History > 2006 > USA > International (V-VI)

Iran Is Seeking

More Influence in Afghanistan

December 27, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE

ISLAM QALA, Afghanistan — Two years ago, foreign engineers built a new highway through the desert of western Afghanistan, past this ancient trading post and on to the outside world. Nearby, they strung a high-voltage power line and laid a fiber-optic cable, marked with red posts, that provides telephone and Internet access to the region.

The modernization comes with a message. Every 5 to 10 miles, road signs offer quotations from the Koran. "Forgive us, God," declares one. "God is clear to everyone," says another. A graceful mosque rises roadside, with a green glass dome and Koranic inscriptions in blue tile. The style is unmistakably Iranian.

All of this is fruit of Iran's drive to become a bigger player in Afghanistan, as it exploits new opportunities to spread its influence and ideas farther across the Middle East.

The rise of Hezbollah, with Iran's support, has demonstrated the extent of Tehran's sway in Lebanon, and the American toppling of Saddam Hussein has allowed it to expand its influence in Iraq. Iran has been making inroads into Afghanistan, as well. During the tumultuous 1980s and '90s, Iran shipped money and arms to groups fighting first the Soviet occupation and later the Taliban government. But since the United States and its allies ousted the Taliban in 2001, Iran has taken advantage of the central government's weakness to pursue a more nuanced strategy: part reconstruction, part education and part propaganda.

Iran has distributed its largess, more than $200 million in all, mostly here in the west but also in the capital, Kabul. It has set up border posts against the heroin trade, and next year will begin work on new road and construction projects and a rail line linking the countries. In Kabul, its projects include a new medical center and a water testing laboratory.

Iran's ambassador, Muhammad Reza Bahrami, portrayed his government's activities as neighborly good works, with a certain self-interest. Iran, he said, is eager to avoid repeating the calamities of the last 20 years, when two million Afghan refugees streamed over the border.

"Our strategy in Afghanistan is based on security, stability and de veloping a strong central government," he said. "It not only benefits the Afghan people, it's in our national interest."

Still, there are indications of other motives. Iranian radio stations are broadcasting anti-American propaganda into Afghanistan. Moderate Shiite leaders in Afghanistan say Tehran is funneling money to conservative Shiite religious schools and former warlords with longstanding ties to Iranian intelligence agencies.

And as the dispute over Iran's nuclear program has escalated [leading the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran on Dec. 23], Iranian intelligence activity has increased across Afghanistan, American and Afghan officials say. This has included not just surveillance and information collection but the recruitment of a network of pro-Iranian operatives who could attack American targets in Afghanistan. [On Dec. 20 in London, British officials charged the interpreter for NATO's commanding general in Afghanistan with passing secrets to Iran.]

Discerning Iranian motives is notoriously difficult. Government factions often have competing agendas. Even so, the question of Iran's intentions in Afghanistan has come under a microscope in recent weeks amid debate in Washington over whether the United States should begin dealing with Tehran as part of a possible solution in Iraq. Some American officials have suggested that Iran's seeming cooperation in Afghanistan may be something of a model for Iraq.

So far, even as it declines to talk with the Iranians about Iraq, the Bush administration has adopted a posture of uneasy detente over Afghanistan. American officials say that they are watching closely, and no evidence has emerged of recent arms shipments to Iranian proxies, as there have been in Iraq, or of other efforts to destabilize the country. Iran's Shiite leaders appear to be maintaining their historic opposition to the Sunni Taliban, who consider Shiites heretics. Iran, they also say, is failing to gain popular support among Afghans, 80 percent of whom are Sunni Muslims.

Of far greater concern, according to American, European and Afghan officials, is Pakistan, America's ostensible ally against terrorism. They say the Pakistanis have allowed the Taliban to create a virtual ministate and staging base for suicide attacks just across Afghanistan's eastern border. Suicide attacks have quintupled, from 23 in 2005 to 115 this year, killing more than 200 Afghan civilians.

[It is too early to know if the Bush administration's position will be at all affected by the latest source of tension between Washington and Tehran - the American arrests of several Iranians in Baghdad on Dec. 20 and 21 on suspicion of conducting attacks on Iraqi security forces.]

Western diplomats say that, at the very least, Iran's goals in Afghanistan are to hasten the withdrawal of American troops, prevent the Taliban from regaining power and keep the Afghan west firmly under Tehran's sway.

"Keep this area stable, but make it friendly for them," said a senior European diplomat in western Afghanistan. "Make it difficult for outsiders to operate here."

Afghanistan, analysts say, is one example of the way Iran is increasingly spending its oil money in a variety of countries to realize its self-image as an ascendant regional power. One Western official said that by focusing on high-profile construction projects, diplomacy and public relations, Iran was, in effect, employing American cold-war tactics to increase its soft power in the region.

In Iraq, that means not just financing an array of Shiite political parties and militias; the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, said Tehran was already providing power and planned to build three hospitals and set up a $1 billion loan fund for Iraqi businesses. Similarly, Iran gave Hezbollah not just weapons and training but also the money for roads, schools and social services that made it the de facto government in southern Lebanon. Iran already has a strong and growing presence in Syria, too.

Iranian officials cast themselves as a counterweight to the United States, which they say has mishandled opportunities to stabilize both Afghanistan and Iraq.

"U.S. policies, particularly under the current administration, have created a huge amount of resentment around the world," said a senior Iranian official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. "I'm not saying Iran is gaining power all over the world. I'm saying the U.S. is losing it fast."

A History of Intervention

Afghanistan, a fragile mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, has long been susceptible to intervention from more powerful neighbors. As the world's largest predominantly Shiite country, Iran is the traditional foreign backer of Afghanistan's Shiites, roughly 20 percent of the country's population.

During the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, Iranian Revolutionary Guards financed and trained fundamentalist Shiite militias, as well as Sunni fighters. In the civil war after the Russian withdrawal in 1989, Iran became a patron of the Northern Alliance, while Pakistan supported the ultimately victorious Taliban.

When the Taliban were ousted in 2001, Iran promised to help stabilize Afghanistan. In Germany that December, it was Iranian diplomats who stepped in to save foundering talks to form a new Afghan government, persuading the Northern Alliance to accept the agreement. Soon after, Iran pledged $560 million in aid and loans to Afghanistan over five years, a "startling" amount for a nonindustrialized nation, according to James Dobbins, the senior American envoy to Afghanistan at the time.

A week later, President Bush situated Iran on the "axis of evil." But even as they assailed that characterization, Mr. Dobbins said, Iranian officials privately offered to train Afghan soldiers. The Bush administration rejected the offer.

Today, the American training and reconstruction effort dwarfs Iran's. The United States has spent a total of $4.5 billion since 2001, according to Afghan officials. But while the United States has built more than 1,000 schools, government buildings and clinics, and paved more than 730 miles of roads, a 2005 government audit found that reconstruction had been slowed by inconsistent financing, staff shortages and poor oversight. Amid rising Taliban attacks and public perception of corruption in the government of President Hamid Karzai, recent opinion polls show optimism declining across the country.

Iranian officials said they had focused on roads and power as a quick way to strengthen Afghanistan's economy. A major project has involved upgrading roads linking Afghanistan with the Iranian port of Chabahar, on the Gulf of Oman.

In many ways, Muhammad Reza Dabbaghi embodies Iran's new approach in Afghanistan. Mr. Dabbaghi, a 46-year-old engineer, is the top executive here for the Iranian company that built the new 70-mile highway linking western Afghanistan to Iran two years ago, is paving much of the northwestern city of Herat and hopes to build the new railway, all with Iranian government financing.

As his staff served green tea, apples and sweet cookies from southeastern Iran, he handed over a glossy color brochure and CD-ROM touting his company's work. Mr. Dabbaghi, a fastidious man in a stylish blazer and slacks, said his company was trying to work in neighboring countries, but he complained that the United States was spreading "mass propaganda," lobbying governments not to hire Iranian companies, especially in Afghanistan.

In Kabul, American contractors, advisers and aid projects clearly dominate the city, but Iran is there, too. In addition to a handful of Iranian advisers at government ministries, Iranian experts have trained more than 1,200 Afghan teachers, librarians and diplomats.

Last year, the Iranian Embassy opened the Iranian Corner, a room in Kabul University's main library filled with computers, books and magazines from Iran, promoting Iran's ancient culture and modern achievements. Librarians say it is more popular than the adjoining American Corner, sponsored by the United States Embassy, primarily because it has a better Internet connection. Unlike in Iran, where the government blocks thousands of Web sites, the Iranian Corner offers open Internet access.

Afghanistan's economic reliance on Iran has increased in another way, as Taliban attacks have slowed the economy. Each morning, hundreds of Afghan men line up outside the Iranian missions in Herat and Kabul for visas to work in Iran. Iranian officials said they expected to issue up to 450,000 visas to Afghans this year, nearly twice the 250,000 issued in 2005.

Signs of Influence

In the murky world of western Afghanistan, centuries of Iranian influence have left many local people with a perception of Iran as all-powerful nemesis. Many said their lives would be in danger if they publicly criticized Iran or its Afghan proxies. Behind every suspicious event in the Afghan west, they contend, lies an Iranian hand.

Such accounts are clearly exaggerated. Still, Western and Afghan officials say that, beyond its much-trumpeted reconstruction program, Iran is also engaging in a range of activities it is less eager to publicize.

Qari Ahmad Ali, a Shiite commander once backed by Iran, said that since 2001, his former patrons had funneled millions of dollars to a web of Shiite religious schools and charities in western Afghanistan. He said the Sadaqia Madrasa, one of the largest Shiite religious schools in Herat, was at the center of an effort to spread Shiite fundamentalism.

"Iran does not have military activities," Mr. Ali said. "They have political and social activities."

Muhammad Siddique Tawakulay, the Sadaqia school's cultural director, said it received no assistance from Iran. "We are saying the truth and the facts," he said, before giving a tour of the school. But a second, unsupervised tour produced evidence of Iranian influence.

In a small ground-floor room, photos of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian revolution, were for sale. The main library had two dozen books published in Iran that criticized Israel and the United States. One, "Dark Star," had a photo of a Hasidic Jew with a star of David burning ominously on its cover. A religious magazine printed in Iran assailed the United States for supporting Israel's attacks on Lebanon last summer.

Shopkeepers said that during the Lebanon fighting, madrasa officials distributed posters praising Hezbollah. One of them, still hanging in a local shop, featured photographs of dead Lebanese children and a heroic image of the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

A senior Afghan intelligence official said that Radio Mashhad, a state-run station in northeastern Iran's largest city, broadcast anti-American messages over the border.

"Iran is providing a lot of assistance for religious and cultural activities in Afghanistan," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secret nature of his work. "That is the easy way to build influence."

Moderate Shiites agreed. "We worry about the situation," said Abbas Noyan, a Shiite member of Parliament. "Right now, the Iranians have a strong hand."

In interviews, three Shiite officials said new religious schools were being built with Iranian money. They also said that more Afghans were celebrating formerly obscure Shiite religious holidays.

Iran's influence appeared to wane two years ago, after the United States doubled aid to Afghanistan and removed Ismail Khan, the governor of Herat and a powerful Iranian-backed warlord who dominated the west.

Since then, though, American troops have turned responsibility for Herat over to the Italians, and this year, the United States cut aid to Afghanistan by 30 percent. Iran, meanwhile, has kept its aid money flowing steadily and continued to back its proxies in the region, according to a Western diplomat.

The last known example of Iranian weapons shipments came in late 2004, when Tehran provided weapons and training to a junior commander loyal to Mr. Khan. Since then, the commander is suspected of having orchestrated a bombing and other incidents to pressure the Afghan government into reinstating Mr. Khan.

In February, Herat experienced its first religious violence in decades. Six people were killed as Sunnis and Shiites staged gun battles on city streets, according to religious leaders. Some local officials blamed Mr. Khan's protégé for fomenting the violence. Others attributed it to rising grass-roots Sunni-Shiite tensions.

As in Iraq, the American-backed effort to build a democracy has fostered a Shiite revival here. Shiites now serve as governors in 4 of 34 provinces, including Herat. Hard-line Sunnis in Herat said they chafed at being ruled by Shiites, blamed Iran for the Shiite rise and expected more violence.

In Kabul, though, Afghan government officials, desperate for aid, say they have decided to trust Iran's intentions.

"History may prove that overly optimistic," said Jawed Ludin, President Karzai's chief of staff. "But it is in our interests today to trust our Iranian neighbors and expect the same in return."

Michael Moss contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Michael Slackman from Damascus.

    Iran Is Seeking More Influence in Afghanistan, NYT, 27.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/27/world/asia/27afghan.ready.html?hp&ex=1167282000&en=5e993b9fa9472987&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Says Captured Iranians Can Be Linked to Attacks

December 27, 2006
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

BAGHDAD, Dec. 26 — The American military said Tuesday that it had credible evidence linking Iranians and their Iraqi associates, detained here in raids last week, to criminal activities, including attacks against American forces. Evidence also emerged that some detainees had been involved in shipments of weapons to illegal armed groups in Iraq.

In its first official confirmation of last week’s raids, the military said it had confiscated maps, videos, photographs and documents in one of the raids on a site in Baghdad. The military confirmed the arrests of five Iranians, and said three of them had been released.

The Bush administration has described the two Iranians still being held Tuesday night as senior military officials. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell IV, the chief spokesman for the American command, said the military, in the raid, had “gathered specific intelligence from highly credible sources that linked individuals and locations with criminal activities against Iraqi civilians, security forces and coalition force personnel.”

General Caldwell made his remarks by e-mail in response to a query about the raids, first reported Monday in The New York Times. “Some of that specific intelligence,” he said via e-mail, “dealt explicitly with force-protection issues, including attacks on MNF-I forces.”

MNF-I stands for Multinational Force-Iraq, the official name of the American-led foreign forces there.

American officials have long said that the Iranian government interferes in Iraq, but the arrests, in the compound of one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite political leaders, were the first since the American invasion in which officials were offering evidence of the link.

The raids threaten to upset the delicate balance of the three-way relationship among the United States, Iran and Iraq. The Iraqi government has made extensive efforts to engage Iran in security matters in recent months, and the arrests of the Iranians could scuttle those efforts.

Some Iraqis questioned the timing of the arrests, suggesting that the Bush administration had political motives. The arrests were made just days before the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.

The Bush administration has rejected pressure to open talks with Iran on Iraq.

The Iraqi government has kept silent on the arrests, but Tuesday night officials spoke of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations by Iraq’s government and its fractured political elite over how to handle the situation.

Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, had invited the two Iranians during his visit to Tehran, his spokesman said Sunday, but by Tuesday, some Iraqi officials began to question if Mr. Talabani had in fact made the invitation. His office was unavailable for comment Tuesday night.

“We know when they caught them they were doing something,” said one Iraqi official, who added that the Iranians did not appear to have formally registered with the government.

Some political leaders speculated that the arrests had been intended to derail efforts by Iraqis to deal with Iran on their own by making Iraqis look weak.

But the military seemed sure of what and whom it had found.

At about 7 p.m. on Wednesday, the military stopped a car in Baghdad and detained four people — three Iranians and an Iraqi. The military released two of them on Friday and the other two on Sunday night, General Caldwell said. The Iranian Embassy confirmed the releases.

But the more significant raid occurred before dawn the next morning, when American forces raided a second location, the general said. The military described it as “a site in Baghdad,” but declined to release further details about the location.

Iraqi leaders said last week that the site was the compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite political leaders, who met with President Bush in Washington three weeks ago. A spokesman for Mr. Hakim said he had not heard of a raid on the compound.

A careful reading of General Caldwell’s statement makes it clear, however, that the location itself was of central importance. The military gathered “specific intelligence from highly credible sources that linked individuals and locations with criminal activities,” it said. The crimes were against Iraqi civilians, security forces and Americans.

In that raid, American forces detained 10 men, 2 of them Iranians. They seized documents, maps, photographs and videos at the location, the military said. The military declined to say precisely what the items showed, nor did it specify if the Iranians themselves were suspected of attacking Americans, or if the Iraqis arrested with them were suspected, or both.

Some Iraqis questioned the American motives, saying the operation seemed aimed at embarrassing Mr. Hakim, the driving force behind a new political grouping backed by the United States to distance militants from the political process.

One Iraqi politician suggested that the tip for the raid had come from a source within Mr. Hakim’s own party, known by the acronym Sciri, in an effort to weaken or unseat him.

However it had been led there, the military said it had found evidence of wrongdoing. By questioning the detainees and investigating the materials, the military found evidence that connected some of those detained “to weapons shipments to armed groups in Iraq,” General Caldwell said.

The military did not specify the types of weapons.

The allegation, if true, would make this the first incident since the American invasion in which Iranian military officials were discovered in the act of planning military action inside Iraq. American officials have long accused them of supplying arms and money from Iran, but never of traveling to Iraq and taking part in plotting violent acts here.

American officials accused Iran of designing and shipping new powerful, armor-piercing bombs to Iraq as early as summer 2005.

American officials have on occasion offered evidence of Iranian involvement: A weapons shipment bearing serial numbers believed to belong to an official Iranian manufacturer was intercepted last year. The most recent allegations, if true, would appear to draw a line back to Tehran more directly than ever.

General Caldwell said that the detainees were still in American custody and that the military was “engaged in ongoing discussions with the government,” about their status. An official in the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad said its diplomats had tried to see the detainees but were not allowed to, a refusal that violated international rules, the official said.

James Glanz contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Michael R. Gordon from Washington.

    U.S. Says Captured Iranians Can Be Linked to Attacks, NYT, 27.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/27/world/middleeast/27iranians.html

U.S. highlights Iran-meddling charge in Iraq

Tue Dec 26, 2006 1:13 AM ET
Reuters
By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration said on Monday the arrest in Iraq of alleged Iranian provocateurs, including two diplomats, underscored U.S. concerns about "meddling" amid rising U.S.-Iranian strains.

U.S.-led forces detained the Iranians during operations "against those planning and plotting attacks against multinational forces, Iraqi forces and Iraqi citizens," the State Department said.

"In the course of those operations, multinational forces recently picked up groups of individuals involved in these kinds of activities, including Iranians operating inside Iraq," it said.

U.S. military and civilian officials in Baghdad and Washington did not respond to questions about any evidence the arrested Iranians were plotting attacks.

"We suspect this event validates our claim about Iranian meddling," said Alex Conant, a White House spokesman, "but we want to finish our investigation of the detained Iranians before characterizing their activities."

"We will be better able to explain what this means about the larger picture after we finish our investigation," he added in an e-mailed reply to questions from Reuters.

Two of the Iranians arrested had diplomatic credentials, Conant said. He said they were handed to the Iraqi government which released them to the Iranian government.

Details of the arrests were sketchy. The New York Times, which first reported the arrests on Sunday, said the Iranians were picked up in a pair of raids in central Baghdad late last week.

At least four Iranians were still being held by the U.S. military, including some described as senior military officials, the paper said.

The arrests were highly sensitive for the three governments involved as tensions have risen over Iran's nuclear program and its support for hard-line, anti-U.S. forces in the Middle East.

On Saturday, UnderSecretary of State Nicholas Burns called for an end to "business as usual" with Iran to bolster U.N. Security Council sanctions adopted earlier in the day aimed at rolling back Iran's nuclear program.

Iran, along with Syria, has been undermining "the government of Iraq's political process by providing both active and passive support to anti-government and anti-Coalition forces," the U.S. Defense Department said in its latest quarterly report to Congress, released last Monday.

"Eliminating the smuggling of materiel and foreign fighters into Iraq is a critical task and a formidable challenge," the Pentagon said.

Earlier this month, Pentagon officials said they were weighing a request from the command responsible for U.S. military operations in the Middle East to send a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf area, partly to deter Iran from "provocative" actions.

    U.S. highlights Iran-meddling charge in Iraq, R, 26.12.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-12-26T061212Z_01_N25363463_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-IRAN-WHITEHOUSE.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-3

U.S. and Britain to Add Ships to Persian Gulf in Signal to Iran

December 21, 2006
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 — The United States and Britain will begin moving additional warships and strike aircraft into the Persian Gulf region in a display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country, Pentagon and military officials said Wednesday.

The officials said that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was expected this week to approve a request by commanders for a second aircraft carrier and its supporting ships to be stationed within quick sailing distance of Iran by early next year.

Senior American officers said the increase in naval power should not be viewed as preparations for any offensive strike against Iran. But they acknowledged that the ability to hit Iran would be increased and that Iranian leaders might well call the growing presence provocative. One purpose of the deployment, they said, is to make clear that the focus on ground troops in Iraq has not made it impossible for the United States and its allies to maintain a military watch on Iran. That would also reassure Washington’s allies in the region who are concerned about Iran’s intentions.

The officials said the planned growth in naval power in the gulf and surrounding waters would be useful in enforcing any sanctions that the United Nations might impose as part of Washington’s strategy to punish Iran for what it sees as ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons. And the buildup would address another concern: that Iran could try to block oil shipments from the gulf in retaliation for United Nations sanctions or other American-led pressure.

Steps are already being taken to increase the number of minesweeping vessels and magnetic “sleds” carried by helicopters to improve the ability to counter Iranian mines that could block oil-shipping lanes, Pentagon and military officials said.

As part of future deployments after the first of the year, the British Navy plans to add two mine-hunting vessels to its ships that already are part of the international coalition patrolling waters in the Persian Gulf.

A Royal Navy news release said the ship movements were aimed at “maintaining familiarity with the challenges of warm water mine-hunting conditions.” But a senior British official said: “We are increasing our presence. That is only prudent.” Military officers said doubling the aircraft carrier presence in the region could be accomplished quickly by a shift in sailing schedules.

As opposed to ground and air forces that require bases in the region, naval forces offer a capacity for projecting power in parts of the world where a large American footprint is controversial, and unwanted even by allies. Many of the ships could be kept over the horizon, out of sight, but close enough to project their power quickly if needed.

Vice Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, commander of naval forces across the military’s Central Command, said that while “Iranian tone and rhetoric creates an environment of intimidation and fear,” the United States “must be careful not to contribute to escalation.” In an interview from his headquarters in Bahrain, Admiral Walsh declined to discuss the specifics of future deployments. “To assure our friends, we have to have capabilities to secure the critical sea lines of communication,” he said.

“They need reassurances that we expect to be part of the effort here for the long term, that we will not run away from intimidation and that we will be part of the effort here for security and stability at sea for the long term,” he added. “Our position must be visible and it must have muscle in order to be credible. That requires sustained presence.”

Other military and Pentagon officials did describe specifics of the planned deployments in order to clarify the rationale for the movement of ships and aircraft, but they would not do so by name because Mr. Gates had not yet signed any deployment orders.

Pentagon officials said that the military’s joint staff, which plans operations and manages deployments, had recently received what is called a “request for forces” from commanders asking for a second aircraft carrier strike group in the region, and that a deployment order was expected to be signed by the end of the week by Mr. Gates. That specific request was mentioned in various news accounts over the past few days.

The aircraft carrier Eisenhower and its strike group — including three escort ships, an attack submarine and 6,500 sailors in all — entered the Persian Gulf on Dec. 11 after a naval exercise to practice halting vessels suspected of smuggling nuclear materials in waters across the region. A carrier had not been inside the gulf since the Enterprise left in July, according to Pentagon officials. The next carrier scheduled to sail toward the Middle East is the Stennis, already set to depart Bremerton, Wash., for the region in late January, Navy officers said.

Officials expressed doubt that the Stennis and its escorts would be asked to set sail before the holiday season, but it could be ordered to sea several weeks earlier than planned. It could then overlap for months with the Eisenhower, which is not scheduled to return home until May, offering ample time to decide whether to send another carrier or to extend the Eisenhower’s tour to keep the carrier presence at two.

Doubling the number of carriers in the region offers commanders the flexibility of either keeping both strike groups in the gulf or keeping one near Iran while placing a second carrier group outside the gulf, where it would be in position to fly combat patrols over Afghanistan or cope with growing violence in the Horn of Africa.

But these same officials acknowledge that Iran is the focus of any new deployments, as administration officials view recent bold moves by Iran — and by North Korea, as well — as at least partly explained by assessments in Tehran and North Korea that the American military is bogged down in Iraq and incapable of fully projecting power elsewhere.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chief of naval operations, has made the case that the United States should seek to create “a thousand-ship Navy.” That would be impossible for the United States alone given current budgets, so instead it would be accomplished by operating more closely with allied warships to better cover critical areas like the Persian Gulf.

He said that such a cooperative naval concept would be a “global maritime partnership that unites navies, coast guards, maritime forces, port operators, commercial shippers and many other government and nongovernment agencies to address maritime concerns.”

As an example, at present there are about 45 warships deployed in the Persian Gulf and waters across the region from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, with a third of those supplied by allies, which this month include Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Pakistan and Britain.

    U.S. and Britain to Add Ships to Persian Gulf in Signal to Iran, NYT, 21.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/21/world/middleeast/21navy.html

Bush Signs Nuclear Deal With India

December 18, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:40 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Monday signed a civilian nuclear deal with India, allowing fuel and know-how to be shipped to the world's largest democracy even though it has not submitted to full international inspections.

''The bill will help keep America safe by paving the way for India to join the global effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons,'' Bush said.

The bill carves out an exemption in U.S. law to allow civilian nuclear trade with India in exchange for Indian safeguards and inspections at its 14 civilian nuclear plants. Eight military plants, however, would remain off-limits.

''This is an important achievement for the whole world. After 30 years outside the system, India will now operate its civilian nuclear energy program under internationally accepted guidelines and the world is going to be safer as a result,'' Bush said in a bill-signing ceremony at the White House.

Critics have said the measure undermines efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and technology and could spark a nuclear arms race in Asia by boosting India's atomic arsenal. India still refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

The measure passed Congress with bipartisan support, but critics complain the deal undermines efforts to prevent states like Iran and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the pact, in effect, shreds the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. ''This is a sad day in the history of efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and materials around the world,'' he said. ''The bill that President Bush has signed today may well become the death warrant to the international nuclear nonproliferation regime.''

The White House said India was unique because it had protected its nuclear technology and not been a proliferator. The Bush administration said the pact deepens ties with a democratic Asia power, but was not designed as a counterweight to the rising power of China.

The administration also argued it was a good deal because it would provide international oversight for part of a program that has been secret since India entered the nuclear age in 1974. The deal also could be a boon for American companies that have been barred from selling reactors and material to India.

''India's economy has more than doubled its size since 1991 and it is one of the fastest-growing markets for American exports,'' Bush said.

In New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday defended the nuclear deal, rejecting strong opposition criticism that it would lead to the dismantling of India's atomic weapons. He said he had some concerns about the legislation, but that they would be dealt with during technical negotiations on an overall U.S.-India cooperation agreement.

''The United States has assured us that the bill would enable it to meet its commitments'' made in agreements struck in July 2005 and in March by Bush and Singh.

Singh said India would not accept new conditions and its nuclear weapons program would not be subject to interference of any kind because the agreement with the United States dealt with civil nuclear cooperation.

Earlier, opposition leader L.K. Advani of the Bharatiya Janata Party said India should not accept the U.S. legislation, saying that the deal would prevent India from conducting nuclear tests in the future. India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974 and followed it up with a series of nuclear tests in 1998.

''The primary objective is to cap, roll back and ultimately eliminate its (India's) nuclear weapons capability,'' Advani warned.

Before civil nuclear trade can begin, several hurdles remain. American and Indian officials need to work out a separate technical nuclear cooperation agreement, expected to be finished next year.

The two countries must now obtain an exception for India in the rules of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an assembly of nations that export nuclear material. Indian officials must also negotiate a safeguard agreement with the IAEA.

    Bush Signs Nuclear Deal With India, NYT, 18.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-India-Nuclear.html

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, U.N. Envoy Under Reagan, Dies

December 8, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:55 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, an unabashed apostle of Reagan era conservatism and the first woman U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has died.

The death of the 80-year-old Kirkpatrick, who began her public life as a Hubert Humphrey Democrat, was announced Friday at the senior staff meeting of the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

Spokesman Richard Grenell said that Ambassador John Bolton asked for a moment of silence. An announcement of her death also was posted on the Web site of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-oriented think tank here where she was a senior fellow.

Kirkpatrick's assistant, Andrea Harrington, said that she died in her sleep at home in Bethesda, Md. late Thursday. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Kirkpatrick's health had been in decline recently, Harrington said, adding that she was ''basically confined to her house,'' going to work about once a week ''and then less and less.''

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said that Kirkpatrick, who had a reputation as a blunt and acerbic advocate, ''stood up for the interests of America while at the U.N., lent a powerful moral voice to the Reagan foreign policy and has been a source of wise counsel to our nation since leaving the government two decades ago. She will be greatly missed.''

Karlyn H. Bowman, a colleague of Kirkpatrick's at AEI, called her ''always insightful. Always interesting. Very thoughtful about modern American politics and foreign policy. A wonderful colleague.''

Bowman also said that Kirkpatrick, who had been elevated to the U.N. post by President Reagan in 1981, had ''served with great distinction'' at the U.N. ''She was a great patriot, a champion of freedom and we will certainly miss her at AEI and the country.''

Kirkpatrick was known as a blunt and sometimes acerbic advocate for her causes. She remained involved in public issues even though she'd left government service two decades ago. She joined seven other former U.N. ambassadors in 2005 in writing a letter to Congress telling lawmakers that their plan to withhold dues to force reform at the world body was misguided and would ''create resentment, build animosity and actually strengthen opponents of reform.''

Bill Bennett, a former secretary of education under Reagan, the nation's drug czar under the first President Bush and a leading conservative opinion-maker, called her ''very forceful, very strong, a daughter of Oklahoma, great sense of humor. She held her own.''

Bennett said the Iraq Study Group so prominently in the news ''would have been better with Jeane Kirkpatrick on it ... She had no patience with tyrannies, said they had to be confronted, you couldn't deal with tyrannies, that there were some people you could work with -- these people you couldn't.''

Kirkpatrick once referred to herself as a ''lifelong Democrat.''

She actually switched to the GOP in early 1985, four years after Reagan sent her to New York for the U.N. job. She took with her a reputation as a hard-liner on foreign policy. Because of this, she often was a lightning rod for the opposition. In some respects, she was a controversial figure like Bolton, who recently decided to resign when it became clear the Senate would not approve him for the job on a full-time basis.

Kirkpatrick considered seeking the Republican presidential nomination that went to George H. W. Bush in 1988. She stopped that process short, however, retreating to the position that she would accept the No. 2 slot if asked. She had played a leading role at the party's convention four years earlier -- at a time when she was still a Democrat.

------

Associated Press Writers Edith M. Lederer and Barry Schweid contributed to this story.

    Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, U.N. Envoy Under Reagan, Dies, NYT, 8.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Obit-Kirkpatrick.html?hp&ex=1165640400&en=ec4b4e2b869130b8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

News Analysis

Dueling Views Pit Baker Against Rice

December 8, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 — Many of the blistering critiques of the Bush administration contained in the Iraq Study Group’s report boil down to this: the differing worldviews of Baker versus Rice.

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III was the architect of the “new diplomatic offensive” in the Middle East that the commission recommended Wednesday as one of its main prescriptions for extracting the country from the mess in Iraq. Ever since, he has been talking on television, to Congress and to Iraqis and foreign diplomats about how he would conduct American foreign policy differently. Very differently.

At a midday meeting with reporters on Thursday, Mr. Baker insisted that the study group had “rejected looking backward.” But he then proceeded to make a passionate argument for a course of action he believed Condoleezza Rice, the current secretary of state, should be pursuing — while carefully never mentioning Ms. Rice by name.

The United States should engage Iran, Mr. Baker contended, if only to reveal its “rejectionist attitude”; it should try to “flip the Syrians”; and it should begin a renewed quest for peace between Israel and the Palestinians that, he maintained, would help convince Arab moderates that America was not all about invasions and regime change.

Meanwhile, Ms. Rice remained publicly silent, sitting across town in the office that Mr. Baker gave up 14 years ago. She has yet to say anything about the public tutorial being conducted by the man who first knew her when she was a mid-level Soviet expert on the National Security Council. She has not responded to Mr. Baker’s argument, delivered in a tone that drips with isn’t-this-obvious, that America has to be willing to talk to its adversaries (a premise Ms. Rice has questioned if the conditions are not right), or his dismissal of the administration’s early argument that the way to peace in the Middle East was through quick, decisive victory in Baghdad.

Aides to the 52-year-old Ms. Rice say she is acutely aware that there is little percentage in getting into a public argument with Mr. Baker, the 76-year-old architect of the first Bush administration’s Middle East policy. But Thursday, as President Bush gently pushed back against some of Mr. Baker’s recommendations, Ms. Rice’s aides and allies were offering a private defense, saying that she already has a coherent, effective strategy for the region.


She has advocated “deepening the isolation of Syria,” because she believes much of the rest of the Arab world condemns its efforts to topple Lebanon’s government, they said; and in seeking to isolate Iran, they said, she hopes to capitalize on the fears of nations like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan that Iran seeks to dominate the region, with the option of wielding a nuclear weapon.

Ms. Rice makes no apology for the premium she has placed on promoting democracy in the Middle East, even though that is an idea that Mr. Baker and his commission conspicuously ignored in spelling out their recommendations. “I don’t think that the road to democracy in Iraq is at all utopian,” she said in April.

It is plenty utopian to Mr. Baker, who has made clear his view that the quest is entirely ill-suited to the realities of striking a political deal that may keep Sunnis and Shiites from killing each other, and that may extract American forces from Iraq.

Mr. Baker said nothing on Thursday about looking for Jeffersonian democrats in Iraq; he would be happy with few good “Iraqi nationalists” who can keep the country from splintering apart.

“They start from completely different places,” said Dennis Ross, the Middle East negotiator who worked for Mr. Baker years ago and left the State Department early in the Bush administration. “Baker approaches everything with a negotiator’s mindset. That doesn’t mean every negotiation leads to a deal, but you engage your adversaries and use your leverage to change their behavior. This administration has never had a negotiator’s mind-set. It divides the world into friends and foes, and the foes are incorrigible and not redeemable. There has been more of an instinct toward regime change than to changing regime behavior.”

To some degree, the Bush administration has softened that approach in its second term, and Ms. Rice’s aides contend that much of what is recommended in the Baker report, including a regional group to support the country, is already under way.

Mr. Bush himself seems uncertain how to handle his always-uncomfortable relationship with his father’s friend. It was Mr. Baker who in 2000 ran the strategy for winning the Florida recount, but he has also made little secret in private that he regards the administration as a bunch of diplomatic go-cart racers, more interested in speed than strategy and prone to ruinous crashes.

The administration has sent out word that it regards Mr. Baker’s recommendations as more than a little anachronistic, better suited to the Middle East of 1991 than to the one they are confronting — and to some degree have created — in 2006 three years after the Iraq invasion. It is a criticism that angers Mr. Baker, members of the study group say.

Iran and Syria illustrate the differing approaches of Mr. Baker and Ms. Rice. “If you can flip the Syrians you will cure Israel’s Hezbollah problem,” Mr. Baker said Thursday, noting that Syria is the transit point for arms shipments to Hezbollah. He said Syrian officials told him “that they do have the ability to convince Hamas to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist,” and added, “If we accomplish that, that would give the Ehud Olmert a negotiating partner.”

Ms. Rice’s allies argue that if it were all that simple, the Syrian problem would have been solved long ago. Stephen J. Hadley, national security adviser and Ms. Rice’s former deputy, said recently that the problem “isn’t one of communication, it’s one of cooperation.” Now that Mr. Baker has taken his differences public, the mystery is this: is he speaking for Mr. Bush’s father? “We never figured that out,” said one fellow member of the panel. “There was always this implication that there was a tremendous amount of frustration from the old man about what was happening. But Jim was always very careful.”

The elder Mr. Bush was careful, too. Asked if he wanted to offer his insights to the panel, he declined.

    Dueling Views Pit Baker Against Rice, NYT, 8.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/world/middleeast/08diplo.html?hp&ex=1165640400&en=a5150650f3246c14&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Chavez taunts US 'devil' after landslide reelection

December 04, 2006
Times Online
Philippe Naughton, and agencies in Caracas

Hugo Chavez has been resoundingly re-elected as President of Venezuela, capturing an ample mandate to extend a socialist revolution that challenges Washington's influence in Latin America.

Dressed in his trademark red shirt, Mr Chavez celebrated his second six-year term late last night from a balcony of the presidential palace after his challenger, Manuel Rosales, conceded defeat in yesterday's vote.

Mr Chavez dedicated his victory to the ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro - whom he calls his "father" - and told a mass of cheering supporters that his landslide win was a bitter defeat for President Bush.

"Today we gave another lesson in dignity to the imperialists, it is another defeat for the empire of Mr Danger," he roared to the crowd. "It’s another defeat for the devil who tries to dominate the world."

The National Electoral Council said that Mr Chavez won 61 per cent of the vote while Mr Rosales, the governor of an oil-producing province who managed to unite the fractured opposition, won 38 per cent after nearly 80 per cent of the vote had been counted.

Chavez supporters fired off thunderous fireworks in the capital and drove through Caracas chanting, "Chavez isn't going anywhere".

The former soldier's clear victory is a blow to the United States and its attempts to maintain influence in a region it has long considered its backyard.

Mr Chavez is the fourth leftist to win an election in Latin America in the past five weeks. Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, who calls himself an ally of the Venezuelan, won a run-off last week after promising sweeping political reforms and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua also have won recent presidential elections.

Mr Chavez has won a loyal following among Venezuela's poor through multibillion-dollar social programmes that include subsidised food, free university education and cash benefits for single mothers.

Since he first won office in 1998, Chavez has increasingly dominated all branches of government, and his allies now control congress, state offices and the judiciary. Current law prevents him from running again in 2012 but he has said he plans to seek constitutional reforms that would include an end to presidential term limits.

Me Rosales, who for many opposition supporters was a bright hope to beat Chavez, acknowledged defeat but promised to keep fighting. He was greeted by cries of"coward" by some upset supporters as he left his campaign headquarters.

"We recognise they beat us today but we will continue the fight," said the 53-year-old, who drew his main support from the middle and upper classes in a polarised nation.

A retired army paratrooper who led a failed military rebellion before his 1998 election, Mr Chavez has survived a brief coup, an oil strike and scores of demonstrations during his years in power.

Having already taken on multinational oil giants to demand they hand more control to the state, Mr Chavez is now expected to press for more share of Venezuela’s vast oil and mineral resources and increase land distribution for the rural poor.

    Chavez taunts US 'devil' after landslide reelection, Ts, 4.12.2006, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2486129,00.html

Bolton to Leave Post as U.S. Envoy to U.N.

December 4, 2006
The New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

President Bush today ended his efforts to have John R. Bolton confirmed by the Senate as United Nations ambassador and said Mr. Bolton will leave the position, which he has held for the past year after being chosen between Congressional terms, this month.

Mr. Bolton became the ambassador under a recess appointment made by President Bush, bypassing the usual requirement of Senate confirmation after Democrats blocked a floor vote on the nomination. Because it was a recess appointment, Mr. Bolton’s term expires when the current Congress ends its term later this month.

Mr. Bush had planned to push for confirmation during the current lame-duck session of the Republican Congress, which would have allowed him to continue as ambassador. But today’s announcement suggests that the White House realized it was not going to receive the necessary votes.

President Bush said that he accepted “with deep regret” Mr. Bolton’s decision to end his service.

“I am deeply disappointed that a handful of United States Senators prevented Ambassador Bolton from receiving the up or down vote he deserved in the Senate,” Mr. Bush said. “They chose to obstruct his confirmation, even though he enjoys majority support in the Senate, and even though their tactics will disrupt our diplomatic work at a sensitive and important time.”

Mr. Bush, who is expected to meet with Mr. Bolton later today, said in his statement that this “stubborn obstructionism ill serves our country, and discourages men and women of talent from serving their nation.”

In a letter to the president dated Dec. 1, Mr. Bolton wrote that he concluded “after careful consideration” that his service should end when his recess appointment expires.

Mr. Bush noted that Mr. Bolton had handled negotiations that resulted in Security Council resolutions regarding North Korea’s military and nuclear activities and built consensus among American allies on the need for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program. He also had a hand in shepherding a Security Council resolution to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and to set up a United Nations peacekeeping force there.

Democrats have criticized Mr. Bolton this year, contending that he has been ineffective at the United Nations. While Republicans have said that he carried out the administration’s foreign policy goals with discipline and energy, some have opposed his continued service.

Earlier this month, administration officials had said that they would try to persuade Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to confirm Mr. Bolton for a new term.

But on Nov. 9, when Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, announced that he would deny Republicans on the committee the last vote needed to send Mr. Bolton’s nomination to the full Senate, some officials began to privately acknowledge that chances of confirmation were low.

Mr. Bolton had a well-known history of disdain toward the United Nations, and his critics have said he is abrasive and represents a hard-line, conservative ideology at odds with the multilateral approach needed at the world organization.

Last year, amid a debate about the future division of authority at the United Nations, Mr. Bolton warned that the United States may look elsewhere to settle international problems. He once also blocked a United Nations envoy from briefing the Security Council on rights violations in the Darfur region of Sudan, saying the Council had to act and not just talk about atrocities. He also once famously said that the United Nations headquarters building was filled with such sloth and incompetence that it would not matter if 10 of its 38 floors were lopped off.

But he also drew admiration from fellow ambassadors for his clarity in expressing his brief and for toughness as a negotiator.

Asked if he thought Mr. Bolton did enough for the organization, the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said today that it was difficult to blame any one ambassador for the problems in speaking with a unified voice on the complicated issues.

“But I think what I have always maintained, that it is important that the ambassadors work together, that the ambassadors understand that to get concessions, they have to make concessions, and they need to work with each other for the organization to move ahead,” he said in remarks broadcast on CNN.

People who have been mentioned both inside and outside the administration as possible successors to Mr. Bolton include the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad; Philip D. Zelikow, the State Department counselor; Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs; and Mr. Chafee.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting from Washington.

    Bolton to Leave Post as U.S. Envoy to U.N., NYT, 4.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/world/05boltoncnd.html?hp&ex=1165294800&en=0e5a81b1f6309575&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S.-British "special relationship" questioned

Thu Nov 30, 2006 7:22 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department on Thursday repudiated comments by one of its officials who suggested the U.S.-British "special relationship" was a myth, calling his comments "ill-informed ... and just plain wrong."

Kendall Myers, a research analyst with the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, was quoted by the Daily Telegraph Web site as saying: "There never really has been a special relationship or at least not one we've noticed."

"As a State Department employee, now I will say something even worse: It has been from the very beginning very one-sided," the official added, according to the Web site.

Myers was reported to have made the remarks during a forum on Tuesday at the Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, where he is an adjunct professor and has taught for about 30 years.

It was unclear whether the comments had strained U.S. relations with Britain, but the State Department was quick to reject them.

"We repudiate and disassociate ourselves from those comments. The comments, frankly, I think could be described as ill-informed, and I think, from our perspective, just plain wrong," State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters.

The United States and Britain have long been said to enjoy a "special relationship" based on their wartime alliances and shared history and language.

Officials from the Bureau of Intelligence and Research had spoken to Myers about the matter, Casey said, adding that "once all the information has been gathered, then the department will look at what actions might be appropriate."

In October, another State Department official caused a stir when he told the Al Jazeera Arabic news channel the United States had shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq. He later apologized for the remarks.

    U.S.-British "special relationship" questioned, R, 30.11.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-12-01T002150Z_01_N30290016_RTRUKOC_0_US-BRITAIN-USA-RELATIONSHIP.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-2

Iran’s President Criticizes Bush in Letter to American People

November 30, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Nov. 29 — Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told the American people on Wednesday that he was certain they detested President Bush’s policies — his support for Israel, war in Iraq and curtailed civil liberties — and he offered to work with them to reverse those policies.

The call came in the form of a six-page letter in English, published online and addressed to “noble Americans” that discussed “the many wars and calamities caused by the U.S. administration.” It suggested that Americans had been fooled into accepting their government’s policies, especially toward Israel.

“What have the Zionists done for the American people that the U.S. administration considers itself obliged to blindly support these infamous aggressors?” Mr. Ahmadinejad wrote. “Is it not because they have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors?”

This was the latest public step by Iran’s president to promote a dialogue with the United States. He wrote a letter to Mr. Bush in May, calling on him to shift his policies and open a discussion, but it was dismissed by the White House as irrelevant to the central issue dividing them — Iran’s nuclear program. Then Mr. Ahmadinejad challenged Mr. Bush to a public debate, also dismissed by the White House.

On Wednesday, the administration’s reaction remained unchanged.

“This is a transparently hypocritical and cynical letter,” Nicholas R. Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs, said in Washington about the latest letter. “It reflects a profound lack of understanding of the United States.”

Still, at least tactically the letter seemed to take a page from Mr. Bush himself, who, speaking to the United Nations General Assembly in September, sought to bypass the Iranian government and address the people directly. The letter also distinguished between the administration and the people.

“Undoubtedly, the American people are not satisfied with this behavior, and they showed their discontent in the recent elections,” Mr. Ahmadinejad wrote. “I hope that in the wake of the midterm elections, the administration of President Bush will have heard and will heed the message of the American people.”

But it was the emphasis on religious themes, specifically Shiite Muslim notions of justice and fighting oppression, that characterized the new letter as it did his letter to President Bush.

“Both our nations are God-fearing, truth-loving and justice-seeking, and both seek dignity, respect and perfection,” the letter said.

The letter seemed directed at three audiences. It sought to reach out to Americans through religious values; to the Arab world, by emphasizing the Palestinian conflict with Israel; and to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s political base at home, which includes the military, hard-line clerics and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.

The letter also employed an inferential, Iranian style of communication that experts say is likely to leave Americans cold.

“Americans are going to be very puzzled by it,” said William Beeman, a linguistic anthropologist at Brown University who specializes in Persian. “People are simply not used to being talked to this way.” He added, “It is almost a sermon, which is very much in keeping with his religious background. But I should also point out it is also a lecture.”

The letter reminded Americans that “many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness.”

It also lamented: “Civil liberties are increasingly being curtailed. Even the privacy of the individuals is fast losing its meaning.”

The president made no reference to the level of poverty, political freedom or judicial independence in his own country.

After referring to Abu Ghraib in Iraq and the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he wrote: “I have no doubt that the American people do not approve of this behavior and indeed deplore it.”

Since his election in June 2005, Mr. Ahmadinejad has pursued an aggressive and outspoken foreign policy, relying on the bully pulpit of his position to make up for the limited powers of Iran’s presidency.

His refusal to end enrichment of uranium and his calls for the destruction of Israel have won him few friends in the West. But they have led to increasing popularity across the Muslim world.

Davoud Hermidas-Bavand, a professor of international relations at Tehran University, said the letter was mostly an effort to win the allegiance of Arabs. Iran has been trying to position itself as the pre-eminent power in the Middle East.

“His first objective is to get the sympathy of Arabs,” said Dr. Hermidas-Bavand. “The letter makes Ahmadinejad a subject of international talks, particularly in the Middle East.”

He said the letter gave insight into President Ahmadinejad’s understanding of American society and governance as being driven largely by Christian beliefs and values.

“He has probably been told that American people are religious and that is how Mr. Bush won, by addressing people’s sense of faith,” he said. “Now he wants to capitalize on this sense of religiousness.”

Iran finds its leverage rising, especially as Iraq struggles through bloody sectarian fighting. In Washington, there is increased pressure on the White House to open direct talks with Iran to help stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Ahmadinejad offered a litany of sharp attacks on American policy — calling, for example, for withdrawal from Iraq. And he once again highlighted a central demand of Tehran: that it be treated as an equal by Washington.

But Professor Beeman also said that Americans should recognize that the letter did represent an overture. “Iran is saying, ‘We want to have a dialogue with you,’ ” he said.

Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Amman, Jordan, and Nazila Fathi from Iran.

    Iran’s President Criticizes Bush in Letter to American People, NYT, 30.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/world/middleeast/30iran.html

You've got mail ... from Iran

Message of H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

USA Today
On Deadline
Copié 30.11.2006

To the American People

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

O, Almighty God, bestow upon humanity the perfect human being promised to all by You, and make us among his followers.

Noble Americans,

Were we not faced with the activities of the US administration in this part of the world and the negative ramifications of those activities on the daily lives of our peoples, coupled with the many wars and calamities caused by the US administration as well as the tragic consequences of US interference in other countries;

Were the American people not God-fearing, truth-loving, and justice-seeking , while the US administration actively conceals the truth and impedes any objective portrayal of current realities;

And if we did not share a common responsibility to promote and protect freedom and human dignity and integrity;

Then, there would have been little urgency to have a dialogue with you.

While Divine providence has placed Iran and the United States geographically far apart, we should be cognizant that human values and our common human spirit, which proclaim the dignity and exalted worth of all human beings, have brought our two great nations of Iran and the United States closer together.

Both our nations are God-fearing, truth-loving and justice-seeking, and both seek dignity, respect and perfection.

Both greatly value and readily embrace the promotion of human ideals such as compassion, empathy, respect for the rights of human beings, securing justice and equity, and defending the innocent and the weak against oppressors and bullies.

We are all inclined towards the good, and towards extending a helping hand to one another, particularly to those in need.

We all deplore injustice, the trampling of peoples' rights and the intimidation and humiliation of human beings.

We all detest darkness, deceit, lies and distortion, and seek and admire salvation, enlightenment, sincerity and honesty.

The pure human essence of the two great nations of Iran and the United States testify to the veracity of these statements.

Noble Americans,

Our nation has always extended its hand of friendship to all other nations of the world.

Hundreds of thousands of my Iranian compatriots are living amongst you in friendship and peace, and are contributing positively to your society. Our people have been in contact with you over the past many years and have maintained these contacts despite the unnecessary restrictions of US authorities.

As mentioned, we have common concerns, face similar challenges, and are pained by the sufferings and afflictions in the world.

We, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the Palestinian people. Persistent aggressions by the Zionists are making life more and more difficult for the rightful owners of the land of Palestine . In broad day-light, in front of cameras and before the eyes of the world, they are bombarding innocent defenseless civilians, bulldozing houses, firing machine guns at students in the streets and alleys, and subjecting their families to endless grief.

No day goes by without a new crime.

Palestinian mothers, just like Iranian and American mothers, love their children, and are painfully bereaved by the imprisonment, wounding and murder of their children. What mother wouldn't?

For 60 years, the Zionist regime has driven millions of the inhabitants of Palestine out of their homes. Many of these refugees have died in the Diaspora and in refugee camps. Their children have spent their youth in these camps and are aging while still in the hope of returning to homeland.

You know well that the US administration has persistently provided blind and blanket support to the Zionist regime, has emboldened it to continue its crimes, and has prevented the UN Security Council from condemning it.

Who can deny such broken promises and grave injustices towards humanity by the US administration?

Governments are there to serve their own people. No people wants to side with or support any oppressors. But regrettably, the US administration disregards even its own public opinion and remains in the forefront of supporting the trampling of the rights of the Palestinian people.

Let's take a look at Iraq . Since the commencement of the US military presence in Iraq , hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, maimed or displaced. Terrorism in Iraq has grown exponentially. With the presence of the US military in Iraq , nothing has been done to rebuild the ruins, to restore the infrastructure or to alleviate poverty. The US Government used the pretext of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq , but later it became clear that that was just a lie and a deception.

Although Saddam was overthrown and people are happy about his departure, the pain and suffering of the Iraqi people has persisted and has even been aggravated.

In Iraq , about one hundred and fifty thousand American soldiers, separated from their families and loved ones, are operating under the command of the current US administration. A substantial number of them have been killed or wounded and their presence in Iraq has tarnished the image of the American people and government.

Their mothers and relatives have, on numerous occasions, displayed their discontent with the presence of their sons and daughters in a land thousands of miles away from US shores. American soldiers often wonder why they have been sent to Iraq .

I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure.

Noble Americans,

You have heard that the US administration is kidnapping its presumed opponents from across the globe and arbitrarily holding them without trial or any international supervision in horrendous prisons that it has established in various parts of the world. God knows who these detainees actually are, and what terrible fate awaits them.

You have certainly heard the sad stories of the Guantanamo and Abu-Ghraib prisons. The US administration attempts to justify them through its proclaimed “war on terror.” But every one knows that such behavior, in fact, offends global public opinion, exacerbates resentment and thereby spreads terrorism, and tarnishes the US image and its credibility among nations.

The US administration's illegal and immoral behavior is not even confined to outside its borders. You are witnessing daily that under the pretext of “the war on terror,” civil liberties in the United States are being increasingly curtailed. Even the privacy of individuals is fast losing its meaning. Judicial due process and fundamental rights are trampled upon. Private phones are tapped, suspects are arbitrarily arrested, sometimes beaten in the streets, or even shot to death.

I have no doubt that the American people do not approve of this behavior and indeed deplore it.

The US administration does not accept accountability before any organization, institution or council. The US administration has undermined the credibility of international organizations, particularly the United Nations and its Security Council. But, I do not intend to address all the challenges and calamities in this message.

The legitimacy, power and influence of a government do not emanate from its arsenals of tanks, fighter aircrafts, missiles or nuclear weapons. Legitimacy and influence reside in sound logic, quest for justice and compassion and empathy for all humanity. The global position of the United States is in all probability weakened because the administration has continued to resort to force, to conceal the truth, and to mislead the American people about its policies and practices.

Undoubtedly, the American people are not satisfied with this behavior and they showed their discontent in the recent elections. I hope that in the wake of the mid-term elections, the administration of President Bush will have heard and will heed the message of the American people.

My questions are the following:

Is there not a better approach to governance?

Is it not possible to put wealth and power in the service of peace, stability, prosperity and the happiness of all peoples through a commitment to justice and respect for the rights of all nations, instead of aggression and war?

We all condemn terrorism, because its victims are the innocent.

But, can terrorism be contained and eradicated through war, destruction and the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocents?

If that were possible, then why has the problem not been resolved?

The sad experience of invading Iraq is before us all.

What has blind support for the Zionists by the US administration brought for the American people? It is regrettable that for the US administration, the interests of these occupiers supersedes the interests of the American people and of the other nations of the world.

What have the Zionists done for the American people that the US administration considers itself obliged to blindly support these infamous aggressors? Is it not because they have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors?

I recommend that in a demonstration of respect for the American people and for humanity, the right of Palestinians to live in their own homeland should be recognized so that millions of Palestinian refugees can return to their homes and the future of all of Palestine and its form of government be determined in a referendum. This will benefit everyone.

Now that Iraq has a Constitution and an independent Assembly and Government, would it not be more beneficial to bring the US officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people? As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness.

I'd also like to say a word to the winners of the recent elections in the US :

The United States has had many administrations; some who have left a positive legacy, and others that are neither remembered fondly by the American people nor by other nations.

Now that you control an important branch of the US Government, you will also be held to account by the people and by history.

If the US Government meets the current domestic and external challenges with an approach based on truth and Justice, it can remedy some of the past afflictions and alleviate some of the global resentment and hatred of America . But if the approach remains the same, it would not be unexpected that the American people would similarly reject the new electoral winners, although the recent elections, rather than reflecting a victory, in reality point to the failure of the current administration's policies. These issues had been extensively dealt with in my letter to President Bush earlier this year.

To sum up:

It is possible to govern based on an approach that is distinctly different from one of coercion, force and injustice.

It is possible to sincerely serve and promote common human values, and honesty and compassion.

It is possible to provide welfare and prosperity without tension, threats, imposition or war.

It is possible to lead the world towards the aspired perfection by adhering to unity, monotheism, morality and spirituality and drawing upon the teachings of the Divine Prophets.

Then, the American people, who are God-fearing and followers of Divine religions, will overcome every difficulty.

What I stated represents some of my anxieties and concerns.

I am confident that you, the American people, will play an instrumental role in the establishment of justice and spirituality throughout the world. The promises of the Almighty and His prophets will certainly be realized; Justice and Truth will prevail and all nations will live a true life in a climate replete with love, compassion and fraternity.

The US governing establishment, the authorities and the powerful should not choose irreversible paths. As all prophets have taught us, injustice and transgression will eventually bring about decline and demise. Today, the path of return to faith and spirituality is open and unimpeded.

We should all heed the Divine Word of the Holy Qur'an:

“ But those who repent, have faith and do good may receive Salvation. Your Lord, alone, creates and chooses as He will, and others have no part in His choice; Glorified is God and Exalted above any partners they ascribe to Him. ” (28:67-68)

I pray to the Almighty to bless the Iranian and American nations and indeed all nations of the world with dignity and success.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
29 November 2006

(Taken from the website for Iran's U.N. mission.)

    Message of H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, UT > On Deadline > You've got mail ... from Iran, copié 30.11.2006, http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/11/youve_got_mail_.html . PDF version http://www.usatoday.com/news/pdf/2006-11-29-iran-letter.pdf . Original source http://www.un.int/iran/pressaffairs/pressreleases/2006/articles/13.htm

U.S. Bans Sale of iPods to North Korea

November 29, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:31 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration wants North Korea's attention, so like a scolding parent it's trying to make it tougher for that country's eccentric leader to buy iPods, plasma televisions and Segway electric scooters. The U.S. government's first-ever effort to use trade sanctions to personally aggravate a foreign president expressly targets items believed to be favored by Kim Jong Il or presented by him as gifts to the roughly 600 loyalist families who run the communist government.

Kim, who engineered a secret nuclear weapons program, has other options for obtaining the high-end consumer electronics and other items he wants.

But the list of proposed luxury sanctions, obtained by The Associated Press, aims to make Kim's swanky life harder: No more cognac, Rolex watches, cigarettes, artwork, expensive cars, Harley Davidson motorcycles or even personal watercraft, such as Jet Skis.

The new ban would extend even to musical instruments and sports equipment. The 5-foot-3 Kim is an enthusiastic basketball fan; then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented him with a ball signed by Michael Jordan during a rare diplomatic trip in 2000. Kim's former secretary, widely believed to be his new wife, studied piano at the Pyongyang University of Music and Dance.

Experts said the sanctions effort -- being coordinated under the United Nations -- would be the first ever to curtail a specific category of goods not associated with military buildups or weapons designs, especially one so tailored to annoy a foreign leader. U.S. officials acknowledge that enforcing the ban on black-market trading would be difficult.

In Beijing on Wednesday, U.S. and North Korean envoys failed to reach an agreement on when to resume six-party disarmament negotiations on Kim's atomic weapons program. Japan's Kyodo News agency cited unidentified people at the talks as saying that Kim demanded the U.S. freeze sanctions on luxury goods and other items imposed after the North's first nuclear test on Oct. 9.

The population in North Korea, one of the world's most isolated economies, is impoverished and routinely suffers widescale food shortages. The new trade ban would forbid U.S. shipments there of Rolexes, French cognac, plasma TVs, yachts and more -- all items favored by Kim but unattainable by most of the country.

''It's a new concept; it's kind of creative,'' said William Reinsch, a former senior Commerce Department official who oversaw trade restrictions with North Korea during Bill Clinton's presidency. Reinsch predicted governments will comply with the new sanctions, but agreed that efforts to block all underground shipments will be frustrated.

''The problem is there has always been and will always be this group of people who work at getting these goods illegally,'' Reinsch said. Small electronics, such as iPods or laptops, are ''untraceable and available all over the place,'' he said. U.S. exports to North Korea are paltry, amounting to only $5.8 million last year; nearly all those exports were food.

The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, the trade group for the liquor industry, said it supports the administration's policies toward North Korea. The Washington-based Personal Watercraft Industry Association said it also supports the U.S. sanctions -- although it bristled at the notion a Jet Ski was a luxury.

''The thousands of Americans and Canadians who build, ship and sell personal watercraft are patriots first,'' said Maureen Healey, head of the trade group. She said it endorsed the ban ''because of the narrow nature of this ban and the genuine dangers that responsible world governments are trying to stave off.''

Defectors to South Korea have described Kim giving expensive gifts of cars, liquor and Japanese-made appliances to his most faithful bureaucrats.

''If you take away one of the tools of his control, perhaps you weaken the cohesion of his leadership,'' said Robert J. Einhorn, a former senior State Department official who visited North Korea with Albright and dined extravagantly there. ''It can't hurt, but whether it works, we don't know.''

Responding to North Korea's nuclear test Oct. 9, the U.N. Security Council voted to ban military supplies and weapons shipments -- sanctions already imposed by the United States. It also banned sales of luxury goods but so far has left each country to define such items. Japan included beef, caviar and fatty tuna, along with expensive cars, motorcycles, cameras and more. Many European nations are still working on their lists.

U.S. intelligence officials who helped produce the Bush administration's list said Kim prefers Mercedes, BMW and Cadillac cars; Japanese and Harley Davidson motorcycles; Hennessy XO cognac from France and Johnny Walker Scotch whisky; Sony cameras and Japanese air conditioners.

Kim is reportedly under his physician's orders to avoid hard liquor and prefers French wines. He also is said to own an extensive movie library of more than 10,000 titles and prefers films about James Bond and Godzilla, along with Clint Eastwood's 1993 drama, ''In the Line of Fire,'' and Whitney Houston's 1992 love story, ''The Bodyguard.''

Much of the U.S. information about Kim's preferences comes from defectors, including Kenji Fujimoto, the Japanese chef who fled in 2001 and wrote a book about his time with the North Korean leader.

    U.S. Bans Sale of iPods to North Korea, NYT, 29.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-NKorea-iPod-Diplomacy.html

Philip Zelikow, Senior Aide to Rice, Resigns From Post

November 28, 2006
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 — Two months ago, the State Department’s counselor, Philip D. Zelikow, offered an oblique criticism of the administration’s failure to push strongly for an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan in the Middle East.

In a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Mr. Zelikow, an intellectual known for peppering his statements with historical references, said progress on the Arab-Israeli dispute was a “sine qua non” in order to get moderate Arabs “to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of other things that we care about.”

A State Department spokesman was quick to distance the department officially from Mr. Zelikow’s remarks, which ruffled the feathers of American Jewish groups and Israeli officials. But the administration may soon be doing what Mr. Zelikow advised, starting a renewed push for a Middle East peace initiative, in part to shore up support in the Arab world for providing help in Iraq.

If it works, the architect of the plan will not be around to see its conclusion. On Monday, the 52-year-old Mr. Zelikow, after 19 months serving as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s in-house contrarian and advocate for realpolitik in American diplomacy, submitted his resignation, effective Jan. 2. He said that he would return to the University of Virginia, where he has an endowed chair as a history professor.

In his resignation letter, Mr. Zelikow cited “some truly riveting obligations to college bursars” for his children’s tuition and said he would remain available to help the administration where he could. While Mr. Zelikow, in an interview, maintained that he was not leaving his post because of any disgruntlement, one administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject publicly noted that Mr. Zelikow had been frustrated with the pace of the administration’s diplomatic efforts on the Middle East, Iran and North Korea.

Whatever the reason for Mr. Zelikow’s departure, in losing him Ms. Rice is losing not only one of her most trusted advisers, but also one of the few people in the State Department willing to speak with candor during closed-door meetings on American diplomatic efforts.

Some of his ideas have become policy; he had called for closing down 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, as Mr. Zelikow had advised, 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 Iran if it suspended uranium enrichment. Neither North Korea nor Iran has responded positively to the initiatives, but America’s allies applauded them.

“I appreciate Philip’s dedicated service in this time of historic change and we will miss his counsel at the State Department,” Ms. Rice said in a statement.

Mr. Zelikow and Ms. Rice are co-authors of a book about Germany’s reunification, “Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft” (Harvard University Press, 1995). The book is a study in realpolitik, examining — and admiring — the tempered, carefully managed American response to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the interview on Monday, Mr. Zelikow disputed suggestions that he was more of a political realist than an ideologue, calling it a “false dichotomy.”

“I think the issue of ideals is important, but ideals that are not practically attainable” end up hurting more than helping, he said. “You don’t end up strengthening your ideals when you fail to attain them.”

    Philip Zelikow, Senior Aide to Rice, Resigns From Post, NYT, 28.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/world/middleeast/28zelikow.html?hp&ex=1164776400&en=a01fb1d23920f9ea&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Panel to Weigh Overture by U.S. to Iran and Syria

November 27, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 — A draft report on strategies for Iraq, which will be debated here by a bipartisan commission beginning Monday, urges an aggressive regional diplomatic initiative that includes direct talks with Iran and Syria but sets no timetables for a military withdrawal, according to officials who have seen all or parts of the document.

While the diplomatic strategy appears likely to be accepted, with some amendments, by the 10-member Iraq Study Group, members of the commission and outsiders involved in its work said they expected a potentially divisive debate about timetables for beginning an American withdrawal.

In interviews, several officials said announcing a major withdrawal was the only way to persuade the government of Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to focus on creating an effective Iraqi military force.

Several commission members, including some Democrats, are discussing proposals that call for a declaration that within a specified period of time, perhaps as short as a year, a significant number of American troops should be withdrawn, regardless of whether the Iraqi government’s forces are declared ready to defend the country.

Among the ideas are embedding far more American training teams into Iraqi military units in a last-ditch improvement effort. While numbers are still approximate, phased withdrawal of combat troops over the next year would leave 70,000 to 80,000 American troops in the country, compared with about 150,000 now.

“It’s not at all clear that we can reach consensus on the military questions,” one member of the commission said late last week.

The draft report, according to those who have seen it, seems to link American withdrawal to the performance of the Iraqi military, as President Bush has done. But details of the performance benchmarks, which were described as not specific, could not be obtained, and it is this section of the report that is most likely to be revised.

While the commission is scheduled to meet here for two days this week, officials say the session may be extended if members have trouble reaching consensus.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bush will be visiting Latvia and Estonia, then will head to Amman, Jordan, on Wednesday for two days of meetings with Mr. Maliki and King Abdullah II of Jordan.

The recommendations of the commission, an independent advisory group created at the suggestion of several members of Congress, are expected to carry unusual weight because its members, drawn from both political parties, have deep experience in foreign policy. They include its co-chairmen, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a Republican, and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman.

Though the commission has met many times, interviewing administration officials, policy experts, military officers and others, the meeting here on Monday will be the first time that members have gathered to hash out the most difficult issues.

The basis for their discussion will be a draft report that Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton directed the commission staff to prepare, based on informal conversations among the members.

The group is expected to present its final report to President Bush and to Congress in December.

The commission’s co-chairmen have urged members and staff not to discuss their deliberations. As a result, those who were willing to talk about the commission’s work and the draft reports did so on the condition of anonymity.

President Bush is not bound by the commission’s recommendations, and during a trip to Southeast Asia that ended just before Thanksgiving, he made it clear that he would also give considerable weight to studies under way by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his own National Security Council.

Last Monday in Bogor, Indonesia, he said he planned to make no decisions on troop increases or decreases “until I hear from a variety of sources, including our own United States military.”

But privately, administration officials seem deeply concerned about the weight of the findings of the Baker-Hamilton commission.

“I think there is fear that anything they say will seem like they are etched in stone tablets,” said a senior American diplomat. “It’s going to be hard for the president to argue that a group this distinguished, and this bipartisan, has got it wrong.”

Mr. Bush’s nominee for secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, resigned from the commission after his nomination this month, and was replaced by Lawrence S. Eagleburger, another Republican who once was secretary of state. Mr. Gates has said little about his thoughts on military strategy, other than to express amazement when he visited Iraq with the study group over Labor Day that the administration had let the situation spin so far out of control.

Mr. Bush spent 90 minutes with commission members in a closed session at the White House two weeks ago “essentially arguing why we should embrace what amounts to a ‘stay the course’ strategy,” said one commission official who was present.

Officials said that the draft of the section on diplomatic strategy, which was heavily influenced by Mr. Baker, seemed to reflect his public criticism of the administration for its unwillingness to talk with nations like Iran and Syria.

But senior administration officials, including Stephen J. Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, have expressed skepticism that either of those nations would go along, especially while Iran is locked in a confrontation with the United States over its nuclear program. “Talking isn’t a strategy,” he said in an interview in October.

“The issue is how can we condition the environment so that Iran and Syria will make a 180-degree turn, so that rather than undermining the Iraqi government, they will support it.”

Administration officials appear to be taking steps that will enable them to declare that they are already implementing parts of the Baker-Hamilton report, even before its release. On Saturday, Vice President Dick Cheney flew to Saudi Arabia for a meeting with King Abdullah, whom he has known for 17 years.

An official who was briefed on the vice president’s trip, and who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about it with reporters, said discussion at the two-hour meeting had covered all the crises in the Middle East.

“The best way to describe it is as a consultation, on a number of issues,” that official said. “But because Iraq is such a big issue, it obviously took up a major part of the conversation.”

The official said Mr. Cheney had not gone to Riyadh to enlist Saudi help for any specific proposals on Iraq.

During an interview on the ABC News program “This Week” on Sunday, King Abdullah said that his agenda with the president extended beyond Iraq, and that his top concern in the region was the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians — which he called the “core issue” in the Middle East — along with tensions in Lebanon.

But, he said, he was hoping that Mr. Bush’s meeting with Mr. Maliki would bring about “something dramatic” to stop the violence in Iraq.

Last week, administration officials played down expectations for the meeting with Mr. Maliki. But they are clearly hoping that Mr. Maliki will show a greater willingness to crack down on the Shiite militias, including the militia run by the powerful cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

While it is unclear what private messages Mr. Bush was preparing for Mr. Maliki, the public message will be an eagerness to turn more operational control over to the Iraqis, as soon as they are prepared to handle it.

“Any disarming of the militias — in large part because there is such a political element to that — is most effectively carried out by the Iraqi security forces,” said Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor.

Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting.

    Panel to Weigh Overture by U.S. to Iran and Syria, NYT, 27.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/world/middleeast/27policy.html?hp&ex=1164690000&en=78302d7a4caf4f6d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Cheney visits Saudi for talks on Middle East

Sat Nov 25, 2006 8:42 AM ET
Reuters



RIYADH (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Saudi Arabia on Saturday for talks with King Abdullah on the Middle East.

He was met in Riyadh by Crown Prince Sultan, government ministers and leaders of the Saudi armed forces, before traveling to the U.S. embassy in the Saudi capital and the monarch's palace for what a spokeswoman said would be "comprehensive" talks on regional issues.

"The vice president is looking forward to meeting with King Abdullah, a strong ally, to discuss regional issues of mutual interest," said Lea Anne McBride, Cheney's spokeswoman,

With Iraq near all-out civil war, the Bush administration is renewing efforts to break the cycle of violence there by enlisting the help of moderate Arab nations.

President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki are due to meet next week.

The United States wants Saudi Arabia to use its influence with Iraq's Sunni minority to help stabilize the country. On Thursday, car bombs killed more than 200 people in a Shi'ite stronghold in Baghdad in the worst attack since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Bush and Maliki will discuss security in Iraq at their meeting, in what is shaping up to be a crisis summit.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will also join

Bush in Amman. She will then attend an annual Middle East conference in Jordan, where key Arab players may meet on the sidelines to discuss Arab-Israeli issues.

The surge in violence in Iraq came as U.S. public discontent with the Iraq war was hammered home in November 7 elections in which Bush's Republican Party lost control of both houses of Congress.

    Cheney visits Saudi for talks on Middle East, R, 25.11.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-11-25T134220Z_01_N22216331_RTRUKOC_0_US-MIDEAST-CHENEY.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-5

Deal With U.S. Brings Russia Closer to W.T.O. Membership

November 19, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:14 a.m. ET
The New York Times

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Russia and the United States signed a key trade agreement Sunday, removing the last major obstacle in Moscow's 13-year journey to join the World Trade Organization.

The deal, inked on the sidelines of a gathering of Pacific Rim economies, is a powerful vote of confidence in Russia -- the largest economy still outside the 149-member WTO -- and signals its integration into the global trading system.

It also marks a bright spot in the two countries' relations that have been marred by disagreements over Iran's controversial nuclear program and Washington's fears of a roll back of democratic freedoms under Russian President Vladimir Putin.

''I am very pleased to be here today to have the opportunity to celebrate this very important milestone as Russia moves one important step closer to becoming a member of the WTO,'' said U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab.

''Russia belongs as a full-fledged member of the WTO,'' she said. ''We look forward to continuing these efforts to improve the economic and commercial ties between our two nations.''

Russia's Trade and Economic Development Minister German Gref called the deal a ''historic step -- the last step -- that signifies the return of Russia to the market principles of the world economy.''

As part of the deal, Gref said that Russia had pledged to cut import tariffs on a range of goods -- including aircraft, computer technology, agriculture and machinery.

Speaking after the signing ceremony Gref defended those concessions. ''I think we found the necessary balance... On all positions that were sensitive for us we found a compromise.''

The two countries also managed to overcome the high-profile question of Russia's shaky record on protecting intellectual property rights. Pirated films, music and software in Russia cost U.S. companies nearly US$1.8 billion in 2005.

Schwab said that while talks with Russia on the piracy question would continue at the stage of multilateral negotiations, she expressed satisfaction with Russia's progress.

Before it can join the WTO, Russia must consolidate the bilateral agreements it has forged with 57 countries. Gref said he expected that process to be completed mid-next year.

After that, the WTO needs to vote to approve Russia's membership.

But some question marks remain. Georgia and Moldova have threatened to block Russia's bid because Moscow has blocked key exports from those nations. Gref said Saturday that he hopes that those problems would also be resolved by mid-2007.

Membership in the WTO would mean Russia, a big oil and gas exporter, would receive the same favorable tariff rates for its products as other members. Also, Russia and other member countries would have to follow WTO rules in trade disputes.

Freer trade would give Russian companies more opportunities to sell their goods on world markets. Joining the WTO also might make its sizable market of potential customers even more attractive to companies in the U.S. and elsewhere.

''This creates a favorable background for all our activities, including solving complicated international problems,'' said Putin after holding a bilateral meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush after the conclusion of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

The trade deal was widely anticipated. On Nov. 10, both sides announced that all the main questions had been settled and all that remained was for a few technical questions to be nailed down.

Before the U.S. can trade with Russia under a WTO agreement, Washington must establish normal trade relations with Moscow.

For that, Congress would still have to pass legislation removing Russia from the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which ties Russia's trade status to whether the country is allowing Jews to freely leave the country.

Though the amendment is widely considered an anachronism, the newly elected Congress, which convenes in January, will be controlled by Democrats, who are less receptive to free-trade agreements than Republicans.

About four months ago, U.S. and Russia had appeared on the verge of an agreement. But in a major embarrassment for Moscow, it failed to materialize -- right before the summit of leaders of the world's wealthiest countries that Putin was hosting in St. Petersburg.

Observers have suggested that the deal with the U.S. may have been used as a political incentive to encourage Moscow to back a U.S. proposed sanctions package, punishing Iran for its controversial nuclear program.

    Deal With U.S. Brings Russia Closer to W.T.O. Membership, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-US-Trade.html?hp&ex=1163998800&en=2767ed3e3b4cfaca&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Signals New Incentives for North Korea

November 19, 2006
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and DAVID E. SANGER

HANOI, Vietnam, Sunday, Nov. 19 — In a series of closed-door meetings on the edges of the economic summit meeting of Asian nations here, President Bush and his aides have signaled that they will dangle a new set of incentives for North Korea to give up nuclear weapons and technology, American officials said. But the offers would hinge on the North’s coming to talks next month agreeing to begin immediately dismantling some of the equipment it is using to build an arsenal.

The stepped up diplomatic effort was made as Mr. Bush met leaders of the four countries that surround North Korea for the first time since the North conducted a nuclear test on Oct. 9. The meetings included a warm session with Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and a frosty one with the South Korean president, Roh Moo-hyun.

At the end of the meeting with Mr. Roh, who has been fundamentally at odds with Mr. Bush on North Korea strategy, the South Korean president repeated his insistence that while his country accepted the “principles and goals” of an America-led initiative to intercept shipments in and out of the North, it would not participate in parts of the effort, American and Korean officials said. That left murky the critical question of whether Mr. Roh would permit a North Korean ship traveling in the South’s waters to be stopped and searched.

American officials at the meeting would not publicly discuss their discussions with Japan, China, South Korea and Russia over what steps they were demanding that North Korea take before resuming negotiations. Even in discussing broader points, most would speak only on condition of anonymity. But Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, said the North needed to take “concrete steps.”

He declined to confirm three steps that American and Asian officials said were now being debated: an immediate shutdown of North Korea’s 5 megawatt reactor, whose spent fuel can be turned into weapons; the closing of the reprocessing facility that manufactures plutonium fuel; and immediate inspections led by the International Atomic Energy Commission. The agency’s inspectors were thrown out of the country in 2003.

“Generically, those are the kinds of things one might think about,” Mr. Hadley said when asked about them.

The combination of incentives and demands on North Korea were expected to be the focal point when President Bush met President Hu Jintao of China. But in their statements to reporters as they sat down in a South Korean-owned hotel here on Sunday, Mr. Hu never mentioned North Korea, instead citing new trade statistics showing a 25 percent jump in American exports to China and noting renewed joint maneuvers between the Chinese and American Navies for search and rescue operations. Mr. Bush mention the North only in passing in the public comments.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also dangled a new incentive: the prospect of North Korea one day being allowed to join this Asia-Pacific economic forum. During a speech to business leaders, she said North Korea could follow the example of Vietnam and overcome its adversarial relationship with the United States. “I can assure you we would welcome them, too, to a future of hope and prosperity,” she said. “We could then all realize the promise of a true community in the Asia-Pacific region.”

North Korea is one of the very few Pacific nations not part of APEC, the group of 21 Asian and Pacific countries holding its annual summit meeting here in Hanoi.

But for all the talk of regional economic cooperation and trade expansion that peppered the official agenda, the focal point of the behind-the-scenes huddles here was the package the United States was trying to put together to make sure that coming six-nation talks aimed at reining in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions would not fail.

Wary that the off-again-on-again talks risk irrelevancy — they began in 2003 and have yet to produce anything — American officials said they did not want to sit down for another round until they had prepared a successful outcome. A senior Bush administration official said the United States was close to agreement with Russia, China, South Korea and Japan on what steps to ask North Korea to take.

Part of the debate has centered on what the five countries, but especially the United States, would give North Korea in return. In the past, American officials have talked about signing a peace treaty that would officially end the Korean War. Now they are hinting at the prospect of a ceremony to commemorate the event, hoping to capitalize on the desire of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, for American recognition.

But few diplomats say the promise of a peace ceremony one day and eventual membership to a trade organization will be enough to get Mr. Kim to start dismantling the nuclear program that his country has spent the last 50 years building. A senior Bush administration official said the five countries were also working on “more immediate elements” of an incentives package.

One big thing that North Korea has signaled it wants is for the United States to lift the financial restrictions it placed on a Macao bank, Banco Delta Asia, last year, that was a main hub of the North’s international financial transactions. Last year, the Bush administration accused Banco Delta Asia of helping North Korea to launder money from drug smuggling and other illicit activities and to pass counterfeit $100 bills manufactured by the North’s government.

Officially, American diplomats say they will lift the restrictions when North Korea stops counterfeiting American currency. But privately, they acknowledge that they hope to find ways to work on the problem with their North Korean counterparts. The American hope is to use the prospect of a resolution of the counterfeiting issue to get at an overall nuclear agreement.

The United States endorsed a statement from the Asia-Pacific group that strongly criticizes North Korea’s October nuclear test and its July missile launchings. Mr. Bush spent Saturday afternoon at the brand new convention center that Vietnam built for the forum, and Saturday night at a gala dinner and cultural performance.

This is his first trip abroad since the midterm elections, and administration officials were dogged by questions about the Iraq war. After her speech to business leaders, Ms. Rice was challenged by an American questioner who drew a parallel between “our recent misadventures in Iraq and the tragedy of the Vietnam War some 30 years ago.”

“How can we resolve this quagmire?”

Ms. Rice, who had been giving fairly bland answers to questions, became animated, embarking on a lengthy discourse that touched on the history books she read last summer (biographies of America’s founding fathers), an exploration of the Iraqi psyche, the 1948 coup in Czechoslovakia that “ended the last free society in Eastern Europe,” and reflections on her own life growing up in the segregated South.

“Think about Japan, prostrate at the end of World War II, now the vibrant second-most important economy in the world,” she said. “Think, too, about Korea, South Korea: after years of military dictatorship, finally a vibrant democracy.

“And think also about where we’re standing. Thirty years ago, what American would have thought that you would be standing in Vietnam at a conference of the Asia-Pacific Economic Council talking about free markets and open trade and the need to better integrate our economies? Who would have thought it?”

She concluded that if the Iraqis work at it, with America’s help, one day an American secretary of state would stand on a podium somewhere and say: “How could it ever have been thought that the Iraqi people weren’t capable of democracy? How could anyone have ever questioned that freedom and liberty would reign in the Middle East?”

    U.S. Signals New Incentives for North Korea, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/world/asia/19prexy.html?hp&ex=1163998800&en=c73ffb8ef45e3e90&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Reporters' Notebook

Unlike Clinton, Bush Sees Hanoi in Bit of a Hurry

November 19, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and HELENE COOPER

HANOI, Vietnam, Sunday, Nov. 19 — President Bush likes speed golf and speed tourism — this is the man who did the treasures of Red Square in less than 20 minutes — but here in the lake-studded capital of a nation desperately eager to connect with America, he set a record.

On Saturday, Mr. Bush emerged from his hotel for only one nonofficial event, a 15-minute visit to the Joint P.O.W./M.I.A. Accounting Command, which searches for the remains of the 1,800 Americans still listed as missing in the Vietnam War.

There were almost no Vietnamese present, just a series of tables displaying photographs of the group’s painstaking work, and helmets, shoes and replicas of bones recovered by the 425 members of the command. He asked a few questions and then sped off in his motorcade.

On Sunday morning, Mr. Bush attended an ecumenical church service in an old French-built Catholic basilica to underscore the need for greater religious freedom.

But the mood of this trip could not have been more different from the visit of another president, Bill Clinton, exactly six years ago this weekend, when he seemed to be everywhere.

And while the difference says much about the personalities of two presidents who both famously avoided serving in the war here, it reveals a lot about how significantly times have changed — and perhaps why America’s “public diplomacy” seems unable to shift into gear.

In 2000, tens of thousands of Hanoi’s residents poured into the streets to witness the visit of the first American head of state since the end of the Vietnam War. Mr. Clinton toured the thousand-year-old Temple of Literature, grabbed lunch at a noodle shop, argued with Communist Party leaders about American imperialism and sifted the earth for the remains of a missing airman.

On Saturday, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, conceded that the president had not come into direct contact with ordinary Vietnamese, but said that they connected anyway.

“If you’d been part of the president’s motorcade as we’ve shuttled back and forth,” he said, reporters would have seen that “the president has been doing a lot of waving and getting a lot of waving and smiles.”

He continued: “I think he’s gotten a real sense of the warmth of the Vietnamese people and their willingness to put a very difficult period for both the United States and Vietnam behind them.”

Perhaps, but the Vietnamese have barely seen or heard from Mr. Bush. He spoke at his first stop, Singapore, promising that “America will remain engaged in Asia.” But the response was tepid — the invited audience somehow missed several of built-in applause lines — and one senior Singaporean diplomat, declining to be quoted by name, said there was little in the speech “that his father didn’t say to us 15 years ago.”

Others questioned whether the United States was so fixated on the Middle East that China had been given free rein to spread its influence.

Here in Vietnam, what has been missing, at least so far, are the kinds of emotional moments of reconciliation that marked Mr. Clinton’s visit. Mr. Clinton took the two sons of the missing airman, Lt. Col Lawrence G. Evert, to a rice paddy in Tien Chau, a tiny town 17 miles northeast of Hanoi. There, they searched for remnants of the colonel’s F-150D Thunderchief, which crashed during a bombing run in 1967. Scores of nearby villagers joined in the effort, and the soil gave up the airman’s bones.

There will be none of that for Mr. Bush, but he plans to highlight the new Vietnam on Sunday and Monday at its stock exchange in Ho Chi Minh City. Then he moves on to Indonesia for a few hours to meet “civic leaders,” something he did three years ago in a stopover in Bali.

But Mr. Bush is not staying overnight in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, which Washington has portrayed as a critical test in the struggle to promote moderate, democratic Islamic states. The Secret Service said it was too dangerous, so he will spend the night in Hawaii.

Waiting for One More Star

The Hadong Silk shop in this city’s Old Quarter is the first port of call for well-heeled visitors on the hunt for the tailor-made silkwares for which Vietnam has become famous. This weekend, with heads of state from 21 countries in town for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, a parade of dignitaries streamed in for fittings of made-to-order shirts, dresses and suits.

Laureen Harper, the wife of Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, showed up on Friday, made a few purchases and signed the guestbook for Dang Thi Thu Thuy, the petite, exquisitely dressed owner. Ditto for Australia’s first lady, Janette Howard.

But Mrs. Thuy was searching for more. “We really hope that Mrs. Bush will come into our store,” she says. “We are waiting for her, but she hasn’t come.”

The walls of Hadong Silk are lined with giant framed photos of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who came to the shop during Mr. Clinton’s visit in 2000. There is a photo of Mrs. Clinton towering over three saleswomen, another of her standing next to Mrs. Thuy, both clad in silk suits, and one upstairs of her, surrounded by Secret Service agents, perusing silk blouses.

Vu Thi Thu Huong, a saleswoman, said the shop was so excited after Mrs. Clinton left, having bought 10 raw silk shirts for her husband, that the distinctive square collar on their men’s silk shirts was renamed the “Bill Clinton Collar.”

So, will there be a “George Bush Collar”?

Mrs. Thuy shrugged. “I’m not sure,” she said. She gestured to her camera, and said, “If she comes we will take her picture, too.”

Mrs. Bush visited the Temple of Literature, a monument to the legacy of Confucius, and the Museum of Ethnology, which focuses on Vietnam’s 54 ethnic groups. With the spouses of other leaders, she saw water puppets. It is unclear whether she bought any silk.

Statements of New Times

The Vietnamese are teetering somewhere between welcoming and overwhelmed as world leaders zoom through their streets and jam the hotels so fully that several diplomats have been housed in youth hostels.

The country wants to portray itself as a rising competitor to China, but this is still a city with the slow-paced feel of an Asia that has been largely lost, one where the bicycle and the moped are the chief modes of transportation, and where old houses cooled by lazy ceiling fans have yet to be bulldozed for look-alike condos, Beijing-style.

But it is also a place that reminds visitors of who prevailed over the Americans. One building that Mr. Bush zipped past is the Military History Museum, which displays a giant sculpture made of the broken fuselages and wings of downed French and American aircraft. The place was close to empty when Mr. Bush and his colleagues were meeting, but had he stopped by he would have heard a pretty one-sided account of the December 1972 bombing of Hanoi, and seen photographs of a troubled President Lyndon Johnson.

Just down the road, a giant banner mixes old and new. “The Great Ho Chi Minh Is Still Alive in Our Modernizaton and Industrial Progress!” it proclaims of the man who proclaimed Vietnamese independence.

If Mr. Ho were still alive, and able to sit up from his spot in the mausoleum, he would have seen road signs advertising the underwriting of the conference by Citigroup and Samsung.

    Unlike Clinton, Bush Sees Hanoi in Bit of a Hurry, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/world/asia/19vietnam.html?hp&ex=1163998800&en=43211877a8033ac3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Rice: Countries Should Follow Vietnam

November 18, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:38 a.m. ET
The New York Times

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- North Korea and Myanmar should follow Vietnam's example in joining the international community and opening their economies to the rest of the world, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.

Rice, in a speech to business executives attending an annual Asia-Pacific economic conference, praised Vietnam for its success in reforming its economy and ''overcoming the past'' in seeking closer ties with the United States.

Washington would like to work with North Korea and Myanmar, also known as Burma, but can't until their governments choose to abide by international norms, she said.

''If the leaders of North Korea and Burma were to follow the example of Vietnam, if they make the strategic choice and take the necessary steps to join the international community, it will open a new path of peace and opportunity,'' Rice said.

    Rice: Countries Should Follow Vietnam, NYT, 18.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-US-North-Korea.html

Diplomatic Memo

On to Vietnam, Bush Hears Echoes of 1968 in Iraq 2006

November 17, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

HANOI, Vietnam, Friday, Nov. 17 — During the presidential campaign in 2000, George W. Bush, who served out the Vietnam War in the Texas Air National Guard, was asked whether he ever considered volunteering to fight when he graduated from Yale in 1968.

“Did I think about going to the Army post and saying ‘Send me to Vietnam?’ ” Mr. Bush asked, describing his own outlook in 1968. “Not really. I wanted to fly, and that was the adventure I was seeking.”

Thirty-eight years later, at age 60, Mr. Bush finally arrived in Vietnam Friday morning. His motorcade sped into the city past roads that Americans once bombed, at the start of a 72-hour visit linked to an annual Asian summit meeting that the Communist government in Vietnam is playing host to for the first time.

In private, some White House officials concede it is spectacularly poor timing. Just as Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1968, Mr. Bush has ousted his longtime defense secretary and nominated a realist with “fresh eyes” to replace him. Just like President Johnson in 1968, he is conducting a broad rethinking of strategy, and is hearing options he does not like.

His aides argue that the analogies between these wars are mostly false. The comparisons will nonetheless be the unavoidable subtext of Mr. Bush’s every move as he travels in Hanoi and then stops in the city that in his youth was known as Saigon, and that became the scene of an American military debacle. And he will have to convince his allies, ordinary Americans, and perhaps himself, that Iraq will end differently.

If Mr. Bush is privately thinking about the war he missed, the White House is not letting on. Asked aboard Air Force One about “the lessons of the war,” Tony Snow, the president’s press secretary, said, “What’s interesting is that the Vietnamese are not particularly interested in that.” He added: “This is not going to be a look back at Vietnam. It really is going to be a looking forward to areas of cooperation and shared concern.”

He went on to talk about the growing trade relationship, and declined to say whether Mr. Bush was betting that deeper economic integration with the world would undermine Vietnam’s Communist government.

Until now, when asked what he had learned from Vietnam, Mr. Bush has almost reflexively reached for the same line: That he does not micromanage his generals, the way Mr. Johnson did. It is a response drawn from conservative orthodoxy about what went wrong in Vietnam, underlying an argument that had the generals been allowed to fight their way, the United States might have won.

But he may feel compelled to say more in Hanoi. Mr. Bush will find himself inside government halls adorned with paintings of Ho Chi Minh. He will be talking about the future of Asia with Ho’s Communist successors who, Washington once warned, could not be allowed to win.

He will be sleeping just a mile or so from the open-air equivalent to the Situation Room where Ho Chi Minh managed his generals, from a single telephone at the end of a conference table. (It is now part of a museum, but Mr. Bush’s schedule reveals no plans to visit.) His motorcade will zip past the lake where John McCain was pulled to shore after bailing out.

With such emotional imagery to deal with, it is no surprise that Mr. Bush’s national security team has spent an enormous amount of time drawing distinctions between the war that their generation grew up with, and the one that they ordered.

“Historical parallels of that kind are not very helpful, and I don’t think they happen to be right,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters the other day. “This is a different set of circumstances, with different stakes for the United States.”

Stephen J. Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, struck a similar note last week when he suggested that the “domino effect” that Americans worried about in the 1960s and 70s — the fear that neighboring countries would fall to Communism’s lures — was nothing compared to the problems today.

“There were discussions about dominoes, some which fell, some which didn’t fall,” he said. But, he added, “Most men and women in America believe that it is important that we not fail in Iraq; that the consequences of an Iraq that descended into chaos would be an Iraq that would be a safe haven for terrorists.”

Ultimately, he said, that “could result in 9/11-type attacks against the United States.”

In private, Mr. Bush says there is another big difference between then and now — the draft. There is little question that by signing up to be a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard, the risk was low that he would end up in Vietnam as a 23-year-old. But according to an academic called into the White House recently, Mr. Bush said the administration could never have sustained this effort in Iraq, politically, without an all-volunteer force. He declined to be named because he was relaying a private conversation.

The argument that Vietnam is very different gets some backing from Stanley Karnow, the Vietnam historian. “There are differences and similarities, of course,” he said. “We got lied into both wars.”

But, he added: “The easy summation is that Vietnam began as a guerrilla war and escalated into an orthodox war — by the end we were fighting in big units. Iraq starts as a conventional war, and has degenerated into a guerrilla war. It has gone in an opposite direction. And it’s much more difficult to deal with.”

U.S. Seeks Korea Nuclear Step

HANOI, Nov. 16 — The United States is working with China and other Asian nations to pressure North Korea to take a visible step toward dismantling its nuclear program before starting a new round of nuclear disarmament talks, American officials said Thursday.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, here for a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, said that while she was hopeful the talks — begun in 2003 — would resume in December, it was pointless to return to the bargaining table without a show of good faith from both sides.

She refused to expand on what those steps would be. But American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said an acceptable move might be for North Korea to dismantle one of its nuclear facilities and to readmit inspectors.

    On to Vietnam, Bush Hears Echoes of 1968 in Iraq 2006, NYT, 17.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/world/17prexy.html

Bush Draws Iraq Lesson From Vietnam

November 17, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:01 a.m. ET
The New York Times

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- President Bush, on his first visit to a country where America lost a two-decade-long fight against communism, said Friday the Vietnam War's lesson for today's confounding Iraq conflict is that freedom takes time to trump hatred.

Embracing a former enemy that remains communist but is allowing capitalism to surge, Bush opened a four-day stay here that was fueling an already raging debate over his war policy. Democrats who won control of Congress say last week's elections validate their call for U.S. troops to start coming home soon, while Bush argues -- as he did again Friday -- for patience with a mission he says can't be ended until Iraq can remain stable on its own.

A baby boomer who came of age during the turbulent Vietnam era and spent the war stateside as a member of the Texas Air National Guard, the president called himself amazed by the sights of the onetime war capital. He pronounced it hopeful that the United States and Vietnam have reconciled differences after a war that ended 31 years ago when the Washington-backed regime in Saigon fell.

''My first reaction is history has a long march to it, and societies change and relationships can constantly be altered to the good,'' Bush said after speeding past signs of both poverty and the commerce produced by Asia's fastest-growing economy.

The president said there was much to be learned from the divisive Vietnam War -- the longest conflict in U.S. history -- as his administration contemplates new strategies for the increasingly difficult war in Iraq, now in its fourth year. But his critics see parallels with Vietnam -- a determined insurgency and a death toll that has drained public support -- that spell danger for dragging out U.S. involvement in Iraq.

''It's just going to take a long period of time for the ideology that is hopeful -- and that is an ideology of freedom -- to overcome an ideology of hate,'' Bush said after having lunch at his lakeside hotel with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, whose country has been one of America's strongest allies in Iraq, Vietnam and other conflicts.

''We'll succeed,'' Bush added, ''unless we quit.''

In a day of meetings with Vietnamese leaders, the Vietnam-Iraq comparisons gave way to a focus on areas of cooperation. Those include continuing military-to-military links, work on AIDS and bird flu, trade, and cooperation on information about more than 1,300 U.S. military personnel still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.

Bush was visiting the U.S. military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command here on Saturday.

He met in succession with Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet at the bright orange presidential palace, with Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung next door, and with the country's most powerful leader, Communist Party chief Nong Duc Manh, at the ruling party headquarters across the street. Each time, he and his hosts sat under a large bronze bust of Ho Chi Minh, the victorious North's revolutionary communist leader.

Nong said the president had ''opened a new page in the relationship.''

In the evening, Bush was feted at a state banquet.

''For decades, you have been torn apart by war,'' Bush said, toasting his hosts. ''And today the Vietnamese people are at peace and seeing the benefits of reform.''

The president's welcome by the public was much less enthusiastic than the rock-star treatment afforded President Clinton when he came in 2000. Happy crowds thronged Clinton, who normalized relations with Vietnam.

But Bush encountered a country where many with long memories deeply disapprove of the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- even as they yearn for continued economic progress to stamp out still-rampant poverty.

With all traffic halted, many Hanoi residents gaped at his long motorcade from their motorbikes. Other clusters of onlookers gathered before storefronts, a few waving but most merely looking on impassively.

Huynh Tuyet, 71, a North Vietnamese veteran who had his hand blown off fighting the Americans, recalled his own lesson.

''Even though the Americans were more powerful with all their massive weapons, the main factor in war is the people,'' he said. ''The Vietnamese people were very determined. We would not give up. That's why we won.''

Vietnamese officials eager for their country to take its turn in the global spotlight expressed disappointment that the president arrived without his expected gift -- congressional approval of a new pact normalizing trade relations with Vietnam.

Surprising the White House, Congress failed to pass the bill this week as expected, leaving U.S. officials trying to explain to the Vietnamese that it would be sure to go through next month.

The visit was a delicate balancing act for Bush. He was trying to improve relations with a crucial Asian economic force and to urge Vietnam to make further steps toward political, economic and social reforms -- even as his mere presence conferred special status on a communist government.

Inside the sprawling Communist Party headquarters, the president gently pressed his hosts on the need for greater political and religious freedoms. He was reinforcing this point Sunday with a visit to a Hanoi church, similar to a stop he made last year on a trip to communist China.

After remaining in Hanoi for a massive summit of 21 Pacific Rim leaders, Bush was traveling on Monday to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon and the country's economic heart, where he was showcasing Vietnam's booming economy with a visit to its stock exchange and discussions with business leaders. He was also going to a medical institute there that focuses on bird flu and AIDS research and taking in a cultural performance at a local museum.

On the sidelines of the summit, Bush was drawing on his powers of personal diplomacy in one-on-one meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin, China's Hu Jintao, Japan's Shinzo Abe and South Korea's Roh Moo-hyun.

------

Associated Press writer Margie Mason contributed to this report.

    Bush Draws Iraq Lesson From Vietnam, NYT, 17.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush.html?hp&ex=1163826000&en=14c61eec161a59f5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Urges Asia - Pacific Help to Revive Doha Talks

November 16, 2006
By REUTERS
Filed at 4:01 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday urged Asia-Pacific nations to help revive frozen Doha world trade talks, reasserting President George W. Bush's economic agenda for the region at the start of a three-nation tour.

It also said Bush believed a free trade zone encompassing the 21-nation Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum ``deserves serious consideration,'' despite a rebuff of a U.S. bid to make the proposal a key part of this weekend's summit in Hanoi.

Bush is trying to reassert his influence on the world stage after his Republican Party lost control of Congress in last week's elections, imperiling his legislative agenda in the final two years of his term.

The APEC summit is expected to focus on efforts to restart the Doha talks, which collapsed in July amid clashes over subsidies and tariffs for farm goods.

``Only an ambitious Doha agreement with real market access can achieve the economic growth and development goals that the world has set,'' the White House said in a statement ahead of a speech by Bush setting out the goals of his Asia tour.

``We look to nations across the Asia-Pacific region to help put these vital talks back on track,'' it said.

The idea of an APEC-wide free trade area has been on the table for years.

But APEC foreign and trade ministers meeting in Hanoi on Wednesday to lay the groundwork for the leaders' summit ended their debate on the issue deciding it should only be studied ''as a long-term objective,'' Japan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Mitsuo Sakaba said.

In reiterating Bush's support for such a free trade zone, the White House said: ``We want to help APEC become a stronger organization that serves as an engine for economic growth and opportunity throughout the region.''

APEC's economies account for nearly half of world trade and generate 70 percent of global economic growth.

    U.S. Urges Asia - Pacific Help to Revive Doha Talks, NYT, 16.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-trade-bush.html

Bush Seeks to Reassure Asian Allies

November 16, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:58 a.m. ET

SINGAPORE (AP) -- With China on the rise and his own stature weakened at home, President Bush sought Thursday to ease any doubts in Asia about the United States' long-term commitment to the region.

Bush chose this East-West crossroads with a turbulent past but booming present as his first stop of an eight-day Asian trip and the stage for the major speech of his travels. A tightly controlled city-state with a significant Muslim population but moderate values, Singapore is considered one of Washington's best friends in the region, a stalwart help in counterterror and nonproliferation efforts and an active trade partner.

''America's presence in the Far East is very important for our own country,'' Bush said after meeting for about an hour with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. He also paid a courtesy call on acting President J.Y. Pillay.

Bush sought to reassure nervous Asian allies that the United States will remain a reliable partner in liberalizing trade, confronting North Korea's nuclear threat and fighting terrorism.

''America will remain engaged in Asia because our interests depend on the expansion of freedom and opportunity in this region,'' the White House said in a statement describing the speech Bush was giving.

Bush appealed to nations across the Asia-Pacific region to salvage global trade talks. The White House also said the idea of a free trade agreement for the entire region -- which encompasses 21 economies along the Pacific Rim -- ''deserves serious consideration.''

The president's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said Bush's speech at the National University of Singapore was intended to emphasize the United States' long history of cooperation with Asia on security, trade and diplomacy. The president was focusing on how rising freedoms have transformed Asia, and how its nations and the United States can continue work together to combat poverty, corruption and health problems like AIDS and bird flu, he said.

''A lot of it is going to be a celebration, because there has been enormous progress in Asia,'' Hadley told reporters traveling here on Air Force One with the president. ''Quite frankly, the American people ought to take some pride in that.''

Analysts said Bush had much to prove, arriving in Asia as a lame-duck president after midterm elections that ousted his Republicans from power on Capitol Hill and amid a push by China for greater global influence.

''The level of attractiveness of China throughout Asia really cannot be underestimated,'' said Kurt Campbell, a top Pentagon official in the Clinton administration who now is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ''I think one of the purposes of American diplomacy is to reassure friends in Southeast Asia that of course the United States still has enough bandwidth in its foreign policy and national security apparatus to focus on these issues.''

For that reason, Bush was trying with his speech and throughout the trip to demonstrate that the relationship is not solely just about anti-terror cooperation and nonproliferation concerns, said Derek Mitchell, a former Asia adviser at the Pentagon also now with CSIS.

''The United States hasn't been there so much,'' he said. ''China has eaten America's lunch.''

The United States has a long list of complaints with China, including human rights, a currency Washington says is undervalued, a massive trade deficit, and energy deals with countries the U.S. considers tyrannical. But Bush also needs -- and gets, at least to some degree -- Beijing's aggressive involvement in nuclear showdowns with North Korea and Iran.

All the while, China's political and economic clout is growing around the world, particularly in Asia.

Hadley hinted at Washington's concern about China's ascendance as a regional power player, saying that one of Bush's aims was to offer reassurance of the American commitment to a corner of the world undergoing change and uncertainty ''as a result of the changing power dynamics within Asia.''

As a way to highlight Singapore's success at integrating the many ethnicities and religions of its people, Bush opened the trip with a visit to the Asian Civilisations Museum overlooking the mouth of the Singapore River.

The president and his wife, Laura Bush, were treated to a performance of Asian fusion music by a group called ''Gamelan Asmaradana,'' which played a classical Javanese piece and a Singapore folk song. Bush was even talked into briefly giving the saron -- an Asian-style xylophone -- a few bangs with a rubber mallet.

In another room, the Bushes watched school children perform dances representing Chinese, Indian and Malaysian culture. Some of the children in brightly colored costumes twirled with peacock feathers and others performed acrobatics.

    Bush Seeks to Reassure Asian Allies, NYT, 16.112006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush.html

U.S. Vetoes Security Council Resolution Assailing Israel for Attacks

November 12, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN HOGE

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 11 — The United States vetoed a Security Council resolution on Saturday that condemned Israel for its military actions in Gaza and called for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area.

The United States ambassador, John R. Bolton, told the Council that the resolution “does not display an even-handed characterization of the recent events in Gaza, nor does it advance the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

The resolution, introduced by Qatar, the Arab representative on the Council, had been amended during two days of negotiations to meet objections that it was not balanced. But Mr. Bolton said it remained “in many places biased against Israel and politically motivated.”

In the vote, 4 countries abstained — Britain, Denmark, Japan and Slovakia — and 10 were in favor — Argentina, China, Congo, France, Ghana, Greece, Peru, Russia, Qatar and Tanzania.

The original draft had made no mention of Palestinian rocket strikes into Israel and accused Israel of conducting a “massacre” of civilians in its attack at Beit Hanun on Wednesday that killed 18 civilians.

New language was inserted condemning the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel and calling upon the Palestinian Authority to take “immediate and sustained action” to end the rocket fire. But while the resolution named Israel as liable for the attacks on Gaza, it was silent on who or what group was responsible for the attacks on Israel.

In other changes, a reference to “indiscriminate” Israeli violence became “disproportionate” violence, and the words “military assault,” “aggression” and “massacre” were dropped in favor of the general phrase “military operations.”

Another provision had proposed that a new United Nations observer force be sent into the area to monitor a cease-fire, but it was substituted with language suggested by France that called for the creation of “an international mechanism for the protection of civilians.”

Mr. Bolton said the United States considered this “a promise which is unwise and unnecessary and which, at any rate, raises false hopes.”

The resolution that was voted on requested that Secretary General Kofi Annan establish a fact-finding mission to investigate Wednesday’s attack and report back within 30 days and called for the resumption of international efforts to achieve peace by the so-called quartet — the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States.

Israel has apologized for the deaths at Beit Hanun, blaming a “technical error,” and has announced its own investigation of the episode. But it has said it will continue to try to stop militants from launching rockets into Israel from Gaza.

The United States traditionally opposes what it considers one-sided Security Council resolutions on Israel, and Saturday’s vote was the fourth time in three years that Washington had taken such action.

In July the United States vetoed another resolution on Gaza; in March 2004 it vetoed a resolution condemning Israel for killing the Hamas leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin; and in December 2003 it blocked a measure protesting the construction of the Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank.

Almost all of the 45 nations that spoke during a daylong debate on the Middle East on Thursday condemned Israel. Arab nations are now expected to move for a vote in the 192-member General Assembly, a path they have followed in the past when such measures have failed to pass the Security Council.

Unlike Security Council resolutions, those passed in the General Assembly are nonbinding and largely symbolic. But they generally attract widespread support when Israel, and, by extension, the United States, are the targets.

Jean-Marc de la Sablière, the French ambassador, said he felt the final negotiated text was “a balanced one” and would have sent the right message to both Israel and the Palestinians. He added, “I hope that the fact this text has not been adopted will not renew tensions on the ground.”

    U.S. Vetoes Security Council Resolution Assailing Israel for Attacks, NYT, 12.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/world/middleeast/12nations.html

News Analysis

Ortega Redux: A History Smolders on Cold War Embers

November 11, 2006
The New York Times
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Nov. 10 — For most of the world, the cold war ended when the Berlin Wall came down. Not so in the Caribbean basin.

Here the stubbornness of old cold warriors in Washington and the equal tenacity of leftist governments in Cuba and Venezuela have kept a miniature cold war going. Just as it was 20 years ago, Nicaragua now finds itself smack in the middle of the conflict with the election this week of Daniel Ortega, the former Marxist rebel leader, as president.

Mr. Ortega faces a balancing act no politician would envy, both inside the country and on the world stage. On the one hand, to satisfy his supporters, he must fulfill promises to “eradicate poverty,” curb “savage capitalism,” and remain friendly with his leftist allies, Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Venezuela, in particular, could be a source of cheap oil and money for social programs.

On the other hand, he can ill afford to lose more than $50 million a year in United States aid or credit from the International Monetary Fund. Neither can Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, jettison the newly approved free trade agreement between Central American countries and the United States. Just to survive economically, this nation of some 5.6 million people needs to continue exporting textiles and fruit to the United States and receiving remittances from Nicaraguans in the north.

“Nicaragua is basically a welfare state that depends on foreign inputs to survive, remittances and foreign aid,” said an American diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

What is more, Mr. Ortega won with only 38 percent of the vote, and the National Assembly is divided among four parties. Every move he makes will involve negotiation and compromise with conservative lawmakers, who are desperate not to anger the Bush administration.

“The problems facing him make it almost impossible to have a successful presidency,” said Larry Birns, the director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. “He has no arrows in his quiver.”

Mr. Ortega’s precarious position may explain the careful nuance in his recent speeches. He ran on a rosy and vague promise of “jobs, peace and reconciliation,” seldom attacked the United States, avoided Marxist rhetoric and wore his newfound religious convictions on his sleeve. These days he talks more on the stump about God than the proletariat.

For the moment, Mr. Ortega is walking very softly and speaking in dulcet tones. “Today more than ever, the Sandinistas have to be patient,” he said to ecstatic Sandinista Party supporters after his victory this week. “We are not going to fall into provocations or insult anyone.”

Still, once in a while, the old revolutionary flares in him. He has called President Bush “the Reagan of these times,” and asserted that the “Yankee Reagan” wanted “to bring death and destruction to the region.” Sometimes, he rails against the havoc the free trade agreement has wrought on small farms.

Since the election, he has taken pains to calm businessmen, assuring foreign investors on Wednesday that he will protect property rights in exchange for help combating poverty. “No one is going to allow the seizure of property big or small,” he said. He has also reached out to his political opponents, saying he will keep in place reforms limiting the president’s power.

Yet at his victory speech later the same day, Mr. Ortega made it clear that he would not be Washington’s lackey. He thanked his leftist “brothers,” Mr. Castro and Mr. Chávez, then took a dig at Washington, saying it was not the Sandinistas who broke off relations after the 1979 revolution. “It was the reverse,” he said.

He also said he would push the country, which currently sells more than 60 percent of its exports to the United States, to join the anti-United States trade association Mr. Chávez wants to organize. And he said he would seek trade agreements with Europe and South America. “We have to know how to make our economy grow not depending on only one market,” he said.

So far, the Bush administration has taken a wait-and-see attitude in the face of what seems like two different Ortegas. A State Department spokesman, Gonzalo Gallegos, said the United States’ cooperation with Mr. Ortega would be “based on their action in support of Nicaragua’s democratic future.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Castro and Mr. Chávez have used Mr. Ortega’s victory to feed their own propaganda machines.

In Havana, Mr. Castro put out a statement saying the victory “fills our people with joy, at the same time filling the terrorist and genocidal government of the United States with opprobrium.” In Caracas, Mr. Chávez claimed he and Mr. Ortega would be “uniting as never before” to construct a socialist future.

The outcome of this tug of war hinges on what steps Washington takes, several experts on the region said. The Bush administration has many high-ranking officials who were involved to one degree or another in the covert war against the Sandinistas and Mr. Ortega in the 1980s, among them Robert M. Gates, the man Mr. Bush put forward to be the new secretary of defense.

So even though Nicaragua is hardly a threat to national security, the memories of the 1980s may influence the Bush administration’s policies, some experts say. “One of the big questions is, independent of what Ortega does, what approach will the U.S. take?” said Geoff Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America, an independent research group.

People who know Mr. Ortega worry his temper will get the best of him if Washington tries to put pressure on him.

“The worst thing that could happen is if Daniel Ortega extends his hand to Bush and Bush rejects it,” said Sergio Ramírez, who was the vice president in the late 1980s under Mr. Ortega. “What will happen is that he’s going to say, ‘Fine, I will go with Chávez.’ ”

    Ortega Redux: A History Smolders on Cold War Embers, NYT, 11.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/world/americas/11nicaragua.html?hp&ex=1163307600&en=e64c8a2de783d167&ei=5094&partner=homepage