History > 2007 > USA > Politics > International (I)

Peter Brookes

The Times        January 10, 2007

U.S. President George W. Bush

Related : U.S. air strikes in Somalia

Leaving Pakistan,

a Seasoned Ambassador Prepares

for Yet Another Turbulent Job: Iraq

March 29, 2007
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, March 28 — Ryan C. Crocker said farewell to the American Embassy in Pakistan on Wednesday and flew to Baghdad for his swearing-in Thursday as the new ambassador to Iraq. He faces a political and diplomatic battlefield in which sectarian and terrorist killing dominates daily concerns of an Iraqi government that has only tenuous control.

One of the State Department’s most experienced Middle East hands, Mr. Crocker, 57, has already served as ambassador to Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan, with postings as well to Iran, Qatar, Egypt and Afghanistan. On an early tour in Baghdad, in 1979, he met Christine Barnes, a Foreign Service secretary, and the two married.

His professional concerns arising from a tour to Iraq taken shortly after the invasion of 2003 were a focus of his Senate confirmation hearings last month.

Mr. Crocker was pressed on the accuracy of news reports that he was frustrated as director of governance for the Coalition Provisional Authority from May until August of 2003 because the Americans were reluctant to reach out to the minority Sunni Arabs who had ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

“I was frustrated by our inability to identify in that period of time Sunnis that had the leadership stature that we could find in the other communities,” Mr. Crocker replied. “It was not that anyone prevented me from making that effort.”

During his hearing, he also was asked about reports that a memo he wrote before the invasion for Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, cautioned that toppling Mr. Hussein would unleash sectarian violence — a situation that has played out over the past four years.

“I consider it my obligation to offer the best advice I can to my superiors, to argue my points of view, whatever they may be, whatever the issue is,” Mr. Crocker told the Senate panel. “And then once decisions are taken, it is my obligation to support those decisions.”

As Mr. Crocker moved within hours of assuming the ambassador’s post in Iraq, certainly one of the most profoundly complex jobs in diplomacy, his friends said he was well suited to the job.

“I’ve known Ryan for more than 20 years,” said William J. Burns, the American ambassador in Moscow. “I’ve never met another diplomat who combines his understanding of the Middle East, sense of how best to advance American interests there, and personal toughness and determination.”

Mr. Burns acknowledged what many had said, that Mr. Crocker “is demanding and sets very high standards, but pushes no one harder than himself.”

“There’s very little that he hasn’t seen or experienced as a diplomat in the Middle East, and no one is better equipped for the huge task before us in Iraq,” he added.

Mr. Crocker was assigned to Beirut in 1983 when terrorists announced a new era of suicide attacks against American targets in the Middle East, bombing the American Embassy and then the Marine barracks — experiences with a painfully direct application to his new posting to Baghdad.

Mr. Crocker succeeds Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been nominated to be the ambassador to the United Nations.

Bypassing the pomp of a Washington swearing-in ceremony is a typical maneuver for Mr. Crocker, according to his friends and colleagues, and for decades he has done his best to avoid assignments back at State Department headquarters.

He does have detractors among human rights advocates, who recently criticized his public support for Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, as the final days of Mr. Crocker’s tour as ambassador in Pakistan were marked by protests denouncing General Musharraf’s suspension of the country’s chief justice. The human rights advocates do acknowledge that Mr. Crocker was carrying out a policy directed from Washington.

Colleagues say Mr. Crocker, a marathon runner, brings a casual and adventurous style to the pinstriped world of diplomacy, and anyone who has worked with him or befriended him has a story that serves as metaphor for the new ambassador to Iraq.

“He has an extraordinary toughness and a total understanding of the environment,” said James F. Jeffrey, who was deputy chief of mission when Mr. Crocker was ambassador to Kuwait in the 1990s. “That, combined with a mischievous sense of the ironical in life — and great people skills.”

Mr. Jeffrey, now principal deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled how his former boss took a vacation trek through Yemen, riding deep into the rocky canyon lands between remote villages on a commuter minibus.

Suddenly, inexplicably, the driver lost control. Mr. Crocker leapt to the front of the bus, grabbed the wheel and guided the bus and its frightened passengers safely down the mountain pass.

Now, he takes control at the largest American Embassy in the world, in Baghdad, starting a new and formidable journey.

    Leaving Pakistan, a Seasoned Ambassador Prepares for Yet Another Turbulent Job: Iraq, NYT, 29.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/world/middleeast/29crocker.html?hp

U.S. Iraq Role Is Called Illegal by Saudi King

March 29, 2007
The New York Times
By HASSAN M. FATTAH

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, March 28 — King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia told Arab leaders on Wednesday that the American occupation of Iraq was illegal and warned that unless Arab governments settled their differences, foreign powers like the United States would continue to dictate the region’s politics.

The king’s speech, at the opening of the Arab League meeting here, underscored growing differences between Saudi Arabia and the Bush administration as the Saudis take on a greater leadership role in the Middle East, partly at American urging.

The Saudis seem to be emphasizing that they will not be beholden to the policies of their longtime ally.

They brokered a deal between the two main Palestinian factions last month, but one that Israel and the United States found deeply problematic because it added to the power of the radical group Hamas rather than the more moderate Fatah. On Wednesday King Abdullah called for an end to the international boycott of the new Palestinian government. The United States and Israel want the boycott continued.

In addition, Abdullah invited President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Riyadh earlier this month, while the Americans want him shunned. And in trying to settle the tensions in Lebanon, the Saudis have been willing to negotiate with Iran and Hezbollah.

Last week the Saudi king canceled his appearance next month at a White House dinner in his honor, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. The official reason given was a scheduling conflict, the paper said.

Mustapha Hamarneh, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, said the Saudis were sending Washington a message. “They are telling the U.S. they need to listen to their allies rather than imposing decisions on them and always taking Israel’s side,” Mr. Hamarneh said.

In his speech, the king said, “In the beloved Iraq, the bloodshed is continuing under an illegal foreign occupation and detestable sectarianism.”

He added: “The blame should fall on us, the leaders of the Arab nation, with our ongoing differences, our refusal to walk the path of unity. All that has made the nation lose its confidence in us.”

King Abdullah has not publicly spoken so harshly about the American-led military intervention in Iraq before, and his remarks suggest that his alliance with Washington may be less harmonious than administration officials have been hoping.

Since last summer the administration has asserted that a realignment is occurring in the Middle East, one that groups Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon along with Israel against Iran, Syria and the militant groups that they back: Hezbollah and Hamas.

Washington has urged Saudi Arabia to take a leading role in such a realignment but is finding itself disappointed by the results.

Some here said the king’s speech was a response to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s call on Monday for Arab governments to “begin reaching out to Israel.”

Many read Ms. Rice’s comments as suggesting that Washington was backing away from its support for an Arab initiative aimed at solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel wants the Arabs to make changes in the terms, most notably the call for a right of return for Palestinian refugees to what is today Israel. The Arab League is endorsing the initiative, first introduced by Saudi Arabia in 2002, without changes.

The plan calls on Israel to withdraw from all land it won in the 1967 war in exchange for full diplomatic relations with the Arab world. It also calls for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Regarding the Palestinians, the king said Wednesday, “It has become necessary to end the unjust blockade imposed on the Palestinian people as soon as possible so that the peace process can move in an atmosphere far from oppression and force.”

With regard to Iraq, the Saudis seem to be paying some attention to internal American politics. The Senate on Tuesday signaled support for legislation calling for a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq in exchange for further funding for the war.

Last November, officials here realized that a Democratic upset could spell major changes for the Middle East: a possible pullout from Iraq, fueling further instability and, more important, allowing Iran to extend its influence in the region.

“I don’t think that the Saudi government has decided to distance itself from Bush just yet,” said Adel alToraifi, a columnist here with close ties to the Saudi government. “But I also think that the Saudis have seen that the ball is moving into the court of the Democrats, and they want to extend their hand to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.”

Turki al-Rasheed, who runs an organization promoting democracy in Saudi Arabia, said the king was “saying we may be moving on the same track, but our ends are different.”

“Bush wants to make it look like he is solving the problem,” Mr. Rasheed said. “The king wants to actually solve the problems.”

King Abdullah said the loss of confidence in Arab leaders had allowed American and other forces to hold significant sway in the region. “If confidence is restored it will be accompanied by credibility,” he said, “and if credibility is restored then the winds of hope will blow, and then we will never allow outside forces to define our future nor allow banners to be raised in Arab lands other than those of Arabism, brothers.”

The Saudis sought to enforce discipline on the two-day meeting, reminding Arab leaders and dignitaries to stay on message and leave here with some solution in hand.

“The weight of the Saudis has ensured that this will be a problem-free summit,” said Ayman Safadi, editor in chief of the Jordanian daily Al Ghad. “Nobody is going to veer from the message and go against the Saudis. But that doesn’t mean the problems themselves will be solved.”

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations gave a stark assessment in an address to the meeting, saying the region was “more complex, more fragile and more dangerous than it has been for a very long time.”

There is a shocking daily loss of life in Iraq, he said, and Somalia is in the grip of “banditry, violence and clan rivalries.”

Iran, which on Saturday had new sanctions imposed against it by the Security Council, is “forging ahead with its nuclear program heedless of regional and international concerns,” Mr. Ban added.

Having spent Monday and Tuesday in Jerusalem and the West Bank, Mr. Ban urged the new Palestinian government to demonstrate a “true commitment to peace.”

In return, he said, Israel must cease its settlement activity and stop building a separation barrier.

He concluded, “Instability in the Arab League states is of profound significance to international peace and security.”

Nada Bakri contributed reporting from Beirut, Rasheed Abou-Alsamh from Jidda and Warren Hoge from Riyadh.

    U.S. Iraq Role Is Called Illegal by Saudi King, NYT, 29.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/world/middleeast/29saudi.html

U.S. Long Worried That Iran Supplied Arms in Iraq

March 27, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, March 26 — More than 20 months ago, the United States secretly sent Iran a diplomatic protest charging that Tehran was supplying lethal roadside explosive devices to Shiite extremists in Iraq, according to American officials familiar with the message.

The July 19, 2005, protest — blandly titled “Message from the United States to the Government of Iran” — informed the Iranians that a British soldier had been killed by one of the devices in Maysan Province in eastern Iraq.

The complaint said that the Shiite militants who planted the device had longstanding ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, and that the Revolutionary Guards and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia had been training Iraqi Shiite insurgents in Iran and supplying them with bomb-making equipment.

“We will continue to judge Iran by its actions in Iraq,” the protest added.

Iran flatly denied the charges in a diplomatic reply it sent the following month, and it continues to deny any role in the supply of the lethal weapons. But the confidential exchange foreshadowed the more public confrontation between the Bush administration and Iran that has been unfolding since December.

In the past four months, the administration has sought to put new pressure on Tehran, through military raids against Iranian operatives in Iraq, the dispatch of an American aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, as well as the increasingly public complaints about Iran’s role in arming Shiite militias. The American actions prompted criticism that the White House is trying to find a scapegoat for military setbacks in Iraq, or even to prepare for a new war with Iran.

A review of the administration’s accusations of an Iranian weapons supply role, including interviews with officials in Washington and Baghdad, critics of the administration and independent experts, shows that intelligence that Iran was providing lethal assistance to Shiite militias has been a major worry for more than two years.

The concern intensified toward the end of 2006 as American casualties from the explosive devices, known as explosively formed penetrators, or E.F.P.’s, began to climb. According to classified data gathered by the American military, E.F.P. attacks accounted for 18 percent of combat deaths of Americans and allied troops in Iraq in the last quarter of 2006.

Excluding casualty data for the Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, where the explosives have not been found, the devices accounted for about 30 percent of American and allied deaths for the last quarter of the year.

Some Democrats in Congress, while critical of many aspects of Bush administration policy toward Iraq and Iran, say they are persuaded by the intelligence pointing to an Iranian role in supplying E.F.P.’s. Debate remains about whether Iran’s top leaders ordered the supply of the weapons, about whether the Iranian-supplied devices can be copied in Iraq and about American policy toward Tehran.

In January, the number of American and allied troops killed by E.F.P. attacks was less than half of December’s total. That trend continued in February.

Some American officials suggest that this may be a response to their efforts to highlight the role Iran is accused of playing, but another factor may be that many Shiite militants have opted not to confront American troops. The weapon, however, is still a major danger. On March 15, an E.F.P. attack in eastern Baghdad killed four American service members and wounded two others.

A Devastating Weapon

E.F.P.’s are one of the most devastating weapons on the battlefield. The weapons fire a semi-molten copper slug that cuts through the armor on a Humvee, then shatters inside the vehicle, creating a deadly hail of hot metal that causes especially gruesome wounds even when it does not kill.

Many of the E.F.P.’s encountered by American forces in Iraq are both difficult to detect and extremely destructive. Because they fire from the side of the road, there is no need to dig a hole to plant them, so they are well suited for urban settings. Because they are set off by a passive infrared sensor, the kind of motion detector that turns on security lights, they cannot be countered by electronic jamming.

Adversaries have used the weapon in new ways. On Feb. 12, a British Air Force C-130 was damaged by two E.F.P arrays as it landed on an airstrip in Maysan Province, the first time the device was used to attack an aircraft, according to allied officials. Allied forces later destroyed the aircraft with a 1,000-pound bomb to keep militants from pilfering equipment.

Over the course of the war, the devices have accounted for only a small fraction of the roadside bomb attacks in Iraq; most bombing attacks and most American deaths have been caused by less sophisticated devices favored by Sunni insurgents, not Shiite militias linked to Iran. But E.F.P.’s produce significantly more casualties per attack than other types of roadside bombs.

“They were a new type of threat with a great potential for damage,” said Lt. Col. Kevin W. Farrell, who commanded the First Battalion, 64th Armor of the Third Infantry Division, in 2005, when a penetrator punched through the skirt armor of one of the battalion’s M-1 tanks and cracked its hull. “They accounted for a sizable percentage of our casualties. Based on searches of the Baghdad environment we occupied and multiple local Iraqi sources, we believed that they came from Iran.”

A Gradual Realization

American intelligence analysts say the first detonation of an E.F.P. in Iraq may have come in August 2003. But their view that Iran was playing a role in the attacks emerged slowly. American officials said their assessment of Iranian involvement was based on a cumulative picture that included forensic examination of exploded and captured devices, and parallels between the use of the weapons in Iraq and devices used in southern Lebanon by Hezbollah.

“There was no eureka moment,” said one senior American official, who like several others would discuss intelligence and administration decision-making only on condition of anonymity.

The entire E.F.P. assembly seen repeatedly in Iraq, including the radio link used to activate it and the infrared sensor used to fire it, had been found only one other place in the world, American officials say: Lebanon, since 1998, where it is believed to have been supplied by Iran to Hezbollah.

According to one military expert, some of the radio transmitters used to activate some of the E.F.P.’s in Iraq operate on the same frequency and use the same codes as devices used against Israeli forces in Lebanon.

More evidence came from the interception of trucks in Iraq, within a few miles of the Iranian border, carrying copper discs machined to the precise curvature required to form the penetrating projectile. Wrappers for C4 explosive, among other items, were traceable to Iran, officials say.

An important part of the American claim comes from intelligence, including interrogation of captured militia members, about Shiite militants who use E.F.P.’s and maintain close ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah.

The militant groups led by Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani have operated one of the most important E.F.P. networks. According to American intelligence reports, his network has been receiving E.F.P. components and training from the Quds Force, and elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard, and Hezbollah operatives in Iran. He is on the Iraqi most-wanted list and the Iraqi criminal court issued a warrant for his arrest in 2005.

Ahmad Abu Sajad al-Gharawi, a former Mahdi Army commander, has been active in Maysan Province. American intelligence officials say his group was probably linked to the attack on British forces that was cited in the American diplomatic protest. He is also on the Iraqi government’s most-wanted list, and an Iraqi warrant has been issued for his arrest.

In September 2005, British forces arrested Ahmad Jawwad al-Fartusi, the leader of a splinter group of the Mahdi Army that carried out E.F.P. attacks against British forces in southern Iraq. American intelligence concluded that his fighters might have received training and E.F.P. components from Hezbollah.

Mr. Fartusi lived in Lebanon for several years, and a photograph of him with Hezbollah members was discovered when British forces searched his home. In the view of American officials that may be circumstantial evidence of an Iranian connection, because American intelligence experts say Hezbollah generally conducts operations in Iraq with the consent of Iran.

Last week, American-led forces captured Qais Khazali and Laith Khazali, two Shiite militants who were linked to the kidnapping and killing of five American soldiers in Karbala in January, the United States military said. American officials say they have also trafficked in E.F.P.’s.

Some people who are experts on military matters but who acknowledge they do not have access to the classified intelligence have said the weapons could be made in Iraq. But American officials say they have not found any facilities inside Iraq where the high-quality E.F.P. components are being manufactured.

Nonetheless, the E.F.P. experience in Iraq appears to have, in turn, influenced developments in Lebanon. The installation of E.F.P.’s in foam blocks painted to resemble rocks, a technique first used in 2005 by Shiite militias in Iraq, appeared last summer in Lebanon when Hezbollah was battling Israeli forces. Previously, Hezbollah had generally placed the devices on tripods at the side of the road, covering them with brush to avoid detection.

“There’s almost been a cross-pollenization,” one official said.

American and British forces have been the primary targets in the E.F.P. attacks, but the devices have also been used against Iraqi security forces. In June 2005, a Japanese convoy near Samawa was struck by a roadside bomb that used a remote control firing device typically provided by Iran or Hezbollah. Concerned by the attacks, the British government protested through diplomatic channels in Tehran that year. Taking note of the British complaint, the Americans made their protest through Swiss intermediaries in Iran. As evidence of an Iranian role, the American complaint cited a May 29, 2005, E.F.P attack near Amara that killed a 21-year-old British lance corporal, Alan Brackenbury. Iran denied any involvement.

Discussing Concerns Publicly

After that diplomatic rebuff, American officials began to broach the topic publicly. In August 2005, Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush’s national security adviser, said allied forces were being made targets of bombs “that seem to have a footprint similar to that of devices used by groups that have historically had Iranian support.”

In October 2005, the British ambassador to Iraq, William Patey, told reporters in London that Iran was supplying lethal technology that had been used against British troops. Prime Minister Tony Blair added, “The particular nature of those devices lead us to either to Iranian elements or to Hezbollah.” At the time Mr. Blair expressed caution about the certainty of the link to Iran, but in February of this year he said it was clear that Iran “is the origin of that weaponry.”

Beginning in April 2006, E.F.P. attacks began to rise. With both the diplomatic protests and the public statements having failed to stop the attacks, American officials again began to discuss what to do. The changing nature of the American strategy, with its increased emphasis on challenging Shiite militias in and around Baghdad, made the issue all the more pressing.

According to officials involved in the discussion, who asked not be identified, one concern was that raiding Iranian operatives in Iraq might provoke Iran to increase lethal assistance to Shiite militants. Another worry was that it might require the American command to divert military and intelligence assets from missions against Sunni insurgents, like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

“For many months American officials were torn between a desire to do something and a wish to avoid confrontation,” Philip D. Zelikow, a former senior State Department official, said in a recent speech. “When a government is conflicted about what to do, the usual result is inaction.”

As the Bush administration debated what to do, one issue involved the rules of engagement if American forces were to conduct raids against Iranian operatives in Iraq. After the United States Central Command submitted a plan for such raids, one option that was weighed was to declare the Quds Force that is operating in Iraq, to be a “hostile force.”

Such an order would give the military a clear legal justification for taking action against Iranian officials and operatives in Iraq, and flexibility in planning the raids.

Other officials said the Iranians were also involved in economic and social programs in Iraq. They argued for a more limited approach, saying that the United States should single out only Iranian operatives found to have “hostile intent” against coalition forces. The Bush administration decided that the raids would be carried out under the more limited rules of engagement for now.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., then the top American commander, approved plans to brief the news media on the E.F.P. issue — a reversal for military officials, who had been reluctant to highlight the effectiveness of the weapons for fear of encouraging their use.

“Our intelligence analysts advised our leaders that the historical Quds Force pattern is to pull back when their operations are exposed, so MNF-I leadership decided to expose their operations to save American lives,” said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the chief spokesman for Multinational Forces-Iraq, as the American-led command is known.

The Iran Connection

Some Democratic lawmakers who are critical of the administration’s Iraq policies say they now accept that there is a connection between Iran and the E.F.P. attacks in Iraq, though they emphasize that Iran is not the primary reason for instability in Iraq.

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who opposed Mr. Bush’s troop reinforcement plan, said he believed that the Bush administration was using the E.F.P. issue to distract attention from the difficulties in Iraq. But he said he was persuaded that the weapons were coming from Iran, in part from extensive talks with American and British commanders during trips to Iraq.

“They want to keep us under pressure in Iraq without causing a major power reaction by us or a major meltdown within Iraq, which puts a failing state on their borders,” Mr. Reed said of the Iranians.

At a February hearing, Senator Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a critic of the plan to send more troops to Baghdad, pressed Mike McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, to acknowledge that other countries in the region, too, were supplying insurgents in Iraq.

Mr. Levin, however, said he was “not surprised” by Mr. McConnell’s view that some of Iran’s leaders probably knew of E.F.P. deliveries arranged by the Quds Force, and aides say Mr. Levin believes that the administration has been too cautious about pinning the blame on Iran’s leaders.

Flynt Leverett, a senior fellow at the New American Foundation and a Middle East specialist who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and on the staff of the National Security Council, also said he believed that Iran was supplying munitions to Shiite militias.

But Mr. Leverett said the threat to American troops from Sunni insurgents, who draw on Syria and Saudi Arabia for money and other logistical support, was “orders of magnitude” greater than that from Shiites, and he contended that the Bush administration’s public emphasis on the E.F.P.’s was part of a larger administration strategy to blame Iran “for the failure of the American project in Iraq.”

In the report it completed in December, the Iraq Study Group called for opening talks with Iran and suggested Iran could take steps to improve security in Iraq by stemming “the flow of equipment, technology, and training to any group resorting to violence in Iraq.”

“The fact that Iran may be supplying lethal equipment is all the more reason to deal with them,” Lee H. Hamilton, a co-chairman of the panel, said in an interview. “We do think it fortifies the case for engaging Iran.”

    U.S. Long Worried That Iran Supplied Arms in Iraq, NYT, 27.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/world/middleeast/27weapons.html

Analysis: Rice Makes Slow Mideast Gains

March 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:43 p.m. ET
The New York Times

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is trying to kick open the door toward Mideast peace as wide as she can each time she comes here, knowing it will swing closed a little each time she leaves.

Rice flew home from the region Tuesday after brokering an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians to meet every two weeks to discuss day-to-day issues. Though the deal was modest, she called the mere fact that the two sides would confer ''a really important step,'' and she wouldn't rule out formal peace talks before President Bush leaves office in less than two years.

Addressing a decades-old conflict suffused with suspicion and tangled in political agendas, Rice's challenge is to make progress, even if only a little, each time she talks to both sides.

Her aides describe a strategy of continually stirring the pot -- throwing in new ideas, or reworked old ones, to keep things moving. As other diplomats have discovered, standing still in the Middle East usually means you are going backward.

''I think the really important thing that we've done over the last few months is that they're not in their corners; they're in the same room and they're going to walk down a path together,'' Rice said at a news conference here Tuesday.

''They've opened doors. They're not closing them, and that's a really important step.''

Rice's optimistic talk contrasts with the gloomier outlook that many others have for resolving the two sides' bitter dispute.

While conceding that continued U.S. engagement is important, Daniel Ayalon, the recently retired Israeli ambassador to the U.S., called the agreement ''no breakthrough'' and expressed skepticism that it would produce anything of substance.

''The talks are reduced to daily management, not the big things of the political horizon,'' he said, using a phrase for the major stumbling blocks like how a future Palestinian state would live in peace with Israel.

''You can't sustain momentum unless you say this is more important to me'' than other issues, Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat chair for peace and development at the University of Maryland, said of Rice's efforts.

He added, ''It's been very hard for the public in the Middle East to take American diplomacy seriously. There are a lot of people, I wouldn't say it was all people, who are skeptical.''

As if to underscore how intractable the Israeli-Palestinian problem is, Rice's optimistic words were almost immediately undercut by a senior Israeli government official before she had even left for the airport.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would talk to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas only about immediate concerns such as security or humanitarian problems as well as a ''general political horizon,'' the official said.

No specifics would be discussed, such as the borders of an eventual Palestinian state, until the Palestinians stop firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip and release a captured Israeli soldier.

By Rice's description, Olmert and Abbas have agreed to sit down together every other week for open-ended talks that could eventually take on the hardest issues dividing their people. There was no mention of conditions or benchmarks to expand the discussions.

''We're on a path here that, yes, at the beginning, I think needs to be careful, needs to build confidence,'' Rice said. ''But what often happens in international politics is that you put in the hard work up front and then there's an opening.''

While Israel had tried to limit discussions to humanitarian and security issues, Rice ensured that talks would be broader, Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said.

''Today the secretary succeeded in maintaining the channel of political communication between President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert,'' Erekat said.

One of the chief obstacles to a peace solution for Israel and the Palestinians is that it has always been in someone's interest not to have one, or not to have one right now, or not on terms that might look too good for the other side.

Although Olmert and Abbas have repeatedly pledged to work for peace, and have met several times before, they serve political constituencies that are deeply mistrustful of each other.

Both leaders are politically weak or compromised, and neither has shown much stomach for the wrenching emotional issues and political risks that would come with a frank discussion of a land-for-peace settlement.

So even as Olmert and Abbas go about their regular meetings, it is inevitable that they or their supporters will chip away at some of the work and much of the optimism that Rice has laid out.

Though she plans to be here often through the 22-month balance of Bush's term, she knows it is doubtful she can frame any final deal in that time. But, as one senior State Department official said, all the alternatives are worse.

------

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Anne Gearan covers foreign affairs and diplomacy, based in Washington.

    Analysis: Rice Makes Slow Mideast Gains, NYT, 27.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Rice-Mideast-Momentum.html

Rice Urges Mideast ‘Common Agenda’

March 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:16 p.m. ET
The New York Times

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday it was important for Israel and the Palestinians to establish a ''common agenda'' to move forward on creating a Palestinian state -- an apparent break with Israel, which has ruled out peace talks for now.

Rice also said all the parties need to have a ''destination in mind'' to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But she conceded the sides were far apart, and had no specific proposal to get long-stalled peace talks moving.

She spoke at a news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, after their first meeting since the Islamic militant Hamas and Abbas' more moderate Fatah Party formed a new coalition government last week.

Israel has said it will not hold peace talks with Abbas now that he has joined forces with Hamas.

Rice said she would meet twice with both Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during her fourth trip to the region in as many months.

''It's extremely important to establish a common agenda to move forward toward the establishment'' of a Palestinian state, she said.

''I think it can help all of us to have a destination in mind,'' Rice said. ''I think this time it is best to talk about that political horizon in parallel. But I sincerely hope in the future the parties themselves can talk about the political horizon themselves.''

Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, declined to comment pending the outcome of a meeting between Rice and the Israeli leader later Sunday.

Abbas aides said he and Rice explored ways to get moderate Arab states involved in Israeli-Palestinian peace-making. A 2002 Arab peace initiative, which offers recognition of Israel in exchange for a withdrawal from all lands Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast War, is to be revived at an Arab Summit next week.

In one proposal raised Sunday, a committee appointed at the summit would serve as a contact for the Quartet of Mideast mediators -- the U.S., the U.N., the EU and Russia -- as well as Israel and the Palestinians.

Abbas said he and Rice also talked about holding more meetings with Olmert. ''All these meetings are part of the bilateral relations with Israel and the future vision that we are all seeking and working toward,'' Abbas said.

Abbas met earlier with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. But the U.N. chief shunned Hamas officials, dealing a setback to the new Palestinian government's efforts to win international recognition. Rice snubbed even U.S.-backed moderates in the Cabinet.

While welcoming the new government's formation, Ban said ''the atmosphere is not fully ripe'' for talks with Hamas, which has killed more than 250 Israelis in suicide bombings and refuses to recognize the Jewish state.

He expressed hope the new government's actions would ''show a genuine commitment to the basic principles ... of peace.''

Hamas and Fatah formed their alliance in the hope of halting deadly Palestinian infighting and persuading the West and Israel to resume crucial funding cut off after Hamas swept parliamentary elections a year ago.

But the new government's platform falls short of demands by the Quartet that Hamas renounce violence, recognize Israel, and accept past peace agreements.

Palestinians say it implicitly recognizes Israel by ''respecting'' peace agreements. Abbas, who hopes to restart peace talks with Israel, has said the deal is the best he can get from Hamas.

U.S. and European diplomats have held a stream of contacts with moderate members of the new coalition while avoiding Hamas ministers. The withheld funding has not been restored.

Palestinian officials rejected the notion of diplomatic cherry-picking.

''This government is one team,'' Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti said. ''Whoever meets with one member is meeting with the whole government.''

Israel welcomed the decisions by Rice and Ban not to meet with Hamas officials.

''We are happy to see world leaders and prominent figures like the secretary general continuing to uphold the Quartet principles,'' Eisin said.

Ban said he would urge Olmert during a meeting Monday to release frozen Palestinian funds, ease travel restrictions in Palestinian areas and halt settlement activity in the West Bank.

On Sunday, he visited the Aida refugee camp near the West Bank town of Bethlehem and inspecting Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank.

Senior U.N. officials and the Palestinian governor of Bethlehem, Salah Tameri, explained to the U.N. chief the difficulties caused by Israeli travel restrictions and the barrier.

Israel says it built the enclosure to keep out Palestinian militants, who have killed hundreds of Israelis in bombing and shooting attacks.

''This is a very sad and tragic thing to see many suffering from the construction of this wall, depriving opportunities for basic living,'' Ban said.

Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb and Dalia Nammari contributed to this report.

    Rice Urges Mideast ‘Common Agenda’, NYT, 25.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?hp

Rice Hints at U.S. Peace Push on Mideast

March 25, 2007
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER

ASWAN, Egypt, March 24 — In making her fourth trip to the Middle East in four months to try to breathe life into dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has opened the door to the possibility that the United States might offer its own proposals to bridge the divide on some of the issues that have bedeviled the region since 1979.

“I don’t rule out at some point that might be a useful thing to do,” Ms. Rice told reporters in Washington before departing for Aswan, Egypt.

Of course, trying to impose an American-made solution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has, for years, been the very thing that Bush administration officials have steadfastly said they would not do.

But times have changed. The Iraq war has eroded support for the United States in the Arab world. And many administration officials now believe that the only way the country can regain its standing among Arabs is if it is seen to be pushing for progress toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and the eventual creation of a Palestinian state.

Several State Department officials say that there is now an acknowledgment within the administration that the hands-off policy has caused prospects for peace to deteriorate.

“This is a place where if you leave things alone, they don’t just stagnate,” one administration official said. “They get worse.”

Ms. Rice has been pushing for openings even as multiple doors have appeared to slam shut.

In the Bush administration’s first term, Middle Eastern experts said, the deal brokered by Saudi Arabia last month in which the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, agreed to form a national unity government with the Islamist militant group Hamas, would have grounded all hopes for peace talks. Hamas is viewed as a terrorist organization by both Israel and the United States.

But Ms. Rice has pressed on anyway. While Israel has continued its boycott of the Palestinian government, the United States has relented somewhat and agreed to talk to moderate members of the government, including Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian finance minister.

Ms. Rice is also prodding Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel to start peace negotiations with Mr. Abbas, and to negotiate with him separately from Hamas.

“She really has tied her personal credibility to this issue in a way that most normal political observers would say, ‘Is she nuts?’ ” said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center who was a senior adviser for Arab-Israeli relations at the State Department under the previous three presidents.

But, Mr. Miller added, “Unless you’re in the middle of the mix, nothing gets done.”

To get Palestinians to buy into the peace process, Ms. Rice has talked of late about a “political horizon,” a diplomatic shorthand for the contours of a Palestinian state. Now, with Israelis increasingly disenchanted because of the Palestinian unity government accord, Ms. Rice is pressing Arab states to hold out a political horizon of their own that could give Israelis something to look forward to.

In Egypt this weekend, Ms. Rice is expected to try to prod America’s Sunni Arab allies to augment a 2002 Saudi peace proposal when the Arab League holds its meeting in Riyadh at the end of the month. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations, who is on his own tour of the Middle East, will also be there.

American officials have largely given up their hope that the Arabs might actually change the initiative to include things more palatable to Israel — like, for instance, signaling a willingness to at least discuss ways to settle the issue of Palestinian refugees who left, or were forced to leave, their homes in Israel.

But Ms. Rice may be able to get some sort of formal or informal mechanism going that could give the Israelis the hope of eventually normalizing relations with the Arab world, American officials said. “It would be a very good thing if at some point, the Arab initiative provided a basis for discussion,” Ms. Rice said.

That is a tall order even in the best of circumstances — most Arab countries do not talk to Israel. It becomes even taller considering that the Arab League works under rules that require unanimous votes from all its members. And in any case, the secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, signaled Saturday that there was no intention to change the league’s peace initiative.

“We fail to understand why we should modify such a peace offer and make it less objective and less positive,” Reuters quoted him as saying at a news conference here with Mr. Ban on Saturday. But there is a growing chorus in Washington that after the Saudi-brokered agreement that formed the Palestinian national unity government, the time has come for the Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, to try to push an Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative forward.

“We’re at a critical juncture right now,” said David Makovsky, a Middle East specialist with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The Arab states can reach out to the Israeli center, and to Olmert,” who Mr. Makovsky pointed out is politically weakened right now within Israel. “But if they don’t, they shouldn’t be surprised if Israel moves rightward.”

    Rice Hints at U.S. Peace Push on Mideast, NYT, 25.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/world/middleeast/25diplo.html?hp

Bush Leaves Mexico With Optimism, but No Agreements

March 15, 2007
The New York Times
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

MÉRIDA, Mexico, March 14 — President Bush left Mexico on Wednesday without reaching concrete agreements with the new Mexican president on a host of issues, from greater cooperation on attacking drug traffic to extending protections for Mexican farmers who grow corn and beans.

But as he sought to mend ties with Mexico, Mr. Bush vowed to step up his efforts to persuade Congress to approve a bigger guest worker program for Mexican migrants and to provide a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants living in the United States illegally, most of them from Mexico and Central America.

Mr. Bush said that the mood in Congress had changed and that he was optimistic that he could persuade moderate Senate Republicans to join Democrats to overhaul immigration laws. He said the proposed changes would create a border where trade would flow freely but criminals and terrorists would face stiff obstacles.

“A good migration law will help both economies and will help the security of both countries,” Mr. Bush said at a news conference here with President Felipe Calderón. “If people can come into our country, for example, on a temporary basis to work, doing jobs Americans aren’t doing, they won’t have to sneak across the border.”

The meetings with Mr. Calderón were on the last stop on Mr. Bush’s weeklong tour of Latin America. At every stop, the American president tried to highlight the positive things the United States had done in the region, promoting democracy and free trade and providing $1.6 billion in foreign aid.

Mr. Bush’s tour was widely seen in Latin America as an attempt to counter the growing influence of Hugo Chávez, the leftist populist president of Venezuela. Mr. Chávez has been undermining United States influence in the region, using his country’s vast oil wealth to build an anti-Washington coalition of left-leaning heads of state.

Mr. Calderón is a conservative free trade advocate, but he made it clear at the news conference that he would remain neutral in the ideological battle. He said he would seek to re-establish full diplomatic ties with Venezuela, which were downgraded by his predecessor, Vicente Fox, a staunch ally of the United States.

“We are respectful of the heads of state of other countries, such as Venezuela, and certainly the United States,” Mr. Calderón said.

On trade, the two leaders did not resolve the thorny issue of protections for small farmers here that are to expire next year. Mr. Bush said it would be a mistake to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, as many leftists here want.

Nor did the presidents make much real progress in coordinating the fight against drug dealers, though Mr. Bush did praise Mr. Calderón’s tough stance against traffickers and pledged to do more to reduce the demand for drugs in the United States.

But the main focus of the talks appeared to be the perennial problem of illegal immigration — more than 400,000 Mexicans cross the border without papers each year.

Mr. Calderón has sharply criticized the United States for plans to build a 700-mile wall along the border. He maintains that policies aimed at bringing more investment to Mexico would be a better strategy to slow illegal immigration.

For his part, Mr. Bush, dogged by a scandal over the firings of federal prosecutors, seemed to embrace a chance to talk about immigration. He used the news briefing to send separate messages to his American and Mexican audiences.

He said his efforts to change immigration laws had been thwarted by the widespread perception in the United States that the current laws were not being enforced. That perception has changed, he maintained, as Congress and his administration have taken measures to deport more illegal immigrants and to fortify the border, posting 6,000 members of the National Guard as sentinels.

He called on his fellow Republicans opposed to his guest worker plan to get behind it now that he has addressed their concerns about border security. He said he had dispatched his homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, and his commerce secretary, Carlos Gutierrez, to negotiate with Republicans, and suggested that the talks were focused on what to do about illegal immigrants already in the country.

“There’s got to be a middle ground, a reasonable way to deal with the 12 million people or so that have been in our country for a period of time,” Mr. Bush said. “And that’s where a lot of the discussions are taking place. And I think we can find a rational way forward, somewhere in between automatic citizenship and kicking people out of the country.”

Mr. Bush also had a message for his Mexican audience, urging patience as the American legislative process plays out. “I don’t know about Mexico, Mr. President,” Mr. Bush said with a wry smile, “but sometimes legislators, you know, debate issues for a while before a solution can be achieved.”

The differences of perspective on either side of the border were evident at the news conference, which was broadcast live on national radio here. A Mexican reporter asked Mr. Bush why people should believe that he could deliver a temporary-worker program after having failed to do so for six years. An American reporter asked Mr. Calderón if his relatives working in America were there legally, a question for which Mr. Calderón had a poignant answer.

“Yes, I do have family in the United States, and what I can tell you is that these are people who work and respect that country,” he said, his voice going misty. “They pay their taxes to the government. These are people who work in the field, they work with — in the fields with vegetables. They probably handle what you eat, the lettuce, et cetera.”

“I am from Michoacán,” he went on, “and in Michoacán we have four million people. Two million of these Michoacán natives are in the States. We want them to come back. We want them to find jobs here in Mexico. We miss them. These are our best people. These are bold people. They’re young. They’re strong. They’re talented.”

Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting.

    Bush Leaves Mexico With Optimism, but No Agreements, NYT, 15.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/world/americas/15latin.html

Bush Meets Anger Over Immigration Issue as He Promotes Free Trade in Guatemala

March 13, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and MARC LACEY

GUATEMALA CITY, March 12 — President Bush came to this struggling Central American nation on Tuesday bearing a message that free trade with the United States would improve conditions for even the poorest Latin Americans.

But he was also confronted with an angry, outside-in perspective on the immigration debate raging at home, with even his otherwise friendly host, President Óscar Berger, using a ceremonial welcome to criticize the arrest of several hundred illegal workers, many of them Guatemalans, in Massachusetts last week.

“As is the case in every mature relationship, once in a while differences of opinion arise,” Mr. Berger said in the central courtyard of the grand presidential palace here. “For example, with regard to the issue of migrants, and particularly those who have been deported without clear justification.”

The remark, coming during otherwise warm comments by Mr. Berger, reflected the longstanding anger here over deportation of Guatemalans from the United States, which has been stoked by a raid last week in which more than 300 workers were arrested at Michael Bianco Inc., a company in New Bedford, Mass., that provides vests for the military.

It gave Mr. Bush a taste of what is to come in the next and final stop in his Latin American tour, to Mérida, Mexico, where immigration is expected to be high on the agenda with President Felipe Calderón.

But with a much smaller population, Guatemala is also a focal point in the immigration debate — 10 percent of its population resides in the United States, according to officials traveling with the president.

While Mr. Bush’s agenda here included a proposed new regional effort to attack the drug syndicates — a majority of Colombian cocaine that finds its way to the United States comes through here — free trade and even adoption, Mr. Bush and Mr. Berger said immigration was a major topic of discussion.

Newspapers here have been dominated by news of the raid, and stories abound of families torn apart and children left behind as their parents were sent off to Texas and New Mexico for deportation, but federal officials say 60 people were released for humanitarian reasons.

Facing pointed questions from Guatemalan journalists, Mr. Bush stood by the raid, saying, “People will be treated with respect, but the United States will enforce our law.”

Mr. Bush said he disputed “conspiracies” relayed by Mr. Berger that children were taken away from families.

Mr. Bush denied such accounts. “No es la verdad,” Mr. Bush said, “That’s not the way America operates. We’re a decent, compassionate country. Those are the kind of things we do not do. We believe in families, and we’ll treat people with dignity.”

Some of those theories have also held that the raid was executed in advance of Mr. Bush’s visit here, to send a message, an idea that United States officials denied.

In fact, an American official who was part of Mr. Bush’s delegation said the timing of the Massachusetts raid could not have been worse, and served to inflame an already emotional issue, adding more passion to anti-Bush protests here.

“Bush doesn’t accept us on his land, so why should we let him on ours,” said Armando Chavajay, a protester outside the Mayan spiritual site that Mr. Bush visited at Iximché.

“They grab us in the U.S. and send us out like criminals,” he said. “We are going there to work and help our families. Now he will know how we feel.”

The protest at Iximché came on top of fierce confrontations throughout the capital, Guatemala City, in the afternoon, with riot police officers firing tear gas at protesters who were hurling stones and eggs, setting off fireworks and burning American flags. One McDonald’s restaurant had anti-Bush slurs written on it.

American officials have suggested that the protests dogging Mr. Bush throughout his trip are being instigated and paid for by his chief nemesis in the region, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

Along the winding road to Iximché, Mr. Bush’s motorcade passed hundreds of indigenous demonstrators who faced off with police and soldiers to oppose the president’s visit to the Mayan spiritual site. At one point protesters managed to block the president’s route with boulders, but soldiers cleared them away in time for the motorcade to pass.

“Iximché represents the dignity of the Mayan people and we can’t have a man who represents war come to this place,” said Jorge Morales, a protest leader. “Our ancestors have spent hundreds of years on this ground and they will feel his presence.”

Mr. Morales and other leaders of indigenous groups said they would perform a ritual cleansing of the negative energy at the site, complete with candles, flowers and song and dance. “We will do a thorough spiritual cleaning,” he said.”

But after Mr. Bush left, the initial cleanup took a different form. Local people picked up the kernels of corn that had been thrown on the ground as part of the welcome of Mr. Bush. With the bulk of the population living in poverty, local people said they did not want the food to go to waste.

It is that kind of crushing poverty that Mr. Bush said he came here to address. And it is that kind of poverty that fuels anger at the United States and its trade policy. Mr. Chávez has tapped that anger in his push for nationalizing industry and cutting interaction with the United States.

While Mr. Chávez was in Haiti promoting his aid to the region, Mr. Bush was in the Guatemalan countryside to highlight his aid efforts and to tout the benefits of trade.

Mr. Bush started his day in Santa Cruz Balanyá, visiting a medical operation run jointly by the United States and Guatemalan militaries. On another stop, in a traditional, embroidered jacket, Mr. Bush helped load crates of lettuce onto a truck at a packing station in the village of Chirijuyu. The station was operated by Labradores Mayas, a food cooperative that was started by a local farmer who took advantage of an irrigation system built with a Usaid loan to transform subsistence farms into commercial enterprises that now distribute to Wal-Mart Central America and McDonald’s.

“Free trade is important,” Mr. Bush said. “It’s a gateway. It creates jobs in America and it creates jobs here.”

It was a message Mr. Bush would repeat in fending off criticism of his free-trade policy, saying at his press briefing with Mr. Berger: “I also believe most citizens in Guatemala would rather find meaningful jobs at home instead of having to travel to a foreign land to work. And therefore, the more we can enhance prosperity in our neighborhood, the more we can encourage trade that actually yields jobs and stability.”

Jim Rutenberg reported from Guatemala City, and Marc Lacey from Iximché, Guatemala.

    Bush Meets Anger Over Immigration Issue as He Promotes Free Trade in Guatemala, NYT, 13.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/world/americas/13prexy.html

Bush, First Lady Welcomed in Guatemala

March 12, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:01 p.m. ET
The New York Times

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (AP) -- Smiling Guatemalan children warmly greeted President Bush with cries of ''Hola!'' and gave first lady Laura Bush lilies Monday as the president worked to burnish the U.S. image in Latin America.

Guatemala's President Oscar Berger and his wife took the Bushes to nearby Santa Cruz Balanya, a town of about 10,000 mostly indigenous Guatemalans to stress the need for social justice and equality.

Bush visited the site of a U.S. military medical readiness and training exercise team, which bring military doctors from both nations to provide medical, dental, surgical and optometrical services for underserved rural areas. Afterward, the Bushes went to the town square, where they listened to a marimba band in front of a yellow church.

There, they walked along the edge of a cheering crowd of about 500 people, shaking hands to greetings of ''Hola!'' The crowd also cheered Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Frame-by-frame, the images of Bush's visit to Guatemala are depicting sharp contrasts, with the leader of the richest nation reaching out to the impoverished.

Undeterred by protests that have dogged Bush at every stop on his five-nation Latin American trip, Bush is working to convince Guatemalans that the United States is a compassionate nation. It's the same message he delivered earlier at stops in Brazil, Uruguay and Colombia.

''It's very important for the people of South America and Central America to know that the United States cares deeply about the human condition, and that much of our aid is aimed at helping people realize their God-given potential,'' Bush said Sunday in Bogota, Colombia.

His goodwill tour also serves as a counterweight to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who has been doing his own tour of Latin America. On Sunday in Bolivia, Chavez called for a socialist counterattack against the American ''empire.'' Chavez has been pumping his nation's oil profits into social programs across the region to further the leftward political shift he's leading in the United States' backyard.

Using his own Marine One helicopter, Bush will fly around this mountainous country, about the size of Tennessee, for a series of events meant to show that strong democratic reforms can improve the lives of Guatemalans.

He'll tour Labradores Mayas, a thriving vegetable packing station in Chirijuyu that has received $350,000 in U.S. assistance since 2003 and is taking advantage of eased trade restrictions under the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement.

Congress narrowly passed the trade pact last year and Bush wants lawmakers to approve of three similar ones with Colombia, Panama and Peru. He acknowledges that these are ''tough votes,'' but failing to get congressional approval would blunt Bush's weeklong message that free trade and democratic reforms can help lift Latin Americans from poverty.

The vegetable packing station Bush is visiting was started in the early 1990s by an indigenous farmer named Mariano Canu. The association of 66 small farming families produces 95,000 heads of lettuce a week that are sold in Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras. It employs 200 indigenous farmers and is one of the major vegetable suppliers for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s Central American supermarkets.

Nearly three-quarters of Guatemala's indigenous people, descendants of native Mayans, live in poverty. Many who have protested Bush's visit don't agree with U.S. immigration policy and believe current trade agreements between the countries have kept Guatemalans from rising out of poverty.

The distribution of income throughout Guatemala is lopsided. The richest 20 percent of the population receives two-thirds of all income. As a result, about 80 percent of the population lives in poverty, including more than 7 million who live in extreme poverty.

On Sunday, in Tecpan, more than 100 Mayan Indians protested Bush's visit, holding signs that read: ''No more blood for oil.'' The group is angry that Bush will be visiting the sacred Iximche archaeological site, founded as the capital of the Kaqchiqueles kingdom before the Spanish conquest in 1524.

Mayan priests say they will purify the sacred archaeological site at Iximche to rid it of any ''bad spirits'' after Bush is there.

''That a person like (Bush) with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked is going to walk in our sacred lands is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,'' said Juan Tiney, director of a Mayan non-governmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders.

Back in the capital, Bush and Berger will talk about trade and immigration. The money that Guatemalans in the United States send back to the nation has become a significant part of the nation's economy.

    Bush, First Lady Welcomed in Guatemala, NYT, 12.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush-Latin-America.html

Bush Visits Colombia Amid Security and Protests

March 12, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and SIMON ROMERO

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, March 11 —The risky nature of President Bush’s trip to this violent country was spelled out on a television monitor aboard Air Force One en route from Uruguay: “Colombia presents the most significant threat environment of this five country trip!”

Listing the terrorist and criminal threats as “high,” the message — meant for Mr. Bush’s security detail but seen by reporters on the plane — underscored the complications Mr. Bush is confronting during his visit to South and Central America.

Mr. Bush came to Colombia, a focal point of the war on drugs, to pledge support for his closest South American ally, President Álvaro Uribe, as leftist leaders in the region seek to counter United States influence. Mr. Bush also came to highlight signs of progress in the Colombian capital, where no American president has visited in more than two decades.

But, as the message on Air Force One showed, it is by no means safe; Mr. Bush stayed here for only seven hours before heading to his next stop, Guatemala. Security officials here even sent a phony airport motorcade as a decoy to flush out any potential attackers on the route to the presidential palace. (There were none.)

Mr. Bush’s host is weathering a scandal linking some close supporters to paramilitary drug traffickers and death squads that are on the United States’ list of terror groups.

And growing allegations of human rights abuses have led groups like Human Rights Watch — with new cachet in a United States Congress now under Democratic control — to oppose approval of a trade deal with Colombia that has already been signed by Mr. Bush.

Anti-Bush protesters battled the police and burned American flags a mile from the presidential palace where the presidents met. At a news conference afterward, Mr. Bush and Mr. Uribe waded directly into questions about the scandal and human rights that are clouding Mr. Uribe’s international reputation.

“I appreciate the president’s determination to bring human rights violators to justice,” Mr. Bush said. “He is strong in that determination. It’s going to be very important for members of my United States — our United States Congress to see that determination. And I believe, if given a fair chance, President Uribe can make the case.”

Asked whether the scandal racking Mr. Uribe’s administration had shaken Mr. Bush’s confidence in him, Mr. Bush said no, because Mr. Uribe had told him that Colombia’s judicial independence would hold people to account regardless of who they are.

Investigations have pointed to kidnappings and the compilation of an assassination list within Colombia’s secret police targeting union officials and academics. These actions, according to investigators, may have been carried out by political supporters of Mr. Uribe working with paramilitary leaders.

Mr. Uribe addressed what he called the “revelations” about his administration in his opening remarks, saying they were happening because “our law on justice and peace requires and demands truth.” He repeated his argument that the scandal had come to light because of actions promoted by his government, an argument that critics had rejected.

“This spin has no basis in fact,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch in Washington. Mr. Vivanco said the scandal’s disclosures were made public through independent investigations by the news media, which Mr. Uribe’s government have actively resisted and criticized, and by the attorney general’s office and the Supreme Court.

Mr. Bush’s aides said he came in part to highlight improvements made under Mr. Uribe, including a more than 30 percent drop in homicides in the last four years and a larger percentage drop in kidnappings and terrorist attacks, according to the State Department.

But the pull of war continues to interrupt daily life here. Just this weekend the State Department confirmed a report in the local news media that United States troops played a supporting role in an operation in January in a part of Colombia under the sway of a Marxist-inspired rebel group holding three American contractors kidnapped in 2003.

The hostages, Marc Gonsalves, Tom Howes and Keith Stansell, Northrop Grumman employees here on a drug eradication mission, were taken when their plane crashed in the jungle. Marshall Louis, a spokesman for the United States Embassy here, declined to provide details on the military operation.

Asked about the operation — the sort relatives of the hostages have warned against — Mr. Bush said, “I’ve obviously discussed this with the president, and he’s developing strategies that will hopefully bring them out safely and that’s all I ask.”

Mr. Bush arrived to the pomp of a state visit. The importance of each man to the other — Mr. Uribe as an ally in a region with shifting allegiances; Mr. Bush as Colombia’s single largest outside benefactor — was on full display.

The welcoming ceremonies were far more lavish than anything that has greeted Mr. Bush so far on this trip. He and the first lady, Laura Bush, exited Air Force One to a phalanx of soldiers in full dress as a military band played. They were feted again in the central square of the presidential palace, Casa de Nariño, where the president reviewed Colombian troops, and stood for the playing of both national anthems, before entering the palace for meetings with Mr. Uribe.

Mr. Bush’s visit to Bogotá was in itself a statement of support for Mr. Uribe: no American president has visited the capital city since 1982, largely because of security concerns.

Aides said Mr. Bush chose to come to illustrate that under Mr. Uribe it was now possible for an American president to visit without incident.

But his hosts were not taking any chances. After the empty decoy motorcade left the airport, the real one traveled to the palace at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour under heavy military guard, with 20,000 troops and police assigned to his protection, lining his route with submachine guns visible on the street and on rooftops. The motorcade passed nearby protesters carrying a large sign that read “Yankee Go Home” and another banner displaying the Communist hammer and sickle.

The leading local newspaper here, El Tiempo, griped that Mr. Bush’s visit was too short, and featured a front-page headline that read, “Bush: Seven hours are enough?” Above it read a smaller headline listing the visits by the last two United States president to visit the city: “Kennedy (1961, 13 hours) and Reagan (1982, 5 hours).”

Aides traveling with the president said the headline was indicative of the push-pull relationship between the United States and its southern neighbors — showing how upon Mr. Bush’s arrival here he could at once be criticized for not staying long enough and for daring to come at all.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Uribe took questions from reporters under a portrait of Simón Bolívar, the South American liberation hero at the heart of the militaristic populism of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, a populism that is often described as “Bolivarianism.”

Mr. Chávez, on his own tour of the region, gave a speech at a military base in Bolivia in which he accused Mr. Bush of plotting to assassinate him. Mr. Chávez, while pledging financial support for Bolivian flood victims, said capitalism was “the road to hell.”

    Bush Visits Colombia Amid Security and Protests, NYT, 12.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/world/americas/12prexy.html

Bush Hails Biofuels Pact in Brazil

March 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:17 p.m. ET
The New York Times

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- At a mega fuel depot for tanker trucks, President Bush heralded a new ethanol agreement with Brazil Friday as way to boost alternative fuels production across the Americas. Demonstrators upset with Bush's visit here worry that the president and his biofuels buddy, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, really have visions of an OPEC-like cartel on ethanol.

But Bush and Silva said increasing alternative fuel use will lead to more jobs, a cleaner environment and greater independence from the whims of the oil market. In Brazil, nearly eight in 10 new cars already run on fuel made from sugar cane.

''`It makes sense for us to collaborate for the sake of mankind,'' Bush said at Silva's side, after touring the depot. ''We see the bright and real potential for our citizens being able to use alternative sources of energy that will promote the common good.''

The agreement itself was signed Friday morning by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Brazilian counterpart, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe announced.

Bush's focus on energy during the first stop on his eighth trip to Latin America comes as the president's nemesis in the region, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, is using his vast oil wealth to court allies. Bush's trip also includes visits to Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.

At the fuel depot, Bush, sporting a white hard hat, fingered sunflower seeds and stalks of sugar cane and sniffed beakers of yellowish biodiesel and clear ethanol.

The depot is operated by a subsidiary of the state-owned Petrobras, where about 100 trucks come and go daily. About a half mile from the site, a large white balloon hung in the sky emblazoned with blue letters that said ''Bush Out'' in both English and Portuguese. The ''s'' in Bush was replaced by a swastika.

On his 45-minute ride from the airport to his hotel on Thursday night, Bush's motorcade sped by a dozen or so gas stations where drivers in this traffic-clogged city can pump either gasoline or ethanol.

Bystanders gawked at Bush's limousine, but only a few people waved. Anti-American sentiment runs high in Brazil, especially over the war in Iraq. Bush missed the demonstrations earlier in the day protesting his visit.

Riot police fired tear gas and beat some protesters with batons after more than 6,000 people held a largely peaceful march through the financial district of Sao Paulo. About 4,000 agents, including Brazilian troops and FBI and U.S. Secret Service officers, are working to secure Bush's stay in the city that lasts about 24 hours.

Authorities did not disclose the number of injuries in Thursday's demonstrations, but Brazilian news media said at least 18 people were hurt and news photographs showed injured people being carried away.

Undeterred by protests, Bush says he's on a goodwill tour to talk about making sure the benefits of democracy -- in the form of better housing, health care and education -- are available to all Latin Americans, not just the wealthy.

In Latin America, however, Bush's trip is widely viewed as a way for the president to counter the influence of Chavez, the populist ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro, who has led a leftward political shift in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

To taunt Bush, the Venezuelan leader will speak at an ''anti-imperialist'' rally in a soccer stadium on Saturday in Buenos Aires, Argentina, about 40 miles across the Plate River from Montevideo, where Bush will meet Uruguay's president, Tabare Vazquez.

Some protesters, carrying stalks of sugar cane, protested the ethanol agreement. The demonstrators warned that increased ethanol production could lead to social unrest because most operations are run by wealthy families or corporations that reap the profits, while the poor are left to cut the cane with machetes.

''Bush and his pals are trying to control the production of ethanol in Brazil, and that has to be stopped,'' said Suzanne Pereira dos Santos of Brazil's Landless Workers Movement.

The White House dismisses talk that the ethanol agreement between Bush and Silva is aimed at setting up an ''OPEC of Ethanol'' cartel led by Washington and Brasilia.

Bush said he wants to work with Brazil, a pioneer in ethanol production for decades, to push the development of alternative fuels in Central America and the Caribbean. He and Silva also want to see standards set in the growing industry to help turn ethanol into an internationally traded commodity.

''It's not about production-sharing, it's about encouraging development and encourage the Caribbean and Central American countries to get into the game,'' Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said.

In January, Bush called on Congress to require the annual use of 35 billion gallons of ethanol and other alternative fuels such as biodiesel by 2017, a fivefold increase over current requirements. To help meet the goal, the president also is pushing research into making ethanol from material such as wood chips and switchgrass.

One roadblock in the Bush-Silva ethanol talks is a 54-cent tariff the United States has imposed on every gallon of ethanol imported from Brazil. Bush says it's not up for discussion.

    Bush Hails Biofuels Pact in Brazil, NYT, 9.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush-Latin-America.html?hp

A predator becomes more dangerous when wounded

Washington's escalation of threats against Iran
is driven by a determination to secure control of the region's energy resources

Friday March 9, 2007
The Guardian
Noam Chomsky

In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington's basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important. As was the norm during the cold war, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq - a country otherwise free from any foreign interference - on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.

In the cold war-like mentality in Washington, Tehran is portrayed as the pinnacle in the so-called Shia crescent that stretches from Iran to Hizbullah in Lebanon, through Shia southern Iraq and Syria. And again unsurprisingly, the "surge" in Iraq and escalation of threats and accusations against Iran is accompanied by grudging willingness to attend a conference of regional powers, with the agenda limited to Iraq.

Presumably this minimal gesture toward diplomacy is intended to allay the growing fears and anger elicited by Washington's heightened aggressiveness. These concerns are given new substance in a detailed study of "the Iraq effect" by terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, revealing that the Iraq war "has increased terrorism sevenfold worldwide". An "Iran effect" could be even more severe.

For the US, the primary issue in the Middle East has been, and remains, effective control of its unparalleled energy resources. Access is a secondary matter. Once the oil is on the seas it goes anywhere. Control is understood to be an instrument of global dominance. Iranian influence in the "crescent" challenges US control. By an accident of geography, the world's major oil resources are in largely Shia areas of the Middle East: southern Iraq, adjacent regions of Saudi Arabia and Iran, with some of the major reserves of natural gas as well. Washington's worst nightmare would be a loose Shia alliance controlling most of the world's oil and independent of the US.

Such a bloc, if it emerges, might even join the Asian Energy Security Grid based in China. Iran could be a lynchpin. If the Bush planners bring that about, they will have seriously undermined the US position of power in the world.

To Washington, Tehran's principal offence has been its defiance, going back to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 and the hostage crisis at the US embassy. In retribution, Washington turned to support Saddam Hussein's aggression against Iran, which left hundreds of thousands dead. Then came murderous sanctions and, under Bush, rejection of Iranian diplomatic efforts.

Last July, Israel invaded Lebanon, the fifth invasion since 1978. As before, US support was a critical factor, the pretexts quickly collapse on inspection, and the consequences for the people of Lebanon are severe. Among the reasons for the US-Israel invasion is that Hizbullah's rockets could be a deterrent to a US-Israeli attack on Iran. Despite the sabre-rattling it is, I suspect, unlikely that the Bush administration will attack Iran. Public opinion in the US and around the world is overwhelmingly opposed. It appears that the US military and intelligence community is also opposed. Iran cannot defend itself against US attack, but it can respond in other ways, among them by inciting even more havoc in Iraq. Some issue warnings that are far more grave, among them the British military historian Corelli Barnett, who writes that "an attack on Iran would effectively launch world war three".

Then again, a predator becomes even more dangerous, and less predictable, when wounded. In desperation to salvage something, the administration might risk even greater disasters. The Bush administration has created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. It has been unable to establish a reliable client state within, and cannot withdraw without facing the possible loss of control of the Middle East's energy resources.

Meanwhile Washington may be seeking to destabilise Iran from within. The ethnic mix in Iran is complex; much of the population isn't Persian. There are secessionist tendencies and it is likely that Washington is trying to stir them up - in Khuzestan on the Gulf, for example, where Iran's oil is concentrated, a region that is largely Arab, not Persian.

Threat escalation also serves to pressure others to join US efforts to strangle Iran economically, with predictable success in Europe. Another predictable consequence, presumably intended, is to induce the Iranian leadership to be as repressive as possible, fomenting disorder while undermining reformers.

It is also necessary to demonise the leadership. In the west, any wild statement by President Ahmadinejad is circulated in headlines, dubiously translated. But Ahmadinejad has no control over foreign policy, which is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The US media tend to ignore Khamenei's statements, especially if they are conciliatory. It's widely reported when Ahmadinejad says Israel shouldn't exist - but there is silence when Khamenei says that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine, calling for normalisation of relations with Israel if it accepts the international consensus of a two-state settlement.

The US invasion of Iraq virtually instructed Iran to develop a nuclear deterrent. The message was that the US attacks at will, as long as the target is defenceless. Now Iran is ringed by US forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and the Persian Gulf, and close by are nuclear-armed Pakistan and Israel, the regional superpower, thanks to US support.

In 2003, Iran offered negotiations on all outstanding issues, including nuclear policies and Israel-Palestine relations. Washington's response was to censure the Swiss diplomat who brought the offer. The following year, the EU and Iran reached an agreement that Iran would suspend enriching uranium; in return the EU would provide "firm guarantees on security issues" - code for US-Israeli threats to bomb Iran.

Apparently under US pressure, Europe did not live up to the bargain. Iran then resumed uranium enrichment. A genuine interest in preventing the development of nuclear weapons in Iran would lead Washington to implement the EU bargain, agree to meaningful negotiations and join with others to move toward integrating Iran into the international economic system.

© Noam Chomsky, New York Times Syndicate

· Noam Chomsky is co-author, with Gilbert Achcar, of Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy

    A predator becomes more dangerous when wounded, G, 9.3.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2030015,00.html

Jordan’s King

Urges U.S. to Pursue Peace in Mideast

March 7, 2007
The New York Times
By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON, March 7 — King Abdullah II of Jordan, in a rare appearance before a joint meeting of Congress, made an impassioned plea today for the United States to lead in an active pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace, saying that without it none of Middle East’s other problems would be solved.

He implored the lawmakers to exert American “leadership in a peace process that delivers results not next year, not in five years, but this year.”

The king pleaded as well for greater concern for the Palestinian people — a theme often heard in Europe but rarely in the halls of Congress. It met with a relatively tepid response, paling next to the applause for his broader calls for regional peace.

“Sixty years of Palestinian dispossession, 40 years under occupation, a stop-and-go peace process — all this has left a bitter legacy of disappointment and despair on all sides,” he said.

Palestinians grievances, the 45-year-old monarch said, were the "core issue" underlying violence throughout the region.

"The wellspring of regional division — the source of resentment and frustration far beyond — is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine," Abdullah said.

His plea for the United States to play a "central role" for peace in the Middle East came as the Bush administration, stung by setbacks from Iraq to Lebanon, has taken a broader diplomatic approach to the region, including a decision to meet on Saturday in Baghdad with Iranian, Syrian and other regional representatives to discuss security in Iraq.

The king, considered one of the closest regional allies of the Bus administration, has expressed deep distress over the regional unrest; he has personally attempted to mediate the infighting between Hamas and Fatah, the two main Palestinian factions.

If matters continue to degrade, he has warned, the region could see be the scene of three civil wars: in Iraq, in Lebanon and among the Palestinians.

“Palestinians and Israelis are not the only victims” of their conflict, he said. “We saw the violence ricochet into destruction in Lebanon last summer. And people around the world have been the victims of terrorists and extremists who use the grievance of this conflict to legitimize and encourage acts of violence.”

“We must work together to restore peace, hope and opportunity to the Palestinian people, and in so doing we will begin a process of bringing peace” to the region, he said.

Many outside of Washington view a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as essential to easing Middle Eastern tensions. But critics say the Bush administration has been slow to act, preoccupied by Iraq and Afghanistan and willing to give the Israeli government considerable leeway — as it did during Israel’s war last summer with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

Abdullah alluded to Washington’s actions, saying that Palestinians “ask whether the West really means what it says about equality and respect and universal justice.”

Palestinians form a majority of the Jordanian population, many having come as refugees after the 1948 or 1967 Arab-Israeli wars.

“Thirteen years ago,” Abdullah said, “my father was here to talk about his hopes for peace.”

He added: “The next time a Jordanian, a Palestinian or an Israeli comes before you, let it be to say thank you for helping peace become a reality. ”

“Help fulfill the aspirations of Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace today.”

For that, he received a standing ovation.

    Jordan’s King Urges U.S. to Pursue Peace in Mideast, NYT, 7.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/07/world/middleeast/07cnd-diplo.html?hp

U.S. Urged to Reject Taiwan Missile Sale

March 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:39 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BEIJING (AP) -- China pressed visiting Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte on Saturday to reject a proposed sale of missiles to Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own territory.

Negroponte was visiting Beijing on a three-nation Asian tour focused on North Korea and regional security.

In his meetings with Chinese officials, ''the Chinese side expressed that it is firmly opposed to the export and sale of weapons to Taiwan and the United States maintaining official relations with Taiwan,'' said Qin Gang, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman.

An American Embassy spokeswoman said the U.S. government had no comment on the meetings.

China and Taiwan separated in 1949 but the communist Beijing government claims the island as part of its territory and has threatened repeatedly to attack. The United States is Taiwan's main arms supplier, though Beijing vehemently objects to such sales.

Taiwan is trying to buy 218 AMRAAM medium range air-to-air missiles and another 235 Maverick missiles at an estimated cost of $421 million.

''China is improving its military power and we treat that as a threat,'' Rear Adm. Wu Chi-fang, a Taiwanese Defense Ministry spokesman, said Saturday.

A statement on the proposed sale issued earlier this week said it would improve Taiwan's security and promote ''political stability, military balance and economic progress in the region.''

Negroponte met with Chinese Foreign Ministers Yang Jiechi and Dai Bingguo after arriving Saturday from Tokyo. He was due to meet later with Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan.

The sides did not discuss Iran or North Korea but might later, Qin said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said earlier that the proposed missile sale would ''seriously violate'' previous commitments made by Washington to reduce arms sales to Taiwan and be a ''rude interference into China's internal affairs.''

''The Chinese side hopes that the United States can definitively keep its promise to work with the Chinese side together and fight and contain Taiwan independence in order to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,'' Qin said.

Negroponte's tour of Japan, China and South Korea is his first foreign trip since being confirmed last month as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's deputy.

A focus of the trip is relations with China, a major U.S. trading partner and key player on such diplomatic issues as North Korea, Iran and Sudan.

Associated Press Writer Eric Talmadge contributed to this report from Taipei, Taiwan.

    U.S. Urged to Reject Taiwan Missile Sale, NYT, 3.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Asia-Negroponte.html
 

Editorial

A Suddenly Convenient Truth

March 2, 2007
The New York Times

We would like to believe that the Bush administration has finally figured out how dangerous and counterproductive it is to hype intelligence — and that that’s why officials are admitting they’re not sure North Korea ever got very far with a secret uranium-based nuclear program. But we doubt it.

It was just last month that intelligence officials, with their bosses’ clear blessings, were insisting that Iran’s leaders had personally ordered the smuggling of especially lethal roadside bombs into Iraq. At least they did until the Pentagon’s top general admitted that no one knew who in Iran was really calling those shots, and President Bush announced that it didn’t matter anyway.

So we suspect that this week’s confessions of doubt about North Korea had less to do with a sudden burst of candor than the fact that Pyongyang has agreed to readmit nuclear inspectors — who probably won’t be able to find the active uranium enrichment program the administration has been alleging for more than four years. Add to that the White House’s eagerness for a diplomatic win in these bleak times — and its insistence that a nuclear deal cannot go ahead if the North is believed to be hiding things — and you understand why the White House might find this truth so convenient.

Late may be better than never, but it isn’t nearly enough to make up for the damage caused. And we haven’t even raised the issue of Iraq and its long-gone weapons.

Let’s be clear. The North Koreans had and have an illicit nuclear arms program. They tested a device from their plutonium-based program last October. And Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has admitted that North Korea bought some 20 centrifuges — useful only for enriching uranium — from Abdul Qadeer Khan’s nuclear black market.

The problem is that the Bush administration eagerly spun those 20 centrifuges into an industrial-scale enrichment program, and then used it as an excuse to scuttle a Clinton-era deal to close down the North’s plutonium-based weapons program. Four years later, the North set off that test.

And while we are pleased that the administration has finally managed to negotiate an agreement to start shutting down the North’s nuclear complex, there is no guarantee that Pyongyang will ever give up its weapons.

If that’s not bad enough, consider some frightening truths. There is no doubt that Iran is moving ever closer to mastering the skills it will need to produce the fuel for a nuclear weapon — and blithely defying the Security Council’s demand that it stop. But even America’s closest European allies have little stomach for a showdown with Tehran, while Russia and China have strong economic incentives to look the other way. Which means that Washington is the only one left out there to warn the world about the dangers of a nuclear-capable Iran.

Make no mistake: there are real and present dangers out there. But who still believes warnings from this White House?

    A Suddenly Convenient Truth, NYT, 2.3.3007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/opinion/02fri1.html

Pressed by U.S., Pakistan Seizes a Taliban Chief

March 2, 2007
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 1 — The former Taliban defense minister was arrested in Pakistan on Monday, the day of Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit, two government officials said Thursday. He is the most important Taliban member to be captured since the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The man, Mullah Obaidullah, was a senior leader of the Afghan insurgency, which has battled American and NATO forces with increasing intensity over the last year.

He is one of the inner core around Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader. The leadership is believed to operate from the relative safety of Quetta, Pakistan, where Mullah Obaidullah was arrested.

It was not clear whether he was picked up before, during or after Mr. Cheney’s visit. But the timing may be significant because Mr. Cheney’s mission was intended to press Pakistan to do more to crack down on members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda who use Pakistan as a sanctuary.

Pakistan has come under rising criticism from American and NATO officials for acting against the Taliban and Al Qaeda only under pressure, conducting operations or making arrests timed for high-level official visits, then backing off.

While Mullah Obaidullah’s detention may be a sign of a new commitment by Pakistan to move against the Taliban leadership, the arrest also seemed to confirm Western and Afghan intelligence reports that the Taliban were using Pakistan, and particularly Quetta, to organize their insurgency.

Pakistani officials have strenuously denied that the Taliban leadership is based in Pakistan, and there was no official announcement of the detention. But two government officials confirmed the arrest.

A NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, Col. Tom Collins, said he was not aware of any arrest. American government officials in Washington confirmed the capture, but cautioned that the arrest was unlikely to deal a significant setback to the insurgents.

“He’s a big fish, but nobody around here thinks this will deal a permanent blow to the operations of the Taliban,” said one American government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the arrest had not been formally announced.

Last year, NATO forces in southern Afghanistan bore the brunt of a resurgent Taliban. They have lost 85 service members since taking over command of southern Afghanistan in August, in suicide bombings, ambushes and often heavy fighting. Commanders and diplomats say it has become increasingly clear that control of the Taliban fighters traced back to Pakistan.

Over the past five months, Pakistan has come under more constant pressure for cooperation than ever, an American official in Afghanistan said recently. Democrats in Congress have raised the possibility of tying military assistance and other financial aid for Pakistan to its performance in fighting terrorism.

President Bush sent an unusually tough message to President Pervez Musharraf, timed to coincide with Mr. Cheney’s visit, senior administration officials said.

Pakistani officials answer the criticism by pointing out that their own military has suffered more than any other, losing more than 600 soldiers in fighting with the militants, before the campaigns bogged down and the government reached peace deals with some tribal leaders.

Pakistani intelligence services also assisted the United States military in tracking another top Taliban official, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Osmani, who was killed Dec. 19 in an American airstrike in southern Afghanistan.

Mullah Osmani was the Taliban’s main financial official and was operating both in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and his death was considered an important blow to the insurgents, Colonel Collins said.

The former Taliban foreign minister, Mullah Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, was detained by American forces in 2002 but was released in 2005 under a government reconciliation program. One of the Taliban’s top military commanders, Mullah Fazel, remains imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, along with the former Taliban governor of Balkh Province.

Mullah Obaidullah is originally from Panjwai district of Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan. As recently as December, he gave an interview to Reuters, boasting that the Taliban had gained in strength and could fight the world’s strongest armies, and threatening to step up suicide attacks against foreign military personnel in Afghanistan.

He was often mentioned as being among the four most senior men of what is known as the Quetta Council, the inner circle around Mullah Omar, which is thought to have based itself in or near the city, in southwestern Pakistan.

A former Taliban spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi, who was himself arrested in 2005 by the police in Quetta, said Mullah Obaidullah was one of only two people who had direct access to Mullah Omar. He also said that Mullah Obaidullah had personally ordered military operations, including the killing of a foreign aid official in Kabul in March 2005.

Bomb Kills 3 Near School

KABUL, Afghanistan, March 1 — A bomb exploded Thursday in a garbage bin on a crowded shopping street in Farah, in the southwest, killing three civilians and wounding more than 54, including 10 schoolchildren, said Dr. Mohammad Qasim Bayan, the director of health in Farah Province.

The bomb exploded just after 8 a.m. at a busy intersection. A police convoy was passing, and the Farah city police chief, Said Aqa Saqib, said he suspected it was a remote-controlled bomb aimed at the convoy.

Chief Saqib said violence was spilling over from Helmand Province, where the Taliban seized control of much of the north, and was aggravated by the government’s campaign to eradicate the poppy crop.

Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

    Pressed by U.S., Pakistan Seizes a Taliban Chief, NYT, 2.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/world/asia/02taliban.html

Cheney Warns Pakistan to Act Against Terrorists

February 27, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 — Just hours after Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a stiff private message to President Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, the Pakistani government lashed out Monday with a series of statements insisting that “Pakistan does not accept dictation from any side or any source.”

The unusual outburst, later toned down, revealed the depth of tensions between General Musharraf and Washington over what administration officials say have been inadequate efforts by Pakistan in combating Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

By the time of the Pakistani response, Mr. Cheney had left Pakistan to make a second secret trip, this time across the border to Afghanistan, where a meeting with President Hamid Karzai was suddenly delayed. American officials said a snowstorm prevented helicopter flights between Kabul and Bagram Air Base, where Mr. Cheney had landed, and neither leader seemed inclined to take a risky drive to meet the other.

[On Tuesday, a blast near the gates of the main American base in Afghanistan killed several people, a witness said, according to Reuters. Mr. Cheney stayed at the base overnight after the talks with Mr. Karzai were delayed and was not reported to be in danger.]

Mr. Cheney’s trip to Pakistan was shrouded in unusual secrecy. In trips to Pakistan last year, President Bush and Secretary State Condoleezza Rice announced their plans days in advance, and reporters filed articles on their visits as soon as they landed. But Mr. Cheney’s traveling press pool was sworn to secrecy, and allowed to report only the barest details just before he left.

News organizations that knew of Mr. Cheney’s travels, including The New York Times, were asked to withhold any mention of the trip until he had left Pakistan. That appeared to be a reflection of growing concern about the strength of Qaeda and Taliban forces in the area, and continuing questions about the loyalties of Mr. Musharraf’s own intelligence services.

The White House would say little on Monday about the message Mr. Cheney was sent to deliver, though it did not deny reports that it included a tough warning that American aid to Pakistan could be in jeopardy. Democrats have threatened to link aid to Pakistan to its effectiveness in combating both Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Pakistan’s response, delivered by a Foreign Ministry spokesman, expressed concern about “proposed discriminatory legislation” in Congress to curb the aid.

The sensitivities of Mr. Cheney’s trip were particularly evident as the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, parried detailed questions about the vice president’s message to Pakistan, a country that Mr. Bush has hailed as a close American ally.

Referring to Mr. Cheney, Mr. Snow said that “the precise nature of his comments and the tenor of comments to the president would be the sort of things that would be confidential,” He reaffirmed Mr. Bush’s confidence that General Musharraf was committed to fighting terrorism.

When asked about comments by senior administration officials who fear that General Musharraf’s peace plan with tribal leaders in the area bordering Afghanistan has allowed Qaeda and Taliban forces to move with more impunity in that region, Mr. Snow said: “We’re often asked to give out report cards on other heads of state. I’m not going to play.”

Mr. Cheney’s trip was one of a series to Pakistan by senior members of the administration, part of what administration officials have said is a plan by the Bush administration to keep the pressure on General Musharraf. To some outside analysts, that is a sign of increasing concern that American efforts to coax along the sometimes prickly Pakistani leader has hit its limits.

“There is a growing consensus that our Pakistan policy is not working,” said Derek Chollet, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington who estimates that over the past five years the United States has sent $10 billion in aid to Pakistan — and perhaps as much in covert funds.

Mr. Musharraf alluded to those payments in his recently published memoir, in which he wrote, “Those who habitually accuse us of ‘not doing enough’ in the war on terror should simply ask the C.I.A. how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan.” When asked about that assertion, C.I.A. officials have declined to answer.

Mr. Cheney’s trip to Pakistan and then to Afghanistan appeared to be part of an effort to resolve a continuing dispute between the two countries over who is more responsible for the failure to stop cross-border attacks. Mr. Musharraf and Mr. Karzai have made no secret of their mutual dislike. President Bush held a dinner with the two men in Washington last fall, in hopes of encouraging them to work together. As soon as the two leaders returned to their respective capitals, however, the sniping resumed.

A particular source of concern is Mr. Musharraf’s peace accord giving tribal leaders greater sovereignty — a deal that he has assured Mr. Bush would not diminish Pakistan’s commitment to fighting extremists. Mr. Bush noted in September that Mr. Musharraf had looked him “in the eye” and said, “There won’t be a Taliban and won’t be Al Qaeda.” Now, American officials contend those groups have gained ground.

Mr. Cheney traveled with the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Stephen R. Kappes, an indication that the conversation probably included discussion of American intelligence agency contentions that Qaeda camps have been reconstituted along the border with Afghanistan.

Speaking in Islamabad on Monday, Pakistani officials acknowledged that Mr. Cheney had expressed concern about the regrouping of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas and that he had called for concerted efforts in countering the threat. Then, at a news briefing, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry protested the “dictation” that the country was being offered, a clear reference to Mr. Cheney’s visit. Later in the day the ministry toned down its comments, saying that Mr. Cheney had “shared U.S. concerns and assessments in the context of intelligence and security cooperation.”

American officials did not explain the extraordinary secrecy surrounding Mr. Cheney’s visit to Pakistan, a country the administration has cast as a stable nation moving gradually toward democracy. Mr. Cheney’s aides told The Times and other news organizations that the Secret Service had imposed the requirement that there be no mention of his trip until he had left Pakistan.

Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune, who is traveling as the sole newspaper “pool” reporter with Mr. Cheney, reported in an e-mail message, “These all were explained as security measures for the protection of the vice president.”

Such caution is not unprecedented. In 2000, President Clinton flew into Islamabad on an unmarked Air Force plane rather than on Air Force One. President Bush’s trip last year was marked with siege-like security and unusual maneuvers during takeoff.

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.

    Cheney Warns Pakistan to Act Against Terrorists, NYT, 27.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/world/asia/27cheney.html

U.S. Says Raid in Iraq Supports Claim on Iran

February 26, 2007
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

BAGHDAD, Feb. 25 — A raid on a Shiite weapons cache in the southern city of Hilla one week ago is providing what American officials call the best evidence yet that the deadliest roadside bombs in Iraq are manufactured in Iran, but critics contend that the forensic case remains circumstantial and inferential.

The new evidence includes infrared sensors, electronic triggering devices and information about plastic explosives used in bombs that the Americans say lead back to Iran. The explosive material, triggering devices, other components and the method of assembly all produce weapons with an Iranian signature that has never been found outside Iraq or southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah is believed to have used weapons supplied by Iran, the Americans say.

But critics assert that nearly all the bomb components could have been produced in Iraq or somewhere else in the region. Even if the evidence were to establish that Iran is the source, they add, that does not necessarily mean that the Iranian leadership is responsible.

The raid by American and Iraqi forces discovered a fake boulder made of polyurethane and containing three of the deadliest kind of roadside bombs in Iraq. Smeared with dirt and pebbles to give it the color and texture of a rock, the polyurethane blob was resting in the back seat of a Toyota, apparently in preparation for a roadside attack, American officials said in lengthy briefings with two New York Times reporters last week.

The Toyota, along with a second vehicle and a nearby house described as an assembly point, contained components and other weaponry that the officials say demonstrate that the bomb parts must have originated in Iran. Called explosively formed penetrators, or E.F.P.’s, bombs like the ones hidden inside the fake boulder are designed to eject molten slugs that slice through American armor with deadly precision.

The assertion that the latest find greatly bolsters the theory of the Iranian origin of the E.F.P.’s is significant because it could provide the United States with a new justification to take action against Iran. But the evidence is unlikely to satisfy skeptics who have been suspicious that the Bush administration is trying to lay the groundwork for isolating or even attacking Iran. They point to the flawed intelligence used by the administration to accuse Saddam Hussein of harboring unconventional weapons before invading Iraq nearly four years ago.

Still, American military officials appear to be making an attempt to respond to critics who say the evidence is inconclusive. In the course of the detailed briefing on the Hilla discovery, Maj. Marty Weber, an explosives expert, said that most of the E.F.P.’s in Iraq use C-4 plastic explosive manufactured in Iran. At the request of the Bush administration, The Times is withholding some specific details about the weapons to protect intelligence sources and methods.

In addition to the Hilla discovery, military officials are expected to disclose at a briefing on Monday details about materials found in a raid in Diyala Province, the mixed Sunni-Shiite battleground north of Baghdad, that, according to one military official, included enough components to make more than 100 E.F.P.’s. The official asked not to be identified because the matter is so sensitive.

All of the items found in the Hilla raid have been used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, said Major Weber, a master explosives ordnance technician who has studied many kinds of improvised bombs in the Middle East and elsewhere and is closely involved in the effort in Iraq.

In addition, the shallow concave caps, which are made of copper and change into armor-piercing balls when the E.F.P.’s explode, were smooth and flawless, indicating to the explosives expert that they were manufactured in Iran because of the high precision required to make them so. Also found during the raid were 10 107-millimeter Strella rockets that had Iranian markings.

A Question of Technology

The most specialized part of the E.F.P.’s that were found is the concave copper disc, called a liner, that rolls into a deadly armor-piercing ball when the device explodes. Although American explosives experts say that the liner is deceptively difficult to make properly, the discs in Hilla look like a thick little alms plate or even a souvenir ashtray minus the indentations for holding cigarettes.

The electronics package is built around everyday items like the motion sensors used in garage-door openers and outdoor security systems; in fact, at the heart of some of the bombs found in Iraq is a type of infrared sensor commonly sold at electronic stores like RadioShack.

Major Weber said the use of precision copper discs combined with passive infrared sensors amounted to “a no-brainer” that the explosive components were of Iranian origin, because no one has used that sort of configuration except Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

Could copper discs be manufactured with the required precision in Iraq? “You can never be certain,” Major Weber said. But he said that “having studied all these groups, I’ve only seen E.F.P.’s used in two areas of the world: The Levant and here,” meaning in Hezbollah areas of Lebanon and in Iraq. Hezbollah is thought to be armed and trained by Iran.

Skeptics say the new details do not support a conclusion that only Iran could be providing the components. “Iran may well be involved in the supply of these weapons, but so far they haven’t proved it,” said Joseph Cirincione, senior vice president for National Security at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research and advocacy organization.

“Before we act on the assumption that these are Iranian we’ve got to rule out all these other possibilities,” he said. “The military hasn’t done that.”

He noted that a related weapon, the shape charge, “has been around for decades.

“This is not new stuff,” he continued. “There is a vast international arms market selling shape charges from many countries.”

New Details

The new information is more substantial than the limited details disclosed earlier this month in Baghdad, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a research group based in Alexandria, Va.

“That initial briefing was not much to write home about,” Mr. Pike said. “The points that they are making here are rather more convincing. Whether they’re true is a completely different question.”

Mr. Pike said he was not swayed by arguments that the copper discs could only be made by equipment in Iran. All that is required are machine tools, he said. “You can buy them,” he said. “I mean, look at all those cylinders people use for L.P.G. cooking gas. Do you think they are all imported from Iran? Probably not. I bet there are guys all over Iraq who make those things for a living.”

But he found other details more persuasive. “The two points they are making about the tradecraft of the fuse and the wrappings of the explosives, those are pretty good pieces of evidence,” he said. “I will say that, totally apart from any of this evidence, I would be astonished if Iran was not providing military support to the Shia militias. It should be self-evident that they are doing that.”

Afternoon Attack

American officials gave this account of the Hilla raid:

It took place at 1:30 p.m. on Feb. 17 after an informant reported seeing a tow truck carrying rockets.

The fake rock with three E.F.P. canisters inside was sitting on the back seat of a different vehicle, a Toyota Crown. The trunk of the same car contained various equipment including an infrared sensor, a G.P.S. unit, two compasses and a jug filled with an unknown explosive.

Tools and materials for making fake rocks were found inside the house along with a partly completed rock and two E.F.P.’s. Among the items found there were seven battery packs needed to set off the blasting caps that initiate the E.F.P. explosion, four cans of epoxy foam and three of the infrared sensors.

The E.F.P.’s were designed to inflict maximum damage. The positioning of the sensor and the exact angles of the E.F.P.’s inside the rock were fixed to find weak points in American armored vehicles like Humvees and Strykers.

“The E.F.P. canisters are typically arrayed at angles to minimize the effects of countermeasures,” Major Weber said. “They want to hit the truck when it is already well into the kill zone.”

The infrared sensors could be armed and disarmed at a distance with cellphones, long-distance cordless phones or radios. That allows the attackers to arm the devices only when convoys are approaching. Then, when the convoys trip the sensors, the E.F.P.’s explode.

Major Weber said many of those techniques were clearly Iranian in origin. Critics said that all of them could be replicated by skilled Iraqis or others in the Middle East with a solid knowledge of electronics and basic manufacturing techniques.

Still, Major Weber said, there were other indications of Iranian involvement in Hilla. In the raid, the Iraqi and American troops also found a red 1988 Chevy tow truck carrying 10 Strella rockets under a false bottom in the bed. The rockets had MJ-1 contact fuses and were probably made in China and repainted with Iranian markings — the usual practice for weapons that Iran imports and re-sells. Following international convention, the markings were in English, not Persian. They indicated that the rockets had been made in 2005 and each carried 18 kilograms of explosive.

As to why the Iranians would leave such obvious markings on the shells, Major Weber speculated that they had simply been taken out of stock and shipped across the border.

Comparisons to Others

Major Weber said he doubted that Hezbollah — the group that the Mahdi militia leader Moktada al-Sadr has used as a model for his political movement — would have provided the material and technology to the Mahdi militia or to other Shiite fighters in Iraq. “It is possible, but based upon my experience we have not seen Hezbollah share information or technology on anything until they have been told to,” he said.

“The E.F.P. is their silver bullet,” he said, referring to Iran and its allied militias.

Major Weber also said that the use of passive infrared sensors, or P.I.R.’s, was one of the strongest markers of Iranian involvement, based on years of experience indicating that only Iranian-backed groups employ the sensors in that manner. But he also acknowledged that the electronic components needed to make the sensors were easily available off the shelf at places like RadioShack.

Those components are used in commercial products, like motion sensors for a lighting system or garage door openers. Those products are opened up, rewired and repackaged. Sometimes on products requiring the triggering of multiple beams to close the circuit, masking tape is used to cover up some beams so that only one is triggered.

“Every P.I.R. in Iraq has been RadioShack, Digigard or Everspring,” Major Weber said. “But in southern Lebanon I never saw them use RadioShack.”

While he maintained that the copper liner also required specialized equipment and skills to make properly, that assertion also rests on some rather subtle distinctions. A senior military official displayed pictures of a stack of some 30 copper E.F.P. liners seized in a raid in Mahmudiya, a town south of Baghdad. Such liners, Major Weber said, were “copycats” stamped in Iraq, not Iran. To the untrained eye, the liners initially looked identical to the genuine ones.

But Major Weber then pointed out that there were often slightly visible cracks forming circles around the tops of the liners when they were set on a table with their concave sides pointing down. Those imperfections were signs that the liners had been made in Iraq, Major Weber said. And because of the imperfections, he said, an E.F.P. made with them would be much less deadly. Such an E.F.P. would fragment rather than curl into a ball, he said, and the fragments would be much less likely to pierce armor.

Michael R. Gordon and Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington.

    U.S. Says Raid in Iraq Supports Claim on Iran, NYT, 26.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/world/middleeast/26weapons.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Cheney leaves military options open against Iran

Updated 2/23/2007 10:31 PM ET
AP
USA Today

SYDNEY (AP) — Vice President Dick Cheney renewed Washington's criticism of Iran on Saturday, saying "all options" remained on the table to deal with that country's regime after it ignored a U.N. deadline to halt uranium enrichment and said it would defy foreign pressure.

Cheney, speaking at a joint news conference with Australia's Prime Minister John Howard, said the United States remained "deeply concerned" about Iran's activities, including the "aggressive" sponsoring of terrorist group Hezbollah and inflammatory statements by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He said top U.S. officials would meet soon with European allies to decide the next step toward planned tough sanctions against Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

"We worked with the European community and the United Nations to put together a set of policies to persuade the Iranians to give up their aspirations and resolve the matter peacefully, and that is still our preference," Cheney said.

"But I've also made the point, and the president has made the point, that all options are on the table," he said, appearing to leave open the possibility of military action.

The White House has previously made similar comments.

"We believe it would be a serious mistake if a nation such as Iran became a nuclear power," he said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Thursday that Iran had not only ignored a U.N. Security Council ultimatum to freeze the enrichment program, but had expanded that program by setting up hundreds of centrifuges. Enriched uranium fuels nuclear reactors but, enriched further, is used in nuclear bombs.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns will travel to London on Monday to meet with the United States' negotiating partners to try to draft a new resolution on Iran that could include tough economic and military sanctions.

The IAEA report came after the expiration Wednesday of a 60-day grace period for Iran to halt uranium enrichment.

Ahmadinejad has adopted a defiant tone, telling a crowd in northern Iran on Thursday that "the Iranian nation has resisted all bullies and corrupt powers and it will fully defend all its rights," according to state television.

The hard-line president appeared to dismiss the IAEA report to the U.N. Security Council, though he did not directly name either organization, or the United States.

"If a few states do not believe that Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful, this is of no importance whatsoever," he was quoted as saying by state television.

    Cheney leaves military options open against Iran, UT, 23.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-02-23-cheney_x.htm

Cheney Criticizes China’s Arms Buildup

February 23, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:23 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- China's recent anti-satellite weapons test and its continued military buildup are ''not consistent'' with its stated aim of a peaceful rise as a global power, Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday.

In a speech in Sydney, Cheney also expressed wariness about North Korea's commitment to a landmark deal on ending its nuclear programs.

As anti-war demonstrators clashed with police outside the hotel where Cheney was speaking, the vice president also expressed gratitude to Australia for sending troops to the Iraq war, which he said must be won or terrorists would be emboldened worldwide.

Cheney praised China for playing an ''especially important'' role in the negotiations that resulted in the North Korea deal, under which the North is to seal its main nuclear reactor and allow international inspections in exchange for fuel oil.

''Other actions by the Chinese government send a different message,'' Cheney told the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, a private organization that promotes ties between the two countries.

''Last month's anti-satellite test, China's continued fast-paced military buildup are less constructive and are not consistent with China's stated goal of a peaceful rise,'' he said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Cheney's remarks. Many government offices were closed Friday for the weeklong Lunar New Year holiday.

Beijing previously said its Jan. 11 firing of a missile into a defunct weather satellite was for scientific purposes, but the test was widely criticized as a provocative demonstration of China's growing military clout.

Washington said the test -- which made China only the third nation after the United States and Russia to use weapons beyond the atmosphere -- undermined efforts to keep weapons out of space. Beijing countered by saying the United States is blocking a possible global treaty that would ban weapons in space.

China's military has grown rapidly along with its economy in recent years, prompting concern that the balance of military power in the Pacific could start to shift away from the United States.

China said in late December it was strengthening its military to thwart any attempt by Taiwan to push for independence, but vowed it was committed to the peaceful development of its 2.3 million-strong military, the world's largest.

Regarding the North Korea deal, Cheney said it represented ''a first hopeful step'' that would ''bring us closer'' to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula -- but he also sounded a note of caution.

''We go into this deal with our eyes open,'' he said. ''In light of North Korea's missile test last July, its nuclear test in October and its record of proliferation and human rights abuses, the regime in Pyongyang has much to prove.''

Cheney, a key backer of the Iraq war, praised Prime Minister John Howard for sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, saying Australians had won the respect of the world through their support of the fight against terror.

''The notion that free countries can turn our backs on what happens in places like Afghanistan or Iraq or any other possible safe haven for terrorists is an option that we simply cannot indulge,'' he said.

He said that if the U.S.-led coalition leaves Iraq before domestic forces can handle security, violence among rival factions would spread throughout the country and beyond.

''Having tasted victory in Iraq, jihadists would look for new missions,'' joining the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan and spreading ''sorrow and discord'' across the Middle East and further afield, he said.

''Such chaos and mounting danger does not have to occur. It is, however, the enemy's objective,'' Cheney said. ''For the sake of our own long-term security, we have a duty to stand in their way.''

Outside, about 100 protesters waved placards saying ''Go home Cheney'' and ''Bring the troops home.'' Three people were arrested after scuffles broke out and officers on horseback moved in to disperse the crowd.

Cheney later visited a military barracks in Sydney and held talks with a group of Australian troops who had served overseas. He also met with opposition leader Kevin Rudd, who wants a timetable set for withdrawing Australian troops from Iraq and faster action to deal David Hicks, an Australian who has been jailed without trial at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for more than five years.

    Cheney Criticizes China’s Arms Buildup, NYT, 23.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Asia-Cheney.html?hp

Defense Chief Again Says U.S. Will Not Wage War With Iran

February 16, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday that the United States had no intention of attacking Iran and that any American military efforts against it would be confined to Iraq to disrupt the smuggling of bomb-making materials over the border.

“For the umpteenth time, we are not looking for an excuse to go to war with Iran,” he said at a Pentagon news conference. “We are not planning a war with Iran.”

Even if the Bush administration were able to establish that Iran’s top leaders knew and authorized the smuggling, Mr. Gates said, there would probably be no change in the Bush administration’s strategy of limiting its military response to actions within Iraq.

Questions about the administration’s intentions toward Iran have re-emerged in recent days after senior officials, beginning last weekend, laid out what they said was evidence that bomb-making materials from Iran were being supplied to Shiite militants in Iraq.

Mr. Gates and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, repeated Thursday that weapons used against American troops were coming from Iran and that personnel from the Quds Force, a paramilitary arm of the country’s Revolutionary Guards, were involved.

But both officials said, as President Bush did at a White House news conference on Wednesday, that they lacked evidence that Iran’s top leaders were involved in the weapons smuggling.

“Whether or not more senior political leaders in Iran know, we don’t know,” Mr. Gates told reporters in the Pentagon. “Frankly, for me, either way it’s a worry.”

General Pace ignited some controversy earlier this week while visiting Indonesia, when he told reporters that American forces had confirmed that some bomb materials found inside Iraq were made in Iran, but “that does not translate that the Iranian government, per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this.”

Those remarks conflicted with comments by a senior Defense Department analyst who said, at a briefing in Baghdad over the weekend, that the effort was being directed “from the highest levels of the Iranian government.”

Asked about the discrepancy, General Pace said Thursday that the analyst in Baghdad “didn’t make a clear enough break between fact and assessment” when he said there was high-level Iranian involvement, “or those listening didn’t hear the break between fact and assessment.”

Mr. Gates said he was sensitive to the public skepticism about American intelligence claims as a result of faulty prewar intelligence about Iraq. He said he insisted that the statements about Iranian weapons smuggling “make it exactly clear what we know and what we don’t know.”

In an interview on Thursday, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said the United States could not invade Iran without specific Congressional authority.

“The president has said that he supports a diplomatic solution of the situation in Iran,” Ms. Pelosi said, speaking to six reporters in her office. “I would take him at his word. I do believe that Congress should assert itself, though, and make it very clear that there is no previous authority for any president to go into Iran.”

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

    Defense Chief Again Says U.S. Will Not Wage War With Iran, NYT, 16.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/washington/16weapons.html

Bush Declares Iran’s Arms Role in Iraq Is Certain

February 15, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MARC SANTORA

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — President Bush said Wednesday that he was certain that factions within the Iranian government had supplied Shiite militants in Iraq with deadly roadside bombs that had killed American troops. But he said he did not know whether Iran’s highest officials had directed the attacks.

Mr. Bush’s remarks amounted to his most specific accusation to date that Iran was undermining security in Iraq. They appeared to be part of a concerted effort by the White House to present a clearer, more direct case that Iran was supplying the potent weapons — and to push back against criticism that the intelligence used in reaching the conclusions was not credible.

Speaking at a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Bush dismissed as “preposterous” the contention by some skeptics that the United States was drawing unwarranted conclusions about Iran’s role. He publicly endorsed assertions that had until now been presented only by anonymous military and intelligence officials, who have said that an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Quds Force has provided Shiite militias in Iraq with the sophisticated weapons that have been responsible for killing at least 170 American soldiers and wounding more than 600.

“I can say with certainty that the Quds Force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated I.E.D.’s that have harmed our troops,” Mr. Bush said, using the abbreviation for improvised explosive device. “And I’d like to repeat, I do not know whether or not the Quds Force was ordered from the top echelons of the government. But my point is, what’s worse, them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and its happening?”

The House of Representatives is debating a resolution disapproving of Mr. Bush’s plan to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq. [Page A16.] And so Mr. Bush used his appearance to defend that decision as necessary in the face of deteriorating security in Baghdad. Asked about a possible American response to Iranian interference, he said, “We will continue to protect our troops.” With skeptics asking why the intelligence about Iran’s meddling is coming to light now, a number of possibilities have been raised, including the increase in attacks and American casualties in recent months.

American intelligence officials have said they think that top leaders in Iran must have approved of the attacks on the American forces, in part because the Quds Force has historically reported to the country’s top religious leaders. But aides to Mr. Bush, mindful of the criticism about its use of intelligence before the Iraq war, said the White House wanted to be careful not to make that kind of accusation without hard proof.

As Mr. Bush discussed Iran in Washington, the chief American military spokesman in Baghdad provided a more detailed, on-the-record account of how the administration believed the weapons, particularly lethal explosive devices known as explosively formed penetrators, or E.F.P.’s, got to Iraq. The spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, was also careful not to link the actions of the Quds Force directly to Iran’s top leaders. He said American assertions about a link between the weapons and the force were based on information obtained from people, including Iranians, detained in Iraq in the past 60 days.

“They in fact have told us that the Quds Force provides support to extremist groups here in Iraq in the forms of both money and weaponry,” General Caldwell said. He added: “They have talked about how there are extremist elements that are given this material in Iran and then it is smuggled into Iraq. We have in fact stopped some at the border and discovered it there, coming from Iran into Iraq.”

The coordinated messages out of Baghdad and Washington were an effort by the White House to tamp down reports of divisions within the American government about who in Iran should be held responsible for the weapons shipments. A senior Defense analyst said at a briefing in Baghdad over the weekend that the effort was being directed “from the highest levels of the Iranian government.” But Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered a contradictory account this week, telling The Associated Press that while some bomb materials were made in Iran, “that does not translate that the Iranian government, per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this.”

At Wednesday’s news conference, Mr. Bush suggested that it did not matter whether senior leaders were involved. “What matters is, is that we’re responding,” Mr. Bush said. He said that if the United States found either networks or individuals “who are moving these devices into Iraq, we will deal with them.”

Some experts said the question of Iran’s responsibility remained important. “There’s a big difference between saying that there is a rogue element doing things and then asking the Iranian government to rein it in, as opposed to saying this is a calculated deliberate strategy of the Iranian government,” said Vali Nasr, a Middle East scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That has very different implications in terms of how do you hold Iran culpable.”

The administration’s claims about Iran have been met with intense skepticism, from Democrats in Congress and from experts like David Kay, who led the search for illicit weapons in Iraq. Some critics have said the White House is using Iran as a scapegoat for its problems in Iraq, and some have suggested that the administration, which has been trying to pressure Iran into abandoning its nuclear program, is laying the foundation for another war.

On Wednesday, a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for president, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, took to the Senate floor to call on Mr. Bush to seek authorization for any military action against Iran. “We cannot and we must not allow recent history to repeat itself,” she said.

Mr. Bush has said that he has no intention of invading Iran and that any suggestion that he was trying to provoke Iran “is just a wrong way to characterize the commander in chief’s decision to do what is necessary to protect our soldiers in harm’s way.” But experts say that the ratcheting up of accusations could provoke a confrontation. Gary Sick, an expert on Iran at Columbia University, said there was a “danger of accidental war.” He said, “If anything goes wrong, if something happens, there’s an unexplained explosion and we kidnap an Iranian, and the Iranians respond to that somehow, this could get out of control.”

Mr. Bush has also refused to meet with Iran’s leaders, and he said Wednesday that he did not believe that it would be an effective way of persuading the Iranians to give up their nuclear goals. “This is a world in which people say, ‘Meet! Sit down and meet!’ ” he said. “And my answer is, if it yields results, that’s what I’m interested in.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Washington, and Marc Santora from Baghdad.

    Bush Declares Iran’s Arms Role in Iraq Is Certain, NYT, 15.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/world/middleeast/15prexy.html?hp&ex=1171602000&en=937f14147ac50c59&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Says Powerful Iraqi Cleric Is Living in Iran

February 14, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 — The powerful Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has left Iraq and has been living in Iran for the past several weeks, senior Bush administration officials said Tuesday.

With fresh American forces arriving in Baghdad as part of the White House plan to stabilize the capital, officials in Washington suggested that Mr. Sadr might have fled Iraq to avoid being captured or killed during the crackdown.

But officials also said that Mr. Sadr, who has family in Iran, had gone to Tehran in the past and that it was unclear why he had chosen to leave Iraq at this time. Mr. Sadr’s departure from Iraq was first reported Tuesday night by ABC News.

Neutralizing the power of Mr. Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has sporadically battled American forces for the past four years, has been a particular concern for American officials as they try to rein in powerful Shiite militias in Baghdad.

With the new American offensive in Baghdad still in its early days, American commanders have focused operations in the eastern part of the city, a predominantly Shiite area that has long been the Mahdi Army’s power base.

If Mr. Sadr had indeed fled, his absence would create a vacuum that could allow even more radical elements of the Shiite group to take power.

Last year’s election of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as prime minister enhanced Mr. Sadr’s political stature inside Iraq. Mr. Maliki was elected with the backing of a political bloc led by Mr. Sadr.

American and Iraqi officials have said that recent intelligence points to signs of fracturing within the Mahdi Army, and that radical splinter groups who are not under Mr. Sadr’s control could be carrying out commando-style raids and assassinations.

Officials have suggested that these splinter groups could be receiving orders from officials in Iran, but have not offered direct evidence to back up their claims.

An aide to Mr. Sadr, reached by telephone on Tuesday night, denied that Mr. Sadr had left Iraq and said that the cleric was planning a televised address in the next several says.

Last week, during a raid in Diyala Province, Iraqi forces killed an aide of Mr. Sadr’s who American military officials said had been leading “rogue” elements of the Mahdi Army and fomenting violence against Iraqi civilians and police.

Three days later, Iraqi and American troops arrested the second-highest-ranking official in the Health Ministry, who they said was running a Mahdi Army splinter group and funneling millions of dollars to rogue Shiite militants.

The raids were carried out after Mr. Maliki dropped his protection of Mr. Sadr.

American officials said Tuesday that Mr. Sadr may have seen these operations coming and fled the country to avoid his own arrest.

But military officials in Iraq have also been wary of moving directly against Mr. Sadr, fearing that capturing or killing the militant cleric would further stoke the sectarian violence inside Iraq and turn more Shiites against the Maliki government.

In 2004, American forces arrested several of Mr. Sadr’s top aides and shut down a newspaper allied with the Mahdi Army, setting off bloody clashes in eastern Baghdad and the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

The news of Mr. Sadr’s departure from Iraq came amid an escalating war of words between the Bush administration and top Iranian officials. In recent days, White House and military officials have accused the Iranian government of supplying Shiite militias with the materials to make deadly roadside bombs.

Iranian officials have denied the charges.

Marc Santora contributed reporting from Baghdad.

    U.S. Says Powerful Iraqi Cleric Is Living in Iran, NYT, 14.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/world/middleeast/14sadr.html

North Korea agrees to nuclear disarmament steps

Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:09PM EST
Reuters
By Jack Kim and Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea agreed to take steps toward nuclear disarmament under a groundbreaking deal struck on Tuesday that will bring the impoverished communist state some $300 million in aid.

Under the agreement, reached by six countries in Beijing four months after the secretive state stunned the world by testing a nuclear device, Pyongyang will freeze the reactor at the heart of its nuclear program and allow international inspections of the site.

Japan and the United States also said they would take early steps toward normalizing relations with Pyongyang.

Washington agreed to resolve the issue of frozen North Korean bank accounts in Macau's Banco Delta Asia within 30 days, chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill told reporters. The United States will also initiate, under a separate bilateral forum, a process to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The proposed plan hammered out by the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China after nearly a week of intensive talks will only be the first step in locating and dismantling North Korea's nuclear arms activities, leaving many questions to future negotiations.

"We think it's a very important first step toward the denuclearization of North Korea and the Korean peninsula," White House spokesman Tony Snow said in Washington.

He said, however, that Pyongyang faces the continuing threat of international sanctions if it reneges on the deal.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iran, another country at loggerheads with the West over its nuclear program, should see North Korea as an example.

"Why should it not be seen as a message to Iran that the international community is able to bring together its resources?" she said at a news conference.

Hill and North Korean envoy Kim Kye-gwan warmly shook hands and patted one another's arms during a closing reception.

Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency said the other parties decided to offer economic and energy aid equivalent to one million tonnes of heavy oil in connection with North Korea's "temporary" suspension of the operation of its nuclear facilities.

Hill dismissed that report as posturing. "Any action to restart the reactors would be a violation of the agreement," he told reporters.

U.S. trade sanctions will also begin to be lifted from a country President George W. Bush once lumped with Iran and Iraq on an "axis of evil."

HOW GOOD A DEAL IS IT?

One area of uncertainty is whether North Korea has a highly enriched uranium program as alleged by Washington. North Korea has not acknowledged the existence of such a program. Highly enriched uranium can be the fissile material for nuclear weapons and its production can be much harder to detect than plutonium refinement.

"We have to get a mutually satisfactory outcome on this. We need to know precisely what is involved," Hill said.

As details of the draft leaked out, Japan was already voicing doubt that any agreement could be made to stick.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and outspoken conservative, said the Communist state should not be rewarded with "massive shipments of heavy fuel oil" for only partially dismantling its nuclear program.

"It sends exactly the wrong signal to would-be proliferators around the world," he told CNN.

The deal says North Korea must take steps to shut down its main nuclear reactor within 60 days. In return, it will receive 50,000 tonnes of fuel oil or economic aid of equal value.

The North will receive another 950,000 tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent when it takes further steps to disable its nuclear capabilities, including providing a complete inventory of its plutonium -- the fuel used in Pyongyang's first nuclear test blast in October.

The 1 million tonnes of fuel would be worth around $300 million at current prices.

The steps for now do not involve providing 2,000 megawatts of electricity -- at an estimated cost of $8.55 billion over 10 years and about equal to North Korea's current output -- that South Korea pledged in September 2005 and which is due after North Korea's denuclearization is completed.

The deal faces a tricky path to fruition amid profound distrust between North Korea and its would-be donors.

North Korea stepped down the path to nuclear disarmament before, in a 1994 agreement with the Clinton administration collapsed in 2002 after Washington accused Pyongyang of seeking to produce weapons-grade uranium.

The United States maintains some 30,000 troops on the Korean peninsula, which has remained in a technical state of war since the 1950-53 Korean War truce.

Japan will not join in giving aid to North Korea because of past abductions of its nationals by Pyongyang's agents, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in Tokyo.

(Additional reporting by Teruaki Ueno, Ben Blanchard, Nick Macfie, Lindsay Beck and Ian Ransom in Beijing and Matt Spetalnick, Steve Holland, Tabassum Zakaria and Sue Pleming in Washington)

    North Korea agrees to nuclear disarmament steps, R, 13.2.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSPEK6774920070213?src=021307_1150_TOPSTORY_n.korea_nuclear_deal

Skeptics Doubt U.S. Evidence on Iran Action in Iraq

February 13, 2007
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 — Three weeks after promising it would show proof of Iranian meddling in Iraq, the Bush administration has laid out its evidence — and received in return a healthy dose of skepticism.

The response from Congressional and other critics speaks volumes about the current state of American credibility, four years after the intelligence controversy leading up to the Iraq war. To pre-empt accusations that the charges against Iran were politically motivated, the administration rejected the idea of a high-level presentation, relying instead on military and intelligence officers to make its case in a background briefing in Baghdad.

Even so, critics have been quick to voice doubts. Representative Silvestre Reyes of Texas, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that the White House was more interested in sending a message to Tehran than in backing up serious allegations with proof. And David Kay, who once led the hunt for illicit weapons in Iraq, said the grave situation in Iraq should have taught the Bush administration to put more of a premium on transparency when it comes to intelligence.

“If you want to avoid the perception that you’ve cooked the books, you come out and make the charges publicly,” Mr. Kay said.

Administration officials say their approach was carefully calibrated to focus on concerns that Iran is providing potent weapons used against American troops in Iraq, not to ignite a wider war. “We’re trying to strike the right tone here,” a senior administration official said Monday. “It would have raised the rhetoric to major decibel levels if we had had a briefing in Washington.”

At the State Department, the Pentagon and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, officials had anticipated resistance to their claims. They settled on an approach that sidelined senior officials including Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq, and John D. Negroponte, who until last week was the director of national intelligence. By doing so, they avoided the inevitable comparisons to the since-discredited presentation that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made to the United Nations Security Council in 2003 asserting that Iraq had illicit weapons.

The White House and the State Department both made clear on Monday that they endorsed the findings presented in Baghdad. Asked for direct evidence linking Iran’s leadership to the weapons, Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said: “Let me put it this way. There’s not a whole lot of freelancing in the Iranian government, especially when its comes to something like that.”

Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said: “While they presented a circumstantial case, I would put to you that it was a very strong circumstantial case. The Iranians are up to their eyeballs in this activity, I think, very clearly based on the information that was provided over the weekend in Baghdad.”

In Australia, however, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that he “would not say” that Iran’s leadership was aware of or condoned the attacks. “It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it’s clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit,” according to an account posted on the Voice of America Web site.

An Iranian government spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, has sought in denying the charges to exploit the lingering doubts about American credibility. “The United States has a long history of fabricating evidence,” Mr. Hosseini, a Foreign Ministry official, told reporters in Tehran.

The administration’s scramble over how to present its evidence started in January, after President Bush accused Iran of meddling in Iraq. Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, demanded that the United States present its evidence, and Mr. Khalilzad, the American ambassador in Baghdad, responded that America would “oblige him by having something done in the coming days.”

That set Bush administration officials racing to produce a briefing that would hold up to scrutiny. Military officials in Baghdad developed the first briefing, a wide-ranging dossier that contained dozens of slides about Iranian activities inside Iraq, which was then sent to Washington for review, administration officials said.

But after a careful vetting by intelligence officials, senior administration officials, including National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, concluded that there were aspects of the briefing that could not be supported by solid intelligence. They sent the briefing back to Baghdad to be shored up, a senior official said.

The evidence that military officials presented Sunday was a stripped-down version of the original presentation, focusing almost entirely on the weapons, known as explosively formed penetrators, and the evidence that Iran is supplying the weapons to Shiite groups.

Both Democratic and Republican officials on Capitol Hill said that while they do not doubt that the weapons are being used to attack American troops, and that some of those weapons are being shipped into Iraq from Iran, they are still uncertain whether the weapons were being shipped into Iraq on the orders of Iran’s leaders.

Several experts agreed. “I’m not doubting the provenance of the weapons, but rather, the issue of what it says about Iranian policy and whether Iran’s leaders are aware of it,” said George Perkovich, a nonproliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Philip D. Zelikow, who until December was the top aide to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said American politics and the increased unpopularity of the war in Iraq is obscuring the larger issue of the Iran evidence, which he described as “abundant and so multifaceted.”

“People have lost their moorings,” Mr. Zelikow said. He said the administration was trying to overcome public distrust by asking, in essence, “Don’t you trust our soldiers?”

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran.

    Skeptics Doubt U.S. Evidence on Iran Action in Iraq, NYT, 13.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/world/middleeast/13weapons.html?hp&ex=1171429200&en=3faf0e9628ca986a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Iran rejects claims of equipping Iraqi Shiite extremists

Updated 2/12/2007 10:54 AM ET
USA Today
By Jim Michaels

BAGHDAD — Iranian officials today rejected claims they were arming Shiite extremists in Iraq with armor-piercing roadside bombs, a day after the U.S. military said those bombs have killed 170 American and coalition troops in Iraq.

U.S. military officials, who declined requests to be identified, said Sunday that shipments of weapons and ammunition to Iraq's Shiite militias were being directed at the highest levels of the Iranian government.

Iran on Monday rejected the accusations. "Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence. Such charges are unacceptable," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.

In a briefing, U.S. officials showed reporters part of a device they described as a sophisticated roadside bomb, along with mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades they said were made in Iran. Later, one of the officials, an intelligence analyst, said it would be impossible to find a "smoking gun" conclusively proving Iranian government involvement.

Sunday's briefing by the three military officials was the most detailed attempt to show that Iran supports militants in Iraq. It followed similar remarks Friday by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Gates said serial numbers and markings found on explosives provide "pretty good" evidence that Iran is supplying either weapons or expertise to extremists in Iraq.

U.S. and coalition forces have not captured any Iranian agents in possession of the armor-piercing roadside bombs. The U.S. officials at the briefing said Iraqis are usually used to transport the explosives from Iran.

The Mahdi Army militia is among the Shiite extremist groups that have obtained the powerful bombs. The Mahdi Army is aligned with anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political organization is part of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.

Al-Maliki has moved to distance himself from al-Sadr in recent weeks and has said he does not want Iraq to become a proxy battlefield for the United States and Iran.

U.S. commanders have been increasingly vocal about allegations of Iranian support for Shiite militias and extremists in Iraq. Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, said recently that Iran was providing training, weapons, ammunition and money to militants in Iraq.

The military said sophisticated weapons from Iran give militants an edge in their fight against American and Iraqi forces.

The Iranian Embassy in Baghdad could not be reached for comment on Sunday, but Tehran has denied the allegations in recent statements.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a televised interview aired Monday that his country was opposed to conflict and bloodshed in Iraq and that problems in Iraq should be solved with dialogue, not the use of force.

"There should be a court to prove the case and to verify the case. The position of our government ... is also the same. We are opposed to any kind of conflict in Iraq," Ahmadinejad to ABC's Good Morning America.

Sunday's military briefing had been delayed several times, as higher-ups in Washington vetted the evidence, the U.S. officials said. The Bush administration was widely criticized after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq for flawed intelligence alleging Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The officials said that among several Iranians picked up in recent raids was an operations officer from Iran's al-Quds Brigade, a unit in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards responsible for training insurgents and terrorists. The U.S. military identified him as Mohsin Chizari.

The Revolutionary Guards and al-Quds force report to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

U.S. forces raided a compound in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil last month, detaining five Iranians, all of whom were al-Quds members, the U.S. military said. Those captured tried to flush documents down the toilet and alter their appearance by shaving their heads, the U.S. officials said.

American officers are particularly worried about the armor-piercing bombs that can shoot a large slug of molten metal through the thick armor of a Humvee or Abrams tank.

Unlike many roadside bombs in Iraq that are cobbled together from artillery shells, so-called explosively formed penetrators are machined in factories.

"It is not just technology you can crank off the street," Lt. Col. Steven Miska, deputy commander of a U.S. brigade in Baghdad, said in an interview last week.

The military officials said the number of explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, used in Iraq increased dramatically last year after first being detected there in 2004. The number of EFP attacks nearly doubled last year. EFPs also have been used against Israeli forces in Lebanon by Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants, who fought a 34-day war with Israel last summer.

The U.S. military says it has also discovered conventional weapons and ammunition in Iraq tied to Iran. In an interview last week, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said U.S. forces have discovered mortar rounds that were Iranian-made. They're distinctive because most tail-fins on 81mm mortars screw off, but Iranian-made shells do not, he said.

The U.S. officials said Sunday that much of the Iranian weaponry found in Iraq was manufactured last year, indicating the munitions were recently shipped into Iraq and were not Saddam-era weapons.

Odierno said in a recent interview that the Iraqi government has been confronted with U.S. allegations of Iranian support for militants in Iraq.

Contributing: Associated Press

    Iran rejects claims of equipping Iraqi Shiite extremists, UT, 2.12.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-02-11-iraq-iran_x.htm

Gates Offers Support and Urges Action in Pakistan

February 12, 2007
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 12 -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made an unannounced trip to Pakistan today for talks with one of America's most complicated partners. He offered strong words of support for the government, even as he urged it to do more to halt the flow of Taliban fighters into Afghanistan.

Mr. Gates volunteered the help of the United States in easing a war of words between Afghanistan and Pakistan over border areas inside Pakistan that are being used as safe havens for Taliban and Qaeda fighters.

After meeting with President Pervez Musharraf, Mr. Gates told reporters he was flying back to Washington reassured that Pakistan would work more strenuously to halt insurgents from crossing the border to attack American, NATO and Afghan troops.

"If we weren't concerned about what was happening along the border, I wouldn't be here," Mr. Gates said.

Mr. Gates flew to Islamabad for a one-hour meeting with President Musharraf in Rawalpindi. He had spent the weekend in Munich at a security conference.

Senior American officials said the effort emphasized Washington's support for an oft-criticized ally who assists the Bush administration's counter-terrorism efforts but has been unable to halt Islamic radicals from using the country as a base.

Mr. Gates and President Musharraf discussed plans by NATO and Afghan forces to launch a spring offensive against the Taliban, which normally mounts a fresh round of attacks with the first thaw.

Asked about reports that American troops in Afghanistan had been shelling Taliban positions across the border in Pakistan, Mr. Gates did not respond specifically, but said, "Our operations are coordinated with the Pakistanis."

A former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. Gates said he first visited Pakistan 20 years ago in an effort to support anti-Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan.

After the Soviets were routed, Mr. Gates said, the United States erred by neglecting the region, allowing extremists to take over. The result, he said, was the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, planned by Al Qaeda leaders under Taliban protection in Afghanistan.

"We will not make that mistake again," Mr. Gates said. "We are here for the long haul."

Mr. Gates said the Pakistani president acknowledged difficulties in enforcing a peace deal reached late last year with tribal militia in North Waziristan, a semiautonomous tribal area straddling the border with Afghanistan.

President Musharraf has said the pact has been a partial success, and was being enforced more successfully now, but critics say the truce allowed the Taliban to consolidate forces, rest and retrain.

Pakistani officials have argued that the responsibility for securing the border should be shared with the United States, NATO and Afghan forces across the frontier. But the cross-border movements by insurgent fighters have prompted accusations back and forth over who bears culpability for allowing the Taliban to have revived.

The discussions between American and Pakistan officials are expected to continue over coming weeks, as a range of senior Bush administration and military officials are expected to make quiet trips to Pakistan.

American officials who specialize in Pakistan affairs say the nation's problems in tackling extremists along the border, both Taliban and home-grown, stem from both politics and capability.

Should General Musharraf move aggressively to quash Islamic radicals in his nation, he risks fomenting internal unrest, which could be a serious matter in a nation with nuclear weapons. Washington understands these risks, these officials said. At the same time, they said, Pakistan's security services have divided loyalties, and even some disciplined units lack adequate equipment and training.

    Gates Offers Support and Urges Action in Pakistan, NYT, 12.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/world/asia/12cnd-gates.html?hp&ex=1171342800&en=1f497782a515152b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Gates Counters Putin’s Words on U.S. Power

February 12, 2007
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

MUNICH, Feb. 11 — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, disputing a lengthy critique of American power by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Saturday, said Sunday at a European security conference here, “One cold war was quite enough.”

Government leaders, legislators and military officials here continued speculating on Mr. Putin’s motivation for delivering his long list of complaints about American domination of global affairs, but Mr. Gates chose words of velvet, not steel, in offering Washington’s fullest response. As Mr. Putin had, he invoked the cold war more than once.

“As an old cold warrior, one of yesterday’s speeches almost filled me with nostalgia for a less complex time,” he said. “Almost.”

Mr. Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency called back to government service from academia to become defense secretary, told attendees of the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy that both he and Mr. Putin had spent most of their careers in their governments’ spy agencies.

“And, I guess, old spies have a habit of blunt speaking,” Mr. Gates said. “However, I have been to re-education camp — spending four and half years as a university president and dealing with faculty.” His remark drew laughs and applause.

His sharpest response to Mr. Putin was gently couched. “Russia is a partner in endeavors,” Mr. Gates said. “But we wonder, too, about some Russian policies that seem to work against international stability, such as its arms transfers and its temptation to use energy resources for political coercion.”

Throughout the rebuttal, and in a longer discourse on how America’s European allies must help rebuild Afghanistan and remain engaged in the fight against terrorism, Mr. Gates mentioned Mr. Putin only once by name. That came when he said he had accepted an invitation from Mr. Putin to visit Moscow.

On Saturday, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, a Putin confidant, denied that Mr. Putin’s speech had been confrontational. “We are not interested in imposing our opinion on anybody,” Mr. Ivanov said. But he cautioned that his government would not support international actions taken without consultation with Russia, nor those taken without its consent, and certainly none that are “imposed on Russia.”

The speech by Mr. Gates was delivered under the long shadow of his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, who both charmed and offended European audiences during his tenure as defense secretary, which included several speeches to this conference.

Mr. Gates cast himself as a geopolitical realist and drew a knowing laugh when he focused on Mr. Putin’s assertion that the United States and its allies were dividing Europe.

“All of these characterizations belong in the past,” Mr. Gates said. “The free world versus those behind the Iron Curtain. North versus South. East versus West, and I am told that some have even spoken in terms of ‘Old Europe’ versus ‘new.’ ”

The last was a reference to a characterization Mr. Rumsfeld made in January 2003 to contrast Germany and France, which objected to the United States plan to invade Iraq, with neighboring supporters, not all of which are NATO members.

Reviewing NATO’s success in standing up to the Soviet threat, “it seems clear that totalitarianism was defeated as much by ideas the West championed then and now as by ICBMs, tanks and warships that the West deployed,” Mr. Gates said. The alliance’s most effective weapon, he said, was a “shared belief in political and economic freedom, religious toleration, human rights, representative government and the rule of law.”

“These values kept our side united, and inspired those on the other side,” he added.

Shifting to current threats and challenges, he called on NATO members to support a comprehensive strategy to stabilize Afghanistan, “combining a muscular military effort with effective support for governance, economic development and counternarcotics.”

He also urged NATO allies to increase their military spending to meet the benchmark of 2 percent of gross domestic product set by the alliance; only 6 of NATO’s 26 members fulfill that standard.

Mr. Gates briefly turned to the war in Iraq, to echo President Bush’s insistence that the United States and its partners there must prevail. If chaos tears Iraq apart, Mr. Gates warned, “every member of this alliance will feel the consequences” of regional turmoil and terrorism.

He acknowledged the damage done to America’s global standing by its conduct in the campaign against terrorism, particularly in holding detainees without due process at the United States naval base in Cuba.

“There is no question in my mind that Guantánamo and some of the abuses that have taken place in Iraq have negatively impacted the reputation of the United States,” Mr. Gates said. “It is also true, though, that there are real terrorists at Guantánamo.”

Repeating comments from a number of American officials, Mr. Gates said most members of the Bush administration would like to close the detention center, and he pledged that tribunals for detainees would be conducted in a legitimate and transparent manner.

    Gates Counters Putin’s Words on U.S. Power, NYT, 12.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/world/europe/12gates.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Putin Rebukes U.S. for Its Use of Force

February 10, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:38 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MUNICH, Germany (AP) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted the United States Saturday for the ''almost uncontained'' use of force in the world, and for encouraging other countries to acquire nuclear weapons.

Putin told a security forum that ''we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations'' and that ''one state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.

''This is very dangerous, nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law,'' Putin told the gathering.

Putin did not elaborate on specifics and did not mention the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. But he dismissed suggestions that the European Union and NATO had the right to intervene in crisis regions.

''The legitimate use of force can only done by the United Nations, it cannot be replaced by EU or NATO,'' he said.

Putin's comments to a weekend forum attended by 250 officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, came after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the international community is determined to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Merkel said Tehran needed to accept demands made by the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

''There is no way around this,'' Merkel said. ''What we are talking about here is a very, very sensitive technology, and for that reason we need a high degree of transparency, which Iran has failed to provide, and if Iran does not do so then the alternative for Iran is to slip further into isolation.''

Merkel, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency, emphasized the international community's support for Israel and said there was a unified resolve to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

''We are determined to prevent the threat posed by an Iranian military nuclear program,'' she said.

The annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, now in its 43rd year, is often used as an opportunity for officials to conduct diplomacy in an informal setting.

Some 3,500 police were on hand to provide tight security for the conference and kept the usual throng of demonstrators away. This year, several thousand protesters were expected, protest organizers said.

Heading in to the conference, Larijani, who is scheduled to speak on Sunday, said he planned to use the conference as an opportunity to talk about Iran's nuclear program. Those would be the first talks with Western officials since limited U.N. sanctions were imposed on the country in December, which fell short of harsher measures sought by the United States.

Larijani was expected to meet with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Javier Solana, the EU's chief foreign policy envoy.

At the opening dinner on Friday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni urged international solidarity in putting pressure on Iran to prevent it from producing a nuclear weapon.

''It is a regime that mocks the Holocaust while threatening the world with a new one, while trying to develop a weapon to do so,'' she said. ''Iran is a threat not only to Israel ... but to the world. The international community cannot show any hesitation ... Any hesitation on our part is being perceived as weakness.''

The conference this year focuses on ''Global Crises -- Global Responsibilities,'' looking at NATO's changing role, the Middle East peace process, the West's relations with Russia and the fight against terrorism.

Merkel opened the conference telling the delegates that one of the major threats facing the world today is global warming, urging a combined effort to combat it.

''Global warming is one of the major medium- to long-term threats that could have a dramatic effect,'' Merkel said.

Gates, who planned to talk Sunday on trans-Atlantic relations, was expected to press allies for more troops and aid for a spring offensive in Afghanistan.

He delivered the message Friday to a NATO defense minister's meeting in Seville, Spain, but got a lukewarm response.

France and Germany are questioning the wisdom of sending more soldiers, while Spain, Italy and Turkey have also been wary of providing more troops.

    Putin Rebukes U.S. for Its Use of Force, NYT, 10.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Security-Conference.html?hp&ex=1171170000&en=145b7b9d00d19e1a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Australian Guantanamo inmate strains U.S. ties

Wed Jan 31, 2007 2:26 AM ET
Reuters
By Rob Taylor

CANBERRA (Reuters) - The United States may speed up the trial of Australia's only Guantanamo Bay inmate, David Hicks, following a rare split between the two allies over accusations he faced "Nazi concentration camp" conditions.

With his five-year detention shaping as an election year issue for Australia's conservative government amid growing public clamor for his release, Prime Minister John Howard has insisted to U.S. authorities that Hicks be charged by February.

"Our position is we want him charged by the end of next month. We have made that very clear to the Americans," Howard told a news conference on Wednesday.

"We are not happy about the time that has gone by it is also important to remember the gravity of the charges."

U.S.-based lawyer Sabin Willet said Hicks's cell was like a Nazi death camp and Australian lawyer David McLeod who visited Hicks's Cuban enclave prison on Tuesday said he was shocked "seeing him chained to the floor, hollow eyes".

Hicks, 31, was arrested in Afghanistan in late 2001 and accused of fighting for al Qaeda. He is among around 395 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters being held in the U.S. enclave, and is tipped to be one of the first to face trial.

Charges against Hicks of conspiracy, attempted murder and aiding the enemy were dropped when the U.S. Supreme Court last June rejected the tribunal system set up by President George W. Bush to try foreign terrorism suspects.

Hicks, a convert to Islam, had previously pleaded not guilty.

But his case is straining Canberra's usually unswerving support for the U.S.-led war on terror, as Howard faces re-election in the second half of the year against polls showing 62 percent of Australians oppose the handling of the Iraq war.

Australia was an original coalition member in both Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney will visit Canberra in February to thank the country for its military support.

But in a subtle shift, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who has previously lashed out at terrorist "appeasers", said on Wednesday he did not want any Australian maltreated.

"If fresh allegations, detailed allegations, facts can be brought forward to us in relation to Hicks, then we're obviously happy to investigate that," he told local radio.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has admitted Hicks's case is dragging and called last week for an urgent medical assessment.

"I think the government must now be feeling a bit angry with Washington, as the Americans have done nothing to meet Australian concerns," Hugh White, Professor of Strategic and Defense Studies at the Australian National University told Reuters.

U.S. military prosecutor Colonel Moe Davis denied Hicks was in poor physical and mental condition, but said the Australian was confined in his Guantanamo cell for long periods.

"The detainees there generally are offered two hours of outdoor recreation time a day, so that would be the 22 hours a day - about right," Davis said.

    Australian Guantanamo inmate strains U.S. ties, R, 31.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-31T072628Z_01_SYD164552_RTRUKOC_0_US-AUSTRALIA-HICKS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-8

Bush vows to 'respond firmly' if Iran expands acts in Iraq

Updated 1/29/2007 11:41 AM ET
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Deeply distrustful of Iran, President Bush said Monday "we will respond firmly" if Tehran escalates its military actions in Iraq and threatens American forces or Iraqi citizens.

Bush's warning was the latest move in a bitter and more public standoff between the United States and Iran. The White House expressed skepticism about Iran's plans to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq. The United States has accused Iran of supporting terrorism in Iraq and supplying weapons to kill American forces.

"If Iran escalates its military actions in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and — or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly," Bush said in an interview with National Public Radio.

The president's comments reinforced earlier statements from the White House.

"If Iran wants to quit playing a destructive role in the affairs of Iraq and wants to play a constructive role, we would certainly welcome that," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. But, he said, "We've seen little evidence to date (of constructive activities) and frankly all we have seen is evidence to the contrary."

Sharply at odds over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, Washington and Tehran are arguing increasingly about Iraq. American troops in Iraq have been authorized to kill or capture Iranian agents deemed to be a threat. "If you're in Iraq and trying to kill our troops, then you should consider yourself a target," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week.

Iran's plans in Iraq were outlined by Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qumi in an interview with The New York Times. He said Iran was prepared to offer Iraqi government forces training, equipment and advisers for what he called "the security fight," the newspaper reported. He said that in the economic area, Iran was ready to assume major responsibility for the reconstruction of Iraq.

"We have experience of reconstruction after war," the ambassador said, referring to the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. "We are ready to transfer this experience in terms of reconstruction to the Iraqis."

Johndroe said the Bush administration was looking at what the ambassador had to say.

The White House says there has been growing evidence over the last several months that Iran is supporting terrorists inside Iraq and is a major supplier of bombs and other weapons used to target U.S. forces. In recent weeks, U.S. forces have detained a number of Iranian agents in Iraq.

"It makes sense that if somebody is trying to harm our troops or stop us from achieving our goal, or killing innocent citizens in Iraq, that we will stop them," Bush said on Friday.

    Bush vows to 'respond firmly' if Iran expands acts in Iraq, UT, 29.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-29-us-iran_x.htm

Australian PM Urges Against Iraq Pullout

January 28, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:54 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Prime Minister John Howard said withdrawing Australian troops from Iraq would damage Australia's alliance with the United States.

Howard said he agreed to send 2,000 troops to back the U.S.-led Iraq invasion because of the perceived threat of weapons of mass destruction, but also to preserve a security alliance with the U.S. that was formalized in a 1951 treaty. No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

''I have to now deal with a decision: do we rat on the Americans ... do we say to the Americans, it's got all too hard and too difficult? If anybody thinks that that wouldn't do damage to the alliance, they're kidding themselves,'' Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting radio.

Australia has about 1,300 personnel in the Middle East, including 800 based in Iraq, mostly guarding Australian officials in Baghdad, helping train Iraqi forces and providing backup security in two relatively peaceful southern provinces.

The opposition Labor Party, which opposed the Iraq war, has vowed to withdraw most Australian troops if it wins elections this year.

Howard said democracy has a ''reasonable prospect'' of taking root in Iraq and the U.S.-led coalition partners should remain in Iraq until then.

''Until we are reasonably satisfied that the Iraqis can look after themselves and deal with the security situation over the years ahead, I think the coalition should stay,'' Howard said.

    Australian PM Urges Against Iraq Pullout, NYT, 28.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Australia-US-Iraq.html

Bush Defends Moving Against
Iranians Who Help Shiites Attack U.S.-Led Forces in Iraq

January 27, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — President Bush and his senior aides on Friday justified American actions against Iranian operatives inside Iraq as necessary to protect American troops and Iraqis, and said they would continue as long as Tehran kept up what they called its support for Shiites involved in sectarian attacks.

“If somebody is trying to harm our troops and stop them from achieving our goal, or killing innocent citizens in Iraq, we will stop them,” President Bush told reporters at the White House.

President Bush decided several months ago to allow American troops to make targets of select Iranian operatives inside Iraq whom military officials have accused of helping militants build sophisticated and powerful roadside bombs. He and other officials faced repeated questioning about the policy, which was disclosed in recent weeks, after The Washington Post published articles on Friday exploring Iran’s regional influence and the administration’s approaches to containing it.

Several administration officials, including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, said that President Bush had given the military no new authorities to carry out the offensive, and that the Pentagon had long had permission to capture or kill foreign operatives thought to be aiding attacks against American troops.

Officials said there was no blanket authority to take action against Iranian agents, only Iranian agents thought to be directly involved in planning or carrying out attacks against American and allied forces. That is a different standard than applied to foreign fighters of Al Qaeda in Iraq, they said.

“If you are on the wire diagram as an Al Qaeda operative, you can be targeted just for reading the newspaper in your living room. These guys are not in that position,” said one senior Defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said there was debate within the administration about whether to become even more aggressive toward Iranians in Iraq. Already, the arrests of Iranians have caused tensions between American and Iraqi officials, as well as heightening the strains between Tehran and Washington. Meanwhile, some lawmakers have expressed concerns that the administration might even strike militarily into Iranian territory just as Congress considers resolutions denouncing Mr. Bush’s war strategy for Iraq.

“You have to balance it,” this official said. “While you want to take care of the situation, you don’t want to cause an international incident where you provoke Iran.”

The White House has not issued a presidential finding authorizing covert action against Iranians inside of Iraq or authorized any military actions inside Iran, officials said.

President Bush kicked off a campaign of escalated rhetoric against Iran during a televised address to the nation on Jan. 10. For months, officials from across the Bush administration have accused Iran of supplying Shiite militias with high-tech explosives and training them to carry out attacks with roadside bombs.

Administration officials have thus far provided little detailed public evidence to support these claims. Officials said that Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador in Baghdad, is planning a news conference for Wednesday during which he will present a dossier of Iran’s efforts to fuel sectarian violence in Iraq.

Part of Mr. Khalilzad’s presentation, officials said, will be to show evidence found during a December raid on a compound of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri.

The officials said that among the evidence that would be presented were photographs, documents and a color-coded wall map that were seized in the raid detailing which Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad would be targets for attack.

Some leading Democrats, including the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, John D. Rockefeller IV, have criticized the Bush administration for building a case against Iran when American intelligence agencies still have a murky understanding of Iran’s intentions in the Middle East.

Last week, Mr. Rockefeller said that the White House campaign was unnervingly similar to Bush administration rhetoric in the months before the Iraq war.

Some Middle East specialists point out that an effort to move against Iranian agents could backfire and prompt Iran to strike back against America troops.

“It’s going to be a bumpy road inside Iraq because it puts U.S. forces at risk and because Ahmadinejad will be more confrontational,” said Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, referring to Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Military commanders in Baghdad say they have documented a rise in the number of sophisticated roadside bombs using “shaped charges” — a type of weapon that officials believe are imported from Iran. Military statistics show that the number of coalition troops killed by these weapons jumped dramatically during the last four months of 2006.

It was late last year, officials in Washington said, that Mr. Bush signed off on a more aggressive military offensive inside Iraq to counter Iranian influence. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice confirmed the policy change in an interview on Jan. 12. An article in The Washington Post on Friday reported new details about how the policy was being carried out, including some that the administration said were inaccurate, without elaborating.

One person briefed on the Bush administration strategy said officials in Washington believed that by giving assistance to radical Shiite militants in organizations like the Mahdi Army, Iran was hoping to split off hard-line elements within these organizations and make them more beholden to Tehran.

By moving against Iranians inside Iraq, the Bush administration hopes it can persuade them to stop their efforts to create rifts among Shiites and to provide aid in attacks against American troops, the person said, requesting anonymity because the briefing he had received was not intended to be made public.

“The Iranian government needs to know that whether it’s the Quds Force or any other kind of Iranian organization, we are not going to tolerate American soldiers being targeted in that fashion,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a top State Department official. He was referring to a section of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

    Bush Defends Moving Against Iranians Who Help Shiites Attack U.S.-Led Forces in Iraq, NYT, 27.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/world/middleeast/27policy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Mexico Extradites 4 Drug Traffickers to U.S.

January 20, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:45 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico extradited four major drug traffickers to the U.S. on Friday, a sign that the nation's new president will deliver on his promise for more cooperation in fighting cross-border crime.

Osiel Cardenas, the purported Gulf cartel leader who is believed to still be running the drug organization from behind bars in Mexico, was extradited along with 13 others wanted in the U.S., all of whose appeals against extradition had run out, the Attorney General's office said in a news release.

The United States has long been frustrated by Mexico's reluctance to extradite Mexican drug lords also wanted in the U.S.

Mexico has said the suspects had to face justice in their own country first.

But that attitude changed under former President Vicente Fox, who promised to hand over top criminals to the U.S.

President Felipe Calderon initiated an aggressive push against drug gangs shortly after taking office on Dec. 1.

''Today, both the Mexican and the American people can celebrate a monumental moment in our two nations' battle with the vicious drug traffickers and criminals who threaten our very way of life,'' U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza said in a statement.

In addition to Cardenas, Mexico extradited Ismael and Gilberto Higuera Guerrero, brothers and former chiefs in the Arellano-Felix cartel in Tijuana and Mexicali, and Hector Palma Salazar, former leader in the Sinaloa cartel of Joaquin ''El Chapo'' Guzman, who escaped from prison in 2001 and is still at large.

Ten others wanted on charges of murder, drug trafficking and sex-related crimes, also were extradited, officials said.

''I cannot say enough about the extraordinary leadership, courage and conviction demonstrated by President Calderon, his Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora, and the hundreds of dedicated law enforcement professionals on both sides of our border who have made this day possible,'' Garza said.

    Mexico Extradites 4 Drug Traffickers to U.S., NYT, 20.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mexico-US-Extraditions.html

U.S. plans envision broad attack on Iran: analyst

Fri Jan 19, 2007 7:49 PM ET
Reuters



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. contingency planning for military action against Iran's nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former U.S. intelligence analyst said on Friday.

"I've seen some of the planning ... You're not talking about a surgical strike," said Wayne White, who was a top Middle East analyst for the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research until March 2005.

"You're talking about a war against Iran" that likely would destabilize the Middle East for years, White told the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington think tank.

"We're not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets inside Iran. We're talking about clearing a path to the targets" by taking out much of the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles that could target commerce or U.S. warships in the Gulf, and maybe even Iran's ballistic missile capability, White said.

"I'm much more worried about the consequences of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructure," which would prompt vigorous Iranian retaliation, he said, than civil war in Iraq, which could be confined to that country.

President George W. Bush has stressed he is seeking a diplomatic solution to the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.

But he has not taken the military option off the table and his recent rhetoric, plus tougher financial sanctions and actions against Iranian involvement in Iraq, has revived talk in Washington about a possible U.S. attack on Iran.

The Bush administration and many of its Gulf allies have expressed growing concern about Iran's rising influence in the region and the prospect of it acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Middle East expert Kenneth Katzman argued "Iran's ascendancy is not only manageable but reversible" if one understands the Islamic republic's many vulnerabilities.

Tehran's leaders have convinced many experts Iran is a great nation verging on "superpower" status, but the country is "very weak ... (and) meets almost no known criteria to be considered a great nation," said Katzman of the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service.

The economy is mismanaged and "quite primitive," exporting almost nothing except oil, he said.

Also, Iran's oil production capacity is fast declining and in terms of conventional military power, "Iran is a virtual non-entity," Katzman added.

The administration, therefore, should not go out of its way to accommodate Iran because the country is in no position to hurt the United States, and at some point "it might be useful to call that bluff," he said.

But Katzman cautioned against early confrontation with Iran and said if there is a "grand bargain" that meets both countries' interests, that should be pursued.

    U.S. plans envision broad attack on Iran: analyst, R, 19.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-20T004912Z_01_N19368342_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAN-USA-EXPERTS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-2

Dems Seek to Bar U.S. Attacks on Iran

January 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:41 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic leaders in Congress lobbed a warning shot Friday at the White House not to launch an attack against Iran without first seeking approval from lawmakers.

''The president does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking congressional authorization,'' Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told the National Press Club.

The administration has accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs and contributing technology and bomb-making materials for insurgents to use against U.S. and Iraqi security forces.

President Bush said last week the U.S. will ''seek out and destroy'' networks providing that support. While top administration officials have said they have no plans to attack Iran itself, they have declined to rule it out.

This week, the administration sent another aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf -- the second to deploy in the region. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the buildup was intended to impress on Iran that the four-year war in Iraq has not made America vulnerable. The U.S. is also deploying anti-missile Patriot missiles in the region.

The U.S. has accused Tehran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday that Iran would not back down over its nuclear program, which Tehran says is being developed only to produce energy.

Reid made the comments as he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., addressed the National Press Club on Democrats' view of the state of the union four days before Bush addresses Congress and the nation.

Meanwhile, Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Friday that the U.S. must try to engage Iran and Syria in a constructive dialogue on Iraq because of the countries' influence in the conflict.

The Bush administration, and several members of Congress, say they oppose talks with Iran and Syria because of their terrorist connections. Bringing the two countries into regional talks aimed at reducing violence in Iraq was one of the study group's recommendations.

''Do we have so little confidence in the diplomats of the United States that we're not willing to let them talk with somebody we disagree with?'' Hamilton asked.

    Dems Seek to Bar U.S. Attacks on Iran, NYT, 19.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iran.html

U.S. Envoy Says North Korea Talk Was ‘Useful’

January 17, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:39 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BERLIN (AP) -- The chief U.S. negotiator at six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program said Wednesday he was hopeful the talks can resume by the end of this month, and described a meeting with his North Korean counterpart as ''useful.''

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and the North's Kim Kye Gwan met for six hours Tuesday at the U.S. embassy in Berlin, and were to meet again Wednesday at the North Korean embassy, Hill said.

''You can assume when you have six hours of conversations ... that you can characterize them as useful,'' Hill said during an event held by the American Academy in Berlin.

He would not comment on what exactly they discussed. However, asked when the six-party talks might resume, Hill said: ''We hope we can do this by the end of January, but we have to talk to the Chinese since they are the hosts in the process.''

The latest round of talks among the Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia -- held after a yearlong hiatus and North Korea's first nuclear test, carried out in October -- ended in December with no agreement on North Korean disarmament, or a new date for further talks.

In 2005, North Korea pledged to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for security guarantees and economic aid, but no progress has been made in implementing that accord. North Korea's test earned it widespread international condemnation and UN sanctions.

The process had been deadlocked for more than a year before the December meeting.

During five days of meetings in Beijing in December, officials from other delegations said Pyongyang's negotiators refused to talk about the country's nuclear weapons program and stuck instead to its demand that the United States first had to remove its financial restrictions on North Korea.

Washington imposed the restrictions against a Macau-based bank holding North Korean accounts for Pyongyang's alleged involvement in counterfeiting and money laundering. That led to a freezing of the North's assets at the bank worth around $24 million.

The U.S. held separate financial talks with North Korea on the sidelines of the Beijing talks but made no progress. The two sides have provisionally agreed to hold financial talks next week.

Hill is to travel to Asia later this week for more separate discussions with his counterparts in the region. He will be in Seoul on Friday, in Beijing on Saturday and in Tokyo on Sunday.

    U.S. Envoy Says North Korea Talk Was ‘Useful’, NYT, 17.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Germany-Koreas-Nuclear.html?hp&ex=1169096400&en=0f3227170c88b302&ei=5094&partner=homepage

New U.S strikes hit 4 places in Somalia

Wed Jan 10, 2007 6:51 AM ET
Reuters
By Sahal Abdulle

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - U.S. forces hunting al Qaeda suspects hit four sites in air strikes in southern Somalia on Wednesday, a Somali government source said, as international criticism mounted over Washington's military intervention.

"As we speak now, the area is being bombarded by the American air force," the source told Reuters.

He said the attacks hit an area close to Ras Kamboni, a coastal village near the Kenyan border where many fugitive Islamists are believed holed-up after being ousted by Ethiopian troops defending Somalia's interim government.

Four places were hit -- Hayo, Garer, Bankajirow and Badmadowe, the source said. "Bankajirow was the last Islamist holdout. Bankajirow and Badmadowe were hit hardest," he added.

Pentagon officials confirmed one air attack on Monday, as part of a wider offensive involving Ethiopian planes.

The strike was aimed at an al Qaeda cell said by Washington to include suspects in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa and a 2002 attack on a hotel in Kenya.

Somali officials said many died in Monday's strike -- the first overt U.S. military action in Somalia since a disastrous humanitarian mission ended in 1994.

A Somali clan elder reported a second U.S. air strike on Tuesday, but that was not confirmed by other sources.

The U.S. actions were defended by Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf, but criticised by others including new U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, the European Union, and former colonial power Italy.

"The secretary-general is concerned about the new dimension this kind of action could introduce to the conflict and the possible escalation of hostilities that may result," U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said Rome opposed "unilateral initiatives that could spark new tensions in an area that is already very destabilized".

EMBASSY BOMBINGS

Monday's attack on a southern village by an AC-130 plane firing automatic cannon was believed to have killed one of three al Qaeda suspects wanted for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, a U.S. intelligence official said.

Washington is seeking a handful of al Qaeda members including Abu Talha al-Sudani, named in grand jury testimony against Osama bin Laden as al Qaeda's east Africa commander.

Critics of the action say it could misfire by creating strong Somali resentment and feeding Islamist militancy.

"Before this, it was just tacit support for Ethiopia. Now the U.S. has fingerprints on the intervention and is going to be held more accountable," said Horn of Africa expert Ken Menkhaus. "This has the potential for a backlash both in Somalia and the region."

Ethiopia sent troops across the border late last year to oust Islamists who had held most of the south since June and threatened to overrun the weak government at its provincial base.

In the capital Mogadishu, residents were woken by gunfire before dawn on Wednesday in an area housing Ethiopian and Somali troops, who were targeted in a rocket attack on Tuesday.

One corpse lay in the street, witnesses said.

In another attack, at least one person was killed on Wednesday when Somali militiamen fired a rocket-propelled grenade at an Ethiopian truck, missing it but hitting a house, a government source said.

Quoting U.S. and French military sources, ABC News said U.S. special forces were working with Ethiopian troops on the ground in operations inside Somalia.

But Interior Minister Hussein Mohamed Aideed denied the report. "There are no American ground forces inside Somalia. The American involvement is limited to air and sea," he said.

President Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi have pledged to restore order in Somalia after entering the capital for the first time since they took office in 2004 at the head of an internationally-recognized interim government.

Both have called for African peacekeepers to help fill a security vacuum that is expected when Ethiopian troops pull out.

"We hope the troops ... will be deployed as soon as possible so these other troops who are in the country leave," said Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, head of a previous transitional government, at a news conference with his successor Yusuf.

Kenya on Wednesday ordered security forces to begin house-to-house searches along the border with its volatile neighbor for any Islamists or illegal immigrants.

"They will be flushed out and anybody hosting them will be arrested," said local provincial commissioner, Kiritu Wamae.

(Additional reporting by Guled Mohamed in Mogadishu, David Morgan and Sue Pleming in Washington, Philip Pullella in Rome, Irwin Arieff in the United Nations, Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi and Noor Ali in Garissa)

    New U.S strikes hit 4 places in Somalia, R, 10.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-10T114933Z_01_L09770013_RTRUKOC_0_US-SOMALIA-CONFLICT.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-2

Somali official: Top al-Qaeda suspect killed in U.S. airstrike

Updated 1/10/2007 4:38 AM ET
AP
USA Today

MOGADISHU, Somali (AP) — The suspected al-Qaeda militant who planned the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in east Africa was killed in an American airstrike in Somalia, an official said Wednesday.

"I have received a report from the American side chronicling the targets and list of damage," Abdirizak Hassan, the Somali president's chief of staff, told The Associated Press. "One of the items they were claiming was that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is dead."

Hassan said that American airstrikes in Somalia would continue.

"I know it happened yesterday, it will happen today and it will happen tomorrow," he said.

Mohammed allegedly planned the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 225 people.

He is also suspected of planning the car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and the near simultaneous attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in 2002. Ten Kenyans and three Israelis were killed in the blast at the hotel, 12 miles north of Mombasa. The missiles missed the airliner.

Mohammed is thought to have been the main target of an American helicopter attack Monday afternoon on Badmadow island off southern Somalia.

U.S. attack helicopters also strafed suspected al-Qaeda fighters in southern Somalia on Tuesday, witnesses said.

The two days of airstrikes by U.S. forces were the first American offensives in the African country since 18 U.S. soldiers were killed here in 1993.

U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity because of its sensitive nature had said earlier that the strike in southern Somalia on Monday killed five to 10 people believed to be associated with al-Qaeda.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman on Tuesday spoke of one strike in southern Somalia, but would not address whether military operations were continuing. Other defense officials speaking on condition of anonymity suggested that more strikes were either planned or under consideration.

A Somali lawmaker said 31 civilians, including a newlywed couple, died in Tuesday's assault by two helicopters near Afmadow, a town in a forested area close to the Kenyan border. The report could not be independently verified.

A Somali Defense Ministry official described the helicopters as American, but witnesses told The Associated Press they could not make out identification markings on the craft. Washington officials had no comment on the helicopter strike.

Col. Shino Moalin Nur, a Somali military commander, told the AP by telephone late Tuesday that at least one U.S. AC-130 gunship attacked a suspected al-Qaeda training camp Sunday on a remote island at the southern tip of Somalia next to Kenya.

Somali officials said they had reports of many deaths.

On Monday, witnesses and Nur said, more U.S. airstrikes were launched against Islamic extremists in Hayi, 30 miles from Afmadow. Nur said attacks continued Tuesday.

"Nobody can exactly explain what is going on inside these forested areas," the Somali commander said. "However, we are receiving reports that most of the Islamist fighters have died and the rest would be captured soon."

Whitman said Tuesday that the assault was based on intelligence "that led us to believe we had principal al-Qaeda leaders in an area where we could identify them and take action against them."

Somali Islamic extremists are accused of sheltering suspects in the 1998 embassy bombings. American officials also want to ensure the militants no longer pose a threat to Somalia's U.N.-backed transitional government.

The U.S. military said Tuesday that the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived off Somalia's coast and launched intelligence-gathering missions over Somalia. Three other U.S. warships were conducting anti-terror operations.

U.S. warships have been seeking to capture al-Qaeda members thought to be fleeing Somalia by sea after Ethiopia's military invaded Dec. 24 in support of the interim Somali government. The offensive drove the Islamic militia out of much of southern Somalia, including the capital Mogadishu, and toward the Kenyan border.

President Abdullahi Yusuf, head of the U.N.-backed transitional government, told journalists in Mogadishu that the U.S. "has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."

Other Somalis in the capital said the attacks would increase anti-American sentiment in their largely Muslim country. Many Somalis are already upset by the presence of troops from neighboring Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population.

It was the first overt military action by the U.S. in Somalia since it led a U.N. force that intervened in the 1990s in an effort to fight famine. The mission led to clashes between U.N. forces and Somali warlords, including the battle, chronicled in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down," that killed 18 U.S. soldiers.

Somalia has not had an effective central government since warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. The warlords turned on each other, creating chaos in the nation of 7 million people.

    Somali official: Top al-Qaeda suspect killed in U.S. airstrike, UT, 10.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-01-10-somalia-airstrikes_x.htm

Al - Qaeda Targeted in Somalia

January 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:38 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States killed five to 10 people in this week's attack on a target in southern Somalia believed to be associated with the al-Qaida terrorist network, a U.S. intelligence official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the operation's sensitivity, said a small number of others present, perhaps four or five, at the targeted area also were wounded. The United States was still trying to figure out who they were -- a process that may require a mix of intelligence and getting personnel to the scene.

Pentagon officials, speaking privately because the Defense Department was not publicly releasing the information, strongly suggested that the U.S. military was either planning or considering additional strikes in Somalia.

With the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower off Somalia's coast, commanders can call in strikes from fixed-wing aircraft like the F/A-18. Pentagon officials said that as of Tuesday no carrier-based aircraft had conducted strikes in Somalia.

Another Pentagon official, spokesman Bryan Whitman, said Tuesday that the U.S. military attacks against al-Qaida leaders in Somalia were based on credible intelligence. He would not address whether the operations were continuing.

Whitman would not confirm any details of the strike, which was conducted by at least one AC-130 gunship early Monday local time in southern Somalia, late Sunday EST. He would not say whether the attack successfully killed any specific members of al-Qaida.

The assault was based on intelligence ''that led us to believe we had principal al-Qaida leaders in an area where we could identify them and take action against them,'' said Whitman. ''We're going to remain committed to reducing terrorist capabilities where and when we find them.''

The United States has been trying to track the ''big three'' al-Qaida figures in East Africa for their roles in plots against the interests of the United States and its allies. They are Abu Talha al-Sudani, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan.

It was not immediately clear to the intelligence official if any of the three was hit in the attack. The official said there were new indications that the targeted area was linked to al-Qaida, rather than the Council of Islamic Courts, a Muslim organization that controlled most of Southern Somalia during the last six months of last year.

Based on that information, the military decided to launch the attack, the official said.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said he was not aware of any consultations with Congress before the assault.

The airstrike Monday was in the town of Afmadow, about 220 miles southwest of the capital of Mogadishu, Somali officials said. It was not immediately clear how many people were killed in the attacks, but Somali officials said there were reports that many were killed.

At the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack said, ''Very clearly, the U.S. government has had concerns that there are terrorists, and al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists, that were in Somalia.'' He added that ''we have great interest in seeing that those individuals not be able to flee to other locations.''

Whitman said the U.S. conducts ''all operations with the close cooperation of our allies in the region'' but would not say if Somali officials gave permission for the raid.

At the outset of a conventional conflict, like the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon normally would publicly release some details.

The Somalia assault, however, was conducted by U.S. Special Operations Command and has been shrouded in secrecy. The military typically declines to reveal much about such missions by special operations forces, including the AC-130 gunships used in the Somalia attack, and Delta Force counterterrorism ground troops.

If the initial air attack was just one part of a broader, continuing special operation, then the military would be even more reluctant to publicly reveal details, out of concern for jeopardizing the mission, endangering the lives of U.S. troops and removing any doubt on the part of hostile forces about what they faced.

------

Associated Press writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.

------

On the Net:

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil

    Al - Qaeda Targeted in Somalia, NYT, 9.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Somalia.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

"Many Dead" in U.S. Strike in Somalia:

Government

January 9, 2007
By REUTERS
Filed at 1:27 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A U.S. air attack on a Somali village occupied by Islamists believed to be sheltering an al Qaeda suspect has left ``many dead bodies,'' a Somali government source said on Tuesday.

In the first known direct U.S. intervention in the Somali conflict, an AC-130 attack plane rained gunfire down on the southern village of Hayo late on Monday, the source told Reuters.

``The Americans are saying an al Qaeda heading operations in east Africa is among the Islamists there,'' the source said.

He did not know the suspect's name or whether he died.

Hayo is in the southern tip of Somalia between Afmadow and Doble, areas where Ethiopian and Somali troops chased the Islamists' last remnants after ending their six-month rule of Mogadishu and most of southern Somalia in a two-week blitzkrieg.

The AC-130 is a propeller-driven cargo plane fitted with electronic sensors that allows it to pinpoint targets with heavy automatic cannon fire. Washington has used it extensively in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda there.

CBS News, which first reported the attack quoting unnamed Pentagon officials, said the AC-130 was flown by the Special Operations command from the U.S. Horn of Africa counter-terrorism base in Djibouti.

A Pentagon spokesman said he had no information on the report.

U.S., Ethiopian and Kenyan intelligence officials say some Islamists provided shelter to a handful of al Qaeda members, and that suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania used Somalia as a base.

The Islamists deny any al Qaeda links.

    "Many Dead" in U.S. Strike in Somalia: Government, NYT, 9.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-somalia-conflict.html

U.S. Airstrike

Aims at Qaeda Cell in Somalia

January 9, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 — A United States Air Force gunship carried out a strike Sunday night against suspected operatives of Al Qaeda in southern Somalia, a senior Pentagon official said Monday night.

The attack by an AC-130 gunship, which is operated by the Special Forces Command, is believed to have produced multiple casualties, the official said. It was not known Monday night whether the casualties included members of a Qaeda cell that American officials have long suspected was hiding in Somalia.

Special Forces units operating from an American base in Djibouti are conducting a hunt for Qaeda operatives who have been forced to flee Mogadishu, the Somali capital, since Islamic militants were driven from there by an Ethiopian military offensive last month.

The American attack was first reported by CBS News.

The Special Forces attack is the first military action in Somalia that Pentagon officials have acknowledged since American troops departed the lawless country in the wake of the infamous “Black Hawk Down” episode in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed in street fighting in Mogadishu.

American officials have long suspected that a handful of Qaeda suspects responsible for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania have been hiding inside Somalia, a country that has not had a central government since 1991.

The search for the terrorist suspects has driven American policy toward Somalia for several years.

Earlier this year, the Central Intelligence Agency began making cash payments to a group of Somali warlords who pledged to help hunt down members of the Qaeda cell.

After Islamist militias took control of Mogadishu in the summer, officials in Washington charged that the Islamists had ties to the terror suspects, and made demands for their handover to American custody.

The Ethiopian military offensive that began last month recently drove the Islamists from the seaside Somali capital, raising hopes within Washington that the Qaeda operatives might surface as they fled the protection of the Islamists. The Islamists have retreated to areas around the southern port city of Kismayo. Ethiopian officials have said they have intelligence reports that members of the Qaeda cell were hiding near the city.

The AC-130 gunship is a heavily armed propeller plane that, because of its slow speed, operates primarily at night and can direct an immense barrage of gunfire onto a target as it circles overhead.

The attack against suspected Qaeda operatives is the sort of targeted operation that senior Bush administration officials have been pressing the Special Operation Command, based in Tampa, Fla., to undertake in recent years.

But officials have said that Special Operations forces have had difficulty carrying out targeted strikes in the past because of the difficulty establishing the whereabouts of wanted terrorists or getting forces in place when a suspected militant is located.

The Central Intelligence Agency has killed a small number of suspected Qaeda members, using a pilotless drone armed with a missile. Among them were five people killed in Yemen in 2002.

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.

    U.S. Airstrike Aims at Qaeda Cell in Somalia, NYT, 9.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/world/africa/09somalia.html

American Diplomat

to Visit Strife-Torn Somali Capital

January 6, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

KISMAYO, Somalia, Jan. 5 — The State Department’s top diplomat for Africa plans to visit Mogadishu, the violence-scarred Somali capital, on Sunday, American officials said Friday. It would be the first time in more than a decade that a high-ranking United States official has set foot there.

But Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged the world’s Muslims on Friday to turn Somalia into a battlefield and use suicide attacks.

These developments were part of Somalia’s transformation after Ethiopian-led forces ousted the once powerful Islamist movement from the capital last week and helped install a potentially viable government there for the first time in over 16 years.

American officials said the schedule for the diplomat, Jendayi E. Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, was still tentative, but that she planned to be in Mogadishu for four hours to meet with officials of the transitional government and leading Somali intellectuals.

The United States has had a minimal presence in the country since its diplomats were withdrawn in the fall of 1994, nearly a year after 18 Americans were killed during an ill-fated attempt to capture a warlord in Mogadishu. In his speech on Friday, Mr. Zawahri urged Muslim fighters to wage a holy guerrilla war in Somalia. “I speak to you today as the crusader Ethiopian invasion forces violate the soil of the beloved Muslim Somalia,” he said in an audio recording on a Web site that has featured Qaeda messages before. “Launch ambushes, land mines, raids and suicidal attacks until you consume them as the lions eat their prey.”

It was not the first time that Muslim extremists have called for a holy war in Somalia.

Ethiopia has a long Christian history, and Somalia’s Islamist leaders had been trying for months to rally outside support by portraying the Ethiopians as infidel invaders and urging Muslims worldwide to turn Somalia into the third front for jihad, after Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the end, though, Western intelligence officials said that only a few hundred foreign fighters heeded the call, and that they seemed to make little difference. The Islamist forces, made up of mostly untrained teenage troops, were routed by Ethiopian soldiers in one battle after another and lost in one week all the territory they had gained in the past six months.

Somalia’s transitional government is now in loose control of most of the country and Western diplomats, including Ms. Frazer, are urging African nations to quickly put together a peacekeeping force before Somalia reverts to anarchy.

Officials from Ethiopia, one of the poorest nations in the world, have said that they do not have the resources to keep soldiers here much longer. Ethiopia has justified its intervention by saying that Somalia’s Islamists were a regional menace.

Ms. Frazer met Friday with Kenyan and Somali officials in Nairobi to discuss the details of the peacekeeping force. Uganda has already volunteered troops, and Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania have indicated they might also send forces.

Ms. Frazer was to travel to Yemen and Djibouti on Saturday to pursue the matter.

In Mogadishu, the transitional government was struggling to collect weapons. Earlier in the week, Ali Muhammad Gedi, the transitional prime minister, announced that Thursday was the deadline for all militias and gunmen to surrender their arms. Only a handful have complied and the deadline has been pushed back to Saturday.

As for the Islamists, Somali officials said Friday that the last remnants of their forces were cornered in a remote area of southern Somalia, south of Kismayo. Somali officials said they expected the conflict to end soon, though the Islamists have vowed to fight on as an underground insurgency.

Mohammed Ibrahim and Yusuuf Maxamuud contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.

    American Diplomat to Visit Strife-Torn Somali Capital, NYT, 6.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/africa/06somalia.html

Somali, Ethiopian forces

prepare major assault

on last stronghold of Islamic militias

Updated 1/5/2007 5:56 AM ET
AP
USA Today

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Somali troops backed by Ethiopians captured a southern town near the Kenyan border Thursday evening and prepared to launch a major assault Friday on the last stronghold of Islamic movement militiamen.

U.S. Navy warships were patrolling off the Somali coast to prevent the militiamen from escaping by sea.

Col. Barre "Hirale" Aden Shire, the Somali defense minister, said Islamic militiamen were dug in with their backs to the sea at Ras Kamboni at the southernmost tip of Somalia.

"Today we will launch a massive assault on the Islamic courts militias. We will use infantry troops and fighter jets," said Shire, who left for the battle zone on Friday. "They have dug huge trenches around Ras Kamboni but have only two options: to drown in the sea or to fight and die."

Somali government and Ethiopian troops routed the Council of Islamic Courts militia last week, driving them out of the capital and their strongholds in southern Somalia.

Al-Qaeda's deputy leader urged Somalia's Islamic militia to ambush and raid Ethiopian forces with land mines and suicide attacks, according to an Internet audiotape posted Friday.

"I speak to you today as the crusader Ethiopian invasion forces violate the soil of the beloved Muslim Somalia," Ayman al-Zawahri said in the audiotape. Ethiopia has a large Christian population.

"Launch ambushes, land mines, raids and suicidal combats until you consume them as the lions and eat their prey," al-Zawahri added.

The more than five-minute audiotape could not immediately be verified but was aired on a website frequently used by militants and carried the logo of al-Qaeda's media production wing, al-Sahab.

Three al-Qaeda suspects wanted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa are believed to be leaders of the Islamic movement in Somalia. The movement's leaders deny having any links to terror network.

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf told top diplomats at a meeting in Nairobi Friday that his country has a rare opportunity to reverse 15 years of anarchy, but needs international help to do it.

The diplomats from the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East met to explore ways to help the Somali government following the defeat of the Islamic movement that sought to rule the country by Islamic law.

Jendayi Frazer, assistant U.S. secretary of state for Africa, said Thursday after meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni that Uganda would supply between 1,000 and 2,000 peacekeepers and that they could begin arriving in Somalia before the end of the month.

The Islamic movement has vowed to launch and Iraq-style guerrilla war, raising the prospect of bloody reprisals against foreign peacekeepers.

Somalia's interior minister said Thursday that 3,500 Islamic fighters are still hiding in the capital.

Kenya closed its border amid fears militants would slip across the frontier. The U.N. said thousands of refugees are also near the border, unable to seek safety in Kenya.

Residents of Mogadishu, Somalia's ruined seaside capital, have been on edge since the government took over. The city is still teeming with weapons, and some of the feared warlords of the past have returned to the city with their guns.

Ethiopian MiG fighter jets and tanks were vital to helping the weak Somali military rout the Islamists. Now, though, Ethiopia wants to pull out in a few weeks, saying its forces cannot be peacekeepers and cannot afford to stay.

Since January 2005, the seven-nation Intergovernmental Authority on Development has offered to send a peacekeeping mission to Somalia, but it has not materialized because of a 1992 arms embargo on Somalia. The U.N. Security Council partially lifted the arms embargo in December to allow such a mission.

There have also been divisions within Somalia's transitional government and parliament over such a move and, when the Islamic movement controlled Mogadishu, there were demonstrations against any foreign peacekeepers.

Somalia's history with foreign intervention has been dark.

A U.N. peacekeeping force, including U.S. troops, arrived in 1992. The next year, fighters loyal to clan leader Mohamed Farah Aideed shot down two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters and battled American troops, killing 18 servicemen. The U.S. pulled out soon afterward, and the U.N. scaled down.

The ease with which Somalis can get weapons is a major problem. Thursday was Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi's deadline for residents to voluntarily give up their arms, but only a handful were seen doing so. But Gedi said the disarmament program was working.

Somalia's last effective central government fell in 1991, when clan-based warlords overthrew military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other. The current government was formed two years ago with the help of the United Nations, but has been weakened by internal rifts.

Gedi swore in thousands of troops into the army Friday who had served under Siad Barre's regime. Most were well over 50, wore old uniforms and carried no weapons.

Hassan Hashi Mohamed, 60, said he saved his camouflage uniform for 16 years.

"They called on us from the radio, so we came here," Hassan Hashi Mohamed, 60, said from a former base of Barre in Mogadishu, where the troops had gathered. "We are old now, but we will get some young men too."

    Somali, Ethiopian forces prepare major assault on last stronghold of Islamic militias, UT, 5.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-01-04-somalia-islamists_x.htm

U.S. warns North Korea

against another nuclear test

Fri Jan 5, 2007 9:47 PM ET
Reuters
By Arshad Mohammed and Paul Eckert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Friday warned North Korea of "severe consequences" to the diplomatic effort to end its nuclear programs if Pyongyang conducts a second atomic test.

The State Department issued the warning as U.S. and South Korean officials sought to play down reports that North Korea, which carried out its first nuclear test on October 9, might be preparing for another.

South Korean officials said activity had been spotted near a suspected nuclear test site in North Korea but there was no evidence to suggest Pyongyang was about to test again.

"We do not have any indication that that kind of test is imminent," South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon told reporters after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"The North Koreans would have to know that any such test would obviously further deepen their isolation," Rice said.

U.S. officials held out the possibility of a quick resumption of six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions if Pyongyang were to return to the table prepared to carry out its agreement to abandon its nuclear programs.

The talks, which involve the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, made no visible headway during their last round in Beijing in December.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said there were signs that a fresh round was possible this month but he made clear that a new North Korean nuclear test would be unwelcome.

"If you did have another test of a nuclear device, that would have severe consequences for the viability of that political-diplomatic process -- why would they take such a step at this time?" State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

RICE SEES SOME PROGRESS

The talks were designed to find a way to carry out a six-party agreement reached on September 19, 2005 in which North Korea said it was committed "to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs." In return, the other countries held out economic, political and security incentives.

Despite the failure of the last round, Rice said the parties had made some progress.

"One of the reasons that you are hearing some sense that we might be able to return sooner than later is that when you look at what happened in the last round of the talks, there actually was significant groundwork laid for potential outcomes that could be useful," Rice told a news conference with Song.

"If there are signals that in fact the North is now ready to come back in a more constructive way ... I do think that we could be back in talks fairly soon," she added, but declined to say when that might be.

"It is North Korea's turn to come back to us with a positive and realistic response to the proposals tabled in Beijing," Song added.

North Korea's October 9 nuclear test caused unease across the Pacific and its neighbors, as well as the United States, have been scrutinizing the country for any signs of a new test.

"Certain activities have been detected near a suspected North Korean nuclear test site but currently there are no specific indications related to an additional test," said a South Korean source familiar with the North's nuclear program.

Another South Korean official in Seoul said vehicle and personnel movement had been spotted near the site of the North's first test, Yonhap news agency reported.

That official, however, said there were no signs of cables being laid or electronic monitors being installed which might indicate a test was imminent.

Meanwhile, the unification minister of South Korea -- still technically at war with the communist North half a century after the 1953 Korean War truce -- urged Pyongyang to agree to early summit talks to reduce tensions.

A statement issued by North Korea's official KCNA news agency warned South Koreans if they voted in the conservative opposition in December presidential elections they would stymie cooperation and "impose a nuclear holocaust."

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim and Kim Yeon-hee in Seoul

U.S. warns North Korea against another nuclear test, R, 5.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-06T024716Z_01_N05288300_RTRUKOC_0_US-KOREA-NORTH.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-7