Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/middleeast/31policy.html
October 31, 2006
U.S. Envoy Arrives in Iraq as Tough Options Loom
By DAVID E. SANGER and JOHN F. BURNS [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [recent brouhaha over benchmarks] [Bush sends NSC advisor Hadely as special envoy to discuss relationship] [interesting—a week before midterms] [but also serious policy decisions] [*********]
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — President Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, arrived in Baghdad on Monday on an unannounced trip to discuss how to pull the country back from the brink.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/middleeast/31policy.html
October 31, 2006
U.S. Envoy Arrives in Iraq as Tough Options Loom
By DAVID E. SANGER and JOHN F. BURNS [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [recent brouhaha over benchmarks] [Bush sends NSC advisor Hadely as special envoy to discuss relationship] [interesting—a week before midterms] [but also serious policy decisions] [*********]
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — President Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, arrived in Baghdad on Monday on an unannounced trip to discuss how to pull the country back from the brink.
Though American officials would describe Mr. Hadley’s talks only in the vaguest of terms, one option widely discussed in Washington and Baghdad in the days before his arrival, according to American and Iraqi officials, is a substantial increase in the number of American and Iraqi troops patrolling Baghdad. It would signal yet another effort to reassert control over the Iraqi capital, which officials in both governments said remains their top priority.
Those officials cautioned that no decision had been made about that option, which would amount to a third effort this year to contain the spreading violence in Baghdad. On Monday evening, J. D. Crouch, the deputy national security adviser, said Mr. Hadley was in Iraq to express support for the Iraqi government and warned, “He is not preconfiguring military options.” Mr. Crouch added that he was “not aware” of anyone proposing an increase in American troops.
Other American officials said that such options have been informally discussed. They said that before any American forces in Baghdad could be increased, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq would have to deliver more Iraqi troops, who would patrol the streets of the capital along with the Americans and take the lead whenever possible.
Other proposals now being discussed inside and outside the two governments range from how to permit greater autonomy for Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish sections of the country without splitting the country apart; how to share oil revenues among Iraq’s population; and an amnesty for those who attacked Iraqi or American troops.
Many of these options may not be dealt with for months, because Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds within the “unity government” in Baghdad are still far apart on issues touching on Iraq’s division of power and wealth.
In an interview Friday evening, Mr. Hadley said that “I wish you could find a silver bullet that could solve this in 30 days,” but that “I doubt it.”
He described a series of American goals, including a new effort to get more financial and other support from neighboring states, saying that “given the risks of chaos in Iraq, and given the threat and aspirations of Iran,” each country in the region has “a huge stake” in a stable Iraq. But such appeals have failed in the past.
Mr. Hadley faces critics — many in his own party — who say that the Bush administration’s effort has devolved to picking the least bad of a dismal set of options, and that the administration must lower its sights for a democratic Iraq and simply regain a semblance of stability there.
“It is folly to think we can win in Iraq the way some of us thought possible in 2003,” Eliot A. Cohen, the director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, wrote this month in The Wall Street Journal.
Speaking in Baghdad on Sunday as Mr. Hadley headed to Iraq to meet him, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, seemed to set out a Shiite vision when he said that while Shiites “have the numbers” in Baghdad, Sunnis who joined in building the new Iraq could look forward to “sharing the wealth” in oil.
But he implied that Sunnis were having difficulty reconciling to the new political realities. “Some of these politicians are not prepared, mentally or psychologically, to make the compromises necessary for us to live cohabitively,” he said.
More Troops
In the interview on Sunday, Mr. Rubaie declined to discuss specifics of recent conversations with Washington over increasing troop levels. But he said, “Baghdad is the core of the issue.” When it comes to turning the tide of the war, he said, “It’s Baghdad, Baghdad, Baghdad.”
American officials in Washington and Baghdad who discussed changes in the Baghdad security plan, including possible troop increases, said it was unlikely that any announcements would be made until after the elections on Nov. 7. Bush administration officials have said that any major changes in American policy will require bipartisan support, and they are clearly waiting to see which party will control the House, and possibly the Senate, before proceeding. A week ago, General George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, said that if he needed more troops, “I will ask for the troops we need, both coalition and Iraqi.”
In Washington, the debate over whether to increase troops comes as the White House seems to be groping for new ideas. The administration has resisted efforts to increase the overall number of American troops in Iraq. At times, tours have been extended for individual brigades, which amount to about 5,000 troops, for 90 days or so. But recent history suggests that any plan to significantly increase the American deployment in Baghdad would require more sweeping changes, by keeping 10,000 to 30,000 troops in Baghdad beyond their scheduled rotations home, even as new troops rotate in.
In the interview on Friday evening, Mr. Hadley declined to discuss internal deliberations. Still, he said: “Everyone says there is no military solution to the problem. That’s true. But you also have this Catch-22 element to the problem. You can’t have security without political and economic progress, but it’s hard to have political and economic progress without security. There is some minimum element of security you need.”
Outside experts who favor an American withdrawal say that almost all the options now being considered would be doomed to failure.
“It’s not going to make any difference,” said Peter W. Galbraith, the author of “The End of Iraq” (Simon & Schuster) and a scholar at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “It’s not a country, and you can’t build an army in the midst of a civil war. And elements of the Iraqi army are partisans in the civil war. You can’t use the combatants as if they were neutral players.”
Regional Governments
In Washington, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has called for the establishment of three regional governments — one Kurdish, one Sunni, one Shiite — responsible for administering their own regions. The idea is adapted from one first proposed by Leslie H. Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
So far the Bush administration has opposed solutions that would give the regions too much autonomy for fear that could ultimately lead to partition. In Washington on Monday, Reuters reported, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said any partition of Iraq would lead to “ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, sectarian killing on a massive scale.”
This month, Iraq’s new Parliament approved a law that empowers the country’s 18 provinces to assemble into regions, but that delays, for 18 months, any practical steps toward forming those regions, in a bid to defuse the explosive political tensions that underlie the debate.
Nearly a year after national elections, the Sunnis, and not just the insurgents, remain unreconciled to the loss of primacy they enjoyed for generations — and to the loss of revenue they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein. “The problem is that in 2003 the Sunnis got 70 percent of the oil, and now they are being asked to take 20 percent,” Mr. Galbraith said.
Meanwhile, the Shiites, or at least the leaders of the religious parties that control the government, have become increasingly strident in insisting that after generations of Sunni domination, it is now their turn to rule. While a process of ethnic and religious separation is already under way in cities including Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk — with tens of thousands of people from the three principal communities fleeing to safer havens in those parts of the country where they are in the majority — any policy that explicitly espoused this kind of separation would be likely to ignite an even fiercer struggle.
The subtext for the debate is the struggle for control of the country’s oil and gas revenues. The Iraqi Constitution, narrowly adopted last year, envisages a formula for dividing the revenues among provinces or regions proportional to the populations in each area, with some adjustments. Though the timetable set by the American and Iraqi governments calls for legislation to be passed on the issue by the end of October, there is now little chance it will happen before the end of the year.
Reconciliation and Amnesty
When he took office in May, Mr. Maliki made national reconciliation a centerpiece of his policy. But today it is foundering.
At the dispute’s heart is the issue of a possible amnesty. It would cover both those responsible for the repressive violence during Mr. Hussein’s 24 years in power, and the killing that has ensued, by insurgents and sectarian militias, since his fall.
Shiite politicians, in particular, have adamantly opposed any amnesty that would cover the decades of Shiite suffering under Mr. Hussein, or the widespread killing of Shiites by Sunni insurgents since the American-led invasion in 2003. As Shiite death squads have killed Sunnis over the past year, Sunni politicians, too, have hardened their stand. American officials, eager to promote Iraqi reconciliation, have still balked at any provision to spare insurgents or sectarian militiamen who have killed American soldiers.
Iraqi officials designated by Mr. Maliki to lead the reconciliation effort now seem to be despairing.
“Iraq has only two options, fragmentation or civil war,” Sayed Ayyad Jamaluddin, a secular Shiite who is a member of the Maliki-appointed Higher Council for National Reconciliation, said last month. “And civil war,” he added, “will be a catastrophe, because it will be fought on the basis of religion.”
A Strongman
Some American experts have suggested that the Bush administration should abandon the effort to create a Western-style democracy and throw its weight behind a stronger Iraqi government. Mr. Cohen, in the Wall Street Journal article, which the White House e-mailed to reporters because it concluded that a withdrawal of American troops would be disastrous, wrote that “a junta of military modernizers might be the only hope of a country whose democratic culture is weak, whose politicians are either corrupt or incapable.” But he also highlighted the downsides of returning to a strongman government.
Iraqi newspapers have adopted the theme of a government change, speculating on the possible composition of a “national salvation government,” backed by the United States, that would wrest power from the Shiite alliance that chose Mr. Maliki for prime minister. Iraqi officials have said that Mr. Maliki has been deeply shaken by rumors that he might be forced from office by year’s end. However, President Bush, in two conversations over the past two weeks, has assured him of support.
David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and John F. Burns from Baghdad. Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Baghdad.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 01:07 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/middleeast/31gulf.html
October 31, 2006
U.S.-Led Exercise in Persian Gulf Sets Sights on Deadliest Weapons
By HASSAN M. FATTAH [Persian Gulf] [followup from yesterday] [US and Qatar as I recall conducting joint exercises to interdict wmd] [PSI] [see yesterday’s external and govt] [*********] [also marked on archive as both external and govt] [*******] [use psci 498] [gala]
ABOARD THE OIL TANKER BRAMBLELEAF, in the Persian Gulf, Oct. 30 — More than two dozen countries, including three gulf states, practiced intercepting and searching vessels suspected of trafficking in unconventional weapons in major military maneuvers on Monday that emphasized their coordination and willingness to aggressively block the spread of arms. [********]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/middleeast/31gulf.html
October 31, 2006
U.S.-Led Exercise in Persian Gulf Sets Sights on Deadliest Weapons
By HASSAN M. FATTAH [Persian Gulf] [followup from yesterday] [US and Qatar as I recall conducting joint exercises to interdict wmd] [PSI] [see yesterday’s external and govt] [*********] [also marked on archive as both external and govt] [*******] [use psci 498] [gala]
ABOARD THE OIL TANKER BRAMBLELEAF, in the Persian Gulf, Oct. 30 — More than two dozen countries, including three gulf states, practiced intercepting and searching vessels suspected of trafficking in unconventional weapons in major military maneuvers on Monday that emphasized their coordination and willingness to aggressively block the spread of arms. [********]
The daylong exercise, about 20 miles outside Iranian territorial waters, seemed to signal to Iran, too, that a coalition of Western powers and neighboring states was intent on denying it access to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, [*****]even on its doorstep.
“The message is clear,” said William T. Munroe, the American ambassador to Bahrain. “Responsible countries of the world will not stand aside as proliferators circumvent their international obligations. Responsible countries will not hesitate to deny proliferators a safe haven.” [***********]
American officials insist that the training exercise, planned since January, was not related to tensions over Iran’s uranium enrichment activities. Iran said Friday that it had stepped up enrichment in defiance of a Security Council demand to suspend such work. [**********]
“This is ultimately important because of where it’s happening, when it’s happening and why it’s happening,” said a diplomat observing the exercise, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment. “Iran and Korea are two main targets, but there are many others of interest to this effort.”
Iran warned the exercise’s participants on Monday against acts that could destabilize the region. Military officials taking part in the exercise said that Iranian patrol boats came close to coalition ships in recent days, inspecting their activities and positions. [********]
“We do not consider this exercise appropriate,” Muhammad Ali Husseini, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters on Sunday. United States actions in the region “go in the direction of more adventurism, not of stability and security,” [******]he said.
Instead, Iran has proposed that Persian Gulf states form a group, excluding the United States, to maintain security in the region. [******]
The exercise on Monday was the first training maneuver in the Persian Gulf under the Proliferation Security Initiative, [PSI] [*******]an American-led effort that seeks to coordinate and develop procedures for intercepting smugglers of unconventional weapons.
It was also notable for the involvement of Bahrain, and support by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which sent observers. [******]
The operation began last week with war games to practice intelligence cooperation, then moved to the exercise at sea, which included Australian, British, French and Italian warships and three Bahraini frigates.
Sailors from the Italian and Bahraini Navies swooped onto the British oil tanker Brambleleaf in the choppy Persian Gulf waters, their machine guns waving in a scene that was half show, half test. Each team combed the ship’s hold for almost two hours until they found a hidden simulated nuclear detonator.
Absent, however, were Saudi Arabia, a power in the Persian Gulf, and China. Officials involved in the Proliferation Security Initiative said that many states that had not signed on were largely concerned about legal aspects of the initiative. [*******]
Technically, teams conducting searches under the initiatives can board a ship only if given clearance by its owners or crew. Ships with no flag can be boarded at will. Organizers of the maneuvers said they hoped the exercise would convince those still on the fence of the legality of the initiative. [*********]
The initiative, first proposed by President Bush in May 2003, has held 24 other training exercises in Europe and Asia in the last three years. [************]
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 01:05 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001250.html
Suspect and A Setback In Al-Qaeda Anthrax Case
Scientist With Ties To Group Goes Free
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A01 [the FBI’s anthrax investigation] [curiouser and curiouser] [*********]
In December 2001, as the investigation into the U.S. anthrax attacks was gathering steam, coalition soldiers in Afghanistan uncovered what appeared to be an important clue: a trail of documents chronicling an attempt by al-Qaeda to create its own anthrax weapon.
The documents told of a singular mission by a scientist named Abdur Rauf, an obscure, middle-aged Pakistani with alleged al-Qaeda sympathies and an advanced degree in microbiology.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001250.html
Suspect and A Setback In Al-Qaeda Anthrax Case
Scientist With Ties To Group Goes Free
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A01 [the FBI’s anthrax investigation] [curiouser and curiouser] [*********]
In December 2001, as the investigation into the U.S. anthrax attacks was gathering steam, coalition soldiers in Afghanistan uncovered what appeared to be an important clue: a trail of documents chronicling an attempt by al-Qaeda to create its own anthrax weapon.
The documents told of a singular mission by a scientist named Abdur Rauf, an obscure, middle-aged Pakistani with alleged al-Qaeda sympathies and an advanced degree in microbiology.
Using his membership in a prestigious scientific organization to gain access, Rauf traveled through Europe on a quest, officials say, to obtain both anthrax spores and the equipment needed to turn them into highly lethal biological weapons. He reported directly to al-Qaeda's No. 2 commander, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and in one document he appeared to signal a breakthrough.
"I successfully achieved the targets," he wrote cryptically to Zawahiri in a note in 1999.
Precisely what Rauf achieved may never be known with certainty. That's because U.S. officials remain stymied in their nearly five-year quest to bring charges against a man who they say admitted serving as a top consultant to al-Qaeda on anthrax -- a claim that makes him one of a handful of people linked publicly to the group's effort to wage biological warfare against Western targets.
Rauf, 47, has been under scrutiny in Pakistan since he was detained there for questioning in late 2001, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials who agreed to talk about the case for the first time. But officially he remains free, and Pakistan now says it has no grounds for arrest. Last year, in an acknowledgment of the impasse in its four-year joint investigation with Pakistan, the FBI officially put the case on inactive status.
"We will never close the door, but the chances of getting him into the United States are slim to none," said one U.S. intelligence official, who, like others, agreed to discuss the case on the condition that he not be identified by name.
The documents that first revealed Rauf's role were part of a large stack of papers discovered in a house after coalition forces overran an al-Qaeda base in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. He emerges from documents and interviews as one of the most intriguing, and in some ways most troubling, figures in an international investigation into al-Qaeda's biological weapons program.
With the evidence against Rauf, some U.S. officials say they are perplexed about why Pakistani authorities have refused to further pursue him, while acknowledging that the case presents both legal and political difficulties for Pakistan.
To terrorism experts, Rauf is a symbol of a dangerous convergence: a marriage of militancy and technical expertise that could someday yield new kinds of highly lethal weapons to be used against civilians.
"He was someone who at least understood the professional procedures and methods," said Milton Leitenberg, an expert on biological weapons with the University of Maryland's Center for International and Security Studies who reviewed the seized documents. "In theory, if he went in the laboratory and tried and tried, maybe he could have gotten it right."
Exactly how far al-Qaeda progressed with Rauf's help is not publicly known. No one has turned up any links between his work and the U.S. anthrax attacks, in which spores were mailed in letters to news organizations and U.S. Senate offices. Coalition forces discovered rudimentary laboratories in Kandahar but no evidence of bioweapons production. Yet both the White House and a presidential commission have hinted at additional findings suggesting that the terrorists were much further along than was first thought.
Last year's presidential commission on intelligence failures, led by retired judge Laurence H. Silberman and former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), described al-Qaeda's biological program as "extensive" and "well-organized," particularly with regard to "Agent X," a pathogen that terrorism experts say was almost certainly anthrax.
"Al-Qaeda had acquired several biological agents possibly as early as 1999, and the necessary equipment to enable limited, basic production of Agent X," the commission said.
U.S. officials are even more reticent in discussing possible links between al-Qaeda's anthrax program and the 2001 U.S. attacks, which killed five people and briefly shut down the U.S. Capitol. Privately, FBI officials doubt that such a link exists. They note that the attacks came with an explicit warning -- a letter advising the victims to take penicillin, resulting in a far lower death toll -- but without an explicit claim of responsibility. "It doesn't fit with al-Qaeda's modus operandi," one intelligence official said.
Yet U.S. officials have been unable to rule out al-Qaeda or any other group as a suspect. Earlier this month, FBI officials acknowledged that the ultra-fine powder mailed five years ago was simply made and could have been produced by a well-trained microbiologist anywhere in the world.
Several leading bioterrorism experts still contend that the evidence points to al-Qaeda or possibly an allied group that coordinated its attack with the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These experts point to hijacker Mohamed Atta's inquiries into renting a crop-duster aircraft and to an unexplained emergency-room visit by another hijacker, Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi, for treatment of an unusual skin lesion that resembled cutaneous anthrax.
Whether or not al-Qaeda was involved, U.S. officials and bioterrorism experts agree on this: The alliance between the terrorist group and a little-known Pakistani scientist could have yielded disastrous results in time.
The Quest for Anthrax
For all his expertise, Rauf was hardly the ideal candidate for helping al-Qaeda realize its ambition of making biological weapons.
The tall, thin and bespectacled scientist held a doctorate in microbiology but specialized in food production, according to U.S. officials familiar with the case. He had to learn about anthrax and other bioterrorism agents as he went along, slowing his progress considerably.
"He could potentially do a great deal of harm because of his knowledge and skills," said one U.S. intelligence expert connected with the case. "On the other hand, he lacked the specific knowledge and training al-Qaeda needed most."
Exactly how he became acquainted with Zawahiri remains unclear. Rauf worked at the prestigious Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in his home town of Lahore, and officials speculate that he may have crossed paths professionally with Zawahiri, a physician.
In any case, captured documents suggest a close collaboration between the two men as they sought equipment for a bioweapons lab.
"I hope my letter will find you in the best of health and circumstances by the God Almighty," Rauf writes to Zawahiri in one of three intercepted notes.
The heavily redacted notes and other documents were obtained from the Defense Department through the Freedom of Information Act after they were first described in the journal Science in a 2003 article by three researchers at the National Defense University. Rauf's name was redacted, but U.S. and Pakistani officials confirmed his authorship in interviews with The Washington Post. Rauf's name was first publicly associated with the documents by Ross Getman, a New York lawyer who maintains a Web site devoted to the 2001 anthrax attacks.
Rauf was a member of the Society for Applied Microbiology, an international professional organization based in Britain, and he appears to have used his membership to make contacts and arrange visits related to his quest. One note from Rauf was handwritten on the group's stationery, apparently while he was attending a 1999 scientific conference at Porton Down, Britain's premier biodefense research center in the southern city of Wiltshire.
Rauf, who writes to Zawahiri in occasionally faltering English, admits in one note to several setbacks. For starters, he had found a supplier who could sell him Bacillus anthracis -- the bacterium that causes anthrax -- but it was a harmless strain incapable of killing anyone.
"Unfortunately, I did not find the required culture of B. anthrax -- i.e., pathogenic," he writes to Zawahiri. He then describes a new attempt to acquire a lethal strain from a different lab.
In a later note he is more upbeat, telling his patron he had "successfully achieved the targets" and had "tried to solve technical problems of our work." He ticked off a list of items he had acquired or arranged to purchase, including respirators, a fermenter used for growing bacteria and vaccines to protect lab workers against accidental exposure.
Rauf also describes an unusual visit -- apparently as the guest of another scientist -- to a high-containment biological lab where dangerous pathogens such as anthrax are kept.
"I visited along with [the host] all the units . . . including the special confidential room in which thousands of cultures are placed," the note reads.
Another handwritten note includes a crude diagram of a biological lab, identifying how space should be allocated for major tasks such as animal testing and growing bacteria.
A recurring theme in the notes is money, or Rauf's apparent lack of it. He complains in one note that his salary was cut while he was on leave from his job for postdoctoral research. "This is highly objectionable, unaffordable and unpracticable with me," he writes.
Rauf's money demands may have led to a falling-out with Zawahiri, who appears to have decided to explore other options for obtaining bacteria and lab equipment, said Rohan Gunaratna, an al-Qaeda expert with the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore.
Gunaratna said al-Qaeda leaders also collaborated with Yazid Sufaat, a member of an allied Southeast Asian group called Jemaah Islamiyah, in purchasing equipment for the Kandahar lab. Sufaat, who once studied chemistry at California State University at Sacramento, has been in custody since late 2001.
"Rauf was financially driven, and al-Qaeda didn't entirely trust him," Gunaratna said.
Investigation Breaks Down
Rauf's detention kicked off a joint U.S.-Pakistani investigation that at first was remarkably successful.
"There was great cooperation at the start," said one U.S. intelligence official who closely followed the case.
The FBI's New York office took the lead U.S. role, and its agents worked closely with the CIA and bureau officials in Pakistan in carrying out interrogations. Though not formally charged with any crimes, Rauf consented to questioning and provided useful leads, U.S. and Pakistani officials said. But problems began when the U.S. side sought to expand the investigation with the goal of pursuing criminal charges, including possible indictment and prosecution in the United States, officials from both countries confirmed.
In earlier cases, the Pakistani government incurred the wrath of Islamic leaders when it sought to prosecute professionals for alleged ties to al-Qaeda.
In 2003, the Pakistanis shut off U.S. access to Rauf. According to Pakistani officials familiar with the case, there simply was not enough evidence showing that he succeeded in providing al-Qaeda with something useful.
Since then, Rauf has been allowed to resume his normal life. Whether he has returned to his former workplace is unclear; officials at the research council declined to respond to requests for information about the scientist. Attempts to contact Rauf in Lahore were unsuccessful.
"He was detained for questioning, and later the courts determined there was not sufficient evidence to continue detaining him," said Tariq Azim Khan, Pakistan's information minister. "If there was evidence that proved his role beyond a shadow of a doubt, we would have acted on it. But that kind of evidence was not available."
Special correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 01:04 PM | Permalink

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-odom31oct31,0,6123563.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
How to cut and run
We could lead the Mideast to peace, but only if we stop refusing to do the right thing
By William E. Odom
Lt. Gen. WILLIAM E. ODOM (Ret.) is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University.
October 31, 2006 [oped] [retired general odom] [getting out of –iraq] [********]

THE UNITED STATES upset the regional balance in the Middle East when it invaded Iraq. Restoring it requires bold initiatives, but "cutting and running" must precede them all. Only a complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops — within six months and with no preconditions — can break the paralysis that now enfeebles our diplomacy. And the greatest obstacles to cutting and running are the psychological inhibitions of our leaders and the public.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-odom31oct31,0,6123563.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
How to cut and run
We could lead the Mideast to peace, but only if we stop refusing to do the right thing
By William E. Odom
Lt. Gen. WILLIAM E. ODOM (Ret.) is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University.
October 31, 2006 [oped] [retired general odom] [getting out of –iraq] [********]

THE UNITED STATES upset the regional balance in the Middle East when it invaded Iraq. Restoring it requires bold initiatives, but "cutting and running" must precede them all. Only a complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops — within six months and with no preconditions — can break the paralysis that now enfeebles our diplomacy. And the greatest obstacles to cutting and running are the psychological inhibitions of our leaders and the public.

Our leaders do not act because their reputations are at stake. The public does not force them to act because it is blinded by the president's conjured set of illusions: that we are reducing terrorism by fighting in Iraq; creating democracy there; preventing the spread of nuclear weapons; making Israel more secure; not allowing our fallen soldiers to have died in vain; and others.

But reality can no longer be avoided. It is beyond U.S. power to prevent bloody sectarian violence in Iraq, the growing influence of Iran throughout the region, the probable spread of Sunni-Shiite strife to neighboring Arab states, the eventual rise to power of the anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr or some other anti-American leader in Baghdad, and the spread of instability beyond Iraq. All of these things and more became unavoidable the day that U.S. forces invaded.

These realities get worse every day that our forces remain in Iraq. They can't be wished away by clever diplomacy or by leaving our forces in Iraq for several more years.

The administration could recognize that a rapid withdrawal is the only way to overcome our strategic paralysis, though that appears unlikely, notwithstanding election-eve changes in White House rhetoric. Congress could force a stock-taking. Failing this, the public will sooner or later see through all of the White House's double talk and compel a radical policy change. The price for delay, however, will be more lives lost in vain — the only thing worse than the lives already lost in vain.

Some lawmakers are ready to change course but are puzzled as to how to leave Iraq. The answer is four major initiatives to provide regional stability and calm in Iraq. They will leave the U.S. less influential in the region. But it will be the best deal we can get.

First, the U.S. must concede that it has botched things, cannot stabilize the region alone and must let others have a say in what's next. As U.S. forces begin to withdraw, Washington must invite its European allies, as well as Japan, China and India, to make their own proposals for dealing with the aftermath. Russia can be ignored because it will play a spoiler role in any case.

Rapid troop withdrawal and abandoning unilateralism will have a sobering effect on all interested parties. Al Qaeda will celebrate but find that its only current allies, Iraqi Baathists and Sunnis, no longer need or want it. Iran will crow but soon begin to worry that its Kurdish minority may want to join Iraqi Kurdistan and that Iraqi Baathists might make a surprising comeback.

Although European leaders will probably try to take the lead in designing a new strategy for Iraq, they will not be able to implement it. This is because they will not allow any single European state to lead, the handicap they faced in trying to cope with Yugoslavia's breakup in the 1990s. Nor will Japan, China or India be acceptable as a new coalition leader. The U.S. could end up as the leader of a new strategic coalition — but only if most other states recognize this fact and invite it to do so.

The second initiative is to create a diplomatic forum for Iraq's neighbors. Iran, of course, must be included. Washington should offer to convene the forum but be prepared to step aside if other members insist.

Third, the U.S. must informally cooperate with Iran in areas of shared interests. Nothing else could so improve our position in the Middle East. The price for success will include dropping U.S. resistance to Iran's nuclear weapons program. This will be as distasteful for U.S. leaders as cutting and running, but it is no less essential. That's because we do share vital common interests with Iran. We both want to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban (Iran hates both). We both want stability in Iraq (Iran will have influence over the Shiite Iraqi south regardless of what we do, but neither Washington nor Tehran want chaos). And we can help each other when it comes to oil: Iran needs our technology to produce more oil, and we simply need more oil.

Accepting Iran's nuclear weapons is a small price to pay for the likely benefits. Moreover, its nuclear program will proceed whether we like it or not. Accepting it might well soften Iran's support for Hezbollah, and it will definitely undercut Russia's pernicious influence with Tehran.

Fourth, real progress must be made on the Palestinian issue as a foundation for Middle East peace. The invasion of Iraq and the U.S. tilt toward Israel have dangerously reduced Washington's power to broker peace or to guarantee Israel's security. We now need Europe's help. And good relations with Iran would help dramatically.

No strategy can succeed without these components. We must cut and run tactically in order to succeed strategically. The United States needs to restore its reputation so that its capacity to lead constructively will cost us less.

Posted by Kent Bolton at 01:03 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000828.html
Supporting Democracy -- Or Not
By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A21 [oped] [usfp] [democracy as an explicit foreign-policy goal?] [use nsc ms] [******]
With a clutch of new books , a multitude of speeches and a score of conferences already underway, no one can claim that the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution has gone unmarked. The Hungarians themselves commemorated their tragic revolt against Soviet communism with a street riot: Just as post-revolutionary France remained divided for decades between royalists and Bonapartists, so, too, is much of post-communist Europe still divided between former communists and former anti-communists, and nowhere more so than in Budapest.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000828.html
Supporting Democracy -- Or Not
By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A21 [oped] [usfp] [democracy as an explicit foreign-policy goal?] [use nsc ms] [******]
With a clutch of new books , a multitude of speeches and a score of conferences already underway, no one can claim that the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution has gone unmarked. The Hungarians themselves commemorated their tragic revolt against Soviet communism with a street riot: Just as post-revolutionary France remained divided for decades between royalists and Bonapartists, so, too, is much of post-communist Europe still divided between former communists and former anti-communists, and nowhere more so than in Budapest.
But as the anniversary moves into its second week, I'd like to celebrate in a different way -- by asking what, if anything, we in the West have learned since 1956. As many have observed, the American role in the Hungarian Revolution was hardly admirable. Although American governments had spent much of the previous decade encouraging Hungary and other Soviet satellite states to rebel -- using radio broadcasts, speeches, even balloons carrying anti-communist pamphlets -- no one was prepared for the real thing. As late as June 1956 a clueless CIA (sound familiar?) published an internal document declaring that "there really is no underground movement" in Hungary at all.
As a result, the initial American reaction was confused, to be polite about it. The White House at first dithered about whether the president ought to call a "day of prayer" or call on the Red Cross or get the United Nations to do something. Only after four days of street fighting did the American secretary of state, John Foster Dulles -- a man who had spoken often of liberating the "captive nations" of Eastern Europe -- finally declare that the U.S. government did not consider the Hungarians "potential allies." The message was clear: The West would not intervene.
Or almost clear: At the same time Dulles was reassuring everybody that nothing would be done, Radio Free Europe was explaining to its listeners how to make molotov cocktails and hinting at the American invasion to come. To use contemporary language, a part of the U.S. government was "promoting democracy." Another part was "advocating stability." The result was a bloody mess.
The Hungarians kept fighting even after Soviet tanks arrived, believing help was on the way. Hundreds died. And Western policy in the region suffered a setback from which it took nearly 40 years to recover.
Has anything really changed since then? Once again we have an American president who speaks openly and no doubt sincerely about human rights and democracy in the Middle East and around the world. He's supported by Congress, the media and even whole fiefdoms of the State Department that dedicate themselves to democracy promotion. Nongovernmental organizations, sometimes with U.S. government funding, have emerged around the world to do the same. It would hardly be surprising, then, if a group of Arab democrats came to assume that we would naturally support an anti-totalitarian rebellion in their country today.
And yet -- what if they acted on this assumption? Try to imagine what would happen if an imaginary group of pro-democracy Saudis staged a street rebellion in Riyadh. No one, of course, would be prepared. No one, of course, would have ever heard of any of the rebels before. Some in the administration, in Congress and in the media would immediately hail the "new democrats," just as in 1956. Arab-language radio stations, staffed by Saudi exiles, might broadcast messages of encouragement to the rebels, just as in 1956.
Meanwhile, others in the administration -- alarmed by the potential for a Middle Eastern war, worried about oil supplies, horrified by the unknown rebels -- would support the ousted royal family and call for maintaining the status quo, just as in 1956. The White House would mutter something about humanitarian aid, call on the United Nations -- and finally wind up supporting the old regime, just as in 1956.
The result: By simultaneously supporting democracy and stability, we would anger the rest of the Arab world, make U.S.-Saudi relations impossible however the rebellion was resolved, and probably damage, in multiple unforeseeable ways, U.S. interests all over the world.
Scholars always bang on about the debate between "realism" and "idealism" in U.S. foreign policy, but the truth is that for most of the past century we've been simultaneously realistic and idealistic -- in favor of democratic change and deeply wedded to status quo stability -- much to the confusion of everyone else.
And the moral? Don't blame George W. Bush: Chaos in U.S. foreign policy is nothing new. But pity those, whether the Hungarians in 1956, or the Shiites in 1991, who take our democracy rhetoric too literally: Sometimes we really mean it -- and sometimes we don't.
applebaumanne@yahoo.com
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 01:02 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000830.html
Don't Worry. Just Back Off.
The GOP Theory of Governing
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A21 [oped] [on rummy’s recent outburst during press conference where he told the media to back off] [********]
Go ahead, people, you have your orders from Napoleon Bonaparte, I mean Donald Rumsfeld. "Back off" and "relax." Book a cruise to Chillsville. Don't worry your pretty little heads about the debacle in Iraq, because "it's complicated, it's difficult." Are mere mortals going to be able to get their minds around a problem that even Albert Einstein, I mean Donald Rumsfeld, finds complicated? Let's be realistic here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000830.html
Don't Worry. Just Back Off.
The GOP Theory of Governing
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A21 [oped] [on rummy’s recent outburst during press conference where he told the media to back off] [********]
Go ahead, people, you have your orders from Napoleon Bonaparte, I mean Donald Rumsfeld. "Back off" and "relax." Book a cruise to Chillsville. Don't worry your pretty little heads about the debacle in Iraq, because "it's complicated, it's difficult." Are mere mortals going to be able to get their minds around a problem that even Albert Einstein, I mean Donald Rumsfeld, finds complicated? Let's be realistic here.
We should all thank our lucky stars that "honorable people" are willing to do all this super-advanced thinking for us. Aristotle, I mean Donald Rumsfeld, was kind enough to phrase it that way rather than spell out what he really meant, which was "people who are smarter than you."
I realize that a few news cycles have come and gone since the secretary of defense held that stunning news conference at the Pentagon last week, but it was such a telling moment -- such a revealing glimpse behind the curtain -- that it deserves to remain fresh in our minds, even amid the distracting cacophony of eleventh-hour electioneering. There, in just two words, you have the Bush administration's approach to the war in Iraq. Indeed, you have the Republicans' theory of government:
Back off.
Could anyone else have summed it up so efficiently? Maybe Tony Soprano, but his vocabulary can't be printed in a family newspaper. The basic style of leadership is the same, though. I'm the boss, so shut up and do as I say.
Republicans who have to face the voters next week, especially those who find themselves trailing badly in the polls, have been going AWOL from Rummy's brigade. Some, such as Maryland senatorial candidate Michael Steele, explicitly disown the Pentagon czar; others avoid mentioning his name and, when pressed, speak of him as if he were some kind of daffy uncle. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) made news Sunday when he ventured that "Donald Rumsfeld is the best thing that's happened to the Pentagon in 25 years." Boehner would be hard-pressed to find professional soldiers who agree with that assessment, but maybe blind loyalty in the face of overwhelming evidence will turn out to be a winning strategy. I have my doubts.
At least Boehner isn't trying to pretend that the disaster in Iraq is all Rummy's fault. Alexander the Great, I mean Donald Rumsfeld, may have authored the mistakes that have cost nearly 3,000 American lives, including more than 100 in October alone -- sending too few troops, disbanding the Iraqi army, failing to plan for an extended occupation, training Iraqi "security forces" that promptly turned into sectarian militias. But George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and the rest of the Vulcans were with him every step of the way, and the Republican majority in Congress sang hosannas of praise like an amen chorus.
Now that most Americans oppose the war and want to bring the troops home before more young men and women die needless deaths, Republicans can't blame Democrats, because they froze them out of all the decision making.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert's immutable rule -- that any legislation brought to the floor had to be supported by a majority of the Republican caucus -- effectively muffled any concrete expression of the public's growing doubts about the war. What if substantial numbers of Democrats and moderate Republicans, enough to constitute a majority of the House, had questions about Iraq, or about torturing detainees, or about the whole course of this incoherent "war on terror"? Tough.
Back off.
The Republican majority came to Washington claiming a populist mandate but has ended up governing with the same breathtaking arrogance that Genghis Khan, I mean Donald Rumsfeld, let slip the other day. Congress is all about lobbyists, earmarks and pork. Democrats aren't immune to these depredations, of course, but if you aren't allowed to participate in any meaningful decisions, you can't be held responsible.
And at the White House and the Pentagon, fantasy reigns. President Bush famously pledged to stay the course in Iraq even if Laura and Barney the dog are his only supporters. Last week he said U.S. forces constantly change tactics to "stay ahead" of the Iraqi insurgents. Excuse me, but when have we ever been ahead of the insurgency? "We're winning" the war, Bush insists. Excuse me, but could you elaborate? In what sense are we winning in Iraq? Where are you seeing anything that resembles victory?
Silly me. Ordinary Americans just aren't smart enough to think about such things. Thank you, Sir Isaac Newton, I mean Donald Rumsfeld, for reminding us of our patriotic duty: Back off.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 01:01 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000972.html
Victory for Lula
Brazil's president earns a second term, but will he make good use of it?
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A20 [editorial] [on Lula’s comeback in Brazil and its implications] [**********]
LUIZ INACIO Lula da Silva overcame some formidable negatives to win reelection as Brazil's president on Sunday, including a squalid series of corruption scandals and a lackluster record of growth during the past four years by Latin America's largest economy. But the reasons for his victory are mostly positive. The former metalworker and union leader, universally known simply as Lula, has been able to mobilize millions of Brazil's poor, who previously were largely excluded from the country's developing economy and democracy. Many of those people have seen tangible improvement in their lives thanks to Lula's policies, which have lifted some 8 million people out of poverty in a country of 185 million.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000972.html
Victory for Lula
Brazil's president earns a second term, but will he make good use of it?
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A20 [editorial] [on Lula’s comeback in Brazil and its implications] [**********]
LUIZ INACIO Lula da Silva overcame some formidable negatives to win reelection as Brazil's president on Sunday, including a squalid series of corruption scandals and a lackluster record of growth during the past four years by Latin America's largest economy. But the reasons for his victory are mostly positive. The former metalworker and union leader, universally known simply as Lula, has been able to mobilize millions of Brazil's poor, who previously were largely excluded from the country's developing economy and democracy. Many of those people have seen tangible improvement in their lives thanks to Lula's policies, which have lifted some 8 million people out of poverty in a country of 185 million.
Lula's achievements have come without the populist trappings, irresponsible fiscal policies or erosion of democracy seen in other Latin American countries -- most notably, neighboring Venezuela. Brazil's often precarious finances are in better shape today than four years ago. International Monetary Fund loans have been paid off, inflation is a mere 4 percent and the country has $60 billion in foreign reserves. Poverty reduction has come about largely because of an innovative program under which the government provides poor families with a monthly cash subsidy if they meet certain requirements, such as sending their children to school and having them vaccinated.
With four more years to work with, Lula's challenge will be finding ways to tackle the big problem he failed to address: Brazil's sluggish growth. Redistribution of wealth is important in one of the world's most economically unequal societies, but Brazil can't prosper when it is growing at a rate below 3 percent, or less than half the rate of other emerging economies. Economists in and outside Brazil largely agree about what is needed: reductions in the sprawling state bureaucracy and runaway government spending, and in Latin America's highest taxes.
Unfortunately, the president hasn't shown much inclination to tackle these tasks. During his runoff campaign against a centrist former state governor, Lula ranted against what he said was the danger that Brazilian state companies and banks would be privatized. In fact, such privatizations are needed, as are more steps to liberalize trade and encourage foreign investment.
Lula campaigned against Brazil's foreign creditors four years ago, then surprised them by adopting orthodox fiscal policies after he took office. He would be wise to take the same course now and tackle the reform of the state, even while continuing programs for the poor. He has the opportunity to propel himself, and Brazil, into a position of leadership in Latin America by demonstrating how poverty can be addressed by sensible and sustainable policies rather than ruinous populism.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 01:00 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/opinion/31tue1.html
October 31, 2006
Editorial
The Untracked Guns of Iraq
[editorial] [yesterday’s report that US govt has completely lost control of arms shipments to –iraqi govt] [appears many have found their way to black marked] [it painful irony, US armaments shipped to –iraq to stabilize –iraqi govt may being used to kill American troops] [***********]
About the last thing the United States ought to be doing in Iraq is funneling weapons into black-market weapons bazaars, as sectarian militias arm themselves for civil war. Yet that is just what Washington may have been doing for the past several years, thanks to an inexplicable decision that standard Pentagon regulations for registering weapons transfers did not apply to the Iraq war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/opinion/31tue1.html
October 31, 2006
Editorial
The Untracked Guns of Iraq
[editorial] [yesterday’s report that US govt has completely lost control of arms shipments to –iraqi govt] [appears many have found their way to black marked] [it painful irony, US armaments shipped to –iraq to stabilize –iraqi govt may being used to kill American troops] [***********]
About the last thing the United States ought to be doing in Iraq is funneling weapons into black-market weapons bazaars, as sectarian militias arm themselves for civil war. Yet that is just what Washington may have been doing for the past several years, thanks to an inexplicable decision that standard Pentagon regulations for registering weapons transfers did not apply to the Iraq war.
Of more than 500,000 weapons turned over to the Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior since the American invasion — including rocket-propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns and sniper rifles — the serial numbers of only 12,128 were properly recorded. Some 370,000 of these weapons, some of which are undoubtedly being used to kill American troops, were paid for by United States taxpayers, under the Orwellian-titled Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund. [********]
This chilling information comes to us from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which has distinguished itself as the most vigilant agency monitoring the money spent on the Iraq conflict. The agency, led by a Republican lawyer who once worked in the Bush White House, has previously reported on the contracting lapses and failures of supervision that allowed billions of taxpayer dollars to be wasted instead of being used to rebuild Iraq. [*******]
The latest special inspector general’s report came in response to a request from Senator John Warner, another conscientious Republican. As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Warner wanted to be sure that the Iraqi security ministries had the skills and resources necessary to make good use of the huge quantities of arms that Washington has been turning over to them. [^^^^^^^^^^^
It turns out that the Pentagon not only failed to register the weapons, but also failed to provide the spare parts, repair manuals and maintenance technicians needed to keep them in working order. The agency found that Iraqi security forces are still heavily dependent on Washington’s support for the most basic military functions. And with America planning to scale back much of that support over the next year, it is far from clear whether Baghdad is preparing to pick up the slack.
Separately, the inspector general’s office also found insecurity so rampant in six Iraqi provinces — five of them in the predominantly Shiite south — that America’s joint military and civil reconstruction teams could not operate there effectively.
These findings go a long way toward explaining why Iraq appears to be ever more violent, with no clear plans yet coming from Baghdad or Washington that seem likely to restore a semblance of order.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:59 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/europe/31briefs-005.html
October 31, 2006
World Briefing | Europe
Bulgaria: Pro-European Union President Wins Second Term
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS [Bulgaria] [elections] [indication that joining EU is still popular despite all the recent turmoil over membership with many new members] [**********]
Georgi Parvanov, the pro-Western incumbent, easily won a runoff election for president on Sunday against Volen Siderov, an ultranationalist who criticized Mr. Parvanov’s successful effort to lead the nation into the European Union.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/europe/31briefs-005.html
October 31, 2006
World Briefing | Europe
Bulgaria: Pro-European Union President Wins Second Term
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS [Bulgaria] [elections] [indication that joining EU is still popular despite all the recent turmoil over membership with many new members] [**********]
Georgi Parvanov, the pro-Western incumbent, easily won a runoff election for president on Sunday against Volen Siderov, an ultranationalist who criticized Mr. Parvanov’s successful effort to lead the nation into the European Union.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:58 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001175.html
Leaders Struggle to Repair Polish-German Ties
Gas Pipeline Route, WWII-Era Property Claims Among Sources of Bilateral Tension
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A15 [German-[Poland relations] [soured] [nearly went to war recently at sea] [followup] [N in TNT] [**********]
BERLIN, Oct. 30 -- It had already been a bad year for German-Polish relations, but things really soured this month when naval warfare between the two countries nearly broke out on the Baltic Sea. [********]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001175.html
Leaders Struggle to Repair Polish-German Ties
Gas Pipeline Route, WWII-Era Property Claims Among Sources of Bilateral Tension
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A15 [German-[Poland relations] [soured] [nearly went to war recently at sea] [followup] [N in TNT] [**********]
BERLIN, Oct. 30 -- It had already been a bad year for German-Polish relations, but things really soured this month when naval warfare between the two countries nearly broke out on the Baltic Sea. [********]
On Oct. 17, the Polish Coast Guard fired warning shots at a German tourist ship after it tried to evade inspection in the Polish port of Swinoujscie and made a run for the German border with three Polish customs officers on board. Polish officials accused the vessel, the Adler Dania, of hiding a cargo of tax-free cigarettes and booze; the German captain accused the Poles of overreacting. "Are Our Neighbors Insane?" blared Bild, Germany's largest newspaper.
No one was wounded or killed, but the incident only added to a string of diplomatic slights, political insults and other indignities that have left Germany and Poland feeling more raw about each other than perhaps at any time since the end of World War II. [********]
Poles have been smarting for more than a year over Germany's decision to bypass their energy-dependent country by routing a major gas pipeline to Russia under the Baltic. The Polish defense minister, drawing on a painful history that is never far from the surface, compared the move to the secret agreement between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin to carve up Poland in 1939. [*********]
Poles are also sore about efforts by some Germans to sue for monetary compensation for property their families were forced to abandon after the defeat of the Third Reich, when borders were redrawn and Germany ceded some of its eastern territory to Poland.
At times, Poland's leaders have made matters worse by displaying thin skins. In July, Polish President Lech Kaczynski canceled an official visit to Germany after a Berlin newspaper mocked him as "a little potato" who thirsted to rule the world. Polish officials demanded, unsuccessfully, that the German government take legal action against the journalists. [*************]
On Monday, Kaczynski's twin brother, Jaroslaw, Poland's prime minister, came to Berlin -- for the first time -- to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in an attempt to repair some of the diplomatic damage. While the pair tried to put on a good face and held a joint news conference, they didn't report any breakthroughs. [*******]
Merkel rejected Poland's demand to sign a deal forswearing any private German property claims from the war.[****] Although she acknowledged the “unease” the issue had caused in Poland, she said government intervention “would make things more complicated than they are.”
Kaczynski said he welcomed Merkel’s comments but added that Poland still wasn’t satisfied. “In the Polish view, this issue is not resolved,” he warned.
Germany and Poland are the two biggest countries in central Europe and share a long border, but polls show a widespread lack of familiarity between the two neighbors’ people.
Two of every three Germans have never set foot in Poland, according to a survey commissioned last spring by the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw. Public views of Poles are also not favorable. When asked what they most associated with Poland, the top answer was “car theft and crime,” followed closely by “illegal workers” and “poverty, backwardness.”
Many Poles harbor skeptical views of Germany as well. In a similar poll conducted by the institute last March, 49 percent of Poles questioned said they feared Germany could pose “an economic threat” to Poland in the future, even though Germany is Poland’s largest trading partner.
Also ruffling feathers in Poland are recent historical exhibits in Berlin that highlighted the hardships faced by millions of German refugees after World War II. Many Poles saw the exhibits, which closed just before Kaczynski’s arrival, as an attempt to portray Germans as victims of a war that they started – and that left 6 million people dead in Poland.
Sponsors of the exhibit, titled “Forced Paths,” said they took pains to include the experiences of other political refugees in Europe throughout the 20th century and questioned whether Polish leaders were seeking to score political points at home.
“I also think politicians in Poland are trying to use the issue to divert attention from massive domestic problems,” said Erika Steinbach, a member of the German Parliament and head of a group called the Federation of Expellees, which has drawn the ire of the Polish government. “I am an optimist, and I think the differences can be resolved. If they are not, it certainly will not be the fault of the German expellees.” [*********]
So far, Poland's government has shown little willingness to forgive and forget. [******]
When the Forced Paths exhibit opened in August, the mayor of Warsaw canceled a visit to Berlin in protest. Kaczynski, the prime minister, trashed the event and responded with a historical lesson of his own: a visit to a former Nazi concentration camp in northern Poland.
Special correspondent Shannon Smiley contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:57 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/middleeast/31mideast.html
October 31, 2006
Olmert Says Israel May Widen Military Role in Gaza
By GREG MYRE [Israel] [followup from yesterday’s external] [Olmert recently forced to accept pro-settlement MP partner] [day by day it’s looking more as though Israel regrets it pulled out of Gaza in 2005] [*********]
JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Monday that the Israeli military might expand operations in the Gaza Strip in an attempt to halt Palestinian rocket fire, but that there was no intention to reoccupy the territory. [********]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/middleeast/31mideast.html
October 31, 2006
Olmert Says Israel May Widen Military Role in Gaza
By GREG MYRE [Israel] [followup from yesterday’s external] [Olmert recently forced to accept pro-settlement MP partner] [day by day it’s looking more as though Israel regrets it pulled out of Gaza in 2005] [*********]
JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Monday that the Israeli military might expand operations in the Gaza Strip in an attempt to halt Palestinian rocket fire, but that there was no intention to reoccupy the territory. [********]
His comments came on another day of turmoil, in which Palestinian gunmen kidnapped a Spanish aid worker in southern Gaza and held him for several hours before releasing him, and a Palestinian militant was killed in northern Gaza in disputed circumstances. [Two more militants were killed in Gaza on Tuesday in clashes between Israeli troops and Hamas gunmen, Reuters reported.]
In a closed session with a parliamentary committee, Mr. Olmert was asked about the military’s plans for Gaza. Israeli forces, which re-entered the territory in late June after an Israeli soldier was seized, have been clashing with Palestinian militants almost daily. Several Israeli political and military officials have hinted recently that a larger operation could be coming.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Olmert, Miri Eisin, who was at the parliamentary session, quoted the prime minister as saying: “We aren’t going to reoccupy Gaza. But we will continue to fight terror, and there may be a change in the level of forces there at any given time.” [*************]
Mr. Olmert also said the military killed about 300 armed Palestinians in the past four months, according to Ms. Eisin. Monitoring groups have said that more than 250 Palestinians were killed during this time, about half militants and half civilians. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting.
In Gaza City, Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian Authority prime minister, said, “We call on the international community to intervene immediately to halt the Israeli aggression.”
On Monday, Mazen Abu Oudah, 20, a member of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, was killed by Israeli fire near the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, according to Palestinian medical workers. However, the Israeli military said it had not been involved in any shooting in the area.
[The two militants killed Tuesday were shot during a military operation near the town of Khan Younis when Israeli troops fired on a group of militants who were trying to plant a bomb near the soldiers, an army spokeswoman told Reuters.]
Also, Palestinians fired two rockets into southern Israel on Monday, Israeli officials said, but they caused no damage or injuries.
Palestinian gunmen kidnapped Roberto Vila, 34, a Spaniard who works for a Spanish aid group, according to Palestinian officials and news media reports. He was freed unharmed late Monday night, according to Palestinian television.
In Israeli politics, Mr. Olmert’s cabinet and the Parliament approved the inclusion of Israel Beiteinu, a far-right party, in the governing coalition. Mr. Olmert’s coalition now controls 78 of the 120 seats in Parliament, a margin intended to make the government more stable.
However, with parties from the right, left and center, as well as a religious party, the coalition is so broad that the factions have little common ground on many issues, such as how to deal with the Palestinians. [**********]
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:57 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001323.html
In Baghdad, a Force Under the Militias' Sway
Infiltration of Iraqi Police Could Delay Handover of Control for Years, U.S. Trainers Suggest
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A01 [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [Maliki govt has reacted badly but surely must see the writing on the wall] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [Malaki is beholding to the Shiia militias] [he’s between –Iraq and a hard place!] [************]
BAGHDAD – The signs of the militias are everywhere at the Sholeh police station.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001323.html
In Baghdad, a Force Under the Militias' Sway
Infiltration of Iraqi Police Could Delay Handover of Control for Years, U.S. Trainers Suggest
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A01 [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [Maliki govt has reacted badly but surely must see the writing on the wall] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [Malaki is beholding to the Shiia militias] [he’s between –Iraq and a hard place!] [************]
BAGHDAD – The signs of the militias are everywhere at the Sholeh police station.
Posters celebrating Moqtada al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi Army militia, dot the building’s walls. The police chief sometimes remarks that Shiite militias should wipe out all Sunnis. Visitors to this violent neighborhood in the Iraqi capital whisper that nearly all the police officers have split loyalties.
And then one rainy night this month, the Sholeh police set up an ambush and killed Army Cpl. Kenny F. Stanton Jr., a 20-year-old budding journalist, his unit said. At the time, Stanton and other members of the unit had been trailing a group of Sholeh police escorting known Mahdi Army members.
“How can we expect ordinary Iraqis to trust the police when we don’t even trust them not to kill our own men?” asked Capt. Alexander Shaw, head of the police transition team of the 372nd Military Police Battalion, a Washington-based unit charged with overseeing training of all Iraqi police in western Baghdad. “To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure we’re ever going to have police here that are free of the militia influence.” [*********]
The top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., predicted last week that Iraqi security forces would be able to take control of the country in 12 to 18 months. But several days spent with American units training the Iraqi police illustrated why those soldiers on the ground believe it may take decades longer than Casey's assessment. [**********]
Seventy percent of the Iraqi police force has been infiltrated by militias, primarily the Mahdi Army, according to Shaw and other military police trainers. Police officers are too terrified to patrol enormous swaths of the capital. And while there are some good cops, many have been assassinated or are considering quitting the force.
"None of the Iraqi police are working to make their country better," said Brig. Gen. Salah al-Ani, chief of police for the western half of Baghdad. "They're working for the militias or to put money in their pocket."
U.S. military reports on the Iraqi police often read like a who's who of the two main militias in Iraq: the Mahdi Army, also known as Jaish al-Mahdi or JAM, and the Badr Organization, also known as the Badr Brigade or Badr Corps. [********]
One document on the Karrada district police chief says: "I strongly believe that he is a member of Badr Corps and tends to turn a blind eye to JAM activity." Another explains that the station commander in the al-Amil neighborhood "is afraid to report suspected militia members in his organization due to fear of reprisals."
American soldiers said that although they gather evidence of police ties to the militias and present it to Iraqi officials, no one has ever been criminally charged or even lost their jobs.
Among the worst of the suspected Mahdi Army members is Lt. Col. Musa Khadim Lazim Asadi, station commander of the Ghazaliyah patrol police. "He has stated to us that he does not believe the Mahdi Militia is a bad organization," a military report said. "He had a picture of Sadr in his vehicle until we said something about it."
"He is a cancer to the station and the people of Ghazaliyah," the report concluded.
On a recent visit to the blue-and-white facility, located in one of the most violent parts of the city, even other police officers in the building complained that Asadi and his subordinates are corrupt and tied to the militias. "They steal vehicles and kill people," said 1st Lt. Sarmad Sabar Dawood, assistant commander for the local police, which is independent of the patrol police. "In fact, we are investigating Colonel Musa and the patrol police for criminal behavior."
But when U.S. military officials visited Asadi on a recent afternoon, he not only denied that his men were involved in the militias or crime but refused to acknowledge that there had been any killings in the area at all. Although scores of tortured bodies are often found in the neighborhood, Asadi said the murders all took place somewhere else.
At his response, 1st Lt. Cadetta Bridges shook her head in disbelief. "This guy is a crook and a liar," said Bridges, 31, of Upper Marlboro. "They're all crooks and liars."
Shaw, 32, of Alexandria, turned the conversation to the confusing division of Iraqi police forces into three autonomous parts: patrol police, regular police who investigate cases, and traffic police. The U.S. military has proposed reorganizing the force so that there is one commander in each neighborhood responsible for all the police. So far, Shaw said, Iraqi officials have not been receptive.
The problems with the tripartite division were evident in Sholeh. Sitting in Asadi's second-floor office, Shaw asked him if he worked with the regular police on the ground floor.
"Of course not," Asadi replied brusquely. "Why do we need to coordinate with them?"
Visibly exasperated, Shaw and Bridges quickly left and headed for a police station in Mansour, a relatively safe neighborhood in central Baghdad, to meet with a police major they described as one of the better cops they'd encountered. [***] [****] [*****]
When Shaw asked what the police in Mansour were doing to reduce the violence, the major said: “There is nothing the police can do. The only solution is to create a government that will take away the militias. Then everything will be fine.”
The major, who asked to be identified as Abu Ahmed because he feared for his safety if his full name was published, sat in a closet-size room that he hardly ever leaves. Orange-and-brown sheets covered a tiny bed next to his desk.
“I can’t go home or I’ll be killed,” said Abu Ahmed, who sees his children only when police officers can bring them to the station. He sighed as he looked at photographs of two recently assassinated officers. “And it’s getting worse. So much worse.”
“I think I must quit soon,” he said quietly.
Arabi Araf Ali, a police officer in the southern neighborhood of Dora, said police do little more than pick dead bodies up off the street. In the station’s parking lot nearby, a colleague washed off a police truck that had just been used to retrieve the corpses of five Shiite men slaughtered that morning. Brain matter littered the ground.
“Some parts of Dora are so dangerous,” Ali added, “that we cannot even pick up the bodies there without Americans. We are just too afraid.”
The Iraqi police are not the only ones who feel unsafe. The American soldiers and civilians who train the Iraqis are constantly on guard against the possibility that the police might turn against them. Even in the police headquarters for all of western Baghdad, one of the safest police buildings in the capital, the training team will not remove their body armor or helmets. An armed soldier is assigned to protect each trainer.
“I wouldn’t let half of them feed my dog,” 1st Lt. Floyd D. Estes Jr., a former head of the police transition team, said of the Iraqi police. “I just don’t trust them.”
Jon Moore, the deputy team chief, said: “We don’t know who the hell we’re teaching: Are they police or are they militia?”
The trainers agree that Ani, the new police chief for western Baghdad, is an honest cop who is trying to get the police force in order. But Ani acknowledged in a meeting with U.S. officials that he does not plan to root out and fire militia members.
“I don’t have that power,” he said. “There are people higher than me that control that.”
Among Ani’s bosses are the police chief for all of Baghdad, who has been linked to the Mahdi Army, and the minister of the interior, who is a member of Sadr’s political bloc.
“I think he’s trying to do the right thing,” said Lt. Col Aaron Dean, the battalion commander, as he walked to his Humvee after the meeting with Ani. “But I know they’re all under certain influences. If you take a big stand against the militias, they’re going to come after you.” [**********]
The difficulty of eliminating corruption and militias from the Iraqi police forces can be exasperating for the American soldiers who risk their lives day after day to train them. "We can keep getting in our Humvees every day, but nothing is going to work unless the politicians do their job and move against the militias," [*********]Moore said.
Sitting in the battalion's war room with four other members of his team, Moore estimated it would take 30 to 40 years before the Iraqi police could function properly, perhaps longer if the militia infiltration and corruption continue to increase. His colleagues nodded.
"It's very, very slow-moving," Estes said.
"No," said Sgt. 1st Class William T. King Jr., another member of the team. "It's moving in reverse."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:56 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/middleeast/31iraq.html
October 31, 2006
Spate of Bombs Sweeps Baghdad; Cleric Faults U.S.
By SABRINA TAVERNISE [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [Maliki govt has reacted badly but surely must see the writing on the wall] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [************]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 30 — A spasm of violence seized the capital on Monday. Forty-six Iraqis were killed in six bombings across the city and a moderate Sunni Arab figure was gunned down by two men on motorcycles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/middleeast/31iraq.html
October 31, 2006
Spate of Bombs Sweeps Baghdad; Cleric Faults U.S.
By SABRINA TAVERNISE [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [Maliki govt has reacted badly but surely must see the writing on the wall] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [************]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 30 — A spasm of violence seized the capital on Monday. Forty-six Iraqis were killed in six bombings across the city and a moderate Sunni Arab figure was gunned down by two men on motorcycles.
The American toll for October rose to 102, the highest since January 2005, with the military’s announcement of three more deaths.
In a single deadly strike, 33 Shiite laborers gathered around food stalls in a Sadr City square were killed when a bomb in a bag exploded at 6 a.m., scattering glasses of tea and remains of breakfasts. The workers had been waiting for offers of $10-a-day jobs.
The attacks continued as the American national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, met in Baghdad with Iraqi officials. He came to discuss the work of a committee set up by the leaders of the two governments on Sunday, whose aim includes giving Iraqis more control over their troops.
The attack in Sadr City came despite the American Army cordon that has been in place for a week in a search for a missing soldier, whom the military believes was taken there. It was the fifth bomb in the area, Al Mudhafar Square, where poor workers line up to seek work, said Haidar Said, a police captain on duty when the bomb exploded.
“Please deliver this message,” said Officer Said. “This city has suffered a lot. These are poor people. We want to reach our voice to the world.”
It is attacks like the one in Sadr City, a Shiite slum, that anger Shiite leaders and put pressure on Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, to press for more of a hand in security, which is controlled almost exclusively by the American military.
The security cordon has caused major traffic jams and cut off much of the movement in and out of the area, drawing the ire of Iraqis. The district is the center of support for Moktada al-Sadr, a radical cleric who called on his followers to fight American troops twice in 2004. In a statement on Monday, Mr. Sadr threatened action if the American cordon continued.
“If this siege continues for long, we will resort to actions that I will have no choice but to take, God willing, and when the time is right,” he said, according to The Associated Press.
Less than an hour after the bomb struck, two men on motorcycles shot and killed Issam al-Rawi, a geology professor, on his way to class. Two associates were wounded. Born in 1949, Mr. Rawi was one of the most moderate voices among Sunni Arabs. But the violence here has radicalized many Iraqis, and moderates who refuse to yield to the militants are either being killed or driven out of the country.
“They murdered one of the few burning candles,” said Abdul Mahdi Talib, dean of the Science College at Baghdad University. “We considered him a man for all.”
In the Green Zone, a walled area where the Iraqi government and American Embassy are located, Mr. Hadley met with his opposite number, Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie. In a statement, Mr. Rubaie said the men discussed the work of a committee established by Mr. Maliki and President Bush to speed training for the Iraqi Army.
The talks felt far away to Officer Said, the police captain, who spent most of the morning gathering bodies in the square in Sadr City. He described a horrific tableau of staggering wounded victims and of bodies missing limbs. Some families lost several members. In one Sadr City hospital, four brothers were being treated. Two died and two others were wounded, with one losing his leg, said a visitor at the hospital.
A politician who supports Mr. Sadr, Nasir al-Saidi, was at the hospital and he spoke angrily against the American military and the Iraqi government as victims were rushed in. [*********]
Officer Said said the cordon actually hindered the authorities’ ability to move the victims to hospitals outside.
One of the wounded blamed the cordon for blocking the Mahdi Army, the grass-roots fighting force of Mr. Sadr’s supporters, and in turn making the neighborhood less safe.
The cordon “forced Mahdi Army members who were patrolling the streets to vanish,” said Ali Abdul Ridha, who was lying next to his brother in a hospital bed, The A.P. reported.
Others, though, said the militia was the reason why the bomb was planted. [*******]
The bombs kept exploding, killing Iraqis in small but steady numbers. Some of the Sadr City victims were taken to Yarmouk Hospital, and there a bomb went off around 2:30 p.m., killing one person and wounding five more. In the Bayaa neighborhood, 4 people were killed and 15 wounded. In Amel, a mixed area, three were killed and six wounded.
In another assassination, Raad Naem al-Jeheshi, a Shiite who led an organization of former Iraqi prisoners, was gunned down in Dora, a Sunni suburb that American troops had swept. [*********]
The militants’ use of government uniforms for deception continued in a particularly grim way on Monday, when a suicide bomber dressed as a police officer passed through two checkpoints in the police headquarters in Kirkuk, north of Baghdad. Three people were killed, including a 5-year-old, the child of a woman who works as a cleaner. Thirteen were wounded. [*******]
Total Iraqi deaths reported for the day was 81, The A.P. said, including bodies found in rivers near Baghdad.
Violence in Baghdad was also responsible for an American’s death, when a member of the 89th Military Police Brigade was killed Monday in the eastern part of the city. Another soldier died when the vehicle in which he was riding was struck by an explosive device south of Baghdad.
The other American whose death was tallied on Monday was a marine who was killed in fighting in Anbar Province the day before.
Hosham Hussein, Sahar Nageeb and Qais Mizher contributed reporting.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:56 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/31/AR2006103100225.html
Maliki Orders Lifting of Checkpoints Around Sadr City
U.S. Disbands Military Blockade After Prime Minister's Announcement
By John Ward Anderson, Ellen Knickmeyer and Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; 11:18 AM [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [Maliki govt has reacted badly but surely must see the writing on the wall] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [************] [ditto]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 31 -- The United States on Tuesday disbanded a five-day-old military blockade of Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City section, meeting a deadline set by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki under pressure from the anti-U.S. cleric whose militia controls the sprawling Shiite slum.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/31/AR2006103100225.html
Maliki Orders Lifting of Checkpoints Around Sadr City
U.S. Disbands Military Blockade After Prime Minister's Announcement
By John Ward Anderson, Ellen Knickmeyer and Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; 11:18 AM [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [Maliki govt has reacted badly but surely must see the writing on the wall] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [************] [ditto]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 31 -- The United States on Tuesday disbanded a five-day-old military blockade of Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City section, meeting a deadline set by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki under pressure from the anti-U.S. cleric whose militia controls the sprawling Shiite slum.
Maliki ordered that the security cordon be lifted hours after cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for a civil disobedience campaign in Sadr City to protest the blockade, which the U.S. launched Wednesday in an effort to find an abducted U.S. soldier and capture a purported Iraqi death squad leader.
Armed fighters of Sadr's Mahdi Army militia had enforced the boycotts, witnesses and residents said -- entering schools to force out children and forcing workers and customers to abandon shops and offices, including government electrical facilities. The checkpoints and barricades had effectively isolated Sadr City from the rest of the capital, making it difficult if not impossible for the slum's 2.5 million residents to travel to schools and jobs elsewhere in the Iraqi capital.
Precisely at 5 p.m. local time (9 a.m. EST), the deadline set by Maliki, U.S. armored personnel carriers pulled away from the roadblocks. Young men in pickup trucks drove through the streets waving banners of the Mahdi Army, and drivers of other vehicles honked their horns in celebration.
It was the Maliki government's greatest demonstration of independence from the occupying U.S. military forces, following two weeks of heated exchanges between Iraqi and U.S. officials. But it was also a reminder of the degree to which Maliki must cooperate with Sadr, who leads the political party that comprises one of the biggest blocs in the governing alliance and effectively runs the Shiite stronghold named for his deceased father.
Maliki has been harshly criticized by U.S. officials here and in Washington for not acting aggressively enough to combat and disarm the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias, some of which have infiltrated Iraqi police stations . At the same time, the U.S. government has been calling on Iraq to embrace timelines and benchmarks for progress, and Maliki instead has stressed his independence from the United States.
U.S. officials in recent days have responded by going to great lengths to underscore the authority of the Iraqi government, saying U.S. forces are here at the behest of a sovereign nation and must do as they are told.
On Monday, a powerful bomb exploded at a busy market in Sadr City, killing at least 26 people and injuring 60. Another bomb exploded outside a Sadr City restaurant on Tuesday, killing four people.
Residents complained that, since U.S. troops were controlling all access to the area, they must have been complicit in the bombings -- a charge denied by a U.S. military spokesman.
Others charged that the strong U.S. military presence had weakened local security by pushing the Mahdi Army at least partly underground.
The family of the kidnapped U.S. soldier has said they believe he was kidnapped by the Mahdi Army -- an assertion that Sadr denies. The soldier's brother-in-law, who was with him at the time of his abduction, has said the kidnappers apparently were taking him to Sadr City after grabbing him.
It was not immediately clear how the reopening of the checkpoints would impact the search for the soldier, whose name has not been released, or the quest to capture the man known as Abu Deraa, who is believed to be a leader of one of Iraq's most notorious Shiite death squads.
The checkpoints, which have been imposed on other neighborhoods as well, created hours-long traffic jams in Sadr City, with angry Iraqi drivers asking why the city is being so disrupted for one missing American soldier, when dozens of Iraqi citizens are killed and kidnapped in the capital every day.
Wilgoren reported from Washington.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:55 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html
October 31, 2006
Iraqi Leader Orders Lifting of Checkpoints
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:25 a.m. ET [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [Maliki govt has reacted badly but surely must see the writing on the wall] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [************]
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. troops on Tuesday abandoned checkpoints around the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City on orders from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the latest in a series of moves by the Iraqi leader to assert his authority with the U.S. administration.[******]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html
October 31, 2006
Iraqi Leader Orders Lifting of Checkpoints
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:25 a.m. ET [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [Maliki govt has reacted badly but surely must see the writing on the wall] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [************]
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. troops on Tuesday abandoned checkpoints around the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City on orders from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the latest in a series of moves by the Iraqi leader to assert his authority with the U.S. administration.[******]
The U.S. military announced the deaths of two soldiers in fighting in the Baghdad area on Monday, one from small arms fire, the other from a roadside bomb. Those brought the number of troops killed in Iraq this month to 103.
U.S. forces disappeared from the checkpoints within hours of the order to remove the around-the-clock barriers by 5:00 p.m. (1400 GMT), setting off celebrations among civilians and armed men gathered on the edge of the sprawling slum that is under the control of the Mahdi Army militia run by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. [**********]
Iraqi troops loaded coils of barbed wire and red traffic cones onto pickup trucks, while small groups of men and children danced in circles chanting slogans praising al-Sadr, who earlier Tuesday had ordered the area closed to the Iraqi government until U.S. troops lifted what he called their ''siege'' of the neighborhood.
Extra checkpoints were set up last week as U.S. troops launched an intensive search for a missing soldier, who has yet to be found.
Shortly after leaving Sadr city, U.S. troops dismantled other checkpoints in the downtown Karradah neighborhood where the soldier had been abducted, loading barbed wire coils onto their Stryker armored vehicles.
Al-Maliki's statement said U.S.-manned checkpoints ''should not be taken except during nighttime curfew hours and emergencies.'' [*********]
''Joint efforts continue to pursue terrorists and outlaws who expose the lives of citizens to killings, abductions and explosions,'' said the statement, issued in al-Maliki's name in his capacity both as prime minister and commander of the Iraqi armed forces.
U.S. troops have increased their presence on Baghdad streets as part of a two-month-old security crackdown. However, they rarely man checkpoints in populated areas where they risk coming under attack or angering residents by conducting vehicle and body searches. [*********]
Al-Maliki's order underscored the his government's reliance of Shiite support and sensitivity to their concerns. [*******] [appears to be co-opted by the Shiia groups and therefore unable to disarm their militia, a prerequisite to stabilizing –iraq] [********]
Besides al-Sadr, the largest Shiite coalition in the 275-member parliament, the United Iraqi Alliance, had also condemned the checkpoints for inflicting what it described as ''collective punishment'' against residents of Baghdad's Shiite neighborhoods.
''Kidnapping a man can't be a pretext for laying siege to these neighborhoods,'' Sheik Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer, a prominent Shiite lawmaker, said at a news conference.
Al-Maliki's threatened to further roil relations with the U.S. that hit a rough patch last week after Al-Maliki issued a string of bitter complaints -- at one point saying he was not ''America's man in Iraq.'' [***********]
Al-Maliki had apparently been angered by a statement from U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad that the prime minister had agreed to set a timeline for progress on reaching security and political goals -- something al-Maliki denied. [*******]He also angrily rebuked the U.S. for a raid on Sadr city targeting an alleged death squad leader in which 10 people were killed.
U.S. concern over the relationship was signaled when National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley showed up unannounced in Baghdad on Monday to meet with al-Maliki and his security chief, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, telling them he ''wanted to reinforce some of the things you have heard from our president.'' [*****************]
Al-Rubaie told the AP late Monday that Hadley was here to discuss the work of a five-man committee that al-Maliki and Bush agreed to Saturday.
Hadley also presented some proposals concerning the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces as well as security plans. U.S. spokesmen could not immediately be reached on Tuesday and it wasn't known whether Hadley had yet returned to Washington.
American voter support for the war at a low point as the Nov. 7 congressional election approaches, and a top aide to al-Maliki said the Iraqi leader was using the Republicans' vulnerability on the issue to leverage concessions from the White House -- particularly the speedy withdrawal of American forces from Iraqi cities to U.S. bases in the country.
Al-Maliki has said he believes that the continued presence of American forces in Iraq's population centers is partly behind the surge in violence. [then why doesn’t he ask them to leave] [after all, the bush administration has gone to great lengths to say his is a sovereign govt] [*******]
His government depends heavily on the backing of a pair of Shiite political organizations and has resisted concerted American pressure to eradicate their private armies -- al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade, the military wing of Iraq's most powerful Shiite political bloc, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI. [********]
Three people were killed and five injured by a car bomb in Sadr City early Tuesday, a day after 33 were killed in a similar attack in the district targeting day laborers lining up for jobs.
Both attacks were carried out despite the U.S. security cordon, bringing accusations from residents that the checkpoints had decreased security by restricting the movement of Mahdi fighters.
At least three Iraqi policemen were also reported killed on Tuesday morning in Baghdad and the volatile western city of Fallujah, police said.
The bodies five unidentified people, including a woman, were found dumped early Tuesday morning in eastern Baghdad, police Maj. Mahir Hamid Mussa said. Those killed had been tied up and blindfolded, with their bodies showing signs of torture, Mussa said.
Five more bodies in similar condition were floating in the Tigris River near Suwayrah, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Baghdad, a clerk at the town morgue, Hadi al-Etabi, said.
Further south, the morgue in the town of Kut reported receiving 10 bodies, including those of five people allegedly killed by U.S. forces in a raid on a house in the Shejeriyah area, 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Baghdad, said Maamoun Ajil al-Robaeie, a morgue employee.
New violence was also reported in Baqouba, a chaotic city north of Baghdad where police and militants fought bloody gunbattles last week. [*******]
Unidentified gunmen killed three people in a downtown market and attacked a police patrol, killing one officer and injuring two others, according to a spokesman for the Diyala provincial police.
Five bodies were found in the Abu Seida district, 25 kilometers (10 hectares) northeast of the city, said the police spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Gunmen killed Sheik Raed Naeem al-Juheishi, the head of a non-governmental organization dedicated to tracing the fate of victims of the former regime of Saddam Hussein, in a drive-by-shooting Monday night in Baghdad's chaotic Dora district, Col. Mohammed Ali said.
Saddam and seven co-defendants -- including a half brother -- have been on trial since Oct. 19, 2005 for their alleged roles in the deaths of about 150 Shiites in Dujail following an assassination attempt against the president in 1982.
A second trial -- for genocide against the Kurds -- began in August and more are expected to follow.
The military said U.S. troops killed five suspected insurgents and detained one on Tuesday morning during a raid in Baghdad targeting suspected associates of a senior of the al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist group.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:55 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/americas/31briefs-001.html
October 31, 2006
World Briefing | Americas
Canada: U.S. Sends Reply, but No Apology, in Case of Deported Man
By CHRISTOPHER MASON [US-Canada relations] [followup] [extraordinary renditions] [used a few times during Clinton but have skyrocketed in use since 9/11] [********]
The government is “satisfied” with an assurance from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Canada will be consulted in the future about any Canadians who may be sent to a third country against their will, [******]said André Lemay, a spokesman for the foreign minister, Peter MacKay. Ms. Rice made the pledge in a letter to Canadian officials on Friday in response to an official protest lodged Oct. 6 over the treatment of Maher Arar, the Canadian seized in New York on inaccurate terrorism allegations and delivered to Syria for interrogation. [******]Ms. Rice did not address a request that the United States acknowledge “inappropriate conduct.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/americas/31briefs-001.html
October 31, 2006
World Briefing | Americas
Canada: U.S. Sends Reply, but No Apology, in Case of Deported Man
By CHRISTOPHER MASON [US-Canada relations] [followup] [extraordinary renditions] [used a few times during Clinton but have skyrocketed in use since 9/11] [********]
The government is “satisfied” with an assurance from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Canada will be consulted in the future about any Canadians who may be sent to a third country against their will, [******]said André Lemay, a spokesman for the foreign minister, Peter MacKay. Ms. Rice made the pledge in a letter to Canadian officials on Friday in response to an official protest lodged Oct. 6 over the treatment of Maher Arar, the Canadian seized in New York on inaccurate terrorism allegations and delivered to Syria for interrogation. [******]Ms. Rice did not address a request that the United States acknowledge “inappropriate conduct.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:54 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/asia/31korea.html
October 31, 2006
China May Be Using Oil to Press North Korea
By JOSEPH KAHN [DPRK] [wmd] [China slowed the petroleum supply] [apparently going to return to the negotiation table] [doubtless, they assume they return with new cards in their hand] [we shall see] [China has clearly pressured DPRK] [*********]
BEIJING, Oct. 30 — China cut off oil exports to North Korea in September during heightened tension over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, Chinese trade statistics show. [******]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/asia/31korea.html
October 31, 2006
China May Be Using Oil to Press North Korea
By JOSEPH KAHN [DPRK] [wmd] [China slowed the petroleum supply] [apparently going to return to the negotiation table] [doubtless, they assume they return with new cards in their hand] [we shall see] [China has clearly pressured DPRK] [*********]
BEIJING, Oct. 30 — China cut off oil exports to North Korea in September during heightened tension over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, Chinese trade statistics show. [******]
The unusual move — the figures show China sold no crude oil at all to its neighbor in September — reduced sales for the year by about 7 percent from the similar period in 2005. China’s oil exports to North Korea, though uneven, had been averaging about 12,300 barrels a day.
North Korea depends on China for up to 90 percent of its oil supplies, much of which is sold on credit or for bartered goods, according to Chinese energy experts. Any sustained reduction could cripple its isolated and struggling economy. [***********]
There is no clear indication that the September figures represent a policy shift by China on providing vital food and fuel supplies to its neighbor and ally in the Korean War. North Korea conducted a nuclear test on Oct. 9, after the period covered by the latest customs data. [*********]
But North Korea tested ballistic missiles in July, defying sharp warnings from Beijing. China supported a United Nations resolution condemning the missile tests, and urged that North Korea not take any steps that might “worsen tensions.”
China did not announce a reduction in oil exports. The figures were released normally by the customs administration, and the drop in supplies was first reported by Reuters.
It remains possible the statistics are an anomaly or that supplies were cut because North Korea did not need more oil in September. Officials at the China National Petroleum Corporation, which sells oil and manages an oil pipeline to North Korea, declined to comment. [*********]
But several analysts said the reduction suggested that Beijing was using crude oil as leverage to press North Korea to resume negotiations over its nuclear program.
“It is a sharp and sudden reduction at a sensitive time, so political considerations cannot be ruled out,” said He Jun, a Beijing-based energy expert and consultant. “China could be sending a clear signal.”
If that analysis is correct, it suggests that Beijing may seek to punish North Korea in a variety of ways, both open and unspoken, in the aftermath of its nuclear test.
Although China has long protected North Korea against outside pressure, analysts said the nuclear test surprised and angered the Chinese leadership. Many here considered North Korea’s nuclear technology primitive and argued that the country was using the threat of developing atomic bombs as an economic bargaining chip. [*******]
China took the unusual step of supporting United Nations sanctions on North Korea after the test. The sanctions restrict sales of military equipment to the North and allow inspections of North Korean cargo.
Both China and South Korea, North Korea’s main trading partners, have opposed restrictions on economic ties. They have interpreted the United Nations sanctions narrowly and declined to intercept North Korea cargo at sea, as the Bush administration suggested might be necessary to prevent exports of nuclear material.
But last spring Beijing followed Washington’s lead in freezing North Korean assets that the Treasury Department identified as connected to money laundering, according to Bush administration officials. Chinese officials never announced that they had done so, suggesting that they take some tough actions quietly.
Chinese experts on North Korea who took part in discussions of the nuclear issue this month said officials had discussed reducing oil shipments if North Korea continued to defy the outside world. Beijing’s response would be especially sharp if North Korea conducted more nuclear tests or declined to resume negotiations about dismantling its nuclear program, [*********]these experts said.
If Beijing was already using oil to warn North Korea in September, its response to the October test could be more severe.
“I doubt you would see them cutting down on grain shipments, because that affects directly the lives of North Korea’s people,” said Han Xiaoping, who follows China’s energy industry for the Beijing Qunying Enterprise Company. “My own feeling is that North Korea cannot expect normal supplies of crude in this environment.”
China’s crude oil exports, once robust, have fallen sharply in recent years, as it uses more domestic oil to power its surging economy. Beijing has already become the world’s second largest oil importer after the United States, but still exports a small part of what it produces.
North Korea has remained a consistent customer even as China has stopped selling oil to some other countries. Volumes of oil shipped to the North varied in the past year from as low as 7,400 barrels a day to as high as 24,600.
The exception this year and last was February, when China celebrated its extended lunar New Year holiday. North Korea and other customers, including Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Australia, got no Chinese oil supplies during that month in either year, customs figures show.
In September, China exported 125,185 tons of crude, the equivalent of 30,780 barrels a day, for a reported value of $62 million. All of that was exported to the United States, with North Korea receiving nothing.
For the first nine months of 2006, China exported 370,000 tons of crude to North Korea, valued by customs data at $176 million. That represented a 7 percent decline in volume but a 21 percent increase in value, according to the export prices recorded by Chinese customs.
Oil industry experts say the published price for the oil does not reflect discounts that China offers.
North Korea also buys small amounts of oil from Iran.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:54 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/31/AR2006103100257.html
N. Korea Agrees to Return to Nuclear Talks
Bush Says U.S. to Send Teams to Monitor Enforcement of U.N. Sanctions
By Howard Schneider and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; 11:10 AM [DPRK] [wmd] [apparently going to return to the negotiation table] [doubtless, they assume they return with new cards in their hand] [we shall see] [China has clearly pressured DPRK] [below in today’s external, China threatens the petroleum supply] [*********] [ditto]
North Korea agreed today to return to stalled, six-nation talks on its nuclear program following a meeting in Beijing with Chinese and U.S. officials, a development that could ease tensions over the isolated country's testing of a nuclear device three weeks ago.
The seven-hour meeting was brokered by Chinese officials during the past few days, and afterward U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill told reporters in Beijing that the talks could resume by the end of the year. Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator on North Korea, said he thought the stage was now set for "substantial progress" on an issue that has raised the specter of a nuclear arms race in Southeast Asia and the possible sale of nuclear technology to terrorist organizations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/31/AR2006103100257.html
N. Korea Agrees to Return to Nuclear Talks
Bush Says U.S. to Send Teams to Monitor Enforcement of U.N. Sanctions
By Howard Schneider and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; 11:10 AM [DPRK] [wmd] [apparently going to return to the negotiation table] [doubtless, they assume they return with new cards in their hand] [we shall see] [China has clearly pressured DPRK] [below in today’s external, China threatens the petroleum supply] [*********] [ditto]
North Korea agreed today to return to stalled, six-nation talks on its nuclear program following a meeting in Beijing with Chinese and U.S. officials, a development that could ease tensions over the isolated country's testing of a nuclear device three weeks ago.
The seven-hour meeting was brokered by Chinese officials during the past few days, and afterward U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill told reporters in Beijing that the talks could resume by the end of the year. Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator on North Korea, said he thought the stage was now set for "substantial progress" on an issue that has raised the specter of a nuclear arms race in Southeast Asia and the possible sale of nuclear technology to terrorist organizations.
A statement on the Web site of China's Foreign Ministry described the meeting as "candid and in-depth."
In brief remarks at the White House, President Bush said he was pleased at the development and said the United States would send teams of people to the region in coming days to monitor the enforcement of existing U.N. sanctions and also work to make sure that the talks are successful once they resume.
The goal, he said, is "a North Korea that abandons her nuclear weapons programs and her nuclear weapons in a verifiable fashion in return for a better way forward.''
Bush explicitly thanked the Chinese for bringing North Korea to the table. Beijing is a key source of fuel and other goods for North Korea and is felt to have considerable leverage over its communist neighbor.
"It's clear the North Koreans got the message from the Chinese and everybody else," said State Department spokesman Tom Casey, the Associated Press reported.
North Korea faced widespread condemnation after testing a small nuclear device earlier this month, a step that even its allies in Beijing found provocative. The United Nations imposed sanctions restricting trade in arms and technology that could be used in the nuclear program, and stemming the flow of luxury goods favored by North Korean leaders. Some nations went further: South Korea earlier had curtailed food aid, and Japan and Australia announced banking and other restrictions.
The Pyongyang government has said it wanted to discuss its nuclear program directly with the United States. But Washington insisted it would only negotiate in the context of a six-nation group established in 2003 to try to discourage North Korean leader Kim Jong Il from pursuing a nuclear weapon.
The leader of the impoverished country is considered an unpredictable actor, and the prospect of his possessing a nuclear bomb alarmed South Korea, Japan and others who live within range of North Korean missiles. It also concerns U.S. officials worried he might provide nuclear material or technology to anti-U.S. organizations such as al-Qaeda.
Along with China, the United States and North Korea, the six-party group includes South Korea, Japan and Russia, all of whom welcomed the resumption of the talks. There was no immediate reaction from North Korea.
The six-party discussions produced what appeared to be a breakthrough last year when North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear program in return for aid and guarantees regarding its security.
However, Pyongyang soon walked away from the talks to protest financial sanctions imposed by the United States over North Korea's apparent involvement in counterfeiting U.S. currency.
The country tested new missiles over the summer, firing them off on the Fourth of July, and then detonated the nuclear device in a remote underground site three weeks ago.
Although Pyongyang's rhetoric has been defiant since the Oct. 9 test -- the communist nation said it regarded the United Nations sanctions as an act of war and threatened "catastrophic" reprisals for nations that tried to punish it -- the agreement to resume the talks without condition are a concession to demands made by the United Nations, the United States and others.
Hill said there have been no promises from North Korea about any further tests, although he said it was "self-evident" that the country should not provoke further world reaction at this point.
Hill said the United States did agree to discuss North Korea's concern about the restrictions placed against a Macao bank suspected of helping launder money for the country.
Concerns about North Korean counterfeiting prompted the Treasury Department action, and Hill said Pyongyang would have to abandon its "illicit activities" for progress on that issue.
Beijing has played a key role in events since the test, sending what U.S. officials said was a strong message opposing North Korea's nuclear program and supporting the vote to impose sanctions in the U.N. Security Council.
Late last week, the Chinese government contacted the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and proposed a trilateral meeting involving North Korea, the United States and China. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice authorized Hill to cut short meetings he had in the South Pacific and pursue the talks, even though expectations were low.
Hill had seven hours of meetings with the Chinese and the North Koreans, sometimes just one-on-one with Kim Gye Gwan, the North Korean deputy foreign minister who is Hill's counterpart in the talks.
In what were described as businesslike sessions, Hill told Kim that the United States would never accept North Korea as a nuclear power, nor would any other nation, according to a senior U.S. official. Hill also told Kim that the U.N. Security Council resolution imposed after North Korea's nuclear test was an "international obligation" and not up for discussion before the talks resumed.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:53 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/asia/01koreacnd.html
October 31, 2006
North Korea Decides to Return to Nuclear Talks
By CHOE SANG-HUN [DPRK] [wmd] [apparently going to return to the negotiation table] [doubtless, they assume they return with new cards in their hand] [we shall see] [China has clearly pressured DPRK] [below in today’s external, China threatens the petroleum supply] [*********]
SEOUL, South Korea, Oct. 31 — North Korea agreed today to return to the stalled six-nation talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons programs, ending an 11-month boycott, American, [*********]South Korean and Chinese officials said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/asia/01koreacnd.html
October 31, 2006
North Korea Decides to Return to Nuclear Talks
By CHOE SANG-HUN [DPRK] [wmd] [apparently going to return to the negotiation table] [doubtless, they assume they return with new cards in their hand] [we shall see] [China has clearly pressured DPRK] [below in today’s external, China threatens the petroleum supply] [*********]
SEOUL, South Korea, Oct. 31 — North Korea agreed today to return to the stalled six-nation talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons programs, ending an 11-month boycott, American, [*********]South Korean and Chinese officials said.
The development raised hopes for an easing of the tensions created by North Korea’s Oct. 9 nuclear test. The agreement to resume the talks “soon” was reached during a three-way meeting in Beijing among chief nuclear negotiators from the United States, North Korea and China, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a brief statement posted on its Web site.
The chief American envoy to North Korea, Christopher Hill, told a news conference in Beijing that the talks could resume “in November or possibly December,” news services reported. [*******]
Mr. Hill also said that the Pyongyang regime had reaffirmed its commitment to a preliminary agreement reached in the six-nation talks last year, shortly before the talks collapsed. He said that he expected “substantial progress” once the talks resume. [********]
But Mr. Hill emphasized that the sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council after the nuclear test would remain in place, and he cautioned North Korea against conducting a second test. [*******]
“I think it’s self-evident they should not engage in provocative behavior,” he said.
The statement by the Chinese foreign ministry said that the agreement followed a discussion among Mr. Hill and Chinese and North Korean officials that was initiated by Beijing.
The statement described that discussion as “a frank and deep exchange of views on continuing the six-party talks.”
“The three parties agreed to carry out the six-party talks in the near future, at the six parties’ convenience,” it said.
The agreement represents a small breakthrough for China, host to the six-nation talks, as well as for the United States, which has called for an unconditional return to the negotiating table by North Korea. [*******]But analysts cautioned against expecting quick progress, because the differences between Washington and Pyongyang remain wide.
Still, the South Korean government, which has called for diplomacy to end the crisis, welcomed the announcement.
“We hope that the six-party talks will resume soon, as agreed upon now, and that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula will be achieved,” said Choo Kyu Ho, spokesman of the South Korean Foreign Ministry.
The brief Chinese statement did not clarify on what conditions, if any, North Korea had agreed to return to the talks, which also include South Korea, Japan and Russia. But the agreement came as the United Nations Security Council was working on a detailed plan for the financial and arms sanctions it decided to impose on the isolated Communist state following its nuclear test. [**********]
North Korea also badly need foods assistance. South Korea curtailed its food aid to the North after the Pyongyang regime conducted a missile test in July, and international aid groups warn that the country may now face another famine unless it receives foreign assistance. [***********]
After the nuclear test, countries like Australia and Japan ordered their financial institutions to block transactions by companies suspected of having links to North Korea’s weapons programs.
The six-party talks began in 2003 with the aim of ending North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. In a session in September 2005, the talks produced a preliminary outline of economic benefits and security guarantees that the North would receive in return for ending its nuclear weapons programs. But the talks disintegrated at the next session in November, when North Korea protested a United States crackdown on North Korean bank accounts in Macau. [***********]
Washington insisted that the crackdown was a law-enforcement effort aimed at money laundering and illicit trade. But North Korea saw it as evidence that the United States was trying to “stifle” or “topple” the Pyongyang regime, [******]and has insisted that it would never return to six-nation talks until the financial sanctions were lifted.
“After its nuclear test, North Korea believes that it can go back to the negotiating table and play a bigger game for bigger concessions from the United States,” [*****]said Nam Sung Wook, a North Korea expert at Korea University in Seoul. “By bowing to the Chinese and South Korean demands for a return to the talks, North Korea can also expect economic assistance to start flowing against from the two neighbors.” [*******]
“But the talks will be tough going,” Mr. Nam said.
In the previous rounds of talks, North Korea demanded that the United States construct civilian nuclear power plants in the North to replace its nuclear program, which it has insisted was originally meant for generating power. Washington rejected the demand, and insisted that the North first start dismantling its nuclear facilities in a verifiable way before expecting any economic and diplomatic rewards.
The nuclear weapon test earlier this month added urgency to efforts to restart the six-nation talks. Left intact, the North’s nuclear weapons program would offer Japanese hawks a compelling reason for demanding that Japan beef up its military and build its own nuclear weapons, experts said. That, in turn, would probably prompt South Korea, a historical rival of Japan, to seek its own nuclear arsenal. [********]
China, which is by far North Korea’s biggest ally, benefactor and trading partner, has been under American pressure to use its influence to coax North Korea back to the negotiating table. Bush administration officials say that North Korea is a leading seller of missile technology to other countries, and given its history of flouting international treaties, could easily turn to selling nuclear materials.
The United States and China both want to maintain the current military balance in Northeast Asia by ending the North’s nuclear weapons programs. But they have differed on how to go about it. While Washington and Japan moved swiftly to impose sanctions on North Korea, China has worried that harsh economic blockades would destabilize the communist regime, which it wants to sustain as a buffer against American influence.
President Bush, who came under heavy criticism at home after the North Korean test, faced significant political pressure to agree to new talks. [********]
Like China, South Korea has a significant trade and aid relationship with the North and opposes economic sanctions against it. But it has been bluntly critical of the nuclear test, and it backed the U.N. sanctions.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said before the agreement was announced that China had no plans to cut off aid or trade flows to North Korea. Though Chinese oil trade data released on Monday indicated that China sent no crude to North Korea at all in September, Mr. Liu denied that the statistics signaled any change in policy.
The North relies on China for nearly all its oil, but its missile test in July and, especially, the nuclear test in October, both carried out despite pleas from Beijing for restraint, have strained the North’s relations with Beijing. [*******]
David Lague contributed reporting from Beijing, and John O’Neil from New York.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:53 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/middleeast/31gulf.html
October 31, 2006
U.S.-Led Exercise in Persian Gulf Sets Sights on Deadliest Weapons
By HASSAN M. FATTAH [Persian Gulf] [followup from yesterday] [US and Qatar as I recall conducting joint exercises to interdict wmd] [PSI] [see yesterday’s external and govt] [*********] [also marked on archive as both external and govt] [*******] [use psci 498] [gala]
ABOARD THE OIL TANKER BRAMBLELEAF, in the Persian Gulf, Oct. 30 — More than two dozen countries, including three gulf states, practiced intercepting and searching vessels suspected of trafficking in unconventional weapons in major military maneuvers on Monday that emphasized their coordination and willingness to aggressively block the spread of arms. [********]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/middleeast/31gulf.html
October 31, 2006
U.S.-Led Exercise in Persian Gulf Sets Sights on Deadliest Weapons
By HASSAN M. FATTAH [Persian Gulf] [followup from yesterday] [US and Qatar as I recall conducting joint exercises to interdict wmd] [PSI] [see yesterday’s external and govt] [*********] [also marked on archive as both external and govt] [*******] [use psci 498] [gala]
ABOARD THE OIL TANKER BRAMBLELEAF, in the Persian Gulf, Oct. 30 — More than two dozen countries, including three gulf states, practiced intercepting and searching vessels suspected of trafficking in unconventional weapons in major military maneuvers on Monday that emphasized their coordination and willingness to aggressively block the spread of arms. [********]
The daylong exercise, about 20 miles outside Iranian territorial waters, seemed to signal to Iran, too, that a coalition of Western powers and neighboring states was intent on denying it access to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, [*****]even on its doorstep.
“The message is clear,” said William T. Munroe, the American ambassador to Bahrain. “Responsible countries of the world will not stand aside as proliferators circumvent their international obligations. Responsible countries will not hesitate to deny proliferators a safe haven.” [***********]
American officials insist that the training exercise, planned since January, was not related to tensions over Iran’s uranium enrichment activities. Iran said Friday that it had stepped up enrichment in defiance of a Security Council demand to suspend such work. [**********]
“This is ultimately important because of where it’s happening, when it’s happening and why it’s happening,” said a diplomat observing the exercise, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment. “Iran and Korea are two main targets, but there are many others of interest to this effort.”
Iran warned the exercise’s participants on Monday against acts that could destabilize the region. Military officials taking part in the exercise said that Iranian patrol boats came close to coalition ships in recent days, inspecting their activities and positions. [********]
“We do not consider this exercise appropriate,” Muhammad Ali Husseini, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters on Sunday. United States actions in the region “go in the direction of more adventurism, not of stability and security,” [******]he said.
Instead, Iran has proposed that Persian Gulf states form a group, excluding the United States, to maintain security in the region. [******]
The exercise on Monday was the first training maneuver in the Persian Gulf under the Proliferation Security Initiative, [PSI] [*******]an American-led effort that seeks to coordinate and develop procedures for intercepting smugglers of unconventional weapons.
It was also notable for the involvement of Bahrain, and support by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which sent observers. [******]
The operation began last week with war games to practice intelligence cooperation, then moved to the exercise at sea, which included Australian, British, French and Italian warships and three Bahraini frigates.
Sailors from the Italian and Bahraini Navies swooped onto the British oil tanker Brambleleaf in the choppy Persian Gulf waters, their machine guns waving in a scene that was half show, half test. Each team combed the ship’s hold for almost two hours until they found a hidden simulated nuclear detonator.
Absent, however, were Saudi Arabia, a power in the Persian Gulf, and China. Officials involved in the Proliferation Security Initiative said that many states that had not signed on were largely concerned about legal aspects of the initiative. [*******]
Technically, teams conducting searches under the initiatives can board a ship only if given clearance by its owners or crew. Ships with no flag can be boarded at will. Organizers of the maneuvers said they hoped the exercise would convince those still on the fence of the legality of the initiative. [*********]
The initiative, first proposed by President Bush in May 2003, has held 24 other training exercises in Europe and Asia in the last three years. [************]
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:52 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/africa/31chad.html
October 31, 2006
Chad Villages Hit by Echoes of Ethnic War Across Border
By LYDIA POLGREEN [chad] [sudan’s mess spilling over into chad] [this has happened before with sudan] [it’s also happened with libya meddling in chad, its souther neighbor][former French colonial possession until 1960s following which civil war and then libya’s meddling] [interesting composition religiously: 50% Muslim; 35% Christian] [see October 27--followup] [*****************]
DJEDIDAH, Chad — The account Halima Sherif gave of her family’s ordeal was chillingly familiar in this part of the world. Arab men on horseback rode into her village, shouting racial epithets over the rat-tat-tat of Kalashnikov gunfire.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/africa/31chad.html
October 31, 2006
Chad Villages Hit by Echoes of Ethnic War Across Border
By LYDIA POLGREEN [chad] [sudan’s mess spilling over into chad] [this has happened before with sudan] [it’s also happened with libya meddling in chad, its souther neighbor][former French colonial possession until 1960s following which civil war and then libya’s meddling] [interesting composition religiously: 50% Muslim; 35% Christian] [see October 27--followup] [*****************]
DJEDIDAH, Chad — The account Halima Sherif gave of her family’s ordeal was chillingly familiar in this part of the world. Arab men on horseback rode into her village, shouting racial epithets over the rat-tat-tat of Kalashnikov gunfire.
“They shouted ‘zurga,’ ” she said, an Arabic word for black that carries the connotation of a racial slur. “They told us they would take our land. They shot many people and burned our houses. We all ran away.” [********]
Scenes like this one have been unfolding in the war-ravaged Darfur region of western Sudan for more than three years, and since the beginning of this year Sudanese Arabs have also been attacking Chadian villages just across Sudan’s porous border. [****] [why?] [one reason is jihadis do not recognize international borders: if inside the historic caliphate, it’s Islamic] [******]
But the attacks on Djedidah and nine villages around it in early October took place not in Darfur, or even on Chad’s violent border with Sudan. It took place relatively deep inside Chad, about 60 miles from the border, a huge distance in a place with few roads, where most travel by horse, donkey or foot.
Beyond that, the attack was carried out not by Sudanese raiders from across the border but by Chadian Arabs, according to victims of the attack.
“They were our neighbors,” Ms. Sherif said, as she hurried to collect a few goats from the charred remains of her family compound. “We know them. They are Chadian.”
The violence in Darfur has been spilling over into Chad since at least early this year, when cross-border attacks by Sudanese bandits and militias chased more than 50,000 Chadians living in villages along the border from their homes. [******]
But the violence around one of the other interior villages that was attacked, Kou Kou, is different and ominous, aid workers and analysts say. It appears to have been done by Chadian Arabs against non-Arab villages in Chad, and was apparently inspired by similar campaigns of violence by Sudanese Arab militias in Sudan. [*****]The villages are inhabited primarily by farmers from the Daju tribe.
“This is not a cross-border conflict — it is a local interethnic conflict,” [*****]said Musonda Shikinda, head of the United Nations refugee agency’s office in the area. “The perpetrators are their neighbors, not people from abroad.”
About 3,000 people have fled their homes because of the recent attacks, and about 100 have been killed, according to United Nations officials.
Accounts of the attacks from displaced people, most of them living in makeshift camps around Kou Kou, are strikingly similar to the accounts given by non-Arab Darfurian refugees of attacks on their villages by Darfur Arabs.
Yusuf Adif, a 29-year-old farmer from Djedidah, said he heard gunshots while tending his crops in early October. Mr. Adif was ready with a group of other village men to fight off the attackers.
Grabbing their traditional weapons — spears with hand-forged blades, bows with poison-tipped arrows — the men ran toward the gunfire. But they soon fled when they saw dozens of men on horseback with automatic rifles. Some wore white robes, like almost all Muslim men here do, while others wore khaki uniforms of a militia he could not identify, Mr. Adif said. [*****************]
Abdel Karim Gamer, the sheik of Djimese, a nearby village, said that 20 people had been killed in the attack, among them women and children. Five women were abducted, he said, and he feared they had been raped, as so many women in Darfur have been.
“These are Arabs we know,” he said as he sat on a mat near the cobbled-together shelter where he and his family have been living for the past two weeks. “We trade with each other, depend on each other. We never had any problem in the past.” [*******]
Racial and ethnic identity are complex concepts in this region. The terms Arab and African or black are often used to signify the deep tribal divisions that have marked the conflict in Darfur. [************]
Historically the racial divisions had been largely meaningless in the arid scrublands of Darfur and eastern Chad, but racial ideology, stirred up among landless nomadic Arabs in Darfur against non-Arab farmers the 1980s, laid the groundwork for the present grim conflict over land, resources and identity in Darfur. [*******]
The ethnic makeup of eastern Chad is similar to that of Darfur. [*****]The border between Chad and Sudan has little practical meaning for the villagers who live, trade and marry across the border, and whose families and tribes often span both Chad and Darfur.
The latest violence here raises fears that Darfur’s troubles could ignite a broader conflict between nomadic Arab tribes and mostly settled non-Arab tribes across this broad swath of the sub-Saharan region.
If the racial and ethnic conflict that has infected Darfur is being copied by Chad’s Arabs, then the violence spreading beyond Darfur’s borders could presage even further regional conflict, [*******]said David Buchbinder, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who specializes in Chad.
“The racial ideology is spreading, and that is very dangerous,” [*****]Mr. Buchbinder said.
Zachariah Ismael, who fled Ambash, one of the villages that was attacked, with his wife and six children, said of the conflict across the border, “Now it has come for us, too.”
He was building a bigger, sturdier shelter to replace the one he had constructed when they arrived two weeks earlier. His crop of maize and dura wheat would soon need to be harvested, but he despaired of being able to reach his fields, half a day’s walk away.
“I think we will be here for a long time,” he said. “We cannot go home.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:51 PM | Permalink

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs31.4oct31,1,7086153.story?coll=la-headlines-world
WORLD IN BRIEF / AUSTRALIA
Controversial cleric takes leave
From Times Wire Reports
October 31, 2006 [Australia] [Lebanese Muslim Association who owns mosque bars its top cleric from preaching for 3 months] [see October 27 external] [followup] [*****]
Australia's most prominent Islamic cleric took a leave and conceded that his comparison of women without head scarves to "uncovered meat" was not appropriate in Western society. [********]

Sheik Taj Aldin Hilali was admitted to a Sydney hospital after he fainted at a meeting with mosque administrators.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs31.4oct31,1,7086153.story?coll=la-headlines-world
WORLD IN BRIEF / AUSTRALIA
Controversial cleric takes leave
From Times Wire Reports
October 31, 2006 [Australia] [Lebanese Muslim Association who owns mosque bars its top cleric from preaching for 3 months] [see October 27 external] [followup] [*****]
Australia's most prominent Islamic cleric took a leave and conceded that his comparison of women without head scarves to "uncovered meat" was not appropriate in Western society. [********]

Sheik Taj Aldin Hilali was admitted to a Sydney hospital after he fainted at a meeting with mosque administrators.

Pressure on him had increased when a newspaper reported this week that he had used a radio interview to endorse militants in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories. [*********]

Prime Minister John Howard said the cleric might have broken laws against incitement of violence against Australian soldiers deployed overseas. [**********]

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:51 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/africa/31algeria.html
October 31, 2006
3 Are Killed in 2 Truck Bombings in Algeria
By REUTERS [Algeria] [it’s been sometime since any openly hydra activity in Algeria] [the Bouteflieki regime seemed to have stabilized the situation] [now comes Jihadis again] [what’s prompting it?] [*************] [use psci 469]
ALGIERS, Oct. 30 (Reuters) — Three people were killed and 24 wounded in truck bomb attacks 10 minutes apart on two Algerian police stations, [*****] the police said Monday. [hydra m.o.: simultaneity of multiple targets; complex logistics] [******]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/africa/31algeria.html
October 31, 2006
3 Are Killed in 2 Truck Bombings in Algeria
By REUTERS [Algeria] [it’s been sometime since any openly hydra activity in Algeria] [the Bouteflieki regime seemed to have stabilized the situation] [now comes Jihadis again] [what’s prompting it?] [*************] [use psci 469]
ALGIERS, Oct. 30 (Reuters) — Three people were killed and 24 wounded in truck bomb attacks 10 minutes apart on two Algerian police stations, [*****] the police said Monday. [hydra m.o.: simultaneity of multiple targets; complex logistics] [******]
The apparently coordinated overnight blasts in the town of Reghaia, 20 miles east of the capital, and the eastern Algiers suburb of Dergana were the first bombings of police stations in Algeria in more than five years. [******]The police said the three dead, a woman and two men, were all civilians. A police statement said a stolen vehicle was used in each attack.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but experts, residents and security officials blamed the main rebel group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, [********] which has consistently refused peace overtures from the government.
Sporadic clashes between Islamist guerrillas and security forces normally take place in isolated rural areas of the country of 33 million.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:50 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/africa/31briefs-006.html
October 31, 2006
World Briefing | Africa
Somalia: Elopements Banned
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS [Somalia] [Islamists have supplanted warlords] [apparently some foreign Jihadis there as well] [the result is a spate of refugees] [as the Islamists and Jihadis have brought order out of chaos, invariably some Somalis are resistant] [bit by bit the Islamists are imposing their religious standards] [historically Somalis have been relatively secular] [*******]
The Islamists who control much of the country have banned Somalis from marrying without the consent of their parents, saying such unions violate Islam. [******] The practice of masaafo, roughly equivalent to eloping, is common because it allows couples to wed without their parents scuttling the union because they deem the dowry too small. Weddings often cost up to a year’s savings for an average Somali.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/africa/31briefs-006.html
October 31, 2006
World Briefing | Africa
Somalia: Elopements Banned
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS [Somalia] [Islamists have supplanted warlords] [apparently some foreign Jihadis there as well] [the result is a spate of refugees] [as the Islamists and Jihadis have brought order out of chaos, invariably some Somalis are resistant] [bit by bit the Islamists are imposing their religious standards] [historically Somalis have been relatively secular] [*******]
The Islamists who control much of the country have banned Somalis from marrying without the consent of their parents, saying such unions violate Islam. [******] The practice of masaafo, roughly equivalent to eloping, is common because it allows couples to wed without their parents scuttling the union because they deem the dowry too small. Weddings often cost up to a year’s savings for an average Somali.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:50 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000176.html
Pakistan Strike Called Response To U.S. Reports
Attack on School That Killed 80 Aimed at Al-Qaeda, Officials Say
By Pamela Constable and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A15 [Pakistan] [new Afghanistan] [followup to yesterday’s raids and the protests thereafter] [Jihaids central] [*******************] [use psci 469] [ditto]
A missile strike that killed close to 80 people at an Islamic school in Pakistan early Monday was launched because of U.S. intelligence reports that senior al-Qaeda figures were hiding there, Pakistani intelligence officials said. [*****] [does this mean the reconisance planes were US?] [implicitly] The strike generated angry protests by religious and tribal leaders, who accused the government of doing Washington's bidding at the cost of Pakistani lives.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000176.html
Pakistan Strike Called Response To U.S. Reports
Attack on School That Killed 80 Aimed at Al-Qaeda, Officials Say
By Pamela Constable and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; A15 [Pakistan] [new Afghanistan] [followup to yesterday’s raids and the protests thereafter] [Jihaids central] [*******************] [use psci 469] [ditto]
A missile strike that killed close to 80 people at an Islamic school in Pakistan early Monday was launched because of U.S. intelligence reports that senior al-Qaeda figures were hiding there, Pakistani intelligence officials said. [*****] [does this mean the reconisance planes were US?] [implicitly] The strike generated angry protests by religious and tribal leaders, who accused the government of doing Washington's bidding at the cost of Pakistani lives.
The country's major Islamic party charged that U.S. military planes carried out the attack, which demolished the school, located near the border with Afghanistan. Pakistani and U.S. military officials denied that, saying the raid was the work of Pakistani helicopter gunships and forces, though U.S. intelligence had prompted it. [*********]
“This was a training camp, and they had been warned to stop their activities,” said Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington. “They did not pay heed, so they were hit by our gunships and all the people there were killed. There will be a lot of unhappy or misguided people saying we are killing our own people for the sake of the Americans, but we had a commitment to fight terrorism on our soil, and we made a decision.” [**************]
Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are widely believed to be hiding in the rugged Afghan-Pakistani border region, [******]home to fiercely independent tribal peoples. Afghan officials also contend that Pakistan's side of the border is serving as a sanctuary for newly aggressive Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.
The attack in the Bajaur tribal district near the village of Khar caused the highest number of deaths of any single anti-extremist attack in Pakistan since 2001, when Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, agreed to side with the United States to help overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. [*******]
The raid on the Islamic studies school, known as a madrassa, seemed to represent an abrupt shift from the Musharraf government's recent policy of seeking peaceful negotiations with extremists in the border regions. [******]In the past several months, two peace deals were signed in the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan after sustained attacks there by the Pakistani military drew strong local opposition and caused heavy casualties on both sides.
A third such agreement was due to be signed in Bajaur this week, but it seemed almost certain to collapse now. [******]Monday's events are bound to compound problems for Musharraf, whose domestic political support has been steadily eroding.
"What a stupid operation, just one day before an accord between the local Taliban and the government. It has killed the entire spirit and the peaceful atmosphere in the tribal areas," said Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khan, who heads one of two major religious parties in parliament. Protesters who turned out in many towns Monday pledged to return to the streets Tuesday.
A similar strike occurred in January, when U.S. missiles devastated a nearby compound that authorities believed Zawahiri was visiting. Officials initially denied, then acknowledged, reports that a U.S. drone had carried out the strike, which killed 18 people. [*******]The incident set off protests across Pakistan and forced the Musharraf government to publicly condemn the U.S. action.
Among those killed Monday was Maulana Liaquat, an Islamic cleric allied with al-Qaeda who is believed to have hosted a dinner for Zawahiri in January that led to the missile strike in Damadola village. [******]At a mass funeral for Liaquat and his followers Monday afternoon, news agencies reported, thousands of armed men shouted, "Down with Musharraf! Down with Bush!"
Some religious politicians from the area rejected the official version of events, saying it bore strong similarities to the January attack. [*****]
"Exactly like Damadola, there was a big flare before a missile hit the madrassa with a huge bang. Several minutes later, Pakistan army gunship helicopters appeared on the horizon firing aimlessly," said Sahibzada Haroon-ur Rashid, the local member of parliament from the religious Jamaat-e-Islami party. "I don't have an iota of doubt that the missile was fired from an American drone."
Rashid resigned from parliament in protest Monday, as did another senior leader of the religious political alliance that controls North-West Frontier Province, near Afghanistan. Until now, the country's religious parties had maintained an uneasy alliance with Musharraf, and he often deferred to their demands.
Pakistani officials dismissed comparisons with the January attack. "I can say with 100 percent surety that our forces targeted the terrorist training facility," the chief military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, asserted. "It is wrong to draw any comparison with U.S.-led action in Damadola." [**********]
If Monday's attack was carried out exclusively by Pakistan's military, it suggests that Musharraf -- long squeezed between domestic and international pressure on the terrorism issue -- decided to risk near-certain outrage at home to bolster his faltering credentials as a partner in the United States' global campaign. [*****]
Musharraf visited Washington last month, [******]where he met with President Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the White House. In the past, Musharraf's government has earned U.S. praise for arresting and killing many al-Qaeda fighters. But relations have been cool with Karzai because of the Afghan accusations that Pakistan is harboring Taliban fighters.
According to Durrani, the Pakistani ambassador, the Washington meetings included pledges by Pakistan to make a strong effort to fight terrorism, to involve tribal leaders in both countries in that effort and to share intelligence [*******]with U.S. and Afghan officials.
"Yes, there are sensitivities, but we cannot sit on our haunches and do nothing," he said. "Many times, things we do in the tribal areas are misinterpreted and not popular. But you have to do tough things. This sends the message that we mean business."
One Pakistani intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the religious school in Khar was "serving as nucleus for all pro-al-Qaeda and pro-Taliban activities" in the Bajaur [********]tribal district.
Publicly, Sultan and other Pakistani officials acknowledged that the attack was partly based on foreign intelligence. Privately, other officials said the information was developed solely by Americans. [*******]"They pressed the intelligence hard against our face. . . . A rapid military action was inevitable," one said.
Durrani said no one at the school was younger than 20 and that no children or other civilians were believed killed.
Constable reported from Washington, and Khan reported from Karachi, Pakistan.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:49 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/asia/31pakistan.html
October 31, 2006
Pakistan Says It Killed 80 Militants in Attack on Islamic School
By SALMAN MASOOD [Pakistan] [new Afghanistan] [followup to yesterday’s raids and the protests thereafter] [Jihaids central] [*******************] [use psci 469]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 30 — The Pakistani military said Monday that it had destroyed a religious school in the Bajaur tribal area, [******] near the border with Afghanistan, killing as many as 80 people it described as militants.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/asia/31pakistan.html
October 31, 2006
Pakistan Says It Killed 80 Militants in Attack on Islamic School
By SALMAN MASOOD [Pakistan] [new Afghanistan] [followup to yesterday’s raids and the protests thereafter] [Jihaids central] [*******************] [use psci 469]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 30 — The Pakistani military said Monday that it had destroyed a religious school in the Bajaur tribal area, [******] near the border with Afghanistan, killing as many as 80 people it described as militants.
Helicopter gunships fired missiles into the Islamic school, or madrasa, in the village of Chingai [****]near the town of Khar, military officials said.
Among those reported killed in the predawn attack was Maulvi Liaqut, a cleric whom the authorities have accused of sheltering local and foreign militants. Mr. Liaqut was affiliated with the banned militant organization Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi, [********] which had recruited thousands of Pakistanis to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan.[*********]
“We received confirmed intelligence reports that 70 to 80 militants were hiding in a madrasa used as a terrorist-training facility, which was destroyed by an army strike, led by helicopters,” [*******]Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, a military spokesman, told The Associated Press.
“No high-value target was present at the time of the attack,” [****] [yesterday some suggestions of al Zawahiri’s aides present] [negated] [***]General Sultan was quoted as saying, referring to top leaders of Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
Some local residents and opposition politicians said there were children in the school, and contended that American planes had participated in the attack. [*****]General Sultan said that no children or women had been in the madrasa and that no American or NATO troops had been involved. [******]
Local television channels showed images of the site, where thousands of people had gathered around the rubble of the madrasa. Armed men were seen standing amid the bodies.
Residents of the nearby village of Damadola, reached by telephone, said they were awakened Monday at about 5 a.m. by two explosions, and when they went to look, it appeared that the school had been destroyed.
Haroon Rashid, a lawmaker from Jamaat-e-Islami who lives half a mile from the school, said that the two explosions were “so powerful that it shook the earth and rattled our doors and windows.”
Three Pakistan Army helicopter gunships appeared 15 minutes later, firing rockets, [*****]the residents said.
One man, who identified himself as Akhunzada, said local residents had seen planes flying over the area in recent days. [reconisance planes] [were they drones?] [were they US?] [************]
General Sultan was quoted as saying that the attack was carried out after those in charge of the building refused warnings to close it down. The A.P. quoted hospital officials as saying that only three of the people inside the building had survived, and that they were wounded.
Pakistani officials dismissed any suggestions that the United States was behind the attack. [*******]Tasnim Aslam, the spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry, said at a weekly news briefing that the attack was not carried out in response to foreign pressure.
But opposition Islamist parties were quick to denounce the attack and blame America. Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, contended that innocent children had been killed. “Why have they owned this very shameful act of killing the innocent people?” Mr. Ahmed said at a news briefing, contending that the Pakistani Army was covering up for an American attack. [*********]
“This area is not an area where there can be any training camp,” he said. “This is actually tantamount to a declaration of war on Pakistan.” [*********]
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, an alliance of opposition Islamist parties, called for nationwide protests on Tuesday.
Siraj ul-Haq, a cabinet minister from the nearby North-West Frontier Province, condemned the attack and said he would resign from the government in protest, The A.P. reported. “The government has launched an attack during the night, which is against Islam and the traditions of the area,” Mr. Haq said. “This was an unprovoked attack on a madrasa.” [******]
Mr. Liaqut was a known supporter of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He is believed to have removed the bodies of foreign Qaeda militants killed in an airstrike last January in Damadola by an American Predator drone, [******]a pilotless aircraft. The aircraft was operated by the Central Intelligence Agency in an effort to capture Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s second in command.
Mr. Zawahri was not present at the time, but local officials said the attack killed 18 civilians, causing nationwide outrage and galvanizing tribes in the region in their opposition to the government in Islamabad. [********] [followup] [early this year]
The airstrikes on Monday came as tribal elders in Bajaur were beginning talks with pro-Taliban militants, including Mr. Liaqut, in an effort supported by the government to stem cross-border attacks in Afghanistan. Similar overtures in North Waziristan led to an agreement recently with pro-Taliban groups there. [******]
“This attack is very strange, as we were told Sunday that the peace agreement would be signed,” Mohammed Sadiq, a local lawmaker, told The A.P.
Faqir Muhammad, believed to be a deputy of Mr. Zawahri, addressed a crowd of mourners on Monday at a mass funeral for the victims, [*****]The A.P. reported.
The strikes on Monday happened two days after thousands of tribesmen protested in Bajaur, which borders the restive Afghan province of Kunar, against the United States and its Pakistani supporters.
NATO and Afghan officials have repeatedly made accusations that militants linked to the Taliban have taken shelter in the border region to carry out attacks on civilians and Western troops in southern Afghanistan.
The Afghan government has accused Pakistan of allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda to build a power base among the independent tribal population along the border. The Pakistani government has said it has sent more than 80,000 troops to the tribal areas near the Afghan border to flush out the militants. [******]
Mohammed Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 12:49 PM | Permalink

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs30.2oct30,1,5709893.story?coll=la-headlines-world
WORLD IN BRIEF / QATAR
U.S. leads antinuclear naval exercise
From Times Wire Reports
October 30, 2006 [US-Qatar] [interesting anti nuke naval excercises] [sounds as if part of PSI] [**************] [use psci 498] [gala]

A U.S.-led naval training exercise aimed at testing procedures to block smuggling of nuclear weapons began in the Persian Gulf, the first of its kind since North Korea's nuclear test and amid tensions over Iran's nuclear program. [********]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs30.2oct30,1,5709893.story?coll=la-headlines-world
WORLD IN BRIEF / QATAR
U.S. leads antinuclear naval exercise
From Times Wire Reports
October 30, 2006 [US-Qatar] [interesting anti nuke naval excercises] [sounds as if part of PSI] [**************] [use psci 498] [gala]

A U.S.-led naval training exercise aimed at testing procedures to block smuggling of nuclear weapons began in the Persian Gulf, the first of its kind since North Korea's nuclear test and amid tensions over Iran's nuclear program. [********]

Iran called the two-day maneuvers "adventurist," but the Foreign Ministry said the Islamic Republic's response would be "rational and wise." [******]

The maneuvers were taking place under the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, which is designed to counter trafficking in weapons of mass destruction, [*******]their delivery systems and related materials, the U.S. Navy said.

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:16 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900545.html
Losing Nicaragua, Again
By Robert D. Novak
Monday, October 30, 2006; A17 [oped] [novak freeking over ortega’s return] [get over it] [the cold war is over] [newer threats much more salient] [*********]
Oliver North and his associates were leaving Managua last Tuesday on a private plane after a dramatic surprise visit when they heard news they could scarcely comprehend. The State Department had just issued a "public announcement" that, in effect, warned Americans not to travel to Nicaragua because of the prospect for "violent demonstrations" and "sporadic acts of violence" leading up to the Nov. 5 presidential election there.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900545.html
Losing Nicaragua, Again
By Robert D. Novak
Monday, October 30, 2006; A17 [oped] [novak freeking over ortega’s return] [get over it] [the cold war is over] [newer threats much more salient] [*********]
Oliver North and his associates were leaving Managua last Tuesday on a private plane after a dramatic surprise visit when they heard news they could scarcely comprehend. The State Department had just issued a "public announcement" that, in effect, warned Americans not to travel to Nicaragua because of the prospect for "violent demonstrations" and "sporadic acts of violence" leading up to the Nov. 5 presidential election there.
The North group had seen nothing in Nicaragua to justify a travel advisory, normally issued when life and limb of visiting Americans are at risk. U.S. and Nicaraguan security officials alike are dumbfounded, and the State Department did not explain it to me. That buttresses suspicion that the U.S. government wants to keep away meddling Americans like North, who seek to influence an election that now appears likely to return Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas to power after an absence of 16 years.
The seemingly unavoidable outcome of next Sunday's election is a Nicaraguan tragedy, losing at the ballot box what was won two decades ago by the blood of contra fighters and the risking of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Because the anti-Sandinista vote is split, Ortega figures to return his Marxist-Leninist party -- now backed by Hugo Chávez's Venezuelan petrodollars -- to the presidential palace. Apart from the misery to be inflicted on the Nicaraguan people, this reflects the deterioration of U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere under the Bush administration.
Nicaraguan law permits the election of a president with as little as 35 percent of the vote if he is five percentage points ahead of his nearest competitor. That now seems probable with the anti-Sandinista vote divided between two major candidates: former vice president Jose Rizo and banker Eduardo Montealegre. The former contras blame this state of affairs on the Bush administration in general and, specifically, on the U.S. ambassador in Managua, Paul Trivelli.
The looming political fiasco in Nicaragua comes as no surprise. Adolfo Calero, a Washington-based contra leader in the '80s, returned to the U.S. capital in April to issue a warning. He asserted that tacit U.S. support for Montealegre and opposition to Rizo was a horrendous political error and that the only hope to hold off the Sandinistas was to support Rizo. But official doors were closed to Calero. The occasion of Calero's visit was a reunion of contra leaders, their former CIA handlers and Ollie North, who as a Marine lieutenant colonel ran the Nicaraguan account at the Reagan White House. The festivities were marred by fear and frustration over the coming election.
North went public in his syndicated column of Oct. 6. He contended that "official U.S. policy in Nicaragua has been blind to the realities of Nicaraguan politics." He said Ambassador Trivelli "has to stop pressuring private sector leaders with potential reprisals" for backing Rizo and his Liberal Party. North called on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to visit Managua and meet with all anti-Sandinista candidates -- including Rizo.
In Washington, North was ignored. He and his colleagues paid a hastily arranged visit to Managua Monday, Oct. 23, and publicly pleaded with Nicaraguans to reject the Sandinistas. The apparent U.S. reaction was Tuesday's official U.S. government warning that implies Americans would do well to stay away from now until April 18. By urging "American residents and visitors in Nicaragua " to be "vigilant," the U.S. government was telling the old contras to keep hands off.
Dewey Claridge, the famous CIA contra handler, put it bluntly in an e-mail to associates: "Just when you think the State Department's level of stupidity has reached bedrock and can go no further, it comes up with this nonsense, probably the [work] of Trivelli and his paranoia that Oliver North's visit to Managua to receive a testimonial and lay a wreath at the tomb of the fallen . . . is the Contra War II."
State Department spokesmen would not elaborate on the basis for the travel advisory, but the department's security personnel and Nicaraguan police privately said they saw none for such a warning. The real warning should be about the return of the Sandinistas, in league with Havana and Caracas, thanks to another failure in U.S. policy.
© 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:15 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
What Was Cheney Thinking?
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, October 30, 2006; 12:56 PM [oped-like piece] [more Cheney fallout on torture] [********]
The one question an unusually dogged White House press corps on Friday demanded that Vice President Cheney address remains unanswered: If he wasn't talking about waterboarding, what did he mean by a "dunk in the water"?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
What Was Cheney Thinking?
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, October 30, 2006; 12:56 PM [oped-like piece] [more Cheney fallout on torture] [********]
The one question an unusually dogged White House press corps on Friday demanded that Vice President Cheney address remains unanswered: If he wasn't talking about waterboarding, what did he mean by a "dunk in the water"?
Cheney last week agreed with a radio interviewer's assertion that "a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives." That sure sounded like an endorsement of waterboarding, a brutal interrogation technique widely viewed as torture.
On Friday, White House press secretary Tony Snow and then Cheney himself insisted that he wasn't talking about waterboarding at all.
But is there any other plausible explanation? We have yet to hear it.
Here's the text of Cheney's radio interview, the audio (from WDAY radio in Fargo, N.D.) and a White House photo .
"Q: Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?
"THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president 'for torture.' We don't torture. "
Here is the text of Cheney's fussily parsed and utterly unconvincing response to a reporter's question on Friday, posed aboard Air Force Two:
"I was being interviewed by a talk show host. I don't talk about techniques and I wouldn't. I have said that the interrogation program for a select number of detainees is very important. It has been I think one of the most valuable intelligence programs we have. And I believe it has allowed us to prevent terrorist attacks against the United States. I did not talk about specific techniques involved --
"Q: So it was not about water boarding, even though he asked you about dunking in the water?
"THE VICE PRESIDENT: I didn't say anything about water boarding. Those were all his comments. He didn't even use that phrase.
"Q: He said dunking in the water.
"THE VICE PRESIDENT: I didn't say anything, he did."
Briefing Room Follies
Here's the text of Friday's wonderfully contentious briefing.
"Q: Tony, your argument that Vice President Cheney didn't know that he was being asked about water boarding or wasn't being asked about water boarding and didn't intend to give an answer that suggested he was saying the United States uses water boarding, it doesn't follow when you read the transcript and it doesn't follow sort of common sense.
"MR. SNOW: Well, I'll tell you what he --
"Q: How can you really make that argument?
"MR. SNOW: I'll tell you what he said. He was asked the question, 'You dunk somebody's head in the water to save a life, is it a no-brainer?' And also, if you read the rest of the answer, he also -- the vice president, who earlier had also been asked about torture, he said, 'We don't torture.'
"Let me give you the no-brainers here. No-brainer number one is, we don't torture. No-brainer number two: We don't break the law, our own or international law. No-brainer number three: The vice president doesn't give away questioning techniques. And number four, the administration does believe in legal questioning techniques of known killers whose questioning can, in fact, be used to save American lives. . . .
"Q: What could 'dunk in the water' refer to if not water boarding?
"MR. SNOW: I'm just telling you -- I'm telling you the vice president's position. I will let you draw your own conclusions, because you clearly have. He says he wasn't talking --
"Q: I haven't drawn any conclusions. I'm asking for an explanation about what 'dunk in the water' could mean.
"MR. SNOW: How about a dunk in the water?
"Q: So, wait a minute, so 'dunk in the water' means what, we have a pool now at Guantanamo, and they go swimming?
"MR. SNOW: Are you doing stand up? (Laughter.) . . .
"Q: What other way is there to interpret this?. . . .
"Q: One follow on this, because what you said in the morning was, 'You think Dick Cheney is going to slip up on something like this?' Is it possible that he's not slipping up at all --
"MR. SNOW: No.
"Q: -- but that he's winking to the base and saying --
"MR. SNOW: No.
"Q: -- 'of course we water board, and of course we'll do anything we need to to get the information because he knows that what they do --
"MR. SNOW: I think you just won the cynical question of the year award. No, I don't.
"Let me put it this way. You got Dick Cheney, who had been head of an intelligence committee. He's been the secretary of defense. He's been the vice president. He's not a guy who slips up, and he's also not a guy who does winks and nods about things that involve matters that you don't talk about for political reasons. Sorry."
ABC News' Ann Compton then got off one of the more memorable briefing-room ripostes in a long time:
"Q: To say that Vice President Cheney doesn't make mistakes like this, he did go up and curse a senator to his face on the Senate floor, and accidentally shot his friend, so he's not perfect. (Laughter.)"
Snow's response: "That's a great line, but it's not germane."
Here's another Snow gambit blowing up in his face:
"MR. SNOW: No, what I'm saying -- no, I think it is because you guys know Dick Cheney. You know the issue. I will go back and I will try to find some language for you.
"Q: We don't know him.
"Q: That's a logical fallacy."
By the end of the briefing, Snow agreed to try to talk to Cheney directly and get some answers.
"MR. SNOW: I'll be happy to talk to him. Okay, I'll talk to him for you, okay? Everybody happy? . . .
"Q: All we're asking is, what's a 'dunk in the water'?"
The Coverage
Jonathan S. Landay writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "Vice President Dick Cheney wasn't referring to the controversial interrogation method of 'water boarding' when he called dunking terror suspects in water 'a very important tool' for obtaining information on al-Qaeda, the White House insisted Friday.
"White House spokesman Tony Snow, however, was unable to clarify what Cheney did mean in a Tuesday radio interview in which the vice president said that dunking detainees in water was 'a no-brainer' if it saved American lives."
Dan Eggen writes in The Washington Post: "Cheney told reporters aboard Air Force Two last night that he did not talk about any specific interrogation technique during his interview Tuesday with a conservative radio host. . . .
"Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters that the vice president was talking literally about 'a dunk in the water,' though neither Snow nor Cheney explained what that meant or whether such a tactic had been used against U.S. detainees. . . .
"Human rights and legal experts said yesterday that even if Snow's version of Cheney's remarks is correct, Cheney's comments are troubling because dunking a terrorism suspect in water as part of an interrogation would actually be more physically dangerous than waterboarding. The tactic also would be illegal under U.S. and international laws, they said. . . .
"Former CIA general counsel Jeffrey H. Smith said Cheney's comments were 'irresponsible' and send a signal to U.S. interrogators that 'the people at the top want you to get rough.'"
Paul Reynolds writes for the BBC News: "The rapport between interviewer and interviewee suggests that they knew very well what they were talking about.
"The mystery of whether water-boarding is allowed also remains. A new U.S. army manual bans its use by military personnel, but the rule does not apply to the CIA. That Mr. Cheney came close at least to approving it should again be no surprise.
"He fought a long battle to maintain the CIA's ability to run secret detention sites around the world and to use interrogation methods which do not, in his view, amount to torture but which do in the eyes of human rights organizations."
Talking Points Memo reader DK writes that "the White House has managed to turn into a story about what Cheney really said or what he really meant by what he said.
"There's no legitimate doubt about what Cheney said and what he meant. Cheney knows it. The president knows it. So do Tony Snow and the whole White House press corps. Yet we have this spectacularly silly dance -- clever people being too clever by half: Snow and Cheney's staff cleverly parsing the interview, and the press cleverly trying to trip up the parsers."
Opinion Watch
From a Cincinnati Enquirer editorial: "Cheney's remarks add to international perceptions that high-placed U.S. officials publicly condemn torture but privately condone it."
From a Miami Herald editorial: "Vice President Dick Cheney says he has been criticized as the 'vice president for torture,' an appellation he apparently dislikes. Small wonder. By appearing to endorse the interrogation technique called 'water-boarding,' which is banned by the U.S. Army and condemned by human-rights experts, he is condoning a form of torture that should never be used by U.S. forces in or out of uniform."
Hendrik Hertzberg writes in the New Yorker: "The 'dunk in water' they were talking about is waterboarding. It has been used by the Gestapo, the North Koreans and the Khmer Rouge. After the Second World War, a Japanese soldier was sentenced to 25 years' hard labor for using it on American prisoners. It is torture, and torture is not a no-brainer. It is a no-souler. The no-brainer is the choice on Election Day."
The Bigger Picture
Jonathan Schell writes in The Nation about the "remarkable yearlong, step-by-step process of trial and error in which the administration, far from concealing its abuses of power, including the torture of prisoners, wound up giving them top billing in its electoral strategy. . . .
"In obedience to the strategy of drawing a distinction between Republicans and Democrats on a non-Iraq issue relating to terrorism, he sought to make just these abuses, including the practice of torture, the core of his party's appeal in the Congressional election. If successful, it would be as if when President Nixon had been accused of illegal wiretapping, lying and obstruction of justice, he had, instead of being subjected to articles of impeachment and thrown out of office, beaten the charge by muscling Congress into legislative complicity with his high crimes and then gone on to lead his party to victory in the next Congressional elections."
Matthias Gebauer and Georg Mascolo interview author Ron Suskind for Der Spiegel online:
"SPIEGEL ONLINE: With all your access to high-level sources, have you come across anyone who still thinks it is a good idea for the U.S. to torture people?
"Suskind: No. Most of the folks involved say that we made mistakes at the start. The president wants to keep all options open because he never wants his hands tied in any fashion, as he says, because he doesn't know what's ahead. But those involved in the interrogation protocol, I think are more or less in concert in saying that, in our panic in the early days, we made some mistakes.
"SPIEGEL ONLINE: Because they could have gotten information through normal interrogations . . . .
"Suskind: . . . yes, and without paying this terrific price, namely: America's moral standing. We poured plenteous gasoline on the fires of jihadist recruitment.
"SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the average interrogator at a Black Site understands more about the mistakes made than the president?
"Suskind: The president understands more about the mistakes than he lets on. He knows what the most-skilled interrogators know too. He gets briefed, and he was deeply involved in this process from the beginning. The president loves to talk to operators."
Lynne Cheney Explodes
Here's the transcript of Wolf Blitzer's acrimonious Friday interview with Lynne Cheney on CNN.
He played an audio clip from her husband's interview.
"BLITZER: It made it sound -- and there's been interpretation to this effect -- that he was, in effect, confirming that the United States used this waterboarding, this technique that has been rejected by the international community that simulates a prisoner being drowned, if you will, and he was, in effect, supposedly, confirming that the United States has been using that.
"L. CHENEY: No, Wolf -- that is a mighty house you're building on top of that mole hill there, a mighty mountain. This is complete distortion; he didn't say anything of the kind.
"BLITZER: Because of the dunking of -- you know, using the water and the dunking.
"L. CHENEY: Well, you know, I understand your point. It's kind of the point of a lot of people right now, to try to distort the administration's position, and if you really want to talk about that, I watched the program on CNN last night, which I thought -- it's your 2006 voter program, which I thought was a terrible distortion of both the president and the vice president's position on many issues."
Yes, rather than actually explain her husband's position, she attacked the media.
Said Cheney: "I mean, I thought Duncan Hunter asked you a very good question and you didn't answer it. Do you want us to win?
"BLITZER: The answer, of course, is we want the United States to win. We are Americans. There's no doubt about that. Do you think we want terrorists to win?
"L. CHENEY: Then why are you running terrorist propaganda?"
Fellow anchor Lou Dobbs gave Blitzer an attaboy:
"DOBBS: Terrific interview with Lynne Cheney. It really -- it was very revealing, in terms of the tone and the tact that's being taken. You know, now we are watching power bridling at truth being spoken to power. Kudos to you, Wolf."
And on Sunday , Blitzer himself had this to say: "I was frankly surprised when she came out swinging on Friday . . . surprised at her sniping at my patriotism."
Cheney's State of Denial
George F. Will writes for Newsweek: "In a recent interview with Vice President Cheney, Time magazine asked, 'If you had to take back any one thing you'd said about Iraq, what would it be?' Selecting from what one hopes is a very long list, Cheney replied: 'I thought that the elections that we went through in '05 would have had a bigger impact on the level of violence than they have . . . I thought we were over the hump in terms of violence. I think that was premature.'
"He thinks so? Clearly, and weirdly, he implies that the elections had some positive impact on the level of violence. Worse, in the full transcript of the interview posted online he said the big impact he expected from the elections 'hasn't happened yet.' 'Yet'? Doggedness can be admirable, but this is clinical.
"Anyway, what Cheney actually said 17 months ago was that the insurgency was in its 'last throes.' That was much stronger than saying we were 'over the hump' regarding violence. Beware of people who misquote themselves while purporting to display candor."
Rove Watch
Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten write in the Los Angeles Times about Karl Rove's plan to win.
"During a whirlwind five-hour trip to bolster an endangered GOP congressman's reelection prospects, White House political guru Karl Rove last week delivered a fiery speech to 500 party activists, then shook every available hand and posed for snapshots like a rock star. He toured suburbs recently trashed by a snowstorm. He also found time to huddle with local strategists.
"But the most significant element of Rove's effort to help four-term Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds keep his job may have occurred behind closed doors, when the White House strategist met with a federal disaster relief official contemplating how to respond to the storm. Four days later, Reynolds announced that President Bush would authorize millions of dollars in federal disaster aid for the area. . . .
"Rove is giving a virtuoso performance designed to prevent the Democrats from taking control of the House and Senate or, if that is no longer possible, to hold down the size of the Democratic victory to make it easier for the GOP to come back in 2008. His plan is three-pronged: to reenergize any conservatives who may be flagging; to make sure the GOP's carefully constructed campaign apparatus is functioning at peak efficiency, and to put the resources of the federal government to use for political gain."
In The Washington Post, Michael Abramowitz profiles Rove, who he writes is "just eight days from having his genius designation revoked -- or upgraded to platinum status. . . .
"Rove reads and makes comments on virtually everything the president is slated to say, plays a pivotal role in shaping the overall White House message and still plays an influential role on policy, according to [Chief of Staff Joshua B.] Bolten. His decades-old relationship with the president appears strong and deep, as the two confer every day, sometimes multiple times, on political developments and other issues. . . .
"Rove voices impatience with the notion that his own reputation is on the ballot. 'I understand some will see the election as a judgment on me,' he said. 'But the fact of the matter is that, look what has been set in motion -- a broader, deeper, strengthened Republican Party, and with an emphasis on grass-roots neighbor-to-neighbor politics, is going to continue.'"
Iraq Watch
Ellen Knickmeyer writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush coaxed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki back into a common front with the U.S. administration Saturday, soothing the Iraqi leader in a 50-minute video link-up after a week of missteps and sharp words exposed tensions between the two allies.
"Both leaders declared themselves 'committed to the partnership' and prepared to work 'in every way possible for a stable, democratic Iraq and for victory in the war on terror,' the White House said in a statement after the Baghdad-Washington teleconference."
Not Bush's Iraq
But for the real story, read Anthony Shadid , writing in The Washington Post about life in Baghdad.
And here's Fareed Zakaria , writing an unusually prescriptive cover story for Newsweek: "[W]ith planning, intelligence, execution and luck, it is possible that the American intervention in Iraq could have a gray ending -- one that is unsatisfying to all, but that prevents the worst scenarios from unfolding, secures some real achievements and allows the United States to regain its energies and strategic compass for its broader leadership role in the world.
"But in order for that to happen, we have to see Iraq as it is now. Not as it once was. Not as it could have been. Not as we hope it will become, but as it is today. There will be ample time to assign blame and debate 'what if's. The urgent task now is ahead of us.
"'We're winning,' President Bush said last week, and then explained his reasoning: 'My view is that the only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done.' That circular definition of success resembles so much of the administration's Iraq policy, one that seems almost determined not to look at the country itself. Iraq, in this view, is a state of mind. If we lose faith, we lose. But there is a real country out there. And it is one in which events are increasingly moving beyond our control.
"In point of fact -- and it is a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless -- America is not winning in Iraq, which means that it is losing."
The Politics of War
Ronald Brownstein writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Bush has absorbed his share of body blows from Democrats criticizing his management of the war. But tagging his rivals as the party of 'defeat' is nonetheless extraordinary language for a commander in chief to use in a political campaign.
"Other wartime presidents have been much more reluctant to argue that only their party was committed to success. . . .
"In 1942, the first election after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was ... emphatic about separating war and politics. Roosevelt spent much of that fall visiting defense facilities on a tour during which he barred press coverage and insisted on being accompanied by Republican as well as Democratic local officials. When the chairman of the Democratic National Committee suggested that a GOP takeover of the House would be bad for the country, Roosevelt publicly rebuked him.
"Even President Nixon displayed more restraint during the 1970 midterm election. Nixon barnstormed the country asking voters to elect members of Congress who would support his war policy. But he took pains to avoid claiming that only his party wanted to win. 'This is not a partisan issue,' Nixon declared that October at a rally for a Texas Republican Senate candidate named George H.W. Bush."
As a result of Bush's polarizing strategies, Brownstein writes, "he now looks less like the president of all the people than the champion of a single faction."
Rallying the Bubble
After a nearly endless series of appearances only open to donors, Bush on Saturday attended the first of several political rallies, where attendance is free.
But anyone hoping to see how Bush would deal with members of the general public -- two out of three of whom, statistically speaking, are not at all happy with him -- will be disappointed.
Yes, tickets are free -- but they're being handed out by Republican campaign officials.
Furthermore, the White House is picking the locales and stage-managing the events with great care.
Molly Hennessy-Fiske and James Gerstenzang write in the Los Angeles Times that Bush is scheduled "to make repeat visits Monday and Tuesday to two Georgia districts, starting with a rally Monday in Statesboro for Max Burns, a Republican seeking to unseat incumbent Democratic Rep. John Barrow.
"The district is so Republican, and so pro-Bush, that even Barrow is airing television ads that proclaim: 'I agree with George Bush.'"
At his first rally, on Saturday, Bush unleashed his most brazen and inaccurate attacks on Democrats yet.
Jim Rutenberg writes in the New York Times: "In an appearance that amounted to his first traditional campaign rally of the election season, President Bush on Saturday told wildly cheering supporters here that Democrats did not want to investigate, prosecute or even detain terrorists and had no plan for Iraq. . . .
"'In all these vital measures for fighting the war on terror, the Democrats in Washington follow a simple philosophy: Just Say No,' Mr. Bush said, borrowing the line from Nancy Reagan's 1980s campaign against drugs. He continued that theme in a call-and-response with the crowd, asking, 'When it comes to listening in on the terrorists, what's the Democratic answer?'
"'Just say no,' the audience answered.
"'When it comes to detaining terrorists, what's the Democratic answer?' Mr. Bush asked.
"'Just say no,' the crowd of roughly 4,000 answered.
"'When the Democrats ask for your vote November the seventh, what are you going to say?' Mr. Bush asked.
"'Just say no,' the crowd replied."
Here's the transcript of the rally.
Caroline Daniel writes in the Financial Times: "President George W. Bush finally gave a new meaning to the word bully in his bully pulpit at the weekend."
She also notes: "Saturday's rally was pure White House stagecraft. The lone black person in the room, and a Hispanic couple, were positioned directly behind Mr Bush. Dozens of ostensibly handcrafted signs -- including 'Moms for Mike' -- were handed out by campaign aides."
Between campaign events, Bush also made an appearance at the Charleston Air Force Base .
Jim Rutenberg blogs for the New York Times: "I have to say if anything the crowd of military seemed somewhat subdued. The scene was certainly dramatic. The president stood on a podium that was set up in front of a bunch of C4 cargo planes.
"But the crowd was nowhere near anything that can be described as ecstatic. . . .
"And while there were certainly hundreds here, several servicemen told me that this was a relatively low turnout given the size of the base and the fact that, according to two of them, this was what they call an active duty event, meaning if you were working you were supposed to be there."
Schuyler Kropf writes in the Charleston Post Courier: "Bush's formal pep talk was brief, lasting 12 minutes. He spent about an equal amount of time shaking hands with the crowd. Immediately afterward, the president helicoptered to Kiawah Island to attend a closed-door fundraiser for the Republican National Committee at the Sanctuary. . . .
"Attendance by base personnel to listen to Bush's speech was mandatory, drawing a few grumbles from some of those who saw the brief air base visit as cover for the political fundraising event on Kiawah."
The Next Eight Days
Kenneth T. Walsh writes in U.S. News: "The closing theme of Bush's final week on the campaign trail, as described by his advisers: If the Democrats have a better idea, let's hear it. Bush will argue that the situation in Iraq is not nearly as bad as the news media are reporting. And Bush, along with military leaders in Iraq, will point to specific cases of success and courage shown by U.S. soldiers and marines to encourage voters to take heart."
Fox News's Sean Hannity is on Air Force One today, for an interview with Bush scheduled to air tonight and tomorrow.
The Next Two Years
Karen Tumulty and Mike Allen write in Time: "If lame-duck presidents are to achieve anything, they often have to look for ways to go around Congress, especially when it is in the hands of the other party. Clinton used Executive Orders and his bully pulpit to encourage school uniforms, impose ergonomic rules on employers and prevent mining, logging and development on 60 million acres of public land. White House press secretary Tony Snow says Bush may take the same bypass around Capitol Hill. 'He told all of us, "Put on your track shoes. We're going to run to the finish,"' Snow said. 'He's going to be aggressive on a lot of fronts. . . . '
"In fact, when it comes to deploying its executive power, which is dear to Bush's understanding of the presidency, the president's team has been planning for what one strategist describes as 'a cataclysmic fight to the death' over the balance between Congress and the White House if confronted with congressional subpoenas it deems inappropriate. The strategist says the Bush team is 'going to assert that power, and they're going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation.'"
Call Him 'Mr. Happy'
Tumulty and Allen also write: "However bleak the president's situation may look to outsiders, aides say he appears to be reveling in campaigning. . . . 'Sometimes he'll premise a point he makes by saying "Call me Mr. Happy, but I think . . . " or "I know I'm Mr. Optimism, but . . . ," says an aide."
Safavian Watch
Susan Schmidt writes in The Washington Post: "A federal judge yesterday sentenced David H. Safavian, a former top Bush administration official, to 18 months in prison for lying and concealing unethical dealings with lobbyist Jack Abramoff. . . .
"Safavian, 39, a former chief of staff for the General Services Administration, wept as he told [U.S. District Judge Paul L.] Friedman that he knows now he never should have given Abramoff inside information about government-owned real estate that the lobbyist wanted to acquire. At the time, Safavian said, he thought what he was doing was innocuous. 'I didn't see anything wrong in helping Jack,' he said."
Another Snow Love Letter
Ben Wallace-Wells writes in the New York Times Magazine about "Snow, who is 51, is 6-foot-4, with a genial lectern slouch and a chin that looks as if it were built for contact. But the first thing you notice about him is his facility at managing the fragile balance of a press room, its constant teeter between sincerity, open hostility and absurdity. . . .
"Watching Snow in that room when he is working fluently and well is really something; the press secretary is gloriously glib."
There is, however, some interesting stuff about Snow's past:
"Snow once spent a couple of months on the news desk at the Greensboro Record, but otherwise he has always been an opinion writer, not a reporter. He does not have a great deal of reverence for the old-time idea of the objective, truth-seeking reporter: 'God, the source of all fact and truth, is objective,' he once told an audience at Hillsdale College, in Spring Arbor, Mich., 'but journalists, who often know very little, are not.'"
And: "After he left the first Bush White House, he stayed friendly with an obscure White House employee from New Jersey named Linda Tripp, who stayed on during the Clinton administration. When Tripp decided to write a tell-all book about the Democratic administration, it was Snow, of all her Bush White House contacts, she asked for help. Snow put Tripp in touch with the conservative literary agent and columnist Lucianne Goldberg."
Doonesbury Watch
Brilliant: Garry Trudeau on Bush's straw-man arguments.
© 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:15 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/opinion/30havel.html
October 30, 2006
Op-Ed Contributors
Turn North Korea Into a Human Rights Issue
By VACLAV HAVEL, KJELL MAGNE BONDEVIK and ELIE WIESEL [DPRK] [oped] [instead of wmd, work it from human rights perspective] [everyone agrees DPRK is a human rights disaster] [************]
WHILE the focus in recent weeks has been on North Korea’s nuclear test, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the government there is also responsible for one of the most egregious human-rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/opinion/30havel.html
October 30, 2006
Op-Ed Contributors
Turn North Korea Into a Human Rights Issue
By VACLAV HAVEL, KJELL MAGNE BONDEVIK and ELIE WIESEL [DPRK] [oped] [instead of wmd, work it from human rights perspective] [everyone agrees DPRK is a human rights disaster] [************]
WHILE the focus in recent weeks has been on North Korea’s nuclear test, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the government there is also responsible for one of the most egregious human-rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today.
For more than a decade, many in the international community have argued that to focus on the suffering of the North Korean people would risk driving the country away from discussions over its nuclear program.
But with his recent actions, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, has shown that this approach neither stopped the development of his nuclear program nor helped North Koreans. It is time, therefore, for a renewed international effort to ameliorate the crisis facing the country’s citizens.
And with the unanimous adoption by the United Nations Security Council of the doctrine that each state has a responsibility to protect its own citizens from the most egregious of human-rights abuses, a new instrument for diplomacy has emerged.
States will retain sovereignty over their own territory, but if they should fail to protect their own citizens from severe human-rights abuses, the international community now has an obligation to intervene through regional bodies and the United Nations, up to and including the Security Council.
It is in this context that, working with the law firm DLA Piper and the United States Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, we commissioned a report on the failure of the North Korean government to exercise its responsibility to protect its own people. The evidence and analysis in this report are deeply disturbing. Indeed, it is clear that North Korea is actively committing crimes against humanity — against its own people.
North Korea allowed perhaps one million — and possibly many more — of its own citizens to die during the famine in the 1990’s. This was caused in part by the government’s decision to reduce food purchases as international assistance increased so that it could divert resources to its military and nuclear program.
Hunger and starvation remain a persistent problem today, with more than 37 percent of North Korean children chronically malnourished. And yet North Korea has requested less food assistance from the World Food Program and refuses to let the program monitor food distribution in some 42 of 203 counties in the country.
As a result of the cuts in food aid, the program has said that millions of North Koreans will face real hardship this winter and many aid groups have warned of another famine.
Furthermore, North Korea holds as many as 200,000 people in its political prisons. Not only are real or imagined dissenters imprisoned, but so are their relatives, including the elderly and children, under a guilt-by-association system instituted by North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung.
Prisoners in the gulag are provided starvation-level rations, forced to work long days under brutal conditions, and many face torture or execution for trivial offenses. It is estimated that more than 400,000 have died in the North Korean gulag over 30 years.
The few attempts by the international community to engage with North Korea on human rights and humanitarian concerns have come up short. Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly and the Commission on Human Rights have been repudiated by North Korean representatives and then ignored.
In addition, North Korea refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea and has denied his numerous requests for access to the country.
Kim Jong-il has proven that the international community’s restraint in openly discussing North Korea’s treatment of its own people did not yield compromise on the nuclear issue. It merely allowed him to decouple the two issues.
Now that Kim Jong-il’s nuclear weapons test has attracted the attention and condemnation of the world, it is imperative to seize this opportunity and once again engage with Pyongyang on human rights and humanitarian concerns.
Our report recommends that, as a first step, the Council should adopt a non-punitive resolution urging open access to North Korea for humanitarian relief, the release of political prisoners, access for the special rapporteur and engagement by the United Nations.
We also urge the incoming secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, to make his first official action a briefing of the Security Council on this dire situation.
Protecting the people of North Korea requires nothing less.
Vaclav Havel is the former president of the Czech Republic. Kjell Magne Bondevik is the former prime minister of Norway. Elie Wiesel, a professor of humanities at Boston University, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:14 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/30CHARITY.html
October 30, 2006
Fears of Inquiry Dampen Giving by U.S. Muslims
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR [American Muslims] [one of 5 pillars is alms or charity] [but US govt has scared regular Muslims] [catch 22: bound to radicalize some who could be friends to US] [***********]
DEARBORN, Mich. — By the end of Ramadan last year, Najah Bazzy remembers having more than $10,000 in cash donations to distribute to the needy, and a vast auditorium ringed with tables groaning with enough free food for 400 poor families to celebrate the holiday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/30CHARITY.html
October 30, 2006
Fears of Inquiry Dampen Giving by U.S. Muslims
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR [American Muslims] [one of 5 pillars is alms or charity] [but US govt has scared regular Muslims] [catch 22: bound to radicalize some who could be friends to US] [***********]
DEARBORN, Mich. — By the end of Ramadan last year, Najah Bazzy remembers having more than $10,000 in cash donations to distribute to the needy, and a vast auditorium ringed with tables groaning with enough free food for 400 poor families to celebrate the holiday.
This year, Mrs. Bazzy formalized the good works she had been doing for a decade among the tens of thousands of Muslims who live in the Dearborn area by establishing a charity, Zaman International.
But by the end of the holiday, charitable contributions were meager. She said cash donations amounted to less than $4,000, and for the first time since she began her charity work she bought food to feed about 85 needy families instead of counting on gifts.
There are similar stories in Muslim communities across the country. Fearful that donations to an Islamic charity could bring unwanted attention from federal agents looking into potential ties to terrorism, many Muslim Americans have become reluctant to donate to Islamic causes, including charities.
“We can’t stop giving because it’s a pillar of Islam — it’s a must,” said Mrs. Bazzy, an animated 46-year-old nurse who veils her hair with a headscarf in keeping with Muslim traditions of modest dress. “It’s a real moral dilemma. Do you forget about the rest of the world out of fear? My family has been here for 101 years, and as an American I’m offended.”
The holy month of Ramadan is supposed to be a time of giving, particularly for the Muslim faithful, for whom charity, or zakat, is one of the five main tenets of their religion. The meaning of “zakat” is rooted in the Arabic word for purification, and sacred texts even define the amount — at least 2.5 percent of net annual earnings.
But recently, fear has often trumped faith.
When Mrs. Bazzy calls people to solicit contributions, they quickly beg off and hang up, telling her later in the grocery store or the bank not to ask them for money on the phone because the government is probably eavesdropping.
Nobody wants to write a check for any amount, and they look at her in horror when she offers a receipt — some of the largest donations she still receives have been anonymous wads of $100 bills stuffed into envelopes.
The developer of the new building that had volunteered office space for her charity begged off, saying that even the potential for a raid might drive away other tenants and bring down rents. The irony, she points out, is that she deliberately avoided any connection with a religious institution, even taking out a loan on her house to finance her longstanding dream of starting the charity. But given her headscarf, many people assume it is a faith-based organization.
Seemingly no individual or organization trying to collect funds is immune.
The imam at the Islamic Center of America, Sayyid Hassan Qazwini, is a favorite of the American government for publicly standing behind President Bush, both literally and figuratively, over the invasion of Iraq.
Imam Qazwini, by his own account, has been invited to the White House four or five times, with the president even photographed kissing the turbaned cleric on the cheek. Imam Qazwini delivered the opening benediction in Congress on Oct. 1, 2003, the first Muslim religious figure accorded that honor after Sept. 11.
Yet, his gleaming new $15 million mosque here, a handsome white structure with a gold dome and soaring twin minarets that is billed as the largest in America, remains $6 million in debt. Contributions dropped sharply this summer after the war in Lebanon, the imam said, when the Bush administration expressed its unreserved support for Israel. Other mosques report similar difficulties. The general sentiment is that the American government’s tilt toward Israel extends to hounding anyone supporting Arab causes.
Much of the fear comes from federal actions that many Muslim Americans view as unnecessarily invasive.
The Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the Treasury Department has shuttered five major Muslim charities in the United States since 2001, seizing millions of dollars in assets, yet not a single officer or organization has been convicted of anything connected to terrorism. Muslim charities operating overseas have been directly linked to terrorist operations, but if such evidence exists in the United States it has remained secret.
“The sad fact is that there are some Islamic charities involved in terrorist financing,” said Daniel L. Glaser, the deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes. “We can’t close our eyes to that. We have to find ways to deal with that.”
Imam Qazwini, the descendant of a long line of prominent Iraqi Shiite Muslim clerics, points out that many Muslim Americans, particularly those from the Arab world, fled the region to escape repressive regimes, expecting the United States to provide both freedom and opportunity. Instead they find themselves facing similar problems.
“Many people who came from the Middle East still live with the psyche of being chased by the intelligence forces,” he said in an interview. “Having these same forces acting here intensifies the sense of fear in these communities.”
Ahmad Chebbani, 46, served as the president of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce for eight years until this June. His accounting firm, Omnex Accounting and Tax Service, occupies a neat two-story building on Warren Avenue, the heart of the community, where most of the shop signs are in both English and Arabic.
Arab-Americans make up more than a third of Dearborn’s population of 100,000, and Michigan has one of the country’s largest concentrations of Muslim Americans. The sentiments expressed here are echoed in Muslim communities across the United States.
Between himself and his company, Mr. Chebbani says he used to contribute some $50,000 annually to charity, the bulk of it to religious organizations. He still gives, but directly either to needy families, business groups or secular institutions like the Arab American National Museum.
As one of the community’s most successful accountants — in his office is a picture of him with former Vice President Al Gore — he also sees the tax returns of some of the most affluent families in Dearborn. Some have stopped giving entirely, and some give but decline to claim any deductions. His rough estimate indicates that community giving is down by about half.
“Contributions across the board have been drastically reduced because of the fear; people associate contributions with risk and they don’t want that,” he said. “There’s a lack of trust in the U.S. judicial system, with just an accusation you could end up in jail with secret evidence used as a means of prosecution.”
Religious scholars say that compromises made over who gets charity might conflict with Islam’s precepts. Verse 60 in Chapter 9 of the Koran, the Sura of Repentance, specifies eight religiously sanctified beneficiaries of zakat. All eight dictate giving to the poor or those who help them. Other charity is considered a blessing but does not fulfill the religious obligation in the same way, they argue.
“There are eight categories; you cannot invent a ninth,” said Khalil Jassemm, a professor and lay prayer leader who helped found Life for Relief and Development, a charity based in Michigan started to help Iraqis living under sanctions that now works across the Muslim world. “You can’t give money to the animal shelter and call this your zakat.”
The offices of Life for Relief and Development were raided in September on the basis of a sealed affidavit. The government has said that the raid was not terrorism-related, although agents of the Joint Terrorism Task Force were along on the raid. The hanging questions put a damper on fund-raising.
Events like that have left some Muslim organizations across the country pondering whether to sue the federal government for denying them their First Amendment rights to practice their religion freely.
Like most Muslims interviewed for this article, Imam Qazwini emphasized that he fully supported a crackdown on any real terrorist financing, but that he thought the government was blindly casting far too wide a net. In a speech by Mr Bush immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, the imam noted, the president said terrorists might be able to destroy a few buildings in this country but could not harm its foundations.
“I hope he’s right, but I’m afraid he’s not,” the imam said after being the host of a Ramadan banquet for a cross-section of Michigan’s political and religious leaders. “It seems like the terrorists have been able to touch our foundations — our civil liberties are being compromised, our religious freedoms are being compromised.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:13 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/americas/30brazil.html
October 30, 2006
Brazil’s President Roars Back to Win Vote
By LARRY ROHTER [Brazil’s Lula makes comeback] [the Bush admin has been apoloplectic but it’s hardly worth worrying about] [*******] [see novak’s histrionics on Nicaragua in today’s societal] [*****]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 29 — Overcoming a series of corruption and political scandals that tarred his image and undermined his credibility, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil won a landslide re-election victory in a runoff vote on Sunday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/americas/30brazil.html
October 30, 2006
Brazil’s President Roars Back to Win Vote
By LARRY ROHTER [Brazil’s Lula makes comeback] [the Bush admin has been apoloplectic but it’s hardly worth worrying about] [*******] [see novak’s histrionics on Nicaragua in today’s societal] [*****]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 29 — Overcoming a series of corruption and political scandals that tarred his image and undermined his credibility, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil won a landslide re-election victory in a runoff vote on Sunday.
With 99 percent of the vote counted, Mr. da Silva, a former factory worker and labor union leader running as the candidate of the left-wing Workers Party, had 60.8 percent of the vote. The percentage of the vote going to his opponent, Geraldo Alckmin of the center-left Brazilian Social Democratic Party, dropped in comparison with the 41.6 percent he won in the first round of balloting on Oct. 1, when Mr. da Silva fell just short of the majority he needed to win outright.
“This is an extraordinary result, one that gives him a legitimacy that all the accusations had perhaps broken,” said Jairo Nicolau, a television commentator and political science professor at the Candido Mendes University here, referring to Mr. da Silva. “It’s one thing to win a narrow victory and something else altogether to register this level of support after all that has happened.”
Wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed “The victory is Brazil’s,” Mr. da Silva spoke to supporters at a hotel in São Paulo on Sunday night, saying that “Brazil is living a magical moment” and expressing his gratitude to voters for their faith in him. “The people knew how to distinguish between what was true and what wasn’t,” he said, before adding that he had “learned a lot” in power and promising to make a greater effort to combat corruption.
Mr. da Silva took office in January 2003, promising a new era of social justice and clean government in this nation of 185 million people, the world’s fourth-largest democracy. But his luster began to fade a year later, when an aide was caught on film soliciting campaign donations from numbers-game kingpins here.
Then, in May of last year, a much larger scandal erupted. Though it was initially limited to corruption in government contracts, investigations by congressional committees and the news media soon established the existence of an illegal multimillion-dollar slush fund used to finance Mr. da Silva’s 2002 campaign, and to pay off legislators from small political parties to support his government.
The metastasizing scandals forced the resignation of Mr. da Silva’s chief of staff and his minister of finance, as well as the president, treasurer and secretary general of the party Mr. da Silva founded in 1980 and has led ever since. As a result, opinion polls taken late last year consistently indicated that the president would be defeated if he ran for re-election.
To make matters worse, the police last month apprehended operatives of Mr. da Silva’s party as they were about to pay $792,000 in cash for a dossier they apparently thought would damage Mr. Alckmin’s chances. Though that weakened Mr. da Silva in the first round of balloting, he benefited from an improved economy and a welfare program that delivers a monthly stipend of about $45 to nearly 12 million poor families.
“Lula’s turnaround is based mostly on the economy,” said Alberto Carlos Almeida, a political scientist. “That, combined with the social programs, gives the electorate the impression that he is really taking care of the poor. There is the appearance of stability, and so people want continuity.”
After being chastised by the first-round vote on Oct. 1, Mr. da Silva adopted a new campaign slogan: “Don’t trade the sure thing for the dubious.” That clearly resonated with the working-class voters who have always provided his electoral base.
“Lula cares about the poor, and that’s what matters to me, more than all this talk about corruption, which we’ve always had,” Jane Cunha, a 56-year-old maid, said at a polling place here Sunday morning. “I earn the minimum wage, and thanks to him, my salary has gone up $20 a month and the price of food has gone down enough that I’m eating a lot more meat than in the past.”
Mr. da Silva has governed on the right, at least as regards his conservative economic policy. He has run up the kind of budget surpluses that delight Wall Street and the International Monetary Fund, and bank profits are at an all-time high.
But in recent weeks, he has “campaigned on the left,” in the words of Marco Aurelio Garcia, Mr. da Silva’s national security adviser. A loan repayment to the I.M.F., for example, was repackaged as Mr. da Silva giving the organization its walking papers, and telling it to keep its nose out of Brazil’s affairs.
In addition, the president repeatedly accused Mr. Alckmin of planning to dismantle the government’s social welfare programs and to privatize state-owned companies and banks.
“Alckmin was pushed to the right and placed on the defensive, and was never able to get out of that posture,” Mr. Nicolau said. “He could neither defend himself nor offer his own program.”
As is often the case, the candidates’ personalities also played a part in voters’ calculations. Mr. da Silva never passed up an opportunity to refer to his humble origins, similar to those of a majority of the electorate, while Mr. Alckmin, a physician whose specialty is anesthesiology, proved unable to shake his image as a bland and somewhat pedantic son of the middle class.
“I think Alckmin had the better platform, but he lacks charisma,” said Renato Bruzzi, a 57- year-old engineer who voted for the challenger nonetheless. “Lula is a fighter and the people identify with him. Alckmin is well-qualified to be a good president. But he has that professorial air that irritates people a bit.”
Mr. Alckmin sought to capitalize on the corruption scandals, making them the centerpiece of his campaign. But he was perceived as being too aggressive on the subject, and the lack of progress in the official investigation of the dossier scandal undermined his argument that Mr. da Silva was ultimately responsible.
“Because of all the corruption denunciations, I voted for Alckmin in the first round, based on emotion,” said Valmir Moura, a 38-year-old office clerk here. “But this time I stopped to reason things through, and I realized his whole campaign is based on nothing but accusations and that he hasn’t presented a program for governing. So I went back to Lula.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:13 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900180.html
Police Storm Oaxaca to Suppress Protest
By Mark Stevenson
Associated Press
Monday, October 30, 2006; A14 [Mexico] [followup] [unrest in Oaxaca] [N in TNT] [******] [ditto]
OAXACA, Mexico, Oct. 29 -- On the order of President Vicente Fox, federal police backed by armored vehicles and water cannons tore down barricades and stormed embattled Oaxaca on Sunday, seizing control of the city center from protesters who had held it for five months.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900180.html
Police Storm Oaxaca to Suppress Protest
By Mark Stevenson
Associated Press
Monday, October 30, 2006; A14 [Mexico] [followup] [unrest in Oaxaca] [N in TNT] [******] [ditto]
OAXACA, Mexico, Oct. 29 -- On the order of President Vicente Fox, federal police backed by armored vehicles and water cannons tore down barricades and stormed embattled Oaxaca on Sunday, seizing control of the city center from protesters who had held it for five months.
A 15-year-old boy guarding one barricade was killed by a tear gas canister, said Jesica Sanchez, a human rights worker.
The conflict has pitted the governor of the state of Oaxaca against a coalition of citizen groups and striking teachers demanding his ouster.
With helicopters roaring overhead, police earlier entered the city, normally a picturesque tourist destination, from several sides. They marched up to a final metal barrier blocking the center, but pulled back as protesters armed with sticks attacked them from behind, hurling burning tires. The air filled with black smoke and tear gas.
Some demonstrators used syringes to pierce their arms and legs, then painted signs in their own blood decrying the police.
As night fell, however, protesters abandoned the center and regrouped at a local university. They pledged to continue their battle to persuade Gov. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz to resign, even as police tore down the banners and tents in the center that had served as demonstration headquarters.
At least eight people have died in the unrest since August, including Brad Will, an American and volunteer correspondent for the Web site Indymedia.org who was shot dead Friday along with two Mexican protesters. Fox, who leaves office Dec. 1, had for months resisted repeated calls to send federal forces to quell the protests.
In Oaxaca, the teachers protest is an annual rite that began 26 years ago. The protests are usually peaceful and generally last a week or two, but this year the teachers became infuriated when Ruiz sent police to forcefully remove demonstrators from the city's idyllic squares.
Last week, teachers tentatively ratified an agreement that would allow them to return to classes at an unspecified date and receive 30 percent raises spread over six years. Their unmet central demand, Ruiz's resignation, threatened to undermine the fragile pact.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:12 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/americas/30mexico.html
October 30, 2006
Mexican Forces Move to Retake Oaxaca
By MARC LACEY [Mexico] [followup] [unrest in Oaxaca] [N in TNT] [******]
OAXACA, Mexico, Oct. 29 — Federal forces moved to take back this picturesque tourist town one cobblestone street at a time on Sunday, bashing through barricades and pushing back activists who had seized the downtown five months ago in an increasingly ugly dispute with the state governor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/americas/30mexico.html
October 30, 2006
Mexican Forces Move to Retake Oaxaca
By MARC LACEY [Mexico] [followup] [unrest in Oaxaca] [N in TNT] [******]
OAXACA, Mexico, Oct. 29 — Federal forces moved to take back this picturesque tourist town one cobblestone street at a time on Sunday, bashing through barricades and pushing back activists who had seized the downtown five months ago in an increasingly ugly dispute with the state governor.
Police officers wearing riot gear and carrying shields were backed by water cannons, police helicopters and heavily armed soldiers as they marched from all directions toward Oaxaca’s main square, the Zócalo, which used to draw tourists but in recent months has been a giant encampment for an array of groups intent on toppling Ulises Ruiz, the governor of Oaxaca State.
The police, estimated to number in the thousands, met resistance in some areas. Demonstrators clutching rocks and sticks tried to stop them. Buses shuttling police officers to the center of town were pelted with stones, and bonfires in the middle of streets sent huge plumes of smoke into the sky.
By Sunday night, the Zócalo was ringed by police officers in riot gear and appeared to be controlled by federal forces.
The tension here spilled over into Mexico City on Sunday, with supporters of the Oaxaca protesters surrounding a hotel where Governor Ruiz was thought to be staying and shouting: “Murderer! Murderer!”
The operation, ordered by President Vicente Fox in his final month in office, did not become the bloodbath that many had feared. Mr. Fox ordered the raid on Saturday after two protesters and an American activist working as a journalist here were killed Friday, the latest in a string of deaths for which protesters blamed provocateurs linked to the government.
Protesters said the police killed one of their supporters in the raid, although police officials did not confirm the death.
The Fox administration said in a statement on Sunday night that it had acted because state and local authorities could no longer guarantee public security and “radical groups, out of control, had put at risk the peace of the citizenry.”
The unrest began in May as a teachers’ strike. But when Mr. Ruiz sent the police to break up the peaceful demonstrations, other activists joined in and the situation quickly spiraled out of control.
The original dispute with the teachers was recently settled with a pay raise. The teachers have said they intend to return to classes on Monday, allowing 1.3 million children to resume their studies.
But on Sunday, many demonstrators, some with bandanas pulled over their noses to protect against tear gas, vowed to continue pressing for the removal of Mr. Ruiz. They accuse him of rigging the 2004 gubernatorial election and ruling the state with an iron hand.
“The very hour that the governor leaves, we will stop these protests and go home,” said Joel Santiago, 38, who stood on the front lines of one standoff with officers on Sunday. “The people are tired of this man treating us as though we’re nothing.”
Some residents were clearly tired of the protesters, as well. As troops advanced, some people came out of their homes to applaud their arrival, and what they hoped was the end of the lawlessness that had taken over Oaxaca. “Thank you for coming to the rescue of our city,” said Teófilo Rodríguez, 56, a businessman.
Oaxaca, a six-hour drive southeast of Mexico City, is known for its colonial charm, with centuries-old architecture and a distinct regional cuisine. But on Sunday it more closely resembled an urban jungle. Protesters from the Oaxaca People’s Popular Assembly, or A.P.P.O., a loose coalition of interests that had laid siege to the Zócalo and taken over radio stations, hustled through the streets, taunting the authorities and then fleeing at each advance.
Protest slogans were painted on buildings everywhere and the burned-out remains of cars and buses litter the roads. On Sunday night, protestors were torching buses in the center of town.
On the main highway leading to Mexico City, police officers in riot gear spent most of Sunday standing in formation, eyeing several hundred protesters manning a barricade of stones and tree trunks 200 feet away.
At one point, a woman approached the officers and stuck white roses and carnations in their all-black uniforms. “It makes me sad that they want to kill my people,” she said. “I want to change their hearts.”
Other demonstrators drew their own blood to protest the arrival of the authorities. They had health workers stick needles in their veins, and the blood that flowed out was then dripped onto street signs and used to paint messages on their chests.
At about 3 p.m., the police officers began advancing. Water cannons were fired on people who did not clear the way. Chaos ensued as men, women and children fled.
Elsewhere, bulldozers cleared some of the hundreds of barricades that had been erected around the town.
The roots of the conflict have less to do with leftist ideology or a peasant uprising than with political patronage and old political rivalries, people here say.
Over the past two decades, as Mexico’s political system has opened up, brutally poor Oaxaca has remained a virtual one-party state, controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the machinelike organization that ruled the entire country until Mr. Fox’s victory in 2000.
After taking office in a disputed election, Mr. Ruiz eliminated millions in community subsidies and began a series of public works projects that involved condemning land, often taking it from farmers at rock-bottom prices, protesters say. He also forbade marches and protests in the Zócalo, angering groups that routinely used protests to demand more government aid.
“He didn’t realize it, but he was closing the escape valves that let the pressure off,” said Flavio Sosa, the head of the New Left of Oaxaca, a political pressure group, and a leader of the A.P.P.O.
When Mr. Ruiz sent in poorly trained riot police officers to oust striking teachers from the Zócalo on June 14, the crisis began.
“This is a fight about power, about money, and the problem of poverty, as well,” said Rosa Nida Villalobos, the head of Priista Women, a group that supports the governor, in an interview last week. “It’s a monster with a thousand heads and a thousand interests.”
Antonio Betancourt and James C. McKinley Jr. contributed reporting.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:11 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900926.html
Golan Heights Land, Lifestyle Lure Settlers
Lebanon War Revives Dispute Over Territory
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 30, 2006; A01 [Israel] [general] [settlement issue and domestic politics] [clearly not in US interest] [*******]
KATZRIN On the edge of this growing Jewish settlement, which bills itself as "the city of water and wine," Moti Bar is building a stylish microbrewery and restaurant in a glass and stone shopping mall that opened a few months ago. His venture, all the way down to the imported copper brew tanks, is a bet that Israel will remain in the Golan Heights for years to come.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900926.html
Golan Heights Land, Lifestyle Lure Settlers
Lebanon War Revives Dispute Over Territory
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 30, 2006; A01 [Israel] [general] [settlement issue and domestic politics] [clearly not in US interest] [*******]
KATZRIN On the edge of this growing Jewish settlement, which bills itself as "the city of water and wine," Moti Bar is building a stylish microbrewery and restaurant in a glass and stone shopping mall that opened a few months ago. His venture, all the way down to the imported copper brew tanks, is a bet that Israel will remain in the Golan Heights for years to come.
The high-end beer and view of the Sea of Galilee are designed to appeal to Israeli yuppies, who are being encouraged more aggressively than ever to move to this rugged plateau seized from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. Dozens of newly graded home sites stretch westward, and a large industrial park called Golantech is emerging a few miles from Bar's pub.
"We're living our life as if we'll be here forever," said Bar, 42, who commutes from the nearby community of Kanaf. "And I don't think there is any reason why we should leave."
Israel's summer war with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia that acts as Syria's military proxy, has revived the decades-old contest over the Golan Heights. This latest phase is also being shaped by demographic changes epitomized by this expanding settlement.
Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 and offered its Arab residents citizenship in the Jewish state, something it has not extended to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The annexation was not recognized internationally, however, and most of the Arabs here refused the offer as a protest against what they consider an illegal occupation. But they do have residency rights that allow them to travel throughout Israel and vote in local elections.
Most of the Arabs in Golan are Druze, members of a sect that split from Islam centuries ago and has large followings in Lebanon, Syria and Israel. Unlike most of the Druze in Israel, those here identify themselves as Arabs and do not serve in the Israeli military. The vast majority consider themselves citizens of Syria, although a small percentage support Israel's presence here.
For years, the Israeli military discouraged civilian settlement in Golan, particularly along the frontier with Syria, for fear the area would emerge again as a battlefield. Some small Israeli settlements were established there anyway, but in the past 15 years all new growth has occurred within existing settlement boundaries rather than in new areas.
The pace has picked up in recent years. Now, for the first time, the number of Jewish settlers in Golan may soon exceed the nearly 20,000 Arab residents whose families remained here after the war. The milestone may have already been passed, Arab leaders concede, with 400 Jewish families moving into Golan each year.
Since the Lebanon war ended on Aug. 14, settler leaders have launched a $250,000 advertising campaign to attract young Israelis with the lure of free land and a lifestyle ethic that blends Marlboro Country, Napa Valley and the X Games. Their goal is to double the Jewish population in Golan to 40,000 within a decade through an appeal that emphasizes cowboy hats over skullcaps.
At the same time, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has called for new negotiations on Golan, emboldened by Israel's inconclusive fight against Hezbollah. For years, the Syrian government has helped arm and fund Hezbollah to strengthen its own hand in talks on the region. The Syrian army, meanwhile, has maintained quiet along the heavily mined frontier.
In a recent interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Assad added an ominous note to his previous calls for talks, warning that "when the hope disappears, then maybe war really is the only solution." In response, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Golan "an inseparable part of the state of Israel."
"No doubt the steadfastness of the resistance in Lebanon, ending the legend of the undefeatable Israeli army, has strengthened our belief that the end of the occupation is closer than ever," said Hail Abu Jabal, 62, a Druze political leader in the town of Majdal Shams who spent seven years in Israeli prisons for campaigning against Israel's hold on Golan. "But expanding these settlements is a mistake, making peace more distant and violent confrontation closer."
Rising from the Sea of Galilee to snowcapped Mount Hermon, Golan is a rocky slope of vineyards, cattle ranches, fruit orchards and remnants of conflict. Vast minefields stretch out behind barbed-wire fences, and the overgrown remains of Syrian houses, military barracks and mosques line mostly empty roads. Trenches and earthworks still score the land where the Israeli army has twice fought Syrian forces.
For decades, Israeli military leaders considered Golan an essential high-ground buffer against Syrian invasion and peppered the region with bases. In recent years, though, some Israeli generals have argued that air power has reduced the strategic importance of the heights. It still remains a training ground for the infantry and armored corps.
Perhaps more important, the region provides a third of Israel's drinking water.
"Until the war with Lebanon, there was no talk of giving back the Golan Heights. Most of the focus was on Israel's real problem, which is with the Palestinians," said Eli Malka, 48, the leader of a group of Golan settlements that is using government money to fund the ad blitz. "We're building, we're growing. And I don't see the prospect of any talks with Assad."
Jewish history here is visible in the remains of a 4th-century synagogue, among others found in Golan, that has been turned into a tourist site on the edge of this settlement of 7,500 people. But most of the roughly 100 families moving each year to Katzrin -- the largest of 33 Jewish communities in Golan -- are secular Israelis like Topaz Barkai, a 32-year-old former banker who arrived last month.
Barkai's father was killed in Golan during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war while her mother was pregnant with her. She was born here, then spent much of her adult life studying and working in Tel Aviv, the cosmopolitan coastal city she still visits for professional soccer games and nightclubs. Her new job is to persuade friends to move to Golan, with its skiing, water sports, cattle ranching and boutique wineries.
"We're trying to make this place younger," Barkai said.
A year and a half ago, the Golan lifestyle drew Einbar Pelter and her husband, Tal, an army officer and aspiring vintner. The couple moved with their two young children from a town near the seaside city of Netanya to Merom Golan, a farming collective founded a month after the 1967 war.
Pelter, a landscaper whose front yard is now a mix of grape vines, lavender and herbs, said the promise of free land, a communal setting and wilderness made them set aside qualms about relocating to an occupied region. Pelter Wines now appear on Tel Aviv wine lists.
"Even if it is going to be temporary, we thought it would be worthwhile," said Pelter, 32, who has seen her new neighborhood fill up over the past year. "A community that isn't growing has an expiration date on it."
The population of roughly 7,000 Arabs who remained after the 1967 war has grown to about 20,000. Most of them refused citizenship. Those who accepted are ostracized to this day in the four insular mountain towns where the Druze population is concentrated.
"After almost 60 years, the basic question of whether the Israelis have a right to create a Jewish state is being asked again after this war," said Taiseer Maray, director of Golan for Development, an Arab-rights organization in Majdal Shams. "This shows the stupidity of power. If I were a clever Zionist, the first thing I'd do is seek peace."
In Maray's Israeli travel document, the space beside "Nationality" reads "undefined." It is an apt description of a population that gathers Fridays at an overlook on the edge of the town to shout to relatives across the border with Syria.
The Arabs here are allowed to sell their apples in Syria and study at Damascus University. Hundreds of graduates have returned, many of them working in summer camps, professional clubs and civic groups, the main venues for political organizing.
"The feeling among the people here is that the Syrians could come back any day," said Maray, who has not seen his three brothers in Damascus since the 1967 war. "The settlers now talk about breaking down the boundaries between us with jobs and investment."
Arab grievances here center on the preferential treatment Israeli settlements receive in allocation of water, which is scarce and expensive for many Arab farmers. Meanwhile, civic campaigns for the removal of the Israeli military base on a hill in the center of Majdal Shams have been ignored.
In recent weeks, a group calling itself the Syrian National Alliance has been posting communiques around town calling for a new campaign against the Israeli occupation, including armed operations. "But we really don't know who they are," said Ayman Abu Jabal, 40, a former prisoner who works for Golan for Development. "So far they have not been very convincing."
Abu Jabal, a distant relative of Hail's, has followed that route before. As a member of the now-defunct Syrian Resistance Movement, he spent 12 years in Israeli jails for blowing up an Israeli military warehouse in 1985. No one was injured.
"What we want is for our rights to be the same as theirs," Abu Jabal said. "I'm not against the Jew as a person. But we want the occupation to end and for us to live in peace."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:11 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/middleeast/30cnd-mideast.html
October 30, 2006
Israel May Expand Gaza Operation, Leader Says
By GREG MYRE [Israel] [gaza withdrawal in summer 2005] [now backsliding?] [note: Olmert recently formed alliance with conservative MP] [********]
JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said today that the Israeli military may expand operations in the Gaza Strip in an attempt to halt Palestinian rocket fire, but that there was no intention to reoccupy the territory.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/middleeast/30cnd-mideast.html
October 30, 2006
Israel May Expand Gaza Operation, Leader Says
By GREG MYRE [Israel] [gaza withdrawal in summer 2005] [now backsliding?] [note: Olmert recently formed alliance with conservative MP] [********]
JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said today that the Israeli military may expand operations in the Gaza Strip in an attempt to halt Palestinian rocket fire, but that there was no intention to reoccupy the territory.
His comments came on another day of turmoil: Palestinian gunmen kidnapped a Spanish aid worker in southern Gaza, and a Palestinian militant was killed in northern Gaza in disputed circumstances.
In a closed session with a parliamentary committee, Mr. Olmert was asked about the military’s plans for Gaza. Israeli forces re-entered the territory in late June after an Israeli soldier was seized and have been clashing with Palestinian militants almost daily. A number of Israeli political and military officials have hinted recently that a larger operation could be coming.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Olmert, Miri Eisin, who was present for the parliamentary hearing, quoted the prime minister as saying that “we aren’t going to reoccupy Gaza. But we will continue to fight terror, and there may be a change in the level of forces there at any given time.”
Mr. Olmert also said the military had killed about 300 armed Palestinians in the past four months, according to Ms. Eisin. Monitoring groups have said more than 250 Palestinians have been killed during this time, and about half were militants and half were civilians. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting.
In Gaza City, the Palestinian Authority’s prime minister, Ismail Haniya, said, “We call on the international community to intervene immediately to halt the Israeli aggression.”
Today, a member of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Mazen Abu Oudah, 20, was killed by Israeli fire near the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, according to Palestinian medical workers. But the Israeli military said it was not involved in any shooting in the area.
Also, Palestinians fired two rockets into southern Israel today, but they caused no damage or injuries.
The Palestinians have fired hundred of rockets into southern Israel since the Israelis pulled out of Gaza in the summer of 2005. The inaccurate rockets have caused damage and injuries in many instances, but deaths have been rare.
Meanwhile, Palestinian gunmen kidnapped Roberto Vila, 34, a Spaniard who works for a Spanish aid group, according to Palestinian security officials and news reports.
More than 20 Westerners, most of them aid workers and journalists, have been kidnapped in the past couple years in Gaza. The Palestinian leadership has condemned the kidnappings and has often secured the release of the kidnapping victims within hours. But Palestinian authorities have not been able to reduce the lawlessness in Gaza.
In Israeli politics, Mr. Olmert’s Cabinet approved the inclusion of Israel Beiteinu, a far-right party, in the ruling coalition. Mr. Olmert’s coalition now controls 78 of the 120 seats in the Israeli Parliament, and the increased majority is intended to make the government more stable.
With parties from the right, left and center, as well as a religious party, however, the coalition is so broad that the factions have little common ground on many issues, including how to deal with the Palestinians.
Ophir Pines-Paz, the minister of culture and sport, who is from the left-leaning Labor Party, voted against the inclusion of the new faction and announced he was resigning as a minister.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:10 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/asia/30refugees.html
October 30, 2006
Afghans, Returning Home, Set Off a Building Boom
By CARLOTTA GALL [Afghan] [hydra] [insurgency] [this year’s spring-summer offensive the most potent since US invaded in Oct 2001] [latest] [followup] [real increase in the pace of killings] [some positive news for a change] [********]
KELAGAY, Afghanistan — Just months ago this place was an empty, dusty plain, the site of an old Russian military base, with an abandoned village of broken walls across untended fields. But frantic construction has been going on, as Afghan laborers have built high-walled compounds and flat-roofed houses from mud and straw.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/asia/30refugees.html
October 30, 2006
Afghans, Returning Home, Set Off a Building Boom
By CARLOTTA GALL [Afghan] [hydra] [insurgency] [this year’s spring-summer offensive the most potent since US invaded in Oct 2001] [latest] [followup] [real increase in the pace of killings] [some positive news for a change] [********]
KELAGAY, Afghanistan — Just months ago this place was an empty, dusty plain, the site of an old Russian military base, with an abandoned village of broken walls across untended fields. But frantic construction has been going on, as Afghan laborers have built high-walled compounds and flat-roofed houses from mud and straw.
The building boom began when the entire population of a ruined village that had been called Naseri Chehl Kapa came back this summer after 26 years as refugees in Pakistan.
Because of their numbers, they occupied government land well beyond their original village and fields, up to and over the nearby road, and within a week the returned villagers began dividing up the land and building.
“This is our ancestral land; our forefathers lived here,” said Haji Abdul Jabar, who is building a large compound that will house his family and those of his seven brothers.
But the provincial authorities say the villagers have seized the land illegally. “When these families broke the law and grabbed land, now everyone wants to grab land,” complained Imamuddin Hasan, the chief refugee and repatriation official for Baghlan Province, here in central Afghanistan.
The return of Afghan refugees over the last four years, and their ability to adapt and survive, has been one of the real successes of the international intervention here and of President Hamid Karzai’s government. Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, an estimated 4.7 million refugees have flooded back from neighboring Iran and Pakistan, 3.7 million with assistance from the United Nations refugee agency and another million on their own. The returns are slowing now, with only 135,000 returning so far this year. Over three million Afghan refugees still live in Pakistan and Iran, but one of the main reasons they are not returning is because they have no house or land to go to.
Baghlan Province alone has taken in 44,000 refugees since the Taliban government fell, half of whom did not have houses or land to return to, Mr. Hasan said.
So far the province, one of the leading ones in the country’s refugee resettlement program, has given out plots to 4,000 families, with plans to settle 6,000 more families in two new government-planned towns. But that does not begin to meet the need. At least 500 families are living in tents in one camp, Mr. Hasan said.
On the face of it, the return of huge numbers of refugees has gone remarkably well, but in every province there are hundreds of land disputes and complaints of illegal occupation, and tens of thousands of returnees remain in tents, crammed in with relatives, or in public buildings. The pressure for housing and land remains enormous.
This village is one such example. The whole population, 200 families, fled one night, with just the clothes on their backs, in 1980 after a raid by Soviet troops that killed 40 people. Now they number 360 families, they said. They arrived in a long convoy of trucks and cars, laden with animals, household belongings, even roof beams. Despite the war and the hardships of the refugee camps, they had prospered and multiplied in their 26 years away.
Haji Abdul Momin, 75, has two wives, 10 children and 10 grandchildren, and he has taken a plot big enough to house the whole family.
“I used to live in the village — we were very few then,” he said. “Now we have increased. We are 23 people, and I don’t have enough land.”
Every family interviewed said the same. Only one man, Sirajuddin, 45, a butcher who uses one name, had rebuilt his family home in the old village. He and his brothers had agreed he would live in the house and farm the fields, and his brothers had secured one of the new plots for their families, he said. His neighbor, Mr. Jabar, had started rebuilding his family house in the village but never moved in. “I would gain the enmity of my brothers, so I have left it empty,” he said.
While it is clear they all need more space, their haste in occupying the land was driven by other concerns, the villagers admitted. Other people from different parts of the province had begun to settle here, said one villager, Haji Paiwand, 50. So the whole village, who are all from one Pashtun tribe, decided to return home together to stake their claim to the land before others took it all, he said.
“The whole tribe decided to come back, and if one family had stayed behind it would not have looked good,” Mr. Momin said.
“Our dispute has been going on for three years,” Mr. Paiwand said. Local officials had not helped because powerful leaders had wanted the land, he added. “We did not grab this land,” he said. “We had discussions with government, and we tried to do it peacefully.”
“We very much wanted to come back to our country,” said Mr. Paiwand, who worked in Saudi Arabia in a grocery store for 12 years. “We have not come to create problems. We came to rebuild the country.”
Their life as refugees in Pakistan was also becoming more difficult as prices were rising, they said. They lived in a refugee camp in Mansehra, north of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and were hit by the devastating earthquake last October. Yet when they were in the refugee camp, they had schools, clinics, electricity and water there, none of which they have in Kelagay.
One of Mr. Sirajuddin’s sons said he missed his school. But his father brushed it off.
“We did military service here and we grew up here,” Mr. Sirajuddin said. “If you are a traveler in a strange land, your mouth will be full of soil. But if you are in your own country and your mouth is full of soil, it does not matter.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:10 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/middleeast/30reconstruct.html
October 30, 2006
U.S. Is Said to Fail in Tracking Arms Shipped to Iraqis
By JAMES GLANZ [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [incredibly the US govt has no idea how many armaments and to whom they’ve gone] [not even basics: serial number data base] [this is disturbing and incredible incompetence] [buck stops with rummy] [also see in today’s govt] [************]
The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/middleeast/30reconstruct.html
October 30, 2006
U.S. Is Said to Fail in Tracking Arms Shipped to Iraqis
By JAMES GLANZ [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [incredibly the US govt has no idea how many armaments and to whom they’ve gone] [not even basics: serial number data base] [this is disturbing and incredible incompetence] [buck stops with rummy] [also see in today’s govt] [************]
The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.
The report was undertaken at the request of Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and who recently expressed an assessment far darker than the Bush administration’s on the situation in Iraq.
Mr. Warner sent his request in May to a federal oversight agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. He also asked the inspector general to examine whether Iraqi security forces were developing a logistics operation capable of sustaining the hundreds of thousands of troops and police officers the American military says it has trained.
The answers came Sunday from the inspector general’s office, which found major discrepancies in American military records on where thousands of 9-millimeter pistols and hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons have ended up. The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands.
Exactly where untracked weapons could end up — and whether some have been used against American soldiers — were not examined in the report, although black-market arms dealers thrive on the streets of Baghdad, and official Iraq Army and police uniforms can easily be purchased as well, presumably because government shipments are intercepted or otherwise corrupted.
In a written response to the inspector general’s findings, the American military largely conceded the shortcomings. The military said it would assist the Iraqis in determining the spare parts and maintenance requirements for the weapons. The military also said it has now instituted a “process to accurately issue weapons by quantity and serial number listing.”
Because the inspector general is charged only with looking at weaponry financed directly by the American taxpayer, the total of lost weapons could end up being higher. The Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon inspector general are expected to look at weapons financed by all sources, including the Iraqi government.
The inspector general’s office, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., also a Republican, responded to Mr. Warner’s query about the Iraqi Army’s logistical capabilities with another report released at the same time, concluding that Iraqi security forces still depended heavily on the Americans for the operations that sustain a modern army: deliveries of fuel and ammunition, troop transport, health care and maintenance.
Mr. Bowen found that the American military was not able to say how many Iraqi logistics personnel it had trained — in this case because, the military told the inspector general, a computer network crash erased records. Those problems have occurred even though the United States has spent $133 million on the weapons program and $666 million on Iraqi logistics capabilities.
The report said that although the United States planned to scale back its support for logistics and maintenance for Iraqi security forces in 2007, it was unclear whether the Iraqi government had any intention of compensating by allocating sufficient money to the Ministries of Interior and Defense.
Mr. Warner confirmed through his spokesman, John Ullyot, that he was reviewing the reports over the weekend in advance of a scheduled meeting with Mr. Bowen on Tuesday.
Mr. Warner “believes it is essential that Congress and the American people continue to be kept informed by the inspector general on the equipping and logistical capabilities of the Iraqi Army and security forces, since these represent an important component of overall readiness,” Mr. Ullyot said.
Mr. Bowen said in an interview that he was particularly concerned about whether the Iraqi government intended to allocate enough money to support the logistics and maintenance needed for the Iraqi security forces to operate effectively.
“There’s a couple of red flags,” Mr. Bowen said. “Most significantly, is the Iraqi Ministry of Interior properly preparing to take over the mission and sustain it?”
“We don’t know because we don’t have adequate visibility into their budgeting,” he said, “and to a lesser extent the same red flag is up for the Department of Defense.”
Another report unrelated to Mr. Warner’s request was also released by the inspector general on Sunday, on the so-called provincial reconstruction teams that the United States is creating for the next phase of rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure.
While some of the teams, intended to be scattered in each of Iraq’s 18 provinces, are functioning, security problems have severely hampered work in others, the report says. As a result, the inspector general recommended, the United States should consider reassigning its personnel in six provinces — including Basra in the south and Anbar in the west — to other places where effective work can be done.
The western province of Anbar is a central focus of the Sunni insurgency, and power struggles between Shiite militias have made Basra increasingly violent. The other four provinces that the inspector general recommends essentially abandoning are also in the Shiite south.
In its assessment of Iraqi weaponry, the inspector general concluded that of the 505,093 weapons that have been given to the Ministries of Interior and Defense over the last several years, serial numbers for only 12,128 were properly recorded. The weapons include rocket-propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns, shotguns, semiautomatic pistols and sniper rifles.
Of those weapons, 370,000 were purchased with American taxpayer money under what is called the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, or I.R.R.F., and therefore fell within the inspector general’s mandate.
Despite the potential risks from losing track of those weapons — involving 19 different contracts and 142 delivery orders — the United States recorded serial numbers for no more than a few thousand, the inspector general said.
There are standard regulations for registering military weaponry in that way, governed by the Department of Defense small-arms serialization program. The inspector general’s report said that when asked why so many weapons went to Iraq with no record of serial numbers, American military officials in Baghdad replied that they did not believe the regulations applied to them.
Still, in their response to the report, military officials said they would keep track of serial numbers for weapons shipped or issued in the future, but in a database outside the small-arms serialization program. They did not present a plan for identifying or monitoring weapons that had already been issued.
The inspector general’s report also found that money for spare parts was allocated for only 5 of the 12 different kinds of weapons sent to Iraq — and when the inspector general contacted units of the Defense and Interior Ministries, none actually knew how or where to requisition spare parts.
There were also significant discrepancies in the numbers of weapons purchased and those in Iraqi warehouses. While 176,866 semiautomatic pistols were purchased with American money, just 163,386 showed up in warehouses — meaning that more than 13,000 were unaccounted for. All 751 of the M1-F assault rifles sent to Iraq were missing, and nearly 100 MP-5 machine guns.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:09 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/middleeast/30iraq.html
October 30, 2006
Iraqi Family Says Missing Army Interpreter Is Son-in-Law
By MICHAEL LUO and QAIS MIZHER [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [politics and violence since big 3 (dec 2005 elections; Feb 22, 2006 attack on famous shii’a mosque; april 22 elevation of current PM Maliki)] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [************]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 29 — The missing American soldier who has been the subject of an intensive manhunt here in the capital since he was kidnapped by gunmen outside the heavily protected Green Zone last week was secretly married to an Iraqi woman and had been visiting her at the time of the abduction, several people who identified themselves as his in-laws said Sunday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/middleeast/30iraq.html
October 30, 2006
Iraqi Family Says Missing Army Interpreter Is Son-in-Law
By MICHAEL LUO and QAIS MIZHER [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [politics and violence since big 3 (dec 2005 elections; Feb 22, 2006 attack on famous shii’a mosque; april 22 elevation of current PM Maliki)] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [************]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 29 — The missing American soldier who has been the subject of an intensive manhunt here in the capital since he was kidnapped by gunmen outside the heavily protected Green Zone last week was secretly married to an Iraqi woman and had been visiting her at the time of the abduction, several people who identified themselves as his in-laws said Sunday.
These people, who provided the first vivid account of the abduction, said the kidnappers were members of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia, who dragged the soldier into a car at gunpoint. His whereabouts and condition remain unknown.
The soldier’s marriage, if confirmed, would not only be highly unusual but also a violation of American military rules, and would put the mystery of the missing soldier in an entirely new light. The American military command has been circumspect in the details of the missing soldier, saying he was an Iraqi-American interpreter who had left the Green Zone without permission to visit unidentified relatives in Baghdad. Search squads have shown local residents the missing soldier’s picture, but the military has not even released his name.
The new details of his family connections were disclosed as a spate of attacks reported elsewhere in Iraq left at least 33 people dead. These included an ambush on a police academy bus in southern Iraq that killed 17.
The people who said they were the missing soldier’s in-laws identified him as Ahmed Qusai al-Taei, 41. They showed visitors to their Baghdad apartment an enlarged wedding photo of him and the bride, whom they identified as Israa Abdul-Satar, 26, a college student. They also showed the visitors glossy snapshots of the smiling couple in Egypt for their honeymoon. The couple had married three months ago, they said. The precise dates of the wedding and honeymoon, and whether the soldier had been on active duty at the time, were not clear.
The people also described how members of the Mahdi Army, led by a local commander known as Abu Rami, came to the wife’s home in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karada last Monday, on the Muslim holiday Id al-Fitr, and took Mr. Taei.
“They were saying, ‘He’s an American journalist,’ ” said a woman who identified herself as his mother-in-law and asked that she be identified only by her nickname, Um Omar, because of fear of reprisals. “We were saying, ‘No, he’s an Iraqi.’ ”
Um Omar and the others in the home said they had not learned until after the man’s kidnapping that he was an American soldier.
Military officials would not comment when asked Sunday about these new details, and it was impossible to independently corroborate the account given by the people who said they were Mr. Taei’s in-laws.
The military’s fraternization policies prohibit active duty personnel from marrying local civilians, said Lt. Col. Josslyn Aberle, a military spokeswoman. But she said privacy rules barred her from providing any details about the missing soldier.
In 2003, a pair of Florida national guardsmen married Iraqi doctors they met in Baghdad soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in a joint ceremony. One of the soldiers’ marriages dissolved soon afterward, but the one whose marriage lasted was confined to his base and eventually discharged from the military.
The people who said they were the missing soldier’s in-laws said he and his immediate family, Sunnis from the capital’s Adhamiya neighborhood, had fled to the United States before the fall of Saddam Hussein. They explained how he came to marry Ms. Abdul-Satar, also a Sunni.
Mr. Taei had friends in Karada, a mostly upscale commercial district that sits outside the Green Zone, Um Omar said. As she described it, he spotted her daughter one day as she was en route to classes at Mustansiriya University in central Baghdad, where she is enrolled in the science college.
Through friends, he arranged to speak with her parents, Um Omar said, and after some discussion, Ms. Abdul-Satar agreed to marry Mr. Taei, whom her mother described as a “gentleman.”
After the couple married, Um Omar said, Ms. Abdul-Satar moved out of her mother’s cramped apartment, on the third floor of a dreary complex on a side street in Karada near the National Theater, and settled into a cousin’s one-story home down the block.
Mr. Taei came to visit every few days, said a neighbor who lives across the street from the cousin’s home, where the kidnapping took place.
“We thought he was a businessman,” said the neighbor, who asked to be identified only by his last name, Nadhir.
Last Monday, Mr. Taei came about 4 p.m. on a motorcycle. Soon after, a car full of gunmen came and demanded that Mr. Taei go with them, Mr. Nadhir said. He said he witnessed the entire episode from across the street but was helpless to stop it.
Abu Rami, said to be the lead kidnapper, had been living in the abandoned Ministry of Defense building just up the street that is now inhabited by squatters, residents said. Members of the Mahdi Army, a force that answers to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, are known to patrol that building as well as a squalid former air force base across the street that has also become a large encampment for the homeless.
Just a few days before the kidnapping, Abu Rami and his men had beaten several teenage boys in the neighborhood with cables for wearing shorts, residents said.
But when the men tried to drag Mr. Taei into their car at gunpoint, he and members of Ms. Abdul-Satar’s family resisted, Mr. Nadhir said. Three additional cars full of gunmen soon arrived to help.
One of Um Omar’s nephews came running to her apartment to tell her what was happening, she said. She rushed over with other family members.
“I saw one of the kidnappers putting a gun to his head,” she said.
The women in the house were screaming and crying, begging and arguing with the gunmen to stop, said Ahmed Abdul-Satar, one of Ms. Abdul-Satar’s brothers, who said he tried to send them inside while the men sorted out the matter. His sister, in hysterics, fainted, he said.
Eventually, the gunmen wrestled Mr. Taei into the car, but another of Ms. Abdul-Satar’s brothers, Omar, who knew Abu Rami from the neighborhood, insisted on going with them, other relatives said.
They were on their way to the vast Shiite slum of Sadr City, the stronghold of the Mahdi Army, relatives said, when Abu Rami ordered Mr. Abdul-Satar out of the car and left him at the side of the road. If he did not get out, he was told, they would kidnap him as well.
Ms. Abdul-Satar and her brother are now staying in the Green Zone for their safety and to answer additional questions from the military, their mother said. She has heard from her daughter a few times, but there has been no news of Mr. Taei.
American troops, along with their Iraqi counterparts, have cordoned off much of eastern Baghdad, including Sadr City, in their search for the missing soldier.
On Friday, they rolled in force into the district, searching a mosque and a school but did not find him.
Just two days before that, Iraqi and American troops had clashed over several hours with militiamen after they entered Sadr City at dawn. They raided the home of a notorious Shiite guerrilla leader in search of suspects in the kidnapping, the military said. In total, 10 militiamen were killed in the fighting.
On Sunday, thousands of residents, along with politicians from Mr. Sadr’s political bloc, gathered in Sadr City to protest peacefully against the security cordon around the neighborhood.
The most serious of the attacks elsewhere across Iraq on Sunday was an ambush of a police academy minibus in the southern city of Basra. Fifteen officers and two interpreters were killed, said Gen. Abdul Khidir al-Taher of the Iraqi police. In addition, the police found at least 31 bodies across the capital on Sunday, many of them shot at close range and bearing signs of torture, an Interior Ministry official said.
For Um Omar, the last week has been filled with waiting and worrying. If she had known that Mr. Taei had been in the United States Army, she said, she would have forbidden him to visit.
“I’m praying,” she said. “I’m calling on Allah for his safety.”
Hosham Hussein contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Basra.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:09 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900562.html
Twofold Operation Seals Sadr City
Troops Seek U.S. Soldier, Militiaman
By John Ward Anderson and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 30, 2006; A12 [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [politics and violence since big 3 (dec 2005 elections; Feb 22, 2006 attack on famous shii’a mosque; april 22 elevation of current PM Maliki)] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [recent operations in Sadr city] [************]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 29 -- American military police backed by Iraqi troops maintained their cordon of Baghdad's Sadr City on Sunday, manning barricades and checkpoints in and around the Shiite slum in an operation to find a kidnapped U.S. soldier and to capture the man considered Iraq's most notorious death squad leader. [********]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900562.html
Twofold Operation Seals Sadr City
Troops Seek U.S. Soldier, Militiaman
By John Ward Anderson and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 30, 2006; A12 [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [politics and violence since big 3 (dec 2005 elections; Feb 22, 2006 attack on famous shii’a mosque; april 22 elevation of current PM Maliki)] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [recent operations in Sadr city] [************]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 29 -- American military police backed by Iraqi troops maintained their cordon of Baghdad's Sadr City on Sunday, manning barricades and checkpoints in and around the Shiite slum in an operation to find a kidnapped U.S. soldier and to capture the man considered Iraq's most notorious death squad leader. [********]
The soldier, an Iraqi American translator whose name has not been released, has been missing for six days. He was abducted by armed men while making an unauthorized visit to see relatives in the Karrada neighborhood of central Baghdad last Monday.
U.S. forces have effectively sealed off Sadr City and its 2.5 million residents from the rest of Baghdad, and within Sadr City, they have isolated the neighborhood around the home of alleged death squad leader Abu Deraa, according to an Iraqi Interior Ministry official who would not be named because he was not authorized to release the information.
U.S. officials have refused to comment on whether they believe that Abu Deraa is holding the missing soldier, and it was unclear whether the two goals of the U.S. operation -- finding the soldier and capturing Abu Deraa -- are related. [*******]
On Sunday, U.S. troops searched every car going in and out of Sadr City. [****]Even donkey carts were searched; an American female MP patted a donkey as Iraqi troops sorted through the junked engine parts and cardboard piled on his back.
About a mile away, 1,000 men and women gathered inside Sadr City to protest the continuing U.S. operation. A woman cloaked in black robes declared over loudspeakers booming across a square that food and medicine were running short because of the near-blockade.
Parliament members and tribal leaders took the podium to demand that the Americans go away. Men pumped their fists but heeded appeals to remain calm. [****]
"The Americans are trying to pull the Sadr movement into war with the U.S.," one speaker in brown robes exhorted. "Do not fall for their tricks. Keep calm, keep cool."
The Iraqi Interior Ministry official and residents of Sadr City said close lieutenants of Abu Deraa's and some of his relatives were killed in U.S. raids near his house on Wednesday and Friday. [*****] They said Abu Deraa, who is feared by Sunnis across the capital for allegedly leading a gang that has kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands of Sunnis, appeared at a funeral Friday and vowed revenge against the United States and anyone in Sadr City who cooperated in the attacks. [the so-called Shiia Zarqawi] [*****]The Interior Ministry spokesman said Abu Deraa accused Moqtada al-Sadr -- an anti-U.S. Shiite cleric with many followers in Sadr City who leads the Mahdi Army militia -- of being "a coward."
The Mahdi Army, which runs Sadr City, has been accused of killing thousands of Sunni Arabs. But many security officials believe that Sadr is losing control of extremist members of his militia and that Abu Deraa might be a rogue element.
Sadr denies knowing anything about the kidnapping of the U.S. soldier, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said last week. The soldier's brother also was abducted, but he was later freed and told police that the kidnappers were from the Mahdi Army, Maliki said.
Although the Sadr movement has previously disavowed Abu Deraa, a Sadr spokesman said Sunday that Abu Deraa was a member of the militia and that he would never speak against the cleric.
"Abu Deraa is merely a slave and a simple person in the Sadr movement, and he could not utter such words, for he is one of the dear fighters of the Mahdi Army and the Sadr movement,"[*******] said Mohammed al-Kaabi, who works in Sadr’s office in the city of Najaf.
[Early Monday, a bomb ripped through a Sadr City market where Iraqi Shiites were lined up for day labor jobs, killing at least 31 people and wounding more than 50, the Associated Press reported, citing police officials.]
On Sunday, the U.S. military said it launched a surprise attack on insurgents who were gathering in two places to ambush coalition forces near the city of Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing about 17 guerrillas. Local officials and residents, who put the number of dead at 11, said the group had gathered to defend the Sunni hamlet of Duluiyah, about four miles across the Tigris River from Balad, fearing that it was going to be attacked.
The two towns were the site of intense Shiite-Sunni strife earlier this month, after Sunni insurgents kidnapped and beheaded 17 Shiite laborers in Duluiyah. Shiite leaders in Balad responded by asking for protection from the Mahdi Army, touching off a four-day sectarian rampage that left as many as 100 people dead. Both towns have since been bracing for reprisals.
Duluiyah police Maj. Ahmed Aziz said a group of armed men had gathered late Saturday to defend the town after receiving news that commandos from Iraq’s Interior Ministry – which has been accused of harboring Shiite death squads – were preparing an assault. He said the men were “planning to ambush the commandos if they launched such an attack,” but instead were struck by three missiles fired by U.S. jets.
Ali Kareem, a 35-year-old farmer whose brother was killed in the strike, said groups were positioned around the town to repel an expected offensive by U.S. forces and Interior Ministry commandos. He said their operations were coordinated with local police.
“We told the police that we do not need you with us in this operation, and we asked them to remain at their police station to defend the city in case the Interior commandos came and wanted to take over the city,” Kareem said. “So we would be the first line of defense, and the police would be the second line of defense inside the city.
“We would not let them take us as prisoners. Either they kill us or we kill them.” [*******]
The U.S. military statement said coalition forces were moving "toward their objective" early Sunday when they "encountered terrorist activity on two separate occasions along their route." The statement, which did not specify the purpose of the operation, said aircraft "engaged the targets with precision fire," killing four guerrillas in the first strike and about 13 more in subsequent attacks.
Elsewhere, 17 police trainees and translators reportedly were killed when gunmen ambushed their bus near the southern city of Basra, local authorities said. Baghdad police said 25 bodies, many bearing signs of torture, were found across the capital Sunday morning. And at least 25 more people were killed in shootings, bombings and other violence in Iraq on Sunday, according to police, security officials and wire services.
Officials at state television station al-Iraqiya said that one of the station's sports broadcasters, Naqsheen Hamma Rasheed, was killed along with her driver Sunday morning while headed to work in Baghdad. She was the second sportscaster from the station to be slain in the past five months.
Falah al-Fadhly, the station's managing editor for news, said Rasheed, a Kurd, was shot about 9:30 as she was getting out of the car at the station, which is across the street from the Justice Ministry. The gunmen fled, he said.
Special correspondents Saad Sarhan in Najaf, Muhanned Saif Aldin in Tikrit and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad contributed.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:08 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900145.html
Baghdad Blast Kills 26; U.S. Oct. Toll Hits 101
Twofold Operation Seals Sadr City
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 30, 2006; 4:00 PM [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [politics and violence since big 3 (dec 2005 elections; Feb 22, 2006 attack on famous shii’a mosque; april 22 elevation of current PM Maliki)] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [************] [ditto]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 30 -- A bustling market in Baghdad's Sadr City became the capital's latest killing ground early Monday when a bomb hidden amid trash and clutter exploded in a fiery inferno, killing at least 26 people and wounding 60, a spokesman at Iraq's Interior Ministry said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900145.html
Baghdad Blast Kills 26; U.S. Oct. Toll Hits 101
Twofold Operation Seals Sadr City
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 30, 2006; 4:00 PM [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [politics and violence since big 3 (dec 2005 elections; Feb 22, 2006 attack on famous shii’a mosque; april 22 elevation of current PM Maliki)] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [************] [ditto]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 30 -- A bustling market in Baghdad's Sadr City became the capital's latest killing ground early Monday when a bomb hidden amid trash and clutter exploded in a fiery inferno, killing at least 26 people and wounding 60, a spokesman at Iraq's Interior Ministry said.
The explosion occurred at about 7 a.m. at the busy Circle 55 intersection, a popular gathering point in the Shiite slum for construction laborers looking for a day's work. The blast spewed shards of metal, exploded three nearby cars and left a huge crater in the pavement.
U.S. and Iraqi forces had previously established a cordon around the teeming slum, which is controlled by the Mahdi Army militia, in an attempt to find a kidnapped U.S. soldier and a man known as Abu Diraa, who is considered Iraq's most notorious death squad leader.
Shiite leaders pointed to that U.S. operation Monday to accuse the Americans of complicity in the market blast, saying that because they were in charge of searching all vehicles going in and out of the area, they must have allowed in the bomb that was detonated at the market.
"The entrances and exits in and out of Sadr City are still under the control of the Iraqi and occupation forces," said Mohammed Al-Ka'abi, a spokesman for Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army and head of a strong political bloc in Iraq's government. "Since the entrances to the city are in the hands of the Americans, they let it in and slaughtered the people."
Some residents of Sadr City, home to 2.5 million Shiites, also blamed U.S. forces for the carnage, saying that the search for the missing soldier -- which began six days ago -- has forced the Mahdi Army underground, weakening the area's defenses.
"That forced Mahdi Army members, who were patrolling the streets, to vanish," Abdul-Ridha, who was injured in Monday's bombing, told the Associated Press from his bed in al-Sadr Hospital.
A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher C. Garver, denied that coalition forces were responsible for the explosion, saying it occurred "despite our security efforts."
Meanwhile, the U.S. military reported that a Marine was killed Sunday in Anbar province west of Baghdad and that a member of the 89th Military Police Brigade was killed Monday in the eastern part of the capital. The Pentagon reported the death of a Marine Friday in Anbar. So far, 101 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq this month, making October the deadliest month for American forces since January 2005, when 107 U.S. soldiers were killed.
In other violence Monday, at least 12 people were killed and 41 were wounded in five car bombings in the capital, and three were killed and six injured in two roadside bombings, according to local police, Interior Ministry officials and wire service reports.
Elsewhere in Iraq, at least 21 people were killed in bombings and other violence, including three people who died when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt walked into a local police headquarters in the northern city of Kirkuk and detonated himself, according to Kirkuk police Capt. Emad Khider. He said a 5-year-old girl was among three killed in the blast. Ten people were injured.
Special correspondents Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Washington Post staff in Kirkuk contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:07 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/middleeast/31iraqcnd.html
October 30, 2006
Blasts Across Baghdad Kill at Least 43
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and JOHN O’NEIL [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [politics and violence since big 3 (dec 2005 elections; Feb 22, 2006 attack on famous shii’a mosque; april 22 elevation of current PM Maliki)] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [************]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 30 — At least 33 Shiite laborers were killed and 59 were wounded in a bomb blast in Baghdad today, as the American death toll in Iraq reached 100 for the month with the announcement by the military that a marine had been killed in al-Anbar province.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/middleeast/31iraqcnd.html
October 30, 2006
Blasts Across Baghdad Kill at Least 43
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and JOHN O’NEIL [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [politics and violence since big 3 (dec 2005 elections; Feb 22, 2006 attack on famous shii’a mosque; april 22 elevation of current PM Maliki)] [bush administration finally had begun talking about “benchmarks”] [meanwhile, the death toll keeps growing] [************]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 30 — At least 33 Shiite laborers were killed and 59 were wounded in a bomb blast in Baghdad today, as the American death toll in Iraq reached 100 for the month with the announcement by the military that a marine had been killed in al-Anbar province.
Four other bombs killed at least 10 people and wounded 26 around the capital today, and a geology professor who is a member of a Sunni political group was gunned down on his way to his college.
The outbreak of violence comes despite the hopes of American military officials that the killings, which increased during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, might slacken following its end last week.
The military said in a statement today that the marine died on Sunday from wounds suffered in combat in al-Anbar, the western province where the Sunni insurgency is based. October has become the deadliest month for American forces in Iraq since January 2005, when 107 troops were killed.
Also today, Britain announced that it is relocating most of the civilian staff at its consulate in the southern city of Basra to the airport, because of security concerns about the city, news services reported.
“Given the threat to the safety of civilian staff, we have decided temporarily to reduce the number of staff at our compound,” Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said.
Britain has been handing responsibility for security in the Basra region over to Iraqi forces, and the level of the violence there has risen as Shiite groups vie with one another for control.
In Baghdad, the American national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, paid an unannounced visit to the government Green Zone for a meeting with his Iraqi counterpart, Mowaffak al-Rubaie. The two men discussed ways to improve the security situation, a statement issued afterward said.
Last week, Mr. Rubaie was one of a number of top officials in the Iraqi government who took issue publicly with American pronouncements and policies. He argued for a faster pace in handing off authority from American to Iraqi forces. “We think we can do things better, and it’s the time now,” he said.
A White House spokesman, Dana Perino, denied today that Mr. Hadley’s trip was related to the strains between Washington and Baghdad. “This is a long-planned trip to the region,” she said.
On a day that saw at least six explosions across the capital, the largest came in Sadr City, the rundown neighborhood in the eastern part of Baghdad that has been the scene of some of the worst sectarian attacks by Sunni insurgents. It is also home to Shiite militias that have been linked to waves of attacks launched in reprisal.
The explosion there today struck a line of day laborers seeking work in Mudhafar Square. Iraqi officials said the bomb was hidden in a plastic bag placed in a garbage bin next to the line. One eyewitness, Abu Zeinad, told Agence France-Presse that it was the third time this year that the line had been attacked.
A spokesman for Interior Ministry, Brig. Gen. Abdel-Karim Khalaf, said that the blast was probably the work either of Al Qaeda or Sunni extremists known as takfiris, who have conducted outrageous attacks in the hope of provoking retaliation that further undermines the country’s fragile government.
“This has the fingerprints of the takfiris and Al Qaeda all over it,” he said, Agence France-Presse reported.
In addition to its continuing vulnerability to insurgent attacks, Sadr City has become the focal point of recent tensions between the American military and the Iraqi government. The district is the stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr, an anti-American cleric who is one of the most important backers of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. American officials have repeatedly pressed Mr. Maliki to crack down on the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to Mr. Sadr, [********]which they blame for much of the sectarian violence in the capital.
According to news agencies, some of the survivors of today’s explosion said American troops were to blame, because the raids had chased away Mahdi Army militiamen who had provided security in the area.
The raids “forced Mahdi Army members, who were patrolling the streets, to vanish,” Ali Abdul-Ridha, 41, [*****]told The Associated Press from his hospital bed.
A spokesman for Mr. Sadr also put blame on the American military, according to Agence France-Presse. “The responsibility for this attack lies with the occupying forces,” said the spokesman, Hamdallah Rikabi. “Everybody knows that before this, this was a secure city, and deploying the occupier’s forces is just harming our security.” [*****]
But another survivor blamed the Mahdi Army for provoking Sunni extremists. “We are just poor people looking to make a living — we have nothing to do with any conflict,” Falih Jabar, 37, a laborer who suffered back wounds, told the A.P.
He said that if the Sunnis “have problems with the Mahdi Army, they should fight them, [*****]not us.”
Sabrina Tavernise reported from Baghdad and John O’Neil from New York.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:07 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/europe/30france.html
October 30, 2006
Attackers Set Fire to Bus in Marseille, Wounding One
By ARIANE BERNARD [france] [eu] [followup from past few days] [paris is on slow boild as one year anniversary of “riots” arrives] [************]
PARIS, Oct. 29 — Attackers set a public bus on fire in the southeastern city of Marseille on Saturday night, critically wounding a young woman, the police there said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/europe/30france.html
October 30, 2006
Attackers Set Fire to Bus in Marseille, Wounding One
By ARIANE BERNARD [france] [eu] [followup from past few days] [paris is on slow boild as one year anniversary of “riots” arrives] [************]
PARIS, Oct. 29 — Attackers set a public bus on fire in the southeastern city of Marseille on Saturday night, critically wounding a young woman, the police there said.
Mama Galledou, a 26-year-old Frenchwoman of Senegalese descent, sustained burns over 60 percent of her body, according to the police.
The bus attack was at least the eighth in the last week, but the first in which anyone was harmed.
The attacks began during the days before the one-year anniversary on Friday of the death of two teenagers in a Paris suburb. Their deaths inflamed feelings of resentment in France’s poor immigrant communities and sparked a three-week wave of unrest.
Although many people feared a repetition of the violence, the country has been mainly quiet except for three recent ambushes of police patrols, in which policemen were beaten up, and the bus burnings. The violence last year included arson, but of unoccupied cars and buildings. Attacking buses in operation was new.
In Saturday’s attack, a group of young people boarded the bus, tossed a bottle of flammable liquid and set it alight before Ms. Galledou could escape, according to several news agencies that quoted the police.
President Jacques Chirac called Ms. Galledou’s family on Sunday, and said “everything would be put in place to find and punish with the utmost severity the perpetrators of the aggression,” Élysée Palace said in a statement.
After the attack, the Interior Ministry put an extra 160 riot police officers on duty in Marseille, particularly in public transportation hubs and near large bus terminals. The prime minister also called a meeting for Monday on public transportation safety, news agencies reported.
During last year’s violence, there was little unrest in Marseille, a city with a large immigrant population. At the time, some analysts said that Marseille’s long tradition of harmonious ethnic relations had spared the city from unrest.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:06 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900758.html
Serbs Said to Back Claim on Kosovo
Charter Passes in Sample Count; Official Results Expected Today
By Katarina Kratovac
Associated Press
Monday, October 30, 2006; A13 [Serbia] [still lording over Kosovo] [note: Kosovo ethnically more Albanian than Slav and majority Muslim] [hydra known to be active in areas] [***********]
BELGRADE, Oct. 29 -- Serbian voters have approved a new constitution reasserting Serbia's claim over the breakaway province of Kosovo, independent observers and Serbia's prime minister said Sunday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900758.html
Serbs Said to Back Claim on Kosovo
Charter Passes in Sample Count; Official Results Expected Today
By Katarina Kratovac
Associated Press
Monday, October 30, 2006; A13 [Serbia] [still lording over Kosovo] [note: Kosovo ethnically more Albanian than Slav and majority Muslim] [hydra known to be active in areas] [***********]
BELGRADE, Oct. 29 -- Serbian voters have approved a new constitution reasserting Serbia's claim over the breakaway province of Kosovo, independent observers and Serbia's prime minister said Sunday.
The Belgrade-based Center for Free Elections and Democracy said its sample count after polls closed in the two-day vote indicated that 96 percent of those who participated in the referendum supported the draft charter.
At least 50 percent of the country's 6.6 million voters needed to participate in order for the results to be valid, and the group estimated turnout at 53.3 percent. The final result is expected Monday.
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica congratulated the country on its new constitution.
"This is a great moment for Serbia," Kostunica told Serbian television. "This is a historic moment, a beginning of a new era for Serbia."
The referendum had been strongly condemned by the ethnic Albanians, who have long boycotted any ballot under Serb auspices.
Foreign diplomats have warned that only international negotiations can decide Kosovo's future, but Belgrade politicians said adopting the new constitution would bolster their position in the talks.
Serbia's opposition Liberal Party said there was "massive fraud" at polling stations in the final hours of voting, with individuals allegedly voting several times and without identification papers.
The need for a new constitution arose in June after Montenegro, Serbia's last partner from the former Yugoslav federation, declared independence and left Serbia on its own for the first time since 1918. But the focus has been on the document's preamble, which seeks to prevent a possible secession of the disputed Kosovo.
The charter's key point declares Kosovo an "integral part of Serbia," despite ongoing U.N.-brokered talks on the province's future status. Serbs cherish Kosovo, which today is home to a dwindling Serb community of 100,000, as their historic heartland.
The province's 2 million ethnic Albanians form 90 percent of the population in Kosovo, which has been under U.N. administration since 1999, when U.S.-led NATO airstrikes halted a Serb crackdown on the separatists.
Kostunica earlier Sunday had issued a final appeal to all voters "who hold Serbia in their hearts" to head to the polls and back the new constitution, warning of "unforeseeable consequences" if it is not approved.
"Citizens, go out and vote yes, for a better life for everyone," Serbian President Boris Tadic said in his own eleventh-hour plea.
A massive government campaign urged voters to say yes to the document, with ads flashing at the top of television screens Sunday on the state-run broadcaster.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:06 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/asia/30cnd-stan.html
October 30, 2006
Pakistan Ties Site It Attacked to Militants
By SALMAN MASOOD [Pakistan] [new Afghanistan] [followup of about a week or so ago] [two days of coverage with missiles found rigged around parliament AND relatively near Musharraf’s army home in Rawalapindi] [last news on this was October 14] [Jihaids central] [*******************] [use psci 469] [ditto]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 30 — The Pakistani military said today that it had destroyed a religious school used for training militants in the Bajur tribal area, which straddles the border with Afghanistan. The attack killed at least 80 people, the military said, describing them as militants.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/asia/30cnd-stan.html
October 30, 2006
Pakistan Ties Site It Attacked to Militants
By SALMAN MASOOD [Pakistan] [new Afghanistan] [followup of about a week or so ago] [two days of coverage with missiles found rigged around parliament AND relatively near Musharraf’s army home in Rawalapindi] [last news on this was October 14] [Jihaids central] [*******************] [use psci 469] [ditto]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 30 — The Pakistani military said today that it had destroyed a religious school used for training militants in the Bajur tribal area, which straddles the border with Afghanistan. The attack killed at least 80 people, the military said, describing them as militants.
The strike started at about 5 a.m. local time, when helicopter gunships fired missiles into the religious school, known as a madrassa, that was run by a local cleric, Maulvi Liaqut, according to military officials. Ground troops then stormed the compound.
Local news reports said Mr. Liaqut was killed in the attack.
He had once been a member of the defunct militant movement Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi, which sent thousands of tribal fighters into Afghanistan to support the Taliban before being banned in 2002 by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Mr. Liaqut was accused by the government of harboring local and foreign militants at the school.
“We received confirmed intelligence reports that 70 to 80 militants were hiding in a madrassa used as a terrorist-training facility, which was destroyed by an army strike, led by helicopters,” Maj. General Shaukat Sultan, a spokesman for the Pakistani military, told The Associated Press.
He also told reporters that security forces had information that the madrassa was being used for military training, and that the militants had been warned to close down the facility but had not done so.
Local television stations showed scenes from the attack site, including armed men seen standing by the dead bodies and thousands of people gathered around the rubble.
General Sultan said that no “high value target” was present during the raid, referring to leaders of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. General Sultan also said that no children or women were present inside the madrassa, and he denied that any American or NATO troops were involved in the raid.
“The information that we are receiving so far is that majority of the facility has been destroyed and most of the miscreants present there, they have been killed,” he said.
General Sultan said that the madrassa was in an isolated location. “There is no house within about a 100-meter radius of this madrassa,” said General Sultan. “As per information that we had, there were no women or children present there,” he said.
Pakistani officials dismissed any suggestions that the United States was behind the attack. Tasnim Aslam, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a news conference that the attack was not carried out under foreign pressure.
But opposition Islamist parties were quick to denounce the attack and blamed the United States. Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, alleged that innocent children were killed and that the Pakistan Army was covering up for the alleged Americans strike.
“This area is not an area where there can be any training camp,” Mr. Ahmed said at a news briefing in Islamabad. “This is actually tantamount to the declaration of war on Pakistan,” he said.
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, an alliance of opposition Islamist parties, announced nationwide protests on Tuesday.
After the attack, helicopters were reported hovering over the area. Telecommunication links were also reported to be suspended, according to local news media.
The madrassa was located in the village of Chingai near Khar, the main town in the tribal region of Bajur, one of the semiautonomous tribal areas in northwestern Pakistan that have long been considered safe havens for Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants.
Bajur, which borders Afghan province of Kunar, has a history of troubled militancy. Itwas the scene of a widely unpopular American military strike in January, when al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was the target.
As it happened, Mr. Zawahiri was not present at the time of that attack, but at least 18 people, mostly civilians, were killed. The incident helped spark nationwide protests against the United States and President Musharraf.
In June 2005, suspected Taliban rebels shot down a Chinook helicopter, killing 16 American servicemen, in Kunar, Afghanistan, not far from Bajur.
President Musharraf has sent more than 80,000 troops to the tribal areas along the Afghan border to flush out Taliban members.
NATO and Afghan officials have repeatedly said that Taliban fighters who have found refuge in Pakistan are responsible for attacks inside Afghanistan.
Responding to Afghani official accusations that Pakistan was not doing enough, General Sultan said both countries were responsible for curbing cross-border infiltration.
“If at all, there is any kind of infiltration taking place, the responsibility to check the infiltration is not only of Pakistan Army,” he said. “The responsibility is of every one else. On the Pakistan side, we need to patrol the borders and on the Afghanistan side, they need to patrol the borders. If anyone is crossing the border, well, it also indicates failing on their part.” “And as far as we are concerned, we do not support any such activity,” General Sultan said. “And the purpose of the peace agreement is that the militant activity is to be marginalized, not to be supported.”
Political fallout became evident in Pakistan soon after today’s attack Siraj ul Haq, a senior minister in the provincial cabinet, and Haroon-ur-Rashid, a member of the Parliament, condemned the strike and announced plans to resign, a local television station reported.
Today’s attack came two days after thousands of tribal militants staged a protest rally in Bajur and vowed to continue their opposition to the United States and its Pakistani supporters. Faqir Mohammad, a local tribal leader, told the protesters that jihad would continue against America and its allies, according toThe A.P., calling supporters of America the enemy.
The attack also threatens to disrupt a peace deal that was expected to be signed today between Bajur tribal leaders and the military. The agreement is meant to control the flow of weapons and militants into Afghanistan. A similar accord was signed with tribal leaders this year in neighboring North Waziristan.
“This attack is very strange, as we were told Sunday that the peace agreement would be signed,” Mohammed Sadiq, a local lawmaker, told The A.P.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:05 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000176.html
Militants Blame U.S. for Pakistan Strike
By PAUL GARWOOD
The Associated Press
Monday, October 30, 2006; 4:54 PM [Pakistan] [new Afghanistan] [followup of about a week or so ago] [two days of coverage with missiles found rigged around parliament AND relatively near Musharraf’s army home in Rawalapindi] [last news on this was October 14] [Jihaids central] [*******************] [use psci 469]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistani helicopter gunships on Monday destroyed a religious school the military said was fronting as an al-Qaida training camp, killing 80 people in the country's deadliest military operation [****]targeting suspected terrorists.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000176.html
Militants Blame U.S. for Pakistan Strike
By PAUL GARWOOD
The Associated Press
Monday, October 30, 2006; 4:54 PM [Pakistan] [new Afghanistan] [followup of about a week or so ago] [two days of coverage with missiles found rigged around parliament AND relatively near Musharraf’s army home in Rawalapindi] [last news on this was October 14] [Jihaids central] [*******************] [use psci 469]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistani helicopter gunships on Monday destroyed a religious school the military said was fronting as an al-Qaida training camp, killing 80 people in the country's deadliest military operation [****]targeting suspected terrorists.
Islamic leaders and al-Qaida-linked militants blamed the United States for the airstrike and called for nationwide demonstrations to condemn the attack that flattened the school _ known as a madrassa _ and ripped apart those inside. [****]Furious villagers and religious leaders said the pre-dawn missile barrage killed innocent students and teachers.
U.S. and Pakistani military officials denied American involvement. [almost a certainty that there was America involvement] [****]
Among those killed in the attack in the remote northwestern village of Chingai, [known Taliban-hydra redoubt] [****]two miles from the Afghan border, was a cleric who had sheltered militants in the past and was believed associated with al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.
The raid threatens efforts by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to persuade deeply conservative tribespeople to back his government over pro-Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, who enjoy strong support in many semiautonomous regions in northern Pakistan. [****]The planned signing of a peace deal between tribal leaders and the military was canceled Monday in response to the airstrike.
Musharraf has been under intense pressure, particularly from the United States and Afghanistan, to rein in militant groups, particularly along the porous Pakistan-Afghan frontier, [*****]where Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahri are believed to be hiding. [*****] The Pakistani leader, along with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, met with President Bush in Washington last month to address the issue. [******]
Protests were held from the northwestern city of Peshawar to the southern city of Karachi, the largest taking place in Chingai and the Bajur district's main town of Khar, where 2,000 tribesmen and shopkeepers chanted "Death to Musharraf! Death to Bush!" [*************]
Amid fears of unrest, Britain's Prince Charles, who arrived in Pakistan on Sunday for a five-day stay, canceled a visit planned for Tuesday to Peshawar.
The raid was launched after the madrassa's leaders, headed by cleric Liaquat Hussain, rejected government warnings to stop using the school as a training camp for terrorists, [*******]said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan.
"These militants were involved in actions inside Pakistan and probably in Afghanistan," [****]Sultan told The Associated Press.
Militant groups in Bajur are believed to ferry fighters, weapons and supplies to Afghanistan to target U.S. forces there and Pakistani soldiers on this side of the ethnic-Pashtun majority tribal belt. [******]
Sultan said 80 people were killed in the building, [****]which was 100 yards from the nearest house. Local political officials and Islamic leaders corroborated the death toll.
Sultan denied reports that al-Zawahri was in the area at the time of the attack. "It is all wrong, speculative and we launched this operation on our own to target a training facility," [*****]he said. A Bajur-area intelligence official said word was spreading among residents that al-Zawahri may have been expected at the madrassa, [*****] [shows intel is improving] [******]but he said the reports were wrong.
Hussain, the cleric believed to have been a deputy of al-Zawahri, was among those killed, [that’s second al Zawahiri deputy in past few months] [***] the intelligence official and residents said.
Another al-Zawahri lieutenant, Faqir Mohammed, apparently left the madrassa 30 minutes before the strike, [good intel] [****]according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Hours later, Mohammed addressed 10,000 mourners at a funeral for some of the victims.
"We were peaceful, but the government attacked and killed our innocent people on orders from America," said Mohammed, who was surrounded by dozens of militants brandishing semiautomatic weapons. "It is an open aggression."
Three funerals were held one after the other in a field near the madrassa, where the remains of at least 50 people were laid on wooden beds placed side by side in rows and covered with colored blankets.
Villagers walked among the beds and offered prayers. One man strode through the crowd holding aloft _ trophy-style _ a severed, blackened hand. Militants, their faces covered with brown and red scarves, patrolled the crowd.
On Saturday, Mohammed led a nearby rally of 5,000 pro-Taliban and al-Qaida militants where he denounced the Pakistani and U.S. governments and praised bin Laden. [********]
Fears are high that the attack will fan unrest across Pakistan, which witnessed violent protests this year after European newspapers published cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, as well as the August killing of a ethnic-Baluch tribal chief in another Pakistani military raid.
In Islamabad, Pakistan's most influential Islamist political leader blamed American forces for the attack, [*****]without providing evidence to support his claim, and called for protests Tuesday.
"It was an American plane behind the attack and Pakistan is taking responsibility because they know there would be a civil war if the American responsibility was known," [******]said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of a six-party religious alliance opposed to Musharraf.
Ahmed claimed that 30 children were among Monday's dead. But Sultan, the army spokesman, said no children or women were killed and rejected suggestions of U.S. or NATO involvement. Most victims' bodies were so mangled that positive identification was impossible.
The U.S. military also denied involvement.
"It was completely done by the Pakistani military," [****]U.S. military spokesman Maj. Matt Hackathorn said in Afghanistan.
The attack happened about two miles from Damadola, where in January a U.S. Predator drone aircraft fired a missile that purportedly targeted _ and missed _ al-Zawahri, but killed several al-Qaida members and civilians instead.
Thousands of tribespeople traveled from nearby villages to inspect Chingai's destroyed madrassa, [********]many wailing and others chanting "Long live Islam." The blast leveled the building, tearing mattresses and scattering Islamic books, including copies of the Quran.
"We heard helicopters flying in and then heard bombs," said one villager, Haji Youssef. "We were all saddened by what we have seen."
AP writers Habibullah Khan in Chingai, Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Sadaqat Jan and Munir Ahmad in Islamabad and Jason Straziuso in Kabul contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Associated Press

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:05 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/middleeast/30yemen.html
October 30, 2006
Yemen Arrests 8 It Links to Plot by Al Qaeda
By HASSAN M. FATTAH [yemen] [followup] [prison break, al qaeda, inside job] [all earlier 2006] [now appears hydra spiriting weapons into Somalia using Yemen] [alqaeda appears to have plan to recruit anglo-saxon converts] [*********] [use psci 469]
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Oct. 29 — Security officials in Yemen have arrested eight men, including several Europeans and Australians, as well as a Somali, in what was described as a plot linked to Al Qaeda to smuggle weapons from Yemen to Somalia, [******]Yemen’s official news agency reported Sunday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/middleeast/30yemen.html
October 30, 2006
Yemen Arrests 8 It Links to Plot by Al Qaeda
By HASSAN M. FATTAH [yemen] [followup] [prison break, al qaeda, inside job] [all earlier 2006] [now appears hydra spiriting weapons into Somalia using Yemen] [alqaeda appears to have plan to recruit anglo-saxon converts] [*********] [use psci 469]
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Oct. 29 — Security officials in Yemen have arrested eight men, including several Europeans and Australians, as well as a Somali, in what was described as a plot linked to Al Qaeda to smuggle weapons from Yemen to Somalia, [******]Yemen’s official news agency reported Sunday.
Security officials said the men, who were arrested Oct. 16, include three Australians, a Briton, a German, a Dane, a Somali and an eighth suspect of undisclosed nationality. [*******]
“Preliminary investigations indicate that they are members of Al Qaeda,” [****]an Interior Ministry official said in a statement carried by the state-run news agency, Saba.
If the men are convicted, it may offer the most concrete link of a growing Qaeda presence in Somalia, where the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamist group, has struggled to consolidate its position [****]after taking control of Mogadishu, the country’s capital, in June.
Officials said the men, who were not identified, had converted to Islam and had received religious instruction in Yemen. They were arrested trying to smuggle light arms, presumably across the Gulf of Aden, [****]a common smuggling route for refugees escaping Somalia and for drugs and contraband brought into Africa.
Yemen, where tribal wars and revenge attacks claim up to 1,200 lives every year, has one of the largest ratios of guns per capita in the world, with thriving arms markets in most major towns and cities. [*********]
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:03 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/28zelikow.html
October 28, 2006
Rice’s Counselor Gives Advice Others May Not Want to Hear
By HELENE COOPER and DAVID E. SANGER [state] [zelikow] [good influence on rice] [however, he and his advice is clearly the object of scorn and anger for the neoconservatives] [they both need to watch their necks] [indicative of rice state department and its rift with the old neocons: Cheney and Rummy] [*********]
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — For the last 18 months, Philip D. Zelikow has churned out confidential memorandums and proposals for his boss and close friend, Condoleezza Rice, that often depart sharply from the Bush administration’s current line. [******]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/28zelikow.html
October 28, 2006
Rice’s Counselor Gives Advice Others May Not Want to Hear
By HELENE COOPER and DAVID E. SANGER [state] [zelikow] [good influence on rice] [however, he and his advice is clearly the object of scorn and anger for the neoconservatives] [they both need to watch their necks] [indicative of rice state department and its rift with the old neocons: Cheney and Rummy] [*********]
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — For the last 18 months, Philip D. Zelikow has churned out confidential memorandums and proposals for his boss and close friend, Condoleezza Rice, that often depart sharply from the Bush administration’s current line. [******]
One described the potential for Iraq to become a “catastrophic failure.” [****]Another, among several that have come to light in recent weeks, was an early call for changes in a detention policy that many in the State Department believed was doing tremendous harm to the United States. [*********]
Others have proposed new diplomatic initiatives toward North Korea and the Middle East, and one went as far as to call for a reconsideration of the phrase “war on terror” because it alienated many Muslims — an idea that quickly fizzled after opposition from the White House.
Such ideas would have found a more natural home under President George H. W. Bush, for whom Mr. Zelikow and Ms. Rice worked on the staff of the National Security Council. [******] They reflect a sense that American influence is perishable, and can be damaged by overreaching, as allies and other partners react against decisions made in Washington. [******]They form a kind of foreign policy realism that was eclipsed in Mr. Bush’s first term, in favor of a more ideological, unilateral ethos, but that has made something of a comeback in his second term. [by comparison the Bush 41 administration looks exemplary] [*******]
Whether Mr. Zelikow, 52, is giving voice to Ms. Rice’s private views, or simply serving as an in-house contrarian, remains unclear. [***] Some of his ideas have become policy: he had called for the closure of secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency [******]a year before the Supreme Court decision that prodded the Bush administration to empty them.
The United States offered North Korea a chance to negotiate a permanent peace treaty, per Mr. Zelikow’s advice, and he, along with Ms. Rice, was one of the backers of the Iran initiative, in which President Bush offered to reverse three decades of American policy against direct talks with Tehran if Iran suspended its uranium enrichment.
Neither North Korea nor Iran has bitten on the initiatives, but America’s allies have applauded them. Mr. Zelikow’s assessments of the Iraq war, first disclosed in Bob Woodward’s book “State of Denial,” were presented to Ms. Rice in 2005.
Ms. Rice keeps Mr. Zelikow close at hand, and the fact that his memorandums have surfaced in recent books and news articles suggests, at a minimum, that he and his allies are aggressively lobbying for his ideas. Mr. Zelikow (pronounced ZELL-i-ko) is being talked about inside the State Department as an outside shot for the vacant job of deputy secretary of state, but some believe that his management style is too combative for the job.
Friends of both officials say that Ms. Rice appears to regard Mr. Zelikow as a kind of intellectual anchor during what has been a turbulent period for American foreign policy, in Iraq and beyond.
“He’s a very important intellectual resource, even if she may not always agree with him,” said Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser, who has been a mentor to both.
Michael A. McFaul, a political science professor at Stanford University who knows both the secretary of state and Mr. Zelikow, said that “the limited results” of the administration’s approach had “created space for guys like” Mr. Zelikow. [*******]
Mr. Zelikow is hardly a household name, even at the State Department, where his title is counselor to the secretary of state. He has few staffers, no line authority, and occupies an office at the very end of the hall on the seventh floor, where Ms. Rice and other top officials also have their offices. [*******]He is a sometimes-geeky intellectual known for fingernails that are bitten down to nubs.
But questions about his role were sharpened last month after Mr. Zelikow gave a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in which he offered what many believed was an oblique criticism of the decision by Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice not to push Israel to return to the negotiating table with the Palestinians. [*******]He also said progress in that conflict was essential to forming a consensus among the United States, moderate Arabs and Europeans on Iran.
The address may have been an example of what Mr. Zelikow, in two speeches last year, called “practical idealism.” But it did not go over well. The State Department quickly distanced itself from the speech, issuing a statement denying any linkage, and Israeli officials, flustered by Mr. Zelikow’s remarks, said Ms. Rice later assured the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, that the United States saw the Iranian and Palestinian issues as two separate matters. [**********]
Neither Ms. Rice nor Mr. Zelikow would comment for this article.
But friends of both Ms. Rice and Mr. Zelikow say her initial decision to appoint Mr. Zelikow to the counselor post last year reflects her openness to views at odds with the more ideological approach that has been dominant under President Bush. [*********] [and shows her to be stronger than many have assumed] [*********]
Ms. Rice had to expend a substantial amount of her own political capital to get the White House to support her choice, friends say, given Mr. Zelikow’s previous job as staff director of the 9/11 Commission, [*****]where he played a major role in writing the report that took both the Clinton and Bush administrations to task for failing to act with sufficient seriousness against the threat from Al Qaeda.
But Ms. Rice arrived at the State Department insistent that she would surround herself with her own people, friends say. Vice President Dick Cheney wanted her to appoint his former deputy national security adviser, Eric S. Edelman, as her political director; she balked and instead chose R. Nicholas Burns, [********]a friend who had worked for her at the security council during the administration of the first President Bush. Likewise, in choosing Mr. Zelikow as her counselor, she eschewed Elliott L. Abrams, a darling of neoconservatives and the pro-Israel lobby. [********] [though oddly, perhaps, Abrams was earlier this year described as helping Rice—sort of a liaison with neocons; could have been when he still thought he might get the job] [******]
Mr. Zelikow and Ms. Rice co-authored a book about Germany’s reunification, “Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft” (Harvard University Press, 1995). It is not exactly light reading, but at its core it is a study in realpolitik, examining — and admiring — the tempered, carefully managed American response to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It is a book that Mr. Zelikow could write again today, but one that Ms. Rice could not, friends and associates of both say. Ms. Rice herself has said that she went through something of a transformation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in which she moved away from the classical realism of her own roots and Mr. Zelikow’s, and closer to the neoconservatives who dominated policy discussions in the first term. [*****] Ms. Rice has told friends that President Bush has had a major impact on her thinking in terms of reintroducing values-based politics and ideology. [hopefully she has come to her senses] [**********]
An example of the distance between Mr. Zelikow and his boss emerged this summer, at the start of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. The position adopted by Ms. Rice — that Israel be permitted to continue its bombardment of Hezbollah despite the mounting civilian death toll in Lebanon — satisfied conservatives in the administration, including Mr. Cheney, who were pushing for strong American support of Israel. [********]
That support also included the decision by the administration to heed Israel’s desire that America not push it to resolve the Palestinian conflict until the Palestinian Authority improved security and cracked down on attacks by groups considered to be terrorist entities by Israel and the United States.
But in his speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Mr. Zelikow implicitly acknowledged that that stance does not win America any friends in the Muslim world, and thwarts other American foreign policy objectives. [*********]
Joseph Nye, the former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and one of Mr. Zelikow’s friends, said, “If you look at the distance where the administration went away from the realism of the 2000 campaign, Philip never went on that kind of excursion.” [*********]
Mr. Zelikow sat out the first Bush term, running the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. But Ms. Rice turned to him for key tasks, and he drafted much of the 2002 “National Security Strategy of the United States,” the document that fundamentally reordered American national security doctrine after the Sept. 11 attacks. [************]
He became the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, from where he pressured Ms. Rice to turn over highly classified intelligence estimates and testify in front of the commission. Officials who worked with him marveled at his industry and precision, but described him as far more opinionated than his gather-the-numbers approach might first suggest. Staffers on the commission said other colleagues were assigned the task of smoothing over the bruised egos of those who had crossed Mr. Zelikow.
The position of counselor to the secretary of state, a post that over the years has been filled by some of Washington’s brightest diplomatic lights, allows Mr. Zelikow to fly under the radar, and Ms. Rice has used that flexibility from the beginning of her term, when he was sent off to Iraq to provide an outsider’s assessment of what had gone wrong. [*********************************]
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
An example of the distance between Mr. Zelikow and his boss emerged this summer, at the start of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. The position adopted by Ms. Rice — that Israel be permitted to continue its bombardment of Hezbollah despite the mounting civilian death toll in Lebanon — satisfied conservatives in the administration, including Mr. Cheney, who were pushing for strong American support of Israel.
That support also included the decision by the administration to heed Israel’s desire that America not push it to resolve the Palestinian conflict until the Palestinian Authority improved security and cracked down on attacks by groups considered to be terrorist entities by Israel and the United States.
But in his speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Mr. Zelikow implicitly acknowledged that that stance does not win America any friends in the Muslim world, and thwarts other American foreign policy objectives.
Joseph Nye, the former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and one of Mr. Zelikow’s friends, said, “If you look at the distance where the administration went away from the realism of the 2000 campaign, Philip never went on that kind of excursion.”
Mr. Zelikow sat out the first Bush term, running the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. But Ms. Rice turned to him for key tasks, and he drafted much of the 2002 “National Security Strategy of the United States,” the document that fundamentally reordered American national security doctrine after the Sept. 11 attacks.
He became the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, from where he pressured Ms. Rice to turn over highly classified intelligence estimates and testify in front of the commission. Officials who worked with him marveled at his industry and precision, but described him as far more opinionated than his gather-the-numbers approach might first suggest. Staffers on the commission said other colleagues were assigned the task of smoothing over the bruised egos of those who had crossed Mr. Zelikow.
The position of counselor to the secretary of state, a post that over the years has been filled by some of Washington’s brightest diplomatic lights, allows Mr. Zelikow to fly under the radar, and Ms. Rice has used that flexibility from the beginning of her term, when he was sent off to Iraq to provide an outsider’s assessment of what had gone wrong.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:20 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/washington/28cheney.html
October 28, 2006
Furor Over Cheney Remark on Tactics for Terror Suspects
By NEIL A. LEWIS [cheney] [veep] [on talk radio apparently characterized or accepted a characterization of water boarding as a dunk in some water] [he’s so out of touch it’s frightening] [why does Bush not put the kibosh on him?]
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — The White House found itself fending off questions on Friday about what Vice President Dick Cheney meant when he agreed with a talk-radio host that there was nothing wrong with dunking a terrorism suspect in water if it saved lives. [********]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/washington/28cheney.html
October 28, 2006
Furor Over Cheney Remark on Tactics for Terror Suspects
By NEIL A. LEWIS [cheney] [veep] [on talk radio apparently characterized or accepted a characterization of water boarding as a dunk in some water] [he’s so out of touch it’s frightening] [why does Bush not put the kibosh on him?]
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — The White House found itself fending off questions on Friday about what Vice President Dick Cheney meant when he agreed with a talk-radio host that there was nothing wrong with dunking a terrorism suspect in water if it saved lives. [********]
Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Cheney was not endorsing water-boarding, a coercive interrogation technique that simulates drowning and that many have said qualifies as torture. Mr. Snow said Mr. Cheney was not, in fact, referring to any technique, whether it was torture or not, because administration officials do not discuss interrogation methods. [*********]
President Bush was also confronted by reporters about Mr. Cheney’s comments as he made a joint appearance with Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the secretary general of NATO. “This country does not torture; we’re not going to torture,” Mr. Bush said, without referring directly to Mr. Cheney or his comments. [*******]
The questioning was set off when Mr. Cheney was interviewed Tuesday by Scott Hennen, a conservative radio talk show host in Fargo, N.D. “Would you agree that a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?” [*******]Mr. Hennen asked.
“Well, it’s a no-brainer for me,” Mr. Cheney replied. “But for a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.” [********]
Mr. Snow, who spent much of his day dealing with questions about the comments, told reporters that none of them related to interrogation techniques, which are classified. “I’m telling you what the vice president’s view is, which is it wasn’t about waterboarding. Period,” he said.
The exchanges grew testy at times, especially when Mr. Snow said Mr. Cheney is not someone who slips up. One reporter noted that the vice president had once used a profanity on the Senate floor, and also shot a friend in the face during a hunting accident last February.
“That’s a great line,” Mr. Snow said, “but it’s not germane.”
Waterboarding is actually not a dunk in the water, but rather, covering a subject’s face with a constantly soaked cloth to make breathing difficult. It has been reported as having been used on some suspected members of Al Qaeda who were secretly held by the Central Intelligence Agency until their transfer last month to the United States detention center at Guantánamo Bay, [****]Cuba.
Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said, “If Iran or Syria detained an American, Cheney is saying that it would be perfectly fine for them to hold that American’s head under water until he nearly drowns, if that’s what they need to do to save Iranian or Syrian lives.” [*****************]
When Mr. Cheney’s wife, Lynne, was asked on CNN about the comments, she told Wolf Blitzer: “That is a mighty house you’re building on top of that mole hill there, a mighty mountain. This is complete distortion. He didn’t say anything of the kind.” [then why doesn’t he say what he means instead of allowing such careless things pass?]
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:20 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/us/28list.html
October 28, 2006
Names of the Dead [KIA] [2803] [*********]
The Department of Defense has identified 2,803 [KIA] [****] American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the death of the following American yesterday:
. . . .
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/us/28list.html
October 28, 2006
Names of the Dead [KIA] [2803] [*********]
The Department of Defense has identified 2,803 [KIA] [****] American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the death of the following American yesterday:
. . . .
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:19 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/americas/28brownfield.html
October 28, 2006
The Saturday Profile
Good-Will Ambassador? Venezuela Is Leery of U.S. Envoy
By SIMON ROMERO
LECHERÍA, Venezuela [more on the schism between the Bush administration and the Hugo Chavez regime] [Chavez has been hard to take seriously when he behaves so bombastically at the UN and elsewhere] [**********]
PRESIDENT HUGO CHÁVEZ does not bother to hide how he feels about William Brownfield, the United States ambassador to this country. “Start packing your bags, mister, if you keep on provoking us,” Mr. Chávez said on TV this year. “Because I’ll kick you out of here.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/americas/28brownfield.html
October 28, 2006
The Saturday Profile
Good-Will Ambassador? Venezuela Is Leery of U.S. Envoy
By SIMON ROMERO
LECHERÍA, Venezuela [more on the schism between the Bush administration and the Hugo Chavez regime] [Chavez has been hard to take seriously when he behaves so bombastically at the UN and elsewhere] [**********]
PRESIDENT HUGO CHÁVEZ does not bother to hide how he feels about William Brownfield, the United States ambassador to this country. “Start packing your bags, mister, if you keep on provoking us,” Mr. Chávez said on TV this year. “Because I’ll kick you out of here.”
Some of Mr. Chávez’s supporters feel the same way. Protesters on motorcycles chased Mr. Brownfield’s car in Caracas last April, beating on its doors and pelting it with tomatoes and eggs. When Mr. Brownfield visited Nueva Esparta last December to hand out baseball equipment, demonstrators threw rocks at his car.
With relations between Washington and Caracas at a low ebb, Mr. Brownfield, a loquacious Texan and career diplomat, has one of the most challenging jobs of any American ambassador. Though at a career stage when some would prefer a plush embassy in a friendly country, Mr. Brownfield seems to relish the opportunity to engage Venezuelans on a street level. [********]
This is no easy undertaking in a country where President Bush is regularly pilloried (an exposition at the Foreign Ministry in Caracas this week depicted Mr. Bush in Nazi clothing).
While Mr. Brownfield is not always greeted with rocks and eggs, he does find himself fighting an uphill battle almost wherever he goes. That much was evident when he arrived here in eastern Venezuela recently, bodyguards in tow, to deliver one of his speeches that gently rankle Mr. Chávez.
Mr. Brownfield started by thanking Venezuela for offering subsidized heating oil to poor Americans this winter. Then he pointed out that Venezuela’s ambassador in Washington similarly travels around the United States speaking to groups interested in Mr. Chávez’s “Bolivarian Revolution.”
“Why, I think my friend Ambassador Bernardo Álvarez is in San Juan at this very moment,” Mr. Brownfield, 54, said in fluent but heavily accented Spanish. (Mr. Álvarez was there to show support for Puerto Rico’s independence movement.)
Finally, responding to questions from local journalists, Mr. Brownfield defended the Bush administration’s recent prohibition on arms sales to Venezuela, after the State Department listed Venezuela as uncooperative in counterterrorism efforts. [*******]
That ended his visit here to an American Corner, one of four he has recently opened in the country. These are essentially libraries and information centers run jointly by the State Department and a local group, where people can study English or read up on American history and culture.
About 30 residents gathered to see him in the municipal building of Lechería, a city led by an anti-Chávez mayor. But even here, the reception was cool. Some tapped messages into their Blackberrys while he spoke. All applauded politely when he finished.
The rest of his trip did not go as smoothly. Tarek William Saab, an author and the governor of Anzoátegui State, described by Mr. Chávez as “the poet of the revolution,” refused to meet with Mr. Brownfield. Executives from two American energy companies with operations here also declined because their partner, Venezuela’s national oil company, denied Mr. Brownfield permission to enter their refining complex.
SO it goes in a country that, paradoxically, maintains resilient commercial ties with the United States. Anti-American sentiment is often directed personally at Mr. Brownfield, who grew up in a ranching family and sometimes sports a University of Texas baseball cap. [*******]
Newspapers have dubbed him el Tejano, the Texan, [*****]a nod to his straightforward if ironic style in pressing ahead with his street diplomacy. He grew up not far from Brownfield, a West Texas ranching town named for an ancestor.
After leaving Texas he entered the Foreign Service in the late 1970s, “starting life,” as he puts it, in the heart of Venezuela’s oil patch in Maracaibo, where there was once an American Consulate. Rising to become one of the most respected American diplomats in Latin America, he accepted assignments in Panama, as political adviser to the United States Southern Command, and as ambassador to Chile. His wife, Kristie A. Kenney, is the United States ambassador to the Philippines.
Since presenting his credentials to Mr. Chávez in August 2004, Mr. Brownfield has repeatedly had to deny claims that the Pentagon is preparing to send the Marines to invade Venezuela. Still, Mr. Chávez finds the United States a convenient boogeyman, using the idea of invasion to strengthen ties with Iran and cement domestic political support. [************]
“We’ve been a partner with Venezuela for 200 years,” Mr. Brownfield said in an interview. “This is a partnership that will endure times of stress.” [well said] [******]
A hardening of relations seems almost inevitable, with spats emerging almost monthly. The two countries are now clashing over Venezuela’s bid to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council and a push by Mr. Brownfield to reopen the consulate in Maracaibo — a support base for Manuel Rosales, the leading opposition candidate in December presidential elections. Both efforts have stalled.
Mr. Brownfield, meanwhile, travels around Venezuela. Often his venues are at baseball diamonds, which he views as areas where the two countries have a history of cooperation. Even Mr. Chávez has been known to don a baseball uniform, evoking youthful dreams of pitching for the San Francisco Giants.
Mr. Brownfield’s overtures, like those of American diplomats in Havana, are often regarded here as imperialist aggression. At first glance, the American Corner in Lechería seems benign. Its library has biographies of Bill Clinton, Katharine Graham and Theodore Roosevelt.
But pro-Chávez activists like Eva Golinger, an American lawyer who lives in Caracas, have denounced the American Corners, which are more common in former countries of the Soviet Union, as examples of “psychological and propaganda operations.”
“Mr. Brownfield is sticking out his foot, in order to have it stepped on,” José Vicente Rangel, Venezuela’s vice president, said this year. “What he wants is for some hothead, or some provocateur that they invite themselves, to throw a stone at him.”
THE challenges before Mr. Brownfield were evident in a visit to a dilapidated public hospital in Barcelona, a city next to Lechería. He went to publicize a program that brings American doctors to repair cleft palates in poor children.
Families of more than 90 children greeted Mr. Brownfield as he walked throughout the hospital, accompanied by aides and television cameras. Oneida López, the aunt of a 2-year-old boy who had undergone the surgery, said Mr. Brownfield was a “very generous man.” But Ms. López said she admired Mr. Chávez more.
She traveled to Barcelona from her home city, Anaco, earlier this month to see the president when he opened a cancer unit at the same hospital. She said she recently started a job as a street sweeper at a cooperative, one of many social welfare programs created by Mr. Chávez. “I love my president,” said Ms. López, 31.
Perhaps relations between the countries come into clearer focus when Mr. Brownfield shows his teeth. One story in diplomatic circles in Caracas describes his brief meeting last year with Mr. Chávez.
Mr. Brownfield recommended holding a friendly baseball game between the staffs of the presidential palace and the United States Embassy, on the condition that the marines played on the American side. “I have only seven of them here,” he told Mr. Chávez, who reacted with a cool smile and ended the encounter. [**********]
A spokeswoman at Venezuela’s communications ministry said she was unable to confirm details of the meeting. An embassy spokesman said only, “On matters as important as baseball, we don’t comment.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:19 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102700560.html
Cheney Defends 'Dunk in the Water' Remark
Addressing Alarm Over the Comment, Vice President Says He Was Not Referring to Waterboarding
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A02 [cheney] [veep] [on talk radio apparently characterized or accepted a characterization of water boarding as a dunk in some water] [he’s so out of touch it’s frightening] [why does Bush not put the kibosh on him?] [ditto]
Vice President Cheney said yesterday that he was not referring to an interrogation technique known as "waterboarding" when he told an interviewer this week that dunking terrorism suspects in water was a "no-brainer."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102700560.html
Cheney Defends 'Dunk in the Water' Remark
Addressing Alarm Over the Comment, Vice President Says He Was Not Referring to Waterboarding
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A02 [cheney] [veep] [on talk radio apparently characterized or accepted a characterization of water boarding as a dunk in some water] [he’s so out of touch it’s frightening] [why does Bush not put the kibosh on him?] [ditto]
Vice President Cheney said yesterday that he was not referring to an interrogation technique known as "waterboarding" when he told an interviewer this week that dunking terrorism suspects in water was a "no-brainer."
Cheney told reporters aboard Air Force Two last night that he did not talk about any specific interrogation technique during his interview Tuesday with a conservative radio host.
"I didn't say anything about waterboarding. . . . He didn't even use that phrase," Cheney said on a flight to Washington from South Carolina.
Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters that the vice president was talking literally about "a dunk in the water," though neither Snow nor Cheney explained what that meant or whether such a tactic had been used against U.S. detainees.
"A dunk in the water is a dunk in the water," Snow said.
The comments were aimed at calming a growing furor over Cheney's comments, which were taken by many human rights advocates and legal experts as an endorsement of waterboarding as a method of questioning.
Coming shortly before the midterm elections, the remarks prompted a wide range of political figures -- from Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to Cheney's wife, Lynne -- to weigh in on the issue, providing another unexpected controversy for Republicans as they fight to keep control of Congress. Reporters peppered Snow with questions about the interview during Snow's two daily news briefings.
Waterboarding, in which a prisoner is secured with his feet above his head and has water poured on a cloth over his face, is one of several methods of simulating drowning that date at least to the Spanish Inquisition. It has been specifically prohibited by the U.S. Army and widely condemned as torture by human rights groups and international courts.
"Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" Scott Hennen of WDAY in Fargo, N.D., asked Cheney on Tuesday. "Well, it's a no-brainer for me," Cheney responded.
Cheney also said he agreed with Hennen that the debate over interrogation techniques was "a little silly," and he praised the information obtained from U.S. terrorism suspects during questioning.
Hennen said in an interview yesterday that he did not know precisely which technique Cheney was referring to and was only passing along a question he had heard from a listener.
"It's impossible for me to say 'Did the listener mean waterboarding?' and 'Is waterboarding torture?' and that sort of thing," Hennen said. "I can't get in the vice president's head, and I can't get in the listener's head."
Many legal experts said it was reasonable to conclude that Cheney was referring to waterboarding, since it has been a widely debated U.S. interrogation technique that uses water to subject a suspect to the fear of drowning. [it was the logical inference and both Hennen and Cheney knew it] [do they think people don’t hear them?] [******]
U.S. interrogation methods have been the focus of fierce debate since revelations of detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan and the disclosure that the CIA ran a network of secret prisons outside the United States. Numerous sources have confirmed that the CIA used waterboarding in its interrogation of alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other "high-value" prisoners.
Some lawmakers have said that they believe waterboarding is illegal under detainee legislation approved last month, but the Bush administration has declined to say what techniques it considers off-limits.
Asked yesterday about Cheney's Tuesday remarks, President Bush did not specifically address them. But he said: "This country doesn't torture. We're not going to torture. We will interrogate people we pick up off the battlefield to determine whether or not they've got information that will be helpful to protect the country."
Human rights and legal experts said yesterday that even if Snow's version of Cheney's remarks is correct, Cheney's comments are troubling because dunking a terrorism suspect in water as part of an interrogation would actually be more physically dangerous than waterboarding. The tactic also would be illegal under U.S. and international laws, they said.
Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, noted that in the 1980s, Chadian forces led by military ruler Hissene Habre allegedly hung people upside down and dunked them in water during questioning. Habre was indicted by a Belgian court for torture and crimes against humanity and faces prosecution in Senegal.
Former CIA general counsel Jeffrey H. Smith said Cheney's comments were "irresponsible" and send a signal to U.S. interrogators that "the people at the top want you to get rough."
"It's clear that the vice president didn't mean a friendly swim at the country club," Smith said. "It would be designed to somehow frighten a prisoner and elicit information from them. Whatever it means, a dunk in the water is not harmless or innocent."
Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, issued a statement saying the comments provided another reason that voters should "change course" by voting for Democrats. "This administration's determination to assert the right to torture has undermined our moral authority, put our troops at greater risk and made our country less safe," [******]Kerry said.
Snow and other Republicans pushed back strongly, arguing that Cheney’s remarks had been misinterpreted and that the vice president had been talking about the value of interrogations in preventing terrorist attacks.
“That is a mighty house you are building on top of that molehill,” Lynne Cheney said during an appearance on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “A mighty mountain. This is complete distortion. He didn’t say anything of the kind.” [********]
The ambiguities in the waterboarding debate were most evident during two contentious news briefings yesterday as Snow was repeatedly questioned by reporters who did not accept his explanations of Cheney's remarks. Snow repeatedly insisted that Cheney was not referring to waterboarding or any other technique, although he was at a loss to explain how being dunked in water would not also qualify as a method of interrogation.
Snow joked at several points about needing to avoid water-related metaphors in his comments, as when he accused reporters of "fishing" for answers. He declined to say what Cheney meant by dunking terrorism suspects in water but said he would get back to reporters with a fuller explanation, which did not materialize yesterday. [*******]
At one point during the first briefing, a frustrated reporter asked: "So the detainees go swimming?"
"I don't know," Snow responded. "We'll have to find out."
Staff writer Peter Baker and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:18 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/washington/28cheney.html
October 28, 2006
Furor Over Cheney Remark on Tactics for Terror Suspects
By NEIL A. LEWIS [cheney] [veep] [on talk radio apparently characterized or accepted a characterization of water boarding as a dunk in some water] [he’s so out of touch it’s frightening] [why does Bush not put the kibosh on him?]
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — The White House found itself fending off questions on Friday about what Vice President Dick Cheney meant when he agreed with a talk-radio host that there was nothing wrong with dunking a terrorism suspect in water if it saved lives. [********]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/washington/28cheney.html
October 28, 2006
Furor Over Cheney Remark on Tactics for Terror Suspects
By NEIL A. LEWIS [cheney] [veep] [on talk radio apparently characterized or accepted a characterization of water boarding as a dunk in some water] [he’s so out of touch it’s frightening] [why does Bush not put the kibosh on him?]
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — The White House found itself fending off questions on Friday about what Vice President Dick Cheney meant when he agreed with a talk-radio host that there was nothing wrong with dunking a terrorism suspect in water if it saved lives. [********]
Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Cheney was not endorsing water-boarding, a coercive interrogation technique that simulates drowning and that many have said qualifies as torture. Mr. Snow said Mr. Cheney was not, in fact, referring to any technique, whether it was torture or not, because administration officials do not discuss interrogation methods. [*********]
President Bush was also confronted by reporters about Mr. Cheney’s comments as he made a joint appearance with Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the secretary general of NATO. “This country does not torture; we’re not going to torture,” Mr. Bush said, without referring directly to Mr. Cheney or his comments. [*******]
The questioning was set off when Mr. Cheney was interviewed Tuesday by Scott Hennen, a conservative radio talk show host in Fargo, N.D. “Would you agree that a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?” [*******]Mr. Hennen asked.
“Well, it’s a no-brainer for me,” Mr. Cheney replied. “But for a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.” [********]
Mr. Snow, who spent much of his day dealing with questions about the comments, told reporters that none of them related to interrogation techniques, which are classified. “I’m telling you what the vice president’s view is, which is it wasn’t about waterboarding. Period,” he said.
The exchanges grew testy at times, especially when Mr. Snow said Mr. Cheney is not someone who slips up. One reporter noted that the vice president had once used a profanity on the Senate floor, and also shot a friend in the face during a hunting accident last February.
“That’s a great line,” Mr. Snow said, “but it’s not germane.”
Waterboarding is actually not a dunk in the water, but rather, covering a subject’s face with a constantly soaked cloth to make breathing difficult. It has been reported as having been used on some suspected members of Al Qaeda who were secretly held by the Central Intelligence Agency until their transfer last month to the United States detention center at Guantánamo Bay, [****]Cuba.
Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said, “If Iran or Syria detained an American, Cheney is saying that it would be perfectly fine for them to hold that American’s head under water until he nearly drowns, if that’s what they need to do to save Iranian or Syrian lives.” [*****************]
When Mr. Cheney’s wife, Lynne, was asked on CNN about the comments, she told Wolf Blitzer: “That is a mighty house you’re building on top of that mole hill there, a mighty mountain. This is complete distortion. He didn’t say anything of the kind.” [then why doesn’t he say what he means instead of allowing such careless things pass?]
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:17 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102700603.html
Bush Says It's Unacceptable for Iran to Have Nuclear Weapon
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A10 [bush] [white house] [again boxing himself in, seemingly] [whether it’s unacceptable or not, it appears that they are heading that way] [and their case study is DPRK where it was also unacceptable] [*******]
WASHINGTON - President Bush said on Friday he was aware of "speculation" that Iran has started enriching uranium in a second network of centrifuges and said it was unacceptable for Tehran to have a nuclear weapon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102700603.html
Bush Says It's Unacceptable for Iran to Have Nuclear Weapon
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A10 [bush] [white house] [again boxing himself in, seemingly] [whether it’s unacceptable or not, it appears that they are heading that way] [and their case study is DPRK where it was also unacceptable] [*******]
WASHINGTON - President Bush said on Friday he was aware of "speculation" that Iran has started enriching uranium in a second network of centrifuges and said it was unacceptable for Tehran to have a nuclear weapon.
"It says to me that we must double our effort to work with the international community to persuade the Iranians that there is only isolation from the world if they continue working forward on such a program," Bush told reporters during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. [******]
"I've read the speculation that that's what they may be doing. But whether they doubled it or not, the idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon is unacceptable," Bush added. [**********]
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:17 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701713.html
Taking Terror Fight to N. Africa Leads U.S. to Unlikely Alliances
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A01 [gsave] [strange bedfellows] [****] [belies Bush’s explicit promotion of democracy as USFP goal] [use nsc ms]
ALGIERS -- Locked in a prison here, for now, is a desert bandit dubbed the "Bin Laden of the Sahara," whose capture was secretly orchestrated by U.S. forces after a long chase across some of the most forbidding terrain on Earth. [Algeria]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701713.html
Taking Terror Fight to N. Africa Leads U.S. to Unlikely Alliances
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A01 [gsave] [strange bedfellows] [****] [belies Bush’s explicit promotion of democracy as USFP goal] [use nsc ms]
ALGIERS -- Locked in a prison here, for now, is a desert bandit dubbed the "Bin Laden of the Sahara," whose capture was secretly orchestrated by U.S. forces after a long chase across some of the most forbidding terrain on Earth. [Algeria]
Amari Saifi, 37, a former Algerian army paratrooper, was caught in 2004 after he and a band of rebel fighters kidnapped 32 European tourists in the Algerian Sahara and ransomed them for about $6 million.
Since then, the U.S. government has cited his case as a model for terrorist-hunting operations and a justification for expanding U.S. military, diplomatic and intelligence programs in North Africa. [******]
A close examination of how Saifi was apprehended, however, highlights the quandaries facing the United States as it extends its fight against Islamic terrorism to remote parts of the globe. In its search for allies in an unstable region, the U.S. government reached out to Libya -- then still officially designated a state sponsor of terrorism -- and to other countries it has condemned for abusing human rights. [same old rub as during the Cold War; support the lesser of evil even when decidedly non-democratic] [*****]
Some security analysts and European counterterrorism officials question the U.S. strategy. They contend the Pentagon may be inflating the importance of Saifi and the terrorist threat in both the Sahara and an equally large and desolate region to the south known as the Sahel.
By sending troops and partnering with repressive governments, U.S. tactics could backfire, said Hugh Roberts, North Africa project director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
"The idea that you could have major jihadi units holing up there always struck me as implausible," Roberts said. "The quickest way to generate a jihadi movement is to send some U.S. soldiers in there to swagger around. The more visible the U.S. military presence, the bigger the target." [******] [is Algeria using gsave to settle old scores] [would appear yes]
The hunt for Saifi lasted more than a year and nearly unraveled at the end, despite a joint operation among the U.S. military and seven countries, according to counterterrorism officials in North Africa and Europe. He was caught by happenstance, by a ragtag rebel army in Chad, as he fled his pursuers across the desert.
Although Saifi was finally transferred to Algerian custody, there are signs that he may not be in prison much longer. After giving him a life sentence last year, the Algerian government said this spring it might release him under an amnesty program, reflecting doubts as to how big a threat he posed in the first place.
Regardless of Saifi's fate, U.S. officials say they consider North Africa an increasingly strategic front. With weak governments and poorly patrolled borders, the region has already attracted Islamic radicals looking for a place to set up training camps and spread their ideology, officials say.
Together, the Defense and State departments are devoting $500 million to new counterterrorism programs in the region. [***] Last year, the Pentagon sponsored Operation Flintlock, the largest U.S. joint military exercise in North Africa since World War II. About 700 U.S. Special Forces personnel trained troops from nine African nations, leading a war game that mirrored the effort to hunt down Saifi a year earlier. [******] [half billion dollars]
"The threat is evolving," said Rear Adm. Richard K. Gallagher, a top commander at the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, which is responsible for most of Africa. "Africa, for a lot of reasons, is a place that we've got to care hugely about. We ignore Africa at our peril."
The Kidnappings
In February 2003, a band of Islamic extremists began scouring the desert expanse of southern Algeria for kidnap victims. The sparsely populated region's colored sand dunes and craggy mountains were a magnet for European tourists.
Soon, foreigners began to vanish, two or three at a time. Within a month, 32 Europeans -- mostly Germans, but also Austrian, Swedish, Swiss and Dutch citizens -- had been rounded up.
The kidnappers belonged to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, [***] a movement dedicated to overthrowing the Algerian government. Despite its local origins, the group has recently reached out to al-Qaeda and other networks in an attempt to broaden its scope. [********] [ominous but not new]
The leader of the cell, Saifi, was a tall, bearded man who dressed in shabby robes and worn-out sneakers; often he wore black eye makeup to ward off the sun's glare. Known as Abderrazak al-Para, or "the paratrooper," he had deserted from the Algerian army in 1991.
"In the beginning, the entire group was very convinced of the plan: 'Europeans -- that'll bring us money and weapons,' " said Rainer Bracht, a German construction worker who was among the hostages. "In the beginning, they always told us, 'You will be free soon, it'll be just a couple of weeks.' But then it took longer and longer."
On May 13, 2003, Algerian troops surrounded some of the fighters on a mountain range. After a gun battle, 17 hostages were rescued and nine kidnappers were killed, according to the Algerian government. But the soldiers were unable to capture Saifi, who escaped with half of his men and 15 tourists.
As the group trekked south, they hid under rock formations to avoid detection from the skies. The trip was arduous, with temperatures climbing to 110 degrees. One German died of heat exhaustion, but Saifi otherwise took care to keep his captives alive.
"His men held him in high esteem and showed respect," recalled Martin Hainz, a Bavarian painter who was taken hostage. "He emanated a lot of authority, but his behavior was not authoritarian. He did not give orders; he listened and made remarks."
In July 2003, Saifi and his crew crossed into Mali, an impoverished and landlocked country. Hiding among desert nomads, the kidnappers negotiated through intermediaries with the German and Libyan governments, seeking cash. [***]A month later, the rest of the hostages were released near the Algeria-Mali border. Although Germany and Libya have denied paying a ransom, other European officials said the two countries provided funds.
Flush with money, Saifi bought protection from local tribes, European counterterrorism officials said. He shopped on the black market for automatic rifles, missile launchers and 4x4 trucks. He expanded his militia to include fresh recruits from Mali, Chad and Niger.
"At this point, he starts to become an important threat," said Louis Caprioli, former director of international counterterrorism for the DST, the French counterintelligence service, which was working with the U.S. military to track Saifi. "And the armies of Niger and Mali couldn't do anything about him."
Warnings Heeded
At the time of the kidnappings, the U.S. government was starting a counterterrorism program in North Africa called the Pan-Sahel Initiative. [*******] [gsave: Pan-Sahel Initiative] [****]
The program represented a response to worries that remote areas of North Africa could serve as a base for al-Qaeda or other Islamic extremists seeking to relocate after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The initiative, led by the U.S. European Command, was designed to share intelligence and train ill-equipped militaries in the region.
The program had its critics, inside and outside the U.S. government, who questioned whether North African radicals had the potential to pose an external threat. They also wondered whether it made sense for the U.S. military to increase its presence in yet another predominantly Muslim part of the world.
The Sahara hostage-takings, however, gave a boost to military leaders who had been warning about the potential for trouble in North Africa. Since then, Congress has listened, budgeting $500 million over the next six years for an expanded version of the original program called the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative.
Gallagher, of the U.S. European Command, said the military wanted to keep a light footprint in North Africa. “We want to get out in front of these problems and train these nations to deal with it,” he said.
In a visit to Algiers in February to promote the program, Henry A. Crumpton, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, warned leaders from across North Africa that Saifi “underscored the real threat posed to the region.” The Algerian Salafist group, he added, “has become a regional terrorist organization, recruiting and operating in all of your countries – and beyond.” [*******]
Coordinated Pursuit
After the last hostages were freed, the U.S. military took effective control of the international hunt for Saifi, according to U.S. and European counterterrorism officials. Saifi had avoided the Algerian army by slipping past unguarded borders and vanishing into the desert. Now U.S. forces began tracking him with spy satellites and reconnaissance aircraft.
Overcoming regional hostilities, the U.S. military persuaded Mali, Niger, Algeria and Chad to cooperate on a plan to corral Saifi. U.S. Special Forces gave crash training to local soldiers. Under pressure, Saifi and his militia moved out of Mali in January 2004, crossed through Niger and entered Chad, covering about 1,000 miles of harsh terrain.
On March 9, 2004, troops from Niger and Chad caught up to Saifi in northwestern Chad. Bolstered by U.S. supplies, they killed 43 of Saifi's fighters. But once again, the desert bandit escaped. [********
A week later, Saifi and 16 followers were wandering through the Tibesti Mountains, short of water and food and unaware they had encroached on turf controlled by a Chadian rebel group. The rebels, known as the Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad, were enemies of the Chadian army. But they also didn't like the looks of the interlopers from Algeria and took them captive.
"We were astonished to see these people," Ousmane Hissein, a Chadian rebel leader in exile, said in an interview in Paris. "We tried to figure out who they were and where they were coming from." News reports on shortwave radio eventually revealed Saifi's identity.
Hissein said the rebels offered to turn Saifi over to Algeria, Germany, France and the United States, but all said no. Each country had been involved in chasing Saifi across the desert but did not want to risk a diplomatic rupture with the government of Chad by dealing with the rebels. [*******]
Once again, Libya agreed to serve as an intermediary. [ironic] [*] Relations between the governments in Tripoli and Washington had warmed since Moammar Gaddafi had ended his program to develop weapons of mass destruction four months earlier. But the alliance was still awkward; Libya had been branded a terrorist sponsor by the State Department since 1979, a label that would persist until June 2006.
The Chadian rebels, however, did not trust Gaddafi. They had accused him of assassinating one of their leaders years before. Negotiations stalled for months.
Losing patience, Gaddafi threatened to send his troops into Chad to attack the rebels, Hissein said. But U.S. diplomats, worried about the risk of a regional war, intervened, persuading Gaddafi to pull back and work a deal. "The Americans played a huge role in all of this," Hissein added.
Seven months after he was captured by the rebels, Saifi was handed over at a border crossing to Libyan authorities, who extradited him to Algeria. The rebels are vague about whether they received any money in return.
Eligible for Amnesty
In June 2005, Saifi was scheduled to go on trial in Algiers. For unexplained reasons, Algerian security services did not bring him to the courtroom, and he was sentenced in absentia to life in prison. Rumors spread that he was dead.
Not so, according to Abdelhaq Layada, founder of the Armed Islamic Group, which fought the Algerian government during the 1990s in a horrific civil war that killed an estimated 200,000 people. Layada, who was recently released from prison as part of an amnesty for convicted terrorists, said he hoped Saifi would soon win his freedom.
"Yes, he's still alive," Layada said during an interview outside Algiers. "He's a Muslim, and he loves Muhammad our prophet, and he loves Allah. He was doing what he thought was right."
Algerian justice officials declined requests for an interview. In March, however, Justice Minister Tayeb Belaiz said Saifi would be eligible for consideration under the amnesty. Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni called it "a sensitive case" but wouldn't rule out his release.
Saifi has been indicted in Germany, but Algeria generally doesn't extradite its citizens to Europe. He is not wanted on criminal charges in the United States. [******]
A U.S. counterterrorism official said the Bush administration would be unlikely to protest publicly if Saifi is released. [*******]
“We would support the Algerians,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Algerian government, the official added, has made “political overtures to leaders and individuals who are willing to lay down their arms. We encourage that.” [*******]
Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington and special correspondent Silke Lode in Berlin contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:16 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701106.html
The Grand Ayatollah Behind the Curtain
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A15 [oped] [-ir] [sistani and his hidden and sometimes not so helpful role] [********]
The question directed this week to the National Security Council press office was straightforward: "Has the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani met with any American official, either military or civilian, since the U.S. invasion in 2003?" [***]The answer reveals the extent to which the Bush administration is now, and always has been, out of its depth in Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701106.html
The Grand Ayatollah Behind the Curtain
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A15 [oped] [-ir] [sistani and his hidden and sometimes not so helpful role] [********]
The question directed this week to the National Security Council press office was straightforward: "Has the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani met with any American official, either military or civilian, since the U.S. invasion in 2003?" [***]The answer reveals the extent to which the Bush administration is now, and always has been, out of its depth in Iraq.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is Iraq's most powerful figure. [****]Under the reign of Saddam Hussein, Sistani was forced to keep a low profile, since he was part of the Shiite majority that Hussein's ruling Baath Party controlled with a heavy hand. Sistani was on the receiving end of assassination attempts by Hussein's thugs. But all that changed in the spring of 2003, when the United States toppled the Iraqi regime. [****]
Today, Sistani's Shiites are the major political force in Iraq. They are leaders in the new government; they run the key Interior Ministry; and one of their own, Nouri al-Maliki, serves as prime minister. Were it not for Iraq's liberation from Hussein's tyranny by U.S. troops, Sistani and his followers would still be under the thumb of Sunnis. [*****]
The average Iraqi may not be happy to see the country occupied by foreigners. But if any Iraqi should feel even a tad kindly toward his American liberators, it ought to be the grand ayatollah. [****]After all, he is the chief beneficiary of Hussein's defeat. It's not too much to think that if the president of the United States visits Iraq, Sistani would at least meet him face to face to say thank you. Think again. [******]
Back to the question that started this column: Has Sistani met with any American official in the past 3 1/2 years? Frederick Jones, the NSC's communications director, said yesterday that no American official has ever met Sistani. [*****] [jones scheduled to retire soon]
But how, you might ask, can that be? After all, since Hussein’s statue was pulled down in 2003, Iraq has been visited twice by President Bush. Vice President Cheney has been there, too. Two different secretaries of state – Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice – have dropped in. So have Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, countless high-ranking Pentagon brass and enough U.S. senators and members of the House of Representatives to warrant a congressional annex in the Green Zone.
How is it possible that leaders of the world’s most powerful nation – a country that has generously sent 140,000 of its finest sons and daughters to fight, suffer and die to free Iraq from the Baathist grip – have not met the Iraqi leader with the most to gain from Hussein’s defeat? [*******]
It's because the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has designated himself off-limits to Americans. He will not let Bush, Cheney, Rice and company in to see him because they are non-Muslims and thus he considers them to be kafir, or infidels. Sistani regards himself as too good to meet with those who freed him. [******]
What's weird is to hear folks in Washington speak about Sistani's views as if they just got off the phone with him. "Sistani doesn't want clerics to have a role in government," one Washington foreign policy expert told me. "Sistani believes Islam should be the national religion," said another. "Sistani is a pragmatist," said a third. All this is asserted with confidence, when in reality these people know only what they have heard from someone else -- a Muslim go-between or a Sistani envoy.
Bush and his high command have never set eyes on the man. Yet Sistani controls them as if they were puppets on a string. It's like something out of "The Wizard of Oz."
Consider what happened in 2004: Barricaded in a Najaf slum miles from Baghdad, the unseen Sistani was able single-handedly to block the United States from staging a handover of power without elections. He did so by issuing a fatwa that sent thousands into the streets. The Bush people were forced to give ground. A law was drafted that led to elections in 2005. [******]
Sistani's chief competition is not the United States but an anti-American Shiite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, [*****]and his Badr Organization, which has infiltrated Iraqi military and police units. The Iraqi parliament, truth be told, responds to the calls of the firebrand cleric.
What have we come to? In addition to al-Sadr, today's Iraq is under the influence of a Muslim cleric, Sistani, who, according to Newsweek, forbids music for entertainment, dancing and playing chess, and forbids women from shaking the hands of any men other than their fathers, brothers or husbands. His whole purpose is to promote Shiite theology and keep Iraq as a democratic, but decidedly Islamic, state. [*******] [scarcely surprising] [*****]
Billions spent, thousands of Americans dead or maimed, U.S. armed forces exhausted, stretched thin and working around the clock -- for that? Is this what George W. Bush had in mind?
kingc@washpost.com
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:15 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701256.html
Backsliding in Europe
Democracies take time to mature, even inside the European Union.
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A14 [editorial] [democracy] [UE]
HUNGARY'S commemoration of the 50th anniversary of a failed revolution against communist rule this week degenerated into rioting -- another signal that the democracy that now governs that Central European country is far from healthy. The Socialist prime minister has been under siege from the streets since he was caught admitting that his party lied "morning, noon and night" to win reelection in June. His right-wing opposition has been soft on the racists and extreme nationalists who are at the forefront of the disturbances.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701256.html
Backsliding in Europe
Democracies take time to mature, even inside the European Union.
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A14 [editorial] [democracy] [UE]
HUNGARY'S commemoration of the 50th anniversary of a failed revolution against communist rule this week degenerated into rioting -- another signal that the democracy that now governs that Central European country is far from healthy. The Socialist prime minister has been under siege from the streets since he was caught admitting that his party lied "morning, noon and night" to win reelection in June. His right-wing opposition has been soft on the racists and extreme nationalists who are at the forefront of the disturbances.
The worse news is that Hungarian politics look pretty good compared with most of the other formerly communist countries of Central Europe. Slovakia, which a year ago was being lionized for its cutting-edge free-market policies, now is governed by a coalition of populists, authoritarians and racists who promise to dismantle the reforms. [****] Poland's government is dominated by twin brothers serving as president and prime minister; their most notable acts have been insults to neighboring Germany and an assault on the independence of the country's central bank. [****]The Czech Republic has had no real government at all since a deadlocked election five months ago. [****]Bulgaria's president finds himself in a runoff election for a new term this weekend with a challenger known for insulting Muslims and Gypsies. [******]
This dismal political picture is creating considerable unease in the European Union, which opened its doors to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and four other former Communist states in 2004 and is due to admit Bulgaria and Romania in January. [***] Some are wondering whether the nationalists and racists now on the fringes of several Central European governments could end up leading them in the future, rupturing the European Union's fundamental commitments to human rights. Others fret that repairing the union's frayed institutions after the rejection of a proposed constitution last year will be impossible with such unattractive and unstable partners -- and that any hope of further E.U. expansion will be lost.
In fact, the gloom seems overstated. Despite the political malaise, Central European countries are flourishingly economically, and their abundant workers and hungry entrepreneurs promise to revive Europe as a whole. The rise of populist and nationalist parties is in part a reaction to years of enforced consensus under previous governments that were trying to meet the European Union's myriad entry criteria. Once the finish line was crossed, a backlash against blending into a single transnational superstate was inevitable. The pendulum will swing back as the populists stumble.
As Russia grows ever more aggressive toward its neighbors, the former Soviet satellites will probably respond by burrowing more deeply into the European Union and NATO. [******] It may be satisfying for Polish nationalists to pretend that Germany is an antagonist or for Hungarians to try equating their current Socialist leaders with the Stalinists of 1956. Yet after 45 years of bitter experience under despotism, Central Europeans won't quickly abandon Western-style democracy or its alliances.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:15 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/world/europe/29weapons.html
October 29, 2006
Russia Led Arms Sales to Developing World in ’05
By THOM SHANKER [Russia] [former USSR] [surpassed US in arms exports] [********]
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — Russia surpassed the United States in 2005 as the leader in weapons deals with the developing world, and its new agreements included selling $700 million in surface-to-air missiles to Iran and eight new aerial refueling tankers to China, according to a new Congressional study.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/world/europe/29weapons.html
October 29, 2006
Russia Led Arms Sales to Developing World in ’05
By THOM SHANKER [Russia] [former USSR] [surpassed US in arms exports] [********]
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — Russia surpassed the United States in 2005 as the leader in weapons deals with the developing world, and its new agreements included selling $700 million in surface-to-air missiles to Iran and eight new aerial refueling tankers to China, according to a new Congressional study.
Those weapons deals were part of the highly competitive global arms bazaar in the developing world that grew to $30.2 billion in 2005, up from $26.4 billion in 2004. It is a market that the United States has regularly dominated.
Russia’s agreements with Iran are not the biggest part of its total sales — India and China are its principal buyers. But the sales to improve Iran’s air-defense system are particularly troubling to the United States because they would complicate the task of Pentagon planners should the president order airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities.
The Bush administration has vowed a diplomatic solution in dealing with Iran. But as United Nations diplomats argue over potential sanctions against Iran for its nuclear ambitions, Russian officials have expressed reluctance to vote for the most stringent economic sanctions, partly owing to Moscow’s extensive trade relations with Tehran.
Russia’s weapons sales to China also worry Pentagon planners. Although China has joined the United States in partnership to press for a resumption of six-party talks to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program after its recent test, Taiwan remains a potential flash point between Beijing and Washington.
Thus, China’s ability to refuel its attack planes and bombers to enable them to fly farther from Chinese soil could require the United States Navy to operate even farther out to sea should the United States military be called to deal with a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. That would have an impact on the range and number of air missions of United States Navy aircraft launched from carriers.
Details of the specific weapons deals in the global arms trade last year are included in an annual study by the Congressional Research Service that is considered the most thorough compilation of statistics available in an unclassified form. The report was delivered to members of Congress on Friday.
Among other arms transfers described in the study was a statistic that a single, unnamed nation — but one identified separately by Pentagon and other administration officials to be North Korea — shipped about 40 ballistic missiles to other nations in the four-year period ending in 2005, the only nation to have done so. Transfers of these weapons are prohibited under international agreements to control the trade of ballistic missiles.
United Nations sanctions passed earlier this month after the North Korean nuclear test include a new and specific ban on trade or transport of ballistic missiles and missile parts to or from North Korea.
The report, entitled “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations,” found that Russia’s arms agreements with the developing world totaled $7 billion in 2005, an increase from its $5.4 billion in sales in 2004. That figure surpassed the United States’ annual sales agreements to the developing world for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
France ranked second in arms transfer agreements to developing nations, with $6.3 billion, and the United States was third, with $6.2 billion.
The leading buyer in the developing world in 2005 was India, with $5.4 billion in weapons purchases, followed by Saudi Arabia with $3.4 billion and China with $2.8 billion.
The total value of all arms sales deals worldwide, when counting both developing and developed nations, in 2005 was $44.2 billion.
The Russian sales in 2005 included 29 of the SA-15 Gauntlet surface-to-air missile systems for Iran; Russia also signed deals to upgrade Iran’s Su-24 bombers and MIG-29 fighter aircraft, as well as its T-72 battle tanks.
“For a period of time, in the mid-1990s, the Russian government agreed not to make new advanced weapons sales to the Iran government,” wrote Richard F. Grimmett, author of the study by the Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress. “That agreement has since been rescinded by Russia. As the U.S. focuses increasing attention on Iran’s efforts to enhance its nuclear as well as conventional military capabilities, major arms transfers to Iran continue to be a matter of concern.”
Russia also agreed in 2005 to sell China eight of the IL-78M aerial refueling tanker aircraft, according to the study.
In 2005, the United States led in total arms transfer agreements, when deals to both developed and developing nations are combined. The total was $12.8 billion, down from $13.2 billion in 2004.
The report charted no blockbuster military sales deals by the United States in 2005, and the total in many ways was reached by sales of spare parts for weapons purchased under previous contracts.
France ranked second in total sales, with $7.9 billion, up from $2.2 billion in 2004. Russia was third when sales to developing and developed nations were combined, with $7.4 billion, up from $5.6 billion in 2004.
The study uses figures in 2005 dollars, with amounts for previous years adjusted to account for inflation.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:14 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/asia/28korea.html
October 28, 2006
Gingerly, South Korea Imposes First Sanction on North
By MARTIN FACKLER
SEOUL, South Korea, Oct. 27 — South Korea has taken a first step toward imposing United Nations sanctions against North Korea for conducting a nuclear test, banning visits by officials involved in the North’s nuclear weapons program.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/asia/28korea.html
October 28, 2006
Gingerly, South Korea Imposes First Sanction on North
By MARTIN FACKLER
SEOUL, South Korea, Oct. 27 — South Korea has taken a first step toward imposing United Nations sanctions against North Korea for conducting a nuclear test, banning visits by officials involved in the North’s nuclear weapons program.
And in a sign of how Seoul has struggled to carry out the United Nations Security Council resolution without antagonizing the heavily armed North, a third top government official involved in North Korea offered to resign Friday over the test.
The travel ban, first reported by several news organizations on Thursday, is largely symbolic in a country that gets few North Korean visitors at all, much less officials engaged in the North’s covert nuclear weapons efforts. It falls short of American requests that South Korea join a United States-led effort to inspect North Korean ships for nuclear and missile-related technology.
South Korean officials have expressed concern that such searches could lead to clashes between South and North Korean warships, something that has occurred in the past.
The resignation offer — by Kim Seung-gyu, head of the National Intelligence Service — came days after the defense minister and the unification minister, the point man on relations with the North, also tendered their resignations.
While President Roh Moo-hyun has not said whether he will accept the resignations, South Korean news media have reported that a cabinet reshuffle is imminent. With the foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, about to become the new secretary general of the United Nations, Mr. Roh may have to replace all aides who oversee his policy on the North.
The cooperation of South Korea, a major source of trade and investment for the North, is seen as crucial for the success of the United Nations resolution, adopted after the North’s test on Oct. 9. The resolution bans the sale of weapons to the North, and restricts sales of luxury goods and travel abroad by its officials.
In addition to not becoming involved in searching North Korean ships, Seoul also has so far balked at taking more punishing steps, like closing a South Korean-run industrial park and a tourist resort in North Korea, which are the North’s largest economic contacts with the outside world. Many South Korean officials have said they fear that stronger sanctions could provoke the North into war, or push it toward China.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:14 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/asia/28afghanistan.html
October 28, 2006
Explosion in South Afghan Suburb Kills 14 and Wounds 3
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA [afghan] [hydra] [insurgency] [this year has been worse year since before the intervention] [*********]
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 27 — An explosion from a mine in a road on Friday killed 14 civilians and wounded three others in a suburb of the capital city in the southern province of Uruzgan, Afghan officials said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/asia/28afghanistan.html
October 28, 2006
Explosion in South Afghan Suburb Kills 14 and Wounds 3
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA [afghan] [hydra] [insurgency] [this year has been worse year since before the intervention] [*********]
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 27 — An explosion from a mine in a road on Friday killed 14 civilians and wounded three others in a suburb of the capital city in the southern province of Uruzgan, Afghan officials said.
The victims were a group of elderly people, youths and children who were riding in a pickup truck toward the provincial capital, Trinkot, for the celebration of Id al-Fitr, the festival at the end of Ramadan.
A spokesman for the provincial governor said that the government was investigating whether the mine had been laid recently by suspected Taliban fighters or was left over from the Soviet invasion.
Afghan officials also said Friday that they were trying to determine the death toll for civilians from an airstrike late Tuesday by NATO forces in the southern province of Kandahar.
On Thursday, President Hamid Karzai said he would ask a committee of tribal elders and governmental officials for a thorough investigation of the episode. The initial estimates of the death toll ranged from about 40 to 50.
Mr. Karzai said Friday at a news conference that he had spoken on the phone with a 75-year-old man who lost 19 members of his extended family in the NATO bombing, late on Tuesday.
“Yesterday afternoon I talked with an elder, Haji Abdullah Shah, who lost all his family members,” Mr. Karzai said, adding that just one of his sons survived.
“Three other families also lost most members on the bombardment,” he said.
As the violence worsens in southern Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai again urged other countries interested in the region to “go to the root of terrorism,” a phrase that Afghan officials frequently use to signal their belief that Pakistan is supporting the insurgents, who are believed to be tied to the Taliban, Afghanistan’s former rulers.
Mr. Karzai said that there was a need for a “firm coordination between NATO and Afghan troops” to avoid killing civilians during operations.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:13 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701635.html
In Baghdad, a Sudden Chance to Play
Lull in Violence During Holiday Frees Families Long Confined by Fear
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A01 [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [recently, benchmarks mentioned in US and denounced by Maliki govt] [also US forayed into Sadr city again, apparently without consultation] [here pleasantly surprising news about decrease in violence] [*******]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 27 -- Maybe it was because this week was the Islamic holiday Eid al-Fitr, and even killers have to stay home with their families once a year. Maybe it was because a massive American operation had shut down some of Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhoods, and U.S. soldiers with M-16 rifles were opening car trunks, favorite places for killers to stash their guns, bombs and struggling kidnap victims.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701635.html
In Baghdad, a Sudden Chance to Play
Lull in Violence During Holiday Frees Families Long Confined by Fear
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A01 [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [recently, benchmarks mentioned in US and denounced by Maliki govt] [also US forayed into Sadr city again, apparently without consultation] [here pleasantly surprising news about decrease in violence] [*******]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 27 -- Maybe it was because this week was the Islamic holiday Eid al-Fitr, and even killers have to stay home with their families once a year. Maybe it was because a massive American operation had shut down some of Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhoods, and U.S. soldiers with M-16 rifles were opening car trunks, favorite places for killers to stash their guns, bombs and struggling kidnap victims.
For the people of Baghdad, death took something of a holiday this week. By Thursday, U.S. and Iraqi military commanders were staring at murder rates that had fallen by half since Monday. On Thursday, Baghdad logged only one man killed by one bomb, the government said. It made for marveling.
"Quietest day in months," said Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. "Still quiet," Khalaf said Friday.
On Monday, as the week-long holiday began, Ali Rahad and his co-workers pushed open the rusty gates of the Tofaha amusement park, gingerly, as an experiment. Tofaha -- the name means "apple" -- last opened for business almost exactly a year ago, on the previous Eid holiday.
Tofaha has only aged swings, slides with the shine long worn off and heavy merry-go-rounds, on a city lot with the grass worn to dirt by children's feet. But it's one of the few places where families might conceivably go -- Baghdad has few public parks, and many of the riverbanks where people used to picnic have been blocked off by the concrete blast walls of Iraqi and U.S. military bases.
So people at the park were hopeful. On Monday, Rahad, who runs a shooting gallery at Tofaha, waited. And waited. "Nobody came," the gangly 20-year-old said. Unsure if the quiet would last, Baghdad's people were still afraid, he said.
Eid marks the end of a demanding month of dawn-to-dusk fasting for Muslims. Families normally pass the holiday boisterously, traveling to see relatives and taking to the streets to parade in newly received finery.
But since last year's holiday, the streets have been rendered largely deserted by a surge of Shiite and Sunni gunmen. The street outside the amusement park is pitted from bombs, and shops are shuttered. The neighborhood, Radill, is just outside Sadr City, a Shiite enclave where death squads hide.
"All the families are suffering," Rahad said. "The kids are small, they forget what's going on. They don't understand why there are explosions and killing, and why they have to be jailed in their houses."
By Wednesday, people were venturing out. On Thursday morning, in a neighborhood near the amusement park, shop owner Allah Abdul Hussein consulted with his wife as he looked at their cooped-up 2-year-old daughter, Nour.
Hussein and his wife considered: Tofaha traditionally had drawn both Sunni and Shiite families; maybe that would protect it from bombs by either side. By midday, Hussein and his wife dared. They put Nour in the car and went to the park.
"Because nothing happened today, I brought them here, to have fun," Hussein said. A solemn Nour, in a new dress with a ruffled heart spread across the bodice, held his hand. Cowed, she looked up at the green helium balloon tied to her other hand and looming over her, bigger than her body.
In Hilla, a city about 60 miles south of Baghdad, Mohammed Salman, a 32-year-old former government employee laid off when the war began, got word that Tofaha was open for Eid. Hilla has had so many bombs, Salman said, that there was no place left for his children to play. "They were crying in the house, begging me to take them out," he said. "It's Eid, it's Eid, we must go," his son told him. So Salman drove them to Tofaha.
At Tofaha, younger children sat stiffly on swings and on the saddles of merry-go-rounds. Play was something that had grown unfamiliar to them.
Twelve-year-old Maisa Mohammed moved among them in a holiday ensemble of heels and a blue chiffon gown, with purple sunglasses and, in her hair, an orange ostrich plume. She had come here Tuesday and Wednesday as well.
Older children like Maisa helped younger ones climb ladders to slides and taught them to pump their legs on swings. "I was dreaming to come here, to play," Maisa said. Except for school, she said, she hadn't been out since last Eid.
Five-year-old Mutaz clung, unsmiling and unmoving, to his grandmother each time she put him on a piece of playground equipment. His mother, Dunya Abdul Rahman, 34, scrunched her face when asked the last time she had taken Mutaz outside the house. "Phoooh!" Rahman exclaimed, trying to think. "Six months."
"I am afraid someone will kidnap him, kill him," Rahman said. "He is the only son I have. I cannot even send him to school."
"Tell them in America about the children in Iraq," Rahman said, her hair awry, her eyes haunted. "Tell them about the children in prison."
The park would be open only another day, through the end of Eid on Friday. No one was counting on the decline in killing to continue. The American operation that shut down normal traffic in Shiite neighborhoods was temporary, part of a search for a kidnapped American soldier.
U.S. military officers played down the notion that their troops' increased operations and the sealing off of Sadr City had contributed to the drop in violence, saying it was a normal calm for Eid. "We can't cordon off Iraq," said Col. Nelson McCouch, a public affairs officer in Baghdad.
At Tofaha, younger children started smiling, yelling, shouting one another's names across the playground as the afternoon wore on. Rahad oversaw a line of boys at his shooting gallery, clustering for a shot at the bull's-eye with wooden-stock rifles, real military weapons stripped of their ammunition clips.
"We are having fun!" shouted Mariam and Batool, two next-door neighbors, answering questions as they soared on swings, their hair flying. "We are not afraid!"
Hussein was. He pulled Nour out of the park. "We're leaving fast, while it's still safe," he said.
At the slide, the children who remained broke into smiles each time their feet landed in the dirt at the bottom. They huddled there for a second before running off, overcome by excitement. Maisa, her orange ostrich plume still high, slid again and again. She stored up the exhilaration that would take her through to next Eid, if war didn't overtake her.
"One time, in a year," Maisa said. "Every year."
Special correspondent Naseer Nouri contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:12 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/28/AR2006102800442.html
Bush, Iraqi PM Pledge to Accelerate Efforts
By Lexie Verdon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 28, 2006; 3:02 PM [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [recently, benchmarks mentioned in US and denounced by Maliki govt] [also US forayed into Sadr city again, apparently without consultation] [here renewed agreement to work together] [*******] [ditto]
President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, seeking to dampen rising tensions between their governments, pledged today to work toward accelerating the pace of training of Iraqi security forces and Iraqi efforts to take control of the country's security.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/28/AR2006102800442.html
Bush, Iraqi PM Pledge to Accelerate Efforts
By Lexie Verdon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 28, 2006; 3:02 PM [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [recently, benchmarks mentioned in US and denounced by Maliki govt] [also US forayed into Sadr city again, apparently without consultation] [here renewed agreement to work together] [*******] [ditto]
President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, seeking to dampen rising tensions between their governments, pledged today to work toward accelerating the pace of training of Iraqi security forces and Iraqi efforts to take control of the country's security.
In a statement released by the White House after a 50-minute video conference this morning, Bush and Maliki said they had formed a panel that will include Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the U.S. commander in Iraq; U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad; and Iraq's national security adviser and defense and interior ministers. The group will make recommendations on three goals: speeding up the training for Iraqi forces, the transfer of command and control operations to the Iraqis and the transfer of responsibility for security to the Iraqi government, according to the statement.
"As leaders of two great countries, we are committed to the security and prosperity of a democratic Iraq and the global fight against terrorism which affects all our citizens," Bush and Maliki said in the statement.
The meeting capped a tumultuous week for the U.S.-Iraqi alliance in which U.S. officials appeared to be pressing Iraq to take a greater role in suppressing the growing violence in the country. In a press conference on Tuesday with Casey, Khalilzad said the Iraqi government had agreed to timelines on issues such as setting a strategy for dealing with militias and reforming the country's Interior Ministry by the end of the year. But the next day Maliki blasted those assertions and said his government would not accept U.S.-imposed benchmarks.
Several hours after Maliki's comments, President Bush called a press conference at the White House and reiterated his support for the Iraqi prime minister, while noting that he was disappointed at the pace of stopping the violence in Iraq. He suggested that benchmarks for the Iraqis to take over security of the country were appropriate even though he has dismissed calls by some critics of the war to set timetables for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
White House spokesman Tony Snow, who briefed reporters about today's meeting, said that there are no strains between the two leaders. Bush is "very happy actually with the way the prime minister is working," Snow said, according to AP.
The AP earlier reported that a Maliki ally said the prime minister told Khalilzad in a meeting Friday, "I am a friend of the United States; but I am not America's man in Iraq."
Snow responded to that today, saying "He's not America's man in Iraq. The United States is there in a role to assist him. He's the prime minister -- he's the leader of the Iraqi people."
Snow also said, "What you've got in Maliki is a guy who is making decisions. He's making tough decisions, and he's showing toughness and he's also showing political skill in dealing with varying factions within his own country. And both leaders understand the political pressures going on."
The Iraqi war has become a central issue in the mid-term U.S. congressional elections, and numerous polls suggest that Democrats could take control of one or both houses of Congress in the Nov. 7 voting. Bus, who has been campaigning hard for Republican candidates recently, has been seeking to relieve fears among voters that the war is dragging on. He has sought to reemphasize his strategy in Iraq and his view that U.S. troops are making progress there but must remain until the Iraqis can secure a peaceful transition and ensure that Iraq does not become a haven for terrorists.
Nonetheless, expanding attacks against U.S. forces in October have kept the issue at the center in the campaign. U.S. officials announced today that a Marine had been killed in Anbar province, bringing the total U.S. combat deaths this month to 98. October has been the deadliest month for U.S. troops since January 2005.
James Webb, the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Virginia, today offered a critical view of the administration's efforts in Iraq during the Democrats' weekly national radio address. "It pains me as an American that our casualties are again escalating while this president and his followers are still incapable of bring forward an intelligent, common-sense approach to ending our involvement there," said Webb, who has made his opposition to the war a central part of his campaign against incumbent Sen. George Allen. Webb urged the United States to make clear that it had no intention of building permanent bases in Iraq and declare its plans to withdraw. He said diplomatic efforts involving other countries in the region are needed to end the conflict.
Allen, who had been a strong supporter of Bush's policies in Iraq, has recently refined his statements about the war. He calls for some adjustments in U.S. tactics and more efforts to disarm Iraqi militias.
President Bush made no mention of the Iraq situation in his national radio address, using the time instead to talk about his tax policies.
In addition to the attacks on U.S. forces, Iraq has been buffeted by violence against its own citizens. U.S. officials and others blame militias connected to the Shiite religious parties that lead Iraq's government of orchestrating many of the attacks against rival Sunni populations. In some areas, especially the southern part of the country, Shiite militias fight each other.
U.S. officials have been pressuring Maliki to take action against the militias, but he is hampered by his need to keep their patrons allied with his government.
In his news conference Wednesday, Maliki vowed again to work against such groups. "Everyone now realizes that the existence of armed groups and militias harms the stability and unity of the state," he said.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:12 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/middleeast/28iraq.html
October 28, 2006
Fighting Split, U.S. and Iraq Renew Vow to Work for Peace
By JOHN F. BURNS [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [recently, benchmarks mentioned in US and denounced by Maliki govt] [also US forayed into Sadr city again, apparently without consultation] [here renewed agreement to work together] [*******]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 27 — With recent events in Iraq causing growing strains between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government, the two governments issued a tautly worded statement through the American Embassy in Baghdad on Friday renewing their commitment to work together for peace and security in Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/middleeast/28iraq.html
October 28, 2006
Fighting Split, U.S. and Iraq Renew Vow to Work for Peace
By JOHN F. BURNS [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [recently, benchmarks mentioned in US and denounced by Maliki govt] [also US forayed into Sadr city again, apparently without consultation] [here renewed agreement to work together] [*******]
BAGHDAD, Oct. 27 — With recent events in Iraq causing growing strains between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government, the two governments issued a tautly worded statement through the American Embassy in Baghdad on Friday renewing their commitment to work together for peace and security in Iraq.
The statement, remarkable for the fact that the two governments found it necessary, followed a meeting between Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador. The three-paragraph joint statement issued afterward appeared aimed at tamping down frictions between the governments while countering a growing perception in Baghdad and Washington that the increasingly grim situation here is driving a wedge between them. [**************]
The statement said Mr. Maliki and Mr. Khalilzad — who have meet regularly during Mr. Maliki’s six months in office — “were pleased to meet today to discuss our ongoing efforts to bring peace and security to Iraq and create a better future for all Iraqis.” Usually, meetings between the two men, with offices close to each other in Baghdad’s Green Zone government compound, are not the subject of official announcements.
“While we recognize the difficulties, we know that our continued partnership and strategic alliance will allow us to meet the challenges facing Iraq,” the statement said. “The United States will continue to stand by the Iraqi government, and the Iraqi government welcomes the support of the United States as it moves forward with plans for national reconciliation, economic progress and the strengthening of the Iraqi security forces.”
The statement concluded: “The government of Iraq is committed to a good and strong relationship with the U.S. government to work together toward a democratic, stable Iraq, and to confront the terrorist challenges in light of the strategic alliance between the two countries.” [*********]
The statement followed an outburst on Wednesday in which Mr. Maliki spoke out forcefully against the idea of American-imposed benchmarks or timelines for action on the most critical issues dividing the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations. [****]The benchmarks have been pushed by the Bush administration as a means of pulling the country back from the brink of civil war.
But Mr. Maliki astonished American officials here by saying Wednesday that “this is an elected government and no one has the right to set a timetable for it.” He spoke 24 hours after Mr. Khalilzad and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, had spoken of a timeline for action on the toughest issues as a centerpiece of a joint Iraqi and American strategy for winning the war. [******]
In Washington, President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have both sought to calm the political storm in Baghdad. At his news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Bush said American officials were “working with the Iraqi government to have certain benchmarks to meet as a way to determine whether or not they are making the hard decisions necessary to achieve peace.”
But he said Mr. Maliki was right in his insistence on Iraq’s right to make its own decisions. “This is a sovereign government,” he said. At a Pentagon news conference on Thursday, Mr. Rumsfeld said the idea of benchmarks did not involve fixed deadlines or penalties for the Iraqis.
The issues outlined by Mr. Khalilzad and General Casey defined the struggle for political and economic power that is tearing at the fragile coalition of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds that make up the Maliki government. They include the role of the Shiite militias, which have played a widening role in the bloodshed across the country, the division of oil revenues and the balance to be struck between holding officials of Saddam Hussein’s government accountable and opening the door to rehabilitation. [******]
Days before Mr. Maliki’s outburst, American officials handed out what they described as a “notional political timetable” setting out a series of deadlines for legislative and executive actions. The timetable ran from September this year through March 2007, and Mr. Khalilzad said it had been drawn up in consultation with the Maliki government.
High on the list was the passage of laws governing the disarming of militias, an amnesty for certain fighters and a program for reintegrating militia members into civilian life. [********]
The dispute over benchmarks reflects a deeper divide between the religious Shiite parties and the Americans, who were once seen by the Shiites as a partner in wresting power from the Sunni minority through elections. But the Americans have become increasingly unpopular with the Shiites as they have pushed plans for a reconciliation with the Sunnis, which the Americans hope would dampen the Sunni insurgency. [*********]
But Shiites have chafed at the American push for reconciliation, in particular with the role played by Mr. Khalilzad, who is a Sunni Muslim. In recent weeks, Mr. Maliki and other high-ranking Shiites have begun to chafe at American military control of the new Iraqi Army, and have grown increasingly bitter over American statements identifying Shiite militias as equally responsible with the Sunni insurgents for the violence here. [*******]
One of the most senior Shiite government officials, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a vice president, told reporters in the southern city of Najaf on Friday that the American focus on disbanding the militias was misplaced.
“There are some attempts to advance the fight against the militias and delay the fight against terrorism and the insurgency,” he said after meeting with Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. “We warn of the dangers of these attempts.” [ominous coming from sistani] [******]
For the second time this week, American troops rolled in force into the stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army on Friday in search of a missing American soldier, but this time withdrew without clashing with fighters there, authorities said.
Michael Luo and Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Najaf.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:11 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701430.html
Iranian Nuclear Effort Defies U.N. Council Again
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A10 [iran] [wmd] [continued defiance] [followup from yesterday] [******] [c.f., with today’s govt where Bush still says unacceptable] [****] [ditto]
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 27 -- Iran has once again defied the U.N. Security Council's repeated demands to halt its nuclear activities, firing up a second line of centrifuges to increase its ability to enrich uranium, according to a report by a semiofficial Iranian news agency.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701430.html
Iranian Nuclear Effort Defies U.N. Council Again
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A10 [iran] [wmd] [continued defiance] [followup from yesterday] [******] [c.f., with today’s govt where Bush still says unacceptable] [****] [ditto]
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 27 -- Iran has once again defied the U.N. Security Council's repeated demands to halt its nuclear activities, firing up a second line of centrifuges to increase its ability to enrich uranium, according to a report by a semiofficial Iranian news agency.
The report came as U.N. negotiations became bogged down in the face of Russia's and China's reluctance to slap tough sanctions on Tehran. U.S. and European officials say they anticipate a long, hard diplomatic struggle over the coming weeks to fashion a formal reaction to Iran's enrichment activities.
President Bush warned on Friday that it is "unacceptable" for Iran to produce nuclear weapons. But the United States has been stymied in its efforts to gain speedy passage of a sanctions resolution.
Bush said the Iranian report "says to me that we must double our effort to work with the international community to persuade the Iranians that there is only isolation from the world if they continue working forward on such a program."
"The idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon is unacceptable," Bush added after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. "And it's unacceptable for the United States, and it's unacceptable to nations we're working with in the United Nations to send a common message."
The Security Council passed a resolution on July 31 threatening to consider sanctions against Iran if it did not suspend its enrichment of uranium and a package of incentives. Those incentives, which include greater access to Western markets and guarantees of foreign-supplied nuclear fuel, are backed by the council's five permanent members -- the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China -- plus Germany.
Iran says that it is willing to restart talks with the major powers to resolve the nuclear crisis but that it will not agree to suspend its enrichment activities as a precondition. It maintains that it has the right, under the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty, to enrich uranium for the production of nuclear power for what it describes as a purely civilian energy program.
With no breakthrough in sight, France, Britain and Germany presented the United States, Russia and China this week with a draft resolution that would ban trade related to Iran's nuclear and ballistic-missile programs but would allow Russia to continue to support the construction of an Iranian nuclear facility at Bushehr.
French President Jacques Chirac told reporters during a visit to the city of Wuhan, China, that "appropriate, adapted, temporary and reversible sanctions will probably have to be found and imposed to show Iran that the whole of the international community does not understand its position," according to Reuters.
The Bush administration declined to endorse the European draft because of concerns that it is too weak to constrain Iran from pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has suggested that the European draft is too tough and does not conform with the six nations' aim of eliminating "the risks of sensitive technology falling into Iran's hands" while maintaining "vital channels of communication with Iran."
Russia is furious that the United States in July sanctioned two Russian military contractors -- the state arms exporter Rosoboronexport and aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi -- under the 2000 Iran Nonproliferation Act.
Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, has hinted that the U.S. failure to lift those sanctions could complicate the Iran negotiations. "If we work collectively, we need to work collectively," Churkin said recently. "If they want to go it on their own, you know legislating unilateral sanctions, they are welcome to tackle the problem alone."
Iran is still years away from producing enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb, according to analysts. It fired up its first 164-centrifuge line, called a cascade, earlier this year at the Natanz nuclear facility -- where Iran plans to operate up to 3,000 centrifuges. But it has been progressing at a slower rate than expected, producing only a tiny sample of enriched uranium.
David Albright, an expert on the Iran nuclear program and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said the second cascade is too small to produce sufficient quantities of enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. The concern, he said, is whether Tehran's nuclear scientists are close to mastering the full-scale enrichment of uranium at the facility. He said the Iranians are clearly "moving forward" in their understanding of the nuclear fuel cycle.
The Iranian Students' News Agency, which is close to the government, reported that Iran began injecting UF-6 gas into the new cascade earlier this week, a key step in producing enriched uranium.
An official at the International Atomic Energy Agency declined to confirm or deny the Iranian report. But the agency's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, told The Washington Post on Monday that Iran was days away from using the cascade to enrich uranium.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:10 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/middleeast/28iran.html
October 28, 2006
Using a 2nd Network, Iran Raises Enrichment Ability
By NAZILA FATHI [iran] [wmd] [continued defiance] [followup from yesterday] [******] [c.f., with today’s govt where Bush still says unacceptable] [****]
TEHRAN, Oct. 27 — Iran has begun to enrich uranium in a second network of centrifuges, an Iranian local news agency reported Friday, in defiance of a United Nations Security Council demand that it halt its nuclear program.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/middleeast/28iran.html
October 28, 2006
Using a 2nd Network, Iran Raises Enrichment Ability
By NAZILA FATHI [iran] [wmd] [continued defiance] [followup from yesterday] [******] [c.f., with today’s govt where Bush still says unacceptable] [****]
TEHRAN, Oct. 27 — Iran has begun to enrich uranium in a second network of centrifuges, an Iranian local news agency reported Friday, in defiance of a United Nations Security Council demand that it halt its nuclear program.
The ISNA news agency quoted an “informed source” as saying that Iran installed a second cascade of 164 centrifuges two weeks ago and successfully injected gas into it last week, theoretically doubling its enrichment capacity.
“We now have the product of the second cascade,” the unidentified speaker was quoted as saying.
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors know of this activity, he said.
In Washington, President Bush said he was aware of “speculation” that Iran has started enriching uranium in a second network. “Whether they doubled it or not, the idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon is unacceptable,” Mr. Bush said.
But Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, said it was too early to speak about Iran being able to produce weapons-grade uranium. “These are empty centrifuges,” he told the Itar-Tass news agency. “You can’t produce anything with them, so to speak about enriching uranium is premature.”
The announcement was widely expected. On Monday, the head of the I.A.E.A., Mohamed ElBaradei, said that “based on our most recent inspections, the second centrifuge cascade is in place and ready to go.”
As Iran was reporting the doubling of its enrichment capacity, the five permanent members of the Council — the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia — and Germany were discussing a draft resolution to impose sanctions on Iran for its refusal to comply with their earlier demand that it stop enrichment.
The draft resolution would reportedly bar Iranian students from studying nuclear physics at foreign universities, prohibit technical or financial assistance that could benefit the nuclear program and impose a visa ban on any Iranians involved in nuclear activities.
A senior Western diplomat in Tehran said Iran went ahead after seeing the limited sanctions imposed on North Korea after its nuclear test this month. “They were reasonably reassured that if North Korea can live with the sanctions, they can do better,” said the diplomat, who refused to be identified. “They think if they give in now, it is a sign of weakness and the West will ask for more.”
Iran insists that its program is for peaceful purposes, and that as a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty it has the legal right to enrich uranium to produce its own reactor fuel. The United States says Iran, a major oil exporter, has no need for a peaceful nuclear program and is merely using it as a cover for an effort to produce nuclear weapons.
Iran, which already had one cascade of 164 centrifuges in operation, has said repeatedly that it plans to increase the number of centrifuges in operation to 3,000 by the end of this year. In a separate interview, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said Tehran was still willing to resolve its nuclear issue through negotiations. But he also issued a veiled threat, saying Europeans “should pay the price” if they choose a different path, ISNA reported. He did not elaborate, but it seemed that he was referring to sanctions.
“If Europeans think they can pursue a radical approach toward Iran and negotiate with us on the side as well, they should know that Iranians are not naïve people,” he added.
He also rejected comments made by the foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, who said last week that Iran might consider suspending its program during negotiations. “I do not approve this view,” he said. “I am in charge of nuclear issues and I do not think the news was accurate.”
Members of the Security Council reacted to the announcement immediately, Reuters reported.
The Foreign Ministry spokesman in France, Jean-Baptiste Mattéi, said the report increased the international community’s worries about the growth of Iran’s capacity to produce fissile material.
“The priority is to move toward the negotiation of a Security Council resolution,” Mr. Mattéi told reporters in Paris in response to the news.
A British Foreign Office spokesman said it was a matter for the I.A.E.A., the United Nations nuclear agency, to investigate.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:09 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/africa/28sudan.html
October 28, 2006
Misery Churns in Eastern Sudan, Away From Spotlight
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN [Sudan] [Darfar and elsewhere] [followup] [catastrophe waiting to happen] [********]
TOGLEY, Sudan — Ali Hamid Ahmed used to be the elder of a village full of green fields and thousands of goats.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/africa/28sudan.html
October 28, 2006
Misery Churns in Eastern Sudan, Away From Spotlight
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN [Sudan] [Darfar and elsewhere] [followup] [catastrophe waiting to happen] [********]
TOGLEY, Sudan — Ali Hamid Ahmed used to be the elder of a village full of green fields and thousands of goats.
But a little-known war between the government and a spreading rebel force drove his people from their homes to a camp at the far eastern edge of Sudan, where the horizon is paper-flat and the land is about as fertile as a sandbox.
The people here are battered by the sun, the wind and the sand; the tribal scars cut into Mr. Ahmed’s face when he was a little boy are constantly creased with dust. Mr. Ahmed’s people still call him “the chairman,” but out here, Mr. Ahmed says, he is the chairman of nothing.
“We have no animals,” he said. “All we have is dirt.”
It is a scene of desolation and despair in a country with much of both. But what is different about the crisis in eastern Sudan is that few outside organizations are paying attention. While there are an estimated 25,000 aid workers in Darfur, the war-ravaged region on the other side of the country that has become the focus of a ceaseless flurry of diplomatic activity, here in Togley there are not even plastic tarps for the huts.
Eastern Sudan is forgotten Sudan, an intriguing, isolated, sun-blasted corner of the country where a conservative culture and a slow-burning war have conspired to keep the people mired in neglect despite the area’s port and oil riches.
The war may finally be over — eastern rebels who had been fighting for a greater share of the country’s resources reached an agreement with the government on Oct. 14 to lay down their weapons in exchange for political representation and a share of the nation’s oil money.
But the neglect will take years to reverse. Eastern Sudan, which encompasses roughly 180,000 square miles and nearly four million people, is the poorest part of the country, with the highest infant mortality rate and a per capita income in some areas of 25 cents a day, a small fraction of the national average.
In remote villages, most women cannot even write their own names, partly because of a strict Muslim culture that forbids education for girls and confines them to their homes.
“These women have nothing to do but sit around and drink coffee and scar themselves,” said Niyal Mohammed al-Haj, a teacher in Kasala, one of the biggest towns in the east. “Girls don’t go to school; boys drop out, and nobody cares.”
One of the reasons that the east has largely gone unnoticed is that the scale of fighting could never compete with the conflicts in Darfur or southern Sudan. The fighting here is thought to have claimed between 2,000 and 5,000 lives in the last 10 years, compared with hundreds of thousands in Darfur and the south.
Yet, the east is increasingly vital to the nation, home to gold mines and the country’s major oil pipeline and port. As the troubles intensified in Darfur, Sudan’s leaders in Khartoum, the capital, could hardly afford to fight another escalating rebellion.
“Khartoum was facing so much pressure on other fronts, it had to put out this fire,” said Ahmed el-Amin Terik, an adviser to the state governor here in Togley. “It wasn’t like the eastern rebels were so much of a threat. But even a mosquito doesn’t let you sleep.”
The eastern rebels do not appreciate being likened to mosquitoes. Most are Beja herdsmen, a proud and traditional group, who strut around in white robes and dusty waistcoats with three-foot-long sabers tucked into their belts. They waged hit-and-run attacks against government soldiers from the backs of their camels. Some are already grumbling about getting a raw deal in the peace effort.
The Beja leadership wanted regional autonomy but instead was given nominal positions in the central government.
The Beja also pushed for a bigger cut of Sudan’s growing wealth, which is driven by oil exports, and asked for one dollar for every barrel shipped from Port Sudan, which would amount to around $150 million each year. Instead, the Sudanese government set up a $600 million eastern development fund, a substantial commitment, but one that is guaranteed only for a few years.
These issues are similar to what set off the bloodshed in Darfur and the south, where long-marginalized regional ethnic groups have taken up arms against the ruling group of Arab Sudanese in Khartoum. Critics of the central government say the three separate peace deals that have been reached — for the south in 2005, for Darfur this spring and now for the east — are not only shaky, but may encourage wider unrest.
“The message seems to be, if you want more development, you need to pick up arms,” said Abda Yahia el-Mahdi, a former finance minister now in private consulting.
When it came time to sign the eastern peace deal at a ceremony in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, just east of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, showed up in Beja dress.
“It was ridiculous,” said Hashim Hangag, a spokesman for the Beja Congress political party. “Here was a guy who has never stood with the Beja, pretending to be one of us.”
Beja political frustrations have been percolating since the 1950s. The central government dammed their rivers and took their grazing land, while delivering few schools, hospitals or roads. The Beja have always been among the poorest and least educated people in Sudan, marooned in an arid, thinly populated area rife with tuberculosis and malaria, and they hardly had the means to fight back.
In the 1990s, that changed. Sudan’s government tried to undermine the Eritrean government by arming Islamic fighters who were waging a holy war against it. Eritrea, in return, began arming the Beja.
Rebels from other tribes and other parts of Sudan flooded into Beja territory and opened a new front against the government, an eastern front — and the alliance eventually took that name. One misimpression of Sudan’s rebel movements is that they are isolated to one area and fighting to secede. Many, however, including Darfur’s rebel groups, have national ambitions and dream not of carving out their own piece of territory but of overthrowing the Arab-led government.
The fighting displaced thousands of people, including 3,000 now in Togley, who drifted from village to village until all their animals died, and then settled on a chunk of land so dry and fruitless that nobody else wanted it.
A turning point came on Jan. 29, 2005, when government troops in Port Sudan killed 25 unarmed Beja men who were protesting what they called a legacy of exclusion. That drove hundreds more into the ranks of the Eastern Front, and the central government began to fear another Darfur.
Serious peace negotiations started this year, culminating in the October agreement.
Several Beja rebels said they had been pressed to accept a less than satisfying deal because the Eritrean government, which had allowed them to operate out of camps along its border, was eager to normalize relations with Sudan and gave them little choice.
The government and some Beja leaders say that peace will bring desperately needed investment, and with the area safe, more foreign aid will flow in. Right now, just a handful of aid organizations operate here, mostly distributing food.
Mr. Ahmed, the chairman of Togley, hopes to lead his people back to their village, but there are literally minefields between here and there. “I know Darfur has problems,” Mr. Ahmed said. “But what about us?”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:09 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701432.html
U.N. Study: Foreign Troops In Somalia Raise War Risk
Associated Press
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A10 [Somalia] [Africa] [followup from yesterday’s confirmation of Ethiopia troops in Somalia] [explosive][********]
NAIROBI, Oct. 27 -- Thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean troops are in Somalia, backing opposing sides in the struggle for control of the country, [*****]according to a confidential U.N. paper. The involvement of the two rivals could set the stage for a regional war. [Ethiopia has large Christian population and historical animosities with Somalia] [********]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701432.html
U.N. Study: Foreign Troops In Somalia Raise War Risk
Associated Press
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A10 [Somalia] [Africa] [followup from yesterday’s confirmation of Ethiopia troops in Somalia] [explosive][********]
NAIROBI, Oct. 27 -- Thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean troops are in Somalia, backing opposing sides in the struggle for control of the country, [*****]according to a confidential U.N. paper. The involvement of the two rivals could set the stage for a regional war. [Ethiopia has large Christian population and historical animosities with Somalia] [********]
The U.N. report, dated Oct. 26, cites diplomatic sources in estimating that "between 6,000 and 8,000 Ethiopians and 2,000 fully equipped Eritrean troops are now inside Somalia supporting" the internationally recognized transitional government and the group known as the Council of Islamic Courts, respectively.
"Both sides in the Somali conflict are reported to have major outside backers -- the government supported by Ethiopia, Uganda and Yemen; the Islamic courts receiving aid from Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Gulf States," the report added.
The transitional government and the Council of Islamic Courts have been girding for battle for weeks. Government forces have dug trenches near the western town of Baidoa, the only town the U.N.-backed government controls. The Islamic group has deployed forces at a strategic town between Baidoa and its headquarters in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
Since taking Mogadishu in June, the Islamic fighters have extended their hold over much of southern Somalia.
Ethiopian officials have said they have only a few hundred military advisers assisting the government. The Somali transitional government has accused Eritrea of arming and supporting the Islamic group, a charge Eritrean and Islamic officials have denied.
The paper was written to help U.N. officials map a strategy on aid to Somalia, a severely impoverished country that has not had an effective central government since 1991.
Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a two-year border war that left tens of thousands of people dead and remains unresolved.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:08 PM | Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701472.html
A Year After Suburban Riots, France Is Mostly Calm
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A09 france] [paris] [EU] [one-year anniversary of the “riots”] [followup from past few days] [********] [ditto]
PARIS, Oct. 27 -- French officials deployed 4,000 extra police officers in the country's poorest suburban areas Friday as the anniversary of last year's wave of arson attacks arrived with only scattered incidents of violence, according to early police and news media reports.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701472.html
A Year After Suburban Riots, France Is Mostly Calm
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 28, 2006; A09 france] [paris] [EU] [one-year anniversary of the “riots”] [followup from past few days] [********] [ditto]
PARIS, Oct. 27 -- French officials deployed 4,000 extra police officers in the country's poorest suburban areas Friday as the anniversary of last year's wave of arson attacks arrived with only scattered incidents of violence, according to early police and news media reports.
The security precautions followed several weeks of increasing tension in the suburban areas of Paris where residents -- most of whom are Arab and African immigrants and their French-born children -- have complained that the government had not lived up to promises it made, after last year's nationwide rampage, to improve living conditions and employment opportunities.
Small groups of men -- some of them armed -- attacked two public buses in the northern suburbs of Paris early in the evening. In one incident, two armed men boarded a bus in front of a train station in the town of Le Blanc-Mesnil, yanked the driver off the vehicle and ordered all the passengers off before throwing a gasoline bomb and burning the bus, French media reported. Authorities reduced bus service into the area and limited night bus service in many other suburbs.
In the past week, about half a dozen public buses have been attacked and set ablaze in suburbs of Paris and Lyon, and gangs wielding rocks and metal pipes have ambushed police in some Paris suburbs.
Friday morning, in the northern Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, several hundred residents marched to memorialize the deaths of two local youths last Oct. 27 -- the incident that set off France's worst civil unrest since the student protests in 1968.
The two teenagers were electrocuted when they leapt into an electrical substation to escape police who witnesses said were chasing them. French officials denied that police had been pursuing the youths.
Marchers carried a banner declaring, "Died for nothing." The marchers stopped at the electrical substation where the youths perished and recited prayers in French and Arabic as their families laid plastic-wrapped flowers against the fence.
"Last year we crossed Clichy by weaving between the burnt-out wrecks of cars, creating an image of our city that we didn't want to see," Mayor Claude Dillain told the gathering during a solemn ceremony Friday morning. "Once again France, and even the world, is watching us and waiting to see what we do. So I appeal solemnly for calm and dignity to prevail here."
During last year's violence, gangs of boys and young men torched more than 10,000 cars and attacked nearly 500 schools and other public buildings, mostly government institutions.
Allegations that the government has failed to respond adequately to demands for improvements in the poor suburbs, along with parallel concerns over security and an increasing Muslim population, are among the most contentious issues in the French presidential campaign. [********]
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:07 PM | Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/europe/28france.html
October 28, 2006
Speeches and Arson Recall Last Year’s Unrest in France
By ARIANE BERNARD [france] [paris] [EU] [one-year anniversary of the “riots”] [followup from past few days] [********]
CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France, Oct. 27 — Hooded attackers burned two buses on Friday night in a city near this Paris suburb on the anniversary of the start of last year’s suburban unrest. [*******]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/europe/28france.html
October 28, 2006
Speeches and Arson Recall Last Year’s Unrest in France
By ARIANE BERNARD [france] [paris] [EU] [one-year anniversary of the “riots”] [followup from past few days] [********]
CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France, Oct. 27 — Hooded attackers burned two buses on Friday night in a city near this Paris suburb on the anniversary of the start of last year’s suburban unrest. [*******]
Additional police officers had been put on duty for Friday night, as France braced for possible violence. In recent weeks, bands of youths had attacked police patrols and buses in the suburbs of Paris and Lyon.
In the Friday night arson, the two buses were attacked separately in Le Blanc-Mesnil, north of Paris. The passengers and drivers of both buses escaped unharmed, said the Paris-area transportation authority, the RATP.
In one of the attacks, assailants broke the bus’s windows and threw firebombs into the vehicle. A spokeswoman for the RATP said that she was unsure if the bombs were thrown before or after the passengers had left the bus. The spokeswoman, who could not be identified by name under the transportation authority’s ground rules, said she did not have details of the other attack.
During the day Friday, several hundred people in this poor suburb of Paris participated in a silent march in memory of two teenagers whose accidental deaths last year set off three weeks of unrest that shook the country. [***]
In speeches after the march, local officials and family members of the teenagers called for calm. The two teenagers, Bouna Traoré, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, were electrocuted last Oct. 27 at a power substation where they and a friend were hiding. Some accounts at the time said they had been running from the police. The friend was severely injured but survived. [*******]
“Once more, France, the world, are watching us,” said the mayor, Claude Dilain, after dedicating an understated white stone monument in front of the teenagers’ school.
“This is a solemn call for calm,” said the mayor, who is a Socialist.
The marchers, many of them youths wearing white T-shirts bearing the words “Dead for Nothing,” paused by the power substation where the teenagers had died. Men and women cried as they passed the site, and an imam said prayers for the dead. [******]
Many expressed not only sadness over the deaths, but also disappointment with how little things had changed in France’s tough suburbs. The unrest last year, during which thousands of cars were set ablaze and businesses were trashed, shed light on the plight of the country’s underprivileged populations, mainly Arabs and black Africans and their French-born children, who feel disenfranchised. In some immigrant neighborhoods, unemployment runs considerably above the national average.
After the march, Muhittin Altun, 18, the survivor of the accident that killed his friends, said, “You’ll see, it’s going to explode, it’s going to explode everywhere, because for the past year, they have been trying to put us to sleep.” [*******]
But Sylviane Dubuisson, 52, who runs a bakery here, said she disapproved of the march because she feared it could lead to new violence. Speaking of the two teenagers, she said, “They died, it’s sad, but they have to rest in peace, and we need to forget.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04: