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Rice defends

Middle East arms sales plan

Tuesday July 31, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Mark Tran and agencies

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, today said plans to sell billions of dollars of weapons to the Middle East would shore up friendly regimes against al-Qaida and Iran.

Ms Rice, who was visiting Egypt with the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, denied the arms sales were a move to ensure the support of states including Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

"This is not an issue of quid pro quo," she said. "We are working with these states to fight back extremism. We all have the same interest in a stable Iraq that can defend itself ... and be unified."

The package also includes a 25% increase in arms sales to Israel over the next 10 years, ensuring it maintains its military superiority in the region.

Washington said the unusual dual visit of Ms Rice and Mr Gates underlined the importance of the Middle East to the Bush administration.

It comes with the US renewing a push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, seeking to stabilise Iraq and attempting to contain growing Iranian influence.

"For the secretary of state and the secretary of defence to travel together to any region ... is at a minimum very rare, if not unprecedented," Mr Gates said.

The two are due to meet the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and the six members of the Gulf cooperation council in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The Arab ministers flew in from an Arab League meeting in Cairo yesterday, at which they gave qualified support to Mr Bush's idea of a Middle East peace meeting later this year.

Just before Ms Rice and Mr Gates began their diplomatic mission, the Bush administration announced its plans for major arms sales to the region.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and UAE are to share $20bn (£10bn), while Egypt is to get $13bn over 10 years and Israel's share will increase to $30bn.

"This effort will help bolster forces of moderation and support a broader strategy to counter the negative influences of al-Qaida, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran," Ms Rice said.

Iran has criticised the promise of arms, accusing the US of trying to sow fear and mistrust in the Middle East and of aiming to destabilise the region.

However, Ms Rice said: "If there is a destabilisation of the region it can be laid at the feet of an Iranian regime. This is a positive agenda in the Middle East."

The secretary of state and Mr Gates are also due to visit Saudi Arabia, which has been publicly criticised by Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to the UN, for trying to undermine the Iraqi government.

Bush administration officials have shown increasing frustration with Saudi Arabia's attitude towards the Iraqi government, which is dominated by Shia Muslims linked with Iran.

Ms Rice sought to play down that criticism, praising the Saudis for offering debt relief to Baghdad and attempting to better secure the border with Iraq.

The arms deals need to be approved by Congress, where some members have said they plan to block the sale of advanced weaponry - including satellite-guided bombs, to Saudi Arabia.

    Rice defends Middle East arms sales plan, G, 31.7.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2138472,00.html

A green light to oppression

July 31, 2007 1:30 PM
The New York Times
Brian Whitaker

In a move supposedly intended to counter Iranian influence, the US has announced a series of arms deals with Middle Eastern countries.

Apart from Israel, which will receive $30bn in military aid, Egypt will get $13bn. Five Gulf states - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the UAE - will also be sold weaponry to the tune of $20bn, with the lion's share going to the Wahhabi regime in Riyadh.

Thus, in the name of "working with these states to fight back extremism" (as secretary of state Condoleezza Rice put it), the US is arming two of the Arab world's leading human rights abusers: Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The reaction from Tehran was predictable. US policy "is creating fear and concerns in the countries of the region and trying to harm the good relations between these countries", foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters in Tehran. And he's absolutely right.

If the Bush administration's goal was to inflame Sunni-Shia tensions across the region and to spread the sectarian strife in Iraq to neighbouring countries, it would be hard to imagine a more effective way of going about it.

Although Iran is the worldwide centre of Shia Islam, there's an important distinction to be made between Shia Muslims and the Iranian regime. The question is how many people will actually make it. Marginalised Shia communities in the Gulf states and Egypt will undoubtedly feel more threatened, while others will interpret the American move as a green light to oppress them further.

In Egypt, the tiny Shia population is already harassed by the authorities and treated with suspicion. Some of this has been documented by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Its report talks of Shia Muslims being arrested - ostensibly for security reasons - but then being subjected to torrents of abuse by state security officers for their religious beliefs.

One officer is quoted as telling a suspect: "I'm going to keep tabs on you. If you try anything, I'll make you regret it. I'm prepared to forgive the members of the Gamaa'a Islamiyya [the armed Sunni Islamist group], although they murder us, but I wouldn't forgive you, because at least the Gamaa'a Islamiyya shares my creed."

In Saudi Arabia, where Shia account for 20% of the population (and, more critically, 75% in the oil-rich region), the official policy, as Matthew Mainen of the Institute for Gulf Affairs noted recently, is to treat them as polytheists, idol worshippers, and as part of a vast Jewish conspiracy against Islam.

"Matching the indoctrination of Saudi Arabia's public education system, governmental practices and policies reinforce the notion that Shia Muslims are subhuman. Shia books, education, music, and art are banned in Saudi Arabia. Shias are further barred from playing any political, social, or religious role in Saudi society, and are not even allowed to provide testimony in courts of law ...

"As long as Saudi Arabia continues to promote and practise an ideology holding that it is the obligation of Sunni Muslims to purge Islam of Shias in the great jihad, hundreds of Saudi insurgents will continue to cross the Iraqi border to further the sectarian violence without hindrance from the Saudi security forces."


As the US state department itself has observed in a report on religious freedom in the kingdom:

"Members of the Shia minority are subject to officially sanctioned political and economic discrimination ...

"Members of the Shia minority are discriminated against in government employment, especially in national security-related positions, such as in the military or Ministry of Interior. While there are some Shia who occupy high-level positions in government-owned companies and government agencies, many Shia believe that openly identifying themselves as Shia would have a negative impact on career advancement ... While there is no formal policy concerning the hiring and promotion of Shia, anecdotal evidence suggests that in some companies -including companies in the oil and petrochemical industries - well-qualified Shia are passed over for less-qualified Sunni compatriots ...

"The Government also discriminates against Shia in higher education through unofficial restrictions on the number of Shia admitted to universities."


Viewed from Washington, bolstering tyrannical Sunni regimes against Iran might seem like pragmatism - a convergence of interests. But it's a dangerous sort of pragmatism because the American and Saudi interests are ultimately different. The Saudi government isn't really worried about Tehran; it's worried about keeping the lid on its Shia population in the oil-rich eastern province - and in the long term that can only rebound negatively on the US.

Just as there is a need to recognise that Jews in general are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, nor ordinary Muslims for the actions of al-Qaida, Arab states must be careful not to automatically treat their Shia communities as tools of the Iranian government, or encourage the public to think that they are.

What the region needs most right now is not more arms but a concerted effort to promote religious tolerance, to combat religious discrimination and prejudice, and to draw the Arab Shia communities into the political processes of their home countries before it is too late.

    A green light to oppression, G, 31.7.2007, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brian_whitaker/2007/07/a_green_light_to_oppression.html

Rice Touts New Mideast Aid Package

July 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:00 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that a new multibillion dollar military sales package for Arab nations will help secure Iraq and promote stability in the Persian Gulf.

Embarking on a four-day tour of the region with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Rice said in a statement that the proposed U.S. package, estimated to be at least $5 billion and as high as $20 billion, ''will help bolster forces of moderation and support a broader strategy to counter the negative influences of al-Qaida, Hebollah, Syria, and Iran.''

''We are helping to strengthen the defensive capabilities of our partners and we plan to initiate discussions with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states on a proposed package of military technologies that will help support their ability to secure peace and stability in the Gulf region,'' she said.

The new sales to Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia, would be counterbalanced with a more than 25 percent increase in military aid to Israel over the next 10 years, enabling the Jewish state to keep its military advantage over neighbors with whom it has no peace deal.

Israel will receive a total of $30 billion in U.S. military assistance while Egypt, which along with Jordan has made peace with Israel, will get $13 billion as part of the broader package.

Specific figures for aid to Saudi Arabia and Gulf nations like Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, first disclosed by senior Bush administration officials on Friday, were not included in the statement.

Rice said that she and Gates, who leave for the Middle East later Monday, would be discussing the amounts with the governments concerned as well as Congress, which must approve the sales. She said that Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns would travel to the region in mid-August for follow-up talks.

On Sunday, Israel, which has long opposed plans to boost Arab militaries, said it understood the U.S. rationale.

    Rice Touts New Mideast Aid Package, NYT, 30.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Mideast.html

British Prime Minister Holds Talks With Bush

July 30, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and SARAH LYALL

WASHINGTON, July 29 — President Bush, whose relationship with Tony Blair when he was prime minister of Britain was unparalleled in closeness and reliability, on Sunday night began two days of meetings with Mr. Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown.

The selection of Mr. Brown, who took office in late June, has injected a dose of unpredictability into Mr. Bush’s most important trans-Atlantic partnership.

The meetings, the first of Mr. Brown’s tenure as prime minister, hold challenges for both men.

Mr. Bush heads into the new relationship as a lame duck. Mr. Brown enters it at the very start of his term, facing demands at home that may redefine what many considered a supplicant relationship with the United States under Mr. Blair.

Headlines out of London have predicted a new era of distance from the United States, first and foremost in terms of Iraq policy — a forecast that has not gone unnoticed at the White House or among diplomats in Washington.

They have also taken note of statements from some officials in Mr. Brown’s government — most notably by a Foreign Office minister, Mark Malloch-Brown, suggesting that the new prime minister will not be anywhere near as close to Mr. Bush as Mr. Blair was.

The former prime minister was mocked as Mr. Bush’s “poodle” by voters increasingly dismayed by the war and by what they regarded as American arrogance and heavy-handedness in foreign policy.

But in interviews last week, American officials referred to the news out of Britain as “white noise,” saying that they had taken heart in Mr. Brown’s statements that he still considered the United States a prime partner.

“Look at what he said on BBC Radio,” said Gordon D. Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, referring to an interview this month in which Mr. Brown pointed to Mr. Bush’s relationship with Mr. Blair in positive terms.

“I will continue to work, as Tony Blair did, very closely with the American administration,” Mr. Brown said in the interview. “We will not allow people to separate us from the United States in dealing with the common challenges that we face around the world.”

Mr. Johndroe said the start of British troop withdrawals from Basra, which has fed into the predictions of a shift in the relationship, had been expected for some time.

Before leaving for the United States, Mr. Brown was unequivocal in his support for the alliance, saying it was Britain’s “single most important bilateral relationship.”

“Because of the values we share, the relationship with the United States is not only strong but can become stronger in the years ahead,” he said in a statement released by Downing Street. “We know that we cannot solve any of the world’s major problems without the active engagement of the U.S.”

United States officials say Mr. Bush and Mr. Brown, who met in person on various occasions before he became prime minister, had already begun to speak regularly by video conference.

Mr. Johndroe said that the men dined alone on Sunday night and that they had a one-on-one breakfast meeting scheduled for Monday.

The idea, Mr. Johndroe said, was that “the two leaders can just get down to direct discussions,” though their meeting Monday morning will be followed by a session with aides, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Mr. Johndroe said the two would lay out their positions on the major topics confronting their nations, what he termed an “exchange of views” on topics like Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, the crisis in Darfur and the status of Kosovo.

American officials seemed encouraged that Mr. Brown traveled to Camp David, a trip they had feared he would cancel after recent widespread flooding in parts of Britain. As of a few days ago, American officials were still uncertain he would come.

While Mr. Brown evidently deemed it politically safe to make the trip, the domestic ramifications of his relationship with Mr. Bush would seem likely to remain delicate for some time.

Mr. Blair’s unwillingness to criticize the United States and his unwavering commitment to the Iraq war proved the most unpopular aspect of his leadership. “Under Tony Blair, the relationship was so subordinate as to appear subservient,” the leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, Sir Menzies Campbell, said recently. “Britain needs to be America’s candid friend, not its client.”

In a newspaper interview this month, Mr. Malloch-Brown, who served until recently as deputy secretary general at the United Nations, said, “It is very unlikely that the Brown-Bush relationship is going to go through the baptism of fire and therefore be joined at the hip like the Blair-Bush relationship was.”

“You need to build coalitions that are lateral, which go beyond the bilateral blinkers of the normal partners,” he told the Daily Telegraph, speaking of reaching out to other leaders in Europe, India and China.

Jim Rutenberg reported from Washington, and Sarah Lyall from London.

    British Prime Minister Holds Talks With Bush, NYT, 30.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/world/europe/30brown.html

U.S. and Iran Trade Blame in Second Round of Iraq Talks

July 25, 2007
The New York Times
By STEPHEN FARRELL

BAGHDAD, July 24 — A second round of talks between American and Iranian diplomats produced scant evidence of progress or common ground on Tuesday, with each side emerging to blame the other for hindering progress on security in Iraq.

Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, reiterated accusations that Iran was providing weapons and training for Shiite militias to attack American-led forces in Iraq, while his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Kazemi-Qumi, countered that Iraqis were “victimized by terror and the presence of foreign forces” in their country.

The talks at the Iraqi prime minister’s office in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone took place as a suicide bomber killed an estimated 26 people in Hilla, a Shiite town 60 miles south of Baghdad, blowing up his tow truck outside a maternity hospital.

With little prospect of a breakthrough, the talks are nevertheless deemed significant by the Iraqi government, which has repeatedly urged the Iranians and the Americans not to allow their differences to further destabilize the situation in Iraq.

Mr. Crocker characterized the talks as “full and frank.” He said the two sides had discussed the formation of a security subcommittee to talk about support for handling militias, Al Qaeda and border security.

He was also blunt in his assessment that the situation had actually worsened since the two sides’ first meeting on May 28, with “an escalation, not a de-escalation” of Iranian-backed attacks on American and Iraqi forces.

“The fact is, as we made very clear at today’s talks, that over the roughly two months since our last meetings, we have actually seen militia-related activity that can be attributed to Iranian support go up, and not down,” Mr. Crocker said. “So I was as clear as I could be with the Iranians that this effort, this discussion, has to be measured in results, not in principles or promises, and that thus far, the results on the ground are not encouraging.”

The Iranians, Mr. Crocker says, have maintained their position that they had “absolutely nothing to do with” the attacks.

Clearly frustrated after hours of talks whose “actual concrete result can be distilled into a discussion of some few minutes,” Mr. Crocker nevertheless said the United States would pursue further talks “as long as we think it has some prospect of leading to better results on the ground.”

Mr. Kazemi-Qumi, speaking after the meeting, insisted that Iran was helping Iraq deal with its security difficulties.

He raised the case of five Iranians detained by American forces in the northern Iraqi town of Erbil in January. Iran says they are diplomats, while the United States says they are linked to the elite Iranian Quds Force, which is suspected of providing arms and training to Iraqi militias.

The Iraqi government has consistently called for their early release, saying that although the detainees were not official diplomats, they were known to the Kurdish authorities where they were detained, and that they were turning their liaison office into a consulate, which would have given them diplomatic immunity.

Mr. Kazemi-Qumi said he had also demanded the release of Iranian citizens who were illegally detained on entering Iraq.

“They acknowledged making mistakes,” he said, referring to the Americans, “and this is a step forward in itself and it’s now up to the Americans to rectify their mistakes.”

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq opened the day’s talks, saying, “We are hoping that you support stability in Iraq, an Iraq that doesn’t interfere in the affairs of others nor want anyone to meddle in its own affairs.”

Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, who presided over the talks, said officials would meet as early as Wednesday to establish the structure and mechanism of the proposed security committee.

In Hilla, the police said that the truck bomber struck at 9 a.m. in the Bab al-Mashhad district while it was packed with shoppers and commuters during the morning rush.

Hospital officials said that nearly 70 people were also wounded in the blast, and that at least one of the estimated 26 killed worked at the nearby maternity hospital. Its patients were moved by ambulances to two nearby hospitals because many of the ceilings had collapsed.

Farther north, in a Shiite area of eastern Baghdad, demonstrators marched in protest of an American and Iraqi blockade of the Husseiniya neighborhood.

Protesters chanted anti-American slogans and burned an American flag as they demanded that American forces remove the barricades and allow vehicle access to the area.

The American military said that militants there had set up dirt mounds to prevent soldiers and their vehicles from entering, and that in response the soldiers had closed off the neighborhood since Saturday to keep more militants from entering.

Access to the sealed area is restricted to emergency vehicles, but donkey carts and pedestrians were allowed past, the latter to reach hospitals and commercial vendors south of Husseiniya, said Lt. Col. John Drago, the commander of the American unit in the area.

“Every day we do this we are inconveniencing the population, and that is not what we want,” Colonel Drago said. “We want to help the population. However, the Shiite extremists do not seem to care about the population. What is going on in Husseiniya has got to stop.”

    U.S. and Iran Trade Blame in Second Round of Iraq Talks, NYT, 25.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/world/middleeast/25iraq.html

U.S. - Iran Talks Resume in Baghdad

July 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:55 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- The U.S. and Iranian ambassadors to Iraq sat down together Tuesday for their second talks in nearly two months, seeking ways to use their influence to bring stability to Iraq despite rising tensions over Washington's allegations that Tehran is fueling the violence.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki opened the meeting with a statement welcoming the delegates at his headquarters in the heavily fortified Green Zone. Al-Maliki said ''terrorism hits all Iraqi population sectors, with no exception,'' in his address, according to Iraqi state TV.

The meeting was closed to the media, but photos released by the Iraqi leader's office showed the participants sitting at three long tables for each delegation linked in triangular fashion and covered with white cloths.

Al-Maliki was joined by Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, while the U.S. delegation was headed by Ambassador Ryan Crocker and the Iranians by Ambassador Hasan Kazemi Qomi.

The detention of four American-Iranians in Iran has deepened tensions between Washington and Tehran, whose relations already were strained over Iran's controversial nuclear program and its support for radical militant groups such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas and by U.S. military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf.

But State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Iraq was the only issue on the agenda.

''This is an opportunity for direct engagement on issues solely related to Iraq,'' McCormack told reporters in Washington on Monday. ''We are going to raise the need for Iran to match its actions with its words in seeking strategic stability in Iraq.''

McCormack said Iran has not taken any steps to help bring about a stable Iraq, a goal he said Iran professes to share with the United States.

''We'll see, if, as a result of these engagements, they will change their behavior.''

The first round of Iran-U.S. talks, on May 28 in Baghdad, broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze following the 1979 Islamic Revolution and U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran.

Iran had said this second round would happen last month, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other U.S officials delayed because Iran had not scaled back what Washington alleges is a concerted effort to arm militants and harm U.S. troops in Iraq.

Iraq's fragile government has been pressing for another meeting between the two nations with the greatest influence over its future.

''What we, as Iraqis, hope to achieve is to build confidence between the two sides,'' Labeed Abawi, a senior Foreign Ministry official, told The Associated Press. ''There are facts on the ground, and they need to be dealt with.''

McCormack said he expected Iran to bring up the case of five Iranians held in U.S. custody in Iraq and accused of supporting insurgents. Crocker would not raise U.S. concerns about the four Iranian-Americans held for espionage, he said.

Washington has called for their release and says the charges are false.

''No, this meeting is about Iraq,'' McCormack said when asked specifically about the case of one of the four, Haleh Esfandiari of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. ''We've taken lots of opportunities via the Swiss to raise the case of Haleh Esfandiari as well as other American citizens in Iran. That is being handled in a separate channel.''

Switzerland looks after U.S. interests in Iran.

Iran has called for the release of the five Iranians, who the United States has said are the operations chief and members of Iran's elite Quds Force, which is accused of arming and training Iraqi militants. Iran says they are diplomats who were legally in Iraq.

But Abawi, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry official, said Baghdad did not want the detentions to dominate the talks ''because this will distract from the primary aim and that's helping Iraq.''

''We will ask the two nations to help us overcome our problems using all possible means,'' he said.

    U.S. - Iran Talks Resume in Baghdad, NYT, 24.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-US-Iran.html

U.S. Military Options Draw a Chorus of Protests in Pakistan

July 24, 2007
The New York Times
By SALMAN MASOOD

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 23 — American assertions that military action remained an option to quell militants in Pakistan’s frontier regions drew mounting protests from the government and its critics here on Monday, as clashes continued in the tribal areas where the United States says Al Qaeda has been allowed to set up a safe haven.

The Pakistani military said Monday that its forces in North Waziristan had killed 35 militants in battles since the day before, though reporters and residents in the tribal town of Miramshah expressed doubts about the military’s claim. The military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, said two soldiers had been killed and 12 wounded in fighting since Sunday night.

Fresh fighting erupted a little over a week ago in the tribal areas, when the Taliban renounced a truce in the aftermath of a government raid on a radical pro-Taliban mosque here in the capital. The government of the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has tried to stitch up the truce. The militants demand that troops pull out of posts in the tribal areas.

The Bush administration has recently stepped up its criticism of the peace deal with the militants, using it to press General Musharraf, its longtime ally, into taking more forceful action against what it calls sanctuaries of Qaeda fighters and their helpers.

The administration’s homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, said Sunday in an interview with Fox Television that the United States would consider military strikes against Qaeda hide-outs in Pakistan.

The statement was promptly countered by the Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Tasnim Aslam, on Monday. “We do not want our efforts to be undermined by any ill-conceived action,” Ms. Aslam said, adding that any military strikes would be deeply resented in the tribal areas and the rest of the country.

She said Pakistan was not aware of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts.

Newspaper editorials over the past several days have pointedly criticized American suggestions of military action, taking note of American troops getting “bogged down” in Iraq and Afghanistan. “So in their own interest and in the interest of Pakistan’s battle with the Taliban,” read an editorial recently in Dawn, an English language daily newspaper, the Americans “better keep themselves out of it.”

In Washington, the White House tried to temper such concerns, saying that reserving the option of military force was not necessarily the same as exercising it.

“I think there has been this notion afoot, or at least an attempt or an inclination somehow, we’re going to invade Pakistan,” said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman. “We always maintain the option of striking actionable targets, but we also realize that Pakistan is a sovereign government and a very important player in the war on terror.”

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

    U.S. Military Options Draw a Chorus of Protests in Pakistan, NYT, 24.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/world/asia/24pakistan.html

Bush to Bolster Abbas and Seek Peace Talks

July 17, 2007
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON, July 16 — President Bush announced an initiative on Monday to shore up the Palestinian president and to begin building a Palestinian state, signaling that his administration will use its remaining months to make a major push for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Mr. Bush called for a regional peace conference this fall to be led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that would include high-level Arab envoys and their counterparts from Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. He exhorted Israel’s Arab neighbors to open talks with Israel and to show leadership by “ending the fiction that Israel does not exist” and “stopping the incitement of hatred in their official media.”

He also urged them to send cabinet-level visitors to Israel, a request directed implicitly at America’s closest Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, which has refused to do so.

“With all these steps, today’s Arab leaders can show themselves to be the equals of peacemakers like Anwar Sadat and King Hussein of Jordan,” Mr. Bush said.

He even took a rare jab at Israel, using the word “occupation” to refer to the Israeli presence in the West Bank.

With Gaza now under the control of the militant Islamic group Hamas, Mr. Bush said Palestinians have arrived at a “moment of choice” between the violent path that Hamas has charted against Israel and the more peaceful route to a Palestinian state embraced by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and his Fatah faction, which retains control of the West Bank. Hamas would be excluded from the regional meeting that Mr. Bush proposed.

The planned meeting, the first of its kind in Mr. Bush’s presidency, signals another pivotal shift for an administration that is desperately seeking some kind of foreign policy victory in the volatile Middle East that would draw attention away from the war in Iraq. For several years, the Bush administration has eschewed direct engagement in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and has refused to press Israel to dismantle settlements or to sit down at the table with Palestinian counterparts to discuss a future Palestinian state.

But now the United States is mired in Iraq and looking for a way to build good will among Arab allies that have pushed for America to re-engage in Middle East peace talks. Administration officials also are hoping to capitalize on growing anti-Hamas sentiment among leaders in Egypt and Jordan. Both of those countries have diplomatic relations with Israel; the big question remains whether Saudi Arabia, which does not, will embrace the administration’s approach.

The most notable previous Middle East peace conference was a regional meeting held in Madrid in 1991 under the sponsorship of the Soviet Union and the United States during the administration of the first President Bush.

To try to gain support for the American position, the current President Bush is sending Ms. Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to the Middle East at the end of July. They will prod Arab leaders to show up for the regional meeting, which is at an undetermined place and date, administration officials said.

Administration officials said that while the guest list had not been fixed — it remains unclear, for example, whether Syria will be invited — Mr. Bush would not have gone out on a limb with such an announcement if Ms. Rice had not received some assurances from Arab allies that they would not embarrass Mr. Bush by boycotting a meeting.

Hamas denounced Mr. Bush’s announcement. “We condemn this American conference which aims to serve the interests of the Zionist enemy,” a spokesman for Hamas, Ismail Radwan, told Agence France-Presse.

Several critics of Mr. Bush’s Middle East policy said his speech on Monday should have been delivered two years ago, after Mr. Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority, and before Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in early 2006.

Another criticism was made by Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator who is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. “Dividing the region into extremists and moderates may sound nice, neat and tidy in a speech,” he said, “but on the ground there is a huge gray area that the president apparently refuses to acknowledge.”

Hours before Mr. Bush spoke, Mr. Abbas went to Jerusalem for another meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert. These meetings are a direct result of American pressure on Mr. Olmert to try to talk about a “political horizon” for a future Palestinian state.

But with the putative state split between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, American, Israeli and Fatah policies seem to be aligned in trying to make the West Bank a model for the Palestinian future and the focus for aid and diplomacy. Another aspect of that policy is to squeeze Hamas in Gaza, preventing normal trading or business relations, but allowing imports of food supplies, fuel and medicine.

Mr. Olmert confirmed that Israel planned to release 250 Palestinian prisoners, of 10,000 currently held, by the end of the week, probably on Friday, after an Israeli cabinet committee approved the names. The release is intended to bolster Mr. Abbas and show the benefits of moderation. The Israelis emphasized that none of them were guilty of killing Israelis.

Mr. Bush also announced that Mr. Abbas would receive about $80 million to help the Palestinian Authority overhaul its security forces. While the money is not new — it had previously been set aside for Palestinian needs — it will now go directly to Mr. Abbas, and will not be funneled through outside organizations, administration officials said.

Administration officials said more aid would come after Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who is now the envoy for the Middle East “quartet” of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, reports success in building a plan to bolster Palestinian security and political institutions.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

    Bush to Bolster Abbas and Seek Peace Talks, NYT, 17.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/washington/17prexy.html?hp

U.K. - U.S. Relations May See Changes

July 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:48 p.m. ET
The New York Times

LONDON (AP) -- Britain's ''special relationship'' with the United States could be cooling, as a senior government official said that new Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Bush would not be ''joined at the hip.''

Lord Malloch Brown -- a Foreign Office minister and former deputy secretary-general of the United Nations -- said in a Daily Telegraph interview published Saturday that Britain needs a more ''impartial'' foreign policy.

''You need to build coalitions which are lateral, which go beyond the bilateral blinkers of the normal partners,'' Malloch Brown told the Telegraph. ''My hope is that foreign policy will become much more impartial.''

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair's close relationship with Bush caused tension across the United Kingdom. Blair was sharply criticized for eagerly joining the U.S.-led Iraq war.

Though Malloch Brown issued a statement Saturday morning which said he supported ''the emphasis (Brown) places on the importance of the United States as our single most important bilateral relationship,'' the British-U.S. relations has been under scrutiny lately.

On Friday, British newspapers suggested a speech in Washington by International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander subtly critiqued Bush's policies.

Alexander said that while Britain stood beside the U.S. in fighting terrorism, isolation does not work in an interdependent world.

The Times described Alexander's speech to the Council on Foreign Relations as ''a series of coded criticisms of American foreign policy.'' The Guardian detected ''the first clear signs'' that Brown, who became prime minister June 27, would reorder Britain's foreign policy.

But on Friday morning, Brown told British Broadcasting Corp. radio that the relationship between the two countries ''is strong and will become stronger in the years to come.''

In his interview with the Telegraph, Malloch Brown said the close relationship between Britain and the U.S. -- and between Bush and Blair -- grew out of unique circumstances.

He suggested that Brown could take more distance.

''It is very unlikely that the Bush-Brown relationship is going to go through the baptism of fire and therefore be joined at the hip like the Bush-Blair relationship was,'' Malloch Brown said. ''That was a relationship born of being war leaders together. There was an emotional intensity of being war leaders with much of the world against them.

''That is enough to put you on your knees and get you praying together.''

Robert McGeehan, a trans-Atlantic relations expert at London's Chatham House think tank, said more distance could appease critics in Britain, but a cooled relationship was unlikely.

    U.K. - U.S. Relations May See Changes, NYT, 14.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-US.html

North Koreans Say They’ve Shut Nuclear Reactor

July 15, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

North Korea told the United States today that it has shut down the nuclear reactor and readmitted a permanent international inspection team, completing its first step toward reversing a four-year-long confrontation with the United States during which the country appears to have built a small arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The North sent a message that the reactor at Yongbyon had been shut down through the country’s small mission to the United Nations at 9:30 this morning, according to Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary of state who negotiated the accord in February after gradually getting the Bush administration to reverse many of the decisions it made in the first term about how to deal with the reclusive state.

The North Korean claim, which was carefully synchronized with the arrival of a first shipment of fuel oil from South Korea, can be easily verified by the 10-member inspection team from the International Atomic Energy Agency. They arrived at the bleak, heavily guarded nuclear site roughly 60 miles north of Pyongyang today, to begin supervising what is envisioned as a lengthy disarmament plan.

American spy satellites will also be able to detect whether the reactor core is cooling, though that confirmation could take several days.

But Mr. Hill has said that it could be the end of the year before North Korea, in return for large shipments of additional fuel oil, completes the next critical steps required under the accord: Permanently disabling the reactor so that it can no longer produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, and issuing a complete declaration of all of its nuclear assets — including how many weapons it may have produced since it threw out inspectors just before New Years Day in 2003.

“Declaration is one of the early next steps,” Mr. Hill said in Tokyo before the notification of the shutdown. “We would expect a comprehensive list, declaration, to be in a matter of several weeks, possibly a couple of months. We see it as coming before disabling of the facilities,” he said.

He cautioned that the shutdown was “just the first step.”

It may also be the easiest. Far more difficult, according to experts and former negotiators with North Korea, will be convincing the country to disgorge what the C.I.A. estimates is enough plutonium fuel for eight or more weapons. Almost all of that was produced starting in 2003, while the United States was distracted by the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.

The accord signed in February commits the country to eventually ridding itself of that fuel or the weapons it may have been turned into. But it sets no deadlines, and getting the North to take those steps would require a second negotiation.

“I could imagined that the next steps could extend beyond this administration,” William Perry, the former defense secretary under President Bill Clinton, who conducted negotiations with North Korea all through the late 1990s, said in an interview in his office at Stanford University on Friday. “And the North Koreans will demand a pretty high price for that.”

Still, for President Bush the announcement today constitutes a rare diplomatic victory for an administration besieged on many fronts. In recent weeks the rising demands from Congress for a date to begin the withdrawal from Iraq, the struggle to keep Al Qaeda and the Taliban from expanding new footholds in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a rapidly expanding nuclear challenge from Iran has created a sense in Washington and around the world that Mr. Bush is badly weakened, and could spend the last 18 months of his presidency attempting to undo steps taken in the first six and a half years.

But the shutdown of the reactor and readmitting inspectors gives him an opportunity to argue that a five-year-long strategy of negotiating alongside North Korea’s neighbors — China, Japan, South Korea and Russia — is finally bearing fruit. Mr. Bush’s innovation in dealing with the North Koreans has been an insistence that all of those countries must be party to any deal.

That approach appears to have been vindicated, though in the end the administration had to drop its insistence that North Korea would not be rewarded from reversing the steps it took in 2003, when it threw out the inspectors, cranked up the production of bomb material, and withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

To lure Kim Jong Il, the North’s reclusive leader, to return to the status quo of 2002, Mr. Hill and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had to route around Vice President Cheney to strike a deal that called for the North to receive large shipments of oil as it took these first steps. They returned $25 million in cash that the administration had claimed was the ill-gotten gains of counterfeiting and arms sales, in the end using the Federal Reserve to get the money from a bank in Macao into the hands of the North Korean leadership. That process took months longer than anyone expected, delaying the reactor shutdown.

The administration’s critics also noted that the February agreement to provide the North with oil bore a strong resemblance to the 1994 accord between the North and the Clinton administration that Ms. Rice had denounced at the beginning of the Bush administration as an ill-conceived giveaway, and that hardliners in the administration dismantled in 2003.

The divisions over North Korea policy ran so deep that some members of the Bush Administration departed, partly in protest. Among them was Robert Joseph, the assistant secretary of state for arms control and disarmament, who told Ms. Rice that he believed the United States was helping prop up a regime that President Bush had termed evil, one that locks dissidents in gulags and whose people have starved.

    North Koreans Say They’ve Shut Nuclear Reactor, NYT, 14.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/world/asia/14cnd-nuke.html?hp

Bush and Putin Far Apart on Policy

July 2, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:47 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine (AP) -- Plates piled with pancakes and omelets and an Atlantic Ocean fishing trip served as the warmup Monday for talks between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The issues menu was daunting: differences over the fate of Kosovo, democracy in Russia and U.S. missile defense plans. These, among other vexing questions, have clouded a once-warm relationship.

After a hearty Maine breakfast, the leaders and security agents piled into the powerful speedboat navigated by Bush's father -- former President George H.W. Bush. Under a bright morning sunshine, Putin and the Bushes roamed close to the shoreline around the Bush family's oceanfront estate for about an hour and a half.

Putin landed a fish, while his host did not, and then the two presidents sat down for their informal talks inside Walker Point's stone-and-shingle main house overlooking the rocky and jagged Atlantic coastline. What remained to be seen was whether the Russian leader was as adept at smoothing relations with Bush as he was at outsmarting the fish.

Bush and Putin have contrasting views on democracy and missile defense, NATO expansion into Russia's backyard and independence for Kosovo. They both want to stymie Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions, but don't see eye-to-eye on how tough to get with Tehran or even whether Iranian missiles currently pose a threat.

When Putin arrived Sunday afternoon, it was all handshakes, kisses and smiles. Putin gave a kiss on the cheek to first lady Laura Bush and the president's mother, Barbara Bush, and handed them bouquets of flowers.

They took their first spin in the former president's prized boat, Fidelity III, for about 45 minutes, starting nearly immediately after he got there. Bush and Putin were seen grinning and waving to photographers as they zoomed along the coastline. The evening ended with a dinner of lobster and marinated swordfish.

While both sides downplayed expectations for the meetings, the two leaders were expected to call their missile defense experts to a joint meeting so they can learn about the installations the United States is proposing and the capabilities of the Azerbaijan system.

They might also come to a closer understanding about getting a third, tougher round of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran because of its refusal to stop enriching uranium. The U.S., Russia and their fellow permanent U.N. Security Council members, however, have told Iran they will hold off on new sanctions if it stops expanding its enrichment activities while they seek to restart talks about the program with Tehran. Diplomats say the Iranian government has not yet responded to the proposal.

On Kosovo, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday that he hoped Bush's meeting with Putin would resolve differences over the future of Serbia's breakaway Kosovo province, but a Putin adviser offered little hope for that.

Over Sunday night's meal, there was ''family style dialogue'' about coming elections in both countries. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied any tense discussions.

''Definitely not,'' Peskov said. ''We could not have predicted the warmness and hospitality from President Bush. The Russian president was very much satisfied with that.''

But for all the pleasantries and talk about patching up the Bush-Putin friendship and forging fresh relations with Russia as it transitions from its communist past, the rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin of late seems mired in the Cold War.

This tiny seacoast town has welcomed the Russian delegation, but an estimated 1,700 demonstrators interrupted a peaceful Sunday afternoon. They called for the impeachment of Bush and an end to the war in Iraq.

Bush, who feels Putin has tried to muzzle free speech, would have approved of a chant led by one demonstrator.

''Tell me what democracy sounds like,'' she yelled to her followers.

''This is what democracy sounds like,'' they screamed.

Associated Press Writer David Sharp in Kennebunkport contributed to this report.

    Bush and Putin Far Apart on Policy, NYT, 2.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Putin.html

U.S. Ties Iranians to Iraq Attack That Killed G.I.’s

July 2, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

BAGHDAD, July 2 — Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today.

Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the military spokesman, also said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has used operatives from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to train and arm Shiite militants in Iraq.

American military officials have long asserted that the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has trained and equipped Shiite militants in Iraq. The Americans have also cited extensive intelligence that Iran has supplied Shiite militants with the most lethal type of roadside bomb in Iraq, a bomb called the explosively formed penetrator, which is capable of piercing an armored vehicle.

But today’s assertions, which were presented at a news briefing here, marked the first time that the United States has charged that Iranian officials have helped plan operations against American troops in Iraq and have had advance knowledge of specific attacks that have led to the death of American soldiers.

In effect, American officials are charging that Iran has been engaged in a proxy war against American forces for years, though officials today sought to confine their comments to the specific incidents covered in their briefing.

When the Karbala attack was carried out on January 20 this year, American and Iraqi officials said that it appeared to be meticulously planned. The attackers carried forged identity cards and wore American-style uniforms.

One American died at the start of the raid, but the rest of the American soldiers were abducted before they were killed.

Some officials speculated at the time that the aim of the raid might have been to capture a group of American soldiers who could have been exchanged for Iranian officials that American forces detained in Iraq on suspicion of supporting Shiite militants there.

But while Americans officials wondered about an indirect Iranian role in the Karbala raid, until today they stopped short of making a case that the Quds Force may have been directly involved in planning the attack.

General Bergner declined to speculate on the Iranian motivations. But he said that interrogations of Qais Khazali, a Shiite militant who oversaw Iranian-supported cells in Iraq and who was captured several months ago along with another militant, Laith Khazali, his brother, showed that Iran’s Quds force helped plan the operation.

Similar information was obtained following the capture of a senior Hezbollah operative, Ali Musa Daqduq, General Bergner said. The capture of Mr. Daqduq had remained secret until today.

“Both Ali Musa Daqduq and Qais Khazali state that senior leadership within the Quds force knew of and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack that killed five coalition soldiers,” General Bergner said.

Documents seized from Qais Khazali, General Bergner said, showed that Iran’s Quds Force provided detailed information on the activities of American soldiers in Karbala, including shift changes and the defenses at the site.

More generally, General Bergner added, Iran’s Quds Force has been using Lebanese Hezbollah as a “proxy” or “surrogate” in training and equipping Shiite militants in Iraq.

The aim of the Quds force was to prepare the militant groups so they would attack American and Iraqi government force while trying to conceal an obvious Iranian role, he said.

There have long been reports that Hezbollah operatives have been working with the Quds Force to train Iraqi operatives in Iran and even Lebanon. But few details had emerged about specific Hezbollah officials.

According to General Bergner, Ali Musa Daqduq joined Hezbollah in 1983, commanded Hezbollah units in Lebanon and was involved in coordinating the protection of the group’s leader, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah has been armed and funded by Iran.

In 2005, the Hezbollah leadership instructed Mr. Daqduq to go to Iran and help the Quds Force train Shiite Iraqi militants, General Bergner said. Mr. Daqduq went to Tehran in 2006 with Yussef Hashim, another Hezbollah operative who serves as the head of the group’s operations in Iraq. They met with the senior Quds force commanders and were directed to go to Iraq and report on efforts to train Shiite militants there, General Bergner said.

Groups of up to 60 Iraqi militants were brought to Iran for military instruction at three camps near Tehran and trained in using road-side bombs, mortars, rockets, kidnapping operations and in how to operate as a sniper. The Quds Force also provided up to $3 million in funding a month to the Iraqi militants, the American general said.

Mr. Daqduq was captured in March in Basra. To avoid giving away his Lebanese accent, he initially pretended that he was a deaf mute, General Bergner said. But he eventually began to speak under interrogation.

In Washington, Bush Administration officials have generally held open the possibility that the Quds Force activities might have been carried out without the knowledge of Iran’s senior leaders.

But military officials say that there is such a long and systematic pattern of Quds Force activity in Iraq, as well as a 2005 confidential American protest to Iranian leaders regarding Iran’s alleged supply of road-side bombs, that senior Iranian leaders must be aware of the Quds Force role in Iraq.

“Our intelligence reveals that the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity,” he said. When he was asked if Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be unaware of the activity, General Bergner said “that would be hard to imagine.”

    U.S. Ties Iranians to Iraq Attack That Killed G.I.’s, NYT, 2.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/world/middleeast/02cnd-iran.html?hp

Bush, Putin Share a Break From Tensions

June 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:43 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine (AP) -- President Bush's summertime meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Bush family's oceanfront estate is about lobsters, legacies and a break from increasing tensions.

Relations between Washington and Moscow are strong, but on the skids, and both Bush and Putin want to massage those relations before leaving office.

Putin, bolstered by Russia's economic muscle and popularity at home, has adopted an assertive posture on the world stage. He has bluntly opposed a U.S. missile defense plan in Europe. Putin bristles when Bush scolds the Kremlin for rolling back democratic reforms and fends off what he sees as U.S. meddling in the affairs of ex-Soviet nations.

Bush, dogged by low poll ratings and rising anti-American sentiment around the world, is preoccupied with the war in Iraq, which Putin opposed. With waning U.S. leverage with Russia, Bush is hoping to tone down the rhetoric and find common ground on issues while dining on lobster, or reeling in a few fish.

It will have to be fast.

Putin arrives Sunday afternoon and will be gone less than 24 hours later.

During the Bush-Putin meeting, no major initiatives will be signed, but both are hoping they'll find reason to agree -- or at least politely disagree-- on issues including missile defense, the future of Kosovo, a civilian nuclear reactor cooperation initiative and how to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions.

''I really don't think that either of them want, as part of their legacy, a trashed U.S.-Russian relationship,'' said Andrew Kuchins, a Russia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Kuchins said he can't find any historical precedent for this style of summit.

''Is this the first time that a U.S. leader has hosted a foreign leader at dad's house?'' Kuchins asked. ''Do Vlad and George need some kind of adult supervision?''

The White House says former President Bush won't be involved in the formal talks, but will be on hand to chat with Putin and the president and go boating in the choppy waters near the Bush compound overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

It will be the two leaders' last real opportunity to reverse the decline in U.S.-Russia relations, aside from chats they might have on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit in September in Australia. In May 9 speech in Red Square, Putin seemed to compare Bush's foreign policy to that of the Third Reich, while in February he accused the U.S. of ''plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.''

''When you look at the rhetoric coming out of Moscow and coming specifically from President Putin -- this sort of standing up to the United States and the West plays very well with the Russian public,'' said Steven Pifer, former deputy assistant secretary of state in the bureau of European and Eurasian affairs. ''We should expect this to continue.''

Putin played host in Russia on Thursday to Hugo Chavez, the leftist Venezuelan leader who has called Bush a devil, a donkey and a drunkard. Amid media speculation that Chavez would sign a major weapons deal while in Russia, Putin said bilateral relations with the South American nation were developing.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, Russia cooperated with the United States in defeating the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. It appeared that the United States and Russia were on the same wavelength.

But in December 2001, Bush announced that the United States would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty President Nixon signed in 1972 to limit strategic missile defense systems. The U.S. withdrew so it could continue development of a missile defense system.

The Russians have joined with the United States in moving steadily to put the brakes on Iran's nuclear program. It's Putin's anger over U.S. missile defense that is testing U.S.-Russia relations today.

The Russian president surprised Bush at a recent meeting in Germany by proposing the shared use of a Russia-rented early warning radar in Azerbaijan as a substitute for radar and interceptors the United States wants to place in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The White House has been careful not to dismiss Putin's suggestion, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the United States will not embrace the facility in Azerbaijan as a substitute. It's unclear if Putin will be willing to budge, but advisers don't expect the matter to be resolved in Kennebunkport anyway.

''There is flexibility in our approach, but not endless flexibility,'' said Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Putin said Thursday in a conference call with reporters.

The United States says the missile defense system is meant to shield the United States and its European allies against missile threats from the Middle East. Moscow, however, sees no threat from Iran and that missile defense elements in Poland and the Czech Republic will have no other target except Russian military bases in the European part of the nation.

Bush advisers say the president will try to convince Putin that the system is not aimed at Russia and persuade Russia that there is a potential threat from Iran. That might be a tough sell.

Russia on Thursday announced the first successful test flight of a new sea-based ballistic missile. It was the country's second major test of new rocket technology in a month and comes amid an aggressive Russian effort to upgrade its missile forces after years of underfunding and a lack of testing.

------

On the Net:

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov

    Bush, Putin Share a Break From Tensions, NYT, 29.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Putin.html

North Korea Is Said to Agree to Shut Reactor Soon

June 23, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:12 a.m. ET
The New York Times

TOKYO (AP) -- North Korea could shut down its plutonium-producing reactor within three weeks, a top U.S. nuclear envoy said Saturday after returning from a rare visit to the reclusive country.

Christopher Hill -- the chief U.S. negotiator at international talks on North Korea's nuclear programs -- also told reporters in Tokyo that the next round of nuclear negotiations could begin in early July, before a full shutdown of the Yongbyon reactor.

Hill said the reactor would be closed after North Korea and the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agree on how to monitor the process. U.N. inspectors are to arrive in North Korea on Tuesday.

''We do expect this to be soon, probably within three weeks ... though I don't want to be pinned down on precisely the date,'' Hill told reporters after briefing his Japanese counterpart, Kenichiro Sasae, on the outcome of his two-day surprise trip to the North Korean capital.

North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency described the talks as ''comprehensive and productive'' on Saturday.

The trip -- the first by a high-ranking U.S. official since 2002 -- came amid growing optimism that North Korea may finally be ready to take concrete steps toward fulfilling a promise to dismantle its nuclear programs.

Last week, the secretive nation invited inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to begin discussing the procedures for shutting down its Yongbyon reactor. The country expelled the U.N. nuclear inspectors in late 2002.

The IAEA announced Friday that a delegation led by Olli Heinonen, the agency's deputy director general for safeguards, would arrive in Pyongyang on Tuesday for a five-day visit.

Hill said earlier he was happy that the team was set to go, but cautioned that halting the reactor was just a first step.

''Shutting down the reactor won't solve all our problems, but in order to solve our problems we need to make this beginning,'' he told reporters after arriving in Tokyo. ''We really think this is the time to pick up the pace.''

North Korean officials told Hill during his visit that they were prepared to shut down the Yongbyon facility as called for in a disarmament agreement reached in February, under which North Korea pledged to close the reactor and allow in U.N. inspectors in exchange for energy aid.

North Korea was to have done that by mid-April, but missed the deadline over a delay in resolving a separate financial dispute involving North Korean funds frozen at a Macau bank.

The bank was blacklisted by the U.S. for allegedly aiding North Korea in money laundering and counterfeiting, leading to the freezing of some $25 million of North Korean money.

The funds were freed earlier this year, but only last week started to be transferred to a North Korean account at a Russian bank.

Russian news agencies, citing unnamed finance ministry officials, reported Saturday that the North Korean funds had reached Dalkombank, a bank in the Russian Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk.

Bank officials could not be located to comment on the reports, while no one answered phones at the Central Bank or the Finance Ministry.

Russia's deputy foreign minister said Friday the funds would be fully transferred sometime next week.

North Korea had made the money's release a main condition for its disarmament, and used the financial dispute as a reason to stay away from six-party nuclear talks -- involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the U.S. -- for more than a year, during which it conducted its first-ever nuclear test explosion in October.

Hill said Saturday that talks could begin before the reactor was fully shut down.

''I would expect it to happen soon after shutdown begins,'' Hill said, adding the exact timing depended on scheduling by the host nation, China.

KCNA said that during Hill's trip, ''both sides shared the views that they would start implementing the (February) agreement on the premise that the issue of the remittance of the funds is finally settled.''

North Korea is to ultimately get aid worth 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil and other political concessions after it fully disables the reactor.

KCNA also said the two sides would seek to hold a meeting in early August of foreign ministers from the six nations in the nuclear talks on the sidelines of an Asian security forum in the Philippines.

Associated Press writer Bo-Mi Lim in Seoul contributed to this report.

    North Korea Is Said to Agree to Shut Reactor Soon, NYT, 23.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html?hp

U.S. Holds Direct Talks in North Korea

June 21, 2007
The New York Times
By NORIMITSU ONISHI and DAVID E. SANGER

TOKYO, June 21 — The United States’ chief nuclear negotiator began a surprise two-day visit to North Korea today, saying he wanted to speed up six-nation talks aimed at dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program.

In the first visit to Pyongyang by a senior American official in nearly five years, the envoy, Christopher R. Hill, was scheduled to meet senior North Korean officials, including his counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, for one-on-one talks.

Mr. Hill was scheduled to spend the night in the North Korean capital before leaving on Friday.

Television footage showed Mr. Hill being greeted at Pyongyang’s airport by Ri Gun, the North’s deputy nuclear negotiator.

“We want to get the six-party process moving,” Mr. Hill said. “We hope that we can make up for some of the time that we lost this spring, and so I’m looking forward to good discussions about that.”

Mr. Hill’s trip was organized in such secrecy and so suddenly that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice alerted American allies, Japan and South Korea, just prior to his departure from Tokyo, where he had been visiting. Mr. Hill flew from Japan to South Korea, and then to Pyongyang aboard a small jet.

“We’re all waiting for you,” Mr. Ri told Mr. Hill, as the two men could be seen smiling and chatting at the airport.

Mr. Hill said that he received the invitation on Monday, adding, “We had to work fast to find an airplane.”

Mr. Hill’s trip came just hours after the United States found a way to return to the North roughly $25 million in funds that were frozen for several years. The United States had frozen the money, saying it came from counterfeiting and trade in missiles and nuclear equipment.

It took months for Washington to clear obstacles preventing the money’s return, a move that hawks in the administration had argued was deeply mistaken.

Now Mr. Hill can pursue the next items on his agenda: Persuading North Korea to fulfill a commitment it made in February to slow down its main nuclear reactor, whose spent fuel has enabled the country to manufacture plutonium and gain the fuel for eight or more nuclear weapons, according to public American intelligence estimates.

In the next step, the North is supposed to provide the United States and the other participants in the six-party negotiations on the issue — Japan, South Korea, Russia and China — with a detailed list of all of its nuclear programs and facilities.

The Bush administration is also considering authorizing Mr. Hill to offer to buy from the North Koreans nuclear equipment that they are believed to have purchased several years ago from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer. That equipment could conceivably give the North a second path to building a bomb, by enriching uranium.

But American officials do not know whether the North ever learned the secrets of enrichment, or where enrichment facilities might be. So far, the North has denied that it possesses the equipment.

“This is critical to the administration’s plan,” one senior official involved in the North Korea strategy said, “because unless they get their hands on this stuff, there is no way we can argue that we’ve stopped the North from making more nukes.”

But it was unclear whether Mr. Hill was prepared to make the offer to the North now, or what form it would take. While Washington or its allies could offer cash for the equipment, they might also promise future deliveries of nuclear fuel to power the civilian nuclear reactors the North insists it needs.

Mr. Hill’s trip was organized in such secrecy that he apparently did not convey his plans to top Japanese officials, whom he visited Wednesday in Tokyo. Japan has refused to join the disarmament deal that North Korea signed in February. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said Japan will only consider joining the deal after resolution of the cases of about a dozen Japanese said to have been abducted by North Korea.

In confirming reports of Mr. Hill’s trip on Wednesday night — after sidestepping questions during the day to give Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice time to alert the Japanese and other American allies — the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, cast the trip as “part of the consultations” with all of the countries in the North Korea talks, trying to make it sound routine.

But for years the administration has refused to engage one on one with the North Koreans.

Ms. Rice had to maneuver around Vice President Dick Cheney, officials said in February, to reach the deal that gives the North hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel oil in return for step-by-step disablement of its facilities. It was exactly the kind of grand bargain the administration had avoided for years, as Mr. Cheney and others argued that the United States should not prolong the life of the North Korean government of Kim Jong-il, but rather seek ways to speed its demise.

“Condi knows she needs a big win here,” said a senior administration official who has dealt with her often on North Korea. “They know they are getting nowhere on Iraq, and they probably won’t get far on Iran. She needs to show that she can reduce at least one big threat.”

Late last week North Korea invited the return of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, presumably to witness the shutdown of its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

Those inspectors were thrown out of the country in late 2002, after American officials confronted the North with evidence that it had sought to cheat on a previous nuclear accord by purchasing from Dr. Khan the centrifuges to enrich uranium. Under the first phase of the accord reached in February, North Korea agreed to shut down the reactor after its frozen funds were returned.

In addition, South Korea will deliver 50,000 tons of fuel oil to the energy-starved North after the shutdown is confirmed. Mr. Hill said in Tokyo that the next round of talks should focus on how to carry out the February agreement’s second phase: declaring where the North has hidden decades of secret work, on the way to dismantling it. That is expected to prove even more difficult; several American officials say they did not believe the North would ever give up all of its nuclear program.

The last time an American delegation traveled to Pyongyang to negotiate, it ended badly. Mr. Hill’s predecessor, James Kelly, went to Pyongyang in 2002 and opened the talks by telling the North Koreans that the Untied States had evidence they had purchased centrifuges and other equipment, and were breaking a 1994 accord. The Americans said the North first confirmed it had obtained the equipment, then later denied it.

That started a confrontation that resulted in a cutoff of American fuel oil supplies to the North. In retaliation, the North ejected the international inspectors and moved its nuclear fuel for what it said was conversion into plutonium. That began a downward spiral of events, culminating in North Korea’s test of a nuclear device last October.

Now, some Korea experts say the confrontation was avoidable. But President Bush was focused on Iraq, and his former aides say he was convinced that once Saddam Hussein fell, the North would be intimidated into giving up its weapons.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and Norimitsu Onishi from Tokyo.

    U.S. Holds Direct Talks in North Korea, NYT, 21.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/world/asia/22koreacnd.html?hp

U.S. Set to Lift Palestinian Embargo

June 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:06 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration on Monday lifted its economic and political embargo against the Palestinian government, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced.

The move follows the expulsion of the militant Hamas movement from the Palestinian Authority, and is meant to strengthen Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas by resuming direct U.S. aid.

Rice said she had informed new Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad of the decision in a phone call.

''I told him the United States would resume full assistance to the Palestinian government and normal government-to-government contacts,'' she told reporters at the State Department. ''I told the prime minister that we want to work with his government and support his efforts to enforce the rule of law and to ensure a better life for the Palestinian people.''

''We intend to lift our financial restrictions on the Palestinian government, which has accepted previous agreements with Israel and rejects the path of violence. This will enable the American people and American financial institutions to resume normal economic and commercial ties with the Palestinaian government,'' Rice said.

She said the administration will ask Congress to rework a previous $86 million aid request. That money had been intended to help shore up Abbas' security forces but could now be put to other uses.

Separately, Rice said the United States would contribute an additional $40 million to the United Nations to help Palestinians, particularly in the Gaza Strip, which is now controlled by Hamas.

''Through its actions, Hamas sought to divide the Palestinan nation, we reject that,'' Rice said. ''It is the position of the United States that there is one Palestinian people and there should be one Palestinian state.''

''We are not going to countenance that somehow the Palestinians are divisible,'' she said ''We are not going to abandon the Palestinians living in Gaza.''

Hamas seized control of Gaza last week after a series of battles with Abbas' Fatah movement. The violence left Gaza increasingly isolated, a situation that worsened Sunday when an Israeli fuel company cut off deliveries to gas stations in the impoverished coastal strip.

Its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip split the Palestinian government in two: the Hamas leadership headed by deposed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza and the new Cabinet now led by Fayyad, a U.S.-educated economist, in the West Bank.

Earlier Monday, President Bush spoke with Abbas to express full U.S. support for his decision to dissolve the government, swear in an emergency Cabinet and outlaw the militia forces of Hamas, the White House said.

In the call, Bush noted that he plans to meet Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and that he would share their thoughts on how to continue, White House press secretary Tony Snow said.

''What's important is, you have to have a partner who is committed to peace, and we believe that President Abbas is,'' Snow said. ''And therefore we are committed to working with this new emergency government.''

Hamas' violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last week split the Palestinian government in two: the Hamas leadership headed by deposed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza and the new Cabinet now led by the Western-backed economist Salam Fayyad in the West Bank.

''We have said that Hamas is a terrorist organization,'' Snow said. ''I think it's pretty clear what our stance has been.''

The move essentially resets U.S. policy to the days before Hamas swept legislative elections in early 2006 and upended U.S. and international peacemaking. The United States, Israel and the European Union regard Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Since those elections, Hamas has continued to flex its muscles.

Meanwhile, in a major boost to Abbas, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana announced in Luxembourg on Monday that the 27-nation bloc would resume direct financial aid to the Palestinian Authority now that Hamas is no longer part of the government.

Hamas, which does not recognize Israel's right to exist, now runs Gaza. Abbas and his secular Fatah Party now run the West Bank. The larger West Bank is home to more than 1.5 million Palestinians.

Some in the United States and in Europe have advocated a policy dubbed ''West Bank first'' in which the West Bank would stand as an example of what a future Palestinian state could be. Critics on the other side say that leaves Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip without assistance. Europeans oppose this idea, and still others worry it would leave the Gaza Strip open to funding and influence from Iran and Syria.

Five years ago, Bush called for a separate, independent Palestine alongside Israel. He was the first U.S. president to back that notion so fully and publicly. But his administration has taken heavy criticism for letting the peace process drift while conditions worsened for the impoverished Palestinians.

In New York on Sunday, Olmert said his country would be a ''genuine partner'' of a new Palestinian government and promised to consider releasing the hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen tax funds.

    U.S. Set to Lift Palestinian Embargo, NYT, 18.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Mideast.html

News Analysis

Palestinian Split Poses a Policy Quandary for U.S.

June 17, 2007
The New York Times
By STEVEN ERLANGER

JERUSALEM, June 16 — With the two Palestinian territories increasingly isolated from each other by a week of brutal warfare between rival factions, Israel and the United States seem agreed on a policy to treat them as separate entities to support Fatah in the West Bank and squeeze Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The idea is to concentrate Western efforts and money on the occupied West Bank, which Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction control, in an effort to make it the shining model of a new Palestine that will somehow bring Gaza, and the radical Islamic group Hamas, to terms.

As Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, who arrives in the United States on Sunday to meet with American officials, said, a Fatah government, shorn of Hamas, “can be a new opening.”

After the failure of the Palestinian unity government, Mr. Olmert said in an interview with The New York Times, “I suggest we look at things in a much more realistic manner and with less self-deceit.”

But like all seemingly elegant solutions in this region, this one has many pitfalls. It is entirely unclear whether Hamas would sit still during such an effort, whether Mr. Abbas would be willing to ignore the 1.5 million residents of Gaza or whether the separation strategy would gain the crucial support of the Arab world.

As Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation and the New America Foundation in Washington suggests, it’s hard to imagine how Mr. Abbas could accept the tax receipts Israel has been withholding from the Hamas government and use them only for West Bankers. The Palestinians in Gaza and the refugee diaspora would not stand for it, he says, and Fatah might lose more popularity than it gains.

Mr. Abbas is already under pressure from some Arab governments, in particular the Saudis, who mediated the national-unity government at Mecca, to take Hamas at its word and try to recreate a shared government.

In a speech on Friday to an emergency meeting of the Arab League, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia said, “The Palestinians have come close to putting by themselves the last nail in the coffin of the Palestinian cause.”

But he added, “It would be best for our Palestinian brothers to return to their commitment to the Mecca agreement and work to carry it out.”

Both the United States and Israel are reeling from the rapid and ignominious collapse of Fatah in Gaza in recent days, despite significant injections of American political and military advice and aid.

There is no question that, if they are to survive, Mr. Abbas and Fatah need bolstering fast after the victory in Gaza of Hamas, which favors Israel’s destruction. The whole future of the two-state solution — an independent Palestine living in relative peace with an independent Israel — seems ever more at stake.

The United States and Israel are each searching for short- and medium-term responses to a collapse neither saw coming. Both want to limit the regional impact of the latest victory of radical Islam over Western-backed, secular forces. And both are worried about the impact on Egypt, which is trying to seal its border from Gazan refugees and where President Hosni Mubarak faces a serious internal challenge from the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical Islamist organization with which Hamas is affiliated.

Mr. Abbas and Fatah say they are committed to a two-state solution with Israel. Whatever his weaknesses, which are manifold, Mr. Abbas still has the legal authority as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization to negotiate with Israel.

There is even talk of pushing Israel to negotiate with Mr. Abbas to create a Palestinian state in provisional borders in much of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with Gaza left for another time — a way to use the road-map peace plan President Bush endorsed. This idea was floated by a former Clinton Administration official, Martin Indyk, now director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, in an opinion article published Friday in The Washington Post.

For Mr. Olmert and Israel, the policy of treating the two territories separately would also be a way to justify the continued sealing off of Gaza from the West Bank on security grounds, to prevent the transfer of military equipment and skill. And it would also take the pressure off Israel to lift security restrictions on Gaza crossing points or to move very quickly to withdraw more settlers and soldiers from the West Bank, let alone start negotiating with Hamas.

But it is highly unlikely that Mr. Abbas, elected as president of all Palestinians, will change his refusal to accept statehood in provisional borders, or abandon all Gazans, many of whom would vote for Fatah if given a chance, to their fate.

That means efforts to reach a shared political consensus will have to continue, because Hamas is clearly not going to go away.

There is another problem with the idea of creating a beautiful West Bank Palestine at relative peace with Israel and with fewer checkpoints and restrictions. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, though kept underground there because of the Israeli occupation, could produce havoc, Iraq style, with a few bombs and suicide bombers. That would put a quick end to any easing of Israeli security restrictions.

And Hamas may in turn make something of its new responsibilities in Gaza. Without what it considers the troublemakers of the Fatah security forces, some of whom had been engaging in crime and destabilizing acts, Hamas may very well bring a new security to the people of Gaza. And if the customs connection to Israel is broken, it may be able to work out a deal to ship goods in and out of Egypt and create some jobs.

Still, Gidi Grinstein, a former Israeli negotiator who runs the Reut Institute in Tel Aviv, said that with Hamas now confronted with real power and responsibility for the welfare and security of Gazans, “this may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory for them,” since they always wanted to share such responsibility with Fatah.

Hamas, he said, is “more comfortable in the gray area where it addresses the needs of the population but not the requirements of power.” But Hamas may find that it needs to deal with Israel and the compromises of politics in ways that could bring it over time, as Yasir Arafat and Fatah were brought, closer to the space in which two adversaries can negotiate a peace.

    Palestinian Split Poses a Policy Quandary for U.S., NYT, 17.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/world/middleeast/17assess.html?hp

U.S. Signals Support for Pakistan Leader

June 16, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:31 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Two senior U.S. diplomats and a top military official offered signs of support for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Saturday, highlighting his government's fight against terrorism and remaining silent about Pakistan's growing domestic political crisis.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher met with Musharraf near the capital, an official at the president's office said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

Adm. William Fallon, commander of the U.S. Central Command, met separately with Musharraf and praised ''the excellent cooperation of the Pakistan armed forces with regard to operations against international terrorism,'' according to a Pakistan army statement.

Negroponte offered similar praise earlier, the official said, adding Musharraf had outlined steps his government had taken to secure its border with Afghanistan, where remnants of Taliban and al-Qaida are believed to be hiding.

Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup and became a key U.S. ally against terrorism after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, plans to seek a new five-year term as president this fall.

But his plans are threatened by a growing protest movement at home triggered by his March 9 suspension of the chief justice and efforts to clamp down on the media.

Critics are calling for him to give up his military post and seek another presidential term only after year-end parliamentary elections, in which opposition parties hope to make gains. Pakistan's president is chosen by lawmakers, rather than in a direct vote.

The meetings came after Boucher on Friday urged Musharraf to ensure upcoming elections are fair and told Pakistani television that the United States believes ''it's time for Pakistan to move back to democratic elections and civilian rule.''

However, Boucher said ''the issue of a free and fair election is much more fundamental'' than how Musharraf deals with the contentious issue of his occupying both the presidency and the powerful army leadership.

Remarks by some U.S. officials have suggested that Washington is pressing Musharraf harder for democratic change. However, others -- including President Bush -- have made clear that securing Pakistan's cooperation against al-Qaida and the Taliban is a more pressing concern.

The flurry of visits by senior U.S. officials to Islamabad have fanned talk in Pakistan about whether Washington might distance itself from a military leader whose domestic support appears to be waning. Some influential U.S. lawmakers have called for Washington to reduce its support for Pakistan, saying it has failed to deal with the Taliban or restore democracy.

A Pakistani foreign ministry official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity, insisted the timing was a coincidence and that all three visits were of a ''routine nature.''

    U.S. Signals Support for Pakistan Leader, NYT, 16.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Pakistan-US.html

U.S. to Keep Europe as Site for Missile Defense

June 15, 2007
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

BRUSSELS, June 14 — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made clear Thursday that the United States would not alter plans to deploy parts of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, despite an unexpected proposal by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to use a radar base in Azerbaijan instead.

During a session of defense ministers here, Mr. Gates also effectively secured NATO’s endorsement for an American plan to build the missile defense bases in Central Europe, overcoming the concerns of some alliance members that the effort could rupture relations with Russia.

The radar in Azerbaijan offered by Mr. Putin at the recent Group of 8 session with President Bush in Germany could complement the sites proposed for Central Europe, Mr. Gates said, but not replace them.

“I was very explicit in the meeting that we saw the Azeri radar as an additional capability, that we intended to proceed with the radar, the X-band radar, in the Czech Republic,” Mr. Gates said at an evening news conference after meeting with his Russian counterpart, Anatoly E. Serdyukov. American military officers have said that the X-band radar proposed for the Czech Republic is designed to spot specific objects in space and to assist interceptors in locking on and destroying an adversary’s missile in the middle of its flight. The system in Azerbaijan is an early warning radar, with a wider range but also less specific tracking ability.

NATO support, described by its officials as a significant step forward for the American proposals, came in the somewhat coded language typical of the Atlantic alliance.

NATO did not issue a specific endorsement of placing the elements of the system in former Soviet states in Central Europe. But it announced an effort that in essence was an agreement that the system would be deployed: a study of how proposed shorter-range NATO missile defense systems would be incorporated in the long-range American antimissile program. That American system will include 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a network of radar defenses in the Czech Republic.

“There were no criticisms by any of the NATO allies of our missile defense proposals or of our moving forward,” Mr. Gates said. “There obviously is interest in trying to encourage the Russians to participate with us, to make the system complementary to NATO shorter-range missile defenses, and for transparency.”

These systems would be “bolted on” to the American system, which is designed to counter long-range missiles, in particular a potential threat from Iran, alliance officials said.

“The NATO road map on missile defense is now clear,” said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO secretary general. “It’s practical, and it’s agreed by all.”

A senior American official, who described the closed-door debate under standard diplomatic rules of anonymity, was even more explicit than Mr. Gates in summarizing NATO’s support. “What you see here is allies agreeing to adapt NATO’s work to the reality that there will be a long-range system, as well,” the official said.

NATO was already studying a theaterwide missile defense system, and the decision made Thursday alleviates the alliance of the financial and political costs of creating long-range missile defenses.

The NATO study is to be completed by February. Its military experts will work on blueprints for short- and medium-range missile defense systems to shield allies not under the cover of the system proposed for Central Europe, including Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Turkey.

In an unexpected development sure to be scrutinized by the Kremlin, Mr. Gates indicated an interest in pushing cooperation on missile defenses even further into the former Soviet hemisphere of Eastern Europe by raising the prospect of future discussions with Ukraine.

Ukraine is not a NATO member, but is part of an alliance dialogue, the NATO-Ukraine Commission. Mr. Gates said that on Thursday he “indicated a willingness to share information, data with Ukraine” on the missile defense efforts in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russian officials have complained that the proposed system is a Trojan horse designed to counter Moscow’s strategic rocket forces, although Mr. Putin shifted the debate with a proposal last week to link the American system to a radar in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.

At the session of the NATO-Russia Council on Thursday, Mr. Serdyukov, the Russian defense minister, “made no threats” about the American plans, said senior American officials who had attended, speaking anonymously under diplomatic rules.

While the United States, Poland and the Czech Republic are all alliance members, the negotiations on missile defense bases are being carried out in bilateral talks outside the NATO framework.

    U.S. to Keep Europe as Site for Missile Defense, NYT, 15.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/world/europe/15gates.html

Familiar Disputes Face US - Russia

June 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S.-Russian dispute over a missile shield in Eastern Europe is too complicated to be resolved during two days of talks next month between President Bush and President Vladimir Putin, a Kremlin spokesman said Thursday.

Dmitry Peskov said the United States should freeze the proposed anti-missile plan while Washington and Moscow evaluate a counterproposal from Putin.

While ties between Moscow and Washington have been described as being at their worst since the Cold War, Peskov said the relationship was ''definitely not living through its golden age. But I wouldn't agree that we're in the worst period'' since the Cold War.

As conceived by the United States, the missile shield would break the strategic balance of power that has helped keep the peace in Europe for decades, Peskov said in an interview. ''Of course Russia will have to restore that balance somehow,'' he said.

Bush and Putin are to meet July 1-2 in Kennebunkport, Maine, at the oceanfront estate of Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush.

The United States has proposed setting up a radar system in the Czech Republic and installing 10 interceptor rockets in Poland to guard against a strike from a country such as Iran.

Putin is unhappy about the prospect of missiles being deployed in Russia's back yard, and has proposed instead that the system be anchored around a Soviet-era radar installation in Azerbaijan. Bush has called the idea interesting but has said the United States is going ahead with planning for the Poland-Czech Republic plan.

''The United States will continue to discuss missile defense options with Poland, Czech Republic, other NATO allies as well as the Russians,'' National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

''This is a complex issue which will include a number of meetings with all the parties involved over the coming months. We hope the Russians accept President Bush's invitation to send experts to the United States,'' Johndroe said.

The other main dispute to be discussed in Kennebunkport will be independence for Kosovo. The United States backs Kosovo's bid while Russia, Serbia's traditional ally, opposes it and has threatened to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution.

    Familiar Disputes Face US - Russia, NYT, 14.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Russia.html

Lieberman Backs Limited U.S. Attacks on Iran

June 10, 2007
The New York Times
By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON, June 10 — Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent who strongly supports the war in Iraq, said today that unless Iran stops training Iraqis to carry out anti-coalition attacks, the United States should launch cross-border attacks into Iran.

“I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Mr. Lieberman said in an interview on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

This could be achieved mostly with air attacks, Mr. Lieberman said, adding, “I’m not talking about a massive ground invasion of Iran.”

The comment from Mr. Lieberman of Connecticut, who is sometimes a swing vote in the closely divided Senate, went far beyond the official position in the Bush administration, which has warned Iran about supporting Iraqi insurgents but also recently held high-level talks with Iranian officials. There was no immediate White House reaction.

The administration has criticized Tehran for failing to stop the flow of highly destructive explosives into Iraq, and training Iraqis in their use, but American officials concede that they are unable to prove that senior Iranian officials are behind the smuggling.

Mr. Lieberman said he supported the high-level talks with Iran, but added that there was “incontrovertible” evidence that Iranians were training Iraqis to use the explosives, which are blamed for killing as many as 200 Americans.

"They can’t believe that they have immunity for training and equipping people to come in and kill Americans," he said. "We cannot let them get away with it.”

The senator also said he doubted that the White House decision not to renominate Gen. Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff presaged any strategy shift for Iraq.

White House spokesmen have pointed to a caution from Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, that a Pace reconfirmation hearing would have provided a platform for a bruising re-examination of mistakes made in Iraq.

The president “would have loved to renominate Pete Pace,” the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said on CBS. “That was his intent.” But he said there was a desire to avoid “getting mired in a backward-looking debate.”

Mr. Snow denied, in an appearance on Fox, that the White House was effectively giving the Democratic Congress a preemptive veto over its nominations.

But some Democrats suggested that, congressional opposition aside, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates wanted his own man in the job — not the last high-ranking holdover from the Pentagon regime of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

“To suggest that tough sledding on Capitol Hill is a reason to pull the plug on Peter Pace, I don’t think that’s a good argument,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. He said he probably would have voted to confirm General Pace.

In the past, the Bush administration has not shied away from such battles — and Mr. Snow said today that the White House would pay no mind Monday if a Senate no-confidence vote in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales prevailed. Mr. Snow called it “a purely symbolic vote.”

Mr. Durbin expressed surprise at that reaction. “This is a White House that is prepared to fight for Attorney General Gonzales,” who has faced intense bipartisan criticism for his handling of the firings of several United States attorneys, “but not fight for Marine Corps General Peter Pace?”

    Lieberman Backs Limited U.S. Attacks on Iran, NYT, 10.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/washington/10cnd-policy.html?hp

Rice: US Pursues Own Missile Plan

June 8, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:28 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- The United States will pursue its own plans to put a missile defense in Eastern Europe despite Russian suggestions to locate it outside the region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The Associated Press Friday.

Rice said Russian President Vladimir Putin's surprise offer to share a Soviet-era radar tracking station in Azerbaijan for the project had caught the Bush administration off guard, but that it was worth looking into even while missile defense negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic continue.

''One does not choose sites for missile defense out of the blue,'' she said in an interview. ''It's geometry and geography as to how you intercept a missile.''

''This is an idea that has not yet been vetted,'' she said of Putin's offer, made Thursday to President Bush at a meeting in Germany. ''We have to see whether Azerbaijan makes any sense in the context of missile defense.''

Rice said Putin's idea, which represented an apparent softening in Moscow's hardline opposition to missile defense, could be positive but stressed that Washington would do what it saw fit to deal with the ''real security problem'' posed by rogue states like Iran and North Korea.

''If it is a way to begin more serious discussions about what we believe is a common threat -- which is the threat of the Irans and North Koreas of the world launching missiles -- that's a very positive development,'' she said.

''But we are continuing our discussions with the Czech Republic and Poland and we're going to do that, we are continuing our discussions in NATO, and we're going to do that. We will do what is best from the point of view of actually dealing with the problem, which is a real security problem. This isn't a faux security problem.''

The United States has been pushing a plan that would put the radar tracking station in the Czech Republic and missile interceptors in Poland to protect European and NATO allies from attacks.

Until Putin's Azerbaijan offer on Thursday, Russia has been vehemently opposed to the entire concept, arguing that it poses a threat to its nuclear deterrent.

    Rice: US Pursues Own Missile Plan, NYT, 8.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Rice-Interview.html

Italy Trial of C.I.A. Operatives Opens

June 8, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:55 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MILAN, Italy (AP) -- The first trial involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program opened in Italy Friday in the absence of all 26 American defendants accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terrorist suspect.

The trial, which has been an irritant in the historically robust U.S.-Italy relationship and coincides with the planned arrival in Rome of President Bush, was not expected to start in earnest, however.

The government has asked Italy's highest court to throw out indictments against 26 Americans -- all but one of them believed to be CIA agents -- accused of abducting Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003.

The Constitutional Court is expected to consider that and another similar appeal in the fall, and participants in the trial said they expect defense requests to postpone the trial until after the high court rules.

In addition to the Americans, seven Italians were also indicted in the case, including Nicolo Pollari, the former chief of military intelligence. Pollari, who was not present Friday, has denied any involvement by Italian intelligence in the abduction.

Pollari's lawyer, Titta Madia, said Friday he would ask for an immediate suspension of the proceedings pending the Constitutional Court ruling, so that both sides know which evidence can be used.

''It is in our interest that the trial proceeds as quickly as possible,'' Madia told reporters before the hearing began. ''In general, Pollari would like to arrive at an acquittal as soon as possible, but we need to have certainty about which evidence we can use.''

A trial has the potential to publicly air details about the renditions -- moving terrorism suspects from country to country without public legal proceedings -- a consequence that has been heralded by critics of the practice. It also has the power to embarrass the intelligence community over the handling of a highly secret operation.

Italian prosecutors say Nasr -- suspected of recruiting fighters for radical Islamic causes but who had not been charged with any crime at the time of his disappearance -- was taken to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany before being transferred to Egypt, where he was imprisoned for four years. Nasr, who was released Feb. 11, said he was tortured.

Nasr's lawyer traveled from Cairo to attend the opening; prosecutors have listed Nasr on their list of more than 120 witnesses.

Lawyers for a former Italian intelligence chief also under indictment have included on their witness list former Premier Silvio Berlusconi -- who was in office at the time of Nasr's disappearance -- and Premier Romano Prodi, lawyers involved in the case said. The same request was denied by a different judge during the preliminary hearing phase.

The 26 Americans have left Italy, and a senior U.S. official has said they would not be turned over for prosecution even if Rome requests it. Prodi's government has so far not made a decision.

The timing of the trial's opening date could not be worse, happening as Bush arrives Friday for talks the next day with the pope and Italy's premier and president.

Relations between Rome and Washington also have been strained by the trial of a U.S. soldier accused of killing an Italian intelligence officer in Baghdad in 2005 as well as Italy's withdrawal of troops from Iraq and reluctance to send additional soldiers to Afghanistan.

    Italy Trial of C.I.A. Operatives Opens, NYT, 8.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Italy-CIA-Kidnappning.html?hp

Gates Urges Stronger U.S. Ties With Europe

June 6, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France, June 6 — Beside a churning sea and an ocean of white marble crosses, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today that the United States and its European allies should honor the thousands of Americans buried here by strengthening the alliance they died defending.

As light rain descended from a gray Normandy sky, Mr. Gates said the allied invasion on D-Day was founded on “the belief that that blood of free men could wash away the stains of tyranny.” But the United States’ ties to Europe are now threatened, he said, by those who “believe that the foundations of the alliance forged in places like this have collapsed or outlived their usefulness.”

At one point, directly addressing his French counterpart, Defense Minister Hervé Morin, Mr. Gates said disagreements between the United States and France that make for an often-stormy relationship should not overshadow what the two nations have in common.

“Let the people of our nations never forget that we are bound by history and values just as we are bound by blood,” Mr. Gates said. “The blood for everyone who has ever perished in defense of the lofty ideals that gave rise to and still underpin our great alliance.”

Mr. Gates’s speech was not typical of many given by Bush administration officials on patriotic days of remembrance. There was no mention either of Iraq or Afghanistan, and no direct attempt to link the sacrifices of the past with America’s current military conflicts.

Instead, the speech’s theme was broader and more elemental: that the indispensable alliances of the past must endure in the future.

Washington’s relations with some of its most important European allies have frayed significantly in the past five years, primarily over the decision to go to war in Iraq. But the Bush administration has more recently made efforts to heal the trans-Atlantic rift as it seeks allies against Islamic radicalism and European help through NATO for the fighting in Afghanistan.

Mr. Gates, who arrived in Paris on Tuesday, was the first American defense secretary to visit France in nearly a decade.

Mr. Gates, who became defense secretary in December after being out of government since 1993, seems puzzled and dismayed at times by the actions of the United States’ European allies.

Last weekend in Singapore, he expressed frustration that despite a pool of 2.3 million troops, European members of NATO were unable to make up a shortfall of 3,000 soldiers needed to train the Afghan army and police forces.

But as a self-described “cold warrior,” Mr. Gates seems to believe that despite the occasional headaches, the Atlantic Alliance that outlasted the Soviet Union is invaluable for the more complex fight against Islamic extremism that Western nations face today.

Using vivid and lofty language in his speech at the Normandy American Cemetery, Mr. Gates invoked a day 63 years ago that “unfolded as if it were a lifetime.” He quoted an American soldier who recalled that the first men to land on Omaha Beach in 1944 were cut down by enemy fire and tumbled “just like corncobs off of a conveyor belt.”

The cemetery is the burial site of 9,387 Americans who died during the Normandy Invasion. After his speech, Mr. Gates cut the ribbon on a $30 million visitor center on the cemetery grounds, perched on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach. The money for the visitors center was authorized by Congress in 2001.

Such memorial sites are essential, Mr. Gates said, to ensure that the heroism of those who fought is not forgotten, and that “the passage of time and the thinning of their ranks will never dim the glory of their deeds.”

    Gates Urges Stronger U.S. Ties With Europe, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/world/europe/06cnd-gates.html?hp

Bush Says Russia Won't Attack Europe

June 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:51 p.m. ET
The New York Times

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (AP) -- After a torrent of sharp exchanges, President Bush tried to stop a steep slide in relations with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday by saying Russia is not a menace to Europe despite a threat to aim missiles at the West.

''Russia is not going to attack Europe,'' the president said, brushing off Putin's warning that he would reposition Russian rockets in retaliation for an American-devised missile shield to be based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

''Russia is not an enemy,'' Bush emphasized. ''There needs to be no military response because we're not at war with Russia.''

A day before meeting privately with Putin here, Bush appeared eager to call a time-out in the bickering over everything from criticism about Russia's backslide on democracy to Putin's complaints about U.S.-backed independence for Kosovo and a supposed new arms race triggered by Washington.

''There will be disagreements,'' the president said, relaxing in the sun during an interview with a handful of reporters before the annual summit of major industrialized countries. ''That's just the way life works. But that doesn't necessarily lend itself to speculation that somehow the relationship between me and the president (Putin) is not a positive relationship. It is a positive -- and I'm going to work to keep it that way.''

Asked if he expected a tense session with Putin, Bush said, ''Could be -- I don't think so, though. I'll work to see that it's not a tense meeting.''

The Russians projected a similar air.

Putin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said open hostility is part of a constructive relationship, even as he reiterated disagreements with U.S. views of Russian democracy and dissatisfaction with explanations about the missile shield.

Peskov promised ''uncomfortable consequences'' if the shield is deployed, and said U.S.-Russia ties are ''not limited only by disagreements.''

But, he added: ''We give ourselves the right to expect our partners to listen to our concerns.''

Bush, tieless and with his shirt sleeves rolled up, sat for the interview just hours before the opening of the Group of Eight summit with Germany, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and Russia.

The leaders gathered in Heiligendamm, a Baltic Sea town in northern Germany that was circled by seven miles of razor wire-topped fence.

Thousands of demonstrators blocked roads to the summit site, and thousands more streamed toward the fence. Police used water cannons to scatter stone-throwing protesters. Hundreds of demonstrators dressed like clowns scampered in the woods and paraded on streets.

At a pre-summit lunch, Bush discussed combatting global warming and poverty in Africa with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the summit host. She advocates a tougher stand on climate change than Bush.

Merkel said they had a ''very good debate ... but I trust that we will work out joint positions.''

In the interview, Bush said he would not yield to Merkel's proposals for mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. Bush has countered with a plan for negotiations among the United States and other nations that spew the most greenhouse gases -- including China and India -- to set a long-term strategy by the end of next year for reducing emissions. U.S. officials said Bush was willing to move more quickly to set goals.

Jim Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said an agreement on global warming was ''almost done.''

Bush also met with new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and discussed North Korea's pledge to close its sole nuclear reactor in exchange for economic aid and political concessions.

''There is a common message here and that is: We expect North Korea to honor agreements,'' Bush said.

In the interview, Bush offered his case for why Russia should not worry about a U.S. missile shield in Europe.

The shield could defend against only one or two rocket launchers, Bush said. ''Russia has got an inventory that could overpower any missile defense system,'' he said. ''The practicality is that this is aimed at a country like Iran, if they ended up with a nuclear weapon, so that they couldn't blackmail the free world.''

Told that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had said it was too late to stop Iran's nuclear program, Bush responded: ''Therefore, let's build a missile defense system.

''And, yes, we're going to work to stop him,'' Bush said, adding that he was seeking tougher sanctions against Iran at the U.N. Security Council.

A week after announcing tighter U.S. sanctions against Sudan, Bush called on other countries to follow the United States and apply pressure to stop the misery in Darfur. He said he would consider supporting calls for a no-flight ban over Darfur.

''I'm frustrated because there are still people suffering and yet the U.N. process is moving at a snail's pace,'' Bush said.

A day after accusing Russia of backsliding on democracy, Bush took pains to emphasize positive developments.

Under Putin, Russia has put major news media under state control, stripped governors of their independence and cracked down on nongovernment civic groups. Critics accuse him of steering his country toward authoritarianism and isolation.

Bush sought the silver lining.

''Society has advanced a long way from the old Soviet era,'' he said. ''There is a growing middle class, there is prosperity, there's elections.''

Yet, Bush said Russia ''is certainly not perfect in the eyes of many Americans,'' taking note, for instance, of anxiety about Moscow's growing energy clout.

------

On the Net:

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov

    Bush Says Russia Won't Attack Europe, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush.html

Bush Reiterates: Russia Not an Enemy

June 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:41 p.m. ET
The New York Times

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday discounted Vladimir Putin's threat to retarget missiles on Europe, saying ''Russia's not going to attack Europe.''

Bush, in an interview with The Associated Press and other reporters, said no U.S. military response was required after Putin warned that Russia would take steps in response to a U.S. missile shield that would be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic.

''Russia is not an enemy,'' Bush said, seeking not to inflame a heated exchange of rhetoric between Washington and Moscow. ''There needs to be no military response because we're not at war with Russia. ... Russia is not a threat. Nor is the missile defense we're proposing a threat to Russia.''

Bush spoke before heading off to lunch with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is hosting the annual meeting of the world's seven richest industrial democracies and Russia. Merkel has made global warming the centerpiece of her G-8 leadership and is pushing for specific targets for reducing carbon emissions.

The meeting is being held under tight security on the Baltic Sea coast in northern Germany. Police used water cannons to scatter an estimated 10,000 demonstrators who swarmed a seven-mile fence that encircles the site. At one section, hundreds of protesters chanted ''Peace'' and ''Free G-8! Free G-8!''

Bush, who met with reporters for nearly an hour in a sun-drenched garden, also discussed Iran, the suffering in Darfur, global warming and this week's sentencing of a former White House aide.

The president said he would like to see other countries follow the United States in taking steps against the government of Sudan to stop the misery in Darfur.

''I'm frustrated because there are still people suffering and the U.N. process is moving at a snail's pace,'' Bush said.

Bush announced tighter U.S. sanctions on Sudan last week. He also is seeking a U.N. resolution to apply new international sanctions against the Sudanese government.

On climate change, Bush said he would not give ground on global warming proposals that would require mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, he backed his own idea for the United States and other nations that spew the most greenhouse gases to meet and -- by the end of next year -- set a long-term strategy for reducing emissions.

Merkel has proposed a ''two-degree'' target, under which global temperatures would be allowed to increase no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, (2 degrees Celsius) before being brought back down. Practically, experts have said that means a global reduction in emissions of 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Merkel supports a global carbon-trading market as one tool.

But Bush wants to bring India, China and other fast-growing countries to the negotiation table. He envisions that each country will set their own goals, and decide whether they should be binding. The president said his plan addresses ''life after'' 2012, the expiration date for the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States has not endorsed.

Merkel put a good face on her talk with Bush about issues such as combatting poverty in Africa. But their debate on global warming seems unlikely to produce the kind of hard targets she and others have advocated. ''We started here on a very good footing,'' she said after the lunch with Bush.

Bush also met with Japan's new prime minister Shinzo Abe and discussed North Korea's pledge to close its sole nuclear reactor in exchange for economic aid and political concessions. ''There is a common message here and that is: We expect North Korea to honor agreements,'' Bush said.

While North Korea topped Bush's talks with Abe, the president's plan to deploy an anti-missile radar system in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland is likely to be a key topic in Bush's meeting Thursday with Putin.

Asked if he anticipated a tense encounter, Bush replied ''Could be. I don't think so ... I'll work to see that it's not a tense meeting.''

Putin has accused the U.S. of starting a new arms race and said if the U.S. pressed ahead with its plan, Russia would revert to targeting its missiles on Europe as it did during the Cold War. China joined Russia in saying the missile defense plan could touch off a new escalation in nuclear weapons.

The move to put the missile defense shield in former Warsaw Pact nations -- purportedly as a defense against a future missile launch from Iran -- clearly fanned Putin's anger.

Bush cited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declaration that it was ''too late'' to stop Iran's nuclear program as justification for the U.S. missile defense system. ''Therefore, let's build a missile defense system,'' Bush said, adding that it was time to return to the U.N. Security Council to tighten pressure on Iran to give up its suspected weapons program.

Bush also has angered Putin in the past by criticizing Russia's spotty progress on democratic reform and human rights -- a theme Bush expressed in a speech just one day ago. Bush said that despite all the problems, the United States has a friendship with Russia. He suggested Putin's recent rhetoric could be calculated mostly for internal political consumption in Russia.

''There will be disagreements,'' said Bush, who has invited Putin to meet him in July in Kennebunkport, Maine, the home of his father, former President George H.W. Bush. ''That's the way life works.''

    Bush Reiterates: Russia Not an Enemy, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush.html

Bush Goes to Europe for Talks in Wake of Putin’s Threat

June 4, 2007
The New York Times
By JUDY DEMPSEY and GRAHAM BOWLEY

BERLIN, June 4 — President Bush flew to Europe today for talks with world leaders later this week, including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in the wake of a threat by Mr. Putin to point Russian missiles at Europe if the United States builds its missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

In an interview with journalists from the other Group of 8 big industrialized countries that was released on the Kremlin Web site, Mr. Putin set an uncompromising tone before the start of the group’s summit meeting in Germany on Wednesday.

His comments set a challenge for Mr. Bush, who flew to Prague in the Czech Republic today before the meeting in Germany.

Mr. Putin said Russia would not stand back and allow Washington to expand its nuclear potential in Europe, even though the new interceptors that the United States intends to deploy in Poland would not carry nuclear warheads.

“Europe is being filled with new weapons,” Mr. Putin said, according to the transcript. “We ask ourselves what is going on.” He said the United States’ planned new installations would be an “inseparable part of the U.S. nuclear potential,” and said the Iranian missiles that America’s bases are intended to protect against “do not exist.”

"If the American nuclear potential grows in European territory, we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe," Mr. Putin was quoted as saying by Corriere della Sera, an Italian newspaper that took part in the interview.

"It is up to our military to define these targets, in addition to defining the choice between ballistic and cruise missiles. But this is just a technical aspect."

Asked whether the American plan to build a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe would force Moscow to direct its own missiles against cities or American military targets in Europe, Mr. Putin replied, "Naturally, yes," according to the newspaper.

Der Spiegel, the German weekly newsmagazine, which also took part in the interview, reported that Mr. Putin had warned about the greater possibility of a nuclear conflict.

There was little immediate international reaction to Mr. Putin’s criticisms. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who will host the Group of 8 meeting, wants to lower tensions ahead of the discussions, German diplomats and advisers said.

But NATO criticized Mr. Putin’s comments. "These kind of comments are unhelpful and unwelcome," James Appathurai, a spokesman for NATO, said.

The differences over America’s plans for the missile shield are likely to dominate the talks in Europe. Ms. Merkel and Group of 8 leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and the United States had been hoping that their meeting could reach a consensus over a separate issue, the future status of Kosovo, one of the last unresolved conflicts of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

The United Nations has drawn up a plan that would pave the way for Kosovo to become independent from Serbia, ending the province’s status as a United Nations international protectorate. This arrangement has been in place since 1999. That independence would be supervised by the European Union.

But Russia, which has veto power as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, made it clear last week in Potsdam, Germany, at a meeting of Group of 8 foreign ministers that it did not accept the plan and instead wanted a resumption of talks between Serbia and Kosovo. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, used that meeting to sharply criticize the United States and the missile defense plan.

European diplomats said Mr. Putin’s blunt remarks were intended not only to sow divisions in Europe over the American missile defense plans but also to try to extract concessions over Kosovo.

In Germany, Ms. Merkel’s partners in the coalition government, the Social Democrats, oppose the American plan and have even suggested that Germany pursue a policy of "equal distance" between Russia and the United States. But Ms. Merkel, the conservative leader of the Christian Democrats, has challenged Mr. Putin on several issues, including his views about the missile defense system.

Ms. Merkel has personally told Mr. Putin that America’s plans are in no way directed against Russia.

American officials have also repeatedly told Mr. Putin that Russia would be informed of every step along the way and could even visit the sites in Poland, where the interceptors would be based, and in the Czech Republic, where the United States plans to deploy the radar system. Russia, however, has not taken up the offer of visiting the sites.

Mr. Putin is due to visit the United States for talks with Mr. Bush on July 1 and 2.

Judy Dempsey reported from Berlin, and Graham Bowley from New York.

    Bush Goes to Europe for Talks in Wake of Putin’s Threat, NYT, 4.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/world/europe/04cnd-putin.html?hp

3 Iranian-Americans Charged With Spying

May 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:36 a.m. ET
The New York Times

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- U.S. academic Haleh Esfandiari and two other Iranian-Americans have been charged with endangering national security and espionage, Iran's judiciary spokesman said Tuesday.

''Esfandiari has been formally charged with endangering national security through propaganda against the system and espionage for foreigners. ... The complainant is the Intelligence Ministry,'' judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters.

''She has been informed of the charges against her,'' he said in response to a reporter's question.

Jamshidi did not say when the specific allegations had been read to Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. She has been held at Tehran's notorious Evin Prison since early May.

Jamshidi said the same charges also had been lodged against Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant who also has worked for the World Bank, and journalist Parnaz Azima. No trial date has been announced and Jamshidi said the investigation against the three is continuing.

Azima, who works for the U.S.-funded Radio Farda, was detained but released and barred from leaving the country. It was the first time the government has confirmed the arrest of Tajbakhsh, who was believed to have been taken into custody around May 11, according to George Soros' Open Society Institute.

Esfandiari's husband, Shaul Bakhash, said from his home in Potomac, Md., that the charges ''are totally without foundation, whether it is espionage or propaganda against the Islamic Republic.''

Bakhash said Esfandiari is being represented by the law firm of 2003 Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, but that the Iranian government has refused access to Esfandiari in Evin Prison.

Esfandiari last called her mother in Tehran on Sunday night, but the call was ''extremely short'' and yielded no new information about her fate, he said.

Laura Silber, a spokeswoman for Soros' Open Society Institute in New York said the organization was ''dismayed at the charges'' against Tajbakhsh, describing him as an ''internationally respected scholar.''

''The charges are completely without merit,'' Silber told The Associated Press by telephone. ''We are very concerned for Dr. Tajbakhsh's safety and urge the Iranian authorities to release him immediately.''

In Washington, the State Department said it had no information about any formal charges being lodged, and it repeated calls for them to be released.

''These are individuals that have family ties to Iran, have done independent research and other kinds of civil society activities there for many years,'' deputy spokesman Tom Casey said. ''They certainly pose no threat or challenge to the regime and we continue to believe they should be released as soon as possible.''

Iran's Intelligence Ministry has accused Esfandiari and her organization of trying to set up networks of Iranians with the ultimate goal of creating a ''soft revolution'' in Iran, along the lines of the revolts that ended Communist rule in Eastern Europe.

The ministry has alleged that the Open Society Institute, which seeks to promote democracy, was part of the conspiracy.

The Wilson Center and the Open Society Institute deny the allegations.

Under Iranian law, the distinction between someone being accused and charged is less clear than in the United States and many Western countries, especially in matters of national security. Security courts have wide latitude, with the option of dropping the proceedings at any time or even holding trials in secret.

However, Jamshidi's statement that specific allegations had been read to Esfandiari and the others indicates the cases have been raised to a new level under the Iranian legal system.

Bakhash said the formal charges are ''very worrisome.''

''I think it certainly ratchets up the case against her several notches in a rather menacing way,'' he said.

The 67-year-old Esfandiari has for years brought prominent Iranians to Washington to talk about the political situation in Iran, some of whom have been subsequently detained and questioned back home. Her defenders say some of those she brought to the U.S. were supporters of the Iranian government who sought to explain Tehran's stance to Americans.

Esfandiari had been trapped in Iran since December, when three masked men with knives stole her luggage and passport as she headed to the airport to leave the country, the Wilson Center said. In the weeks before her arrest, she was called in for questioning daily on her activities, it said.

Iran has stepped up accusations that the United States is trying to use internal critics to destabilize the government. Tensions have mounted between the two countries over Iran's nuclear program and U.S. allegations that the Iranians have been supporting armed groups in Iraq.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hard-line government has also increased restrictions on local non-governmental organizations, particularly women's rights groups and other critics.

Associated Press Writer Stephen Manning in Bethesda, Md., contributed to this story.

    3 Iranian-Americans Charged With Spying, NYT, 29.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-Americans.html

Bush Tightens Fiscal Penalties Against Sudan

May 29, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, May 29 — President Bush announced today that he is imposing stiff economic sanctions against Sudan and that he will press the United Nations for additional action to end the violence in Darfur.

“The people of Sudan are crying out for help and they deserve it,” he said in a brief statement at the White House.

The decision makes good on a threat the president made nearly six weeks ago. Mr. Bush warned then that the United States would act if Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, did not permit a full deployment of United Nations peacekeeping forces, allow aid to reach the Darfur region and end his support for the janjaweed, the militias that have been systematically killing civilians there.

Mr. Bush leaves next week for Europe to attend a meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations, where Darfur is expected to be an issue. Two senior administration officials, who spoke anonymously on Monday before Mr. Bush had given the speech, said Mr. Bush wanted to act before then.

Specifically, the president outlined four steps, which the officials said would all be effective immediately.

First, he will step up enforcement of existing economic sanctions against 100 or so Sudanese companies already barred from doing business with the United States.

Second, he will add 31 additional companies to the sanctions list, barring them from any dollar transactions within the United States financial system.

Of those companies, 30 are controlled by the Sudanese government, and at least one is violating an embargo against shipping arms to Darfur.

“All these companies are now barred from the U.S. financial system,” Mr. Bush said. “It is a crime for American companies and individuals to knowingly do business with them.”

Third, Mr. Bush said he would target sanctions against individuals responsible for violence. This means singling out two senior officials and a rebel leader for sanctions, senior administration officials said.

Mr. Bush said this would call “the world’s attention to their crimes.”

Finally, Mr. Bush said he will direct Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to consult with Britain and other allies to seek United Nations approval for an international resolution to impose a broad arms embargo against Sudan and to bar the Sudanese government from conducting any military flights in Darfur.

Mr. Bush has long been trying to find a way to end what his administration has termed genocide in Darfur, in western Sudan, where at least 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million displaced.

He has been under intense pressure from human rights advocates to act, and many expected him to announce measures against Sudan last month in a speech he delivered at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Instead, Mr. Bush bowed to pressure from the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, who had been trying to pursue a diplomatic course with Mr. Bashir.

In the days before the president’s April 18 speech, Mr. Ban called Ms. Rice to ask for more time to negotiate with the Sudanese leader, and administration officials said then that Mr. Bush decided reluctantly to give it to him.

“I have made a decision to allow the secretary general more time to pursue his diplomacy,” Mr. Bush said then, while at the same time adding, “The time for promises is over — President Bashir must act.”

In the statement today, which was highly critical of Mr. Bashir, Mr. Bush said the Sudanese leader had not met his obligations to stop the killing in Darfur.

“President Bashir’s actions over the past few weeks follow a long pattern of promising cooperation while finding new methods for obstruction,” he said.

Although the Bush administration has classified the situation in Darfur as genocide, the United Nations has not. The administration officials said the secretary general had been made aware of Mr. Bush’s plans for sanctions, though they would not say if Mr. Bush had spoken personally with Mr. Ban.

It remains unclear how Mr. Bush’s announcement will be received at the United Nations.

The Sudanese government today criticized the sanctions, Reuters reported.

“I think these sanctions are not justified,” Mutrif Siddig, Sudanese undersecretary for foreign affairs, told Reuters in Khartoum. “It is not timely. We are cooperating well with the United Nations.”

After the president’s speech last month, ambassadors from China, Russia and South Africa said they were not yet convinced of the need for sanctions. In Beijing today, China’s representative on African affairs, Liu Guijin, told Reuters: “Expanding sanctions can only make the problem more difficult to resolve.” He said that it was too soon to say whether China would veto any United Nations resolution against Sudan, Reuters reported.

Mr. Bush is said by officials to be extremely frustrated with the situation in Darfur, and his top aides have been saying for months that they were upset with Sudan’s refusal to permit the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers in the country or to allow relief aid to reach the region.

At the same time, saving Darfur has become a powerful political cause, not only among human rights advocates but also among religious groups, including some of the Christian conservatives who make up Mr. Bush’s political base.

The administration’s frustration spilled out in the open in March, when Andrew S. Natsios, the United States special envoy to Sudan, laid out the package of sanctions that the president was to announce today in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Then, just a day before Mr. Bush’s April speech at the Holocaust Museum, a confidential United Nations study found that Sudan was flying arms and heavy equipment into Darfur in planes painted white, apparently to masquerade as United Nations jets.

In the weeks since that speech, the senior administration officials said that they had seen little change in Darfur. If anything, they said, the violence there grew worse. “In the time since that speech at the Holocaust museum, he has done nothing to meet his obligations,” one of the officials said of Mr. Bashir. “Instead, he’s bombed a meeting of religious leaders, he kept food from his people, they painted an aircraft white to look like a U.N. jet.”

The officials were asked how many people have died since Mr. Bush gave the speech. “I couldn’t say we have specific numbers on how many people have died,” one of them said, though he added, “The displacement numbers have only grown.”

Graham Bowley contributed reporting from New York.

    Bush Tightens Fiscal Penalties Against Sudan, NYT, 29.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/world/africa/29cnd-darfur.html?hp

U.S. and Iran Begin Rare Talks on Iraq Security

May 28, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:17 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Iran and the United States resumed public diplomacy Monday for the first time in more than a quarter century. The meeting in Baghdad between ambassadors on security in Iraq could produce a chapter in world history for its success or a footnote for its failure.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker represented Washington. Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi spoke for Iran at the talks, which were held at Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office in the Green Zone compound in Baghdad.

Just before 10:30 a.m., al-Maliki greeted the two ambassadors, who shook hands, and led them into a conference room, where the ambassadors sat across the table from each other. Al-Maliki then made a brief statement and left the room.

He told both sides that Iraqis want a stable country free of foreign forces and regional interference. The country should not be turned into a base for terrorist groups, he said. He also said that the U.S.-led forces in Iraq were only here to help build up the army and police and the country would not be used as a launching ground for a U.S. attack on a neighbor, a clear reference to Iran.

''We are sure that securing progress in this meeting would, without doubt, enhance the bridges of trust between the two countries and create a positive atmosphere'' that would help them deal with other issues, he said.

Speaking in Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Monday the talks could lead to future meetings, but only if Washington acknowledges that its Middle East policy has not been successful.

''We are hopeful that Washington's realistic approach to the current issues of Iraq by confessing its failed policy in Iraq and the region and by showing a determination to changing the policy guarantees success of the talks and possible further talks,'' Mottaki said.

Monday's talks were to have a pinpoint focus: What Washington and Tehran -- separately or together -- could do to contain the sectarian conflagration in Iraq.

Washington wants Tehran to stop arming, financing and training militants, particularly Shiite militias that are fighting American and Iraqi troops. Tehran wants Washington out of Iraq, period.

But much more encumbers the narrow agenda, primarily Iran's nuclear program and more than a quarter-century of diplomatic estrangement after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.

Further, the Iranian Shiite theocracy fears the Bush administration harbors plans for regime change in Tehran and could act on those desires as it did against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Washington and its Sunni Arab allies, on their side, are deeply unnerved by growing Iranian influence in the Middle East and the spread of increasingly radical Islam.

Compounding all that is Iran's open hostility to Israel.

Those issues, combined, are what make this opening of the U.S.-Iranian minuet both so important and so interesting.

Will this first meeting, as the Iraqis openly hope and as the Iranians and Americans may quietly aspire, be sufficiently cordial and productive that a second meeting becomes possible? Should that happen, will a future dialogue involve higher-level officials -- perhaps Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki?

On Saturday, Crocker was circumspect when asked about prospects for further meetings.

''It's going to start with one meeting and see how it goes,'' Crocker said. ''We're coming prepared to talk about Iraq.''

A political aide to al-Maliki told The Associated Press that Iraq hoped to play a mediator's role in easing tensions between the Americans and Iranians, which Iraqi officials have routinely said are being played out in Iraq.

The adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said Iraq would remain neutral as regards to its position in the disputes.

''But we want to try to close the gap, to be partners in the dialogue,'' the official said. ''It is time to look forward, not backward.''

Many small issues could cloud the talks before they begin. There were U.S. Navy exercises in the Persian Gulf last week and tough talk from President Bush about new U.N. penalties against Tehran over its nuclear program. The United States says Tehran is trying to build a bomb, while Iran says it needs nuclear technology for energy production.

Further complicating the talks, Iran said Saturday that it had uncovered spy rings organized by the United States and its Western allies.

Iran accuses the U.S. of improperly seizing five Iranians in Iraq this spring. The U.S. military is holding the five. Iran says they are diplomats; Washington contends they are intelligence agents.

The U.S. also has complained about the detention or arrest of several Iranian-Americans in Iran in recent weeks. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said that issue was not on the U.S. agenda for Monday.

Regardless, the Baghdad talks are the first of their kind and a small sign that Washington thinks rapprochement is possible after nearly three decades of animosity. Iran, angry over the blunt show of U.S. military power off its coast, almost refused to come.

    U.S. and Iran Begin Rare Talks on Iraq Security, NYT, 28.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-US-Iran-Talks.html?hp

Timeline: Ups and downs of U.S.-Iran relations

Mon May 28, 2007
4:49AM EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - U.S. and Iranian officials began rare talks in Baghdad on Monday to discuss Iraq's spiraling violence, which Washington says Tehran is fuelling by giving arms, funding and training to Shi'ite militias there.

Here is a chronology of major events in Iran-U.S. relations:

August 1953 - CIA helps orchestrate the overthrow of Iran's popular Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, restoring the shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, to power.

January 16, 1979 - Pahlavi is forced into exile after mounting discontent with his authoritarian rule.

-- February 1 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini triumphantly returns to Tehran after some 15 years in exile.

-- October - The U.S. allows the shah to enter the country for medical treatment, angering the revolutionary government.

-- November 4 - Iranian students seize the U.S. embassy in Tehran and take 90 hostage; 52 held captive for 444 days.

April 7, 1980 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter breaks off diplomatic relations with Iran.

-- April 25 - A U.S. commando mission to rescue the embassy hostages fails in the desert, killing eight Americans.

-- September - Iraq invades Iran to lay claim to Shatt-al-Arab waterway. Washington supports Iraq in war that lasts until 1988.

January 20, 1981 - American hostages are released on the day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration as U.S. president.

1986 - President Reagan admits secret arms deal with Iran in breach of the U.S. arms embargo. Money from the sales was secretly passed to Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua.

July 3, 1988 - U.S. warship Vincennes mistakenly shoots down an Iranian passenger plane over the Gulf, killing 290 on board.

March 16, 1995 - U.S. President Bill Clinton issues executive orders preventing U.S. companies from investing in Iranian oil and gas and from trading with Iran.

January 29, 2002 - U.S. President George W. Bush accuses Iran, Iraq and North Korea of being an "axis of evil."

June 2003 - International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran has failed to comply with nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

February 2005 - President Mohammad Khatami says no Iranian government will give up nuclear technology programme.

August 2005 - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad becomes president of Iran.

May 31, 2006 - Washington says willing to join multilateral talks with Iran if it verifiably suspends its nuclear programme.

September 30 - U.S. Congress agrees to extend economic sanctions on Iran for another five years.

December 23 - United Nations imposes sanctions on Iran in an effort to stop nuclear enrichment work.

February 8, 2007 - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Iran would target U.S. interests around the world if it came under attack over its nuclear programme.

February 26 - Major powers agree to begin work on a new U.N. Security Council resolution on Iran.

March 10 - U.S., Iranian officials attend meeting in Baghdad aimed at stopping the spread of sectarian violence in Iraq.

May 2 - Ahmadinejad calls on U.S. and other foreign forces to leave neighboring Iraq, reiterating an Iranian demand on the eve of an international meeting in Egypt.

May 28 - Iranian and U.S. ambassadors to Iraq meet in Baghdad to discuss violence in the country.

    Timeline: Ups and downs of U.S.-Iran relations, R, 28.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2821927720070528?src=052807_0529_TOPSTORY_u.s._and_iran_meet

Top US War Boss: We Can't Ignore Iran

May 28, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:22 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- The top U.S. commander in the Middle East said Sunday that Iran is a major player in the region that cannot be ignored but that the United States has no intention of leaving, as Iran would like to see happen.

Adm. William Fallon said the U.S. would continue to maintain a presence in the Middle East, as it has for decades, at the request of other countries in the region.

''We have to figure out a way to come to an arrangement with them,'' Fallon said about Iran in an interview with The Associated Press.

The admiral's remarks came on the eve of a meeting between American and Iranian ambassadors in Baghdad to discuss ways to ease the crisis in Iraq. It would be a rare one-on-one forum between the two countries, which broke off formal relations after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Fallon was in New York to be the keynote speaker at a Memorial Day ceremony hosted by the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Central Park on Monday.

Fallon succeeded Army Gen. John Abizaid as head of U.S. Central Command earlier this year. He is overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and managing military relationships with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other nations at the center of President Bush's strategy for fighting terrorism.

Fallon said he welcomed Bush's creation of an Iraqi war czar position, which was created to eliminate conflicts between the Pentagon, Department of State and other agencies.

He also said about three-quarters of the U.S. troops are in place for a planned surge in Iraq and that the additional troops will be in place by next month.

Fallon said increased U.S. efforts to root out insurgents and quell sectarian violence could mean an increase in casualties.

''We are uncovering the bad actors, and they are not taking it lying down,'' Fallon said. ''We are trying to turn the balance, and they are fighting back.''

    Top US War Boss: We Can't Ignore Iran, NYT, 28.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Admiral-Iran.html

U.S. Resupplies Lebanon Army

May 25, 2007
By REUTERS
Filed at 10:17 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (Reuters) - The United States and Arab allies sent military aid to Lebanon on Friday and the Lebanese army deployed extra troops to a Palestinian camp where it has been battling Islamist militants this week.

A fragile truce held between the army and the Fatah al-Islam militant group in northern Lebanon at the Nahr al-Bared camp, where the faction is based, despite sporadic overnight clashes.

Lebanese Defence Minister Elias al-Murr said the government was leaving room for negotiations but the army would act if necessary. ``What is required is the handing over of those terrorists and criminals,'' he told reporters.

Murr gave no details on the talks, but a delegation from the various main Palestinian factions have been holding extensive meetings with Lebanese leaders in a bid to end the crisis.

At least 33 soldiers and 25 militants have been killed in what is the worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war. Thousands have fled the camp, where Palestinian sources say at least 11 civilians have been killed and 100 wounded.

At least six U.S. and Arab military supply planes arrived at Beirut airport carrying ammunition and other light equipment from U.S. depots in the region and from Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, security sources said.

``The United States has existing agreements to provide (military) assistance to Lebanon. Under those agreements we are expediting the delivery of supplies,'' said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, acknowledging that some shipments had arrived.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

UNRWA, the U.N. agency which cares for Palestinian refugees, said around 15,000 people were still in the camp, home to some 40,000 before it came under heavy army shelling this week.

``The humanitarian situation in Nahr al-Bared is deteriorating,'' UNRWA spokeswoman Hoda Elturk said. ``We have our trucks full of food and water ready,'' she said, but added: ''It's not secure enough for our staff to enter.''

Extra Lebanese soldiers arrived overnight at the camp, which the army is not allowed to enter under a 1969 Arab agreement, witnesses said. The 40,000-strong army is already stretched with significant deployments along the border with Israel in south Lebanon, Syria to the north and east and in and around Beirut.

Many army units deployed in Beirut for months to stem rising sectarian tensions amid a deep political crisis, appear to have left their positions and headed north, witnesses said.

Beirut requested more U.S. military aid after fighting erupted on Sunday. Washington voiced support for the government, calling Fatah al-Islam ``a brutal group of violent extremists.''

Arab states, many of which have fought their own battles with Sunni Islamist militants, have also pledged military aid.

Lebanese leaders have vowed to stamp out the group, which is led by a Palestinian but has little support among Lebanon's Palestinian refugee community of around 400,000.

Military analysts say it will be very hard for the army to deal Fatah al-Islam a decisive blow unless it enters the camp.

Lebanon's defense ministry estimates between 50 and 60 militants have been killed in the fighting, which the army says started after Fatah al-Islam launched unprovoked attacks on soldiers. The militants say they have acted in self-defense.

Thousands who fled the fighting are sheltering in a nearby refugee camp where relief workers are delivering aid.

Fatah al-Islam is inspired by the Sunni militant group al Qaeda. The Lebanese authorities say they have arrested Saudi, Algerian, Tunisian, Syrian and Lebanese members of the group.

Anti-Syrian Lebanese leaders say Fatah al-Islam is a tool of Syrian intelligence. Damascus and the group deny the charge.

    U.S. Resupplies Lebanon Army, NYT, 25.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-lebanon-fighting.html?hp

Editorial

Propping Up the General

May 23, 2007
The New York Times

It seems the more unpopular Pakistan’s military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, becomes at home and the less he is willing to fight the Taliban, the more the Bush administration clings to him.

Washington is afraid, and entirely not without reason, that nuclear armed Pakistan’s next ruler could be even worse. The answer is not to stand by while the general cranks up his repression. That only feeds the fundamentalist and anti-American passions that Washington fears.

Instead of propping up the general, Washington should use the leverage it gets from roughly $2 billion a year in aid to encourage an early return to democratic rule.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has been paying about half that amount each year to reimburse Pakistan’s military for fighting Taliban and Al Qaeda forces along the Afghan border. Eight months ago, General Musharraf radically pared back those efforts, but the lavish American payments have continued. Cutting back on those patrols makes it easier for the Taliban and Al Qaeda to kill American and NATO troops. Congress must insist that future payments be linked to actual counterterrorist activity and results, as some American military officials now recommend.

Washington’s uncritical support has also reinforced the general’s arrogance and insularity, which are at the heart of his current political problems. In March, he arbitrarily suspended Pakistan’s independent-minded chief justice, setting off protest demonstrations which have continued ever since. The suspension came as the court was preparing to hear challenges to the general’s schemes to keep himself in power — as both army commander and president — with his presidential candidacy ratified by the current, submissive Parliament, not the new one due to be elected later this year.

Members of the general’s ruling party are now urging him to reach a compromise. Some are even calling on him to open up the election to other serious contenders, including two former prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, now living in exile. Both governments were badly stained with corruption. But there can be no meaningful return to democracy without the free participation of Pakistan’s two most popular political leaders. General Musharraf is resisting this good advice, but could change his mind if Washington added its voice to the call for free elections.

A succession of uniformed dictators has misruled Pakistan for more than half of its 60-year history. All have advertised themselves as great friends of Washington, but all have fanned extremism while discrediting America’s reputation among ordinary Pakistanis. There is no security with General Musharraf. The United States belongs on the side of Pakistani democracy.

    Propping Up the General, NYT, 23.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/opinion/23wed1.html

U.S. Pays Pakistan to Fight Terror, but Patrols Ebb

May 20, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID ROHDE

WASHINGTON, May 19 — The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country’s military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though Pakistan’s president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active.

The monthly payments, called coalition support funds, are not widely advertised. Buried in public budget numbers, the payments are intended to reimburse Pakistan’s military for the cost of the operations. So far, Pakistan has received more than $5.6 billion under the program over five years, more than half of the total aid the United States has sent to the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, not counting covert funds.

Some American military officials in the region have recommended that the money be tied to Pakistan’s performance in pursuing Al Qaeda and keeping the Taliban from gaining a haven from which to attack the government of Afghanistan. American officials have been surprised by the speed at which both organizations have gained strength in the past year.

But Bush administration officials say no such plan is being considered, despite new evidence that the Pakistani military is often looking the other way when Taliban fighters retreat across the border into Pakistan, ignoring calls from American spotters to intercept them. There is also at least one American report that Pakistani security forces have fired in support of Taliban fighters attacking Afghan posts.

The administration, according to some current and former officials, is fearful of cutting off the cash or linking it to performance for fear of further destabilizing Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is facing the biggest challenges to his rule since he took power in 1999.

The White House would not directly answer the question of why Pakistan is being paid the same very large amount after publicly declaring that it is significantly cutting back on its patrols in the most important border area. But Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, emphasized Pakistan’s strategic importance in the region.

“Pakistan’s cooperation is very important in the global war on terror and for our operations in Afghanistan,” Mr. Johndroe said. “Our investments in that partnership have paid off over time, from increased information sharing to kills and captures of key terrorist operatives. There is more work to be done, the Pakistanis know that, and we are engaged with the Musharraf government to ramp up the fight.”

The Pentagon, in response to inquiries, said Friday that the payments to Pakistan since October 2001, when the war in Afghanistan began, had averaged $80 million a month. The Congressional Research Service estimated last year that they accounted for about a fifth of Pakistan’s total military expenditures.

The administration told Congress in January that the Pakistanis performed operations that “would be difficult for U.S. Armed Forces to attain,” and the Pentagon said those included carrying out joint operations, commanding observation posts and conducting land and maritime interdictions.

But General Musharraf announced in September that under a peace agreement with local militants his regular army troops in North Waziristan, the center of Al Qaeda’s operations, would no longer operate checkpoints and that they would stay in garrisons, a decision that came after Pakistani forces suffered heavy casualties in the lawless tribal areas.

Soon after, appearing with President Bush, General Musharraf promised that tribal leaders and local militia would handle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the tribal areas. Outside powers have long struggled to gain firm control of the remote and impoverished region, where fiercely independent tribes have largely ruled themselves for centuries. American officials say they think Osama bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda members fled there in 2001.

Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, Mahmud Ali Durrani, said in an interview that the agreements were working and that his country’s military activities on the border itself were increasing. He said that Pakistan was being properly reimbursed for fuel, munitions and wear and tear on military equipment. “There are multiple small and big operations going on, we have deployed troops along the border,” he said. “There is a lot of coordination.”

American officials tell a different story, saying that Pakistani cooperation was mixed at best in 2005 and 2006, though they acknowledge that the Pakistanis have been more responsive to NATO and American requests in recent months. Still, they complain that the Pakistanis are paid whether they go on operations or sit in their barracks.

“They send us a bill, and we just pay it,” said a senior military official who has dealt extensively with General Musharraf. “Nobody can really explain what we are getting for this money or even where it’s going.”

After visiting Pakistan last year, Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, wrote in a report that the Defense Department’s military office in Islamabad, the capital, recommended changing the aid program so that it was “paying for specific objectives that are planned and executed, rather than simply paying what the country bills.” A senior military official engaged in battling the Taliban said many commanders and diplomats in the region agreed with that recommendation.

Mr. Johndroe, the national security spokesman, said the White House was unaware of any such debate and was not currently considering changing the program.

“I’m not aware of any serious discussion to cut off the funding,” Mr. Johndroe said. The payments are critical to bolstering the military, General Musharraf’s greatest source of support, particularly as he faces growing street protests over his removal of an independent-minded Supreme Court chief justice as the court was about to consider the legality of the president’s decision to hold the nation’s top military and political posts at the same time.

“In funding the Pakistani military, we are making it easier for Musharraf to fulfill his objectives, and we are keeping the military off his back,” said Xenia Dormandy, a former director for South Asia for the National Security Council who is now a scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

“It is a very good question to raise,” he added. “If we are giving a billion dollars to the military each year, would that money not be better spent building schools, roads and health services in that region?”

A study of the roughly $10 billion sent to Pakistan by the United States since 2002, conducted by Craig Cohen and Derek Chollet of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, found that $5.6 billion in reimbursements was in addition to $1.8 billion for security assistance, which mostly finances large weapons systems.

But those weapons are more useful, the authors concluded, in countering India than in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The United States has also provided about $1.6 billion for “budget support,” which Pakistan can use broadly, including for reducing debt.

In contrast, only about $900 million has been dedicated to health, food aid, democracy promotion and education, in a country where illiteracy rates are about 50 percent, and American policy makers say the education gap has opened the way for religious schools that can become hotbeds of extremism.

The Pentagon says the Pakistani expenses are reviewed by the Central Command and the American Embassy in Islamabad, and reported to Congress. But current and former commanders and diplomats say that the review is cursory and that there is no real way to audit the Pakistani operations.

Meanwhile, American and NATO military frustration with Pakistan’s performance in the border area is growing, say current and former senior American military officials. They said that Taliban fighters had been seen regularly crossing the border within sight of Pakistani observation posts, but that the Pakistanis often made little effort to stop them.

Pakistani and American military commanders established direct radio communications between Pakistani and American border posts about two years ago, after a series of meetings on border issues. Since then, the system has worked well on some parts of the border and poorly in others, they said.

Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO supreme commander, said that when American or NATO forces saw Taliban fighters crossing the border and radioed nearby Pakistani posts, there sometimes was no answer. “Calls to apprehend or detain or restrict these ongoing movements, as agreed, were sometimes not answered,” General Jones said. “Sometimes radios were turned off.”

General Jones said he raised the problem with Gen. Ehsan ul Haq, the chairman of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, during General Haq’s visit to NATO headquarters last fall.

Mr. Durrani, the ambassador, denied that Pakistani troops were failing to stop Taliban fighters at the border. He said the troops were carrying out joint operations with American forces based inside Afghanistan.

Two American analysts and one American soldier said Pakistani security forces had fired mortars shells and rocket-propelled grenades in direct support of Taliban ground attacks on Afghan Army posts. A copy of an American military report obtained by The New York Times described one of the attacks.

“Enemy supporting fires consisting of heavy machine guns and R.P.G.’s were provided by two Pakistani observation posts,” said the report, referring to rocket-propelled grenades. The grenades killed one Afghan soldier and ignited an ammunition fire that destroyed the observation post, according to the report. It concluded that “the Pakistani military actively supported the enemy assault” on the Afghan post.

James Dobbins, an analyst at the RAND Corporation and a former senior American envoy to Afghanistan, said soldiers had relayed similar complaints to him. “I’ve heard reports of Pakistani units providing fire support from positions inside Pakistan for Taliban units operating against Afghan Army units inside Afghanistan,” he said.

A second American analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said American soldiers had told him that Pakistani forces supported Taliban ground attacks with mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenades at least two dozen times in 2005 and 2006. Senior American military officials said that they had not heard of the incidents, but added that Pakistani tribal militia, not Pakistani soldiers, could be supporting the Taliban attacks.

Mr. Durrani, the Pakistani ambassador, called the reports of direct Pakistani military support for the Taliban “preposterous.” He said the Pakistani military, which has lost 700 soldiers fighting militants in the tribal areas, would never tolerate such activity from its soldiers. “If even once this happens,” he said, “the whole system will come down like a ton of bricks on this person.”

David E. Sanger reported from Washington and Brussels, and David Rohde from Washington and New York. Carlotta Gall contributed from Islamabad, Pakistan.

    U.S. Pays Pakistan to Fight Terror, but Patrols Ebb, NYT, 20.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/world/asia/20pakistan.html?hp

Carter slams Bush on world relations

 

19.5.2007
AP
USA Today

LITTLE ROCK (AP) — Former President Carter says President Bush's administration is "the worst in history" in international relations, taking aim at the White House's policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy.

The criticism from Carter, which a biographer says is unprecedented for the 39th president, also took aim at Bush's environmental policies and the administration's "quite disturbing" faith-based initiative funding.

"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper's Saturday editions. "The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me."

Carter spokeswoman Deanna Congileo confirmed his comments to The Associated Press on Saturday and declined to elaborate. He spoke while promoting his new audiobook series, Sunday Mornings in Plains, a collection of weekly Bible lessons from his hometown of Plains, Ga.

"Apparently, Sunday mornings in Plains for former President Carter includes hurling reckless accusations at your fellow man," said Amber Wilkerson, Republican National Committee spokeswoman. She said it was hard to take Carter seriously because he also "challenged Ronald Reagan's strategy for the Cold War."

Carter came down hard on the Iraq war.

"We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered," he said. "But that's been a radical departure from all previous administration policies."

Carter, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, criticized Bush for having "zero peace talks" in Israel. Carter also said the administration "abandoned or directly refuted" every negotiated nuclear arms agreement, as well as environmental efforts by other presidents.

Carter also offered a harsh assessment for the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which helped religious charities receive $2.15 billion in federal grants in fiscal year 2005 alone.

"The policy from the White House has been to allocate funds to religious institutions, even those that channel those funds exclusively to their own particular group of believers in a particular religion," Carter said. "As a traditional Baptist, I've always believed in separation of church and state and honored that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one."

Douglas Brinkley, a Tulane University presidential historian and Carter biographer, described Carter's comments as unprecedented.

"This is the most forceful denunciation President Carter has ever made about an American president," Brinkley said. "When you call somebody the worst president, that's volatile. Those are fighting words."

Carter also lashed out Saturday at British prime minister Tony Blair. Asked how he would judge Blair's support of Bush, the former president said: "Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient."

"And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world," Carter told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

    Carter slams Bush on world relations, UT, 19.5.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-05-19-carter-bush_N.htm

U.S., Russians, Agree to Ease Rhetoric

May 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:04 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia and the United States agreed Tuesday to moderate their rhetoric in a bid to improve strained ties, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said after Rice met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Rice said recent comments by Putin and other Russians had not been ''helpful'' to relations and had obscured positive developments and cooperation on a wide range of issues, including the fight against terrorism and halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

''We did talk about the need to keep the temperature down,'' she said after seeing Putin in an effort to calm rising tensions between the former Cold War enemies.

She described some remarks as ''overheated rhetoric,'' while accepting a Russian explanation that Putin's recent reference in a speech to Nazi Germany, widely perceived as criticism of the United States, was not intended to slight the Bush administration.

''I have said while I am here that the rhetoric is not helpful,'' Rice told reporters. ''It is disturbing to Americans who are trying to do our best to maintain an even relationship.''

''We are going to have our differences, there is no doubt about that. There are going to be old scars to overcome, there is no doubt about that ... But the relationship needs to be free of exaggerated rhetoric,'' she said.

Asked whether she thought her message was received by the Russians, Rice replied: ''I sure hope so, because I don't think you ever hear President Bush use certain kinds of rhetoric about Russia because he respects the partnership.''

Speaking separately, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Putin agreed.

''The president supported the American side's understanding that it's necessary to tone down the rhetoric in public statements and concentrate on concrete business,'' Lavrov, who participated in the meeting, told reporters.

Lavrov also suggested Rice had not dispelled Russia's opposition to U.S. plans to station a defense missile system in Europe, saying that ''our stance on missile defense was reaffirmed.''

Rice said missile defense continued to be an area that the two countries needed ''to work through'' but that no country, including Russia, would have a ''veto'' on issues related to U.S. national security.

In another key area, Lavrov said that the two countries agreed to search for a mutually acceptable solution on Kosovo, but failed to achieve a breakthrough.

''It was agreed to search for a solution on Kosovo that would be acceptable for all, but there is no such solution immediately in sight,'' he said after taking part in the meeting at Putin's residence outside Moscow.

There has been growing transoceanic tension about the U.S. missile defense plan, concern in Washington about Moscow's treatment of its neighbors and steps Putin has taken to consolidate power in the Kremlin -- seen as democratic backsliding -- as Russia prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections next year.

Rice headed into the talks in Moscow acknowledging that ties were tense, but rejecting suggestions that a ''new Cold War'' had erupted.

''I don't throw around terms like 'new Cold War,''' Rice said. ''It is a big, complicated relationship, but it is not one that is anything like the implacable hostility'' between the United States and the Soviet Union for a half-century after World War II.

''It is not an easy time in the relationship,'' Rice added, ''but it is also not, I think, a time in which cataclysmic things are affecting the relationship or catastrophic things are happening in the relationship.''

She noted that the United States and Russia are working together in numerous areas: on Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs, the global spread of weapons of mass destruction and efforts to achieve Middle East peace.

Despite the agreement to cool down the rhetoric, a planned event at which Rice and Putin were to be photographed together and make brief remarks was canceled by the Kremlin and a senior Russian diplomat on Monday warned the U.S. not to try to go it alone in world affairs.

In April, simmering Russian anger over U.S. plans to place missile defense components in Poland and the Czech Republic, both former Warsaw Pact members, boiled over despite Washington's pledges to cooperate with Moscow on the system.

Russia views the plan as an attempt to alter the strategic balance. Rice has dismissed such concerns as ''ludicrous,'' but top Russian military officials have hinted the system might be targeted.

Last month, hours before the United States and its NATO allies met in Norway to discuss the matter, Putin threatened to suspend Russia's participation in a key treaty limiting military deployments in Europe.

Rice says that NATO and the United States want to keep the Conventional Forces in Europe pact alive but cannot unless Russia abides with its treaty commitments to remove troops from Georgia and Moldova.

Russia views U.S. activity in its former sphere of influence with growing suspicion. Just last week, Putin denounced ''disrespect for human life, claims to global exclusiveness and dictate, just as it was in the time of the Third Reich.''

Associated Press Writer Vladimir Isachenkov contributed to this report from Novo-Ogaryovo, Russia.

    U.S., Russians, Agree to Ease Rhetoric, NYT, 15.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Rice-Putin.html

Iran vows "severe" response if U.S. attacks

Mon May 14, 2007 10:12AM EDT
Reuters
By Diala Saadeh

ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday threatened "severe" retaliation if the United States attacked his country, which is locked in a standoff with the West over its nuclear program.

"They realize that if they make such a mistake the retaliation of Iran would be severe and they will repent," Ahmadinejad told a news conference in the United Arab Emirates. He was speaking through an interpreter.

"All people know they cannot strike us. Iran is capable of defending itself. It is a strong country," said Ahmadinejad.

He said the West could not stop Tehran pursuing its nuclear energy program. "Superpowers cannot prevent us from owning this energy."

The United States, which has a strong military presence in the Gulf, accuses Iran of wanting to produce nuclear weapons and has sought tougher U.N. sanctions against Tehran. Iran says it wants only to generate electricity to allow more oil exports.

Using stronger language than on Sunday when he called for U.S. troops to leave the region, Ahmadinejad said Gulf countries should "get rid of" foreign forces, which he blamed for insecurity in the region.

"We in the Persian Gulf are faced by difficulties and enemies," he said. "They claim lack of security is the reason for their presence (but) the problem is the intervention of foreign powers."

Tension between the United States and Iran has raised regional fears of a possible military confrontation that could hit Gulf economies and threaten vital oil exports. Washington has said it is committed to diplomacy but will not rule out the "military option".

CHENEY VISIT

Ahmadinejad said Iran had agreed to talk to the United States about Iraq to help the Iraqi people. The White House said on Sunday that U.S. and Iranian officials would meet in the next few weeks in Baghdad about security in Iraq.

"They know that their plans have failed in Iraq, their vision is wrong. As long as you are plotting against the Iraqi people, failure will be there day after day," said Ahmadinejad.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, flying to Moscow after talks with regional leaders, said there was agreement on a need to stop a flow of arms and fighters across borders to insurgents in Iraq.

Ahmadinejad was speaking during a trip to the UAE, an ally of Washington, just days after a visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.

Cheney met officials from the UAE and its larger neighbor Saudi Arabia to discuss issues including Iran, which he has described as a major concern to Sunni Arab states.

Dubai-based analyst Mustafa Alani said Tehran was trying to forge regional cooperation around joint interests and to push for an end to foreign troops in the region, a demand that Arab Gulf states would not support.

"The disappearance of the Americans in the region will make Iran emerge as a super regional power, this is a demand linked to their (Iranians) strategic ambitions," he said. "But they (Arab states) need foreign support in the region because there is a deep mistrust in the Iranians."

The UAE, which with its Gulf Arab neighbors has expressed concern about Tehran's nuclear plans, on Sunday voiced support for a moderate approach to Iran's crisis with the West.

    Iran vows "severe" response if U.S. attacks, R, 14.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1473466420070514

No ‘New Cold War,’ Says Rice in Russia

May 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:55 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MOSCOW (AP) -- The United States and Russia are going through a difficult period but rising tensions between the two fall well short of a new Cold War, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday.

''It's a time for intensive diplomacy,'' she said as she flew here for high-level meetings amid new strains in relations over major policy differences underscored by Russian President Vladimir Putin's increasing criticism of the United States.

Rice, who sees Putin on Tuesday, said Washington was committed to working through those differences, notably over U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Europe, Russia's threat to suspend a major military treaty and Moscow's opposition to a U.N. plan for Kosovo independence.

There is also growing U.S. concern about Moscow's treatment of its former Soviet state neighbors and steps Putin has taken to consolidate power in the Kremlin are seen as democratic backsliding as Russia prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections next year.

''I don't throw around terms like 'new Cold War,''' Rice told reporters as she flew here. ''It is a big, complicated relationship, but it is not one that is anything like the implacable hostility'' that clouded ties between the United States and the Soviet Union.

''It is not an easy time in the relationship, but it is also not, I think, a time in which cataclysmic things are affecting the relationship or catastrophic things are happening in the relationship,'' Rice said.

She said, ''It is critically important to use this time to enhance those things that are going well and to work on those things that are not going well.''

She noted that the United States and Russia were working together in numerous areas, including on dealing with Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs as well as cooperating in the fight to stop the global spread of weapons of mass destruction and Middle East peace efforts.

''Russia is not the Soviet Union, so this is not a U.S.-Soviet relationship, this is a U.S.-Russian relationship,'' said Rice, an expert on the Cold War who first visited Moscow in 1979. ''A great deal has a changed.''

But her visit comes as the two nations have traded increasingly sharp barbs at each other, despite ostensibly warm personal feelings between Putin and President Bush, who spoke to each other just last week and are expected to meet at a summit of leaders in Germany next month.

In April, simmering Russian anger over U.S. plans to place missile defense components in Poland and the Czech Republic, both former Warsaw Pact members, boiled over despite Washington's pledges to cooperate with Moscow on the system and even share technology.

Russia views the plan as an attempt to alter the strategic balance, a fear Rice has dismissed as ''ludicrous'' but top Russian military officials have hinted the system might be targeted.

U.S. and Polish officials opened formal talks in Warsaw on the plan even as Rice was headed to Moscow. The two sides were talking about the legal status of a possible U.S. anti-missile base on Polish soil and the American personnel stationed there.

Hours before the United States and its NATO allies were to meet in Norway recently to discuss this issue, Putin threatened to suspend Russia's participation in a key treaty limiting military deployments in Europe.

Rice said that NATO and the United States want to keep the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) pact alive and want to ratify it themselves, but cannot unless Russia honors its treaty commitments.

Russia views U.S. activity in its former sphere of influence with growing suspicion and just last week, Putin denounced ''disrespect for human life, claims to global exclusiveness and dictate, just as it was in the time of the Third Reich.''

The Kremlin insisted that Putin had not meant to compare the Bush administration's policies with those of Nazi Germany but the reference appeared to highlight Russia's annoyance at what it sees as U.S. domination of world affairs and meddling in Russian politics.

Rice did not address Putin's comments but suggested that sometimes emotionally charged remarks by Russian officials were not constructive, saying she had urged counterparts to avoid ''rhetoric that suggests the relationship is one of hostility.''

She couched criticism of Russia's democratic progress under Putin with a caveat alluding to the country's troubled history -- from Czarist empire to communist monolith -- a nation now struggling to find its role in the world and at home.

''This is a big and complex place that is going through a major historic transformation ... things are not going to change overnight, but frankly we would like to see them change faster than they are changing, and for the better,'' Rice said.

She said she would use her meetings in Moscow to impress on Putin and other top Russian officials the need for a missile defense to counter threats from Iran and North Korea and the genuine U.S. desire to work with Russia in building the system transparently.

She also said she would push the Russians on accepting a U.N. proposal for supervised independence for Kosovo, now a U.N.-administered province in Russian ally Serbia, that Moscow has threatened to block.

    No ‘New Cold War,’ Says Rice in Russia, NYT, 14.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Rice.html?hp

Cheney in Saudi Arabia Seeking Iraq Help

May 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:16 a.m. ET
The New York Times

TABUK, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney worked to overcome Saudi skepticism over the U.S. military strategy to secure Baghdad and the leadership capabilities of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Cheney met with King Abdullah at a royal palace in this northern city on Saturday. The king, while considered an important U.S. ally in the Arab world, increasingly has sent signals that he doubts the effectiveness of President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq.

Abdullah also has signaled that he sees al-Maliki as a weak leader with too many ties to pro-Iranian Shiite parties to be effective in reaching out to Iraqi's Sunni minority. Saudi Arabia has a predominantly Sunni Muslim population.

Cheney was given a red-carpet arrival ceremony at the airport. At the palace, as he and the king exchanged pleasantries, Abdullah asked about the first President Bush. The elder Bush assembled a broad international coalition, including Saudi Arabia, to confront Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War.

Cheney, who was Bush's defense secretary, said the former president was doing well. ''He's still willing to jump out of airplanes,'' Cheney said. For his 80th birthday, Bush made a 13,000-foot tandem parachute jump over his presidential library in Texas in 2004; the 41st president, now 82, jumped alone on his 75th birthday.

''I did not want to do it when I was 60 and he's done it twice now,'' the 66-year-old Cheney said.

Cheney is touring Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states in an attempt to win wider support for ethnic reconciliation in Iraq and to counter efforts by Iran to spread its influence in the region.

After a four-hour meeting with the king that included dinner, Cheney headed for Aqaba, Jordan, to spend the evening before meetings on Sunday. He was expected to visit Egypt later on a weeklong trip that began in Iraq.

Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride told reporters after arriving in Jordan that Cheney had ''a very good meeting'' with the Saudi king. ''They discussed a wide range of regional issues and tonight's meeting served to reaffirm and strengthen old friendships,'' she said.

Earlier Saturday, Cheney urged greater support for U.S. policies in Iraq when he held meetings in Abu Dhabi with leaders of the United Arab Emirates.

A senior Bush administration official traveling with Cheney said afterward that the Emirates' president, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, pledged to do as much as possible to support the struggling Iraqi government.

Iran also was a major focus of the meeting, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. The Emirates' leaders, the official said, were keenly aware of the looming presence of Iran, a $20 billion a year trading partner. ''They have a very large neighbor less than a hundred miles away,'' the official said.

The UAE maintains close ties with the U.S., which has three air bases in the Emirates, yet must exist in the virtual shadow of a much larger and more powerful neighbor just across the Straits of Hormuz, through which pass roughly a quarter of the world's oil supplies.

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was scheduled to visit the Emirates on Sunday, is trying to persuade the Gulf states to drop their military alliances with Washington.

Cheney's mission to Saudi Arabia included an effort to smooth over recent divisions between the oil-rich kingdom and the United States.

The kingdom has taken an aggressive leadership role in efforts to quiet Mideast troubles. In a possible attempt to gain more credibility in the region, Abdullah recently has openly challenged the U.S. military presence in Iraq, calling U.S. troops in Iraq an ''illegal foreign occupation.''

The king refused to see al-Maliki when the Iraqi prime minister toured Arab countries late last month.

Cheney went to Saudi Arabia last November for meetings, requested by the king, that are still shrouded in secrecy.

Reports at the time suggested the two discussed what role Saudi Arabia might play in reaching out to Iraq's Sunni minority as conditions in that country deteriorate.

This time, the king did not request the meeting. Cheney was sent to the region by Bush.

(This version CORRECTS al-Maliki's title.)

    Cheney in Saudi Arabia Seeking Iraq Help, NYT, 13.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Cheney.html

Cheney, on Carrier, Sends Warning to Iran

May 12, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

Vice President Dick Cheney used the deck of an American aircraft carrier just 150 miles off Iran’s coast as the backdrop yesterday to warn that the United States was prepared to use its naval power to keep Tehran from disrupting oil routes or “gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.”

Mr. Cheney said little new in his speech, delivered from the cavernous hangar bay of the John C. Stennis, one of the two carriers in the Persian Gulf. Each line had, in some form, been said before at various points in the four-year nuclear standoff with Iran, and during the increasingly tense arguments over whether Tehran is aiding insurgents in Iraq.

But Mr. Cheney stitched all of those warnings together, and the symbolism of sending the administration’s most famous hawk to deliver them so close to Iran’s coast was unmistakable. It also came just a week after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had talked briefly and inconclusively with Iran’s foreign minister, a step toward re-engagement with Iran that some in the administration have opposed.

Mr. Cheney’s sharp warnings appeared to be part of a two-track administration campaign to push back at Iran while leaving the door open to negotiations. It was almost exactly a year ago that the United States offered to negotiate with Iran as long as it first agreed to stop enriching uranium, a decision in which Mr. Cheney, participants said, was not a major player.

Senior officials said Mr. Cheney’s speech was not circulated broadly in the government before it was delivered. A senior American diplomat added, “He still kind of runs by his own rules.”

The speech was reminiscent of Mr. Cheney’s speeches about Iraq in August 2002, which argued against sending weapons inspectors back into Iraq and laid bare the split within the administration over how to deal with Saddam Hussein. But the circumstances with Iran are quite different. American officials say that so many troops are tied up in Iraq, and Iran has so much power to cause disruption there and in the oil markets, that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be an enormous risk.

“This is about saber-rattling, and power projection,” one senior State Department official said yesterday. “And who better to do it?”

When President Bush ordered the two carriers into the Persian Gulf last year, senior officials said it was part of an effort to gain some negotiating leverage. About the same time, American military personnel began capturing some Iranians in Iraq, and some are still being held there. American officials have also been pressing European banks and companies to avoid doing business with Iran, hoping to disrupt its efforts to recycle its oil profits.

Oil seemed to be on Mr. Cheney’s mind yesterday when he told 3,500 to 4,000 members of the Stennis’s crew that Iran would not be permitted to choke off oil shipments.

“With two carrier strike groups in the gulf, we’re sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike,” he said, according to an official transcript of his remarks. “We’ll keep the sea lanes open. We’ll stand with our friends in opposing extremism and strategic threats. We’ll disrupt attacks on our own forces. We’ll continue bringing relief to those who suffer, and delivering justice to the enemies of freedom. And we’ll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.”

Some Iran experts have questioned whether the threats delivered by administration officials help or hurt diplomacy with Iran.

“The problem with the two-track policy is that the first track — coercion, sanctions, naval deployments — can undercut the results on the second track,” said Ray Takeyh, an Iran scholar at the Council of Foreign Relations.

“There are some in Tehran who will look at Cheney on that carrier and say that everything Rice is offering is not real,” he said.

He added, “This is a case where we are trying to get through negotiations what, so far, we couldn’t get through coercion.”

Without question, symbols of coercion were part of the backdrop: Mr. Cheney spoke in front of five F/A-18 warplanes. While he never said so, it is clear to the Iranians that several of their major nuclear sites, including the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, are within reach of the Navy’s weapons.

But mindful of the lasting imagery of President Bush on another carrier, there were no signs proclaiming success, much less “Mission Accomplished.” Instead, Mr. Cheney repeated his arguments about the danger of early withdrawal from Iraq, suggesting that it would empower Iran.

“This world can be messy and dangerous, but it’s a world made better by American power and American values,” he told the cheering crew. He then reached back to some language Mr. Bush had previously used to describe the goals of Al Qaeda — the word caliphate, which the president has avoided in recent times.

“Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants believe they can wear us down, break our will, force us out and make Iraq a safe haven for terror,” Mr. Cheney said. “They see Iraq as the center of a new caliphate, from which they can stir extremism and violence throughout the region, and eventually carry out devastating attacks against the United States and others.”

    Cheney, on Carrier, Sends Warning to Iran, NYT, 12.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/world/middleeast/12cheney.html?hp

4 U.S. Workers Seized in Nigeria

May 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:41 p.m. ET
The New York Times

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- Gunmen seized four American workers as violence escalated in Nigeria's southern petroleum-producing region, a Chevron spokesman said Wednesday.

The attackers, carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, stormed a vessel carrying the workers in the southern Niger Delta minutes before midnight Tuesday, two industry officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because their company prohibits them from talking to the media.

Chevron Corp. spokesman Femi Odumabo said the four kidnapped workers were subcontractors with U.S. citizenship.

''Four American employees of Global Industry Ltd. were taken hostage,'' he said. ''There is no current threat to production.''

Another vessel in the same area, the Walvis 6, was also attacked and robbed. A crew member reported missing was later found hiding on the boat.

''This is just a piracy, robbery case,'' Odumabo said. Despite last week's attack, in which six Chevron employees were taken hostage, he said the company did not feel singled out as a target.

''It's not directed at any one company,'' he said.

Earlier Tuesday, militants staged coordinated attacks on three pipelines in the wetlands region, the most damaging assault on the country's vital oil infrastructure in over a year, marking a heightening of hostilities.

Nigeria is Africa's largest producer of crude, one of the top 10 exporters in the world and a leading supplier of oil for the United States.

The near-simultaneous blasts Tuesday followed the kidnappings of dozens of foreign oil workers last week, a sequence of events militants say is intended to shut down the continent's largest crude exporter.

Analysts believe armed groups are heightening the tempo of attacks in a bid to demonstrate their relevance ahead of this month's handover of power to a newly elected government. It was unclear if the Tuesday attacks were linked in the massive Niger Delta, roamed by various militant and criminal outfits.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the largest militant group in Nigeria's oil-rich region, claimed responsibility for the bombings and warned of more attacks ahead of a May 29 presidential inauguration meant to set up the country's first-ever handover of civilian power. In an e-mail message on Wednesday, MEND said it did not kidnap the four Chevron workers on Tuesday but was encouraging all groups to launch attacks.

''We have asked all groups to attack all facilities and oil workers,'' it said.

The militants claimed to have taken out the entire network of pipes leading to an Agip-operated terminal, which can export 200,000 barrels a day. Nigeria has a total production capacity of 3 million barrels per day, but protests and militant attacks had reduced oil production by around 680,000 barrels before Tuesday's bombings.

It was not immediately clear how much production had been cut by the attacks, since the Nigerian staff of Agip, a subsidiary of Italy's oil giant Eni SpA, were on strike for a second day and company representatives in Italy said they were unable to comment.

Nearly 100 foreign oil workers have been kidnapped since the beginning of the year. The kidnapping of the Chevron workers means that 32 foreigners have been abducted in the last 10 days.

Attacks in Nigeria often send ripples through markets already jittery over instability in the Middle East. The light crude that the west African country produces is much cheaper to refine than heavier oils and its proximity to North America cements its importance as the fifth-largest supplier of crude to the United States.

The attacks also come on the heels of Nigeria's presidential election in April, which put the country under an international spotlight following widespread evidence of vote-rigging.

The April polls, which President Olusegun Obasanjo's ruling party won by a landslide, were characterized by violence and did not take place at all in many areas of the impoverished Delta region. Many militant groups have issued statements saying they will not recognize the incoming government of the president-elect, Umaru Yar'Adua.

    4 U.S. Workers Seized in Nigeria, NYT, 9.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Nigeria-Oil-Unrest.html

U.S. Officials Meet Briefly With Iranians

May 4, 2007
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and JON ELSEN

SHARM EL SHEIK, Egypt, May 4 — American and Iranian officials spoke briefly today at a regional conference here on the Iraq situation, in a rare direct conversation between representatives of the two antagonistic nations.

Ryan Crocker, the United States ambassador to Iraq, said that he and David Satterfield, who is the senior adviser on Iraq to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had an impromptu 3-minute discussion with an Iranian deputy foreign minister. Ms. Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, did not participate.

Mr. Crocker would not say what was discussed, except that the conversation was limited to the situation in Iraq.

Afterward, Ms. Rice said: “We have no desire to have difficult relations with anyone in Iran.” She said the United States has been very clear that “we are prepared to change 27 years of policy and engage in a broad range of issues” with Iran if Iran accepts international demands that it suspend its nuclear enrichment program.

Whether American and Iranian officials would meet and talk directly here has been one of the major questions surrounding the international conference. On Thursday, Ms. Rice met with her Syrian counterpart, the first high-level diplomatic contact between Washington and Damascus in more than two years.

The meetings with Syrian and Iranian officials confirm a significant, if unstated, change in approach for the Bush White House concerning relations in the Middle East, analysts throughout the region said. Washington is asking for help, even from foes it has spurned in the past. Under pressure from its Arab allies, the Bush administration has slowly edged away from its position that direct talks can be conducted only as a reward for what it considers good behavior.

Iranian-American relations have been especially tense lately, with the United States saying that Shiite militias in Iraq have used weaponry from Iran in attacks on American troops, and with the United States pressing Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program. The United States has no diplomatic relations with Iran and has sought to isolate and contain the country.

In today’s opening remarks at the conference, Iran’s foreign minister, Mr. Mottaki, did not seem to have changed his country’s position toward the United States.

“The terrorists claim that they are fighting the forces of occupation, while the occupiers justify their presence under the pretext of the war on terror,” he said. “Therefore, this axis of occupation-terrorism is the root of all problems in Iraq.”

He said the problems in Iraq are the fault of the Americans, so they should not point the finger at others.

At the conference luncheon on Thursday, attended by diplomats from 60 countries, Ms. Rice and Mr. Mottaki exchanged pleasantries. Ms. Rice had planned to approach Mr. Mottaki at dinner Thursday evening, held by Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit. But Mr. Mottaki left the dinner before Ms. Rice arrived — and apparently before eating.

Iranian officials said that Mr. Mottaki was not avoiding Ms. Rice; rather, they said, he left because he considered the red dress worn by one of the event’s entertainers to be too revealing, according to news services.

Today, Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, sounded dubious about that explanation. “I’m not sure which woman he was afraid of, the one in the red dress or the secretary of state,” he said.

In the two-day conference here, the Bush administration has been seeking the help of Iraq’s neighbors, and countries around the world, to quell the violence there and relieve Iraq’s enormous debt.

Ms. Rice’s talk here on Thursday with Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, lasted only 30 minutes but was substantive. She asked that Syria, with its porous border with Iraq, do more to restrict the flow of foreign fighters. Bush administration officials noted afterward that it might already be happening; in the past month, they said, there had been a drop in the number of foreign fighters traveling over the Syrian border into Iraq.

Ms. Rice characterized her meeting with Mr. Moallem as “professional,” adding, “I didn’t lecture him, and he didn’t lecture me.”

Mr. Moallem, for his part, said he hoped that the meeting was the start of something more. He asked that the United States return its ambassador to Syria; the most recent ambassador, Margaret Scobey, was withdrawn in 2005 after the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syria, which had troops in Lebanon at the time, has been implicated in the assassination, but has denied any involvement.

What was also telling was what was not discussed. Syrian officials said that Ms. Rice did not raise the issue of the Hariri killing or the plans to form an international tribunal to hear evidence in the case, which Syria strongly opposes.

“We hope the Americans are serious because we in Damascus are serious about improving relations with America,” Mr. Moallem said.

Ms. Rice gave him a noncommittal reply.

The United States, which considers Syria a state sponsor of terrorism, has struggled to isolate Syria as a strategy to change it. The White House in April sharply criticized the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for visiting Syria’s capital, Damascus, and meeting with President Bashar al-Assad, even going so far as calling the trip “bad behavior,” in the words of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Less than a month later, Ms. Rice walked through the cavernous hallways of a conference center in this desert resort town and into the “Sun” room to sit down with Mr. Moallem. After the meeting, Mr. Moallem was mobbed by reporters and camera crews, while Ms. Rice quickly escaped to her hotel.

“This is a marked improvement in the administration’s ostrich policy approach, and a tacit admission of how wrong it was last month in criticizing the speaker of the House and Congressional colleagues, including myself, for going to Damascus,” Representative Tom Lantos, Democrat of California, said in a statement. “As a lifelong internationalist, Secretary Rice knows better than most the great value of face-to-face discussion, even those with whom we strongly disagree.”

The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, took pains to assure reporters that the meeting was not a change in United States policy. First, he called the meeting a “pull-aside conversation,” then a ”sidebar conversation.”

“That’s still informal and not bilateral,” Mr. Snow said, after being pressed. Finally, he concluded: “It’s a conversation. Yes, it’s a conversation. In fact, conversations happen. It’s a good thing.”

There was certainly some forethought to it, though, since Ms. Rice took the time to telephone Ms. Pelosi before heading to Egypt this week, though Bush administration officials did not say whether Ms. Rice told Ms. Pelosi beforehand that she planned to follow her footsteps.

“She wanted to hear from Speaker Pelosi about her discussions with the Syrian president,” a senior State Department official said, adding that that the call centered on gathering information about Ms. Pelosi’s trip, not further condemnation for making it. Ms. Rice, he said, “didn’t want to poke her finger in her eye or anything.”

But the Bush administration has come under increasing pressure, internally and externally, to talk to Syria.

“Sometimes it appears people in diplomacy use talk as a reward or punishment,” said the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, in an interview after his own 30-minute meeting with Ms. Rice. “That seems to me very childish. We are frustrated when people don’t talk together.”

Relations with Syria still are far from close. Besides Iraq, the issue of Lebanon — not to mention Israel — remains a huge obstacle. The Bush administration is still making plans to seek a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing a tribunal into the Hariri assassination.

American officials maintained Thursday night that they do not plan to trade away Lebanon for Syria’s help in Iraq. “The Lebanese people have no better friend than the United States,” said Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman.

The Thursday conclave centered around trying to persuade the international community, particularly the Persian Gulf countries, to agree to a debt relief and financial aid for Iraq. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said that donor countries, including Britain, Saudi Arabia and China, pledged to waive $30 billion in Iraqi debt.

In return, Baghdad promised to enact a series of reforms, like better inclusion of the country’s Sunni minority in the political process, an oil law and better legal protections for Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds.

“The national unity government is committed to providing all necessary services for the deprived people, and because these services need huge finances, we call on all the friends and brothers participating in this conference to write off Iraq’s debt to enable it to start reconstruction and development projects and rebuilding its infrastructure,” Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq said in a speech before the group. “Your support will enable the national unity government to move forward with the political process and consolidate democracy and impose law and order.”

But there is a clear quid-pro-quo at play, and while conference attendees verbally pledged 80-percent debt relief and billions in aid, they left themselves room in case the Shiite-led Iraqi government did not make good on its promises to reform and reach out to minority groups.

Indeed, assembled diplomats, particularly the Sunni Arab envoys, said they remained unconvinced that Mr. Maliki’s government would take the necessary steps.

“We don’t see anything happening in Iraq in implementation,” Prince Saud said in the interview. “Our American friends say there is improvement: improvement in violence, improvement in the level of understanding, improvement in disarming militias. But we donft see it.”

Prince Saud added that it seemed premature to produce an international agreement to help out Iraq. He said that during his meeting with Ms. Rice on Thursday, he expressed his reservations on the process and his concern that the Maliki government was not doing enough to stabilize the country.

“You have to have national consensus,” Prince Saud said. “If you move to improve the situation, you can’t do it from the outside.”

American officials acknowledged that much of the help for Iraq is contingent on Baghdad. “That point is valid,” said Mr. Crocker, the United States ambassador to Iraq. “If you’re not moving forward on these issues, the centrifugal forces will take hold and move you back. The international compact is a good thing, it deserves support, but it’s very important to move forward on the national compact.”

Michael Slackman contributed reporting for this article from Sharm el Sheik, Egypt.

    U.S. Officials Meet Briefly With Iranians, NYT, 4.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/world/middleeast/05diplocnd.html?hp

U.S. and Syria Discuss Iraq in Rare Meeting

May 4, 2007
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and MICHAEL SLACKMAN

SHARM EL SHEIK, Egypt, May 3 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met on Thursday with her Syrian counterpart in the first high-level diplomatic contact between Washington and Damascus in more than two years.

The 30-minute meeting with Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, came in the middle of two days of international talks on Iraq in which the Bush administration is seeking the help of Iraq’s neighbors, and countries around the world, to quell the violence there and relieve Iraq’s enormous debt.

To that end, Ms. Rice also tried to speak with her counterpart from Iran, a country that the United States has no diplomatic relations with and that it has sought to isolate and contain.

Ms. Rice had planned to approach Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki of Iran at dinner to ask that Iran stop providing Shiite militias in Iraq with weaponry to attack American troops, State Department officials said. But he left the dinner, held by Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit of Egypt, before Ms. Rice arrived — and apparently before eating.

At the day’s lunch, attended by diplomats from 60 countries, Ms. Rice and Mr. Mottaki did exchange pleasantries. Ms. Rice’s decision to meet with the Syrian foreign minister and seek out the Iranian seemed to confirm a significant, if unstated, change in approach for the Bush White House to handling relations in the Middle East, analysts throughout the region said. Washington is asking for help, even from foes it has spurned in the past. Under pressure from its Arab allies, the Bush administration has slowly edged away from its position that talking can only be a reward for what it considers good behavior.

Ms. Rice’s talk with Mr. Moallem, though short, was substantive. She asked that Syria, with its porous border with Iraq, do more to restrict the flow of foreign fighters. Bush administration officials noted afterward that it might already be happening; in the past month, they said, there had been a drop in the number of foreign fighters traveling over the Syrian border into Iraq.

Ms. Rice characterized her meeting with Mr. Moallem as “professional,” adding, “I didn’t lecture him, and he didn’t lecture me.” Mr. Moallem, for his part, said he hoped that the meeting was the start of something more. He asked that the United States return its ambassador to Syria; the most recent ambassador, Margaret Scobey, was withdrawn in 2005 after the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syria, which had troops in Lebanon at the time, has been implicated in the assassination, but has denied any involvement.

What was also telling was what was not discussed. Syrian officials said that Ms. Rice did not raise the issue of the Hariri killing or the plans to form an international tribunal to hear evidence in the case, which Syria strongly opposes.

“We hope the Americans are serious because we in Damascus are serious about improving relations with America,” Mr. Moallem said.

Ms. Rice gave him a noncommittal reply.

The United States, which considers Syria a state sponsor of terrorism, has struggled to isolate Syria as a strategy to change it. The White House in April sharply criticized the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for visiting Syria’s capital, Damascus, and meeting with President Bashar al-Assad, even going so far as calling the trip “bad behavior,” in the words of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Less than a month later, Ms. Rice walked through the cavernous hallways of a conference center in this desert resort town and into the “Sun” room to sit down with Mr. Moallem. After the meeting, Mr. Moallem was mobbed by reporters and camera crews, while Ms. Rice quickly escaped to her hotel.

“This is a marked improvement in the administration’s ostrich policy approach, and a tacit admission of how wrong it was last month in criticizing the speaker of the House and Congressional colleagues, including myself, for going to Damascus,” Representative Tom Lantos, Democrat of California, said in a statement. “As a lifelong internationalist, Secretary Rice knows better than most the great value of face-to-face discussion, even those with whom we strongly disagree.”

The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, took pains to assure reporters that the meeting was not a change in United States policy. First, he called the meeting a “pull-aside conversation,” then a “sidebar conversation.”

“That’s still informal and not bilateral,” Mr. Snow said, after being pressed. Finally, he concluded: “It’s a conversation. Yes, it’s a conversation. In fact, conversations happen. It’s a good thing.”

There was certainly some forethought to it, though, since Ms. Rice took the time to telephone Ms. Pelosi before heading to Egypt this week, though Bush administration officials did not say whether Ms. Rice told Ms. Pelosi beforehand that she planned to follow her footsteps.

“She wanted to hear from Speaker Pelosi about her discussions with the Syrian president,” a senior State Department official said, adding that that the call centered on gathering information about Ms. Pelosi’s trip, not further condemnation for making it. Ms. Rice, he said, “didn’t want to poke her finger in her eye or anything.”

But the Bush administration has come under increasing pressure, internally and externally, to talk to Syria.

“Sometimes it appears people in diplomacy use talk as a reward or punishment,” said the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, in an interview after his own 30-minute meeting with Ms. Rice. “That seems to me very childish. We are frustrated when people don’t talk together.”

Relations with Syria still are far from close. Besides Iraq, the issue of Lebanon — not to mention Israel — remains a huge obstacle. The Bush administration is still making plans to seek a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing a tribunal into the Hariri assassination.

American officials maintained Thursday night that they do not plan to trade away Lebanon for Syria’s help in Iraq. “The Lebanese people have no better friend than the United States,” said Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman.

The Thursday conclave centered around trying to persuade the international community, particularly the Persian Gulf countries, to agree to a debt relief and financial aid for Iraq. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said that donor countries, including Britain, Saudi Arabia and China, pledged to waive $30 billion in Iraqi debt.

In return, Baghdad promised to enact a series of reforms, like better inclusion of the country’s Sunni minority in the political process, an oil law and better legal protections for Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds.

“The national unity government is committed to providing all necessary services for the deprived people, and because these services need huge finances, we call on all the friends and brothers participating in this conference to write off Iraq’s debt to enable it to start reconstruction and development projects and rebuilding its infrastructure,” Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq said in a speech before the group. “Your support will enable the national unity government to move forward with the political process and consolidate democracy and impose law and order.”

But there is a clear quid-pro-quo at play, and while conference attendees verbally pledged 80-percent debt relief and billions in aid, they left themselves room in case the Shiite-led Iraqi government did not make good on its promises to reform and reach out to minority groups.

Indeed, assembled diplomats, particularly the Sunni Arab envoys, said they remained unconvinced that Mr. Maliki’s government would take the necessary steps.

“We don’t see anything happening in Iraq in implementation,” Prince Saud said in the interview. “Our American friends say there is improvement: improvement in violence, improvement in the level of understanding, improvement in disarming militias. But we don’t see it.”

Prince Saud added that it seemed premature to produce an international agreement to help out Iraq. He said that during his meeting with Ms. Rice on Thursday, he expressed his reservations on the process and his concern that the Maliki government was not doing enough to stabilize the country.”

“You have to have national consensus,” Prince Saud said. “If you move to improve the situation, you can’t do it from the outside.”

American officials acknowledged that much of the help for Iraq is contingent on Baghdad. “That point is valid,” admitted Ryan C. Crocker, the United States ambassador to Iraq. “If you’re not moving forward on these issues, the centrifugal forces will take hold and move you back. The international compact is a good thing, it deserves support, but it’s very important to move forward on the national compact.”

    U.S. and Syria Discuss Iraq in Rare Meeting, NYT, 4.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/world/middleeast/04diplo.html?hp

Iraq wins debt relief, Rice to meet Syrian minister

Thu May 3, 2007
8:08AM EDT
Reuters
By Mariam Karouny and Sue Pleming

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - Iraq won a trickle of debt relief pledges at a big international conference in Egypt on Thursday and the United States prepared for the highest-level contact with Syria in more than two years.

Egypt and three East European countries agreed to waive debts owed by Iraq as part of an International Compact to support Iraqi institutions in exchange for political and economic reforms by the Baghdad government.

The first day of the two-day conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh is dedicated to the International Compact, a five-year plan to restore stability and economic prosperity through national reconciliation.

But much of the attention is on whether the United States will abandon its longstanding reluctance to hold high-level talks with the Iranian and Syrian governments, as recommended by the Baker-Hamilton commission on Iraq last year.

Iraq has been in turmoil since the United States invaded in 2003 and overthrew President Saddam Hussein. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, including some 3,300 Americans.

U.S. officials said they were preparing for a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem -- the first meeting at this level between the two governments for more than two years.

But any encounter between Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki will not tackle substance, added one of the officials, who asked not to be named.

The U.S. official said that even the meeting between Rice and Moualem would deal mainly with security on the Iraqi-Syrian border, not with Lebanon or attempts to prosecute those who killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in 2005.

"I would expect they will have a discussion on border security issues," a senior State Department official said.

The United States has accused Syria of allowing foreign fighters to enter Iraq through the long border and is pushing for an international tribunal to try suspects in the killing of Hariri. A U.N. probe has implicated Lebanese and Syrian security officials in the killing but Damascus denies all the charges.

U.S. officials said that if Rice does exchange words with the Iranian minister in Sharm el-Sheikh it would probably be in passing before dinner, without substantive discussions.

This would be in accordance with the wishes of the Iranian side, the official said.

DEBT RELIEF

Iran and the United States have not had relations since soon after the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979.

In his opening speech to the two days of meetings in Egypt, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appealed for debt relief. "We call on everybody participating in this conference to write off the accumulated debts of Iraq," he said.

Iraq sits on the world's third-largest proven crude oil reserves but is struggling to rebuild after four years of war.

Iraqi Finance Minister Bayan Jabor said the three Eastern European countries -- Slovenia, Bulgaria and Poland -- would agree to forgive 80 percent of Iraqi debt but did not say how much that would be.

He said the European Union would grant Iraq $200 million, and he expected grants from some Asian countries as well.

"They will help us and in return Iraq will have to commit to finding real national reconciliation," Jabor told Reuters.

But James Dobbins, an analysts at the RAND Corporation, said debt relief was of secondary importance because the Iraqis are not paying off the money they owed anyway.

"It is a purely paper transaction. It's symbolic but it doesn't have any immediate effect," he said.

Jabor said that Iraq had rejected as unacceptable an offer from Russia to forgive the debt it is owed by Baghdad in return for access to a major Iraqi oilfield.

"The Russians are hesitant. They want investment in the Rumaila oilfield in return for eliminating the debt," he said.

When Saudi Arabia announced last month that it was writing off 80 percent of the more than $15 billion it was owed by Iraq, Jabor estimated his country's debt at $140 billion.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal renewed the Saudi promise at the opening session on Thursday but said the details were still under discussion.

"It (Saudi Arabia) has submitted all the information it possesses to the Iraqi side, and the matter is still at the discussion stage ... to reach an appropriate settlement. Our treatment of the question ... will be in accordance with the guidelines (of) the Paris Club," he added. The Paris Club has recommended waiving 80 percent of Iraqi debt.

    Iraq wins debt relief, Rice to meet Syrian minister, R, 3.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSIBO13141920070503?src=050307_0810_TOPSTORY_rice_to_meet_syrian_minister

April may have been one of Rice's cruelest months

Tue May 1, 2007
12:44PM EDT
Reuters
By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, April may have been one of the cruelest months.

There is little good news on U.S. foreign policy from Iraq and Afghanistan to North Korea and Russia.

On the domestic front, Rice has been subpoenaed to testify about erroneous intelligence used to justify the Iraq war, has fended off criticism from former CIA Director George Tenet and has watched one of her top aides resign amid a sex scandal.

Few analysts could cite recent diplomatic victories for the administration; all said challenges abound.

Violence rages in Iraq and the U.S.-backed government there has yet to forge the political compromises that many analysts believe are mandatory to end the strife.

In Afghanistan, U.S. and NATO forces face a revived Taliban insurgency more than five years after U.S.-led troops toppled the Taliban regime that harbored al Qaeda.

Analysts said the U.S. commitments in both countries, as well as the complexity of the problems they face and the heavy U.S. resources they demand, are constraining U.S. foreign policy elsewhere.

"Quite clearly the fact that we have most of our forces tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan is not lost on the rest of the world," said Daniel Serwer of the U.S. Institute for Peace think tank. "When Gulliver is tied down, everybody knows it."

"You've got some long-term trends, like the war in Iraq and the (Republican) loss of Congress, which are narrowing the options and the chickens are coming home to roost," said Rand Corporation analyst James Dobbins.

One area where the State Department claimed success just a few months ago was North Korea, following its February 13 agreement to take steps to give up its nuclear programs in exchange for the prospect of economic and other benefits.

However, Pyongyang missed one of the deal's first deadlines on April 14 by failing to shut down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon because of a financial dispute.

"WEAK HAND"

Last week alone, Rice suffered several setbacks.

On Wednesday, a congressional committee subpoenaed her to testify about the 2003 White House claim -- since discredited -- that Iraq sought to acquire uranium from Niger.

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans to freeze Moscow's commitments under a European arms control deal, a move that increased tensions.

On Friday, Rice accepted the abrupt resignation of Randall Tobias, a U.S. deputy secretary of state in charge of foreign aid, after he told ABC News he had called an escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage."

Tobias, 65, said there had been no sex, ABC reported.

On Sunday, Rice spent much of her morning on television talk shows responding to Tenet's claim in his new memoir that "there was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack rejected the idea that it had been an exceptionally difficult week.

"In this business, I have lived through some really bad weeks. The week of September 11 -- that was a bad week," McCormack said. "Last week -- this is what happens in the conduct of foreign policy. It's what happens in Washington."

Carlos Pascual, the director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, gave credit to the administration for maintaining coalitions to deal with North Korea and Iran, which Washington also accuses of developing nuclear weapons.

"When you deal with rogue actors like North Korea you can't expect them to do what they say they will do. You have to build in the resilience to come back at them," Pascual said.

"It's too early to draw conclusions that the North Korea policy is a failure ... or that she'll never get anywhere on the Middle East, or that the Iran opening is a charade," said Dobbins. "I wouldn't be drawing judgments except that, given the weak hand she is playing, the odds for success are long."

    April may have been one of Rice's cruelest months, R, 1.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN3031668120070501

A Saudi Prince Tied to Bush Is Sounding Off-Key

April 29, 2007
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, April 28 — No foreign diplomat has been closer or had more access to President Bush, his family and his administration than the magnetic and fabulously wealthy Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia.

Prince Bandar has mentored Mr. Bush and his father through three wars and the broader campaign against terrorism, reliably delivering — sometimes in the Oval Office — his nation’s support for crucial Middle East initiatives dependent on the regional legitimacy the Saudis could bring, as well as timely warnings of Saudi regional priorities that might put it into apparent conflict with the United States. Even after his 22-year term as Saudi ambassador ended in 2005, he still seemed the insider’s insider. But now, current and former Bush administration officials are wondering if the longtime reliance on him has begun to outlive its usefulness.

Bush administration officials have been scratching their heads over steps taken by Prince Bandar’s uncle, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, that have surprised them by going against the American playbook, after receiving assurances to the contrary from Prince Bandar during secret trips he made to Washington.

For instance, in February, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed plans by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for a high-profile peace summit meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, by brokering a power-sharing agreement with Mr. Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas that did not require Hamas to recognize Israel or forswear violence. The Americans had believed, after discussions with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis were on board with the strategy of isolating Hamas.

American officials also believed, again after speaking with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis might agree to direct engagement with Israel as part of a broad American plan to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. King Abdullah countermanded that plan.

Most bitingly, during a speech before Arab heads of state in Riyadh three weeks ago, the king condemned the American invasion of Iraq as “an illegal foreign occupation.” The Bush administration, caught off guard, was infuriated, and administration officials have found Prince Bandar hard to reach since.

Since the Iraq war and the attendant plummeting of America’s image in the Muslim world, King Abdullah has been striving to set a more independent and less pro-American course, American and Arab officials said. And that has steered America’s relationship with its staunchest Arab ally into uncharted waters. Prince Bandar, they say, may no longer be able to serve as an unerring beacon of Saudi intent.

“The problem is that Bandar has been pursuing a policy that was music to the ears of the Bush administration, but was not what King Abdullah had in mind at all,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former United States ambassador to Israel who is now head of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

Of course it is ultimately the king — and not the prince — who makes the final call on policy. More than a dozen associates of Prince Bandar, including personal friends and Saudi officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that if his counsel has led to the recent misunderstandings, it is due to his longtime penchant for leaving room in his dispatches for friends to hear what they want to hear. That approach, they said, is catching up to the prince as new tensions emerge between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Bandar, son of one of the powerful seven sons born to the favorite wife of Saudi Arabia’s founding king, “needs to personally regroup and figure out how to put Humpty Dumpty together again,” one associate said.

Robert Jordan, a former Bush administration ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said the Saudis’ mixed signals have come at a time when King Abdullah — who has ruled the country since 1995 but became king only in 2005 after the death of his brother, Fahd — has said he does not want to go down in history as Mr. Bush’s Arab Tony Blair. “I think he feels the need as a kind of emerging leader of the Arab world right now to maintain a distance,” he said.

Mr. Jordan said that although the United States and Saudi Arabia “have different views on how to get there,” the countries still share the same long-term goals for the region and remain at heart strong allies.

An administration spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said none of the current issues threatened the relationship. “We may have differences on issues now and then,” he said, “but we remain close allies.”

Or, as Saleh al-Kallab, a former minister of information in Jordan, put it, “The relationship between the United States and the Arab regimes is like a Catholic marriage where you can have no divorce.”

But there can be separation. And several associates of Prince Bandar acknowledge that he feels caught between the opposing pressure of the king and that of his close friends in the Bush administration. It is a relationship that Prince Bandar has fostered with great care and attention to detail over the years, making himself practically indispensable to Mr. Bush, his family and his aides.

A few nights after he resigned his post as secretary of state two years ago, Colin L. Powell answered a ring at his front door. Standing outside was Prince Bandar, then Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, with a 1995 Jaguar. Mr. Powell’s wife, Alma, had once mentioned that she missed their 1995 Jaguar, which she and her husband had traded in. Prince Bandar had filed that information away, and presented the Powells that night with an identical, 10-year-old model. The Powells kept the car — a gift that the State Department said was legal — but recently traded it away.

The move was classic Bandar, who has been referred to as Bandar Bush, attending birthday celebrations, sending notes in times of personal crisis and entertaining the Bushes or top administration officials at sumptuous dinner parties at Prince Bandar’s opulent homes in McLean, Va., and Aspen, Colo.

He has invited top officials to pizza and movies out at a mall in suburban Virginia — and then rented out the movie theater (candy served chair-side, in a wagon) and the local Pizza Hut so he and his guests could enjoy themselves in solitude. He is said to feel a strong sense of loyalty toward Mr. Bush’s father dating to the Persian Gulf war, which transferred to the son, whom he counseled about international diplomacy during Mr. Bush’s first campaign for president.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, as the United States learned that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi and focused on the strict Wahhabi school of Islam that informed them and their leader and fellow Saudi, Osama bin Laden, Prince Bandar took a public role in assuring the Americans that his nation would cooperate in investigating and combating anti-American terrorism. He also helped arrange for more than a hundred members of the bin Laden family to be flown out of the United States.

Even since he left the Saudi ambassador’s post in Washington and returned to Saudi Arabia two years ago, Prince Bandar has continued his long courtship, over decades, of the Bush family and Vice President Dick Cheney, flying into Washington for unofficial meetings at the White House. He cruises in without consulting the Saudi Embassy in Washington, where miffed officials have sometimes said they had no idea that he was in town — a perceived slight that contributed to the resignation of his cousin Prince Turki al-Faisal as ambassador to the United States last year. He has been succeeded by Adel al-Jubeir, who is said to have strong support from the king.

Prince Turki was never able to match the role of Prince Bandar, whom the president, vice president and other officials regularly consult on every major Middle East initiative — from the approach to Iran to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to Iraq. Prince Bandar played a crucial role in securing the use of the Prince Sultan Air Base at Al Kharj, roughly 70 miles outside Riyadh, in the attacks led by the United States against Afghanistan and Iraq, despite chafing within his government.

He helped in the negotiations that led to Libya giving up its weapons programs, a victory for Mr. Bush. He pledged to protect the world economy from oil shocks after the invasion, the White House said in 2004, but he denied a report, by the author Bob Woodward, that he had promised to stabilize oil prices in time for Mr. Bush’s re-election campaign.

The cause of the latest friction in the American-Saudi relationship began in 2003, before the invasion of Iraq. The Saudis agreed with the Bush view of Saddam Hussein as a threat, but voiced concern about post-invasion contingencies and the fate of the Sunni minority. When it became clear that the administration was committed to invading Iraq, Prince Bandar took a lead role in negotiations between the Bush administration and Saudi officials over securing bases and staging grounds.

But Saudi frustration has mounted over the past four years, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated. King Abdullah was angry that the Bush administration ignored his advice against de-Baathification and the disbanding of the Iraqi military. He became more frustrated as America’s image in the Muslim world deteriorated, because Saudi Arabia is viewed as a close American ally.

Tensions between King Abdullah and top Bush officials escalated further when Mr. Bush announced a new energy initiative to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil during his 2006 State of the Union address, and announced new initiatives in that direction this year.

Both American and Saudi officials say that King Abdullah clearly values — and uses — Prince Bandar’s close relationship with the White House. And that, associates said, will dictate what Prince Bandar can do.

“Don’t expect the man, because he happens to have an American background, not to play the game for his home team,” said William Simpson, Prince Bandar’s biographer, and a former classmate at the Royal Air Force College in England. “The home team is Saudi Arabia.”

Michael Slackman and Hassan M. Fattah contributed from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Steven R. Weisman from Washington.

    A Saudi Prince Tied to Bush Is Sounding Off-Key, NYT, 29.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/washington/29saudi.html?hp

Rice Says Missile-Defense Plan No Threat to Russia

April 26, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER

OSLO, April 26 — Brusquely dismissing protests by Russian officials, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said here on Thursday that a missile-defense system the United States plans to install in Poland and the Czech Republic would pose no danger to the security of Russia.

“The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in Eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous, and everybody knows it,” Ms. Rice said before a meeting of NATO foreign ministers expected to focus on the missile-defense dispute.

“The Russians have thousands of warheads,” Ms. Rice said. “The idea that you can somehow stop the Soviet strategic nuclear deterrent with a few interceptors just doesn’t make sense.”

Still, Ms. Rice said the United States would continue discussing the system with Russian officials, in an effort to “demystify” it. She planned to meet the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, later on Thursday.

Ms. Rice’s comments came as President Vladimir Putin declared in Moscow that Russia would no longer honor its obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. The decision, he said, was a response to Western threats, including the planned missile-defense system.

The secretary of state’s comments are part of a broader campaign by the Bush administration to rally support for the system, which Washington says is meant to protect Europe from missiles fired by Iran.

Her trip comes a few days after a visit to Moscow by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, during which he failed to persuade Mr. Lavrov and other officials to drop their opposition to the system.

Speaking after a meeting with Norway’s foreign minister, Ms. Rice also signaled she would resist a subpoena issued on Wednesday by Congress, demanding that she appear before a House committee to answer questions about the White House’s handling of pre-war intelligence about Iraq.

“This is an issue that has been answered and answered and answered,” Ms. Rice said. “I am more than happy to answer them again — in a letter, because I think that is the way to continue this dialogue.”

A spokesman for the State Department, Sean McCormack, said afterward that the administration had not reached a formal decision on whether to comply with the subpoena, which was issued by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Ms. Rice said she had worked in the White House, as national security advisor, during the period under scrutiny, and was therefore not legally obligated to testify before Congress.

The State Department, Ms. Rice said, sent three letters to the House committee in the last month, responding to questions about intelligence gathering in the months leading up to the Iraq war.

    Rice Says Missile-Defense Plan No Threat to Russia, NYT, 26.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/world/europe/26cnd-Rice.html?hp

McCain Jokes About Bombing Iran

April 20, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:05 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican presidential contender John McCain, known for having a quirky sense of humor, joked about bombing Iran at a campaign appearance this week.

In response to an audience question about military action against Iran, the Arizona senator briefly sang the chorus of the surf-rocker classic ''Barbara Ann.''

''That old, eh, that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran,'' he said in jest Wednesday, chuckling with the crowd. Then, he softly sang to the melody: ''Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, anyway, ah ...'' The audience responded with more laughter.

His quip was prompted by a man in the audience who asked: ''How many times do we have to prove that these people are blowing up people now, nevermind if they get a nuclear weapon, when do we send 'em an airmail message to Tehran?''

The campaign stop was in Murrells Inlet, S.C.

After his joke, McCain turned serious and said that he agrees with President Bush that the United States must protect Israel from Iran and work to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. McCain has long said the military option should not be taken off the table but that it should be used only as a last resort.

The episode echoed President Reagan's 1984 quip at the height of the nuclear arms race when he said: ''My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.''

Reagan was testing a microphone before his regular Saturday radio address.

------

WASHINGTON (AP) -- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will launch biographical ads in Iowa and New Hampshire beginning Monday, the first commercials broadcast in the Democratic presidential contest.

The ads, both 30-second and 60-second ads, signal Richardson's aggressive steps after raising a surprising $6.25 million in the first quarter that left him with $5 million in the bank.

Richardson is a distant fourth in fundraising, behind Democratic leaders Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. But after spending much of the first quarter in New Mexico while the state legislature was in session, aides say he intends to step up his campaigning and fundraising.

He also trails in the polls in national and state polls. Though he was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary under President Clinton, he has low name recognition.

''It's a great way to get the governor's message out and reinforce his extraordinary record,'' Richardson spokesman Pahl Shipley said.

The ads are part of an overall campaign that will complement Richardson's increased presence in states with early presidential contests.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrat John Edwards is trying to get out of a hairy situation, reimbursing his presidential campaign $800 for two visits with a Beverly Hills stylist.

Two $400 cuts by stylist Joseph Torrenueva, who told The Associated Press that the former North Carolina senator is a longtime client, showed up on Edwards' campaign spending reports filed this weekend. Edwards spokesman Eric Schultz said it never should have been there.

''The bill was sent to the campaign. It was inadvertently paid,'' Schultz said. ''John Edwards will be reimbursing the campaign.''

Edwards is also the subject of a popular YouTube spoof poking fun at his youthful good looks. The video shows the candidate combing his tresses to the dubbed-in tune of ''I Feel Pretty.''

Federal Election Commission records show Edwards' campaign also spent $250 in services from Designworks Salon in Dubuque, Iowa, and $225 in services from the Pink Sapphire in Manchester, N.H.

Schultz said those services were legitimate campaign expenditures to prepare Edwards for media appearances.

Political candidates often have hair and makeup done before media appearances. Edwards rival Hillary Rodham Clinton got some attention last year when her campaign paid $2,500 for two hairstyling sessions that the campaign classified as media production expenses.

------

NEW YORK (AP) -- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, gathered the city's wealthiest and most active political donors Thursday -- and didn't ask for money.

Instead, Bloomberg reminded his guests at the posh Four Seasons restaurant that before they give, they should make sure the candidate is on New York's side on a checklist of issues, including funds for ailing Ground Zero workers.

The billionaire media mogul doesn't need the cash. He financed both his mayoral bids, spending $74 million to get elected and $85 million for another four years. He could easily pay for a presidential bid.

Joining Bloomberg was former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is mulling a run for the Republican nomination, and former Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr.

They participated in a brief panel discussion about New York's role in national politics during the presidential race -- not only as a source of cash for the candidates, but in producing potential nominees -- Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani.

''I think that tells you something very profound about how this country's attitude has changed, about the degree to which this country embraces and accepts New York as a legitimate source of leadership,'' Gingrich said.

Bloomberg joked about the buzz surrounding both of them, cracking at one point that Gingrich would make a ''great vice presidential candidate.''

In what could be perceived as a jab at a potential political rival, Gingrich praised former mayor David Dinkins, Giuliani's predecessor, who was in the audience. Gingrich said the city's famous crime cleanup in the 1990s really began with the Democrat and Giuliani continued it.

The city is already a leading contributor to the 2008 race. More than $2.3 million has flowed out of the 10021 zip code alone -- which happens to be Bloomberg's swank Upper East Side neighborhood.

------

Associated Press Writer Nedra Pickler and Jim Kuhnhenn in Washington and Sara Kugler in New York contributed to this report.

------

On the Web: http://www.youtube.com/watch?vo-zoPgv--nYg

    McCain Jokes About Bombing Iran, NYT, 20.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-On-the-2008-Trail.html

Bush Threatens New Sanctions on Sudan Over Darfur

April 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:46 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, ramping up pressure on Sudan, said Wednesday the United States will tighten economic sanctions and impose new ones if Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir does not take quick, concrete steps to stop the bloodshed in Darfur.

Bush said the Sudanese government must allow U.N. support forces, facilitate deployment of a full U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force, stop supporting violent militias and let humanitarian aid reach the people of Darfur.

''The world needs to act,'' Bush said. ''If President al-Bashir does not meet his obligations, the United States of America will act.''

Bush said the United States would tighten economic sanctions on Sudan, barring certain companies from taking part in the U.S. financial system; target sanctions on individuals responsible for violence; and apply new sanctions against the government of Sudan.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in the four-year conflict in Darfur, which began when rebels from ethnic African tribes rose up against the Arab-led central government. The government is accused of responding by unleashing the janjaweed militias of Arab nomads, blamed for indiscriminate killing. The government denies the charges.

''It is evil we're now seeing in Sudan and we're not going to back down,'' Bush said.

The current force of 7,000 AU peacekeepers has been unable to stop the fighting in a region the size of Texas. About 2.5 million people have been driven from their homes in Darfur and are living in poorly protected camps in the province and eastern Chad.

The United Nations and U.S. have been pushing Sudan to accept thousands more U.N. troops to build up a combined AU-U.N. force of 20,000. The Sudanese president has repeatedly rejected a U.N. force, but his recent agreement to accept 3,000 U.N. troops could be a sign that the pressure is beginning to have an effect.

The Sudanese government, however, has reversed position in the past after appearing to agree to a peacekeeping mission.

David C. Rubenstein, director of the Save Darfur Coalition, is skeptical.

''His regime makes promises, signs agreements and makes pledges -- only to hedge, qualify and renege on their commitments,'' Rubenstein said. ''President Bashir has been one broken promise after another, and we fear this concession may be an extension of that trend.''

Bush said he wants to give U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon more time to pursue diplomatic efforts, but that if al-Bashir does not act quickly, the U.S. will take action. He did not say how long he would wait before levying harsher punishments.

Bush said the Treasury Department would tighten U.S. economic sanctions on Sudan. That would allow the United States to block any of the Sudan government's dollar transactions within the U.S. system. The Treasury Department also would add 29 companies owned or controlled by the Sudanese government to a list that will make it a crime for American companies and individuals to do business with them.

Secondly, the U.S. would target sanctions on individuals held responsible for violence. That will cut them off from the U.S. financial system, preventing them, too, from doing business with U.S. companies or individuals and ''calling the world's attention to their crimes,'' Bush said.

Bush said he will direct the secretary of state to prepare a U.N. Security Council resolution to apply new sanctions against the government of Sudan and people found to be violating human rights or obstructing peace. The resolution would also impose an expanded embargo on arms sales to Sudan, prohibit Sudan's government from conducting offensive military flights over Darfur and strengthen the U.S. ability to monitor and report any violations, Bush said.

Bush spoke at the U.S. Holocaust Museum to a crowd that included Holocaust survivors. He honored Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who died trying to keep a gunman from shooting his students in the killing spree at Virginia Tech. Librescu, an aeronautics engineer and teacher at the school for 20 years, saved the lives of several students by using his body to barricade a classroom door before he was gunned down in Monday's massacre.

''We take strength from his example,'' said Bush, who took a brief tour of the museum, which is marking the National Days of Remembrance of the Holocaust in which Nazi Germany and its collaborators killed an estimated 6 million Jews.

    Bush Threatens New Sanctions on Sudan Over Darfur, NYT, 18.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html

U.S. Says Iranian Arms Seized in Afghanistan

April 18, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, April 17 — A shipment of Iranian-made weapons bound for the Taliban was recently captured by allied forces in Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s top officer said Tuesday.

It was the first time that a senior American official had asserted that Iranian-made weapons were being supplied to the Taliban. But Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it was not clear if the Iranian government had authorized the shipment.

“We have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran,” General Pace told reporters. “It’s not as clear in Afghanistan which Iranian entity is responsible.”

The shipment involved mortars and plastic explosives and was seized within the past month near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. Markings on the plastic explosive material indicated that it was produced in Iran, General Pace said.

American military commanders in Baghdad have repeatedly asserted that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran has provided components for powerful roadside bombs and other weapons to militants in Iraq. Iran has denied those allegations.

Iran has played a complicated role in Afghanistan. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, Iran was a bitter foe. When the Taliban-controlled forces seized the northern Afghan town of Mazar-i-Sharif in 1997, a group of Iranian diplomats there were executed.

Iran provided support to the Northern Alliance, which sought to overthrow the Taliban. It also cooperated with the United States in picking the current Afghan leader, President Hamid Karzai.

But as relations between Iran and the United States have become more confrontational, some intelligence reports have indicated that the Revolutionary Guards might arm the Taliban in order to weaken and tie down the American military in Afghanistan.

Bush administration officials have repeatedly argued that Iran has been seeking to become the dominant power in the Middle East. Some experts, however, assert that the Iranian strategy may be defensive.

“The overall Iranian role has been to work closely with us to bring Karzai into power,” said Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at New York University. “However, the Iranians believe the No. 1 threat is an American attack to overthrow their government. They may do anything it takes to make the United States and its allies uncomfortable there.”

Asked how he thought the United States should respond to the purported Iranian support for militant groups opposed to American interests, General Pace said it should take military actions against Iranian-sponsored networks.

“I think we should continue to be aggressive inside of Iraq, and aggressive inside of Afghanistan, in attacking any element that’s attacking U.S. and coalition forces, regardless of where they come from,” General Pace said. He also said that the United States and other nations should use diplomacy with the Iranian government “to address Iranian interference.”

While General Pace did not say exactly when the Iranian-made arms in Afghanistan were seized or which forces captured the shipment, one American official said the episode occurred within the past week or so.

The Bush administration has charged that Iran has been supplying lethal support to Shiite militants in Iraq. Five Iranians who were captured in an American raid in January in the northern Iraqi town of Erbil are still in American custody. Iran has demanded their release, insisting that they are diplomats and not intelligence or military operatives.

According to American intelligence officials, the support to militant groups in Iraq is so systematic that it could not be carried out without the knowledge of some senior Iranian officials. “Based on our understanding of the Iranian system and the history of I.R.G.C. operations, the intelligence community assesses that activity this extensive on the part of the Quds Force would not be conducted without approval from top leaders in Iran,” a senior intelligence official said this year. The Quds Force is an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards.

General Pace has been much more cautious about asserting involvement by senior Iranian officials.

“We know that there are munitions that were made in Iran that are in Iraq and in Afghanistan,” General Pace said Tuesday. “And we know that the Quds Force works for the I.R.G.C.”

“We then surmise from that one or two things,” he said. “Either the leadership of the country knows what their armed forces are doing, or that they don’t know. And in either case that’s a problem.”

    U.S. Says Iranian Arms Seized in Afghanistan, NYT, 18.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/world/middleeast/18military.html?hp

U.S. Consulate Closes in Morocco Over Security Concerns

April 16, 2007
The New York Times
By IAN FISHER

CASABLANCA, Morocco, April 15 — The United States Consulate here said Sunday that it would close until further notice, a day after two brothers carried out puzzling suicide attacks near the consulate amid a spate of bombings in Morocco and Algeria.

With the Moroccan police tightening security around the consulate and other foreign consulates here, the closing underscored American concerns expressed here and in Algeria about further attacks and possible dangers to Americans.

On Saturday, United States officials here told their employees to stay home, warning that the potential for violence against Americans “remains high.”

A similarly strong warning in Algeria prompted an official government protest that American officials were exaggerating the threat and stirring undue fear.

“They take us for idiots,” Algeria’s interior minister, Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni, told reporters Sunday, according to Reuters. “Who has an interest in causing panic? It is clear that there is scheming.”

Some Moroccans, even if uneasy over violence in their largely stable nation, also expressed skepticism about the threat to Americans.

On Wednesday, suicide bombings killed 33 people in Algiers, the capital of Algeria. The attacks, the first large bombings there in years, were aimed at the prime minister’s office and a police station, and were claimed by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The day before in Casablanca, a port city and the commercial heart of this nation, which depends heavily on tourism, three men blew themselves up and a fourth was shot dead in a police raid on a safe house in the poor Hay Farah quarter.

Then on Saturday, the rich downtown, filled with cafes, upscale shops and hotels charging as much for a night as many workers earn in a month, was hit. Mohammad Maha, 32, blew himself up across a palm-lined boulevard from the United States Consulate. About a minute later, his younger brother, Omar, 23, detonated a suicide bomb a few hundred yards away, near the American Language Center, one of a chain of privately owned schools.

“People were really scared,” said a waiter, whose boss would not let him give his name, at the American Dream cafe between the locations of the two bombings on Boulevard Moulay Youssef. “People left their coffee and everyone just started running.”

The bombings on Saturday caused some measure of puzzlement: the attackers killed only themselves and struck early Saturday morning, when the streets were largely empty.


Ahmed Najim, a reporter for the weekly newsmagazine Nichane who happened to be in the area when the bombs went off, said he believed that the two were actually aiming for a Moroccan security forces building nearby — and that something went wrong before they reached their target.

He noted that the language school was patronized by Moroccans, not Americans. He added that the older brother did not detonate himself directly at the consulate, but across a wide boulevard, and did not pick the time or day to cause severe damage.

“If he really wanted to blow up the American Consulate, he would have come on a weekday,” Mr. Najim said. “It’s more logical.”

Until the recent violence, Morocco had not been struck by a terrorist attack since 2003, when 33 people were killed by 12 suicide bombers. Many here worry that the bombings over the last week may mean more violence in a nation that has been peaceful since then.

“It has never been this way,” said Omar Qadir, 45, who was in a small supermarket around the corner from the American Consulate. “But now the country is opening up to things that we don’t know about.”

For months, Moroccan security forces have been working to dismantle what they say is a terrorist cell aimed not at foreigners but at infrastructure like the port and police stations. On Thursday, the police said that they had arrested the head of that group and his deputy, who were on the run after Tuesday’s explosions.

The connections among the bombers have not been fully explained publicly, but one of the men who died Tuesday was reportedly the brother of a man who detonated himself, apparently accidentally, in a cybercafe here on March 11.

There have also been news media reports that Omar Maha, the younger of the bombers on Saturday, had been sought in connection with that group.

In the working-poor neighborhood of Derb Sultan, the dead brothers’ sister, Khadija, described her brothers — one of whom sold electronics, the other who printed T-shirts — as “normal,” and not unusually religious. She said they were not acting suspiciously when they left the house on Saturday morning.

“My heart is broken to lose two brothers at once,” she said. “Obviously someone manipulated them.”

    U.S. Consulate Closes in Morocco Over Security Concerns, NYT, 16.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/world/africa/16morocco.html

U.S. Suspects That Iran Aids Both Sunni and Shiite Militias

April 12, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, April 11 — Arms that American military officials say appear to have been manufactured in Iran as recently as last year have turned up in the past week in a Sunni-majority area, the chief spokesman for the American military command in Iraq said Wednesday in a news conference.

The spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said that detainees in American custody had indicated that Iranian intelligence operatives had given support to Sunni insurgents and that surrogates for the Iranian intelligence service were training Shiite extremists in Iran. He gave no further description of the detainees and did not say why they would have that information.

“We have in fact found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence sources have provided to Sunni insurgent groups some support,” said General Caldwell, who sat near a table crowded with weapons that he said the military contended were largely of Iranian manufacture.

The weapons were found in a mostly Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, he said, a rare instance of the American military suggesting any link between Iran and the Sunni insurgency. It has recently suggested a link with Shiite militants in Iraq.

The accusation of a link between the Iranian intelligence service and Sunni Arab insurgents is new. The American military has contended in the past that elements in Iran have given Shiite militants powerful Iranian-made roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, and training in their use.

Critics have cast doubt on the American military statements about those bombs, saying the evidence linking them to Iran was circumstantial and inferential.

The weapons displayed on Wednesday were more conventional, and officials pointed to markings on them that they said indicated Iranian manufacture.

The display came as the military released figures showing that 26 percent fewer civilians were killed and wounded in Baghdad from Jan. 1 through March 31 than during the previous quarter, as the new American effort to secure Baghdad got under way, but that nationwide civilian casualties had risen.

From February to March the number of dead and wounded nationwide, including civilians and members of Iraqi and American security forces, rose 10 percent, according to the military report.

“What does that mean?” General Caldwell said. “It means we still have a lot of work to do.”

The military announced that one soldier died on the eastern side of Baghdad from a roadside bomb early Wednesday and that another soldier died in southern Baghdad on Tuesday.

In his statement, General Caldwell renewed American contentions that Iran was not doing enough to stop weapons from being moved into Iraq from outside.

It is unclear from the military’s comments on Wednesday whether it is possible to draw conclusions about how the weapons that the military contends are of Iranian origin might have made their way into a predominantly Sunni area or why Shiite Iran would arm Sunni militants.

There are several possibilities, military officials who were not authorized to speak publicly for attribution said privately. One is that they came through Syria, long a transit route for Iranian-made weapons being funneled to the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah. Another possibility is that arms dealers are selling to every side in the conflict.

The weapons on the table next to General Caldwell were found two days ago, the general said, after a resident of the predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhood called Jihad, in western Baghdad, informed the local Joint Security Station run by Iraqi and American soldiers that there were illegal arms in the area.

The soldiers found a black Mercedes sedan and on its back seat, in plain view, a rocket of a type commonly made in China but repainted and labeled and sold by Iran, said Maj. Marty Weber, a master ordnance technician who joined General Caldwell at the briefing. In the trunk were mortar rounds marked “made in 2006.”

In a nearby house and buried in the yard, the soldiers found more mortar rounds, 1,000 to 2,000 rounds of bullets, five hand grenades and a couple of Bulgarian-made rocket-propelled grenades, Major Weber said.

The weapons that the military officials said were of Iranian origin were labeled in English, which Major Weber said was typical of arms manufactured for international sale. He added that the military knew that they were of Iranian origin by “the structure of the rounds, the geometry of the tailfins and, again, the stenciling on the warheads.”

He also said the mortar rounds marked 81 millimeters on the table were made regionally only by Iran.

In the political arena, the members of Parliament allied with the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr announced that they would leave the government unless Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki set a fixed timetable for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Mr. Maliki rejected the idea this week.

The capital was largely quiet on Wednesday, but 16 bodies were found around the city and a director general of the city’s electricity ministry was assassinated, an Interior Ministry official said. The center of the city, where fighting raged on Tuesday, remained extremely tense.

The United States military raised the death toll from Tuesday’s estimate to 14 insurgents in Fadhil killed, 8 detained and 12 wounded.

Sheik Jasim Yehiya Jasim, the imam of Al Joba mosque, whose brother was killed by the Iraqi Army, said he was devastated and confused about why his brother had been singled out and killed. “He was born only in 1982,” Sheik Jasim said. “He did the call to prayer. I thank the Iraqi and American governments in the name of the people of Fadhil for this bloody democracy.”

Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting.

    U.S. Suspects That Iran Aids Both Sunni and Shiite Militias, NYT, 12.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html

U.S. Sends (Another) Warning on Darfur

April 11, 2007
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON, April 10 — While the Bush administration is dispatching another top envoy — this time Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte — to deliver another strong message to the Sudanese government about the killing in the Darfur region, critics say the diplomacy is allowing Sudan to play for time as the death toll mounts.

The administration has been trying to come up with a way to make good on repeated threats that the United States will hold President Omar Hassan al-Bashir accountable for the violence in Darfur, where 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million displaced.

But even now, Democrats are demanding a plan to address the Darfur crisis, and suggesting their own proposals, including one to impose a no-flight zone over Darfur, and another to authorize American states to divest from foreign companies invested in Sudan.

Bush administration officials said last month that they were fed up and ready to impose new sanctions against Sudan, including restrictions on companies that do business there in American dollars. Andrew S. Natsios, the United States special envoy to Sudan, told members of Congress that the administration was also considering travel bans on some Sudanese officials, and confiscating the savings accounts of Sudanese politicians connected with the government-backed Arab militias, called the janjaweed.

So far, Mr. Bashir has yet to yield in response to a demand from the United States that Sudan permit a United Nations peacekeeping force to help beleaguered African Union troops stop the militias from raping and killing unarmed civilians.

Administration officials said that an angry President Bush personally ordered up the new sanctions. It was Mr. Bush who told the General Assembly last fall that the credibility of the United Nations was at stake in Darfur.

But after hearing from United Nations envoys that the organization wants more time for diplomacy, the State Department said last week that Mr. Negroponte was heading to Sudan. Administration officials have billed the trip as one last chance to try to get Mr. Bashir to allow a United Nations peacekeeping force.

It remains unclear what Mr. Negroponte can accomplish that a succession of administration officials to Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, could not. Gayle Smith, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said Mr. Bashir was stalling. “If Khartoum is true to form, the government will offer something that sounds real but means nothing in order to buy more time,” said Ms. Smith, an Africa adviser to former President Bill Clinton.

“How many bites of the apple does Khartoum get?” Ms. Smith said. “There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Khartoum is calculating on the fact that when we say, ‘this is it,’ we don’t mean it.”

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, has summoned Mr. Natsios to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a hearing on Wednesday. The news release on the hearing includes a derisive heading. “Topic: Darfur,” it says. “A ‘Plan B’ to Stop Genocide?”

State Department officials last year threatened an unspecified “Plan B” by Jan. 1 if Mr. Bashir did not agree to the U.N. force, but “Plan B” has yet to materialize.

Administration officials say their own version of Plan B would include the United States travel ban and financial sanctions. In addition, the United States and Britain will try to push the United Nations Security Council into imposing sanctions against Sudan. So far, the United Nations has proved more recalcitrant on cracking down on Mr. Bashir, in part because China, which has extensive business ties to Sudan and generally dislikes the use of sanctions, has blocked multilateral action.

American and British officials say that they are now getting close to trying to force the issue at the Security Council, and may try to push for a vote. Britain has now taken over the chairmanship of the Security Council from South Africa, and the United States is next in line after Britain.

But Bush administration officials have promised action before and come up short. On Aug. 31 last year, Jendayi Frazer, the State Department’s top Africa official, after meeting with Sudanese government officials, said she was “very confident that ultimately they will accept” the international peacekeeping force. Two weeks later, on Sept. 19, President Bush gave his speech at the General Assembly.

“If the Sudanese government does not approve the peacekeeping force quickly, the U.N. must act,” he said.

A week later, in a speech, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that if the Sudanese government “continues waging war against its own citizens, challenging the African Union, undermining the peacekeeping force, and threatening the international community, then the regime in Khartoum will be held responsible, and it alone will bear the consequences of its actions.”

Now, more than six months later, there is still no United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur.

Sudan’s government says the violence has been exaggerated for political reasons.

In agreements signed last year in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Abuja, Nigeria, Mr. Bashir appeared to accept the deployment of United Nations troops, only to back away. The same thing happened this year; Mr. Bashir agreed to an interim “heavy support” package of 3,000 well-equipped military police officers along with aviation and logistics support.

But then, in a long letter to Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, on March 9, Mr. Bashir asked to reopen that agreement. Mr. Ban protested that the Sudanese president was reneging, and Western officials said any reworking of the pact would delay a peacekeeping force until the start of 2008.

[The Associated Press reported Tuesday that during further talks in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, United Nations and Sudanese officials had reached agreement on some elements to beef up the peacekeeping force during meetings on Monday, but that additional issues remained. Bush administration officials said they were not aware that such an accord had been reached.]

Congressional Democrats, backed by some Republicans, have introduced a flurry of bills. In one proposal, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, introduced a bill in March that would authorize states to divest from foreign companies invested in Sudan. Several states have passed such laws, but a federal judge in February struck down an Illinois law as unconstitutional.

    U.S. Sends (Another) Warning on Darfur, NYT, 11.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/washington/11darfur.html?hp

High Stakes: Chávez Plays the Oil Card

April 10, 2007
The New York Times
By SIMON ROMERO and CLIFFORD KRAUSS

CARACAS, Venezuela, April 9 — With President Hugo Chávez setting a May 1 deadline for an ambitious plan to wrest control of several major oil projects from American and European companies, a showdown is looming here over access to some of the most coveted energy resources outside the Middle East.

Moving beyond empty threats to cut off all oil exports to the United States, officials have recently stepped up the pressure on the oil companies operating here, warning that they might sell American refineries meant to process Venezuelan crude oil even as they seek new outlets in China and elsewhere around the world.

“Chávez is playing a game of chicken with the largest oil companies in the world,” said Pietro Pitts, an oil analyst who publishes LatinPetroleum, an industry magazine based here. “And for the moment he is winning.”

But this confrontation could easily end up with everyone losing.

The biggest energy companies could be squeezed out of the most promising oil patch in the Western Hemisphere. But Venezuela risks undermining the engine behind Mr. Chávez’s socialist-inspired revolution by hampering its ability to transform the nation’s newly valuable heavy oil into riches for years to come.

As Mr. Chávez asserts much greater control over Venezuela’s oil industry, his national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, is already showing signs of stress. Management has become increasingly politicized, and money for maintenance and development is being diverted to pay for a surge in public spending.

During the last several decades, control of global oil reserves has steadily passed from private companies to national oil companies like Petróleos de Venezuela. According to a new Rice University study, 77 percent of the world’s 1.148 trillion barrels of proven reserves is in the hands of the national companies; 14 of the top 20 oil-producing companies are state-controlled.

The implications are potentially stark for the United States, which imports 60 percent of its oil. State companies tend to be far less efficient and innovative, and far more politicized. No place captures the shift in power to nationalist governments like Venezuela.

“We are on a collision course with Chávez over oil,” said Michael J. Economides, an oil consultant in Houston who wrote an influential essay comparing Mr. Chávez’s populist appeal in Latin America with the pan-Arabism of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya two decades ago. “Chávez poses a much bigger threat to America’s energy security than Saddam Hussein ever did.”

Consider the quandary facing Exxon Mobil after its chairman, Rex W. Tillerson, recently suggested that Exxon might be forced to abandon a major Venezuelan oil project because of its growing troubles with Mr. Chávez.

The energy world took notice. So did Mr. Chávez’s government.

Only a day later, Venezuelan agents raided Exxon’s offices here in the San Ignacio towers, a bastion for this country’s business elite. The government said that the raid was part of a tax investigation, but energy analysts said the exchange of threat and counterthreat was all too clear.

Politics and ideology are driving the confrontation here as Mr. Chávez seeks to limit American influence around the world, starting in Venezuela’s oil fields. Mr. Chávez views the Bush administration as a threat, in part because it indirectly supported a coup that briefly removed him from power five years ago. Yet the United States remains Venezuela’s largest customer.

Mr. Chávez recently decreed that Venezuela would take control of heavy oil fields in the Orinoco Belt, a region southeast of Caracas of so much potential that some experts say it could give the country more reserves than Saudi Arabia. The United States Geological Survey describes the area as the “largest single hydrocarbon accumulation in the world,” making it highly coveted despite Mr. Chávez’s erratic policies.

By setting a May 1 deadline for what some foreign oil executives consider an expropriation, the Venezuelan leader risks losing Exxon, ConocoPhillips and other companies, which are loath to put their employees and billions of dollars in assets under Venezuelan management.

A departure of expertise and investment could weaken an oil industry already unsettled by being transformed into Mr. Chávez’s most crucial tool for carrying out his reconfiguration of Venezuelan society.

Mr. Chávez has raised taxes on foreign oil companies and forced other oil ventures to come under his government’s control. And he has purged more than 17,000 employees from Petróleos de Venezuela after a debilitating strike about four years ago.

The talks have bogged down over how much the oil companies’ stakes in four big Orinoco projects are worth, whether Venezuela’s cash-short oil company would pay for the assets in oil instead of cash and, most important, who would manage the reduced operations of the foreign oil companies.

Still prevented from producing oil in places like Saudi Arabia and Mexico, the companies desperately want to hold on to their Venezuelan reserves. Companies like Exxon, whose Venezuelan assets were nationalized in the 1970s and returned to it in the 1990s, know the pitfalls of operating here and figure that Mr. Chávez will not be around forever.

With oil prices at high levels, oil-rich countries as varied as Angola, Norway and Russia are also waiting to see how the talks unfold. Governments in Kazakhstan and Nigeria are trying to negotiate better terms with foreign oil companies as well. But none are doing so with Mr. Chávez’s revolutionary flourish.

“It is a defining moment,” said Christopher Ruppel, a geopolitical risk analyst at John S. Herold Inc., the energy consulting firm.

Last week, Rafael Ramírez, Venezuela’s energy minister, sent a chilling signal to the oil companies, saying Venezuela might sell refineries in Texas and Louisiana that process crude from Exxon’s Venezuelan oil fields. Analysts say Venezuela could be setting the stage to produce much less oil in ventures with American oil companies for export to the United States.

The oil companies decline to talk publicly about the negotiations, but people in the industry say Exxon and ConocoPhillips, two of the largest American companies in Venezuela, are digging in their heels. The companies, however, lack a united front: Chevron is expected to accept Mr. Chávez’s terms, since it is also negotiating access to a large natural gas project in Venezuela.

“If the majors want to negotiate a settlement, they have to be able to let Chávez save face and look like he has won this with his people,” said Michael S. Goldberg, head of the international dispute resolution group at Baker Botts, a law firm in Houston that represents many of the major oil companies around the world.

For decades, Venezuela has been a leading supplier of oil to American refineries, a resilient economic relationship that remains intact despite deteriorating political ties. Venezuela is the fourth-largest supplier of oil to the United States, accounting for more than 10 percent of American oil imports.

Once Venezuela’s heavy oil is counted, its reserves may surpass those of Saudi Arabia or Canada, though the oil will be worthless without ventures to extract it. American oil producers are drawn here by Venezuela’s 80 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, among the largest outside the Middle East.

But Mr. Chávez is chipping away at those ties by forming ventures with state oil companies from China, Iran, India and Brazil. Venezuelan exports of oil and refined products to the United States fell 8.2 percent to a 12-year low in 2006 of about 1.3 million barrels a day, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Meanwhile, Mr. Chávez has accepted higher shipping costs to reach China, expanding exports tenfold to about 160,000 barrels a day since 2004.

“If the United States wants to diversify its oil supplies for reasons of national security, then Venezuela should be allowed to diversify its customer base for the same reason,” said Mazhar al-Shereidah, an Iraqi-born petroleum economist who is one of Venezuela’s leading energy experts.

But even under the best of circumstances, China’s retooling of its refineries to handle Venezuela’s sour, or high-sulfur, crude oil could take five to seven years. And it is not clear whether Mr. Chávez’s new foreign energy partners are prepared to invest heavily until they are confident they can trust him.

In a country where many facets of life are politicized, output levels are no exception. Venezuela says it produces 3.3 million barrels a day, but OPEC officials say production is closer to 2.5 million, 1 million barrels less than in 1999 when Mr. Chávez’s presidency began.

No one sees an immediate crisis at Petróleos de Venezuela. But its windfall from high oil prices masks the devilish complexity and rising costs of producing heavy oil.

Meanwhile, the company acknowledged last month that spending on “social development” almost doubled in 2006, to $13.3 billion, while its spending on exploration badly trailed its global peers. And Petróleos de Venezuela’s work force has ballooned to 89,450, up 29 percent since 2001 even as production declined.

Independent analysts are alarmed by a troubling increase in explosions and refining accidents during the last two years, which authorities brush off as sabotage. Mr. Ramírez, the energy minister, declined repeated requests for an interview.

With heavily subsidized domestic oil consumption surging, the government spends an estimated $9 billion to keep gasoline prices under 20 cents a gallon. Moreover, Mr. Chávez uses Petróleos de Venezuela to finance other nationalizations, like its $739 million purchase of an electric utility in Caracas from the AES Corporation.

Petróleos de Venezuela’s cash is said to be running short as Mr. Chávez uses its revenue to cement political alliances with Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua. The company has borrowed more than $11 billion since the start of the year, a rapid debt buildup that reflects a wager by Mr. Chávez that oil prices will remain high indefinitely.

Simon Romero reported from Caracas, Clifford Krauss from Houston.

    High Stakes: Chávez Plays the Oil Card, NYT, 10.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/worldbusiness/10showdown.html?hp

U.S. Toughens Its Position on China Trade

April 10, 2007
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, April 9 — Has the Bush administration’s economic team run out of patience with China?

For years, President Bush has avoided confronting Beijing with sanctions or legal challenges to its trade practices, preferring to use diplomacy to press China to bring down its trade deficit with the United States, now at $232 billion. But these days, the conciliatory approach looks as if it is being reconsidered, if not discarded.

The latest in a string of tough actions against China came on Monday, when the top American trade envoy, Susan C. Schwab, announced that the United States would take China to court at the World Trade Organization over suspected trade barriers and piracy of books, music, videos and other goods.

That action came after two other unfair trade complaints earlier this year, one last month threatening stiff new duties on certain imports, and the other in February, challenging China over its subsidies of manufactured goods.

Ms. Schwab said that even though negotiations had failed to solve trade problems, the latest steps “should not be viewed as hostile actions against China” and that resolving issues at the World Trade Organization in Geneva was “the normal way for mature trading partners” to handle differences.

The new policy risks angering or embarrassing those in Beijing who may be trying to reform economic policies as Washington wants. In addition, many trade experts worry that China might retaliate against American imports or cut back on cooperation sought by Washington on other issues, like diplomatic problems involving Iran, North Korea and Sudan.

Still, the new policy was widely seen by trade specialists and industry spokesmen as necessary to send a signal not only to Beijing but also to Democrats in Congress, who plan even tougher sanctions against China if the administration does not act.

The announcement by Ms. Schwab on piracy and trade barriers brought cautious praise from an array of Democratic trade hawks, from Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York to Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who won last year in part by taking a tough line on trade. Many Republicans echoed their endorsement. All said the action was overdue and in need of follow-up.

But even those who praised the administration’s actions warned that more such efforts were needed.

“I’ve been sending letters to this administration for years urging these kinds of actions, and they’ve been ignored,” said Representative Sander Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the trade subcommittee for the House Ways and Means panel. “Obviously the pressure has been building in this new Congress.”

Within the Bush administration the new actions were defended less as a shift than a complement to the policy proclaimed by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. since he took office last summer — that it is better to solve economic disputes by negotiation. But he has also warned China that it would be dangerous to ignore the restive mood in Congress.

Unlike Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, who praised Ms. Schwab’s announcement on Monday, Mr. Paulson issued no public statement in support of it. Aides say that as a former Goldman Sachs executive with long business experience in China, he has been reluctant to be identified with punishments or threats.

Mr. Paulson, who has visited China three times in the last six months, is the instigator of a “strategic economic dialogue” with top Beijing leaders aimed at getting them to change Chinese policies and practices over the long term. People who have talked to the secretary about trade with China say he has been taken aback by the anti-China mood in Congress.

The Treasury chief signed off on the recent steps against China, however, according to administration officials.

“What the action today means is that Paulson realizes his approach will not deliver concrete results in time to avoid the risk of serious Congressional reaction,” said C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a policy institute in Washington.

“The problem is that the secretary’s Chinese friends have not given him much help,” Mr. Bergsten added, referring to the unwillingness or inability of Mr. Paulson’s counterparts to move on issues as quickly as Washington wants.

Mr. Paulson has tried not to get into the specifics of trade issues like subsidies, the piracy of intellectual property in software, videos and pharmaceuticals or the welter of Chinese trade barriers on American goods and financial services.

The one issue he has spoken out on the most is currency, echoing the criticism of many economists that China’s practice of buying huge amounts of dollars has kept the value of its currency, the yuan, artificially low in order to promote its own exports by making them cheaper.

But China has taken only moderate steps to allow its currency values to float on the open market. Many in the administration are known to be increasingly impatient over the lack of progress in this area.

The next test of the administration’s tough new approach will be in late May, when a delegation of Chinese officials, led by Vice Premier Wu Yi, will come to Washington for another session of the strategic dialogue started by Mr. Paulson.

It is to be a second round of the talks begun in December, when the Treasury secretary took a team of cabinet members, and Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, to push the dialogue as the best way to solve problems.

At the time, Democrats said they would pause in their plans to push for tough measures against China to give the dialogue a chance to work. Now they say it has clearly failed and the more recent escalation is welcome.

What China will do next is an open question in the administration. The answer may not be clear until Mr. Paulson’s economic meeting with the Chinese in May.

But many Chinese experts warn that the latest steps by the administration will not help persuade China to change its reliance on a low-valued currency and other restrictions on imports and investment. The power and influence of Communist Party leaders tied to the export sector is too great, they say.

“If the U.S. takes more actions against China, it will harm Paulson’s dialogue with China and future trade meetings,” said Chen Jianan, a professor of economics at Fudan University in Shanghai. But he said the most recent actions could compel both sides to negotiate.

In the meantime, China is considered likely to try to ease tensions, not by opening up its own markets, but by opening up its wallet and purchasing more American exports, whether planes or machinery or computer chips.

There are media reports in China that the leadership will announce new purchases in advance of the May meeting, just as they did before President Hu Jintao’s visit to the White House last year.

Mr. Gutierrez, the Commerce secretary, has said repeatedly that the way to reduce the trade deficit with China, which now is about a third of the total trade deficit with other countries, is to export more. But Congress is considered unlikely to be impressed by a Chinese shopping spree.

All sides agree that the latest American actions portend a period of rough weather in United States-Chinese relations.

David Barboza contributed reporting from Shanghai.

    U.S. Toughens Its Position on China Trade, NYT, 10.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/worldbusiness/10trade.html?hp

U.S. Weighs Iran Request

to Visit Prisoners in Iraq

April 4, 2007
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, April 4 — An American military spokesman said today that the Americans were reviewing an informal request from the Iranian government for an envoy to visit five Iranians imprisoned following an American raid in northern Iraq in January.

The spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said at a news conference that the request was “being assessed at this time.” He added that the Americans had conducted the raid to go after people suspected of carrying out “illegal operations” in Iraq. The general did not say when the Americans might approve or reject the request.

The general also said the International Committee of the Red Cross had recently been allowed to visit a group of prisoners that included one of the five Iranians.

The general’s comments came in response to a reporter’s question about a report on Wednesday from the Iranian state news agency that said an envoy from the Iranian embassy in Iraq will meet with the five detainees.

Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, said the five Iranians were a subject of discussion at a regional conference held last month in Baghdad that was attended by American and Iranian diplomats.

Talk of the five detainees came on the same day that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said his country would free 15 British marines and sailors who had been held for nearly two weeks. The British detainees were seized by the Iranian military in the northern Persian Gulf on March 23 and accused of having trespassed into Iran’s territorial waters.

General Caldwell did not say whether there was any connection between talks over the five Iranians and negotiations over the 15 British prisoners.

The five Iranians imprisoned by the Americans were among six people detained in a raid on Jan. 11 in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region. American attack helicopters and armored vehicles backed up the soldiers doing the raid, and 200 Kurdish soldiers surrounded the Americans in a tense standoff before letting the Americans leave with their prisoners. One of the detainees was released that day.

The Bush administration has long accused Iran of giving weapons and money to Shiite militias in Iraq, but has escalated its accusations against Iran in recent months. Military officials say they have evidence that Iran has given technology for deadly bombs called explosively formed penetrators to Shiite militias here. The number of American soldiers being killed by such bombs has risen sharply, the officials say.

The White House has also been pushing the United Nations to impose harsh sanctions on Iran to try and get the country to curb its nuclear program. American officials say Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

On Tuesday, an Iranian diplomat who was kidnapped more than eight weeks ago by men wearing uniforms from the Iraqi security forces was released to the Iranian embassy. The Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said he had pushed hard to get captors to free the diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, and he was still working on the issue of the five Iranians held by the Americans.

Mr. Zebari said the liberation of Mr. Sharafi, the second secretary of the Iranian embassy here, had nothing to do with the standoff over the 15 British marines and sailors.

In other political wrangling, two members of Parliament who answer to Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, were fired by Mr. Sadr for meeting with the Americans, a third legislator, Saleh al-Ajili, said on Wednesday. American military officials say Mr. Sadr is in Iran, while Mr. Sadr’s supporters say he is still in Iraq.

Mr. Ajili declined to give details of the meetings that the two fired legislators, Salam al-Maliki and Qusay Abdul Wahab, had with the Americans. Mr. Maliki is a former transportation minister. “We have an order not to meet with anyone from the occupation authorities,” Mr. Ajili said.

The Sadr organization holds at least 30 of the 275 seats in Parliament. Mr. Ajili did not say who would replace the two fired legislators.

Five employees of a power station were shot dead on Wednesday in an ambush west of the oil-city of Kirkuk, police officials said. In the Kut area, a concealed bomb killed two Iraqi soldiers. A former Iraqi Army colonel was shot dead in a restaurant in Falluja.

Four Iraqi policemen were killed in an ambush in restive Diyala province on Tuesday night, a police official said on Wednesday. A civilian was killed and seven wounded in an attack the same day in the town of Khalis. Four bodies, including one of a policeman, were found Wednesday in Baquba, the capital of Diyala.

At least 22 shepherds and their sheep were abducted on Wednesday west of the holy Shiite city of Karbala by men in police uniforms. Police officials in Karbala denied any involvement.

Qais Mizher contributed reporting for this article from Baghdad and NYT employees contributed reporting from other cities in Iraq.

    U.S. Weighs Iran Request to Visit Prisoners in Iraq, NYT, 4.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/world/middleeast/04cnd-Iraq.html?hp

Pelosi Meets With Syrian President

April 4, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that Syrian President Bashar Assad assured her of his willingness to engage in peace talks with Israel.

Pelosi said she and other members of her congressional delegation raised with Assad their concern about militants crossing from Syria into Iraq, as well the Israeli soldiers kidnapped by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas.

The Californian Democrat spoke to reporters shortly after talks with Assad at the end of a two-day visit to Syria, which the White House has criticized as undermining American efforts to isolate the hard-line Arab country.

She said the delegation gave the Syrian leader a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert whose essence was that Israel was ready to hold peace talks with Syria.

She did not say more about the message, but Israel has previously made such talks conditional on Syria's cutting off its support for hardline Palestinian groups and Hezbollah.

''We were very pleased with the assurances we received from the president that he was ready to resume the peace process. He's ready to engage in negotiations for peace with Israel,'' Pelosi said.

Pelosi and the rest of the delegation began their day by holding separate talks with Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem and Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa and then met Assad, who hosted them for lunch after their talks.

Pelosi's visit to Syria was the latest challenge to President Bush by congressional Democrats, who are taking a more assertive role in influencing policy in the Middle East and the Iraq war.

Bush has said Pelosi's trip signals that the Assad government is part of the international mainstream when it is not. The United States says Syria allows Iraqi Sunni insurgents to operate from its territory, backs the Hezbollah and Hamas militant groups and is trying to destabilize the Lebanese government. Syria denies the allegations.

''A lot of people have gone to see President Assad ... and yet we haven't seen action. He hasn't responded,'' he told reporters soon after she arrived in Damascus Tuesday. ''Sending delegations doesn't work. It's simply been counterproductive.''

Pelosi did not comment on Bush's remarks but went for a stroll in the Old City district of Damascus, where she mingled with Syrians in a market.

Wearing a flowered head scarf and a black abaya, Pelosi visited the 8th century Omayyad Mosque. She made the sign of the cross in front of an elaborate tomb which is said to contain the head of John the Baptist. About 10 percent of Syria's 18 million people are Christian.

At the nearby outdoor Bazouriyeh market, Syrians crowded around, offering her dried figs and nuts and chatting with her. She bought some coconut sweets and looked at jewelry and carpets.

On Tuesday night, Pelosi met Syrian human rights activists, businessmen and religious leaders at the U.S. ambassador's residence.

Al-Moallem was quoted Wednesday as saying that Pelosi and other members of Congress were ''welcome'' in Syria.

''Better late than never,'' he told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Anba in an interview. He said the visits were taking place because Americans and Europeans had realized that their policy of trying to isolate Syria had failed.

However, the Syrian ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha, was quoted as saying Syria was ''wary of the sudden U.S. openness'' and would respond cautiously.

''Syria will not hurriedly offer concessions when it refused to offer them under much greater pressure from the United States in the past,'' he said in an interview with the Al-Baath newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling party.

''Syria will take a step forward every time the Americans take one,'' he added.

Democrats have argued that the U.S. should engage its top rivals in the Mideast -- Iran and Syria -- to make headway in easing crises in Iraq, Lebanon and the Israeli-Arab peace process. Last year, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended talks with the two countries.

Bush rejected the recommendations. But in February, the U.S. joined a gathering of regional diplomats in Baghdad that included Iran and Syria for talks on Iraq.

Visiting neighboring Lebanon on Monday, Pelosi shrugged off White House criticism of her trip to Syria, noting that Republican lawmakers met Assad on Sunday without comment from the Bush administration.

She said she hoped to rebuild lost confidence between Washington and Damascus and would tell Syrian leaders that Israel will talk peace with them only if Syria stops supporting Palestinian militants. She said she also would raise Syria's roles in Iraq and Lebanon and their support for the Hezbollah militant group.

''We have no illusions but we have great hope,'' said Pelosi, who met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah earlier Tuesday.

Relations between the U.S. and Syria reached a low point in early 2005 when Washington withdrew its ambassador to Damascus to protest the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Many Lebanese blamed Syria -- which had troops in Lebanon at the time -- for the assassination. Damascus denied involvement.

Washington has since succeeded in largely isolating Damascus, with its European and Arab allies shunning Assad. The last high-ranking U.S. official to visit Syria was then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in January 2005.

The isolation, however, has begun to crumble in recent months, with visits by U.S. lawmakers and some European officials.

    Pelosi Meets With Syrian President, NYT, 4.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mideast-Pelosi.html

U.S. and South Korea in Landmark Trade Deal

April 2, 2007
By CHOE SANG-HUN
The New York Times

SEOUL, April 2 — The United States and South Korea today struck a landmark bilateral free trade agreement, the United States’ biggest since the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 with Canada and Mexico, and its first with a major Asian economy.

Studies have estimated that the free trade pact could add $20 billion to bilateral trade between the two countries, estimated last year at $78 billion.

The deal “will generate export opportunities for U.S. farmers, ranchers, manufacturers, and service suppliers, promote economic growth and the creation of better paying jobs in the United States,” President George W. Bush said in a letter notifying Congress of his intention to enter into the deal.

If ratified, the agreement will immediately remove tariffs on more than 90 percent of all goods bilaterally traded, officials said.

Potential gains to the United States economy range from $17 billion to $43 billion, according to Usha Haley, director of the Global Business Center at the University of New Haven. South Korea’s exports to the United States are expected to rise in the first year by 12 percent, or by $5.4 billion.

The agreement “highlights the United States’ strong commitment to active engagement and partnership throughout Asia,” said Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Karan Bhatia.

The deal gives the United States badly needed support for its trade policy and South Korea a chance to boost its export-driven economy in return for opening up its market. It has long restricted access to such iconic American products as cars and beef.

The last-minute agreement marks a significant victory for the Bush administration, which sought a high-profile deal to add to a list of bilateral trade pacts with Panama, Peru and Colombia that it is struggling to sell to a Democrat-controlled Congress.

The increased relations between the United States and South Korean economies — the world’s biggest and eleventh-largest, respectively — provide the United States economy with an important stronghold in Asia to check the growing influence of China.

It could fuel a global race to forge bilateral trade pacts as an alternative to stalled multilateral talks under the World Trade Organization, economists said.

With pressure mounting from Congress, and Seoul’s streets reverberating with farmers’ protests in the early hours of Monday, negotiators haggled right up to the deadline set for resolution of the talks.

Students marched on the presidential palace in Seoul, chanting “No to FTA!” or “Feed mad cow beef to Bush!”

Once hailed for seeking a greater distance from Washington, President Roh Moo Hyun has now stood accused of turning his country into a “51st state of the United States of America.”

Breakthroughs came when negotiators exchanged compromises in politically sensitive issues. South Korea agreed to phase out its 40 percent tariffs on beef over 15 years.

It also indicated today that it would resume American beef imports, which have been banned for three years over mad cow disease, if the World Organization on Animal Health, or OIE, declares United States meat safe in a ruling expected in May.

Seoul will also remove an 8 percent duty on cars and revise its taxation system that American officials said discriminates against American cars with bigger engines and makes South Korea one of the world’s most protected auto markets.

In return, Washington agreed to South Korea’s wish to keep its heavily subsidized rice market out of any free trade deal, even though South Koreans were buying rice for four times the global price.

Washington will also remove 2.5 percent tariffs on cars with engine sizes of 3,000 cc or less — a key South Korean export item — and phase out 25 percent duty on trucks, as well as slashing tariffs on textiles.

Mr. Bush said the trade pact would strengthen ties between the United States and South Korean — an assessment shared by analysts who had repeatedly warned that the alliance, forged during the Korean War, was fraying during the terms of Mr. Bush and Mr. Roh in disputes over Communist North Korea.

“President Roh believes the free trade agreement with the United States will serve as a spring board for South Korea to become an advanced economy,” said Roh’s spokesman, Yoon Seung Yong.

Consumers of both countries are the biggest winners from the deal.

Hyundai cars and Samsung flat-panel TV sets, as well as Korean-made hats and clothes, will become cheaper in the United States.

American beef and oranges, as well as Ford cars and Toyota vehicles built in the United States, will be more affordable in South Korea.

TV networks can air more American movies and TV series, such as “CSI,” “Prison Break” or “Grey’s Anatomy,” which already command large followings here.

But the deal will cost South Korean farmers tens of thousands of jobs and up to 2 trillion won, or $2.1 billion, in lost revenue, as cheap American corn, soybeans and processed foods flood in, according to studies by South Korean economists.

Meanwhile, there is doubt American carmakers will win quick gains in South Korea, even after the deal is implemented. Many South Koreans still equate buying domestic vehicles to patriotism. High-end consumers prefer European models like Mercedes or BMWs to American cars.

The ambitious talks began in June last year. In their final round, the negotiators held eight days of marathon talks in Seoul, lasting through the night because Mr. Bush must notify Congress of his plan to sign a trade agreement 90 days before his special Trade Promotion Authority expires July 1.

Congress must ratify or reject a trade deal submitted under the special authority, but cannot amend it.

Originally, American officials said a deal had to be agreed by March 31, but later said the deadline was April 1.

Shortly after midnight today, the White House released Mr. Bush’s letter to congressional leaders, dated April 1.

Washington seeks bilateral pacts in Asia to counter China’s move to expand its influence in the region through its own free trade agreements. Washington’s talks with Malaysia are stalling, while deals are unlikely with Japan, with its powerful farmers, or with China, with its huge state-owned industries.

The new deal will help narrow Washington’s large trade imbalance with South Korea, experts on both sides said.

Only 5,000 American cars were sold here last year while South Korean carmakers sold 800,000 vehicles in the United States.

The gap accounted for 80 percent of the estimated $13 billion United States trade deficit with South Korea last year.

United States officials hope that today’s deal will placate American cattle raisers, who were struggling to recapture their global beef market following an outbreak of mad cow disease in late 2003.

Before its import ban, South Korea used to be the world’s third-largest consumer of American beef, importing $800 million a year.

“A free trade agreement with the United States carries a huge potential for the South Korean economy,” said Huh Chan Guk, director of research at the private Korea Economic Research Institute in Seoul.

“Besides winning more access to the U.S. market, it will help upgrade the economy by exposing its inefficient sectors, like the service industry, to competition.”

    U.S. and South Korea in Landmark Trade Deal, NYT, 2.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/business/02cnd-trade.html?hp

Bush Calls Iran’s

Capture of Britons ‘Inexcusable’

April 1, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:47 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CAMP DAVID, Md. (AP) -- President Bush on Saturday said Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines was ''inexcusable'' and called for Iran to ''give back the hostages'' immediately and unconditionally.

Bush said Iran plucked the sailors out of Iraqi waters. Iran's president said Saturday they were in Iranian waters and called Britain and its allies ''arrogant and selfish'' for not apologizing for trespassing.

''It's inexcusable behavior,'' Bush said at the Camp David presidential retreat, where he was meeting with the president of Brazil. ''Iran must give back the hostages. They're innocent. They did nothing wrong.''

It was the first time that Bush had commented publicly on the captured Britons. Washington has taken a low-key approach to avoid aggravating tensions over the incident and shaking international resolve to get Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program.

Bush did not answer a question about whether the United States would have reacted militarily if those captured had been Americans. The president said he supports British Prime Minister Tony Blair's efforts to find a diplomatic resolution to the crisis, now in its second week.

Bush would not comment about Britain's options if Iran does not release the hostages, but he seemed to reject any swapping of the British captives for Iranians detained in Iraq.

''I support the prime minister when he made it clear there were no quid pro quos,'' Bush said.

Like Bush's words, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments were his most extensive on the crisis. They tracked tough talk from other Iranian officials, an indication that Tehran's position could be hardening.

''The British occupier forces did trespass our waters. Our border guards detained them with skill and bravery,'' Iran's official news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. ''But arrogant powers, because of their arrogant and selfish spirit, are claiming otherwise.''

Britain, however, appeared to be easing its stance, emphasizing its desire to talk with Iran about what it termed a regrettable situation.

''I think everyone regrets that this position has arisen,'' British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said at a European Union summit in Bremen, Germany. ''What we want is a way out of it.''

Iran appeared unreceptive to possible talks with Britain.

''Instead of apologizing over trespassing by British forces, the world arrogant powers issue statements and deliver speeches,'' Ahmadinejad told a crowd in southeastern Iran.

The British sailors were detained by Iranian naval units March 23 while patrolling for smugglers near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, a waterway that has long been a disputed dividing line between Iraq and Iran. Britain also insists the sailors were in Iraqi waters.

In London on Saturday, the political wing of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen Khalq said the capture was planned in advance and carried out in retaliation for U.N. sanctions over Iran's nuclear program. The group is listed as a terrorist group by Britain, the U.S. and the European Union.

Blair has expressed disgust that the captured service members had been ''paraded and manipulated'' in video footage released by Iran. He warned Tehran that it faced increasing isolation if it did not free them.

Britain has frozen most contacts with Iran. The U.N. Security Council has expressed ''grave concern'' about the incident. The EU has demanded the sailors' unconditional release and warned of unspecified ''appropriate measures'' if Tehran does not comply -- a position the Iranian Foreign Ministry called ''bias and meddlesome.''

Ahmad Bakhshayesh, a professor of politics in Tehran's Allameh University, said he's convinced that Iran is prepared to stand its ground and insist that the British violated Iranian territory.

''Iran will seriously continue the case and will put them on trial,'' Bakhshayesh said. ''Only an apology by Britain can stop it. Iran thinks that Britons trespassed to test Iran's reaction, and now London is trying to isolate Tehran instead of apologizing.''

But British officials are hopeful that diplomacy can resolve the crisis. The Foreign Office confirmed Saturday that Britain had replied to a letter received earlier in this week from the Iranian embassy. It declined to reveal the nature of either letter.

''We have been exchanging letters with the Iranian government, and we will continue to conduct or diplomatic discussions in private,'' a spokesman said on the government's customary condition of anonymity.

Associated Press writers Jill Lawless in London and Benjamin Harvey and Katarina Kratovac in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report.

    Bush Calls Iran’s Capture of Britons ‘Inexcusable’, NYT, 1.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-Bush.html?hp

South Korea, U.S. Try to Save Trade Deal

April 1, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:47 a.m. ET

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The United States and South Korea worked to save a proposed free trade agreement Sunday in extended high-level talks, after failing to conclude the deal by an original U.S.-imposed deadline.

''They're still looking at options and figuring out if they can do it or not,'' said Steve Norton, spokesman for the Office of the United States Trade Representative, or USTR.

South Korea's Trade Minister Kim Hyun-chong and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Karan Bhatia, as well as the chief negotiators for the two sides, have been meeting since Monday at a Seoul hotel to bridge gaps in contentious sectors such as autos and agriculture.

If they succeed, the accord to slash tariffs and other barriers would be the biggest for Washington since the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, and the biggest ever for South Korea.

The two sides said Saturday morning -- after an all-night session -- that they needed more time, and agreed to finish the talks by 1 a.m. Monday in Seoul, corresponding to a noon Sunday deadline in Washington.

The original U.S.-imposed deadline was midnight Friday in Seoul.

Concern over the fate of the effort, which began almost 10 months ago, was raised Friday, when the White House hinted that the negotiations could fail. Spokesman Dana Perino had described the talks as ''not going well.''

A USTR spokesman in Washington said Saturday that the U.S. must wrap up the deal by Sunday U.S. time, because that is the deadline to notify Congress that U.S. President George W. Bush intends to sign a deal under his expiring Trade Promotion Authority.

Any final deal will be subject to approval by both Congress and South Korea's National Assembly.

South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed their countries' political will to reach a deal in a phone conversation Sunday, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said.

The call follows a similar one Thursday, in which the two countries' presidents instructed negotiators to be as flexible as possible.

South Korea has refused to discuss including its $9.1 billion rice market in the deal, claiming the staple food is a ''sensitive sector.'' Seoul has warned that it was ready to walk away from the deal if the U.S. pushed too hard.

Seoul's chief farm negotiator suggested Sunday that gaps between the two sides on agricultural issues may be narrowing.

''The U.S. side has paid a great attention to our situation and position, and I believe their understanding has also been greatly raised,'' Min Dong-seok, deputy minister for trade at the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry, told reporters.

Other bottlenecks are trade in autos; Seoul's demand that goods made in a small North Korean industrial zone by South Korean companies be included; and the status of U.S. beef, absent from South Korea markets for more than three years after mad cow disease was discovered in the United States.

South Korean media have reported that the two sides may compromise if the U.S. agrees to leave South Korean rice out of the deal in return for Seoul removing restrictions on American beef.

The USTR's Norton said he had no knowledge of any such deal.

Government officials on both sides say an agreement would boost economic ties between two longtime security allies, which already do more than $75 billion in trade a year.

The deal's South Korean opponents -- who include labor, farm and activist groups -- claim that an influx of cheaper U.S. imports will lead to job losses and potentially damage livelihoods.

Associated Press Writer Bo-Mi Lim in Seoul contributed to this report.

    South Korea, U.S. Try to Save Trade Deal, NYT, 1.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-SKorea-US-Free-Trade.html

Bush, Following Up on Trip,

Meets With Brazilian Leader

April 1, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, March 31 — President Bush continued his new courtship of Latin America on home turf on Saturday, meeting and dining with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil at the presidential retreat at Camp David.

In their second meeting in a month, Mr. Bush and Mr. da Silva talked about the stalled Doha round of trade negotiations and their newly signed deal to cooperate in the development and production of ethanol.

But the two announced no new breakthroughs.

Speaking at a joint news briefing, Mr. Bush said he was willing to reduce farm subsidies “in a substantial way,” a statement that was likely to get some notice by the farm lobby and its Congressional supporters but was unlikely to convince skeptical European partners.

But he repeated American demands for fuller access to foreign markets. Developing nations have resisted those demands without greater subsidy and tariff reductions than Mr. Bush is offering.

For his part, Mr. da Silva repeated his call for an end to the United States tariff on ethanol produced in Brazil, something Mr. Bush says is Congressionally mandated and out of his control.

But the visit was clearly intended as another show of allegiance after Mr. Bush’s visit to São Paulo three weeks ago, as part of a trip that had the clear intention of fighting the anti-American influence in the region of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

On Saturday, reporters also asked Mr. Bush how long his embattled attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, might have to “repair the damage” to his credibility in the controversy over the recent firings of eight United States attorneys.

“Attorney General Gonzales is an honorable and honest man,” Mr. Bush said. “And he has my full confidence.”

Bush, Following Up on Trip, Meets With Brazilian Leader, NYT, 1.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/washington/01prexy.html