in a global economy that has been kept afloat for years by cheap money. US equity markets had been rising more or less steadily for the last eight months, despite slowing economic growth and a declining housing market. Markets have been even more buoyant in Europe. Investors in emerging markets have thrown caution to the wind: risky markets in such far-flung places as Russia, Argentina and Egypt have attracted so much capital that government bond spreads over US Treasuries have plummeted. This heedless approach to risk has been epitomised by the so-called carry trade, in which investors borrow in low-yielding currencies such as the yen and the Swiss franc and invest in securities that bring a higher return, typically in emerging markets.
Carry trade
On Tuesday, the carry trade showed signs of unwinding, at least temporarily. The yen was the world’s best-performing currency, rising by more than 2% against the US dollar as investors sold emerging-market currencies and bought Japan’s to close out speculative positions. The Swiss franc also rose against the dollar, by more than 1%. Most of the popular carry-trade investment currencies, including those in New Zealand, Iceland and South Africa, fell by between 1% and 2.5%.
Economists have been expecting the carry trade to unravel for more than a year, to no avail, and nothing that happened yesterday suggests a sustained reversal. Interest rates remain very low in Japan and Switzerland, and the opportunity to earn profits by borrowing those currencies and investing elsewhere remains attractive. But the carry trade also depends on stable exchange rates; if Tuesday’s gyrations signal a period of greater volatility, the appeal of the carry trade will fade. It is too soon to draw that conclusion; the trade has slowed before, only to accelerate when volatility eased. The Bank of Japan’s decision last week to raise the country’s benchmark interest rate should have depressed the carry trade, but the central bank’s signal that rates won’t rise very sharply during the next year had the effect of reassuring carry trade investors.
The sell-off in emerging markets also highlights the frothy valuations in many of these countries; equity markets in India and Russia, for example, have doubled or tripled in the last two years. Although emerging-market bourses declined by around 25% in April and May 2006, they later rebounded and pushed even higher by year’s end. Morgan Stanley Capital International’s emerging markets index, a composite of 23 stockmarkets, has doubled in the last three years (it fell 3% on Tuesday.) Another measure of investor risk, the composite spread between emerging-market government debt and US Treasuries, has fallen to a record-low of around 165 basis points this year from a 10-year average of around 600 basis points. (The spread on Tuesday was as much as 12 basis points higher than the day before.) The search for yield in emerging markets has, despite ever higher valuations, been relentless.
Chinese froth
The tumult in China’s own market also points to the speculative nature of investment there. Some sectors in China, especially property and construction, have experienced significant overinvestment; surplus capacity in China’s steel industry, for example, exceeds Japan’s entire output of steel. China’s stock market, in particular, has been a casino for the last year. While China’s economy continues to grow rapidly, the government is adopting policies to restrain investment, and there is no clear evidence of overheating. That said, the government’s struggle to manage the stockmarket surge suggests that its wider management of the economy may not always go smoothly.
The global equity sell-off, which was partly fueled by weak US economic data, also suggests the US dollar may be in for a rough ride. The dollar fell sharply at the end of 2006 as the economy slowed, but recent buoyancy in US growth and a likely delay in interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve have served to support the dollar this year. The US economy, despite weakness in manufacturing and housing, continues to expand, and the Economist Intelligence Unit still expects growth of around 2.5% in 2007. But the dollar remains vulnerable to even the slightest hint of bad economic news, and with the European and Japanese economies performing well, investors have alternatives to the US.
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Selected CRS Reports
Analysts at the Congressional Research Service continue to churn out reports for Congress faster than they can reasonably be digested. Not all of them are of broad interest, nor do they consistently offer original content or significant analytical insight.
But as long as Congress refuses to make them available online to the general public, there seems to be value in our helping to do so. Recent CRS products that are not already available in other online public collections such as OpenCRS and the State Department's Foreign Press Center include the following. "Is China a Threat to the U.S. Economy?," updated January 23, 2007. "China's Trade with the United States and the World," updated January 4, 2007. "Yemen: Current Conditions and U.S. Relations," updated January 4, 2007. "State and Urban Area Homeland Security Plans and Exercises: Issues for the 110th Congress," updated January 3, 2007. "The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development," updated January 19, 2007. "Environmental Activities of the U.S. Coast Guard," updated January 16, 2007. "The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA): A Summary," updated January 3, 2007. "Countries of the World and International Organizations: Sources of Information," updated January 8, 2007.
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Venezuela to purchase surface-to-air missiles
Russian media has reported that Hugo Chavez has expressed interest in purchasing Russian made Almaz-Antey Tor-M1 SA-15 surface to air missiles. Russia will provide training and maintenance for $300 million.
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Canada's Parliament scraps 2 anti-terror measures
Two anti-terror measures adopted as part of Canada's response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks will expire Thursday after opposition lawmakers agreed they were an unnecessary infringement on civil liberties.
The measures empower authorities to arrest and detain suspects for three days without charge and to compel individuals with knowledge of terrorist activity to testify before a judge. Neither has ever been applied.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Conservative Party wanted to extend them three years, but his minority government needed the opposition's support.
The motion was defeated 159-124 in the House of Commons Tuesday after all three opposition parties voted against it.
"These two provisions especially have done nothing to fight against terrorism, have not been helpful and have continued to create some risk for civil liberties," Liberal leader Stephane Dion said.
The vote came just days after Canada's Supreme Court struck down a law allowing the government to detain foreign terror suspects indefinitely while the courts review their deportation orders.
Human rights activists hailed Friday's ruling as a victory for those who believe fundamental rights have been curtailed in the name of national security after Sept. 11.
That law and the two measures expiring Thursday were all part of a sweeping package of antiterrorism laws passed weeks after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
Although some abstained, most Liberal Party lawmakers voted Tuesday against extending the measures, although the opposition party was in power when the laws were passed.
Harper predicted the Liberals will be defeated in the next election because of their refusal to back his proposed extension.
"This issue is not going to go away. It's going to haunt the Liberal Party from now until the election campaign," Harper said. That campaign could begin as early as this spring.
"Any party that doesn't take the national security of Canadians seriously will never be chosen by Canadians to form the government of Canada."
Ahead of the vote, relatives of Canadians killed in the Sept. 11 attacks appealed to lawmakers to retain the security measures.
Maureen Basnicki, whose husband, Ken, was one of 24 Canadians killed in the attack on the World Trade Center, said a rejection would seriously diminish Canada's capacity to fight terrorism.
"We want to protect other Canadians from the devastation that we experienced," Basnicki said.
Stockwell Day, Canada's public safety minister, said Canada was sending the wrong message to allies and potential terrorists.
Although the provisions were never used, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was planning to use the investigative hearing provision to compel 15 individuals to testify about their knowledge of Canada's worst terrorist attack - the 1985 downing of Air India Flight 182, which claimed 329 lives.
AP
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US won't extradite indicted CIA agents to Italy
The United States will refuse any Italian extradition request for CIA agents indicted in the alleged abduction of an Egyptian cleric in Milan, a senior US official said Wednesday.
"We've not got an extradition request from Italy. If we got an extradition request from Italy, we would not extradite US officials to Italy," John Bellinger, legal adviser to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told journalists after meeting legal advisers to EU governments.
Milan prosecutors want the Italian government to forward to Washington their request for the extradition of the 26 Americans, mostly CIA agents. The previous government of Silvio Berlusconi refused, and Premier Romano Prodi's center-left government has indicated it would not press Washington on the issue.
The 26 are accused in the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003. Nasr was allegedly taken to Aviano Air Base near Venice, Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany, and then to Egypt, where he was held for four years and, according to his lawyer, tortured. He was freed last week by an Egyptian court that ruled his detention was "unfounded."
AP
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Pakistan: Teacher suspected to be US spy beheaded
Suspected Islamic militants captured and beheaded a schoolteacher in Pakistan's wild Afghan border area for allegedly spying for the United States, an official said Wednesday.
The man's body was found early Tuesday in a large sack dumped by a road near Jandola, a town in the South Waziristan tribal district, the local security official said. He asked not to be identified due to the sensitive nature of his job.
A note found with the beheaded man's body identified him as "Akhtar Usman, the one who spied for America," the official said.
He said the forehead of the man's severed head was inscribed with the word for "hypocrite" in Urdu, Pakistan's main language.
Usman, in his 30s, was a teacher at an Islamic school in nearby North Waziristan and was known to have spoken out against militants in the area, the official said.
AP
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By JOHN T. BENNETT The Pentagon must create a new force of experts to combat growing threats in cyberspace, a task that will require changes in how the military’s high-technology experts are trained, educated and retained, senior U.S. military officials say.
But, according to several officials, the military is still grappling with several key questions about just how officials should create such a cyber fighting force, including:
• What skills will cyberwarriors need?
• What training and education will they need?
• How will the services retain them? Often, these personnel opt to jump to the private sector – where salaries are bountiful.
“It takes five years to build someone who can do this,” Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Jon Davis, the deputy commander of Strategic Command’s Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare, said last week during an industry conference in Alexandria, Va. Then, Davis said, “The services have to figure out how to keep guys in the ‘cyber cockpit.’”
The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review highlighted the growing strategic importance of cyberspace, noting it plays an increasingly important role in U.S. operations. The Air Force last fall unveiled plans to establish its first Cyberspace Command. Some military officials are debating how the military should be organized and armed — from a legal and hardware standpoint — for cyber conflict.
Military officials and information security experts say the new cadre is needed to meet the growing potential threats of al-Qaida and rising national powers like China.
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Hezbollah building new military line
BEIRUT, Lebanon (UPI) - The armed wing of the Lebanese Hezbollah organization is openly rebuilding a military line further back from the Israeli border along with an arsenal.
A Times of London correspondent reported the build-up is occurring out of sight of the 12,000-strong U.N. Interim Force In Lebanon, or UNIFIL, although peacekeepers said they are aware of what's going on.
Hezbollah critic Walid Jumblatt told the newspaper Shiites are buying land to create a contiguous belt through the mountains north of the Litani river.
"The state of Hezbollah is already in existence in south Lebanon," Jumblatt said.
For 34 days last July and August, Hezbollah militia and Israeli troops fought along the border, killing more than 1,100 Lebanese civilians, 116 Israeli soldiers and 43 Israeli civilians.
A Western diplomat who asked not to be identified said while Hezbollah has admitted to rearming, the strategic land acquisitions suggest more is going on.
"We have evidence to support their presence there. It seems to be an expansion of what was there before the war," the diplomat said.
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Baloch Nationalists Up the Ante in Iran
By Chris ZambelisA February 14 car bomb attack against a bus carrying Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) units outside of Zahedan in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Balochistan is the latest example of tensions and violence between ethnic Baloch nationalists and Tehran. Eleven IRGC members were killed and scores more wounded in the bombing. Baloch insurgents also allegedly targeted a school located near the site of the initial strike on February 16, culminating in a firefight between rebels and Iranian security forces (Fars News Agency, February 15; Rooz, February 21).
Iranian authorities accused Jundallah (Soldiers of God) of orchestrating the attacks. Jundallah has a history of violence against Tehran dating back to 2003, including attacks against Iranian security forces and other symbols of the regime. Unlike most ethnic Persians and other Iranians who are Shiite Muslims, the vast majority of ethnic Baloch are Sunnis. Sistan-Balochistan is one of Iran's most underserved and impoverished regions (Terrorism Monitor, June 29, 2006). The province is also the scene of frequent military crackdowns by Iranian security forces. As a result, Iranian Baloch harbor deep resentment toward Tehran and feel a sense of solidarity with their kin in Pakistan's neighboring province of Balochistan, who are also engaged in a violent struggle for independence, and the small Baloch community in Afghanistan in what Baloch nationalists refer to collectively as "Greater Balochistan." Because of their Sunni background, Tehran accuses Baloch nationalists, in an attempt to tarnish the group's image, of having ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, despite a lack of evidence (Terrorism Monitor, June 29, 2006).
Shortly after the attacks, Tehran announced that it had detained men allegedly involved in the bombing who later provided televised confessions of having received foreign funding and material support to sow ethnic and sectarian strife to destabilize Iran. Iran then accused the United States and other foreign elements of backing Jundallah, possibly from Pakistani territory with Islamabad's support, despite Pakistan's history of cooperating with Iran to suppress Baloch nationalism. Tehran then publicized photographs of what appear to be U.S.-made ammunition and explosive materials allegedly uncovered at a Jundallah hideout (Fars News Agency, February 18). Interestingly, the United States is known to have provided the Northern Alliance units with the same material during the invasion of Afghanistan. A number of sources, however, claim that the images were doctored using Photoshop software (http://www.iraqslogger.com).
Iran also accused Abdulmalak Rigi, the group's leader, of appearing on a television station run by the People's Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI) minutes before the February 16 attacks, thus implying a link between Jundallah and other Iranian opposition groups. In a February 17 statement on its official website, PMOI dismissed these claims as "propaganda" devised by Iranian intelligence to tarnish the reputation of PMOI. The PMOI, also known as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), is affiliated with the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an umbrella organization of anti-regime movements that include ethnic Baloch and other Iranian minority-led groups that seek to overthrow the Shiite Islamist-led government (http://www.ncr-iran.org).
Jundallah traditionally claims responsibility for its attacks early. The group eventually took credit for its actions under a different moniker. In a public statement issued on February 20 by the self-proclaimed "former Jundallah of Iran" and "People's Resistance Movement of Iran" (PRMI), the group justified what it labeled as "recent defensive measures" to prevent Iran's "genocide" against the Baloch people. PRMI also declared its intention "to change the present regime and establish a new system in Iran in which every Iranian enjoys equal opportunity and equal rights." The group adamantly denies any links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, as well as foreign governments such as the United States and Great Britain: "We do not receive any support, arms, ammunition, training and financial help from any country. In such conditions it is not easy for us to live peacefully. Yet, we have been able to maintain our independence in such [an] important geopolitical center and battlefield" (http://www.radiobalochi.org).
Tehran's claims of a foreign hand behind Baloch nationalism mirror previous allegations of U.S. and British support for armed uprisings among ethnic Arabs (Ahvazi) in Iran's southwestern province of Khuzestan (also known as Arabistan) and ethnic Kurdish nationalists in Iranian Kurdistan. Tehran is also attempting to counter pressure from Washington over its nuclear program and influence among Iraqi Shiite militias by casting the United States as a destabilizing force in the region. In this context, groups such as PRMI see growing U.S. pressure on Iran as an opportunity to bolster their own positions.
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By Pascale Combelles Siegel
In the early hours of February 14, the anti-terrorism directorate of the French national police arrested 11 French citizens, including four women, on suspicion that they were part of a network recruiting volunteers to go to Iraq to fight the U.S.-led coalition. On February 17, the French prosecutor charged six men with "criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist venture" (e.g. facilitating the infiltration of jihadis into Iraq via Syria). Three of them have also been placed under formal investigation for financing international terrorism. Four have been remanded in custody, while two have been released with judicial supervision. The four women were released on February 15 and the last man was released on February 16. The names of those involved, however, have not been released.
French authorities have known since the summer of 2004 that some young Muslims living in France were seeking to infiltrate Iraq to fight against coalition forces. Between July and October 2004, three young Muslim French citizens were killed in the Sunni Triangle area of Iraq. By December 2004, the French anti-terrorism services identified "Fawzi D.," a French Muslim, as an amir of an Iraqi armed group (estimated at 20 people) fighting against the U.S. Marines in Fallujah. These deaths prompted the French prosecutor's office to open an investigation into the networks providing assistance to jihadis infiltrating Iraq. The investigation led to the dismantlement of at least three networks in Paris, Tours and Montpellier in the past two years (NouvelObs.com, January 26, 2005). According to press reports, the recruitment networks of would-be jihadis bound for Iraq used the Mosque of Adda'Wa in the 19th arrondissement of Paris and a musalla (prayer hall) in Levallois (a working suburb of Paris). The Levallois prayer hall was closed in 2004 while the Mosque of Adda'Wa was raided by police in December of 2005.
This latest operation was the result of a different, joint Franco-Belgian surveillance operation that began in May 2006. Both French and Belgian authorities have praised the cooperation effort as "excellent" (20minutes.fr, February 17). According to the Paris prosecutor's office, "This [operation] is the result of an exemplary cooperation between the French and Belgian services, which took the novel approach of mutual assistance, with the creation of a joint investigative unit." The joint surveillance operation led to 11 arrests in France and nine more in Belgium on suspicion of ties to a terrorist group. Six of the 11 were charged in France, while the nine Belgians were released after being interrogated.
These operations provide insight into the path of young French Muslims who leave their lives behind to face certain death in Iraq. The would-be jihadis trying to infiltrate Iraq are French Muslim citizens. They are the sons of Muslim immigrants born in France. They closely identify with the idea, repeated ad nauseum by jihadi propaganda, that the Muslim nation is suffering great injustices at the hands of the West in general and of the United States in particular. They do not necessarily come from destitute socio-economic backgrounds; two of those arrested in Montpellier, for example, were students in telecommunications and electronic engineering.
In these latest arrests, according to the police, the radicalization process began in Egypt. The recruits traveled to radical schools in Egypt, where they learned Arabic and underwent ideological and religious training (in Salafism). After successfully completing this training, the recruits made contact with a cell affiliated with al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. This cell helped them reach a network in Syria that was supposed to infiltrate them into Iraq (20minutes.fr, February 17). Their ultimate goal, according to the French prosecutor's office, was to "commit terrorist acts such as suicide bombings" (20minutes.fr, February 17). There was nothing in the background of those arrested on February 14 hinting at their jihadi inclinations. The police did not have records on any of them, neither for criminal activity nor for association with radical Islamists or with terrorist groups. They also were not known for supporting "jihad" elsewhere (20minutes.fr, February 17). The run of this particular cell ended in Syria, when authorities intercepted two of them last December. Both men arrested in December were deported back to Paris on the February 14. The rest of the network was arrested in France on the same day.
Considering that terrorist networks and radical Islamists have used the wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia very effectively to radicalize young Muslims in the past, the French authorities greatly fear the possible effects of a blowback from the Iraq war on the French Muslim population. The networks uncovered so far do not seem to be as numerous and as sophisticated as those operating during the Afghan war, but the question remains as to how long this will remain the case.
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Two militants killed in sweep in Dagestan
MAKHACHKALA. Feb 28 (Interfax) - Two militants have been killed in the active phase of a sweep operation, which has ended in the village of Tyube in Dagestan's Kumtorkala district, a source in Dagestan's Interior Ministry, who worked at the scene, told Interfax.
"The Dagestani Interior Ministry was informed on Tuesday evening that a suspicious group had been noticed in a private house in the village of Tyube. The house was encircled at about 5:30 a.m. and the group was ordered to walk out and surrender. Two men, one of them the owner of the house, followed the order. They are being questioned," the source said.
But the two other men stayed in the house refusing to surrender. The house was stormed at 5:45 a.m. with the use of armored vehicles and grenade launchers. The operation lasted for two hours.
"Early reports indicate that both suspected militants were killed. They have been identified, but their names will not be disclosed thus far. Investigators are working at the scene," the source said. sd
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Two Iranian police killed, four abducted in ambush attack near Pakistan border
Xinhua A group of Iranian police were ambushed late Tuesday in Sistan-Baluchestan province bordering Pakistan, leaving two police killed and four others kidnapped, the official IRNA news agency reported on Wednesday.
Police commander Esmael Ahmadi-Mogadam was quoted as saying that "seven police fell victim to an ambush by rebels, two were killed and another four were abducted", without disclosing the seventh police's destiny.
"The rebels in two cars escaped towards Pakistan," said Ahmadi- Mogadam.
The commander complained that "the Pakistani side lacks cooperation with Iran to fight against these rebels", underscoring that "this position is not acceptable."
Sistan-Baluchestan province borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Earlier this month, 13 Revolutionary Guards members were killed in a car bomb explosion in the provincial capital Zahedan.
Iran's security forces usually clash with local armed groups which were involved in drugs smuggling. Sistan-Baluchestan and its close province of Kerman have been hit by a string of attacks and kidnappings in the past years, which Iranian authorities blamed on a Sunni group called Jundallah.
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Security developments in Iraq, Feb 28
Feb 28 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq as of 0830 GMT on Wednesday:
BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed 10 people and wounded 21 near a vegetable market in Bayaa district in southern Baghdad, police said.
NEAR TAJI - U.S. forces killed eight insurgents and detained six suspects during operations targeting foreign fighter facilitators and the al-Qaeda in Iraq network northeast of Taji, 20 km (9 miles) north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
TIKRIT - Gunmen shot dead a man inside his car on Tuesday in Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
HIMREEN - Police found a body shot in the head in the town of Himreen, 120 km (75 miles) south of the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police said.
MOSUL - Gunmen killed Abdul-Hadi Mahmoud, the head of a government office in Mosul that issues identity cards, in a drive-by shooting in the northern city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
ISKANDARIYA - Several mortar rounds landed in a residential district, killing a man and woman, in the town of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - A report of a bomb killing 18 people, mostly children, on Tuesday in Ramadi was wrong and stemmed from confusion over a similar attack the day before, police officials and residents said. There was no such attack on Tuesday.
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Sudan: Iranian President arrives for visit
Khartoum, 28 Feb. (AKI) - Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Sudan on Wednesday for a two-day visit to the country, which like Iran is currently under pressure from the United Nations. Ahmadinejad wad greeted at Khartoum airport by Sudanes president Omar el-Bashir. Sudan continues to face international criticism for policies in the country's ethnically troubled Darfur region where government forces have been accused of colluding with local Arab militias in the murder and rape of the region's African ethnic groups. Khartoum has repeatedly refused to allow UN peacekeepers to deploy in Darfur.
On Tuesday the International Criminal Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands released what it said was evidence implicating former Sudanese interior minister Ahmed Haroun, the current humanitarian affairs minister, in the killings of civilians in Darfur. Khartoum has rejected ICC jurisdiction to try those it intends to indict for crimes in Darfur.
Iran on the other hand ins under fire for its controversial nuclear development programme with the United States and several European nations pressing the UN to impose sanctions on Tehran.
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Russia Worried About Possible U.S. Military Attack on Iran
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Moscow was “worried” about the possibility of US military action against Iran, The Associated Press reported on Monday.
“We are worried that the forecasts and suppositions of a possible attack on Iran have become more frequent,” Lavrov said during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin that was shown on state television.
Lavrov referred in particular to comments made last week by US Vice President Dick Cheney, who said that “all options are still on the table” for Washington to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
“What attacks are they talking about, without sanctions from the UN Security Council?” Putin asked during the meeting at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow.
“No-one is talking about such sanctions,” Lavrov responded.
Russia has relatively close ties with Iran and is building the country’s first nuclear power station at Bushehr, although Moscow agreed to support limited UN sanctions in December against the Islamic republic.
Washington suspects Iran of developing nuclear weapons under cover of a nuclear energy programme. Iran denies this, saying its nuclear programme is strictly for civilian energy generation.
Representatives of six key powers, including Russia, gathered in London on Monday for talks on how to increase pressure on Tehran amid mounting tension over the Islamic republic.
The United States, while insisting it has no military plans against Iran, is beefing up its naval firepower in the Gulf: two US aircraft carrier groups are now there, the highest concentration since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
And the New Yorker magazine reported Sunday that the United States is stepping up covert operations in Iran in a new strategy that risks sparking an “open confrontation” and benefits Sunni radicals.
The weekly reported that the US Defence Department had formed a special planning group to draw up possible attacks on Iran “that can be implemented, upon orders from the president, within 24 hours.”
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College professor spied for Cuba
A Cuban-born university professor and his wife who pleaded guilty to spying for Cuba have been jailed in the US.
Carlos Alvarez, 61, and his 56-year-old wife, Elsa, received a five and three-year term respectively for exchanging coded messages with Cuba.
Both said they took responsibility for their actions but had wanted to establish an open dialogue with Cuba.
But a Miami district judge said that their behaviour had undermined US foreign policy towards the country.
"As we know, a good motive is never an excuse for criminal conduct," Miami Judge Michael Moore said before he sentenced the couple.
The pair were accused of sending coded messages about fellow Cuban-American exiles living in Miami back to Cuba.
Carlos Alvarez was accused of being in contact with Cuban intelligence agencies since 1977.
'Innocuous information'
The psychology professor, based at Florida International University, disguised his identity using the codename David.
His wife also communicated with Cuban agents under the name Deborah but to a lesser extent than her husband.
Before being sentenced, Carlos Alvarez told the court he had once been part of an underground movement that sought to oust Castro's regime but that he later became "an advocate of dialogue."
"I decided to engage in a relation that would require sharing what I consider innocuous information and analysis for access," he said, adding, "The method and channel that I used were unfortunately wrong."
Carlos Alvarez's lawyer claimed that the messages included no secret, classified or defence material and often amounted to no more than "simple gossip".
But US lawyer Matthew Axelord said that the pair had gone to great lengths to conceal their actions.
"This was not idle chit-chat," he said, "Carlos Alvarez was tasked directly by the Cuban intelligence service to provide certain information and he provided that information."
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Terror: Is Tehran Targeting New York?
March 5, 2007 issue - Increasing tensions between Washington and Tehran have revived New York Police Department concerns that Iranian agents may already have targeted the city for terror attacks. Such attacks could be aimed at bridges and tunnels, Jewish organizations and Wall Street, NYPD briefers told security execs last fall, according to a person with access to the briefing materials who asked for anonymity because of the sensitive subject matter.
NYPD officials have worried about possible Iranian-sponsored attacks since a series of incidents involving officials of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. In November 2003, Ahmad Safari and Alireaza Safi, described as Iranian Mission "security" personnel, were detained by transit cops when they were seen videotaping subway tracks from Queens to Manhattan at 1:10 in the morning. The men later left New York. "We're concerned that Iranian agents were engaged in reconnaissance that might be used in an attack against New York City at some future date," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly told NEWSWEEK. A spokesman for the Iranian Mission in New York said he was aware of the allegations but had no immediate comment.
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Europe's space wars
The Economist Print EditionEurope should not let Russia's threats deter it from deploying a defence against rogue states with rockets
SINCE the end of the cold war, few of the people of Europe, east or west, have worried much about missiles. In 1987 Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed a treaty eliminating the medium-range nuclear-tipped ones, such as the Pershings and SS-20s, that had convulsed Europe's politics for much of the 1980s. The angry British women who had set up “peace camps” outside the missile base at Greenham Common eventually rolled up their sleeping bags and went home.
This week the missile wars returned—on two fronts. General Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of Russia's strategic forces, warned Poland and the Czech Republic that if they went ahead with plans to allow the rockets and radars of an American anti-missile system to be installed on their territory, Russian forces would be “capable of having these installations as their targets”. Condoleezza Rice, America's secretary of state, called that “an extremely unfortunate comment”. The Czech foreign minister accused Russia bluntly of “blackmail”.
Where has this sudden squall blown in from? As Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, surely knows, the anti-missile radar the Czechs are receiving, and the battery of anti-missile missiles that may end up in Poland, are not aimed at Russia. They are parts of a defensive shield that NATO has concluded could help defend both America and its European allies from a different threat altogether: the growing danger of long-range missiles, potentially even nuclear-armed ones, from countries such as Iran and North Korea. And the anti-missile missiles may not even in the end be based in Poland.
The Economist has learned that Britain has also made a bid to become the European base for them (see article). This, however, highlights the second front—the battle for domestic public opinion. With the row over the Iraq war still reverberating, this offer will come as a red rag to Britain's vocal anti-everything-Bush-stands-for lobby. Just the sort of poodlish behaviour from Tony Blair's government that we have come to expect, many will fume. Why make Britain more of a target?
For Britain's Labour government, this is already round two of the missile-defence debate. At America's request, it agreed in 2003 to upgrade an early-warning radar system at Fylingdales; that radar is already a working component of America's still developing anti-missile plans. If the Fylingdales decision was controversial, offering to host the interceptors that might shoot down missiles bound for America or Europe as they travel through space is sure to be more so. Yet, as it did last time, the Blair government should welcome a robust debate.
A false alarm
During the cold war, when the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction helped to keep the peace, a case could be made that building defences against incoming missiles would be destabilising. So it was not just the usual anti-American crowd that was alarmed when George Bush insisted, soon after becoming president—and eventually Russia accepted—that their long-standing Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty be scrapped. By preventing either side from building an effective anti-missile shield, the rules meant neither side had been tempted to strike the other in the belief that it was safe from a counter-attack. Surely scrapping such limits on defences was a mistake? Wasn't Mr Bush planning to bolster America's security at everyone else's expense? And won't extending his anti-missile shield a bit farther over Europe enrage the Russians anew and just end up making everyone less secure?
In fact, scrapping the ABM treaty, far from worsening America-Russia rivalry, left the Russians free to look more realistically to their own defences. And instead of the new arms race that was predicted, America and Russia, no longer enemies, quickly agreed to far deeper cuts in the numbers of strategic warheads they had pointing at each other than either had previously imagined possible.
Mr Putin may not like the Czechs and Poles—former vassals of the old Soviet Union that are now NATO members—volunteering for new missile-defence duty. But putting ten interceptors in Poland, or Britain, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter, will do nothing to blunt Russia's vast nuclear deterrent. America should do more to reassure Mr Putin of that. Indeed, it would reduce tension if the Americans responded to Russia's request to negotiate further arms-control treaties. But the only real damage to Russia from this episode will be self-inflicted: Mr Putin and his generals have reminded the Czechs and the Poles, and others queueing outside the door, why they wanted to join NATO in the first place.
And a real threat
Other governments have come to accept that their security is genuinely at risk from those more limited, but less predictable, threats. Japan and Australia have been co-operating with America to help fend off the danger from North Korea's missiles. Iran's tests of increasingly far-flying rockets, and its repeated refusal to heed UN Security Council deadlines (another passed this week) to end nuclear work that could be abused for bomb-making, have convinced even NATO's sceptics that limited defences can bolster security in Europe too.
Yet it is worth keeping in mind just how limited a role such limited defences can play. Even if the missiles America is still testing can be made to work properly, technology is seldom flawless. At best, therefore, the extra defences can offer a little bit of extra insurance in a crisis, by helping to persuade an aggressor that an attack, or a threatened one in an attempt at nuclear blackmail, might well fail and invite retribution instead.
Might. So the best way of avoiding getting to crisis-point is still to uphold and strengthen the rules against nuclear proliferation. Only far more robust diplomacy than has been tried so far seems likely to discourage Iran from pressing ahead with its nuclear ambitions. And there Russia is key. Mr Putin worked hard to ensure that the first sanctions resolution on Iran, passed in December, was as feeble as he could make it. What folly. A nuclear-armed Iran would bring instability to Russia's borders in a way neither NATO nor the modest American missile defences in Europe ever will.
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U.S., Italian Ambassadors Hurt in Sri Lanka Shelling
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. and Italian ambassadors to Sri Lanka were wounded in an artillery attack by Tamil Tiger rebels in the island's east. The Tigers accused the government of putting the diplomats in danger.
Robert Blake and Pio Mariani were injured when shells fired by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam struck an air force base at Batticaloa at about 8:45 a.m. Sri Lankan time, said Flight Lieutenant Kanishka Rajapaksa, a military spokesman.
Sri Lanka's peace process collapsed last year as fighting broke out in the north and east of the country and two rounds of peace talks in Geneva failed. The LTTE last week marked the fifth anniversary of a cease-fire with the government by saying the army's new offensives will force Tamils to renew their struggle for self-determination.
The Tigers expressed ``shock and sadness'' at the wounding of the diplomats, while saying the government was to blame for their injuries because it didn't inform the rebels the envoys would be in the area.
The ``Sri Lankan government has exposed senior diplomats to danger by allowing aircraft carrying them into an area where they have declared military operations without informing the LTTE in advance,'' the rebels said in a statement, citing their military spokesman S. Ilanthirayan.
Sri Lankan military aircraft bombed ``identified LTTE bases'' in the Batticaloa district after today's attack, military spokesman Upali Rajapakse said. The targets were marked for destruction before the attack he said. A teacher was killed and another was wounded in a bomb attack the Tamil Tigers blamed on government forces, Agence France-Presse reported. The attack came hours after the shelling of the air base by the Tigers.
Injuries
Blake has minor injuries, military spokesman Upali Rajapakse said. The U.S. Embassy in Colombo issued a statement saying Blake is ``all right.'' Mariani suffered shrapnel wounds to the head and was being taken to a hospital in the capital, Rajapakse said. Italian Foreign Ministry spokesman Pasquale Ferrara said via telephone that Mariani was lightly wounded. Mariani was later discharged from hospital, Ferrara said.
``This is an indication that the LTTE doesn't want any betterment for the people of the east,'' Rajapakse said. ``The visit was part of a tour to see the resettlement of civilians after the takeover of LTTE camps.''
The diplomats were accompanying Mahinda Samarasinghe, the human rights minister, on a visit to the eastern region when the shelling occurred, the military said. At least seven other people, including air force and police personnel and a schoolboy, were hurt, he added.
Army Offensive
Sri Lanka's army this week drove LTTE fighters from four bases near the northeastern port of Trincomalee, one month after capturing 12 rebel camps in the area.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa's office condemned today's attack and said terrorism must be eliminated.
``I take this opportunity to call upon the international community to support the endeavors of the government of Sri Lanka to address the scourge of terrorism and to pressure the LTTE to give up terrorism and return to the democratic fold,'' Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said in an e-mailed statement.
The Tamil Tigers have been fighting for two decades for a separate homeland in areas of northern and eastern Sri Lanka they control, a conflict that has killed more than 60,000 people in the South Asian island nation of 20 million. The LTTE is classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S., European Union and India.
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Iran's space launch suggests no technology leap
By Doug Richardson, JMR Editor The launch of Iran's first space research rocket does not represent a significant development in Iranian rocket technology.
The vehicle's performance is similar to that of existing Iranian solid-propellant tactical missiles.
In a statement to Iran's Fars news agency, Ali Akbar Golrou, executive deputy of the Aerospace Research Institute, said that the vehicle was a sounding rocket able to carry a payload to an altitude of 150 km before returning it by parachute.
Sounding rockets are normally launched on near-vertical trajectories in order to attain the greatest height possible from their post-boost velocity. To obtain the maximum range from a rocket of modest performance, it must be fired at an angle of about 45 degrees. (This assumes a flat, non-rotating earth, without an atmosphere, but is a good approximation for short-range tactical missiles.)
Jane's Missiles and Rockets
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Russian Military-Industrial Commission To View Fifth Generation Air-Defense System
Moscow (RIA Novosti): The Military-Industrial Commission, which answers directly to the Russian president, will meet Tuesday to consider prospects for a fifth-generation air-defense system, a senior Russian government official said Monday.
"It will be a field session, which will be held at the Almaz Science and Production Association," said First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who oversees the defense related sectors.
Ivanov said new S-400 missile systems were adopted for service in late 2006 and will be placed on alert duty later this year.
"It is a unique system that has no parallels [in the world]," he said.
He said priority should now be given to the development of fifth-generation air-defense systems, combining elements of air-, missile-, and space defense.
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Iran Ready For US Talks Without Preconditions
Tehran (AFP): Iran said on Monday it would be ready to examine positively a request by its arch-enemy the United States for talks but would not accept halting sensitive nuclear activities as a precondition. "If the United States presents a request for negotiations through the official channels and it appears these negotiations are constructive and logical, we are ready to examine this request with a positive eye," chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told the IRNA agency.
But he added: "Fixing preconditions means that you have already determined the result of negotiations in advance and it is for this reason that such policies have produced no result up to now."
Iran and the United States have had no diplomatic relations since Washington severed ties in 1980 in the wake of the seizure of its embassy in Tehran by Islamist students.
Any official contacts between the two sides would mark a breakthrough in the frozen relations, which have been marked by mutual recriminations and enmity over almost three decades.
However past overtures for talks have stumbled over Iran's right to enrich uranium in its nuclear programme, a process the West fears Iran could use to produce nuclear weapons.
The UN Security Council has imposed limited sanctions against Tehran over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment and world powers were to meet in London on Monday in a bid to thrash out a consensus on further measures.
The United States and Israel accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons. Tehran denies the charges, insisting that its atomic programme is peaceful in nature.
While US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has insisted she is ready for talks with her Iranian counterpart, Washington has always maintained Tehran must halt its uranium enrichment activities first.
If Iran froze enrichment "then we can come to the table and we can talk about how to move forward," Rice said in a US weekend television interview.
"We're all prepared to have full-scale negotiations anytime, at any place," she added.
"We do not accord credibility to declarations made through the media," responded Larijani, head of Iran's supreme national security council, who spoke to IRNA from Pretoria where he has held talks with South African leaders.
However Iranian officials have repeatedly rejected the prospect of suspending enrichment, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday comparing the Iranian nuclear programme to a train without brakes or reverse gear.
"The great powers have to put an end to our worries and respect the right of Iran," said Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Jalili, according to the Fars news agency.
"We have done what was necessary to put an end to their worries. It is their job now to end our worries and win our confidence," he added.
The remarks on official talks coincide with an upsurge in speculation that the United States is planning air strikes on Iran to thwart its nuclear programme.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that Moscow was "worried" about the possibility of US military action against Iran.
"We are worried that the forecasts and suppositions of a possible attack on Iran have become more frequent," Lavrov said at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin shown on state television.
Lavrov referred in particular to comments made last week by US Vice President Dick Cheney, who said that "all options are still on the table" for Washington.
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KOSOVO: BLAST HITS OSCE VEHICLES, AS FORMER PREMIER LEAVES FOR HAGUE WAR CRIMES COURT
Pristina, 27 Feb. (AKI) - An explosion damaged seven automobiles belonging to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the Kosovo town of Pec on Monday, just hours before former prime minister Ramus Haradinaj left for the Hague to stand trial before the United Nations' tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on charges of crimes against Serb and other civilians during the 1998/99 Kosovo conflict.
"Immediately after the explosion, the police found seven OSCE automobiles damaged at the scene as well as two private vehicles," local police spokesman Avni Djevukaj told media. He said the explosion took place at 3.30 am local time and the police discovered another unexploded device. An investigation of the blasts was continuing and police had no immediate knowledge of the perpetrators or their motives, he said.
Haradinaj, the former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which started a rebellion against Serbian rule in 1999 in the Pec region, has been indicted by the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for alleged crimes against Serbs, Gypsies and ethnic Albanians loyal to Belgrade.
Haradinaj, the leader of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, was Kosovo's prime minister when he was indicted in 2004 and surrendered voluntarily to the the ICTY. He was freed in June 2005, pending the start of his trial, which will begin on 5 March. Chief ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte has voiced concern that Haradinaj might influence the court witnesses while free, but the court had even allowed him to continue his public activities.
One of the ICTY potential witnesses was run over by a car and killed in a suspicious accident in Montenegro this month, and Serbian media reported that many other witnesses had in the meantime changed their original statements.
Haradinaj was seen off by hundreds of his supporters at Pristina airport and vowed he would prove his innocence and return home soon. Last week, he was received in a farewell visit by the chief United Nations administrator in Kosovo Joachim Ruecker, as well as by Kosovo president Fatmir Seidiu and prime minister Agim Ceku. ICTY prosecutors had asked Ruecker not to see Haradinaj, but Ruecker ignored the call.
Ceku and Seidiu have said they believe Haradinaj is innocent, while the British-based Observer newspaper noted that Haradinaj had received "unprecedented treatment for someone accused of war crimes." Kosovo, most of whose 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority demands independence, has been under UN control since 1999 and the final round of UN sponsored talks on a proposal for "supervised independence" for the province is due to resume on Tuesday in Vienna.
A Kosovo Serb leader, Rada Trajkovic, said the Pec explosions were aimed at applying pressure on the ICTY to acquit Haradinaj and to steer Vienna talks towards granting independence for the province in which ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs by 17 to one.
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World court finds Serbia innocent of genocide charge
SERBIA did not commit genocide against Bosnia during the 1992-5 war, the United Nation's highest court has ruled in a landmark case - but it said that the country had violated its responsibility to prevent genocide.
Bosnia had asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ), based in The Hague, to rule on whether Serbia had committed genocide through the killing, rapes and ethnic cleansing that overtook Bosnia during the war.
It was the first time a sovereign state had been tried for genocide, outlawed in a UN convention in 1948 after the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews.
A judgment in Bosnia's favour could have allowed the country to seek billions of pounds of compensation from Serbia.
Judge Rosalyn Higgins, the ICJ president, said the court concluded that the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys did constitute genocide, but that other mass killings of Bosnian Muslims did not.
But she said the court ruled that the Serbian state could not be held directly responsible for genocide, so paying reparations to Bosnia would be inappropriate even though Serbia had failed to prevent genocide and punish the perpetrators.
"The court finds by 13 votes to two that Serbia has not committed genocide," she said. "The court finds that Serbia has violated the obligation to prevent genocide ... in respect of the genocide that occurred in Srebrenica."
Some 8,000 Muslims from Srebrenica and surrounding villages in eastern Bosnia were killed in July 1995. The bodies of almost half of them have been found in more than 80 mass graves nearby.
Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, both accused of genocide over Srebrenica, are still on the run.
Reacting to the ruling in Belgrade, the Serbian president, Boris Tadic, urged the country's parliament to condemn the massacre. "For all of us, the very difficult part of the verdict is that Serbia did not do all it could to prevent genocide," he told a news conference.
"Thank God," said Mirko Kocic, a 25-year-old economy student and Belgrade resident. "For once we are cleared of something."
Tomislav Nikolic, an ultra-nationalist Serbian leader, dismissed the World Court proceedings as "part of a conspiracy" to declare the Serbs a "genocidal nation."
In Sarajevo, 160 miles to the south-west, the Bosnian presidency's Muslim member, Haris Silajzic, told Bosnian television: "I am sorry that Serbia and Montenegro were not convicted of genocide and that they were not convicted of conspiracy in genocide."
In front of Serbia's embassy to Bosnia, set on the banks of Sarajevo's Miljacka river, protesters have planted a series of black coffin-shaped headstones in the riverbank, each marked with the name of a Bosnian town.
"Srebrenica," "Foca," "Zepa," read three of them, some of the towns were Serb atrocities were at their worst.
"I am speechless," said Fadila Efendic, whose son and husband were killed in Srebrenica. "We know that Serbia was directly involved. We saw Serbian troops shell us ... and kill our sons and husbands, we saw them commit genocide here."
Sehida Rahmanovic, another massacre survivor, added that "Bosnian Serbs could not have committed genocide without the help in arms, money, troops and everything from Serbia."
Mr Silajdzic's Bosnian-Croat colleague Zeljko Komsic said he was "disappointed" the ruling did not class as genocide other crimes in the war in which at least 170,000 people died, three-quarters of them Muslims and Croats.
"We who were in Bosnia know what happened here right from the beginning of the war and I know what I will teach my kids," Mr Komsic said.
Fatija Suljic, 60, who lost her husband and three sons in Srebrenica, said: "This makes me cry. This is no verdict, no solution. This is a disaster for our people."
Serbia had said a ruling against it would be an unjust and lasting stigma on the state, which overthrew its wartime leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
Milosevic died last year, only months before a verdict in his trial on 66 counts of genocide and war crimes was due.
The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has already found individuals guilty of genocide at Srebrenica. Bosnia used evidence from trials there for its case against Serbia.
It is almost 14 years since Bosnia first sued the rump Yugoslav state from which it seceded in 1992, but the case has been repeatedly held up by arguments over jurisdiction.
In 1992, backed by the Yugoslav army, the Serbs captured two-thirds of Bosnia and besieged Sarajevo. Tens of thousands of non-Serbs were killed and hundreds of thousands forced from their homes.
In Brussels, Friso Roscam Abbing, a spokesman for the European Commission, urged both sides to respect the judgment "to ensure justice and enable reconciliation to start".
Nenad Canak, of Serbia's new Social Democrat-Liberal Democratic coalition, said the ruling left him "speechless".
"The only thing I can say is to remind you of the words of Primo Levi written on a wall in Dachau. "The man who denies Auschwitz is the same one who is ready to repeat it."
Meanwhile, in the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo, teetering on the edge of fresh ethnic violence, the former prime minister headed to the UN court in The Hague on Monday to face a war crimes charges in a trial due to start next week.
Ramush Haradinaj, the Kosovo Albanian leader of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, will appear before the UN war crimes tribunal on 5 March on charges of involvement in a criminal plot to murder, rape and torture Serbs and gypsies in the Albanian-dominated province.
Haradinaj, accompanied by his wife, Anita, was cheered by hundreds of supporters as he arrived at the province's main Slatina airport.
Haradinaj was indicted in 2005 and surrendered to the UN court. The highest-ranking Kosovo Albanian to be indicted by the court, he was allowed to return to Kosovo pending the start of the trial and was also permitted to take up his role of president of his political party, which is part of the province's governing coalition.
Seven international vehicles belonging to the OSCE, or Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, were damaged by an explosion in the town of Peja in western Kosovo, hours before Haradinaj's departure.
Another explosive device was found nearby, said a Kosovo police service spokesman.
• THE powerful post of Bosnia's peace overseer is likely to be extended for a year from July because of concerns about the political stability of the tiny Balkan state.
Nevertheless, European Union officials said the bloc would approve plans today to more than halve its 6,000-strong peace force in Bosnia by June, saying they had few concerns about security.
An extension of the mandate of the Office of the High Representative is expected to be agreed today by Bosnia's Peace Implementation Council, said the spokesman for Christian Schwarz-Schilling, who is due to step down on 30 June.
"There appears to be a consensus that the mandate will be extended for a year," Chris Bennett said.
The post, set up to oversee implementation of the Dayton peace agreement ending the 1992-95 war and giving the holder powers to sack officials and impose laws, had been due for abolition after Mr Schwarz-Schilling stands down.
However, he said last month he would argue against scrapping it due to concerns that an imminent decision on the future of the breakaway province of Kosovo in neighbouring Serbia could raise ethnic tensions in Bosnia.
Bosnian leaders also failed last week to break a year-long deadlock over unification of police forces, a condition for establishing closer ties with the European Union. The EU wants Bosnia to have its 16,000 policemen, now divided into 15 separate police forces, integrated into a single structure that would be politically unbiased and operate across the Balkan country without artificial boundaries.
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Five Officers Killed as Blast Hits Police Base in Chechnya
MosNews A blast in Russia’s southern republic of Chechnya killed at least five policemen on Friday, Reuters news agency reports Monday.
The blast rocked an Interior Ministry base in the Gudermes region of Chechnya, a source in the Southern Federal District’s law enforcement services reported.
The incident is under investigation, he said.
Russian leaders say Chechnya, where Russia has fought two wars since 1994, is a stable province undergoing reconstruction.
But Chechen separatists, many of whom say they are fighting in the name of Islam, are able to launch attacks on Russian forces from their mountain hideouts
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Defense News
Defense news articles:
Latest news 26 Feb 2007 Boeing and Azerbaijan Airlines Finalize Order for 787s and 737s 26 Feb 2007 Lockheed Martin Team Qualifies to Bid on First Faa Nextgen Program 26 Feb 2007 CAE Inc. and Engenuity Technologies Inc. Announce Mailing of the Takeover Bid Circular and the Directors' Circular in Connection With Previously Announced Friendly All Cash Offer 26 Feb 2007 DRS Technologies' C3 Strategic Business Unit Receives a CMMI Maturity Level 5 Appraisal from Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute 26 Feb 2007 EADS supplies protected rescue stations for operations abroad 23 Feb 2007 Ukraine Unveils its Dozor-B 4x4 Armoured Personnel Carrier at IDEX'2007 23 Feb 2007 Formation, Inc. signs Radiation Electronics Inc. as ToughDisk® rugged hard disk representative 23 Feb 2007 Oshkosh Truck Awarded $878 M Contract For Heavy Tactical Vehicles 23 Feb 2007 SAIC to Provide Security Services to DHS Customs and Border Protection 23 Feb 2007 Rockwell Collins/cubic Team Selected for Common Data Link Program 23 Feb 2007 Thales wins German deployable Access Nets phase 2 contract 23 Feb 2007 Alenia Aeronautica successfully completes pre-production verifications and starts assembly of the first Boeing 787 Dreamliner horizontal stabiliser 23 Feb 2007 IDE and SATA 2.5-inch Flash Disks Package Up To 160 GBytes Max Capacity; Include Advanced Data Security Features 23 Feb 2007 Leading cargo industry players endorse Air Freight Asia 2007 Exhibition 23 Feb 2007 BAE Systems Receives Additional $16 M Contract for Bradley Remanufacture 22 Feb 2007 Rockwell Collins introduces new electronic intelligence tool 22 Feb 2007 Raytheon HDAM Missile Successful in Test Flight Against Low-Power Radar Source 22 Feb 2007 Boeing Completes Major Stage in Design of U.S. Navy's Mobile User Objective System 22 Feb 2007 MoD Reponds to MP's Report on Armoured Vehicles 22 Feb 2007 BAE Systems Receives Additional $16 M Contract for Bradley Remanufacture 22 Feb 2007 Rockwell Collins Receives DoD Outstanding Performance Award 22 Feb 2007 BAE Systems Offers Emergency Escape Windows for Up-armored Vehicles 22 Feb 2007 Raytheon Demonstrates Engine for Powered Joint Standoff Weapon Extended Range 22 Feb 2007 DRS Receives $51M Contract to Support the Mast Mounted Sights on Army Helicopters 22 Feb 2007 BAE Systems Awarded Second Phase of Mobile Communications Contract 22 Feb 2007 Raytheon Receives $27.7 M for V-22 Support 22 Feb 2007 SAIC Awarded Army ITES-2S Contract 22 Feb 2007 Elbit Systems Awarded a PFI Contract to Establish and Operate Israeli Air Force 20 Feb 2007 Additional Heavy Tank Transporters for Australian Army 20 Feb 2007 Oshkosh Truck Signs Contract To Provide Medium Tactical Trucks To Egyptian Ministry of Defense
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Venezuela: FARC, ELN Told To Leave
Stratfor Venezuelan rebel group Bolivarian Liberation Force (FBL) has demanded that Colombian rebel groups the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army suspend their activities in Venezuela, El Universal reported Feb. 26. In a press release sent to El Universal, FBL said it considers the Colombian groups' activities harmful to its insurgency because they are facilitating counterrevolutionary action in Venezuela.
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The Shiite extremist groups in southern Iraq
The Iraqi forces, backed by the US Army, launched an offensive on 28/1/07 near Najaf against a Shiite extremist group named Jund Al-Sama’.
It was the first time that a Shiite extremist group had appeared in southern Iraq - an area largely dominated by the Dawa party, the Sadrists and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
Jund Al-Sama’ is not the only Shiite extremist group active in southern Iraq. There are other groups which work in secret. All work under the Al-Mahdawiya Movement, which is waiting for the Imam Al-Mahdi Al-Muntazar or the Awaited Imam to appear.
Some of these groups are active in Basra, Nassiriyah, Kut, Najaf, Karbala and Maysan, some others in Shiite-populated districts of Baghdad and a part of Diyala province.
Although these groups are Shiite, they include members of other sects, such as Sunni, or Ismaili or Zaidi.
Reports from southern Iraq suggest these groups call on to destroy all public institutions, kill all leaders and clerics to pave the way for the Imam Al-Muntazar.
Besides Jund Al-Sama’, these groups include:
- Ruhullah group, which is active in Nassiriyah and Maysan. Its members are sacked from the Sadrist movement.
- Al-Marsumi group, active in Diyala;
- Ahmad Bin Al-Hasan group, active in Najaf and Karbala
- Jund Al-Islam, active in Basra and Kut
- Al-Hadiya group, active in Kut and Maysan
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Lithuania exploring 'exit strategy' for Belarus leader
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU state Lithuania and EU neighbour Georgia are working on an exit strategy for Europe's "last dictator" - Belarus president Aleksander Lukashenko - amid concern that Russian gas and oil hikes against Belarus are part of a wider process threatening the country's independence.
"I recently visited Georgia and I had a lot of discussions with our Georgian colleagues - some of them think we need to propose an exit strategy for Lukashenko," Lithuanian prime minister Gediminis Kirkilas told EUobserver in Vilnius on Friday (23 February).
The prime minister declined to speculate whether such an "exit strategy" could one day see Lukashenko retire to a friendly country such as Venezuela, or whether it would mean a full rapprochement with the EU starting with, say, Belarus' release of senior political prisoner Aleksander Kozulin.
"For the preparation of this strategy we have to have some informal consultation with envoys, such as a former president who can speak Russian [and go to Minsk]," Mr Kirkilas added. "Lukashenko has to take some steps [such as releasing Mr Kozulin]...but we have to work with him, to speak with him."
The prime minister explained that Belarus' conflict with Russia is "much more deep than it seems" in the context of a proposed Russia-Belarus state union that is being resisted by Minsk. "Belarus sovereignty is the main issue. Lukashenko will step down sooner or later, but to have an independent Belarus is very important [for the EU]."
Old allies Russia and Belarus fell out in January when Russia imposed gas and oil hikes set to cost Minsk $1.8 billion a year and that could push it to the edge of economic crisis, with European kremlinologists scratching their heads as to why Moscow made the move.
Russian ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov recently said it is simply designed to fit in with market prices, adding that the old talks on state union are at a "relative standstill" but that all options are still on the table, including the annexation of Belarus by Russia.
Of all the EU states, Lithuania has kept the closest contacts with Minsk since EU-Belarus relations began to deteriorate in the mid-1990s, with Lukashenko and 34 of his officials currently on an EU visa ban list and with EU trade sanctions worth $530 million a year to kick in by July.
The Belarus game is being played out amid EU concern for Mr Lukashenko's mental health. The 53-year old autocratic ruler is a gifted orator and a match-fit ice hockey player. But he is wildly unpredictable in policy terms, prone to emotional outbursts and increasingly self-contradictory statements.
The prospect of Mr Lukashenko one day leading a reformed government and shaking the hands of a European Commission president in Brussels is laughable to most EU diplomats working on the Belarus dossier, while some hardline Belarus activists want him to face justice over disappeared persons.
Other candidates wanted
"We are looking for other people in the Belarus administration that we can talk to," Lithuanian foreign ministry eastern Europe director, Arunas Vinciunas, said last week. The US has also recently hinted it would prefer to work with an alternative leader from the existing government.
EU diplomacy is focussing on approaches to potential reformers at the "low and medium" levels of the Belarus government for now. Lukashenko's former EU ambassador and current foreign minister, Sergei Martynov, was once considered a reformer but lost that reputation after returning to Minsk.
Meanwhile, Mr Lukashenko seems to be grooming his eldest son, Viktor, for succession, having recently appointed him as a senior member of the country's security council and given him two assistants to underline his importance.
The president has also carried out an extensive process of derussification of the Belarusian KGB and military to reduce the risk of a Russian-led palace coup, but many Kremlin-loyal Belarus KGB and military officers remain in the system adding to Mr Lukashenko's unease.
Historically, Belarus has only been independent twice in its entire history - briefly in 1918-1919 and since 1991, with Lukashenko taking the reins in 1994. Ethnic Belarusians make up 81 percent of the 10 million-strong population, with Russians (11%), Poles (4%) and Ukrainians (2%) also forming large groups.
Belarusians recall that surrealist painter Marc Chagall, Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas (a.k.a. Issur Danielovitch) and proto-existentialist writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky have Belarusian origins. "We are not just a territory underneath a gas pipeline," Belarusian activist Natalia Koliada once told EUobserver.
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Security developments in Iraq, Feb 26
Feb 26 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq as of 1810 GMT on Monday:
BAGHDAD - Iraq's Shi'ite vice president, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, and a cabinet minister were wounded in an apparent assassination attempt when a bomb killed six people at the public works ministry in Baghdad where they were attending a ceremony. An aide said Abdul-Mahdi was taken to hospital after suffering wounds in the blast. At least 31 people were wounded.
BAGHDAD - Iraqi security forces killed 12 insurgents, including two wearing explosive vests, and arrested 117 others, the government said in a statement.
BAGHDAD - At least 1,000 displaced families have returned to their homes since Operation Imposing Law was officially launched about 10 days ago.
* FALLUJA - A U.S. Marine was killed in combat in Anbar province, the U.S. military said.
BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb struck a police patrol, killing two officers and seriously wounding another in the Rustamiya area of southern Baghdad, police said.
ABBASI - A suicide car bomber killed one Iraqi soldier and wounded two others when he attacked a joint U.S.-Iraqi military checkpoint near the small town of Abbasi, 70 km (40 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police and army sources said.
BAGHDAD - A mortar round killed one civilian and wounded two others when it landed in central Baghdad's commercial Nidhal street, police said.
ISKANDARIYA - At least seven people were wounded when mortar rounds hit the town of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
MOSUL - A roadside bomb wounded two policemen in a patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police said.
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The Threat of Grassroots Jihadi Networks: A Case Study from Ceuta, Spain
By Javier Jordán, Robert WesleyOn December 12, 2006, Spanish police executed a spectacular counter-terrorism operation in the neighborhood of "Príncipe Alfonso" in Ceuta (a Spanish city located in North Africa, just south of Gibraltar). Those arrested belonged to a grassroots jihadi group planning attacks on local targets in the Spanish enclave. The following analysis emphasizes the principal characteristics of this former jihadi network and explores two issues of particular importance: 1) the relationship between the network's members and Spanish soldiers garrisoned in Ceuta, and 2) the inclusion and importance of the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla in jihadi rhetoric as Muslim territories that must be liberated from their infidel occupation.
The jihadi group in Ceuta was composed of at least 11 individuals and constitutes another good example of the emergence of grassroots jihadi networks in European countries. "Grassroots jihadis" refers to groups that sympathize with and relate to the global jihadi movement, sharing common strategic objectives, but have little or no formal connections to al-Qaeda or any other associated organizations. They could, however, eventually secure relationships with some established operatives.
The History and Characteristics of the Ceuta Jihadi Network
The group's origins stem from meetings in a small mosque called Darkawia that was dominated by a radical imam and located in the Príncipe Alfonso district—a disadvantaged area of Ceuta, where around 12,000 Muslims live. At the time of the raids, the area was practically considered a conflict zone by local police and residents, with high rates of unemployment and delinquency. In the months preceding the December 12 operation, the local police had resigned from patrolling the neighborhood due to various threats, especially from ambushes by local organized delinquent groups [1].
The majority of the group's members were born in Ceuta and lived in the Príncipe Alfonso district, with all but one having Spanish nationality. Many of the group's members also had criminal records. The principal leader of the jihadi network, Karin Abdelselam Mohamed, became radicalized while serving time in prison for minor crimes. Within the group, the members justified these illegal activities by claiming that they were done in support of jihad, a seemingly common occurrence among jihadis.
In terms of linkages with external jihadi groups, their primary connection was Karin's relationship with Tarik Hamed, who has been incarcerated in Spain since June 2005 for his involvement in a network established to recruit and facilitate travel for recruits heading to the jihad in Iraq. The group's radicalization, however, was largely independent of external mentoring, with its two leaders Karin and Mohamed Fuad Mohamed driving the process. The group's "gatherings," which were held in the mosque outside of normal praying hours and in the homes of its members, played a very important role in the development of the group's radicalization. Another apparent contributing element in this path was the incorporation of jihadi propaganda distributed via CDs containing videos, songs and text archives.
A common characteristic of grassroots networks is that they direct their aggression against targets of close proximity [2]. In the case of the Ceuta network, that hostility underwent several stages of escalation. In the first stage, the network started to spread rumors of possible attacks in the city and painted threatening graffiti around town. The next step consisted of destroying a morabito—a small building that lodges the tomb of people considered holy by Muslims in the Maghreb [3].
The third stage was aborted by the police. At the time of their arrests, the members of the group had already started to plan a high-casualty attack in Ceuta using explosives. They had discussed several targets: a shopping mall, a fairground during a time of festivities and a fuel depository. During their investigations, police found a will of a jihadi and evidence that some of them had expressed their willingness to die as martyrs (El Mundo, December 17, 2006; El País, December 16, 2006).
What has been described, so far, resembles other grassroots networks dismantled in Spain and Europe during the past few years and underlines the vitality of the third jihadi generation (if we follow the terminology used by the strategist Abu Mus'ab al-Suri) [4]. There are two aspects of the Ceuta case, however, that merit special attention.
First, the network tried to recruit Spanish soldiers of Muslim origin born in Ceuta. Approximately 30% of the troops in the Ceuta and Melilla garrisons have Muslim backgrounds. Each of the cities has on paper the equivalent of a light brigade. For many young Muslims born in Spanish territory, the military is an attractive employment opportunity, as many of them encounter difficulties securing jobs in the civil sector. The military provides an acceptable salary and offers the opportunity to learn a profession, while opening the door to other jobs such as occupations in the national and local police services. A significant portion of young soldiers also end up finding stable jobs in the public security domain.
The network's leader, Karin, succeeded in attracting several young soldiers garrisoned in Ceuta to his private meetings. Karin's jihadi group wanted the soldiers to facilitate access to a military deposit of arms and explosives with which to perpetrate further terrorist attacks. The soldiers, however, were not persuaded. Despite the group's overall failure, news of the group's military contacts and the fact that one of the apprehended had been an infantry soldier in Ceuta (and as a consequence had been taught the use of light weapons) produced alarm about the possible infiltration of jihadis in the Muslim ranks of the garrisons.
In addition, this news coincided with the non-renewal of the contracts of more than 15 soldiers of Muslim backgrounds in the Ceuta garrison due to the findings of internal intelligence reports. In fact, the worry over possible infiltration of radical Salafism in the military began much earlier than this recent operation. It was already explicitly mentioned in a military intelligence report leaked to the press in September 2005, which led to the non-renewal of at least three soldiers in the previous months (El País, September 12, 2005; El País, November 5, 2006). The most recent news of non-renewal, however, has helped precipitate an antagonistic climate among the associations and the opinion leaders of the Muslim community, a problem that has been politicized rapidly. La Unión Democrática Ceutí—the political party in Ceuta that receives most of the Muslim vote—has started a protest campaign that has included the distribution of thousands of leaflets at the entryways of mosques denouncing the "persecution of the Spanish soldiers of the Muslim faith" (El País, January 21).
The tension has increased even more with a police union requesting to control Muslim candidates' access to vacancies in the national police coming from Ceuta and Melilla in order to avoid potential infiltration by radicals (there were 434 Ceuta/Melilla Muslim applicants for the most recent entrance examination). This request has also been harshly criticized by Muslim collectives in Ceuta and throughout Spain (EFE, January 25).
It is quite possible that this frictional dynamic will continue or worsen in the future if the two factors evident in this case study continue to be present: a) that grassroots jihadi networks remain resolute in their campaign to attract members of the security services; and b) that thousands of qualified second generation Muslims continue to apply for vacancies in the army and police forces.
In facing this situation, the Spanish government will have to find the appropriate balance between protecting the constitutional right to non-discrimination regardless of ethnicity or religion and necessary counter-intelligence activities. It is an equation which will require discretion and an acute sense of the social climate from policymakers in the military and police intelligence units to avoid additional polarization and the permissive conditions that could further recruitment and radicalization in local communities.
Another salient aspect of this case is its implications for future networks to operate in the region based on the grievances emerging from local interests (i.e. perceived discrimination in the military), and those emanating from exogenous jihadi propaganda. The Ceuta counter-terrorist operation overlapped with an increase in global jihadi rhetoric concerning the rightful ownership of the cities of Ceuta and Melilla. Although there is apparently no relationship between this most recent network's activities and these claims, such rhetoric cannot be overlooked when considering the future of jihadi activity in the region.
In May 2006, a direct threat to Spanish interests appeared in the radical al-Ansar forum, in which the fight for the liberation of Ceuta and Melilla was compared with those of Iraq, Chechnya and Kashmir. The communiqué was posted by a group calling itself Nadim al- Magrebi, which is the name occasionally used by an Algeria-based jihadist network (El País, November 5, 2006).
The communiqué quite naturally caused alarm throughout Spanish counter-terrorism agencies. Even more worrying, however, was the reference to Ceuta and Melilla as occupied cities in the December 20, 2006 diatribe of Ayman al-Zawahiri. These types of proclamations have the potential to pressure or motivate groups acting in the Maghreb or in Spanish territory to plot new attacks on Spanish interests.
This threat could be compounded further by the recent partnering initiatives of groups operating in the Maghreb (i.e. the GSPC's tactic of changing its name to "Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb"). These more established groups are in part attempting to harness the potential of such local grievances and grassroots groups to further their agenda of reinvigorating their beleaguered movements.
Notes
1. Javier Jordan & Humberto Trujillo, Favourable situations for the jihadist recruitment: The neighbourhood of Principe Alfonso (Ceuta, Spain), Jihad Monitor Occasional Paper No. 3, November 27, 2006.
2. This hostility can also be observed in other European networks such as the Hofstad Group that assassinated Theo Van Gogh, the network that authored the Madrid attacks, as well as other Spanish-based groups arising after the March 11, 2004 attacks.
3. Their construction and veneration constitutes a habitual practice in the north of Morocco; nevertheless, it is considered abominable by Salafis.
4. Brynjar Lia, "Al-Suri's Doctrines for Decentralized Jihadi Training," Part 1 and 2, Terrorism Monitor, January 18 and February 1.
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3 French nationals shot dead in Saudi Arabia
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) -- Three French nationals, some of them Muslims, were shot dead in Saudi Arabia on Monday in what appeared to be a militant attack, the Interior Ministry said.
A ministry statement said a group of eight French nationals came under fire near the town of Tabuk and a nearby historical site, Madain Saleh, in the northwest of the vast desert country as they were heading to the holy city of Mecca for a pilgrimage.
Two of the group died at the scene and one of the two wounded died later in hospital, said the statement carried by the official news agency SPA. A state television report earlier said 4 had died.
The group included four men, three women and a child, the ministry said. It said two of the dead were men. A security source said the attackers had singled out the men when shooting.
"Three are dead and I am not sure about the state of the fourth one," a Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman told Saudi television.
In Paris, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy confirmed the deaths.
"I have been informed that several of our compatriots residing in Riyadh were the victims of an armed attack today," Douste-Blazy said.
"Three of them died in this attack. Another was wounded and taken to hospital in Medina," he said in a statement.
Militants swearing allegiance to al Qaeda launched a violent campaign to topple the U.S.-allied Saudi monarchy in 2003, with suicide bomb attacks on foreigners and government installations including the oil industry.
There had been no major attacks targeting foreigners since 2004, when the campaign was at its height.
Frenchman Laurent Barbot was shot dead in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah by suspected al Qaeda militants in September 2004.
The last major attack was an attempt to storm an oil facility at Abqaiq in the east of Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter.
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Al-Qaeda Linked to Iraqi Chlorine Site
The terrorist organization al-Qaeda is believed to have operated a factory linked to recent chlorine attacks in Iraq, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 22).
Eight people were killed and scores injured in two attacks last week involving explosions of vehicles carrying the chemical. The deaths have been attributed to the explosions rather than exposure to chlorine.
The U.S. military said a plant in Karma was connected to the attacks. A Feb. 20 raid on the facility uncovered al-Qaeda propaganda fliers and “interactive DVDs,” said Lt. Col. Valery Keaveny.
“This is absolutely a display that al-Qaeda is trying to adjust its barbaric tactics,” Keaveny said. “Is this a threat? Yes. Are we prepared to deal with it? Yes.”
U.S. forces discovered three 55-gallon barrels of chlorine, three barrels filled with nitroglycerine that could be used in explosives, mortar and artillery shells, crude explosives, five vehicles and propane tanks, Reuters reported.
“They had all the munitions, they had all the cars. The chemicals found were not weaponized yet, but they were probably planning to use them,” said Capt. Matt Gregory (Reuters/Gulf Times, Feb. 25).
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Iranian forces reportedly clash with an Iranian offshoot of the Kurdish militant PKK in northern Iraq, and Turkey may be planning a spring offensive that promises to further escalate the conflict.
Commentary by Dominic Moran in Tel Aviv for ISN Security Watch (26/02/07)
As attention focuses on the joint Iraqi-US security operation in Baghdad, a cross-border militant strike on Saturday has served as a timely warning that the failure to settle a low-scale Kurdish insurgency could yet unravel the significant progress made in ensuring stability in northern Iraq.
The state-run IRNA news agency reported on Saturday that Iranian Revolutionary Guards units had engaged Kurdish militants in the country's West Azarbaijan province, as the insurgents apparently sought to flee to the safety of the Iraqi border 17 kilometers away.
According to IRNA, "The Revolutionary Guards besieged these elements and started neutralizing them. In this operation at least 17 mercenary anti-revolution elements were killed and some were injured."
Kurdish news agency Firat carried a report the same day that militants from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK/PEJAK) were claiming to have shot down an Iranian military helicopter in the area with a shoulder-launched missile, killing eight soldiers and capturing one.
Iran's semi-official Fars news agency confirmed that a helicopter had gone down in the region on Saturday, saying that one of the pilots had been "martyred" in the crash, which it claimed was caused by bad weather.
In December, Iranian officials reported the capture of 87 members and supporters of "terrorist groups" in West Azarbaijan, saying that security forces had killed nine militants in recent months.
PJAK is an Iranian offshoot of the larger Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), which launched an insurgency against Turkey in 1984. PJAK claims to have several thousand men and women under arms, but visitors to the group's Qandil Mountains stronghold in northeast Iraq say that PJAK bases shelter around 1,000 fighters.
The movement is focused on replacing Iran's theocratic government with a liberal-democratic model that recognizes minority rights.
Iran retaliated to PJAK attacks last May by shelling Kurdish villages in northern Iraq.
The New Yorker's Seymour Hersch alleged in a November 2006 article that PJAK was receiving support from the US and Israel, including equipment, training and targeting information. In an earlier interview, a spokesperson for the group, Ihsan Warya, denied any direct links, adding he was "disappointed that Washington hasn't made contact."
Iran recognizes the Kurds as an official minority and allows the free use of the Kurdish language.
Turkey has instituted limited civil reforms since the withdrawal of most PKK forces to Iraq in 1999, including allowing television and radio broadcasts in the Kurdish language.
The PKK has set up a tiny quasi-state in the far north of Iraq, establishing public utilities and services that include health and dental clinics.
The group says it has given up on its demand for an independent Kurdistan and has moved away from its Marxist roots. It has focused instead on protecting its mountain stronghold from regular Turkish assaults while demanding full protection for minority cultural rights and the Kurdish language in the Turkish constitution.
In a worrying development, the PKK announced last June that it was ending its second unilateral ceasefire since the group's founder Abdullah Ocalan was captured in 1999 due to the alleged failure of Turkey to reciprocate. The group has vowed to target Turkish tourist and financial centers.
More than 30,000 people died in the PKK-led insurgency in Turkey from 1984-1999, with human rights groups reporting widespread atrocities on both sides.
The US has appeared to give its tacit support to Turkish incursions into northern Iraq, but may look to prevent an all out assault as the PKK and PJAK are maintaining military pressure on Iranian forces.
Iran has repeatedly accused Britain and the US of fomenting ethnic discontent within its borders and of aiding armed insurgents who have launched attacks in the country's north and southwest and along the Pakistani border in recent weeks.
Any large-scale Turkish military assault would threaten relations with the US-allied Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), whose peshmerga forces have maintained an island of calm in northern Iraq since 1991. The KRG looks set to hold sway over lucrative oil contracts under a new national plan for the division of fossil fuel assets.
The growing independence of the KRG within the nascent Iraqi federal structure has raised concerns in Syria, Iran and Turkey of a new wave of agitation for Kurdish autonomy, if not independence.
The KRG's ruling Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) parties have sought to placate these fears by insisting that their demands and concerns are now confined to Iraq.
The PKK has expressed an interest in dialogue and constitutional politics but has been ignored by Turkey, the EU and the US. Given the diminished size of the insurgency, the opportunity appears to exist for a negotiated end to the Kurdish independence struggle that would see the PKK and PJAK and related organizations dissolved or incorporated within the KRG and Turkish political systems in return for minor Turkish constitutional emendations.
Emboldened by its successes against the PKK insurgency in the late 1990s, Turkey is rumored to be preparing a spring offensive that promises to extend the conflict and further destabilize northern Iraq.
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Uprising May Widen, Warns Yemen Rebel Leader
SANAA, 26 February 2007 — A Yemeni lawmaker accused of being a leader of a deadly three-year uprising in the mountainous north of country warned yesterday that rebels might widen their campaign.
Yahia Badruddin Al-Houthi, the brother of Hussein Al-Houthi who led the uprising until he was killed by security forces in 2004, told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that the rebels “have opened new fronts” in their stronghold in the northern province of Saada.
“It is not unlikely that confrontations could spread outside the province,” he said from Germany, where the newspaper said he was currently based.
The rebellion — which the government claimed to have crushed in April 2005 — flared up again in January following a presidential ultimatum on the rebels to disarm, and 42 Yemeni soldiers were killed in the space of a week.
Earlier this month, Yemen requested the extradition from Libya of Houthi while he was on a visit there, saying he was wanted for the “major role he has played and continues to play in the sedition.”
Asharq Al-Awsat quoted Houthi as saying he had been invited by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi who wanted to mediate in the conflict.
Houthi also accused the government of spreading false information that the rebels were targeting Jews in Saada, saying they are “not a target.”
However, earlier this month, the MP’s other brother, rebel leader Abdel Malak Al-Houthi, said that threats had been made against Jews in a village in Saada to force them to leave.
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Iran fires 'first space rocket'
Iranian media say the country has successfully launched its first rocket capable of reaching space.
But officials said it was just for research and would not go into orbit.
Experts say if Iran has fired a rocket into space it would cause alarm abroad as it would mean scientists had crossed important technological barriers.
Iran has made little secret of its desire to become a space power and already has a satellite in orbit launched by the Russians.
The latest launch - if confirmed - comes at a time of mounting tension between Tehran and the West over Iran's controversial nuclear programme.
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany are due to meet on Monday to discuss the possibility of more sanctions over the nuclear issue.
On Sunday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered another defiant speech insisting there is no going back on Iran's nuclear programme.
Iran's potential nuclear military programme, combined with an advanced missile capability, would destabilise the region
Sir Richard Dalton, former UK ambassador to Iran
In a speech in Tehran, he likened his country's nuclear programme to a train with no brakes and no reverse gear.
One of his deputy foreign ministers, Manouchehr Mohammadi, said they had prepared themselves for any situation arising from the issue, even for war.
Meanwhile, foreign ministers from seven Muslim states meeting in Pakistan have called for a diplomatic solution to the "dangerous" stand-off.
"It is vital that all issues must be resolved through diplomacy and there must be no resort to use of force," said a statement issued after talks involving ministers from Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Missile technology
Iranian TV broke the news of the reported test saying: "The first space rocket has been successfully launched into space."
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Ahmadinejad has claimed Iran's right to nuclear technology
It quoted the head of Iran's aerospace research centre, Mohsen Bahrami, as saying that "the rocket was carrying material intended for research created by the ministries of science and defence".
However, Ali Akbar Golrou, executive director of the same facility, was later quoted by Fars news agency as saying the craft launched by was a sub-orbital rocket for scientific research.
"What was announced by the head of the research centre was the news of launching this sounding rocket," Mr Golrou said.
It would not remain in orbit but could rise to about 150km (94 miles) before a parachute-assisted descent to Earth.
No pictures of the reported launch have been shown on Iranian state TV, and no Western countries have confirmed tracking any such test-firing.
Some Western diplomats suspect Iran may have backtracked on the announcement when it realised what negative publicity this would bring at a sensitive time, says the BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran.
The reports come a day after Iran's Defence Minister spoke of plans to build a satellite launcher and join the space club. Also, an Iranian official quoted in Aviation Week earlier this month said Iran would soon test a new satellite launcher.
Britain's former ambassador to Iran, Sir Richard Dalton, told the BBC that, if confirmed, such a launch could destabilise the Middle East.
"It is a matter of concern," he said. "Iran's potential nuclear military programme, combined with an advanced missile capability, would destabilise the region, and of course if there were a bomb that could be placed on the end of this missile, it would in breach of Iran's obligations under the non-proliferation treaty."
Military experts believe that if Iran has sent a rocket into space it means scientists have mastered the technology needed to cross the atmospheric barrier.
In practice, they say, that means there is no technological block to Iran building longer range missiles now, something that will be of great international concern.
In 2005, Iran's Russian-made satellite was put into orbit by a Russian rocket.
But shortly afterwards Iranian military officials said they were preparing a satellite launch vehicle of their own, and last month they announced they were ready to test it soon.
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Iran's Move in Latin America
By Douglas Farah Seems like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela is not the only one who is entering into new strategic alliances with Iran while much of the world is backing away.
It is not much of a surprise that Nicaragua's new/old president Daniel Ortega has, according to my sources who have seen the documents, already signed agreements to send a small group of "diplomats" to Tehran for intelligence training.
In addition, Nicaragua will support Iran's nuclear ambitions and other Iranian positions. In exchange, Nicaragua will get a hydroelectric plant, a motorcycle factory and other economic toys. This is all in concert with Venezuela, who, as today's Washington Post reports, Chavez is consolidating his control in Venezuela while buying support of other nations. Along with his "brother" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Chavez is pledging a $2 billion investment fund for the region.
Chavez and Ahmadinejad are certainly free to spend their money as they see fit. The aid is given without the stringent marco economic conditions of the loans from the World Bank and IMF. Fine.
But there are conditions nonetheless, and it is truly unbelievable to read that there are those who think this is all done from the altruistic natures of Chavez and Ahmadinejad.
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Japan Launches Its 4th Spy Satellite
TOKYO -- Japan launched its fourth spy satellite Saturday, completing its capabilities to monitor activities worldwide and bolstering its ability to observe neighboring North Korea's nuclear program.
The satellite, along with a smaller test prototype, was launched from the country's space center on a remote southern Japan island atop an H-2A rocket, the workhorse of Japan's space program.
Japanese space agency spokesman Satoki Kurokawa described the liftoff _ which had been postponed three times due to poor weather _ as a success. Television footage showed the rocket racing up through cloudy skies.
The launch of the radar satellite enhances a multibillion dollar, decade-old plan for Japan to have round-the-clock surveillance of the secretive North and other areas Japan wants to peer in on.
But weaknesses in the satellites' capabilities have led to criticism that the program is a waste of money and, with better data available on the commercial market, that Japan will continue to be dependent on Washington for its core intelligence.
The launch also comes just a month after China demonstrated its ability to shoot satellites out of orbit with ground-based missiles. Japan and other countries, including the United States, have strongly protested Beijing's anti-satellite test.
China has defended the test as peaceful, and said it presents no country with a threat.
Japanese space officials say the satellites provide an important means for the country to independently collect intelligence, and say improvements in the satellites' capabilities are in the works.
The prototype launched Friday, for example, features higher-resolution optics that can be used in the future to improve the quality of the satellites' photographs from orbit.
Japan launched its first pair of spy satellites into orbit in March 2003. The program grew out of concern following North Korea's launch of a ballistic missile over Japan's main island in 1998.
The government's original plan was to put a total of eight intelligence-gathering satellites into orbit through 2006. However, it suffered a major setback in November 2003, when a rocket carrying the second set of spy satellites malfunctioned and was destroyed in mid-flight.
Officials say they are back on course now.
"Our crisis management has improved substantially," said Yasuhiro Itakura of the Cabinet office in charge of the program.
Though Japan's intelligence-gathering satellites are not under military control, Japan's ruling party proposed late last year that the military be allowed to use the country's space program. The proposal still needs to be approved by Parliament.
Since 1969, Japan's space program has been limited by a parliamentary resolution committed to peaceful uses. The new proposal would restrict military use of the program to self-defense, officials say.
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Colombian rebels offer prisoner swap
BOGOTA, Colombia - The rebels holding a former presidential candidate hostage said Friday they were still willing to strike a deal for her release, five years to the day after her capture.
In a statement, Ivan Marquez, a member of the supreme command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, of FARC, also dismissed recent speculation that Ingrid Betancourt was being held outside of Colombia.
"The liberation of Ingrid Betancourt and all the prisoners held by both sides could already have been part of history, if (President Alvaro Uribe) had agreed to demilitarize the municipalities of Florida and Pradera," Marquez said in the statement.
He referred to a long-standing demand by the rebels for the government to withdraw all security forces from two remote towns in southwest Colombia, a guerrilla stronghold.
The 15,000-strong FARC say the towns must be demilitarized for 45 days to allow an exchange of prisoners, something the government has so far rejected.
The FARC hold around 60 well known prisoners — including Betancourt, former ministers and three U.S. defense contractors who were kidnapped four years ago — which they will only release in return for the freeing of some 500 imprisoned rebels.
Betancourt — who has become a cause celebre because of her dual French-Colombian nationality — was kidnapped on Feb. 23, 2002, as she campaigned for president in southern Colombia.
Saying that the guerrillas are not interested in a deal, Uribe advocates military rescues of the hostages as the only hope of freeing them — something the hostages' families unanimously oppose, fearing their loved ones will be killed in the crossfire of a military operation or executed by their captors to prevent their escape.
"A military rescue is simply irresponsible," said Marquez, calling the escape of former minister Fernando Araujo six weeks ago from six years of captivity during an attack by the army on the camp where he was being held "the luck of one in a thousand."
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Algeria busts North African Qaeda arms ring-paper
ALGIERS, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Algerian police have dismantled a network suspected of funnelling weapons to an al Qaeda branch in North Africa, a newspaper said on Saturday.
The busted ring included French, Tunisian and Algerian nationals and was believed to supply the Al Qaeda Organisation of Islamic Maghreb, the daily Liberte said, citing unnamed sources.
A French national, two Tunisians and 24 Algerians were in custody in the eastern town of Constantine after they were arrested by police following a search operation there.
Police raided a safe house in Constantine, 430 km (268 miles) from Algiers, on Feb.11 and seized 165 shotguns, 995 cartridges and 30,300 euros, the newspaper added.
A 30-year-old Tunisan is suspected to be the network's financier and a French national named as Alain-Roger Raphael was believed to have smuggled the arms on a camper van from the eastern port of Skikda, the daily said.
Police believed another French national, still on the run along with 13 other members of the network, supplied the weapons. There was no immediate confirmation of its account from the authorities.
The daily said the main purchaser of the arms was The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which has claimed responsibility for seven bomb attacks on Feb. 13 in two provinces east of the capital Algiers.
Six people were killed in the attacks, which took place a few weeks after a bomb on a bus carrying foreign oil workers near Algiers killed two people and wounded eight.
GSPC recently adopted the name of Al Qaeda Organisation of Islamic Maghreb after Osama Bin Laden approved the name change, the group has said on a Web site used by Islamists. Islamists began an armed revolt in 1992 after the then military-backed authorities, fearing an Iran-style revolution, scrapped a parliamentary election that an Islamist political party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), was set to win.
Up to 200,000 people were killed in the ensuing bloodshed. The violence has sharply subsided in the past few years.
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Iran politics: Tighter squeeze
FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT The tensions arising from Iran's nuclear programme have been ratcheted up a few notches following the latest progress report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The report, unsurprisingly, found that Iran had failed to abide by the demand of the UN Security Council on it to halt all uranium enrichment activities by February 21st, and indicated that the programme was likely to take a big step forward in May with the start-up of 18 cascades, involving 3,000 centrifuges, at the Natanz enrichment plant north of Isfahan. The IAEA also noted that Iran had agreed to periodic inspections, but had ruled out permanent monitoring by remote cameras.
Iran's refusal to yield on its basic position of exercising what it claims to be its right to acquire the capability to produce fuel for nuclear power stations means that confrontation with the international community will continue. Foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany are to meet at the end of February to discuss a possible expansion of the sanctions agreed in December in resolution 1737. A military strike at Iran's nuclear and defence installations could be launched at any moment, although the US continues to maintain in public that it has no such intention, for the time being.
Slow grind
The Economist Intelligence Unit has elaborated a medium-term scenario that accords a 65% probability to a non-military outcome to the Iran nuclear issue. This incorporates a 45% likelihood of Iran managing to achieve its goal of completing the nuclear fuel cycle, either with IAEA scrutiny and international approval or in the teeth of sanctions and with the exclusion of IAEA inspectors. We consider an outcome whereby Iran fails to achieve its objective, either because of sanctions or through an agreement to scale down its programme, as having 20% probability. That leaves a 35% chance, in our view, of a military outcome, which would be likely to slow down the programme, but cannot be guaranteed to destroy it completely.
The leading international powers have maintained a united front on the principle of preventing Iran from acquiring the potential to develop nuclear weapons, but this unity is likely to come under increasing strain as the options of tougher sanctions and, ultimately, of a military threat come into the reckoning. Iran claims not to be bothered by the prospect of sanctions--even though its economy has already suffered some damage through the fraying of its commercial and financial links with the outside world. Iranian officials have also downplayed the risk of military attack from the US, on the grounds that US forces are bogged down in Iraq, while emphasising that Iran would hit back hard if such an attack were to be launched.
The sanctions approved under Resolution 1737 were focused on inhibiting the supply of equipment for the nuclear fuel programme (although not for the Bushehr power station). They also entailing freezing the funds and assets of a number of designated entities and individuals tied to the nuclear programme and to Iran's military industries and a travel ban on these individuals. Again, this is hedged around with numerous exceptions, including one framed to ensure that contractual payments to Russia for work on the Bushehr project are not affected. The entities include the Defence Industries Organisation, "some of whose subordinates have been involved in the centrifuge programme making components, and in the missile programme," according to an annex to the resolution. The individuals are listed as either being involved in the nuclear programme or involved in the ballistics programme--with one exception, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, who is listed as being involved in both.
The proposed new package of sanctions is thought to include imposing a travel ban on all of the individuals named in the earlier resolution. There has also been talk of restricting the provision of government-backed loans and credit guarantees to Iran, but such a step would be likely to be resisted by some of Iran's main trading partners--including Japan, South Korea, France, Germany and Italy--which would face the prospect of meeting large claims on existing transactions.
Russian privilege
Another possible element in a fresh sanctions package would be an embargo on weapons sales. However, this would be strongly opposed by Russia. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said in a recent interview with Qatar-based Al Jazeera television that he considered it important to maintain a certain level of co-operation with Iran so as to convince the country's people and leadership that it is not surrounded by hostile forces. He observed that Russia's weapons supplies to Iran were of relatively limited scope, and of an exclusively defensive nature. At the same time, however, Mr Putin said that Russia remained "categorically opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons". He said that Russia remained in contact with Iran's leaders, and that he hoped that Iran would give consideration to Russia's recommendations--which would entail Iran subcontracting part of the fuel production process to Russia so as to provide a guarantee against a military application--but he conceded that Russia had not heard anything constructive on the particular issue of Iran suspending its enrichment activities while negotiations are held on a political resolution.
Russia has applied pressure on Iran in its own way through raising the issue of supposed late payments for work on the Bushehr project. Iran has contested these claims, but it seems clear that Russia is in no hurry to complete the 1,000-mw power station project, which is based on an agreement for Russia to supply the fuel and to dispose of the spent fuel rods. The inauguration of the plant would provide an opportunity for Iran to flaunt its ability to defy international pressure, and would thus be embarrassing for the project's Russian sponsors. Bushehr would boost Iran's total power generating capacity by 2.6%, from its present level of 38,000 mw.
Pre-emptive
The influence of Russia is likely to ensure that the next moves by the UN Security Council are not unduly severe, leaving the way for Iran to be persuaded of the benefits of negotiation, rather than seeking to bludgeon it into submission. This would give Iran several more months in which to build up the capacity of its Natanz facility. In the view of the US, Iran has, in effect, been thumbing its nose at the international community, not only forging ahead with a programme assumed to be aimed ultimately at developing nuclear weapons, but also building up its capability to retaliate against or, indeed, to pre-empt a US (and/or Israeli) military attack. Iran's missile batteries are capable of threatening US bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, and, according to (possibly self-serving) reports from Israel, Iran has been working to build up the missile and anti-tank capabilities of its two main Arab allies, Hizbullah and Syria. The US has made much in recent weeks of Iranian involvement in arming Shia militias in Iraq with the aim of increasing the pressure on US forces.
The absence of any dramatic shift--such as a surprise US attack or an Iranian U-turn--the pattern of confrontation that has been set over the past 18 months is likely to continue, with Iran doing just enough to keep the diplomatic ball in play, while relying on its regional allies to highlight the message that the issue has effects reaching far beyond Iran's borders. The Bush administration, meanwhile, will be seeking to turn the tide in its favour in Iraq, while holding a firm line against Syria and Hizbullah; the other Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, will do their best to steer a middle path.
The Economist Intelligence Unit
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Congressional Report on Russian Political, Economic and Security
"Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia: Security Issues and Implications for U.S. Interests,"
Yamaha Employees Arrested for Helicopter Export
Japanese authorities have arrested three Yamaha Motor Co. employees on suspicion of attempting to illegally export to China a remote-controlled helicopter that could be used to disperse chemical agents, Deutsche Press-Agentur reported today (see GSN, Jan. 4).
The company failed to obtain government approval for exporting the helicopter to Beijing BVE Technology, which is believed to be connected to the People’s Liberation Army, Kyodo News reported.
The export in question did not go through. However, Yamaha has acknowledged previously shipping nine of the helicopters to Beijing. It denied violating Japanese export rules, and said the helicopters were intended solely for agricultural use (Deutsche Press-Agentur, Feb. 23).
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Colombia orders hunt for rebels holding hostages
BOGOTA • Colombian President Alvaro Uribe ordered the military to intensify the hunt for rebels holding hostages yesterday after rejecting a condition for their release delivered from the guerrilla’s jungle hide-out.
The order scuttled hopes of breaking a deadlock over talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, which has held scores of hostages, including three US conractors, for years as part of Latin America’s oldest rebel insurgency.
Uribe, a Washington ally popular for reducing violence with the help of a US-funded security crackdown, said a civilian emissary had returned from a jungle meeting with the FARC leadership with a demand and threats he could not accept.
“We authorised a Colombian citizen with contacts to make a gesture for a hostage exchange; he went in good faith for the government and brings back a Farc threat,” Uribe said.
“Faced with this threat, we have to get tough with these bandits.” The announcement is a set back for the families of politicians, police and soldiers held for as long as nine years in secret rebel camps. They want Uribe to negotiate an exchange of jailed guerrillas for 61 key hostages held by Farc.
The hostages include Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian national and former presidential candidate captured five years ago this week, and three US citizens caught while on a drug eradication mission in 2003.
The Farc, which began fighting for land reform in the 1960s but is now deeply entrenched in Colombia’s cocaine trade, wants the government to demilitarize two towns the size of New York City to facilitate talks.
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Italy's Prodi set to return as prime minister
ROME (AFP) - Romano Prodi looked set Friday to be renamed as Italy's prime minister after securing the backing of his fractious ruling coalition with the threat of a new election.
Prodi resigned on Wednesday after an embarrassing foreign policy defeat in the Senate, raising the spectre of a new period of revolving-door governments for which Italy was notorious for decades following World War II.
Following the late-night accord, however, President Giorgio Napolitano pursued consultations with political leaders and was expected to decide Friday or Saturday whether to give the centre-left leader a new chance to form a government.
Silvio Berlusconi, the right wing leader and former prime minister, said after meeting with Napolitano: "We told the head of state that this government is not and will never be able to govern."
Berlusconi added: "Now we find ourselves faced with an indisputable reality, the absence of a parliamentary majory in foreign and defence policy, issues that jeopardise Italy's international credibility."
Prodi got his coalition to agree a 12-point "non-negotiable" political pact which includes support for Italy's 2,000-troop deployment in
Afghanistan and other foreign commitments, the issue that caused the rupture on Wednesday.
The 67-year-old prime minister, whose coalition narrowly won last April's elections, also secured a commitment to a high-speed train linking the northern city of Turin to Lyon, France, a project opposed by the Greens.
"Either you accept these conditions ... or I go. And after me, you know very well, all that's left is the prospect of elections," Corriere della Sera newspaper quoted Prodi as telling his coalition partners.
In Wednesday's Senate vote two communist senators who oppose the Afghanistan mission and the planned enlargement of a US military base in Vicenza, northern Italy, voted against Prodi.
Franco Giordano, the secretary of the Refoundation Communist party, said: "What is important now is to confirm confidence in Prodi. Efforts to end this government experiment should in no way succeed."
The crisis comes at a time when Italy has commitments in many areas, notably Lebanon, where it leads a peacekeeping force, as well as Afghanistan, lamented Guido Moteldo, editor-in-chief of the centre-left magazine Europa.
"Aside from
Israel, with myriad parties unable to form lasting coalitions, there are few examples in the world of such governmental instability," he told AFP.
Napolitano, a former communist, met with several party leaders and three past presidents.
If Napolitano asks Prodi to stay on, the first order of business will be to call a vote of confidence in parliament.
While the centre-left has a comfortable majority in the lower house, it has only a one-vote advantage in the Senate. However, centre-left party leaders said Thursday they would rally their lawmakers to back Prodi in a confidence vote.
The president could also choose a new government leader from the coalition, appoint a technocrat government or dissolve parliament and call new elections.
Sergio Romano, a leading Italian political analyst based in Milan, said: "Prodi is using an argument that is right now very strong: 'Do we want to help Berlusconi regain power?'"
The Refoundation Communists "don't want to be considered responsible," he told AFP.
Although Prodi was elected on pledges to revive Italy's economy and and rein in a gaping budget deficit, his opinion poll standing has plunged since the unveiling of an austerity budget.
Prodi's unwieldy coalition also includes centrist Catholics who are uncomfortable with some initiatives affecting the family, notably the issue of civil unions for unmarried couples including gays.
Prodi, head of Italy's 61st government, was also prime minister for two years and five months in 1996-98, falling when communists withdrew support.
In the short term, Romano said, Prodi is likely to stay on. "But the real question is will the new agreement ... be strong enough to hold water during the next problem?
"This may just be one stage in the process of a much longer crisis," he said.
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Chad PM dies in Paris from brain haemorrhage
N'DJAMENA, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Chad's Prime Minister Pascal Yoadimnadji died from a brain haemorrhage in Paris on Friday after he was flown there for urgent treatment following a heart attack. He was 56.
Yoadimnadji, a former agriculture minister, was named prime minister of the central African country in February 2005 by President Idriss Deby, who seized power in a military coup in 1990.
"The prime minister was a great statesman with a strong sense of responsibility to the service of his country. He was a great uniter of the Chadian people," the Chadian government said in a statement.
Chad's ambassador to Paris, Moukhtar Wawa Daha, told Reuters Yoadimnadji had died shortly after midnight from a brain haemorrhage. His body will be flown to Chad for burial.
Yoadimnadji, who as prime minister oversaw the daily running of government, served several times as a minister in Chad. He was also president of the national electoral commission in 1996 during the country's first multi-party elections and was a former president of the country's constitutional council.
Instrumental in implementing reforms in Chad's nascent oil sector, he was reappointed last year after Deby won a fresh five-year term at elections boycotted by the opposition in the impoverished, landlocked former French colony.
Despite becoming one of Africa's newest oil producers, Chad remains near the bottom of the continent's development indices and health facilities are basic.
Deby's government faces a low-intensity war against rebels in eastern Chad as well as ethnic conflict spilling across the border from the neighbouring Sudanese region of Darfur. The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of Chadians.
Infrastructure Minister Adoum Younousmi will act as interim head of the cabinet until Yoadimnadji's successor is chosen.
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Cheney warns on Chinese build-up
BBC US Vice-President Dick Cheney has expressed concern over China's military policies, saying they were at odds with the country's stated peaceful aims.
On a visit to Australia, he praised China's role in a nuclear deal with North Korea but criticised its military build-up and anti-satellite tests.
Mr Cheney also thanked Australia for its support for US operations in Iraq.
Australian PM John Howard is facing opposition on the issue, and there have been protests over Mr Cheney's visit.
The US vice-president commended Chinese leaders for their role in six-party talks with North Korea, which resulted in a landmark agreement on 13 February committing Pyongyang to shut down key nuclear facilities.
"The Chinese understand that a nuclear North Korea would be a threat to their own security," he said.
Prime Minister Howard and the nation he serves has never wavered on the war on terror
Dick Cheney
However, he added that "other actions by the Chinese government send a different message".
He said China's destruction of an inactive weather satellite last month, as well as its "continued fast-paced military build-up are less constructive, and are not consistent with China's stated goal of a peaceful rise".
The BBC's Nick Bryant, in Sydney, says the comments were significant because Mr Cheney often delivers the authentic voice of the White House.
Beijing has said the anti-satellite tests was for scientific purposes only, but many observers saw it as a demonstration of China's growing military power.
Reassurance
Mr Cheney also questioned whether North Korea would abide by its commitments in the nuclear deal, saying the US was going "into this deal with our eyes open".
He arrived in Australia on Thursday after visiting Japan - another key US ally.
Correspondents say he has sought to assure both countries that Washington remains committed to the Asia-Pacific region, despite problems in Iraq.
During his speech in Sydney, Mr Cheney praised Mr Howard, who he said had "never wavered in the war on terror".
The vice-president said Australia had won global recognition for its efforts to fight terrorism.
"The United States appreciates it, and the whole world respects you for it," he added.
Mr Cheney warned of the dangers of an early withdrawal of coalition troops from Iraq.
"If our coalition withdrew before Iraqis could defend themselves, radical factions would battle for dominance of that country," he said.
He also expressed concern that failure in Iraq would lead to more violence in the Middle East: "Having tasted victory in Iraq, jihadists would look for new missions".
Under pressure
Australia currently has about 1,450 military personnel based in Iraq or involved in Iraq-related operations.
Protester is arrested by police in Sydney during demonstrations on Thursday over Dick Cheney's visit - 22/02/07
There have been scuffles between police and anti-war protesters
Mr Howard faces an election battle this year and is under strong domestic pressure to announce a withdrawal of Australian forces.
An opinion poll earlier this week suggested that more than two-thirds of Australians want Mr Howard to announce a date for withdrawing troops or to order an immediate pull out.
But Mr Howard has instead offered to send an additional 70 military advisers to help train the Iraqi army.
Protesters gathered in Sydney to rally against Mr Cheney's visit.
Three people were arrested during scuffles on Friday, and at least seven were arrested after similar scenes on Thursday.
Mr Cheney is scheduled to hold talks with Mr Howard on Saturday.
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Iran's nuclear defiance risks new sanctions
Iran has failed to comply with a UN Security Council demand to halt uranium enrichment, the UN nuclear watchdog said, prompting calls around the world for new sanctions against Tehran.
The United States, which accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, said international powers want to haul Iran back before the Security Council.
France called for a new sanctions resolution while fellow Security Council permanent member Britain called for "further Security Council measures, which will lead to the further isolation of Iran internationally."
But Tehran insisted that it would not halt its nuclear work.
"Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities," the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report for the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors and the Security Council that showed Iran actually increasing the scale of this work.
The Security Council passed a resolution on December 23 imposing limited sanctions on Iran and demanding it freeze enrichment, which makes fuel for civilian reactors but can also produce atom bomb material.
The council gave IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei 60 days to report on whether Iran had complied. The IAEA board is to meet on March 6.
ElBaradei's report said Iran had failed to cooperate on crucial issues that raise the possibility of a military dimension to Iran's work. Iran has failed to hand over a 15-page document outlining the plan for making the core of nuclear bombs, for instance.
A senior UN official said the lack of "progress in the outstanding issues is the most important thing in this report."
The IAEA also demanded that Iran allow monitoring cameras at a huge, heavily bunkered underground enrichment site in Natanz, in central Iran.
The United States and its allies are now expected to urge new UN Security Council action against Iran.
"We are disappointed that Iran has not complied with (UN) resolution 1737," said White House national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said the failure "is going to leave us in a position of looking at next steps in the Council on how to proceed."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Berlin after talks with the Russian, German and EU foreign ministers that world powers were agreed on the need to refer Iran back to the UN Security Council.
But in Madrid, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos called for more talks, saying: "Diplomacy is never finished."
Stronger sanctions could be opposed by Iranian allies and trading partners Russia and China, who as permanent members of the Security Council have the power to veto any resolution.
Iran has continued to build up its enrichment program in defiance of the world's calls for it to freeze strategic nuclear fuel work, according to the report.
The IAEA said Iran has now installed 328 centrifuges at a huge underground site at Natanz and is in the process of installing another 328 centrifuges, all in units of 164-centrifuge cascades, or production lines, at what is intended to be an industrial-level facility.
Iran is only actually enriching uranium at a pilot plant above-ground. This is in small amounts and at a level "below 5 percent U-235" -- far below the 90 percent refinement for the U-235 isotope needed to make weapons, the IAEA said.
At the underground facility, heavily bunkered against possible air strikes, Iran is however already operating two of the 164-centrifuge cascades in test mode "under vacuum" and not with the feedstock uranium gas needed for enrichment, the report said, adding that its information was current as of February 17 when inspectors were last there.
But Iran brought in on January 31, 8.7 tons of the uranium gas, a sizeable amount and ready to be fed into the centrifuges.
Iran told the IAEA in January that it wanted to install up to 3,000 centrifuges underground and bring them into operation by May. It eventually seeks to have over 50,000 centrifuges, which could produce enough uranium to make at least 15 nuclear weapons a year.
Iran has blocked IAEA inspectors from installing cameras to monitor the centrifuges at the Natanz underground site, although there are cameras outside the hall where they are located.
A senior UN official said the centrifuges need to be monitored due to the growing scale of the Iranian work, although he said there is "no indication" the Iranians are close to having enough knowledge of enrichment to make nuclear weapons.
Iran cannot accept UN demands that it halt enrichment, a top official said in reaction to the report.
"Iran considers that a suspension of uranium would be contrary to its rights, to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and to international rules," said Mohammad Saidi, deputy director of Iran's atomic energy agency.
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Pakistan successfully tests nuclear-capable missile
ISLAMABAD (AFP): Pakistan Friday test-fired its longest range nuclear-capable ballistic missile, two days after signing a deal with rival India to cut the risk of atomic weapons accidents, the military said.
The Shaheen II, or Hatf VI, missile with a range of 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles) was launched from an undisclosed location, military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP.
"The test was very successful. It was carried out to validate technical parameters and it hit the target with 100 percent accuracy," Sultan said.
"It is a two-stage solid-fuel-based missile capable of carrying all types of warhead including nuclear."
Pakistan had informed "neighbouring countries" in advance about the missile test, foreign office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said. Pakistan is bordered by India, Afghanistan, China and Iran.
***image1***"We conduct these tests from time to time according to our requirement and defence needs. It was not meant to convey any message to anyone. It was not any country-specific," she said.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz congratulated the missile's technical team "on its outstanding success," a military statement said.
"The missile test was part of (a) continuous process of validation and technical improvement, which Pakistan follows to consolidate and verify its various land-based strategic missile systems," the statement said.
The test comes at a key time in relations between New Delhi and Islamabad following the firebombing of a cross-border train at midnight Sunday, which killed 68 Pakistanis and Indians.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri went ahead with a visit to India starting on Tuesday, during which the two countries signed the nuclear weapon safeguard agreement.
Friday's missile launch was watched by Pakistan's Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff General Ehsan Ul Haq, who said the test was "an important milestone in Pakistan's quest for sustaining strategic balance in South Asia."
India and Pakistan carried out tit-for-tat nuclear detonations in May 1998 and have routinely conducted missile tests since, even after the start of a slow-moving peace process in January 2004.
The neighbours have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, which is divided between the two and claimed by both in its entirety.
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Egyptian police find explosives near Gaza border
EL-ARISH, Egypt, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Egyptian police found one tonne of explosives near the border with the Gaza Strip on Friday as part of a widening hunt for suspected Palestinian militants in Sinai, security officials said.
Police sources said on Wednesday they had arrested a Palestinian man wearing a suicide belt who confessed to planning to attack Israeli tourists in Sinai.
The man had entered Egypt through a tunnel on the border with the Gaza Strip. Two of his accomplices were later seized in the Egyptian border town of Rafah and security officials said on Friday a fourth suspect was still on the run.
"Police fear that more (militants) could have entered Sinai through the same tunnel and have been sweeping suspected hideouts as a precautionary measure," one official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.
Scores of Palestinians and Egyptians, including Sinai Bedouin, have also been detained for questioning, he said.
One of the sweeps led police to a warehouse near the Karm Salem border crossing where they found 34 sacks stuffed with one tonne of explosives, security officials said.
Bombers have attacked south Sinai resorts popular with Israeli tourists three times in the past 2-1/2 years. Egypt has blamed the attacks on a group of Islamists who are from the Sinai Bedouin community and sympathetic toward the Palestinians.
"Cars and trucks have been closely watched and guarded for fear they could be used in (suicide) operations inside Sinai," the security official said.
Egyptian police regularly seize explosives and ammunition in Sinai, sometimes hidden in tunnels near the border with the Palestinian territories. On Wednesday, police found 240 old anti-tank mines and six artillery shells stashed in the mountains of central Sinai.
A security source said police suspect the owners planned to empty the ordnance, left over from 20th century wars, and smuggle the explosive material to Palestinian groups.
The Israeli government often complains about the smuggling of weapons, ammunition and explosives across the Egypt-Gaza border. Egypt says it does its best to stop it.
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Report says nuclear work ongoing in Iran
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran has expanded its uranium enrichment program instead of complying with a U.N. Security Council ultimatum to freeze it, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Thursday in a finding that clears the way for harsher sanctions against Tehran.
"Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities," the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report.
Although its information was based on material available to it as of Feb. 17, a senior U.N. official familiar with Iran's nuclear file, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the issue, suggested the IAEA's conclusion remained valid as of Thursday.
The IAEA detailed recent activities showing Tehran expanding its enrichment efforts - setting up hundreds of uranium-spinning centrifuges in an underground hall and bringing nearly 9 tons of the gaseous feedstock into the facility in preparation for enrichment. It added that Iranian officials had informed the agency that they would expand their centrifuge installations to have thousands of them ready by May.
The conclusion - while widely expected - was important because it could serve as the trigger for the council to start deliberating on new sanctions meant to punish Tehran for its intransigence over its nuclear program.
In the report, written by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency also said the Islamic republic continues building both a reactor that will use heavy water and a heavy water production plant - also in defiance of the Security Council.
Both enriched uranium and plutonium produced by heavy water reactors can produce the fissile material used in nuclear warheads. Iran denies such intentions, saying it needs the heavy water reactor to produce radioactive isotopes for medical and other peaceful purposes and enrichment to generate energy.
The six-page report also said that agency experts remain "unable ... to make further progress in its efforts to verify fully the past development of Iran's nuclear program" due to lack of Iranian cooperation.
That, too, put it in violation of the Security Council, which on Dec. 23 told Tehran to "provide such access and cooperation as the agency requests to be able to verify ... all outstanding issues" within 60 days.
The report - sent both to the Security Council and the agency's 35 board member nations - set the stage for a fresh showdown between Iran and Western powers.
In Tehran, the deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammed Saeedi, said: "Iran considers the (IAEA demand for) suspension as against its rights, the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and international regulations."
"That's why Tehran could not have answered positively to the request by resolution 1737 of the UN Security Council for a suspension of enrichment activity," Saeedi said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said that Iran's refusal to curtail its nuclear program is a "missed opportunity" for its government and people. He said he is confident that the Security Council will approve additional sanctions against Iran but declined to predict what they might be.
Before the report was issued, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. and its allies would use the Security Council and other "available channels" to bring Tehran back to negotiations over its nuclear program.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply concerned ... that the Iranian government did not meet the (Wednesday) deadline set by the Security Council."
"I urge again that the Iranian government should fully comply with the Security Council" as soon as possible, he told reporters in Vienna, saying Iran's nuclear activities had "great implications for peace and security, as well as nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction."
In addition to the sanctions, the U.S. government has been raising the pressure on Tehran on other fronts, from arresting Iranian officials in Iraq to persuading European governments and financial institutions to cut ties with the Islamic Republic.
Rice, speaking in Berlin, said U.S., European and Russian diplomats all want Iran back at the bargaining table.
"We reconfirmed we will use available channels and the Security Council to try to achieve that goal," she said following a breakfast meeting with her counterparts from Germany, Russia and the European Union.
The Security Council is demanding an immediate and unconditional stop to enrichment, after which European-led negotiations over an economic reward package could begin. Iran has long insisted it will not stop its nuclear activities as a precondition for negotiations.
In moderate remarks Wednesday directed at Washington - the key backer of tougher U.N. action - Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the dispute "has to be decided peacefully with the United States."
But other top Iranian officials used harsher language, and none showed signs of compromise on the main demand of the U.S. and other world powers - a halt to enrichment and related activities.
"The enemy is making a big mistake if it thinks it can thwart the will of the Iranian nation to achieve the peaceful use of nuclear technology," Iranian state TV's Web site quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying Wednesday.
With the United States bolstering its naval forces in the Gulf and cracking down on Iranians within Iraq it says are helping Shiite militias, concerns have grown that Washington might be planning military action.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said "the only sensible way" to solve the crisis was to pursue political solutions, but that he could not "absolutely predict every set of circumstances."
Still, "I know of nobody in Washington that is planning military action on Iran," Blair told BBC radio. "Iran is not Iraq. There is, as far as I know, no planning going on to make an attack on Iran and people are pursuing a diplomatic and political solution."
The Security Council sanctions targeted Iran's nuclear and missile programs and persons involved in them.
Discussions on a new resolution aimed at stepping up pressure on Iran to suspend enrichment were expected to start next week, a Security Council diplomat said in New York, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Part of the sanctions target companies suspected of involvement in Iran's nuclear program - a measure that an Iranian dissident group said Tehran was circumventing by renaming the companies and otherwise disguising them, or setting up new ones.
The National Council of Resistance in Iran said firms under sanctions that were renamed were the Farayand Technique Co. and the Pars Thrash Co. It named new companies set up to work on Iran's enrichment programs while avoiding sanctions as Tamin Tajhizat Sanayeh Hasteieh, Shakhes Behbood Sanaat and Sookht Atomi Reactorhaye Iran.
All are headed by Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran's atomic energy programs, and some employ others on the Security Council's list of those involved in Iran's nuclear program, said the group, the political wing of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, which advocates the overthrow of Iran's Islamic government.
There was no independent confirmation of the information provided by the group, which the U.S. and the European Union list as a terrorist organization. But it has revealed past secret Iranian nuclear activities subsequently verified by the IAEA or governments.
In Tehran on Thursday, 400 students burned British and Israeli flags and urged the government not to scale down the nuclear program.
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Beijing’s New Approach to Winning Friends in Washington
To deal with the new Democrat majority in Congress, which includes opponents of Beijing’s human rights record, China is counting on lobbying concerns in Washington and American businesses working in China to plead its cause.
In the office of the new leader of the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi (San Francisco), is a picture of her holding a banner in Tien an Men Square in memory of victims of the crackdown on students. Other stout opponents of the Chinese regime are now in positions of power in Congress as well, among them representative Tom Lantos (California), who heads the International Relations Committee, and former representative Sherrod Brown, co-founder of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus who was elected senator for Ohio in November.
To limit the loss of its influence in Congress, the Chinese government has called on the services of external consultants such as the firms Jones Day and Patton Boggs. The hiring of lobbying professionals is new to China: unlike Taiwan, which has always had several lobbyists working for it in Washington, Beijing has previously refused to appeal to American consultants for help.
The change in policy was recommended by Zhou Wen Zhong, former interpreter of Deng Xiaoping and China’s ambassador to the United States for the past two years; he had previously been consul in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 2005, Zhou already urged the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to retain lobbyists when it mounted a bid to buy Unocal from Chevron. The Chinese oil company hired several firms to win backing in Congress and the federal government for its takeover, among them Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, BKSH & Associates, the Brunswick Group and Public Strategies. In the end, however, CNOOC’s venture into lobbying didn’t help it.
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| INTELLIGENCE ONLINE N° 541 |
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Encryption Software for Islamists
Islamist groups linked to Al Qaeda have just developed a new kind of software that allows them to encrypt communications in Arabic.
Available since January on secret forums dedicated to pro-Al Qaeda ideology, a software program dubbed “Secrets of the Mujahideen” works with highly sophisticated encryption.
It was developed by the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF). one of the communication units which gravitate around Al Qaeda and specialize in “electronic jihad,” Resulting from from “several years of work” to test its effectiveness, the program was designed by its inventors to serve as “an electronic weapon capable of guaranteeing the security of members who communicate, and to protect secrets of the Mujahideen,” according to the software’s literature.
The program was tailor-made for Iraqi groups and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, an extremist Algerian movement known by its French initials of GSPC.
According to the French firm Terrorisc headed by Anne Giudicelli, which obtained and tested the program, the software uses five of the best existing encryption algorithms, including the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) that has been championed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) since 2001 as the most reliable symmetric key encryption software on the market.
“Secrets of the Mujahideen” is based on a hybrid system that combines symmetric encryption (256 bytes) and the asymmetric type (2084 bytes) with a double key function, private and public (RSA algorithm) to maximise the cut-off of communications between the sender and recipient. And an ultimate advantage for clandestine users is that the “portable” software can be installed on a USB key and used on any computer in an Internet café without leaving the least trace. Warned of its existence by Jim Melnick, director of an affiliate of VeriSign, American intelligence is now trying to crack the “jihad software,” portrayed by experts as a “technological feat.”
INTELLIGENCE ONLINE N° 541
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Pakistan Springboard Against Iran
The CIA has launched operations to destabilize Iran in the east (Sistan and Baluchistan) with the help of Pakistan’s ISI and in the west (Khuzestan) with MI6.
Immediately after the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, told Congress on Jan. 11 that Al Qaeda had established itself in Pakistan, a furious Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf dispatched the boss of the country’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, lieutenant-general Ashfaq Pervez Kiani, to Washington.
According to diplomatic sources in Islamabad, Kiani met with Negroponte himself as well as with CIA director Michael Hayden and national security adviser Stephen Hadley. A few days later he was joined by the head of ISI’s anti-terrorist division, lieutenant-general Muhammad Zakki. The latter is handler to several extreme Sunni movements in Pakistan belonging to the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI).
The two ISI bosses reached an agreement with the Americans: they would launch destabilization operations in the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchistan, where Sunnis form the majority of inhabitants, by inciting a number of violent groups like the Jundallah to stage attacks, particularly against the Revolutionary Guards (Pasdarans).
Jundallah claimed responsibility for a bomb attack against a bus at Zahedan, capital of Baluchistan, on Feb. 14 that killed 11 Pasdarans in what was the first strike in the Pakistani offensive. It was indeed interpreted by Tehran as a Pakistani operation because Iran reacted immediately by rounding up hundreds of Baluchis (a suspected perpetrator was hanged in public on Feb. 19). Then, on Feb. 18, a suicide bomber blew up a courtroom in Quetta, capital of the Pakistani part of Baluchistan, killing 16.
The same day the Pakistani envoy to Tehran was called in to the foreign ministry to be told: “We’re in a position to destabilize your country if you continue to work with the Americans.”
Backed by British troops deployed in southern Iraq, MI6 and British special forces carried out an attack against the Revolutionary Guards University in the center of Ahvaz, the capital of the Iranian part of Khuzestan, on Feb. 7. The British have been infiltrating the region since 2003 with the help of Sunni Arabs who are in the majority in the area. The Feb. 7 operation, like others in Dezful (which houses a major military base) and in the oil port of Abadan, were hushed up by the Iranian authorities.
American policy planners can also count on the possibility of activating some 5,000 members of the People’s Mudjihideen, which fiercely opposes the Iranian regime and trains under the protection of the US Army at the Ashraf base some 120 km north of Baghdad.
INTELLIGENCE ONLINE N° 541
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Security developments in Iraq, Feb 22
Feb 22 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq as of 1315 GMT on Thursday:
RAMADI - U.S. forces killed at least 12 insurgents and wounded three in a six-hour gunbattle in Ramadi involving heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and air strikes on Wednesday evening, the U.S. military said. A civil defence official and an ambulance driver, both of whom declined to be identified, said as many as 26 people were killed, including some women and children, but a U.S. military spokesman said there were no reports of civilian casualties.
* TAJI - U.S. forces killed three militants in an air strike after seeing them preparing to attack a patrol that had arrested six suspected al Qaeda-linked insurgents near Taji, just north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
BAGHDAD - The bodies of 20 people shot dead and most showing signs of torture were found on Wednesday in different districts of Baghdad, police said. The total includes six already reported found in Ghazaliya in western Baghdad.
TAL AFAR - The U.S. military said four people were killed, including a policeman and a 12 year-old boy, and five were wounded, including two policemen, on Monday when two booby-trapped houses detonated while police were searching homes in the northern town of Tal Afar, about 420 km (260 miles) northwest of Baghdad. During the search, a policeman shot and killed a suspect and wounded two others. Police had already reported the death of one policeman.
KIRKUK - The bodies of five people were found shot and tortured on Wednesday in the outskirts of the oil rich city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
MAHAWEEL - The bodies of two people were found on Wednesday and Thursday in the town of Mahaweel, 75 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
HILLA - Police retrieved the body of a man from Euphrates river in the city of Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. The body bore gun shot wounds.
BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was shot dead while conducting a search patrol in northern Baghdad on Tuesday, the U.S. military said on Thursday.
BAGHDAD - Militants blew up a bomb that killed at least three people and released toxic fumes that sent dozens more to hospital with breathing problems in Baghdad on Wednesday, police and interior ministry sources said.
The bomb was in Bayaa, in southwest Baghdad. A police source put the death toll at three with 35 more hospitalised, while an interior ministry source said six were killed and 73 more wounded, including those sickened by gas thought to be chlorine.
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Spies in our midst, says SIS
The Dominion Post: A FOCUS on counter-terrorism has allowed foreign spies to continue to operate in New Zealand unabated, the Security Intelligence Service says.
In its 2006 annual report issued yesterday, now-retired SIS director of security Richard Woods said international terrorism had dominated his past five years and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future. However, espionage and intelligence gathering by other countries continued to be a problem. "Rather than diminishing, activity by foreign intelligence services continues to feature prominently in security investigations," the report says.
Spies were collecting economic and political information and scientific and technological research and development to further their own national interests. "Their activities can be harmful to New Zealand's international and economic wellbeing," Mr Woods said.
The annual report is one of the few glimpses the public gets into the secretive spy agency's activities.
As well as the publicised cases in the past years of a Yemeni man expelled from New Zealand as a security threat after being linked to a September 11 terrorist, and of the SIS warning university heads about potential terrorists disguised as international students, the agency revealed it had investigated:
* The activities of those assessed as being Islamic extremists.
* Links between individuals in New Zealand and international extremist organisations.
* The raising of funds from New Zealand for terrorist organisations.
* Covert operations by individuals on behalf of foreign intelligence services.
The Combined Threat Assessment Group, made up of SIS, police, defence and customs staff, produced 144 reports on threat-related issues.
Twenty-two domestic interception warrants were in force, allowing agents to eavesdrop and copy documents. An unspecified number of foreign interceptions were also in force.
Mr Woods said he was not aware of any specific threat to New Zealand and the threat of a terrorist attack occurring in this country was low.
Auckland University's Paul Buchanan, a former CIA adviser, said the threat of espionage, especially by the Chinese as they sought to boost their influence in the South Pacific, was much more real.
"If they are going to be the next superpower, they have no choice but to expand their intelligence gathering."#paraHe said China would be interested in our small military technology industry, events in the resource-rich Pacific and monitoring dissidents such as Falun Gong and even Chinese students. "It's perfectly rational for the Chinese to go about this business, but on the other hand it's perfectly reasonable for New Zealand to be worried about it."
He said procuring quality intelligence was vital as it would ensure intelligence in return from foreign powers who were worried about China's expansion but relied on local sources.
Green Party MP Keith Locke said the SIS was scaremongering with a report that was vague on details and appeared to be a "make-work scheme" to justify the $23 million in funding that the agency received.
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Indian, French air forces stage war games
KALAIKUNDA AIRBASE, India (AFP) - Indian and French air forces fielded some of their deadliest combat aircraft in mock fights and aerobatic displays during a joint exercise.
Fighter planes tore through the skies demonstrating their capabilities in front of hundreds of people at the Kalaikunda airbase in West Bengal state, of which Kolkata is the capital, on Wednesday
The Indian Air Force -- the world's fourth largest -- pitted its Russian-built Sukhois and MiGs and the French-made Mirage 2000 against France's M2000D, Dash 5 and Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft.
"Nearly 480 sorties have been flown by both sides which included air combat missions, basic fighter manoeuvres and large force engagements," Air Marshal P.K Barbora told reporters.
"Kalaikunda has huge airspace and the French pilots were focused on real-life operation. Our pilots have gained much experience from the exercise," said French Air Chief Marshal Patrick de Rousiers.
"I have seen such exercises, but this was extraordinary."
Around 300 Indian and 150 French pilots took part in the joint air exercise involving 26 fighter jets.
Observers from Canada and Germany also attended the exercise.
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Syrian troops move closer to Israel border: report
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Syrian armed forces appear to be moving closer to the border with Israel and the military is being strengthened with Iranian help, an Israeli newspaper reported Thursday.
"The Syrian armed forces are being strengthened in an unprecedented way in recent memory with the help of generous funding from
Iran," wrote Zeev Schiff, the military affairs correspondent for the liberal Haaretz daily.
"The main emphasis of the efforts has been missiles and long-range rockets to compensate for the weak air force," he added.
"It appears that the Syrians have moved forces closer to the border with Israel on the Golan Heights."
Schiff pointed to similar movements prior to a Syrian offensive on the same front during the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War in October 1973.
Reserve general Amos Gilad, an advisor to Defence Minister Amir Peretz, told public radio there was nothing to indicate an imminent Syrian attack but neither did he deny the Haaretz report.
"There is no information indicating that the Syrians are preparing to attack us in the coming months," said Gilad.
"The fact that
Syria is strengthening its military capabilities does not mean we're going to be attacked tomorrow but certainly we need to be prepared," he said.
He denied any comparison between the troop movements reported by Haaretz, and Egyptian and Syrian deployments prior to their two-pronged simultaneous assault on Israel in October 1973.
"There is no danger of war. There is no deployment of forces indicating that Israel would be threatened by an offensive tomorrow," the official said.
Damascus has repeatedly demanded the return of the Golan, a strategic plateau which Israel captured from Syria in the 1976 Arab-Israeli war and unilaterally annexed in 1981. It is now home to more than 15,000 settlers.
Peace talks between Israel and Syria collapsed in 2000, in part because of disputes over the return of the strategic plateau.
The Haaretz report came a day after Israel launched war games on the Golan Heights in what Peretz said was a bid to learn the lessons of last summer's conflict in neighbouring Lebanon.
"Conducting these exercises in this area does not at all mean that they are connected to a possible conflict," the defence minister said on Wednesday.
Iran is Syria's closest ally in the region and both nations are accused by the United States of helping foment the violence in
Iraq and of supporting "terrorist" groups in the region.
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Uganda rebels quit assembly areas agreed to in truce
KAMPALA, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army rebels said on Thursday they have left two assembly points in southern Sudan set up under a landmark truce with the Ugandan government, fearing for their safety.
LRA spokesman Godfrey Ayoo said the rebels would never resume negotiations in south Sudan's capital, Juba, despite claims by the chief mediator, south Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar, that they were due to do so this week.
A truce renewed in December gave the rebels until last month to gather in two places in south Sudan -- Owiny-Ki-Bul, on the Uganda border and Ri-Kwangba, on the Democratic Republic of Congo border.
Ayoo said both groups had dispersed and the LRA's top leaders were back in their jungle hideouts in the DRC.
"We withdrew from Ri-Kwangba because of security concerns, so we are back in Congo," he said. "The group in Owiny-Ki-Bul has scattered in southern Sudan."
Ayoo was talking by phone from Nairobi. LRA delegates have refused to return to Juba since Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir threatened to "get rid of the LRA from Sudan".
The Juba peace talks had raised hopes of an end to two decades of conflict in northern Uganda that have killed tens of thousands and displaced 1.7 million people.
But the truce expires at the end of this month, with no agreement on when the two sides will meet to extend it.
Uganda accuses the rebels of repeatedly failing to assemble in agreed locations, which the rebels deny. Government officials were not immediately available for comment.
Machar told Reuters on Tuesday he expected LRA delegates back in Juba this week to set a date for resuming talks.
"Our position has not changed," Ayoo said. "We are not going back there (to southern Sudan). We are fully united in the search for a new venue."
The Ugandan government has said it will not move the venue.
But Ayoo said the LRA would keep their guns silent, even if the truce expires. The government has made similar comments.
Many Ugandans fear the LRA will never sign a peace deal unless the International Criminal Court in the Hague drops indictments against its top leaders for war crimes like rape, mutilation and abducting children to use as fighters.
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New Kyrgyz opposition fuels political dispute
The United Front for a Worthy Future for Kyrgyzstan is the newest opposition movement in Kyrgyzstan and, with former Prime Minister Feliks Kulov as one of its leaders, it is already stirring up the political waters.
By Bruce Pannier for RFE/RL (22/02/07)
According to the United Front, Bakiev "is in no condition" to carry out his duties as head of state, and if he stays in office Kyrgyzstan "has no future." In a statement released on 19 February, the group called for an early presidential election.
The president's office responded today with a statement saying that the new movement has "no moral, and moreover, no political basis" for making such claims and demands, and it warned the United Front not to take any radical action.
"There is no basis for early presidential elections," the president's press secretary, Nurlan Shakiev, told RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service. "For that, there would [have to] be some negative situation here. On the contrary, today the nation - most of the people - support President [Bakiev's] policies."
Government failed to reform
The opposition Ar-Namys party is one of the groups that joined the United Front. One of the leaders of Ar-Namys, Emil Aliev, said the creation of the new movement is necessary because Bakiev and the government have not fulfilled promises made during and after the widespread protests of spring 2005 that chased former authoritarian President Askar Akaev from power.
"Those events in 2005 were organized by political parties, politicians, and NGO leaders who wanted to change, to annul, a political system that was very corrupt," Aliev said. "But now we see that corruption is even worse than at that time, and that's why we are creating this United Front."
The formation of the new movement is the latest development in a crisis that actually began in November 2006, when a massive protest in Bishkek forced Bakiev to agree to a new constitution. That document took away some of Bakiev's powers - but pro-Bakiev lawmakers succeeded just before the New Year in adding amendments that basically restored many of the powers the president had lost.
Aliev of Ar-Namys said constitutional reform is still one of the demands of the United Front. "First of all, it's a constitutional reform, we must change a [political] system. One person shouldn't be given all the power in the country," he said. "Secondly, the current leaders can't rule in a new system. Our statement says that the current president has no desire to change this system."
Kulov returns
Kulov resigned as prime minister just before the late December passing of the new, revised constitution that restored many powers to the presidency.
Kulov was originally named prime minister in the summer of 2005 as part of a deal, the so-called "tandem" with Bakiev. In the deal, Kulov agreed not to run for president against Bakiev in exchange for being named prime minister if Bakiev - who was heavily favored - won the presidency.
Kulov confirmed that the "tandem" is over when he announced last week he would join the opposition and on 19 February that he is part of the movement calling for an early presidential election.
United Front's purpose
Opposition lawmaker Kubatbek Baibolov, another member of the United Front, said the new movement will not resort to any "radical steps" and simply wishes to spur Bakiev and the government into action on important issues for the country.
"Elections should be held on time. Those who were elected should complete their terms." Baibolov said. "This statement is a political and an emotional document. We want to give an impulse to the authorities; we are saying, 'hey, there is such a kind of movement, you should think, keep it in mind that you should change your policies.'"
A Bakiev ally in parliament, lawmaker Iskhak Masaliev, said there is no reason to hold an early presidential election and equally believes that there is no reason to be overly concerned about what the United Front is saying.
"I consider the situation today as proper. The parliament is carrying out its functions and the president will be fulfilling his responsibilities until the end of his term. There is no fundamental contradiction here," Masaliev said. "I consider this to be a political demand. Every opposition group, in order to justify itself, has to have some kind of slogan."
Possible inside secrets
Former Foreign Minister Roza Otunbaeva, who is now a co-leader of the opposition Asaba Party, questioned Kulov's role in the new opposition movement. Otunbaeva noted that Kulov was a member of the government that he suddenly opposes and that Kulov would gain credibility by revealing some of the "secrets" he knows from being prime minister.
"Kulov knows the secrets, he knows how at the very start Bakiev's team defined what advantages it could derive for itself," she said. "I think that Kulov, as a person who says he knows about the family business and corrupt methods [of governing], should tell this to the people."
The United Front said in a statement that it is a "temporary structure" formed to achieve its stated goals and no more. But the new movement's appearance in Kyrgyz politics presents a new problem for the Kyrgyz government and - considering Otunbaeva's comments - seems to have effectively split the opposition.
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US 'Iran attack plans' revealed
BBC: US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.
It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres.
The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment.
The UN has urged Iran to stop the programme or face economic sanctions.
But diplomatic sources have told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran.
That list includes Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list, the sources say.
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Iran ready for possible US military action, but insists on dialogue: FM
ISTANBUL (AFP): Iran is prepared for possible US military action over its nuclear programme, but believes dialogue is the best way to resolve the dispute, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said here Wednesday.
"The United States put forward two options: the first is to use violence and the second (is) cooperation," Mottaki told reporters at the end of a two-day visit to Turkey. "We are ready for both eventualities but, of course, we have always preferred cooperation."
Mottaki insisted that the dispute should be resolved peacefully.
"A diplomatic solution is the way" to settle the problem, he said, speaking through an interpreter.
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France shows interest in Russian aircraft
MOSCOW (RIA Novosti): France's top government officials expressed Wednesday their interest in buying Russian aircraft, including heavy helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles.
"We are interested in heavy helicopters, and also in reconnaissance aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)," French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said at a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and officials from the Russian-French Council for Security Cooperation.
She said France and Russia could become effective partners in developing new-generation aircraft.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Doust-Blazy said at the same meeting that France would consider buying Russian amphibious aircraft to create a fleet to combat forest fires.
Russia manufactures multipurpose turbofan Be-200 aircraft that can be used as a firefighter, a cargo plane, a flying ambulance, and a passenger airliner. In its firefighting configuration, it can pick up 12 tons (26,460lb) of water by skimming over the water's surface, making it an effective weapon in extinguishing forest fires, a role in which it is used by Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry.
"We are interested in the Russian planes and we have already started relevant certification procedures," the French minister said.
He also said France "would be happy if Russia bought French Airbus passenger aircraft."
The council was set up by the presidents of the Russian Federation and the French Republic in January 2002 and held its inaugural meeting in Paris in November 2002.
The purpose of the bilateral forum is to strengthen the strategic dialogue between France and Russia by having biannual meetings of the foreign and defense ministers that focus on cooperation in defense industry, nonproliferation and the fight against global terrorism.
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Middle East politics: Tripolar
FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT The outcome of the coming phase of the struggle for dominance in the Middle East will be strongly influenced by the development of the three-cornered relationship between Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. The main change over the past few weeks has been the decision of Saudi Arabia to become more actively engaged in regional diplomacy, involving intensive discussions with Iran, as the next landmark in the nuclear dispute approaches, and a decisive intervention in the Palestine question to prevent the Hamas-Fatah feud degenerating into civil war. The blossoming of the Saudi-Iranian relationship has been a source of anxiety for Syria, as it threatens to undermine its own strategic alliance with Tehran, which is the source of much of the Assad regime's ability to project its influence in Lebanon and on the Palestinian scene.
A series of visits to Saudi Arabia by Ali Larijani, the head of Iran's national security council and chief negotiator on the nuclear question, has reflected the growing concern in Iran about the risks of persisting with a confrontational approach to the international community and to its immediate neighbours. The appearance of articles in the conservative press blaming the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for uniting the world against Iran and for mismanaging the economy pointed to a reassessment at the heart of the Iranian regime about how best to handle the nuclear question and regional relations.
Taking stock
Iran has had to take stock of the fact the UN Security Council has passed a resolution imposing sanctions on it, without serious demur from Russia or China, and that the US administration has decided to adopt a more robust military posture in Iraq and to beef up its naval forces in the Gulf, despite its heavy losses in the mid-term elections. There is now every prospect of sanctions being toughened, unless Iran agrees to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, and Iran has to reckon with the possibility that the US may launch a military strike against it at any moment, either using the pretext of hostile Iranian actions in Iraq or claiming that a pre-emptive attack was needed to prevent the nuclear programme passing the point of no return.
Talking to Saudi Arabia provides Iran with the means to arrive at a better understanding of US intentions. Mr Larijani's opposite number on the Saudi side, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdelaziz, served for 22 years as ambassador in Washington, until his recall in 2005, and enjoyed (and by all accounts continues to enjoy) privileged access to the Bush administration. Through Prince Bandar, Iran can also be confident of delivering a message to Washington about its own intentions--although there can be no assurance how much credence Saudi Arabia or the US would have in any Iranian statements of intent.
Iran's overriding objective has seemed to be to complete its mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle, thereby giving it the theoretical capability of developing nuclear weapons, but not at any cost. The message being delivered through the Saudis and in Mr Larijani's recent discussions with the EU and with Mohammed El-Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Authority is that Iran is interested in resuming negotiations, but it not prepared to capitulate to the conditions set by the UN Security Council.
Actions speak louder than words
The difficulty for Iran is that unless it agrees to a verifiable suspension of its enrichment activities, there can be little confidence that negotiations are anything other than a stalling tactic. In this respect the engagement with Saudi Arabia has given Iran an opportunity to show evidence of its goodwill in areas of interest to the Saudis. The Mecca agreement between the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Hamas leader, Khaled al-Mishaal, came only a few weeks after a similar encounter in Damascus failed to yield any results. Although Hamas did not make any major concessions in Mecca, the imprimatur of Mr Mishaal in the holiest city of Islam gave the agreement a credibility that previous accords negotiated by Mr Abbas with the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh lacked. The agreement has every appearance as having been secured through Saudi and Iranian diplomacy, breaking an effective veto that Syria has previously exercised through its hosting of Mr Mishaal and of Ramadan Shallah, the head of Islamic Jihad. (Mr Shallah was in Tehran on the eve of the Mecca talks.) Syria has sought to claim some retrospective credit for the Mecca agreement, but has conspicuously not received any acknowledgement from Saudi Arabia.
Iran has some leverage over Hamas, as a source of much of the movement's funds. Iran has also been concerned to dispel the notion that it is intentionally stirring up civil strife throughout the Arab world--Hamas, although most of its members are Sunni, had started to be derided by its opponents as Shia.
The other main area of Saudi-Iranian-Syrian rivalry is Lebanon. In this arena, the stakes for Syria are the highest. It has long regarded Lebanon as its fiefdom, and has been working assiduously to retrieve its dominance after being forced to withdraw its troops in April 2005 in the face of a wave of Lebanese, Arab and international revulsion at the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister. Syria is now focusing its efforts on preventing the formation of an international tribunal for the Hariri assassination, to which end it is urging its Lebanese allies to bring down the government that was formed by Mr Hariri's political inheritors. Saudi Arabia, which is close to the Hariri camp, and Iran, which bankrolls and arms Hizbullah, have been seeking to broker a compromise. However, this could open the way to the Lebanese government approving the Hariri tribunal and to the election of a new president prepared to defy Syria. Faced with the prospect of being sidelined by a Saudi-Iranian deal based on these two states' common strategic interest in Gulf security, Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, headed for Tehran, where he received warm assurances of the continued strength of the Syrian-Iranian alliance. However, a more difficult challenge lies in store for Mr Assad at next month's Arab summit conference in Riyadh--assuming that he decides to attend.
The Economist Intelligence Unit
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Moscow Threatens Planned US Anti-Missile Sites in Europe
The commander of Russia's strategic missile force says Russia is capable of targeting U.S. missile defense sites if they are built in the Czech Republic and Poland.
General Nikolai Solovtsov warned Monday that Russia has the ability to resume building intermediate and short-range missiles if the Kremlin drops out of an arms treaty with the United States.
A NATO spokesman Monday described the general's comments as "extreme language" that is uncalled for and out of date.
The Polish and Czech prime ministers, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Mirek Topolanek, said Monday they would likely accept Washington's proposal to build U.S. missile defense sites.
Washington says the sites would defend against missile launches from Iran or North Korea.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the presence of a missile defense system so close to Russia's border a threat to its security.
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Iran refuses to halt nuclear work
VIENNA (Reuters): Iran brushed off threats intended to make it freeze its nuclear programme as a U.N. deadline to do so fell due on Wednesday, but offered to guarantee it would not seek atomic weapons.
Iran, defiant as a 60-day grace period it had been given to stop enriching uranium for nuclear fuel ran out, again vowed it would not halt its nuclear activities as a precondition for talks on trade benefits offered by six world powers.
The U.N. Security Council, which in December banned transfers of technology and expertise to Tehran's nuclear programme, may consider broader sanctions if Tehran, as expected, does not freeze enrichment work by February 21.
The West suspects Tehran is conducting an atomic weapons project disguised as a bid to produce peaceful atomic energy.
"Maybe there are certain groups or countries willing to coerce Iran ... (but) Iran's nuclear dossier cannot be resolved through force and pressure," Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said on Tuesday, alluding mainly to the United States, which has built up strike forces in the Gulf near Iran.
Iran says its programme aims solely to generate electricity.
"If the other side expresses concerns about possible deviations of Iran's activities in the future, we have no objections to settling these concerns at the negotiating table," Larijani said after meeting the U.N. nuclear watchdog director.
"We would give the necessary assurances and guarantees (in negotiations) that there will be no deviation ever towards nuclear weapons (in Iran)," said Larijani, who Iranian officials said would go to Italy for talks on Wednesday.
"We are a country with no intentions to develop nuclear weapons. We want to work within the framework of the NPT (nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)."
He said he had "constructive" talks with International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohamed ElBaradei on ways of reviving talks with Western powers. But he offered no sign Iran was ready to compromise on the issue of suspension.
IAEA EXPECTED TO CONFIRM IRANIAN DEFIANCE
ElBaradei, whose agency has been unable to verify that Iran's nuclear work is wholly peaceful after three years of investigations, was expected to report to the Security Council that Tehran had ignored the deadline to suspend enrichment.
But his report was now more likely to appear on Thursday, not Wednesday as expected, a diplomat close to the IAEA said.
ElBaradei has urged both sides to take a mutual "timeout" to enable talks -- Iran would suspend enrichment rather than accelerate it from research level to "industrial scale" as planned at its Natanz plant, while sanctions would be suspended.
A diplomat close to the IAEA said Iranian officials were sounding positive in private about a "timeout" and hoped EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who led earlier talks with Larijani, would be authorised to discuss it with him.
Western officials have dismissed previous such signs of Iranian flexibility as stalling while it seeks to master enrichment technology at its Natanz nuclear complex.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference in Turkey that Larijani and Solana had reached agreement that the negotiations should be resumed.
The Security Council is not expected to take action before the next meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors on March 5-9, leaving a little more time for dialogue to avert a feared U.S.-Iran conflict, said the diplomat close to the IAEA.
As a possible compromise to jumpstart negotiations, Larijani suggested earlier this month that Iran could pledge to refine uranium no higher than the 4-5 percent level, sufficient for power plant fuel but far below the 80 percent needed for bombs.
Another, Swiss-backed, proposal has been for Iran to run centrifuge enrichment machines empty while negotiations proceed, rather than feed them with uranium for enrichment.
But Western diplomats and analysts have said there is no technological means to guarantee a cap on enrichment levels, while the Swiss-backed proposal is unacceptable as it would still let Iran gain expertise running centrifuges.
ElBaradei has cited intelligence estimates that Iran remains four to eight years away from mastering the means to assemble an atom bomb, assuming it wants one.
Washington has not ruled out military action but says it is seeking a diplomatic solution, not planning a war.
Larijani, echoing other Iranian leaders, said Washington would pay dearly if it attacked Iran.
"If they are inclined to engage in a boxing match, they will have problems of their own. But if they are willing to sit down at a chess match, both sides could come to a negotiated result."
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Morocco adds more names to al Qaeda wanted list
RABAT, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Moroccan police widened a search for suspected Islamic extremists on Tuesday, calling on citizens to help reveal the hiding places of two militants they say have links to al Qaeda, state news agency MAP reported.
The appeal was the second of its kind in five days and came after a meeting of top officials last week to discuss tougher security measures amid growing fears of al Qaeda attacks.
"The Moroccan authorities ask all people with information or who know where these wanted men may be hiding to immediately inform the administrative authorities or security services," MAP cited the police as saying.
The wanted suspects are Hmam Bilal et Bel Hachmi Mohamed Rida who are accused of having ties with groups including the Algeria-based al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, MAP cited police sources as saying.
Violence in Tunisia and Algeria and arrests in Morocco in the past months have raised fears that militant groups across the Maghreb are beginning to coordinate their activities.
Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), has stepped up a campaign of bombings and ambushes in Algeria.
It claimed responsibility for seven bomb attacks in Algeria last week in which at least six people were killed.
Security sources say the Moroccan authorities have intelligence information about an al Qaeda plot to carry out an attack or attacks in the kingdom, but have no specific details.
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The Muslim Lobby
Europe’s democracies have changed dramatically in recent years in response to Islamic population growth, growth fueled by immigration and birth rates substantially higher than local norms. Great Britain, France, Italy, and other nations have been forced to accommodate the needs and preferences of their Islamic citizens, often at the expense of the global conflict with radical Islam.
Can it happen here? Suppose that the writer Mark Steyn is right to argue that “demographics are destiny.” What number of Muslims, agitating for their self-defined interests and agendas, would constitute a critical mass in the U.S.? At what point would American politicians feel compelled to take up their cause?
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) all worked overtime this past election cycle to create the impression that, in American politics, Muslims are now a force to be reckoned with. They were especially emphatic about the country’s growing Muslim population—some 8 million souls, in their oft-repeated estimates.
So it comes as a useful corrective to read Patrick Poole’s “Numbers Don’t Lie” in this week’s Front Page Magazine. Poole cites two recent pieces (in IBD and the New York Sun) criticizing the methodology of the survey that produced the 8 million figure and citing new estimates drawn from survey work done at CUNY and the University of Chicago—estimates suggesting that there are, in fact, not 8 million Muslims in the U.S. but well under 3 million. Moreover, of these, only a minuscule 4,761 are dues-paying members of CAIR, which presents itself as the community’s authoritative voice.
Whether CAIR or any of the others truly represents the sentiments of American Muslims is a question that political strategists might consider before pandering to their radical demands or overlooking their questionable (or worse) political associations, all amply documented over the years by observers like Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson. But why be fooled by numbers? The readiness to inflate the size of their alleged constituency is only another tactic in a campaign of intimidation to which too many have already succumbed.
by Lisa Schiffren
commentarymagazine.com
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Dick Cheney in Japan to Discuss North Korea, Iraq
TOKYO -- Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Japan on Tuesday on a visit to reassure America's close ally that a troop build-up will help quell violence in Iraq, just weeks after Japan's defense minister said starting the war was a mistake.
North Korea will also be on the agenda after a six-party energy-for-arms deal aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear arms programs was forged in Beijing this month.
Japan has said it will not provide economic aid to fund the deal until progress is made on resolving a feud over Japanese citizens kidnapped by the North's agents decades ago.
A U.S. official in Washington said earlier that Cheney would back the Japanese position.
"You can be sure that things like missiles in North Korea and abductees are going to need to be addressed. And I think that the vice president will tell the Japanese that the United States is very supportive of that agenda."
In a sign of the importance Japan attaches to the issue, Cheney will meet the parents of one of the abductees early Thursday morning before he leaves, the Japanese foreign ministry said, in a last-minute addition to his schedule.
More than 80 percent of respondents to an opinion poll published by the Asahi newspaper on Tuesday backed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's stern stance toward Pyongyang.
But 57 percent agreed with the view expressed by Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma last month, when he said that President Bush had been wrong to start the Iraq war.
Cheney will meet Abe to brief him on the White House's decision to add 21,500 U.S. troops in Iraq.
He then travels to Australia to meet Bush's other strong ally in the region, Prime Minister John Howard.
The U.S. official declined to say whether Cheney would make specific requests for troops or other kinds of aid for Iraq.
Cheney is not scheduled to meet Kyuma during his visit, but the defense minister shrugged off any talk of a snub.
"Even in the past, defense ministers didn't meet vice presidents because their rank differs," Kyuma told reporters.
Cheney last visited Japan in 2004 and did not meet the then defense minister.
Cheney will, however, meet Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who earlier this month was quoted by media as criticizing U.S. policy in Iraq, calling its occupation strategy "immature".
The U.S. official said relations between the United States and Japan could hardly be stronger, adding that their military ties had grown in the six years of the Bush administration.
"And it corresponds with Japan's own rising sense of leadership and confidence internationally, reflected in these unprecedented deployments of Japanese troops to Iraq," he said.
Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, sent about 550 non-combat troops to southern Iraq in 2004 as part of Tokyo's largest and riskiest overseas mission since World War Two.
The soldiers returned home last July, but about 200 Japanese air force personnel based in Kuwait are still transporting supplies to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.
Their legal mandate expires in July, but domestic media have said the government plans to extend the mission.
reuters
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U.S. Navy Positioning to Protect Strait of Hormuz
MANAMA, Bahrain -- Iran has brought its war games maneuvers over the past year into busy shipping lanes in the Straits of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which two-fifths of the world's oil supplies pass, the top U.S. Navy commander in the Mideast said.
The moves have alarmed U.S. officials about possible accidental confrontations that could boil over into war, and led to a recent build-up of Navy forces in the Gulf, Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh said in an interview with The Associated Press and other reporters.
During maneuvers, Iranian sailors have loaded mines onto small minelaying boats and test-fired a Shahab-3 ballistic missile into international waters, he said.
"The Shahab-3 most recently went into waters very close to the traffic separation scheme in the straits themselves. This gives us concern because innocent passage of vessels now is threatened," Walsh said in the interview Monday on the base of the Navy's Fifth Fleet in the Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain.
Iran tested the Shahab during November maneuvers, which it said were in response to U.S. maneuvers in the Gulf it called "adventurist." Iran also showed off an array of new torpedoes in war games in April.
The carrier USS John C. Stennis - backed by a strike group with more than 6,500 sailors and Marines and with additional minesweeping ships - arrived in the region Monday. It joined the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower after President Bush ordered the build-up as a show of strength to Iran.
The additional U.S. firepower has ratcheted up tensions with Iran. But Walsh said the increase aims to reassure Arab allies in the Gulf and prevent misunderstandings that could escalate into outright conflict.
"That's certainly what we're trying to avoid, a mistake that then boils over into a war," said Walsh, who departs his command of the Fifth Fleet this month to become vice chief of naval operations at the Pentagon, the Navy's No. 2 post.
Walsh said the Navy was responding to "more instability than we've seen in years" in the Fifth Fleet's region - with conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, tensions in Lebanon and the standoff with Iran.
The Navy has grown increasingly alarmed at what Walsh called Iran's "provocations." Once cordial Navy ship-to-ship relations with Iran in the Gulf have disintegrated over the past 18 months as Iranian vessels made "probing" incursions into Iraqi waters, he said.
"They threaten to use oil as a weapon. They threaten to close the Straits of Hormuz," Walsh said. "And so it is the combination of the rhetoric, the tone, and the aggressive exercises in very constrained waters that gives us concern."
Since the Stennis was ordered to the region, Iranian leaders have increasingly warned that they would respond to any attack by closing off oil shipping lanes or attacking U.S. interests.
The Straits of Hormuz are 34 miles across, but its shipping lanes are only about six miles wide.
Walsh said it was doubtful that Iran could physically block the entire six-mile lanes with mines - but hitting only a few vessels with missiles and mines would "terrorize" shipping and have the same effect.
"It's more the threat of mines than the threat of closing the straits. That would have dramatic effects on markets around the world," he said.
Walsh said his biggest worry was that Iran would underestimate U.S. resolve to protect its interests in the world's richest oil region. He said the tone of Iranian leaders could make their commanders on the ground more reckless. "It's a mix and a formulation where you can have misunderstanding," he said.
Asked whether the U.S. Navy would launch an attack on Iran if Iranian involvement were confirmed in a deadly incident in Iraq, Walsh said he was unable to discuss the Navy's rules of engagement. But he added, "There are events on land that can spill over onto the sea."
At the same time, Walsh said he understood that U.S.-allied Gulf nations feared that any U.S.-Iranian military conflict could bring attacks on their soil.
Walsh said he was aware that a University of Maryland/Zogby International poll of Arab public opinion this month showed residents of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other allies believe Iran is far less a threat than the U.S. and Israel.
"I'm trying to talk to those in the region, to give them assurances that the reason we're here is to stand by them," he said.
newsmax.com
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By Matthew Levitt February 20, 2007 On February 20, the U.S. Department of the Treasury designated Jihad al-Bina, Hizballah's construction company in Lebanon, effectively shutting the terrorist group's firm out of the international financial system. While the designation will not take effect at the United Nations -- sanctions under UN Security Council Resolution 1267 only target elements associated with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, to the exclusion of any other terrorist groups -- international lenders and donors, including financial institutions, NGOs, and governments, are unlikely to want to assume the reputational risk of working to rebuild Lebanon in partnership with Hizballah instead of the Lebanese government.
Moreover -- and contrary to conventional wisdom -- the designation presents a rare public diplomacy opportunity in the battle of ideas in the war on terror.
Background
In July, Hizballah dragged Lebanon into a war with Israel that proved devastating for Israeli and Lebanese civilians alike and left much of Beirut in shambles. In the aftermath of Hizballah's costly military adventure, the United States pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to support Lebanon's reconstruction, including $230 million pledged in August 2006 and an additional $770 million pledged last month. But Hizballah, ever adept at building grassroots support by providing free and heavily discounted social services, has been doing much the same with significant financial support from Iran. Indeed, according to the U.S. government, Iran provides hundreds of millions of dollars per year to Hizballah, is the group's main source of weapons, and uses its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to train Hizballah operatives in Lebanon and Iran.
'Construction for the Sake of the Holy Struggle'
Offering insight into the firm's business philosophy, Jihad al-Bina is also referred to as "Construction for the Sake of the Holy Struggle," a loose translation of its Arabic name. Said to be modeled after a similar firm established in Iran after the Islamic revolution, it should not surprise that Jihad al-Bina selects projects "based on political considerations that serve the overall objectives of Hizballah," according to a 1999 UN report by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. According to the Treasury Department, "Jihad al-Bina receives direct funding from Iran, is run by Hizballah members, and is overseen by Hizballah's Shura Council, at the head of which sits Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah."
In 1993, a senior Hizballah official noted that Jihad al-Bina had only a $1.8 million budget, though he added, "We are promised more from Iran and concerned individual financiers." By November 2006, Hizballah officials were quoted as having some $450 million earmarked just for operations south of the Litani River. Though it was a small-time operation hardly worthy of concern in the early 1990s, today Jihad al-Bina is one of Lebanon's most significant construction firms, funded and controlled by Iran.
Flush with money from Iran and operating under the guidance of senior Hizballah leadership, Jihad al-Bina has followed up on the July war with an accelerated reconstruction campaign aimed at building grassroots support for Hizballah. According to information made public by the Treasury Department, after the 2006 war with Israel, "Hizballah used Jihad al-Bina to raise funds for the terrorist organization and to bolster the group's standing by providing construction services in Southern Lebanon."
But Jihad al-Bina not only functions in a manner intended to maximize grassroots support for Hizballah, it also facilitates the group's less magnanimous activities. It should be no surprise, for example, that Jihad al-Bina has used deceptive means to seek funding for projects from international development organizations. According to the Treasury Department, "In cases when intended solicitation targets were thought to object to the group's relationship with Hizballah and the Iranian government, the organization employed deceptive practices, applying in the name of proxies not publicly linked to Hizballah." Indeed, Hizballah operatives have mastered the art of denial and deception, learned at the hands of IRGC trainers, to further a variety of illicit activities from terror financing to arms smuggling. Consider a few examples:
•In September 2006 the Treasury designated two Hizballah controlled financial institutions, Bayt al-Mal and the Yousser Company for Finance and Investment, which served as a bank, creditor and investment arm for Hizballah and secured loans and financed business deals for Hizballah companies.
•In November 2006, the Italian press, filing stories on the new Italian commander for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, reported that a ship said to be carrying refrigerators to Lebanon was impounded in Cyprus after it was found to contain eighteen trucks with mobile anti-aircraft radars and other vehicle-mounted monitoring equipment.
•In December 2006, the Treasury Department designated nine members of a Hizballah financing network in the tri-border area (TBA) of South America, including Sobhi Mahmoud Fayad. Fayad was descrtibed as "a senior TBA Hizballah official who served as a liaison between the Iranian embassy and the Hizballah community in the TBA. . . . Fayad received military training in Lebanon and Iran and was involved in illicit activities involving drugs and counterfeit U.S. dollars."
A Public Diplomacy Opportunity
There are sure to be those -- including some in the intelligence and policymaking communities -- who will complain that any entity engaged in the reconstruction of Lebanon, even one operating as an arm of Hizballah, should not be subjected to targeted financial measures. Rebuilding Lebanon, the argument is sure to go, should be of paramount concern at this delicate point in Lebanese internal politics. Others are sure to oppose any action targeting a Lebanese political party, even if that party also maintains an independent, extralegal militia and an international terrorist arm.
But while these arguments miss the point, the designation of Jihad al-Bina offers a rare opportunity to engage in what amounts to a critical component of the battle of ideas as it affects the campaign to disrupt terrorist financing. Indeed, it should not go unnoticed that while the U.S. government is designating one reconstruction company that is engaged in activities of both an overt humanitarian and covert illicit nature, it is also allocating significant funding for reconstruction efforts that come with no strings attached. As undersecretary of the treasury Stuart Levey explained, "At the same time that we are targeting Hizballah's construction company, the U.S. Government is also working to ensure that legitimate reconstruction efforts, led by the Lebanese Government, succeed."
To the credit of the interagency bureaucracy responsible for terrorism designations, the government press release announcing this designation highlighted the public diplomacy facet of this action. The purpose of the humanitarian reconstruction and security assistance pledged last summer and the additional funds pledged at last month's Lebanon Donors' Conference in Paris, the press release notes, is "to help all the Lebanese people rebuild their lives and country, while strengthening Lebanon's sovereign, democratic government and helping to ensure lasting peace."
That is a public diplomacy message that resonates in a region worried about the growing strength of a radical "Shia crescent." Conservative regimes like Egypt and Saudi Arabia expressed public opposition to Hizballah's actions when the war with Israel began, and it remains an obvious if unstated consensus that Hizballah -- with Iranian support -- should not be allowed first to drag Lebanon into a devastating war and then take credit for rebuilding the country it nearly destroyed.
Whether targeting an Islamist NGO financing al-Qaeda or a "reconstruction company" financing Hizballah, the decision to subject a person or entity to targeted financial measures should be taken solely on the merits of the case at hand. At times such action may engender charges of targeting Muslim charities or social service organizations simply because they are Muslim, but that should not prevent authorities from taking action against bad actors. To the contrary, these cases -- always based on sound evidence and interagency consensus -- are public diplomacy opportunities. Preventing Jihad al-Bina from furthering Hizballah's cause while working hard to fund and facilitate Lebanon's reconstruction is a textbook example of how to leverage these two critical components of the war on terror.
counterterrorismblog.org/ Washington Institute
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Police thwart large-scale terror attack planned for Tel Aviv
Security forces on Tuesday thwarted a large-scale terrorist attack planned for Tel Aviv. Forces arrested a Palestinian resident of the West Bank and three other people at a Bat Yam house after receiving intelligence information from the Shin Bet security service.
A senior member of the Islamic Jihad said the group had planned the attack and had sent one of their militants execute it. Two of the other Palestinians arrested at the Bat Yam house were identified as collaborators and all three were illegally residing in Israel.
Following his arrest in Bat Yam, the suspect led investigators to the nearby city of Rishon Letzion, where he had hidden a bag filled with explosives. Police said the suspect confessed to planning to carry out an attack. He had apparently set out Tuesday morning from the Jenin area with the bag of explosives.
Security sources said the attack was to have been executed Tuesday evening at the central bus station in Tel Aviv. For unknown reasons, the sources said, the suspect had hidden the explosives in a Rishion Letzion trash bin and returned to Bat Yam without them.
It is not clear whether the Palestinians arrested along with the suspect had been aware of his plan to carry out an attack.
After the suspect's arrest, police lowered security levels in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area, which had been raised hours earlier due to the terror alert.
Suspecting that a suicide bomber had infiltrated the region, security forces had stationed roadblocks across Tel Aviv on Tuesday afternoon, particularly in the southern part of the city.
Police deployed in large numbers to search vehicles and residential yards. The alert level was also extended into Rishon Letzion.
PA officials: 3 U.S. women released after abducted in Nablus
Meanwhile, a Palestinian man released three U.S. women on Tuesday about an hour after abducting them and holding them in a village in the West Bank, a Palestinian official told Reuters.
"The girls are in our hands," Kamal el-Sheikh, governor of the West Bank city of Nablus. The women, all in their 20s, were unharmed, el-Sheikh said. No further details on their identities were released.
Sheikh said "a guy with personal demands" had seized the women shortly after nightfall and held them in a village called Kufr Kalil.
A man calling himself Hadi Saud contacted The Associated Press in Nablus and said he was the kidnapper. He demanded to be given a job in the security forces and medication for a shooting injury sustained last year, in exchange for releasing the hostages. He provided no proof that he was holding the women.
The security officials said the three women were last seen taking pictures on the outskirts of the Balata refugee camp near Nablus. The officials did not release the names of the three women.
Two of the women were volunteers with a non-governmental group involved in water projects in the West Bank, and a third was a friend of theirs, a Palestinian security source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The source said the women had been on an outing in Nablus and were headed back in a taxi when the man kidnapped them at gunpoint, demanding the driver drive to the village.
The kidnapper, who was wounded in the leg in fighting with IDF forces, had demanded medical care and a job in exchange for the women, and officials said they would look at his case, the source said.
Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, said U.S. officials were informed of the kidnappings. "We take them extremely seriously," Schweitzer-Bluhm said of the incident.
In the past, scores of foreigners were kidnapped by various Palestinian
militant groups, but usually released unharmed after a few hours.
haaretz
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Iran denies late payment on power plant
Top Iranian officials on Monday rejected claims that Teheran has been dragging its feet on payments for a Russian-built nuclear power plant, and accused Moscow of buckling under international pressure and prolonging the reactor's launch, the official news agency reported.
Russian officials on Monday said uranium fuel deliveries to the Bushehr nuclear plant in southern Iran and the reactor's launch could fall behind schedule because of Iran's delays in payment.
But Mohammad Saeedi, the deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, denied that Iran had been late making payments.
"Iran has had no delay whatsoever in making payments for the Bushehr nuclear power plant to the Russian ... company," Saeedi was quoted as saying by the news agency, IRNA.
Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani criticized Russia for the delay in completing the Bushehr plant, saying Teheran expected Russia to prevent actions that deny Iran's nuclear rights, IRNA reported.
"We want Russia to finish completing the Bushehr power plant as soon as possible," IRNA quoted Rafsanjani as saying.
"Extraregional powers, through dominating international institutions, are trying to ignore Iran's definite [nuclear] rights. We expect our friends [Russia] to prevent such attempts," IRNA quoted Rafsanjani, who heads the Expediency Council, a powerful clerical body, as saying.
The launching of the Bushehr plant has been delayed for several years due to what Russia has said are technical reasons. Last year, Russia agreed to ship fuel to the plant in southern Iran by March 2007 and launch the facility in September, with electricity generation to start by November.
Saeedi said Teheran would come up with a solution "in the coming days" to avoid any excuses for a delay in the launch of the plant.
"To resolve part of the financial problems, which is basically related to the Russian company and not Iran, we will come up with a solution in the coming days," IRNA quoted Saeedi as saying.
Russia has emphasized that Iran has the right to a peaceful nuclear energy program, and Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials have said repeatedly that Moscow would honor the Bushehr contract.
Putin's increasingly defiant posture toward the United States would make it highly unlikely that the Kremlin could opt out of the agreement, particularly now that US concerns have been eased by an agreement obliging Iran to return spent fuel - which could potentially be used for a weapons program - to Russia.
AP
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Venezuela Wants Sub Fleet for Conflict with U.S.
Venezuela is spending $3 billion to build nine submarines, a fleet of undersea craft that would be the largest in the region -- and ready to be used against the U.S. in event of a conflict between the two countries.
The submarines will be the "diesel-electric variety," according to a communique issued by Vice Adm. Armband Laguna, quoted this month by Brazil's leading newspaper, O Estado de Sao Paulo.
They will weigh-in at approximately 1,750 metric tons apiece.
The navy is considering bids from Germany, France, and Russia, which is said to be the odds-on favorite, according to the Washington Times.
Venezuela, the Times wrote, could use a fleet of submarines to protect its interests in its exclusive economic zone, which in Caracas' view includes a large portion of the Caribbean Sea.
Protecting an area that large would require far more subs than the two over-30-years-old German U-Boats that the Venezuelan military now employs.
Moreover, the addition of the nine subs would give Venezuela the largest submarine fleet in Latin America, surpassing those of Peru, Brazil and Chile -- with six, five and four submarines, respectively.
Venezuela says it is beefing up its military capabilities -- including plans to develop an enlarged submarine fleet -- in preparation for what it called any "asymmetrical conflict" with the U.S.
The new submarine fleet is a small part of an arms buildup that the Times reports includes small arms, jet fighters and potentially air-defense missiles.
The buildup is being carried out in compliance with all international and regional nonproliferation treaties, Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez told the Times in a telephone interview.
Alvarez said that his government was contemplating the need to defend itself against the world's lone superpower, a nation with vastly greater military resources.
"We have simply been trying to upgrade our military equipment and maintain our defense while preserving balance in the hemisphere," Mr. Alvarez added. He also insisted that Venezuela's Latin American neighbors need not worry about the buildup.
According to the Times, Venezuela is reported to have already spent $3.4 billion on Russian arms, including assault rifles and fighter jets, and is said to be negotiating to buy a $290 million Russian air-defense system.
The Times noted that a Pentagon report estimated that Venezuela had spent about $4.3 billion on arms since 2005 alone, more than countries such as Iran, Pakistan and even China.
Venezuela also is pursuing an estimated $2 billion worth of military-transport ships and aircraft from Spain, a deal that the Times reports was delayed last year after the U.S. objected, noting that foreign companies must seek Washington's approval when de facto selling U.S. military technology.
Venezuela now is trying to work out a deal with Spain to swap out the U.S. parts in the 10 aircraft and eight vessels.
Venezuela already has done billions of dollars worth of business with Russia, purchasing 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 24 Sukhoi-30 fighters and about 35 helicopters.
More recently, Venezuela has its sights set on buying Russian air-defense missiles known as the Tor-M1 system, which consists of eight missiles in a battery mounted to a launch vehicle. The short-range system is designed for use against low-flying aircraft and incoming missiles.
The Times wrote that a Venezuela military official told the Associated Press last month that the missiles were wanted for "air defense" only -- a notion in keeping with Mr. Chavez's repeated warnings about the threat of a U.S. invasion, a threat the U.S. dismisses as fantasy.
Among Washington concerns is the fear that the Russian assault rifles could wind up in the hands of leftist rebels in neighboring Colombia or be used to further the Venezuelan leader's socialist agenda in the region.
"I can see why Chavez wants to militarize Venezuela. ... He's a military man, just like Bolivar was a military man," John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org. told the Times, which noted that Simon Bolivar, whom Mr. Chavez idolizes, liberated several Latin American nations from Spain during the 19th century.
Waging war with the U.S., however "would be a foolish thing to do," he added, noting that even a minor skirmish would jeopardize Venezuela's oil sales to its largest customer.
newsmax.com
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Riot police patrol restive Zimbabwe township
HARARE, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Zimbabwean riot police patrolled a Harare township on Monday to stop possible unrest a day after crushing an opposition rally the government feared would spark a new street campaign against President Robert Mugabe.
Heavily armed riot squads prevented the Movement for Democratic Change from holding a court-approved rally in Highfield on Sunday, firing teargas and water cannon to drive away stone-throwing protesters and arresting 122 people.
Political analysts said the crackdown had stoked tensions in the southern African country, where people are struggling with a desperate economic crisis, unemployment is surging, and where critics say Mugabe is trampling over human rights.
The European Union on Monday extended sanctions on Zimbabwe for another year, including an arms embargo, travel ban and asset freeze on Mugabe and other top officials over charges of rights violations.
The sanctions were initially triggered by the controversial distribution of white-owned commercial farms to mainly landless blacks and Mugabe's disputed re-election in 2002.
On Monday, riot squads on foot and in armoured trucks were still patrolling the streets of Highfield, but in smaller numbers than on Sunday.
Police armed with guns, rubber batons, shields, teargas canisters and launchers were also on guard at the poor township's main shopping mall, traditionally a flashpoint for political clashes.
"It's quiet here, but you can see there that they are not quite sure yet," one resident told a Reuters journalist, nodding towards one police patrol.
Tension has been rising in recent months over Zimbabwe's deteriorating economy and skyrocketing cost of living, prompting some workers, including doctors and teachers, to embark on wage strikes as inflation tops 1,600 percent.
The High Court on Saturday ordered the government to allow the MDC to hold its rally, rejecting police arguments that they needed more time to find the manpower to monitor it.
RALLY WORRIED AUTHORITIES
State media suggested the authorities were worried that the MDC wanted to use the event to launch a wave of anti-government protests, and stopped it "for security and political reasons".
The media said the rally was to be part of a British-backed drive "to galvanise the regime-change lobby" and embarrass Mugabe, who turns 83 this week and will celebrate his birthday at a huge party organised by his governing ZANU-PF on Saturday.
"I think the government's heavy-handed approach yesterday, the decision to ignore the court order and use force has further damaged its image at home and abroad," said Eldred Masunungure, a political science professor at the University of Zimbabwe.
"Both here and internationally, they are reinforcing the impression that they are in trouble, and the use or show of force is just going to worsen the tension, it's adding fuel to the fire," he said.
The MDC had said it planned to use the rally to launch its presidential election campaign. The election is due in March 2008 but the ruling ZANU-PF party plans to put it off until 2010 and to hold it at the same time as parliamentary elections.
The MDC says Zimbabwe cannot afford Mugabe, charging that the man who has led the country since independence from Britain in 1980 is to blame for the economic crisis.
Along with the world's highest inflation rate, Zimbabwe has seen unemployment climb to 80 percent while food, fuel and foreign exchange are in short supply.
Critics blame the crisis on Mugabe's politically driven policies, including the farm seizures. The veteran leader says Zimbabwe is the victim of economic sabotage by his enemies. (Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander in Brussels)
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The PKK and Syria's Kurds
By James Brandon In January, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) appointed "Doctor Bahoz," the nom de guerre of Fehman Huseyin, a Syrian Kurd, to lead the People's Defense Forces (the HPG), putting him in charge of the movement's day-to-day military operations. The appointment of a Syrian—and a noted hardliner—to head the military wing of the Kurdish group seems likely to increase tensions between the movement's older members, who are largely supportive of the Syrian government, and its younger recruits, who see Syria's 1.7 million Kurds as an oppressed minority ripe for liberation.
Although Bahoz's rise to the top of the PKK—a movement that is ostensibly Turkish—is unusual, there are thousands of Syrian Kurds in the PKK, which is the result of a long-standing alliance between the guerrilla movement and Damascus. Anecdotal evidence suggests that as much as 20 percent of the PKK's 4,000 troops in Mount Qandil, the PKK's headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan, are of Syrian origin [1]. These Syrian Kurds fall into two rough categories: older members who joined the PKK to fight against Turkey, and younger, more radical recruits who have joined more recently and who believe that all Kurdish lands—including those in Syria—should be liberated.
The tension between PKK members loyal to the Syrian government—of whom Bahoz is one—and those who believe the PKK should fight Syria could have serious regional consequences. The PKK is in a crisis, struggling to remain relevant to ordinary Kurds, while caught in a region-wide struggle between Islamism and ethno-nationalism; between Western democracies and Arab dictatorships. The winner of the struggle within the PKK will decide whether men like Bahoz continue their traditional, Maoist guerrilla war against Turkey, or if power will fall to younger, more radical recruits who advocate a broader, pan-Kurdish campaign of urban warfare.
History of Syria's Kurds
Syria's estimated 1.7 million Kurds make up around 10 percent of the country's population and are concentrated in a geographically compact area of northeast Syria in the triangle formed by the Turkish and Iraqi borders. The region's main towns are Qamishli and Hassaka, which also have large Christian populations. There are Kurdish villages scattered along the northern border with Turkey. In addition, at least 100,000 Kurds live in Damascus. Some of these Kurds are recent migrants, while others are from families that have lived in the Syrian capital for generations.
Historically, the Kurds of the rolling plains of eastern Syria have adopted a far-more quietist attitude than the Kurds in the rugged mountains of Iran, Syria and Iraq. While these latter Kurds have been engaged in almost continuous rebellions against their central governments since at least the 1960s, Syria's Kurds have no comparable history of revolt against Damascus.
Syrian Kurds—like those elsewhere—have largely rejected the political Islam promoted by Gulf Arab states, preferring to mix secular politics with a personal attachment to conservative and rustic "village" Islam. Although Syrian Kurds are proud of their ethnic identity, this only rarely translates into a desire for independence or even regional autonomy. In general, the Kurds' grievances against the government are those of most Syrians—they desire political freedom, basic human rights and greater economic opportunity.
"The Kurdish people in Syria don't want autonomy; they just want their democratic rights in a democratic Syria," says Kawa Rashid, the Netherlands representative of Yekiti, one of the largest Syrian Kurdish political parties. "They also want their language and culture to be respected" [2].
Syria and the PKK
For the last quarter century, Syria has aimed to weaken its neighbors by stoking pan-Kurdish sentiments around the region, while also urging its own Kurdish minority to subordinate their ethnic identity to Syria's Arab—and increasingly Islamic—identity. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the Syrian government backed the PKK against Turkey by providing its fighters based in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley with arms and training. Simultaneously, Syria supported Iraqi Kurds against Baghdad. In particular, Syria aided the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which was founded by Jalal Talabani in Damascus in 1975.
In return, Turkish and Iraqi Kurds, backed by Damascus, abandoned all claims to lead Syria's Kurds. Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK's founder and leader, even publicly said that Syria's Kurds were not fully Kurdish [3]. In 1998, however, Syria, under heavy Turkish pressure, ended its support for the PKK, expelling Ocalan from his home in Damascus and closing PKK camps in Lebanon. While this precipitated Ocalan's arrest soon afterwards in Kenya, the PKK survived by moving their camps to Iraqi Kurdistan.
This did not, however, end Syrian involvement with the PKK since Syria had already encouraged thousands of its own Kurds to join the PKK to fight against Turkey. Many of these traveled to the camps in Mount Qandil in Kurdistan where they have been joined by a steady trickle of Syrian Kurds eager to fight for an independent homeland. Syrian PKK members have also continued to take part in attacks in Turkey. For example, when a Syrian PKK member was killed near Trabzon in northern Turkey in August 2005, Kurdish activists returned his body to his family in Syria (Journal of Turkish Weekly, August 24, 2005). There are also widespread rumors that Syria continues to covertly fund, supply and train the PKK.
Growing Activism
Despite Syrian success in co-opting the PKK, the last few years have provided evidence that Syria's formerly placid Kurds are becoming increasingly angry with the Syrian government—and increasingly determined to take action against it. In 2004, Kurdish restlessness peaked when Syrian police shot dead seven Kurds during a riot at a football match in Qamishli on March 12 (Amnesty International, March 16, 2004). Further violence took place at the men's funerals, leading to a rapid escalation of hostilities. On March 13, events akin to a spontaneous uprising began in Qamishli, Aleppo and Afrin. In Qamishli, thousands of Kurds attacked police stations and government buildings, burning some of them.
Events climaxed when Kurds in Qamishli toppled a statue of Hafez al-Assad in imitation of the toppling of Saddam's statue in Baghdad just a year earlier. The Syrian army responded quickly, deploying thousands of troops backed by tanks and helicopters. At least 30 Kurds were killed as the security services re-took the city. According to Amnesty International, more than 2,000 Kurds were subsequently jailed for their role in the violence.
Syria's tough response silenced the Kurds, but only temporarily. Soon after, Sheikh Mashuq Khaznawi, a popular Kurdish Sufi religious leader, began to speak out against the government and met Muslim Brotherhood members abroad. Later, on May 10, 2005, he was kidnapped, tortured and killed. The government blamed criminals, yet his family and supporters blamed the security services. Thousands attended his funeral where, again, violence erupted between Kurds and the police.
As Syria tightly controls and monitors political activity, this rise in activism seems to be largely spontaneous and organic, inspired in part by Kurdish achievements in neighboring Iraq and by Saddam's overthrow. A pan-Kurdish message has also been broadcast around the region by Roj TV, a Denmark-based satellite channel supportive of the PKK. Kurdish assertiveness has been stoked by regional trends such as the spread of the internet, increasing unemployment and a general polarization of Middle East politics.
Blowback
Rising Kurdish national feeling is also the belated blowback from Syria's schizophrenic policy toward the Middle East's 25 million Kurds. For the last 30 years, successive Syrian governments have backed Kurdish nationalists against Iraq and Turkey, while seeking to preemptively intimidate their own Kurds, aiming to stifle their separatist ambitions without triggering an outright rebellion.
In the modern era, Syrian repression of its Kurds began in the 1960s, when around 150,000 Syrian Kurds were stripped of their Syrian citizenship and declared to be "foreigners." Today, their similarly disenfranchised descendents number over 200,000. Around the same time, the Syrian government removed many Kurds from a 10 kilometer deep strip along the country's northern and northeastern borders, replacing them with Arab settlers.
Today, the Syrian government continues to harass, arrest and occasionally kill Kurdish activists, fueling broader Kurdish resentment. For example, in 1993 when the main prison in Hassake burnt down, killing 61 Kurds, including many prominent activists, many Kurds accused the government of starting the fire deliberately. Syrian Kurdish activists say that at least 300 Kurds are in prison today for political reasons. In addition, Kurdish culture has been forced underground. The use of the Kurdish language is prohibited in business or government. The government strictly curtails Kurds' expressions of other aspects of Kurdish culture such as music and celebrations of the spring Newruz festival.
Fearing the cumulative effects of these factors—and un-nerved by the 2004 Kurdish "intifada"—the Syrian government has periodically attempted to placate the Kurds. In March 2005, 312 Kurds who were jailed following the Qamishli violence were pardoned (al-Jazeera, June 8, 2005). Soon afterwards, the Syrian government promised to address Kurdish grievances by granting them greater social and cultural rights. Syrian ministers also proposed awarding nationality to the stateless Kurds. These concessions, however, came as Syria reeled from a series of international and domestic crises, in particular the assassination of Rafiq Hariri in early 2005. By 2007, the Syrian government, strengthened by the United States' difficulties encountered in Iraq and the success of Hezbollah's summer 2006 war with Israel, has reverted to its traditional intolerance.
As a result, Kurdish discontent remains high and is likely increasing, fortified by the knowledge that a post-Assad regime is unlikely to treat them any better. Even moderate Syrian democrats and secular reformists regard the Kurds with a mix of fear, disgust and contempt [4]. Islamic opposition figures also distrust the Kurds' separatist and secular inclinations and have made little attempt to include them in their plans [5].
PKK Action in Syria
Just as Syrian policies toward the Kurds have helped make Syrian Kurdistan a potentially fertile ground for future uprisings, so have the PKK's own contradictions threatened to undermine the decades-old understanding between the PKK and Damascus, by radicalizing not only its own members, but also Kurds around the region. The PKK's longstanding strategy of using Syrian Kurds to fight Turkey—while also working with the Syrian government—therefore threatens to constantly backfire.
This danger is exacerbated because the PKK's camps on Mount Qandil currently have a revolving-door effect of radicalizing and training Kurds and then spewing them out across the region. Just as many Turkish Kurds are leaving the PKK disillusioned by the party's aging leadership, its peace overtures to Turkey and the sense of lethargy prevailing on Mount Qandil, so too are many Syrian Kurds (Terrorism Monitor, September 8, 2006). Trained and motivated, some of these Syrian Kurds may someday return to their homelands to engage in activism there—just as the shadowy Turkish group the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons has evolved as a radical rival to the PKK (Terrorism Focus, October 17, 2006).
This problem may be even more acute for Syrian Kurds who must be baffled by their leaders' denial of the Syrian Kurds' nationalist aspirations and by their enduring loyalty toward the Syrian regime. The PKK's hypocritical attitude toward Syria also contrasts with its overt support for PJAK, the PKK's Iranian clone, whose success in mobilizing Iranian Kurds is attracting ever-increasing interest from Washington (Terrorism Monitor, June 15, 2006).
Therefore, in the internal struggle to decide the future of the PKK, the appointment of Dr. Bahoz marks a victory for pro-Damascus factions of the PKK. It may also, however, mark the increasing marginalization of the aging Kurdish leadership from the Kurdish mainstream, while also accelerating the flow of younger Syrian PKK members away from the group and into smaller and potentially more radical movements.
Notes
1. Author interviews at PKK base camp, Mount Qandil, Iraqi Kurdistan, March 20-22, 2006.
2. Author interview with Kawa Rashid, Netherlands representative of Yekiti, February 12, 2007.
3. Author interview with Jawad Mella, president of West Kurdistan Association, London, Spring 2006.
4. Author interviews with Haitham Maleh, Ayman Abdel Nour and Sami Moubayed, Damascus, Spring 2006.
5. Author interview with Ali Sadreddin al-Bayanouni, secretary-general of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, June 2006.
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Three Explanations for al-Qaeda's Lack of a CBRN Attack
Terrorism Monitor By Chris Quillen The evidence of al-Qaeda's interest in conducting a terrorist attack with chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) weapons appears compelling. As early as 1998, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden declared the acquisition of CBRN weapons a "religious duty" for Muslims [1]. He followed up in 2003 by asking for and receiving a fatwa from Saudi Sheikh Nasir bin Hamid al-Fahd that condoned the use of CBRN weapons by Muslims against infidels [2]. Combined with the multitude of warnings from al-Qaeda associates that a CBRN attack against the West is not only forthcoming but also long overdue, the Muslim "duty to warn" has been firmly established. In al-Qaeda's opinion, no further justification is needed and no additional warnings are required [3].
These words have also been backed up by deeds. In the early 1990s, al-Qaeda began its efforts to acquire radiological and nuclear materials [4]. While no evidence exists that these efforts have succeeded, there is little doubt that al-Qaeda continues to pursue this capability today. Prior to the fall of the Taliban, the training camps in Afghanistan taught recipes for the manufacturing of poisons and toxins including cyanide and botulinum. A video recovered by CNN in Afghanistan in 2002 clearly demonstrates that al-Qaeda had some success in manufacturing chemical weapons in the form of a poisonous gas capable of causing death. The WMD Commission reported that al-Qaeda had similar success with biological weapons, including the acquisition of at least small quantities of the virulent strain of "Agent X" which has been widely reported to be anthrax [5]. While some technical hurdles remain for al-Qaeda to weaponize and effectively employ CBRN weapons on a mass-casualty scale, the terrorist group clearly is capable of conducting small-scale, low-tech CBRN attacks.
Given this stated desire and apparent capability to conduct a CBRN terrorist attack, why has al-Qaeda not yet launched an attack with such weapons? This analysis explores three possible explanations for this lack of a CBRN attack: disruption, deterrence and, most disturbingly, patience.
Disruption
An encouraging explanation is that al-Qaeda's efforts have thus far been disrupted through a combination of stepped-up counter-terrorist efforts after 9/11 and possibly the simple luck enjoyed by government authorities. Clearly, the al-Qaeda CBRN programs that existed in Afghanistan under the Taliban were at least temporarily disrupted by the 2001 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent need to move to safer locales. According to this explanation, al-Qaeda's CBRN programs have yet to recover from this significant setback.
Several specific CBRN attack plots have apparently been disrupted, although none advanced far beyond the initial planning stages. In May 2002, Jose Padilla arrived in the United States, reportedly planning a "dirty bomb" attack, but never got much beyond the idea stage. Similarly, Dhiren Barot (also known as Issa al-Hindi) was arrested in the United Kingdom in 2004, carrying relatively detailed plans for conducting a Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD) attack, but had not yet acquired the necessary materials [6]. Given that an RDD attack is widely considered the CBRN attack most likely within al-Qaeda's capabilities, these disruptions could be especially significant.
Al-Qaeda's chemical and biological plots have not fared much better. In 2003, UK police arrested a group of Algerians with recipes and materials for creating ricin and cyanide, although stories conflict about whether any actual poisonous material was recovered (BBC, April 13, 2005). A 2004 chemical plot against multiple targets in Jordan had apparently advanced to the point of acquiring vehicles and materials, selecting targets and assigning duties (al-Jazeera, May 2, 2004). It remains unclear whether the materials recovered were for the manufacture of conventional explosives or chemical gases [7].
At the same time as these arrests, however, al-Qaeda succeeded in launching devastating conventional attacks in Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, Indonesia, Jordan, Spain, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, while al-Qaeda has suffered some setbacks in its CBRN efforts, these disruptions alone do not appear sufficient to have prevented al-Qaeda from conducting a CBRN attack given its other successful attacks.
Deterrence
Another possible explanation for al-Qaeda's apparent restraint is the threat of massive retaliation. Although an intriguing possibility, the complications of deterrence theory may offer more questions than answers.
Al-Qaeda's initial rationale for pursuing CBRN weapons was the desire to deter enemies such as the United States from attacking the organization [8]. In 2001, bin Laden specifically warned, "We have [chemical and nuclear] weapons as a deterrent" (Dawn, November 10, 2001). While this particular strategy clearly failed after the September 11 attacks, al-Qaeda may still be using its CBRN efforts as part of its deterrence strategy [9].
Traditional deterrence theory indicates that terrorist organizations are less susceptible to deterrence strategies because they lack the defined territory that can be held hostage to a retaliatory attack. Al-Qaeda's strategy, however, has long been to acquire just such territory. In his book Knights Under the Prophet's Banner, Ayman al-Zawahiri described this goal when he wrote, "Confronting the enemies of Islam and launching jihad against them require a Muslim authority, established on a Muslim land." Al-Qaeda is no doubt aware of the risks of acquiring territory. Previous efforts to establish al-Qaeda authority in Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan and Iraq have all resulted in U.S. attacks. Nevertheless, al-Qaeda is an organization that requires territory to operate and carry out its mission and is clearly willing to accept this risk to achieve its stated goals.
Today, al-Qaeda is heavily dependent on its safe haven in the tribal areas of Pakistan. This dependency may have driven al-Qaeda to compromise its immediate desire to launch CBRN attacks against the United States for the longer-term goal of establishing their authority in a Muslim land as a stepping stone to future attacks and ultimate victory. In particular, al-Qaeda may assess that a significant CBRN attack against the West (or, for that matter, another major attack on the U.S. homeland) would invite a U.S. invasion of the tribal areas. The Pakistani government—always staking a position somewhere between Washington's and al-Qaeda's interests—may have even warned al-Qaeda's leadership that such an attack will lead to U.S. troops on Pakistani soil (with or without Islamabad's consent) and the subsequent end of al-Qaeda's safe haven. The U.S. occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the presence of thousands of U.S. troops across the border in Afghanistan, make the threat of an American invasion more than credible.
Of course, al-Qaeda is not the only combatant being deterred in this war. In fact, the United States and al-Qaeda appear to have settled into a pattern of violence acceptable to both sides. While al-Qaeda continues to launch terrorist attacks around the world, the terrorist organization appears to be deterred from launching another major attack on the U.S. homeland or a significant CBRN attack against U.S. interests by the threat of a U.S. invasion of Pakistan. Meanwhile, the United States occasionally launches missile strikes against al-Qaeda targets on Pakistani territory, but is reportedly deterred from sending ground troops into Pakistan due to the possibility that the Musharraf government would fall and an even more dangerous Islamic terrorist threat would rise from the ashes. Al-Qaeda may very well assess that a CBRN attack would upset this delicate balance.
Patience
A final possibility is that al-Qaeda simply is waiting for the right time to launch a CBRN attack. Bin Laden has often been described as an exceedingly patient man, willing to wait for the right moment to act. Major terrorist attacks such as 9/11 were in the works for years before the final order was given. Al-Qaeda's leaders reportedly view their struggle against the United States as a long one, likely to continue well after they have left this world. In this view, the attacks on September 11 were only one battle and the final destruction of the United States may take generations to complete.
Under this scenario, al-Qaeda is building its capabilities in anticipation of a great victory and will not rush to act just for the sake of acting. The planned attack on the New York City subway system with the "mubtakkar" improvised chemical device may be an example of such patience. Al-Zawahiri reportedly called off the attack because it was not an adequate follow-up to September 11 [10]. Al-Qaeda apparently wanted an even more devastating attack for its second wave. Given the carnage of 9/11, it is hard to imagine al-Qaeda wreaking even more havoc, but a CBRN attack—including the physical, psychological and economic impacts—could certainly fit the bill.
It is possible that al-Qaeda's success with the September 11 attacks has set the bar too high for its current CBRN capabilities. Al-Qaeda may be concerned that a CBRN attack that "only" kills dozens of people would be perceived as a relative failure and demonstrate its weakened position relative to its pre-9/11 stature. The organization may prefer to wait until its CBRN capability has matured to the point where its chances of success are greater and its capability for destruction has increased [11]. Given the fact that there is no indication that al-Qaeda has abandoned its pursuit of CBRN weapons, the possibility of a patient al-Qaeda is a disturbing possibility worth remembering.
Conclusion
Many of the traditional reasons why terrorist groups do not attempt CBRN attacks do not exist for al-Qaeda. The organization has clearly demonstrated its willingness to engage in indiscriminate killing on a massive scale without fear of losing the support of its followers. Al-Qaeda has also shown it is willing to take on the technical challenges involved and has had some successes in developing lethal materials including cyanide, anthrax and especially the mubtakkar device. Unfortunately, this combination of continuing interest, growing capability and demonstrated patience may one day pay off for al-Qaeda.
Notes
1. Interview with Jamal Isma'il, December 1998 and re-broadcast on al-Jazeera, September 2001.
2. Sheikh Nasir bin Hamid al-Fahd, "A Treatise on the Legal Status of Using Weapons of Mass Destruction Against Infidels," May 2003.
3. Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, p. 155-156.
4. Jamal Ahmad al-Fadl, Testimony before the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, United States vs. Usama bin Laden et al, February 2001.
5. Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Final Report, March 31, 2005, p. 269-270.
6. See, in particular, Dhiren Barot, "Final Presentation," posted by the London Metropolitan Police Service at http://www.met.police.uk/pressbureau/rhyme/index.htm.
7. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, April 26, 2004. Al-Hayat, April 16, 2004. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi admitted to planning a conventional bomb attack, but called the allegations of a chemical plot "fabrications" in an audio statement posted on the al-Ansar Forum, April 29, 2004.
8. According to Abu Walid al-Masri in his book The Story of the Afghan Arabs: From the Entry to Afghanistan to the Final Exodus with Taliban, published in al-Sharq al-Awsat, December 8, 2004. See also Robert Wesley, "Al-Qaeda's WMD Strategy Prior to the U.S. Intervention in Afghanistan," Terrorism Monitor, October 7, 2005 and Sammy Salama and Lydia Hansell, "Does Intent Equal Capability?: Al-Qaeda and Weapons of Mass Destruction," Nonproliferation Review, Volume 12, Number 3, November 2005, p. 625-626.
9. For another discussion of al-Qaeda's deterrence strategy, see Lewis A. Dunn, "Can al-Qaeda Be Deterred from Using Nuclear Weapons?" Occasional Paper 3, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction, July 2005.
10. Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11, p. 218-220.
11. See also Dunn, p. 15 "The fact that no single attack has yet occurred may simply indicate that preparations for a more spectacular multi-attack effort are under way."
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Raytheon to Develop Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Radar
TEWKSBURY, Mass: Raytheon Company has been awarded a $212 million contract by the Missile Defense Agency for the manufacture, delivery and integration support of one Terminal High Altitude Area Defense radar, also called the AN/TPY-2 radar.
"The AN/TPY-2 radar plays a vital role in the Ballistic Missile Defense System, protecting the U.S., deployed forces and allies from ballistic missile threats," said Pete Franklin, vice president of Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems' (IDS) Missile Defense business. "This award underscores the Missile Defense Agency's confidence in Raytheon's ability to deliver affordable, advanced sensor capabilities to meet the Ballistic Missile Defense System mission."
Under the terms of the contract, Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems will manufacture one AN/TPY-2 radar. Work will be performed at Raytheon's Missile Defense Center in Woburn, Mass., and at the company's Integrated Air Defense Center in Andover, Mass.
The AN/TPY-2 is a high-power, transportable X-Band radar designed to detect, track and discriminate ballistic missile threats.
Raytheon IDS designed and built the AN/TPY-2 radar for the Ballistic Missile Defense System and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense weapon system drawing on extensive sensor knowledge from its X-Band "Family of Radars."
Integrated Defense Systems is Raytheon's leader in Joint Battlespace Integration providing affordable, integrated solutions to a broad international and domestic customer base, including the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, the U.S. Armed Forces and the Department of Homeland Security.
Raytheon Company, with 2006 sales of $20.3 billion, is an industry leader in defense and government electronics, space, information technology, technical services, and business and special mission aircraft. With headquarters in Waltham, Mass., Raytheon employs more than 80,000 people worldwide.
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Al-Qaeda 'regrouping' on Pakistan boarder
The Australian: LEADERS of al-Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their terrorist network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border.
Citing unnamed US intelligence and counterterrorism officials, the New York Times said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan.
Until recently, the administration of President George W Bush had described bin Laden and Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of al-Qaeda, the report said.
The United States has also identified several new al-Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including one that officials said might be training operatives for strikes against targets beyond Afghanistan, according to the paper.
Recent intelligence showed that the compounds functioned under a loose command structure and were operated by groups of Arab, Pakistani and Afghan militants allied with al-Qaeda, The Times said.
They receive guidance from their commanders and Zawahri, analysts said. Bin Laden, who has long played less of an operational role, appears to have little direct involvement, according to the report.
Officials said the training camps had yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the al-Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the paper reported.
But groups of 10 to 20 men are being trained at the camps, and the al-Qaeda infrastructure in the region is gradually becoming more mature.
The new warnings are different from those made in recent months by intelligence officials and terrorism experts, who have spoken about the growing abilities of Taliban forces and Pakistani militants to launch attacks into Afghanistan, The Times said.
US officials said the new intelligence points to the prospect that the terrorist network is gaining in strength despite more than five years of a sustained US-led campaign to weaken it, the report said.
The concern about a resurgent al-Qaeda has been the subject of intensive discussion at high levels of the Bush administration and has reignited debate about how to address Pakistan's role as a haven for militants without undermining the government of General Pervez Musharraf, according to The Times.
Last week, senior White House counterterrorism adviser Frances Fragos Townsend went to Afghanistan to meet with security officials about rising concerns on al-Qaeda's resurgence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the paper said.
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Iran to launch more military exercises
TEHRAN: Iran's elite ideological army, the Revolutionary Guards, will on Monday launch three days of military manoeuvres across the country amid mounting tension over Tehran's nuclear programme, the ISNA news agency reported.
"The ground forces of the Revolutionary Guards, with 20 brigades, will participate in these manoevres using the most modern arms recently distributed to units," the agency quoted an official statement as saying.
"These manoeuvres will proceed in 16 of Iran's 30 provinces. They are part of exercises that are scheduled on an annual basis."
The Revolutionary Guards earlier this year staged naval and air manoeuvres aimed at testing the defence and preparation capacities of their ballistic missile units.
The force said then that it had successfully tested a surface-to-sea missile with a range of 350 kilometres (217 miles) and a new anti-aircraft defence system delivered in January by Russia
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Simultaneous Attacks in Southern Thailand Rock Chinese New Year's Celebrations
By Zachary Abuza In the first time in several months, Muslim insurgents in southern Thailand executed near simultaneous attacks across four provinces in the troubled south.
Ethnic Chinese celebrating the start of the lunar new year were the primary targets. There were roughly 40 bombings and arson attacks that began around 7PM. Eight people were killed (five in drive by shootings) and 62 wounded by the bomb blasts. Insurgents targeted karaoke bars, hotels and other night spots, as well as department stores and gas stations. A power transmission station was also hit, throwing much of Yala into darkness. Yala was hit with 24 bombs, 7 in Betong town, alone. There were 5 bombs in the border town of Sungai Golok, a town with a large Chinese population. The two bombs in Songkhla Province cause considerable alarm to authorities in Bangkok, as the province tends to be a bellweather of whether the insurgency is spreading beyond the three Muslim dominated provinces. One bomb was placed at the door of an army major’s house, killing him. Two bombs were found and defused in a department store. Most of the bombs were 2-3kg ammonium nitrate-based devices placed in metal canisters or fire extinguishers and detonated with small digital watches. In addition to the bombings, two more schools were arsoned.
Some 2,000 people have been killed in the insurgency since January 2004. There has been a sharp up-tick in the violence since the military coup on 19 September 2006 deposed former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Despite a sharp increase in deaths, there had not been a major coordinated attack across all four provinces since August 2006. Thai authorities remain unable to quell the violence.
counterterrorismblog.org
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Cabbie Runs Down Students
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A local cab driver allegedly tried to run over two customers after a fight over religion became heated.
The incident happened early Sunday morning on the Vanderbilt campus and left one man hospitalized and a cab driver arrested, said police
Two students visiting from Ohio were coming from a bar downtown when they got into an argument with their driver over religion, said police. After they paid the driver he allegedly ran them down in a parking lot.
Ibrihim Ahmned, of United Cab, was arrested and charged with assault, attempted homicide and theft. One of the passengers, Andrew Nelson, managed to outrun the cab but Jeremy Invus was taken to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center with serious injuries, said police.
Ahmed has been convicted of misdemeanors including evading arrest in a motor vehicle and driving on a suspended license, said police.
Ahmed was charged with theft because police said the license plate on his cab was listed as stolen. His bond is set at $300,000.
WSMV.com
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N.Y. Times: Al-Qaeda Gaining Strength in Pakistan, Waziristan Accord Has Failed
By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross A report in today's New York Times discusses American intelligence and counterterrorism officials' view that al-Qaeda's senior leadership has "re-established significant control" over the worldwide terror network. Their operations hub is located in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area:
"American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda. The United States has also identified several new Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including one that officials said might be training operatives for strikes against targets beyond Afghanistan. . . . Officials said the training camps had yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. But groups of 10 to 20 men are being trained at the camps, the officials said, and the Qaeda infrastructure in the region is gradually becoming more mature."
Several factors have allowed al-Qaeda's core leadership to regain its strength, including "[t]he emergence of a relative haven in North Waziristan and the surrounding area." To that extent, the Times reports that officials in Washington and Islamabad are conceding that the Waziristan Accord -- which was signed on September 5, and was designed as a treaty between Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf and tribal leaders -- "had been a failure." This should come as no shock. In the October 2 issue of the Weekly Standard, less than a month after the Waziristan Accord was signed, Bill Roggio and I provided the following analysis:
"The agreement is, to put it mildly, a boon to the terrorists and a humiliation for the Pakistani government. . . . The accord provides that the Pakistani army will abandon outposts and border crossings throughout Waziristan. Pakistan's military agreed that it will no longer operate in North Waziristan or monitor actions in the region. Pakistan will return weapons and other equipment seized during Pakistani army operations. And the Pakistani government essentially paid a tribute to end the fighting when it agreed to pay compensation for property destroyed during combat -- an unusual move since most of the property that was destroyed belonged to factions that had consciously decided to harbor terrorists. Of particular concern is the provision allowing non-Pakistani militants to continue to reside in Waziristan as long as they promise to "keep the peace." Keeping the peace will, in practice, be defined as refraining from attacks on the Pakistani military. Meanwhile, since the military won't be monitoring the militants' activities, they can plan and train for terrorist attacks or work to bolster the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan without being seen to violate the treaty."
It is unsurprising that the Waziristan Accord has failed: the truly astonishing news is that so many analysts waited until now to declare it a failure.
I spoke with a senior military intelligence officer about the Times article. He reports that the Times's description that camps in Pakistan have "yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule" and its mention of "groups of 10 to 20 men" being trained is only a partial picture of the training camps in Pakistan. The Times article focuses on al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan, camps where militants receive the kind of training that could enable them to carry out terrorist attacks in the West. But there are also larger military training camps -- the kind that are used to train Taliban fighters to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan, or to train Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, or other Kashmiri separatist groups. The training required to carry out a terrorist attack in the West is different than what is needed to fight in Afghanistan or Kashmir.
The senior officer also noted that the Times article portrays al-Qaeda as having fragmented in 2005, when "American intelligence assessments described senior leaders of Al Qaeda as cut off from their foot soldiers and able only to provide inspiration for future attacks." In his estimation, such assessments were essentially intelligence failures: al-Qaeda's senior leadership was regrouping and gathering force during this period, and Western intelligence wasn't aware of it. The reason we realize it now, he says, is because the strength of al-Qaeda's central leadership has become blatantly obvious.
There is support for this view. When the 7/7 Tube bombings hit London in the summer of 2005, a number of analysts jumped to announce that there was no link to a central al-Qaeda network. This view was later undercut when al-Qaeda released martyrdom tapes recorded by 7/7 bombers Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, and when news organizations learned that both men met with al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Pakistani tribal areas in 2005. These revelations prompted Chatham House analyst Bob Ayers to say of early police reports, "It makes the police look pretty bad. It means the investigation was either wrong, or they had identified links, but were reluctant to reveal them."
There are three areas of particular concern to note. First, the gathering of al-Qaeda forces in Waziristan and other parts of Pakistan makes the terrorist group increasingly look very similar to how it looked prior to 9/11. Much of the progress that the U.S. and other Western countries have made over the past five years will be lost if al-Qaeda is able to regenerate in this manner. Second, a number of British citizens of Pakistani descent have been to training camps in Pakistan. This is of great concern because people traveling with Commonwealth passports come under less suspicion when entering other Commonwealth countries. This includes Canada -- which may, in turn, make it easier for graduates of the training camps in Pakistan to attack the U.S. And a third point of concern is that, although analysts now concede that the Waziristan Accord has failed, they aren't discussing what should be done now. Indeed, I have spoken with nobody in policymaking or intelligence circles with a good answer to that question.
counterterrorismblog.org
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Report: Syrian President Assad denies rift with Iran
Syria on Sunday denied any rift between Damascus and Iran during a visit to Tehran by the Syrian President Bashar Assad, who accused the enemies of Islamic countries of trying to sow discord.
"The creation of a rift among Muslims is their latest weapon, which is more dangerous than their previous plans," Assad was quoted as saying on the Iranian state television's Web site on Sunday, a day after the Syrian leader ended his visit to Iran.
Assad's visit, his fifth since taking office in 2000, comes at a time when some Arab diplomats have said Syria feels betrayed by Iran because of a joint Iranian-Saudi Arabian effort to clamp down on sectarian tensions in Iraq and violence in Lebanon.
Syria has largely alienated many of its traditional Arab allies but has had close ties to Iran for years.
Arab observers have said there are also newfound tensions between majority Shiite Iran and majority Sunni Syria over their differing interests in Iraq.
The site did not elaborate on who those enemies might be, but during his two-day trip the Syrian president also accused the U.S. and Israel of having ominous aims.
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Sunday the United States will fail to achieve its goals in the Middle East, state television reported.
"Realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region," the broadcast quoted Khamenei as saying in a meeting with Assad.
Assad left Iran on Sunday after a two-day visit to discuss Iraq and other regional issues with senior Iranian officials, including Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
During his visit, Assad accused the U.S. and Israel of trying to harm the regional positions of Iran and Syria by raising questions about their roles in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority.
"Through effort and coordination, we have to enlighten public opinion about the ominous aims of the U.S. and Zionists," said Assad, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Ahmadinejad expressed similar concerns when he accused the U.S. and Israel of targeting Islamic countries under the pretense of achieving peace.
"They imply that they are pursuing peace and security in the region, however they want to improve their and the Zionists' position in the region and hit Islamic countries," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
The U.S. has accused Syria of not doing enough to prevent militants from crossing its border into Iraq and has blamed Iran for supporting Shiite militias in attacks that have killed American troops. U.S. officials also accuse Iran and Syria of interfering in Lebanon and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, both of which the U.S. considers terrorist groups.
Iran and Syria have long been close allies. During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Syria was the only Arab country to support Iran.
During the past 10 years, Iranian companies have invested more than $700 million in Syria, in sectors such as power generation,
automobiles, cement and agriculture.
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Blast in Russian McDonald's injures six
ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - An explosion caused by a suspected bomb in a McDonald's restaurant in Russia's second city of St. Petersburg on Sunday slightly injured at least six people, officials said.
City prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev told reporters the blast in the restaurant on Nevsky Prospect, the main thoroughfare, occurred at 8:30 p.m. (10:30 p.m. British time) and had been caused by an unidentified substance.
Earlier, a police spokesman told Reuters an unidentified device had caused the explosion.
Zaitsev said five women and one man had been slightly injured and were taken to hospital for treatment. Five of them, including the man, were later released.
Police said the man was a foreign tourist.
"I was walking past and heard a noise and then felt a shake in the air and saw a flash. I got scared. After a few seconds, people started running out," said Artur, a witness who would give only his first name.
A Reuters reporter at the scene said the ceiling of the restaurant had fallen in, its windows had been blown out and there were parts of the broken ventilation system and glass scattered over the pavement.
Anti-Moscow rebels linked to Russia's Chechnya region have mounted a spate of bomb attacks on civilians in Russia but there have been no major attack outside the turbulent North Caucasus region for more than two years.
A police source has said police are checking other McDonald's restaurants in St Petersburg for explosives.
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Assad, Ahmadinejad vow to cooperate against US, Israel
Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday night pledged to cooperate to confront US and Israeli plans in the Middle East.
We should cooperate and work to make the public aware of the sinister aims of the United States and the Zionists," Assad said after his meeting with Ahmadinejad, according to the state-run IRNA agency.
"Iran and Syria support the peoples of the region and the enemies will only reach their goals by creating pessimism and disunity amongst Muslims," he added.
Assad went on to say that the United States had suffered many failures in Iraq and, therefore, was bringing up "baseless charges" against Iran and Syria day after day to create fresh challenges in the region.
Ahmadinejad concurred with the Syrian president saying that "we should be careful about the enemies' efforts to create division and conflict amongst Muslims and make sure they do not reach their sinister goals."
"Under the current conditions Islamic countries must preserve their vigilance, unity and wisdom to prevent the establishment of new conspiracies," he added.
Ahmadinejad also voiced his support for the new Palestinian Authority unity government stressing that conflicts among Muslim groups would only serve the interests of the "enemies of Islam."
Assad was given a red-carpet welcome at the Presidential Palace in the Iranian capital, the Iranian state-run television reported.
The US has accused Iran and Syria of not doing enough to stop militants crossing from these countries into Iraq to join the insurgency. Both have rejected the charges.
It was Assad's fifth visit to Iran since he took office in 2000. Iran and Syria have long been close allies. During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Syria was the only Arab country to support Iran.
During the past 10 years, Iranian companies have invested more than $700 million in Syria, in sectors such as power generation, automobiles, cement and agriculture.
jpost
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Blast in Pakistan court kills at least 12 - police
QUETTA, Pakistan, Feb 17 (Reuters) - At least 12 people, including a judge, were killed in a suspected suicide bomb attack on a courtroom in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Saturday, according to police.
"Twelve people, including a senior judge and six lawyers, have been killed in the blast, and over 20 people were wounded," Rehmat Niazi, the police officer in charge of operations, told Reuters.
Police found a head amongst the carnage, raising suspicions that the blast could be have caused by a suicide bomber, Niazi said.
Pakistan has recently suffered a spate of suicide attacks that intelligence officials have linked to groups operating from tribal areas, regarded as hotbeds of support for the Taliban. The attacks followed a Pakistan army air strike on a militant base in Waziristan in mid-January.
Pakistan has been under mounting pressure from the United States and Afghanistan to tackle Taliban sanctuaries on its territory.
Taliban leaders are widely believed to be operating from in and around Quetta, the capital of the restive province of Baluchistan, though Pakistan consistently denies their presence.
Baluchistan is also beset with unrest due to ethnic Baluch militants, who are fighting for greater autonomy.
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RF Plans Military Attacks on Border Under Chadian Intelligence Assistance
Khartoum (smc): Redemption Front (RF) leadership held a wide meeting last week. At conclusion session participants agreed on retraining RF elements and exert efforts to attract more members from tribes in Darfur to join the movement.
Reliable source told (smc) that RF has already started opening military training centers from within Chadian territories under supervision of Dr. Khalil Ibrahim.
Moreover RF receive 52 cars as logistical support from Chadian government to relocate forces on Bahai strip into Sudan to execute military operation accompanied by Chadian intelligence officers.
It was noted that a tripartite summit has been held in French town of Kan between presidents of Sudan, Chad and Central Africa Republic (CAR). The summit discussed means of improving relations between the three countries based do respecting sovereignty, prevent support of oppositions in each country and establishing consultancy mechanism between the three states to Solve disputed issues.
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A Madrid Redux: potential terror attacks during forthcoming French presidential elections
By Olivier Guitta Some recent French intelligence reports leaked to Le Monde and Al Hayat are pointing to that possible threat during the April-May 2007 French presidential elections.
Al Hayat specifically mentioned Al Qaeda related websites calling for attacks against France along with pictures of French presidential campaign.
But for the time being, police officers do not have any information on concrete preparations of attack. However, the recent reports dated January 15, testify to the constant attention paid to the GSPC now called Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Two threats are mentioned here.The first, appeared in December 2005, relates to threats of attack related to “Al-Qaida executives in Pakistani-Afghan zone”, without more precision.
The second one is called” threat of autumn": it focuses on “planning, from the Middle East, of a wave of suicide attacks against a European country not identified, anywhere between September 2006 and April 2007”. The threat would not come inevitably from a possible GSPC cell in Europe. But could come from the transformation of a supporting cell into an operational one and also could be the work of isolated individuals influenced by the GSPC propaganda, in particular via Internet. All the services noted an increasingly assiduous use of Islamist forums. Proof of growing success: a French-speaking site has triple the number of registered members in six months. The police officers noticed a frequent diffusion of satellite views, obtained through Google Earth. For instance, the recent Islamist group dismantled in Tunisia, in January, “had views of the British and American embassies in Tunis and of the French one in Rabat, Morocco.”. Another Islamist site named “PACT OF THE EVIL” , known for helping with the manufacturing of explosives, even put on its site information on the sewers of Paris, which could be a potential target or a way of escape.
counterterrorismblog.org
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Iranian hands all over armed rebellion in Yemen
By Olivier Guitta The rebellion of Badreddine Al-Huthi, in the area of Saada, in the north of Sanaa, is reportedly supported and armed by Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been implicated in the destabilization of this border area with Saudi Arabia.
According to daily newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi, the Yemeni authorities declared the area of Saada “closed military zone”. Violent fighting has erupted there in the past few days and killed at least 91 among the ranks of the Yemeni army, of which very many officers. Yemeni sources explain the fact that a majority of victims are officers by “the refusal of the soldiers to fight in light of the intensity of the confrontations”. The Al-Huthi militants, supported and armed by Iran, are also very mobile and resort to ambushes. According to sources of the Iranian opposition, the Al-Huthi rebels recently received modern weapons including anti-tank missiles which had been used by Hezbollah against Israel during the July war.
counterterrorismblog.org
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Iran answers U.S. Gulf buildup with test of SSN4 anti-ship missile
Iran's military tested an anti-ship missile in the Gulf as a massive U.S. naval build-up is underway.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it fired missiles designed to destroy large enemy naval vessels. The missiles were identified as the SSN4. Fadavi termed the SSN4 a strategic anti-ship cruise missile, saying it was capable of destroying Western cruisers. He said the SSN4, with a 500-kilogram warhead, could withstand electronic counter-measures.
geostrategy-direct.com
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US moves to clamp down on three Iranian companies
The Bush administration moved Friday to clamp down financially on three Iranian companies suspected of having connections with Teheran's nuclear program.
It marked the government's latest move to put the financial squeeze on Iran, which the United States accuses of fostering terrorism and whose nuclear ambitions have drawn international rebuke.
The action also comes days after President George W. Bush said he has no doubt the Iranian government is providing armor-piercing weapons to kill American troops in Iraq.
The Treasury Department's action is against Kalaye Electric Co. and Kavoshyar Co., both based in Teheran, as well as Pioneer Energy Industries Co. in Isfahan.
AP
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Bomb explodes in Iran near site of previous blast
A bomb exploded in southeastern Iran late Friday, near the site where an earlier explosion this week killed 11 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, the state-run news agency IRNA reported.
"Minutes ago, the sound of a bomb explosion was heard in one of Zahedan streets," the agency said but gave no further details. There was no indication of whether there were casualties.
On Wednesday, a car blew up a bus owned by the elite troops in Zahedan, capital of the Sistan-Baluchestan province on the border with Pakistan.
AP
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Italy: 26 Americans indicted in CIA case
An Italian judge indicted 25 suspected CIA agents and a US Air Force lieutenant-colonel in the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric who had been under investigation for recruiting Islamist fighters
Friday's indictment paves the way for Italy to put the Americans, along with five Italians, on trial in June in the first criminal case involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.
The Americans have all left Italy, and it is unlikely that they would be turned over for prosecution, even if Italy requests their extradition, a move that would strain relations between Rome and Washington.
All but one of the Americans have been identified as CIA agents, including the former Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady and former Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli. The other is Air Force Lt. Col. Joseph L. Romano III, who was stationed at the time at Aviano.
Prosecutors believe that many of the American names in the indictment are aliases.
AP
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Austria okays export of 30,000 handguns to Iran
Austrian authorities have approved the export of 30,000 handguns to Iran, local media reported Friday, days after a report that sophisticated Austrian rifles were finding their way into the hands of Iraqi insurgents.
Austrian media reported the pistols had been sold to Iran's interior ministry, which is in charge of the police force.
Austrian economic ministry officials told state radio that their ministry had approved the sale of the "Glock" pistols last month, saying Iranian authorities had provided documentary evidence that they would not be passed on to others.
Another request for the weapons from the Iranian army was denied after it refused to give such assurances, said the officials, adding such sales to police were allowed under legislation governing the export of weapons.
AP
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CRS Report on "Al Qaeda: Statements and Evolving Ideology"
ALGERIA: POLICE KILL 26 MILITANTS AND ARREST 35 AFTER ATTACKS
Algiers, 16 Feb. (AKI) - Algerian police killed 26 alleged Islamic militants and arrested 35 suspects in an anti-terror operation on Thursday following a round of deadly attacks in Tizi Ouzu and Bourmedes, in Algeria's eastern Kabylia area, claimed by an al-Qaeda-linked group in Algeria, Arabic satellite television al-Jazeera reported on Friday. The police operation took place in the mountain area of Qashra, near the eastern city of Skikda, where many militants are believed to be hiding.
The Organisation of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb - previously called the Salafite Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) - has claimed responsibility for the series of explosions on Tuesday that killed six and wounded another 20.
Leaders of the terror group are reportedly among the militants killed by police on Thursday.
The GSPC is believed to have recently changed its name to the Organisation of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb after it pledged allegiance last year to the international terror network led by Osama bin Laden.
An Algerian Islamic insurgency started in 1992 after authorities cancelled elections an Islamist party was poised to win.
The insurgency is now conducted by the GSPC with an estimated 500 militants, significantly less than in the 1990s when some 30,000 insurgents operated in the country. Militant strongholds are located in Algeria's mountains and parts of the southern desert
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Putin positions ally to take over
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has promoted Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov to the post of First Deputy Prime Minister in what is widely seen as a move to position his close ally for a presidential run.
Mr Putin's decree appointing his former KGB colleague was published by the Kremlin yesterday, allowing him to begin serving alongside the Government's other First Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, who has been widely tipped as Mr Ivanov's main rival in a presidential election scheduled for 2008.
At a government meeting earlier in the day, Mr Putin said he was "broadening" the responsibilities of Mr Ivanov, the country's first civilian Defence Minister, so that he would oversee not only Russia's military-industrial sector but also part of the civilian economy.
Mr Putin said he had appointed Anatoly Serdyukov, formerly head of the federal tax service, to replace Mr Ivanov as defence minister.
Mr Ivanov, a smooth-talking former agent in the KGB intelligence service and its post-Soviet successor the FSB, is a close friend of Mr Putin from his home town of St Petersburg.
While his fluent English and suave approach may help get his message across in the West, the fact he was expelled from Britain in a diplomatic spat in 1983 for alleged spying will provide ammunition for critics.
As Defence Minister, Mr Ivanov largely succeeded in breaking a Chechen rebellion still raging at his appointment in 2001, but the armed forces are still dogged by accusations of serious war crimes, brutalisation within the forces and corruption.
The promotion will free him of the baggage of the army's intractable problems which have been "more of a burden than an advantage" for Mr Ivanov's public profile, said analyst Stanislav Belkovsky, chairman of the National Strategic Institute.
A recent survey by the independent Levada polling centre showed that in a presidential election, Mr Ivanov would have the support of 23 per cent of those surveyed, against 38 per cent for Mr Medvedev.
Mr Ivanov has long been seen as a favourite to take over when Mr Putin steps down at the end of his second term, as required by the constitution, next year.
Although he has repeatedly played down his ambitions, analysts were unanimous in interpreting the reshuffle as part of the Kremlin's elaborate preparations to ensure the election brings a Putin loyalist to power.
Mr Putin's creation of two rivals meant he did not intend simply to name a favourite successor for next year, but was rather "putting forward candidates that the people will choose between," said Kremlin-connected analyst Sergei Markov.
But Andrei Ryabov, editor of the World Economy and International Relations review, said the choice would hardly be democratic. "There will be competition ... but in a very narrow circle - a contest between the chosen ones," he said.
In appointing the 45-year-old Mr Serdyukov as defence minister, Mr Putin has again favoured a St Petersburg colleague.
A law graduate, Mr Serdyukov left a career in the furniture industry to join the tax service in 2000, the year Mr Putin became president, and became the service's head in 2004, developing financial credentials that Mr Putin said would help in dealing with the armed forces' multi-billion-dollar annual budget.
AFP
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Pakistani police crack suicide bomb gang
KARACHI, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Pakistani police arrested three al Qaeda-linked would-be suicide bombers following a shootout in the southern city of Karachi on Friday, a senior police official said.
"We have recovered a jacket used in suicide bomb attacks, hand grenades and pistols from them," Fayyaz Khan, a senior official in the Crime Investigation Department (CID), told Reuters. He said the jacket was fitted with explosives.
"Now we are carrying out raids to arrest 10 more members of this group," he said.
Khan said the three militants who had been trained in Wana in South Waziristan, a restive tribal region on the border with Afghanistan, and a hotbed of support for the Taliban.
"They have admitted getting training in Wana, and we have also recovered a list of potential targets from them," Khan said, adding that the trainers were fellow Pakistanis, Uzbeks and East Africans.
Police also recovered a video disc in which an Arabic speaking man explains how to prepare a suicide bomber and how to inflict the maximum number of casualties.
A Reuters correspondent was shown the video. Only the trainer's hands were visible, and mannequins were used to demonstrate the attack.
Khan said the captured men belonged to a faction known as the Qari Zafar group, which had links with Al Qaeda and the Taliban had been involved in previous suicide attacks in Pakistan.
"They had plans to carry out attacks in Karachi and Jehlum (in Punjab province)," Khan said.
The police official also said the Qari Zafar group had been behind the a bomb attack on the U.S consulate that killed 12 people in June, 2002.
He described the Qari Zafar group as a splinter group of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant organisation that has targeted Pakistan's Shi'ite minority, and has forged strong ties with al Qaeda.
"One of the captured men, Abdul Ghani Subhan belongs to the Wana and he was apparently the one trained to carry out a suicide attack in Karachi," Khan said.
Islamist militants, angered by President Pervez Musharraf's support for the United States in a war against terrorism, have sought to destabilise the government by carrying out attacks.
There has been a series of bomb blasts, including a number of suicide attacks since the start of 2007.
A suicide attack in the capital Islamabad, and another in the northwestern city of Peshawar raised fears that unrest in the tribal regions was spilling over into Pakistan's cities as a result of the government confronting Taliban militants.
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Raytheon delivers NMT satellite terminal
BOSTON, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- The U.S. Navy begins testing this week on a prototype satellite communications system that links ships, subs and shore installations.
Raytheon said Thursday it was ready to deliver its proposed Navy Multiband Terminal (NMT) as part of a process that is running two years ahead of schedule.
"We have successfully completed rigorous testing and performance verification with our innovative, production-ready design," said Colin Schottlaender, president of Raytheon's Network Centric Systems in Massachusetts.
The system is based on Raytheon's past experience in building military communication equipment and a vast library of non-propriety software on the topic compiled by the Department of Defense.
The company said in a news release that the U.S. Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command was expected to "downselect" the NMT contract to a single company in the third quarter of this year.
The NMT will the link between sailors and the high-capacity data capabilities provided by Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite system. It also allows shipboard global broadcasting via Ku and X-band services. The terminal provides the bandwidth necessary to handle the flood of new information and will replace three separate systems currently in use by the Navy.
Harris Corp. announced last month its NMT prototype had successfully linked to a Milstar satellite and completed a point-to-point communication under simulated shipboard conditions.
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EU's new Black Sea policy faces Russian misgivings
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission is drafting a new EU policy for trade and security cooperation among Black Sea states, but Russia - a major regional player with a naval force in the Crimean peninsula - has already begun sniping at the scheme.
The document - entitled "Black Sea Synergy" - will be presented to member states' diplomats in late April or early May in time for formal approval by the June EU summit, with the accession of Romania and Bulgaria and the German EU presidency's eastern foreign policy focus spurring things on.
The draft text of the "synergy" envisages regular meetings between foreign ministers of Black Sea zone states Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova as well as the EU "trojka" of the EU presidency, the office of EU foreign policy envoy Javier Solana and the external relations commissioner.
The ministers will aim to agree new projects for bringing in fresh supplies of gas and oil from the Caspian Sea basin, soothing separatist tensions, curbing illegal immigration and smuggling, promoting human rights NGOs, fighting environmental crimes and building new transport links.
The EU-led club will not have its own building or secretariat but will try to galvanise political agreement for actions to be implemented by existing institutions, such as the Black Sea Economic Cooperation group (BSEC) or the Black Sea Forum (BSF) and co-funded from the EU's "neighbourhood policy" budget.
"The area is a very important transit region for hydrocarbons [from the Caspian Sea basin]," an EU official said. "We would not try to substitute existing frameworks for conflict resolution on the so-called frozen conflicts, but we hope very much regional cooperation might create a better understanding."
The Black Sea region is home to a patchwork of separatist conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan and Transdniestria in Moldova, with regular exchanges of fire in Georgia and with military spending soaring in all the South Caucasus states.
On top of this, Moldova and Georgia accuse Russia of aiding the Russia-friendly separatist entities, which are widely seen as conduits for fake currency, illegal immigrants, drugs and guns into Europe. Georgia's plan to join NATO in 2009 could see relations with Russia deteriorate further.
Early stage
EU member states' thinking on the new policy is still at an early stage. But some differences are already emerging, with Poland keen to pull non-regional players such as Belarus into the ministerial meetings and to make sure Russia plays second-fiddle to the EU in agenda-setting terms, while Romania sees Russia as an "equal partner."
"We want to have the Russians on board, but this is different to the Northern Dimension," the European Commission official said, referring to another forum for Baltic Sea projects where Brussels is on equal footing with Moscow. "The Black Sea Synergy is an EU initiative, so Russia will play a different role."
President Vladimir Putin's Russia is not inclined to take a back seat in sensitive territories in its near-abroad these days however, with senior Russian diplomats already warning that the Black Sea project will fail unless Moscow is given a more prominent part to play.
'Frankly, I don't see the need'
"We don't want to see this become EU-dominated," Russian EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov told EUobserver last week. "The Northern Dimension should be kept in mind: when it was launched as an EU-dominated initiative it didn't work, so it was reconfigured to be a quadri-partite undertaking of the EU, Russia, Norway and Iceland and now it's up and running."
Mr Chizhov compared the Black Sea Synergy to a previous project of the 1999 German EU presidency, the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe, saying it was "very loudly launched" but "sort of scaled down afterward" getting bogged down in bureaucracy and squabbles over history textbooks on the Ottoman Empire.
"OK, I understand that the physical presence of the EU in the Black Sea has increased with the accession of Romania and Bulgaria. But these two countries are members of both the BSEC and the Black Sea Forum," he said. "Frankly I don't see the need for any additional structure."
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In bow to Beijing, Google censors anti-satellite test graphic
Internet search engine company Google has self-censored a graphic produced by three MIT researchers showing the trajectory and impact of China’s Jan. 11 anti-satellite test.
According to officials, three MIT researchers, Geoff Forden, Ted Postol and Subrata Ghoshroy, produced a color graphic showing the flight path of the missile that destroyed an orbiting Chinese weather satellite by ramming it with a non-explosive warhead.
The researchers said the test proved that China is “part of the small but unfortunately growing club of countries that can accomplish the difficult task of hypervelocity interceptions in space.”
“As a signal to the world, this test highlighted both China’s technological prowess and the fact that China will not quietly stand by while the United States tries to expand its influence in the region with new measures such as the US-India nuclear deal,” the MIT researchers stated.
“We have analyzed the orbits of the debris from this interception and from that put limits on the properties of the interceptor,” they stated. “We find that not only can China threaten low-Earth orbit satellites but, by mounting the same interceptor on one of its rockets capable of lofting a satellite into geostationary orbit, all of the U.S. communications satellites.”
Last year, Google's senior policy counsel, Andrew McLaughlin, defended the censorship saying the company sought to balance commitments ''to satisfy the interests of users, expand access to information, and respond to local conditions."
''While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission," McLaughlin said in an email statement to the Associated Press, ''providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission."
newsmax.com
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Bahrain plans 700 wells in massive oil push
ABU DHABI — Bahrain plans to launch a major effort to explore for crude oil and natural gas.
The state-owned Bahrain Petroleum Co., or Bapco, intends to drill 700 wells through 2020 in an effort to increase the kingdom's oil reserves. Officials said the project would more than double the number of operational wells in in Bahrain.
Currently 650 of the 800 wells in Bahrain are deemed functional. Bapco has approved the drilling of 63 wells in 2007 and 2008, expected to increase oil production by 1,000 barrels per day.
Bahrain produces about 35,000 barrels of oil per day. The kingdom has the smallest energy production among Gulf Cooperation Council states.
worldtribune.com
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U.S. to pay millions for capture of Iran-backed terrorists
WASHINGTON — The United States has offered a reward of up to $5 million for agents of Hizbullah and Islamic Jihad.
The State Department has reported a U.S. search for agents of two Iranian-sponsored groups. On Monday, the department identified the targets as Hizbullah's Mohammed Ali Hamadei and Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah of Islamic Jihad, Middle East Newsline reported.
"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has authorized the addition of Mohammed Ali Hamadei and Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah to the U.S. State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security's Rewards for Justice [RFJ] program, each with a potential reward of up to $5 million," the department said in a statement. "Hamadei and Shallah were added to RFJ's Most Wanted List at the request of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division; both are also on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list."
Officials said both men were responsible for the killing of Americans. Hamadei was said to have participated in the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, in which U.S. sailor Robert Stethem was killed.
In 1985, a U.S. federal grand jury indicted Hamadei on 15 charges for his role in planning and taking part in the hijacking. He was arrested by Germany in 1987 and paroled in 2005.
"Hamadei, an alleged member of the terrorist organization Lebanese Hizbullah, is believed to be living in Lebanon," the State Department said.
Officials said the department relayed a request to Lebanon for the arrest and extradition of Hamadei. They said the Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora failed to act.
[On Tuesday, at least 12 people were killed in the bombing of two buses filled with laborers near a Christian town in northern Lebanon. There was no immediate claim of responsibility in what was regarded as an attack against the Christian community.]
Shallah, deemed a terrorist in 1995, was identified as secretary-general of Islamic Jihad. The State Department said Shallah, in a 1995 indictment, has been wanted for conspiracy in connection with Jihad suicide bombings, murder, extortion and money laundering.
Officials said Shallah was living in Damascus. They said Syria has refused to extradite Shallah.
"The FBI is working closely with our law enforcement and intelligence community partners to bring all necessary resources to bear to protect the American public from terrorist attacks and the nefarious activities from extremely dangerous terrorists like Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah and Mohammed Ali Hamadei," FBI assistant director for counter-terrorism Joseph Bill said.
worldtribune.com
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Putin Promotes Sergei Ivanov to First Deputy Premier
Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin promoted Sergei Ivanov to first deputy prime minister from defense minister, giving him the same rank as his main rival to replace Putin next year.
Putin's announcement of Ivanov's promotion was broadcast on Russian television today. The presidential press service could not immediately be reached for comment.
``The successor's name is still unknown but Sergei Ivanov has a very good chance,'' Olga Khrystanovskaya, a Moscow-based analyst of the Russian political elite, said in a telephone interview. Ivanov's promotion ``allows him to become a more wide-ranging politician.''
It also places Ivanov, 54, on the same level as the other first deputy prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, 41. The two men are frequently cited by Russian media as the frontrunners to succeed Putin, who's also 54. The country is scheduled to hold a presidential election in March 2008 and Putin is barred by the constitution from standing for a third consecutive term.
Ivanov has support from the powerful group of former KGB Soviet security-service agents who wield the most influence in Putin's government, unlike Medvedev, Khrystanovskaya said.
``Ivanov is a strong figure. He is part of the politburo of security hawks who decide everything.'' Putin and Ivanov both served in the KGB.
KGB Successor
Ivanov's rise through Russia's state structures has tracked Putin's. He became deputy director of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the KGB, when Putin was appointed the service's director in 1998. He then rose to head Russia's Security Council in November 1999 when Putin left that post to become prime minister and then president the next year.
Ivanov has taken a tough line with the U.S., criticizing U.S. bases in Central Asia after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and U.S. plans for a missile defense shield in eastern Europe.
Medvedev, who worked with Putin in the St. Petersburg city administration after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, courted Western investors at the Davos economic forum last month. He is currently tasked by Putin with raising the standard of education, housing and health-care in Russia.
Ivanov and Medvedev both receive extensive coverage on Russia's state-run national networks. Medvedev has benefited most from the exposure to date.
In a survey by the Levada Center from Jan. 19-23, Medvedev rated 33 percent compared with Ivanov's 21 percent. The agency asked 1,600 respondents who they would vote for if elections were held next Sunday.
`Lame Duck'
Ivanov's promotion prevents Medvedev from assuming the mantle of favorite, Christophe Granville, managing editor of Trusted Sources, a new analytical service on emerging markets, said by telephone.
``Putin doesn't want a definite successor. He wants to keep equilibrium,'' Granville said. ``This keeps Putin as the arbiter, not a lame duck.''
Putin said during a press conference in Moscow Feb. 1 he will wait until the presidential election campaign starts before endorsing a successor.
The president appointed Anatoly Serdyukov, head of Russia's tax service for the last three years, to replace Ivanov as defense minister. The defense ministry refused to attach any significance to the change.
``This reform doesn't have anything to do with the future election,'' Ivanov's spokesman Pavel Zenkovich said by telephone. ``As the president has said, there will be no successor, there will be candidates, and this nomination is a consequence of a logical process in carrying out the development of our economy.''
Ivanov will now have the task of overseeing Russia's defense industry and part of the civilian economy in his new post. ``In these conditions he won't be able to carry on as defense minister,'' Putin said in his announcement today. ``You can't sit on two stools.''
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Assad to leave Sat. on official visit to Teheran
Syrian President Bashar Assad will leave Saturday on an official visit in Iran, the Iranian Mehr news agency reported Thursday.
According to reports, Assad will meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority.
It will be Assad's second visit in Teheran since Ahmadinejad was elected.
AP
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Egypt detains 73 members of Muslim Brotherhood
Police arrested 73 members of the Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday, in what appeared to be a pre-emptive strike against the country's largest Islamic group ahead of elections and a key parliamentary debate, spokesman for the police and the Brotherhood said.
A Brotherhood executive said the detentions risked provoking violence, not from the group itself but from those who would conclude that the state was leaving no scope for peaceful Islamic political activity.
The arrests bring the total of Brotherhood members in custody to just under 300, according to figures provided by the group and Human Rights Watch.
Police did not give a reason for Thursday's early morning detentions, but those arrested were mostly Brothers who were expected to stand in the April elections for the Shura Council, the upper house of parliament, as well as assistants to the group's legislators, said Abdel Gelil el-Sharnoubi, the editor of the Brotherhood's Web site.
AP
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UNSC sends Iran support over bombing, not gov't
The UN Security Council responded to a request from Iran on Thursday and condemned the deadliest terrorist attack in the country in years, extending "sincere condolences" to the Iranian people - but not to the government, at US insistence.
Acting US Ambassador Alejandro Wolff said it was "a rich irony" that a government which rejects the Security Council's authority and has refused to implement a council resolution demanding suspension of its uranium enrichment program asked the council to adopt a statement condemning the attack.
"We rejoice in the fact that the government recognizes that the council is the supreme body to deal with issues of international peace and security," Wolff said. "It recognizes the council's legitimacy, and now we call on the government of Iran to implement its obligations under existing Security Council resolutions and respect them the way it sought our respect for recognition of this terrorist act."
AP
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Salt Lake Jihad?
By Robert Spencer FrontPageMagazine.com When Sulejmen Talovic entered the Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City Monday night with a shotgun, a pistol, and a backpack full of ammunition, he intended to "kill a large number of people," according to Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank. Talovic killed five people and wounded four before he himself was killed by an off-duty Ogden police officer who happened to be in the mall.
Why did Talovic do it? No one knows. Talovic's aunt, Ajka Omerovic, told reporters : "We want to know what happened, just like you guys. We have no idea...We know him as a good boy. He liked everybody, so I don't know what happened." Talovic, who was eighteen at the time of the murders, was a Bosnian Muslim who came to the United States with his family in 1998 . Could he have been motivated by jihadist sympathies?
FBI special agent Patrick Kiernan discounted that possibility . "We're working closely with the Salt Lake P.D. and we're obviously aware that that [terrorism] is a potential issue out there," he explained. "But at this point there is nothing that is leading us down this road." And with Talovic dead and apparently having acted alone, unless something he wrote explaining his actions is discovered, it is unlikely that his motive will ever be definitively known.
But was Kiernan really correct that "there is nothing that is leading us down this road"? Unfortunately, he didn't explain how he came to this conclusion. Talovic joins an unfortunately growing list of Muslims who have committed random acts of violence, only for officials to assure us that their actions have nothing to do with terrorism. Maybe none of them do, but the list is full of troubling details:
On January 31, Ismail Yassin Mohamed, 22, stole a car in Minneapolis. He went on a rampage , ramming the stolen car into other cars and then stealing a van and continuing to ram other cars, injuring one person. His father told officials that Mohamed was suffering from mental problems; his mother added he had been depressed and hadn't been taking his medication. During his rampage, Mohamed repeatedly yelled, "Die, die, die, kill, kill, kill," and when asked why he did all this, he replied, "Allah made me do it."
Omeed Aziz Popal, a Muslim from Afghanistan, who killed one person and injured fourteen during a murderous drive through San Francisco city streets in August 2006, during which he targeted people on crosswalks and sidewalks, identified himself as a terrorist after his rampage, according to Rob Roth of San Francisco's KTVU . Later the murders were ascribed to Popal's mental problems, and to stress arising from his impending arranged marriage .
On July 28, 2006, a Muslim named Naveed Afzal Haq forced his way into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. Once inside, Haq announced , "I'm a Muslim American; I'm angry at Israel," and then began shooting, killing one woman and injuring five more. FBI assistant special agent David Gomez stated : "We believe...it's a lone individual acting out his antagonism. There's nothing to indicate that it's terrorism-related. But we're monitoring the entire situation."
In March 2006, a twenty-two-year-old Iranian student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drove an SUV onto the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, deliberately trying to kill people and succeeding in injuring nine. After the incident, he seemed singularly pleased with himself, smiling and waving to crowds after a court appearance on Monday, at which he explained that he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah." Officials here again dismissed the possibility of terrorism, even after Taheri-azar wrote a series of letters to the UNC campus newspaper detailing the Qur'anic justification for warfare against unbelievers, and explaining why he believed his attacks were justified from an Islamic perspective.
None of these were terrorist attacks in the sense that they were planned and executed by al-Qaeda agents. And it is possible that all of them were products of nothing more ideologically significant than a disturbed mental state, although it is at least noteworthy that each attacker explained his actions in terms of Islamic terrorism. As such attacks grow in number, it would behoove authorities at very least to consider the possibility that these attacks were inspired by the jihadist ideology of Islamic supremacism, and to step up pressure on American Muslim advocacy groups to renounce that ideology definitively and begin extensive programs to teach against it in American Islamic schools and mosques.
In October 2006, a pro-jihad internet site published a "Guide for Individual Jihad," explaining to jihadists "how to fight alone." It recommended, among other things, assassination with guns and running people over. Is it possible that Sulejmen Talovic and some of these others were waging this jihad of one? It is indeed, but with law enforcement officials trained only to look for signs of membership in al-Qaeda or other jihad groups, and to discount terrorism as a factor if those signs aren't there, it is a possibility that investigators will continue to overlook.
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Blast rocks a café in Albania shortly after Tirana’s mayor leaves it
Tirana. A blast rocked a café in the Albanian capital of Tirana early this morning, a few minutes after the leader of the Socialist Party and candidate for a third term Edi Rama left it, the Balkanweb reported. No one was injured. The explosive was 150 grams of TNT. The Socialist Party’s spokeswoman Arta Dade said she hopes that the blast is not linked to the coming local elections in the country on Sunday.
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