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

Hughes, Loyal Bush Adviser,

Leaving State Dept.

October 31, 2007
The New York Times
By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — Karen P. Hughes, one of the few remaining members of President Bush’s circle of longtime Texas advisers, said today that she will return to private life, stepping down as the head of public diplomacy at the State Department sometime in December.

Ms. Hughes is credited with injecting new energy into the administration’s efforts to improve America’s image around the world, more actively spreading good news about the United States while more aggressively addressing bad news.

But Ms. Hughes herself has said that hers was “the work of generations,” an imposing challenge at a time when the United States was fighting wars in two Muslim countries and when terms like waterboarding and names like Abu Ghraib have entered the world’s vocabulary.

Opinion polls indicate that the image of the United States in Muslim countries — the chief target of Ms. Hughes’s labors — has not improved, and in some cases has deteriorated, since she took office two years ago.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in announcing Ms. Hughes’s planned departure today, praised her for making public diplomacy “strong and central to American foreign policy,” adding, “She has done just a remarkable job.”

Public diplomacy efforts toward the Muslim world, propelled to prominence by the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, got off to a slow start.

One of Ms. Hughes’s predecessors, Charlotte Beers, came to the post from the advertising world and had scant foreign experience. Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, a Republican leader on foreign policy who tends to weigh his words, said in 2003 that United States efforts to improve the American image among Muslims had been “all thumbs.”

Ms. Beers was succeeded by Margaret Tutwiler, a former State Department spokeswoman, who lasted just five months.

Ms. Hughes herself lacked extensive foreign experience, though she speaks some Spanish, learned as a child when her father was governor of the Panama Canal Zone.

But she was considered to have one major advantage over her predecessors: her close ties to President Bush, forged when he was governor of Texas and she was his director of communications, and strengthened further when she accompanied him to the White House in the same role. She left that job in 2002 to spend more time at home with her family.

But she returned to the administration in mid-2005 to become undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.

Sensing that bad news and sometimes baseless rumors about the United States were being allowed to spread unchallenged in Muslim countries while good news was not actively presented, Ms. Hughes sharply increased the number of interviews American officials, including Arabic speakers, gave to the Arabic news media. She said she was tired of seeing the president presented as a “caricature.”

Ms. Hughes established rapid-response centers to respond to unfavorable developments overseas. The department’s public diplomacy budget swelled, nearly doubling to $900 million a year. She promoted cultural and educational exchanges, added summer camps and English classes for young Muslims, and traveled tirelessly, explaining to all who would listen — particularly women — that Americans are people of faith.

But her travels had mixed results. She was credited for her vigor, care and the sweep of her efforts. But she was mocked at times for gaffes or misreadings of local sentiment.

Shortly after taking up her job, she told an audience of 500 Saudi women that she hoped some day they would be able to drive and “fully participate in society”; but many of the women expressed resentment at the American assumption that everyone wanted to live like them.

Just in the past week, many Canadians were annoyed that a new welcome-to-America video, proudly posted on Ms. Hughes’s blog on the State Department web site, used images of the Horseshoe portion of Niagara Falls, which is entirely within Canada.

The overall gains made in public diplomacy during Ms. Hughes’s tenure are difficult to assess. Perceptions abroad of the United States are formed mainly by wars, foreign policy, direct contacts and popular culture, not by diplomacy.

By one measure at least — public opinion surveys — there has been little progress from 2005, when the percentages of people in many Muslin countries who had favorable views of the United States were running in the single digits.

“Over the course of her term, the image of the United States has not improved among Muslim countries and, in fact, in some Muslim countries, particularly Turkey, it has become markedly less positive,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. “This may not be a measure of her lack of competence, but how little, in the end, public diplomacy can do when the issue, in the end, is big events.”

Ms. Hughes told The Associated Press that in her travels, Muslims and Arabs she spoke to generally raised the issue of the Iraq war only after mentioning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She said she advised President Bush and Secretary Rice that resolving that conflict would do more than anything to improve American standing among Muslims.

Ms. Rice plans to hold a conference later this year in Annapolis, Md., to press for progress toward Middle East peace.

Two other members of the president’s Texas inner circle have left the White House this year, Dan Bartlett and Karl Rove. Ms. Hughes said she had told Ms. Rice before accepting the State Department post that she did not plan to serve to the end of Mr. Bush’s term.

    Hughes, Loyal Bush Adviser, Leaving State Dept., NYT, 31.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/washington/31cnd-hughes.html?hp

Longtime Bush Adviser Leaving State Dept

October 31, 2007
Filed at 9:30 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Karen Hughes, who led efforts to improve the U.S. image abroad and was one of President Bush's last remaining advisers from the close circle of Texas aides, will leave the government at the end of the year, she told The Associated Press.

Hughes said she plans to quit her job as undersecretary of state and return to Texas, although improving the world's view of the United States is a ''long-term challenge'' that will outlast her.

''This will take a number of years,'' Hughes said in an interview to announce her departure. She was informing her staff of her decision Wednesday morning.

Bush had picked Hughes two years ago to retool the way the United States sells its policies, ideals and views overseas. A former television reporter and media adviser, Hughes' focus has been to change the way the United States engages and responds to criticism or misinformation in the Muslim world.

''Negative events never help,'' Hughes said when asked how events like last month's shooting of Iraqi civilians by private U.S. security guards in Iraq affects the way the world sees the United States.

    Longtime Bush Adviser Leaving State Dept, NYT, 31.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Karen-Hughes.html

UN Urges US to End Cuba Embargo

October 30, 2007
Filed at 12:28 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. General Assembly voted for the 16th straight year Tuesday to urge the United States to end its trade embargo against Cuba whose foreign minister accused the U.S. of stepping up its ''brutal economic war'' to new heights.

The 192-member world body approved a resolution calling for the 46-year-old U.S. economic and commercial embargo against Cuba to be repealed as soon as possible.

''The blockade had never been enforced with such viciousness as over the last year,'' Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told the assembly, accusing President Bush's administration of adopting ''new measures bordering on madness and fanaticism'' that have hurt Cuba and interfered in its relations with at least 30 countries.

Delegates in the General Assembly chamber burst into applause when the vote in favor of the resolution flashed on the screen -- 184 to four with one abstention.

    UN Urges US to End Cuba Embargo, NYT, 30.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Cuba.html

New Sanctions Levied Against Iran

October 25, 2007
Filed at 9:10 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration announced Thursday that it is imposing sweeping new sanctions against Iran's defense ministry, its Revolutionary Guard Corps and a number of banks.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, joined at a State Department news conference by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, said the steps the Bush administratioin is taking are designed to punish the Iranians for their support for terrorist organizations in Iraq and the Middle East, missile sales and nuclear activities.

Rice called the moves -- the harshest of this kind since the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in 1979 -- were in response to ''a comprehensive policy to confront the threatening behavior of the Iranians.''

But she also said that Washington remains open to ''a diplomatic solution.''

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is imposing sweeping new sanctions against Iran's defense ministry, its Revolutionary Guard Corps and a number of banks to punish them for purported support for terrorist organizations in Iraq and the Middle East, missile sales and nuclear activities, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The measures, to be announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, will cover some of the Iranian government's largest military and financial institutions, which Washington blames for supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, Shia insurgent groups in Iraq, along with the Hamas and Hezbollah organizations, they said.

''We believe that diplomacy needs to be very vigorous, it needs to be strengthened, many of our allies believe that as well, and these are steps that the United States can take to accomplish that end,'' an official said.

The sanctions will cut off more than 20 Iranian entities, including individuals and companies owned or controlled by the Revolutionary Guards, from the American financial system and will likely have ripple effects throughout the international banking community.

The Quds Force, a part of the Guard Corps that Washington accuses of provided weapons, including powerful bombmaking materiel blamed for the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and other banks will be identified as ''specially designated global terrorist'' groups for their activities in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East, the officials said.

The sanctions will be the toughest the United States has levied against Tehran since the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy there.

Rice told a House committee Wednesday that the administration shares Congress' goal of making sanctions tougher on Iran. She also declared that activities in Iraq by the Quds Force ''are inconsistent with the Iranian government's obligations and stated commitment to support the Iraqi government.''

Iran's defense ministry and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are to be designated proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile technology while several banks will be hit with sanctions for ''proliferation financing,'' the officials told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity before the formal announcement.

''We have decided to take this measure because we believe Iran is continuing its proliferation activities and its terrorism activities and certainly on the nuclear (issue) it is continuing activities. We also want these actions to contribute to a diplomatic solution to this problem,'' said one official.

The two officials said they hoped the measures would ratchet up pressure on Iran to negotiate.

The United States has long labeled Iran as a state supporter of terrorism and has been working for years to gain support for tougher sanctions from the international community aimed at keeping the country from developing nuclear weapons.

The sanctions would be unilateral, however, and are believed to be the first of their type taken by the United States specifically against the armed forces of another government.

The sanctions reportedly will empower the United States to financially isolate a large part of Iran's military and anyone inside or outside Iran who does business with it.

Such steps could impact any number of foreign companies by pressuring them to stop doing business with the Revolutionary Guards or risk U.S. sanctions.

The Revolutionary Guards, formed to safeguard Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, has pushed well beyond its military roots, and now owns car factories and construction firms and operates newspaper groups and oil fields.

Current and former members now hold a growing role across the country's government and economy, sometimes openly and other times in shadow.

The guards have gained a particularly big role in the country's oil and gas industry in recent years, as the national oil company has signed several contracts with a guards-operated construction company. Some have been announced publicly, including a $2 billion deal in 2006 to develop part of the important Pars gas field.

Now numbering about 125,000 members, they report directly to the supreme leader and officially handle internal security. The small Quds Force wing is thought to operate overseas, having helped to create the militant Hezbollah group in 1982 in Lebanon and to arm Bosnian Muslims during the Balkan wars.

The administration accuses the Quds Force of sending fighters and deadly roadside bombs, mortars and rockets to kill American troops in Iraq in recent years -- allegations that Iran denies.

The United States pressures U.S. and European banks to do no business with Iranian banks, such as Bank Sedarat that the Bush administration believes help finance guards' business operations. But the United States has been known for some time to also be considering naming the entire group as a foreign terrorist organization, allowing wider financial crackdowns.

------

AP Diplomatic Correspondent Anne Gearan contributed to this story.

    New Sanctions Levied Against Iran, NYT, 25.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iran.html

Rice: Iran a Obstacle to US in Mideast

October 24, 2007
Filed at 6:23 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iran is a major obstacle to the U.S. vision of a Middle East in which nations will ''trade more, invest more, talk more and work more constructively to solve problems,'' Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says.

''The Iranian government is pursuing policies which are detrimental to the long-term interests of its neighbors, of the region, and of the Iranian people themselves. It need not be this way,'' Rice said in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday to a House panel.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of her testimony.

Rice's testimony, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, comes amid increased frustration by Republicans and Democrats alike that the Bush administration is not doing enough to deter Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Last month, the House passed, by a 397-16 vote, legislation aimed at blocking foreign investment in Iran, in particular its lucrative energy sector. The bill, sponsored by Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., would specifically bar the president from waiving U.S. sanctions.

Rice said the administration shares Congress' goal of making sanctions tougher on Iran, but urged caution.

''We simply want to be certain that our collective efforts do not undermine our multilateral strategy, where we will have a maximum chance of success,'' she said.

President Bush says a U.S.-linked missile defense system is urgently needed in Europe to protect against a potential Iranian strike. Plans for such a system have strained U.S. relations with Russia, which estimates Iran's capability to be less mature and has close financial ties with Tehran.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Bush administration has told Moscow it may delay activation of the system until it has proof that Iran poses a missile threat.

''We would consider tying together activation of the sites in Poland and the Czech Republic with definitive proof of the threat -- in other words, Iranian missile testing and so on,'' Gates said.

Rice planned to tell the House committee Wednesday that in addition to nuclear ambitions that undermine stability in the region, Tehran has provided ''lethal assistance'' to extremist groups in Lebanon, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, as well as Iraq.

In particular, she noted, activities in Iraq by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds force ''are inconsistent with the Iranian government's obligations and stated commitment to support the Iraqi government.''

    Rice: Iran a Obstacle to US in Mideast, NYT, 24.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Bush to Warn Cuba on Plan for Transition

October 24, 2007
The New York Times
By GINGER THOMPSON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — President Bush is planning to issue a stern warning Wednesday that the United States will not accept a political transition in Cuba in which power changes from one Castro brother to another, rather than to the Cuban people.

As described by an official in a background briefing to reporters on Tuesday evening, Mr. Bush’s remarks will amount to the most detailed response — mainly an unbending one — to the political changes that began in Cuba more than a year ago, when Fidel Castro fell ill and handed power to his brother Raúl.

The speech, scheduled to be given at the State Department before invited Cuban dissidents, will introduce the relatives of four Cuban prisoners being held for political crimes. A senior administration official said the president wanted to “put a human face,” on Cuba’s “assault on freedom.”

In effect, the speech will be a call for Cubans to continue to resist, a particularly strong line coming from an American president. He is expected to say to the Cuban military and police, “There is a place for you in a new Cuba.”

The official said Mr. Bush would make the case that for dissidents and others pursuing democracy in Cuba, little has changed at all, and that the country has suffered economically as well as in other ways as a result of the Castro rule.

He will say that while much of the rest of Latin America has moved from dictatorship to democracy, Cuba continues to use repression and terror to control its people. And, the administration official said, Mr. Bush will direct another part of his speech to the Cuban people, telling them they “have the power to shape their destiny and bring about change.”

The administration official said Mr. Bush was expected to tell Cuban viewers that “soon they will have to make a choice between freedom and the force used by a dying regime.”

Some of the sharpest parts of the speech, however, will be aimed directly at Raúl Castro. Mr. Bush is expected to make clear that the United States will oppose an old system controlled by new faces. The senior administration official said that nothing in Raúl Castro’s past gives Washington reason to expect democratic reforms soon. And he said the United States would uphold its tough economic policies against the island.

Mr. Bush would hold out the possibility of incentives for change, if Cuba demonstrated an openness to such exchanges, the official said. Those steps might include expanding cultural and information exchanges with Cuba and allowing religious organizations and other nonprofits to send computers to Cuba and to award scholarships.

However, he is expected to reiterate the administration’s long-standing demands for free and transparent elections, and the release of political prisoners.

John Kavulich, senior policy adviser at the U.S.-Cuba Trade andEconomic Council, said those demands would likely be non-starters for Cuba. He said the technology and educational opportunities Mr. Bush intends to offer are being provided to Cuba by Venezuela and China.

He suggested that the real constituency for Mr. Bush’s speech was the politically-powerful exile community in Miami.

Phil Peters, an expert on Cuba at the non-partisan Lexington Institute, said he saw Mr. Bush’s speech as an attempt to reorient a policy that had fallen behind the times. American policy, he said, had been centered around the idea that the Communist government would fall once Mr. Castro left power, and that Mr. Castro, 81, would be forced out of power only by death. Instead, Mr. Peters said, Raúl Castro’s rise caught the administration off guard.

President Bush has remained largely silent, Mr. Peters said, while Raúl Castro consolidated his control over Cuban institutions by establishing his own relationships with world leaders, and opening unprecedented dialogue with the Cuban people about their visions for their own country. Meanwhile, all the doomsday scenarios predicted for Cuba once Fidel Castro left power — a violent uprising by dissidents and a huge exodus of Cuban refugees — never materialized.

“The administration realized they had missed the boat,” Mr. Peters said. “Succession has already happened. They can no longer have a policy that keeps them waiting for Castro to die when the rest of the world has moved on.”

    Bush to Warn Cuba on Plan for Transition, NYT, 24.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/washington/24cuba.html?hp

Bush Touting Cuban Life After Castro

October 24, 2007
Filed at 3:15 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, ever pushing for a Cuba without Fidel Castro, wants allies around the world to offer money and political support so the island can be ready to transform itself.

It is Bush's vision for Cuban regime change: providing help on the outside, prodding change on the inside.

Seizing on Castro's fading health as a rare opening, Bush was to ask other nations Wednesday to help Cuba become a free society.

In remarks prepared for delivery at the State Department -- his first standalone address on Cuba in four years -- Bush looks to the day when Castro is gone. Bush describes a nation in which Cuban people choose a representative government and enjoy basic freedoms, with support from a broad international coalition.

For now, though, Castro is still the island's unchallenged leader, as he has been for almost 50 years. And he remains a nemesis to Bush, whom he accuses of being obsessed with Cuba and of threatening humanity with nuclear war. At the age of 81, Castro is ailing and rarely seen in public. But life has changed little on the island under the authority of his brother, 76-year-old Raul Castro, who has been his elder brother's hand-picked successor for decades.

Bush was expected to tout peaceful, pro-democracy movements in Cuba and call on other countries to get behind them. In a direct appeal to ordinary citizens in Cuba, he was to tell them they have the power to change their country, but the White House says that is not meant to be a call for armed rebellion.

Bush proposes at least three initiatives: the creation of an international ''freedom fund'' to help Cuba's potential rebuilding of its country one day; a U.S. licensing of private groups to provide Internet access to Cuban students, and an invitation to Cuban youth to join a scholarship program.

The latter two offerings help the Bush administration underscore the kind of real-life limitations that Cubans now face, from blocked Internet access to restricted information about their leaders to denial of legal protections. The creation of the international fund is meant to speed up societal transformation.

''We all know that Cuba is going to face very significant requirements to rebuild itself,'' said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the president. ''There's a whole set of challenges that Cuba is going to face. The United States will clearly want to help the Cubans as they define what it is they need, but we think the international community should be thinking that way as well.''

Washington's decades-old economic embargo on Cuba prohibits U.S. tourists from visiting the island and chokes off nearly all trade between both countries. Bush will ask Congress to maintain the embargo, which has come under scrutiny and calls for reassessment from some lawmakers.

Cuba staged municipal elections on Sunday, the first step in a process that will determine whether Fidel Castro is re-elected or replaced next year. The Communist Party is the only one allowed, and while candidates do not have to be members, critics claim they are the only ones who ever win.

Bush, increasingly, is speaking of a Castro-free Cuba. As he put it earlier this month: ''In Havana, the long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing an end.''

------

On the Net:

CIA World Factbook on Cuba:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cu.html 

    Bush Touting Cuban Life After Castro, NYT, 24.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Cuba.html

Castro Claims Bush Could Spark WWIII

October 23, 2007
Filed at 12:00 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

HAVANA (AP) -- Fidel Castro wrote Tuesday U.S. President George W. Bush is threatening the world with nuclear war and famine -- an attack on Washington a day before the White House plans to announce new plans to draw Cuba away from communism.

''The danger of a massive world famine is aggravated by Mr. Bush's recent initiative to transform foods into fuel,'' Castro wrote in Cuban news media, referring to U.S. support for using corn and other food crops to produce gasoline substitutes.

The brief essay titled ''Bush, Hunger and Death'' also alleged that Bush ''threatens humanity with World War III, this time using atomic weapons.''

Bush is expected to announce new strategies toward Cuba on Wednesday. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said last week that Bush would ''emphasize the importance of democracy for the Cuban people and the role the international community can play in Cuba's transition by insisting on free speech, free assembly, free and competitive elections and the release of all political prisoners.''

In his essay, Castro predicted that Bush ''will adopt new measures to accelerate the 'transition period' in our country, equivalent to a new conquest of Cuba by force.'' Cuban officials have long denounced U.S. efforts to produce a ''transition'' from Castro's government to a Western-style representative democracy.

Ailing and 81, Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery and ceding power to a provisional government headed by his younger brother Raul in July 2006.

While he has looked upbeat and lucid in official videos, he also seems too frail to resume power.

Life on the island has changed little under Raul Castro, the 76-year-old defense minister who was his elder brother's hand-picked successor for decades.

Cuba staged municipal elections on Sunday, the first step in a process that will determine if Fidel Castro is re-elected or replaced next year as Cuban leader.

    Castro Claims Bush Could Spark WWIII, NYT, 23.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Cuba-Castro.html

Bush Awards Mongolia With $285M in Aid

October 22, 2007
Filed at 1:43 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Monday approved $285 million for Mongolia, the latest country to receive U.S. aid in exchange for committing to democratic reforms.

The public aid is part of the Millennium Challenge, a Bush initiative to reduce global poverty by trying to encourage economic freedoms and strengthen human rights. So far, about $5 billion is committed for 16 countries; Mongolia became the 15th to have a signed compact with the United States.

''The Millennium Challenge compact encourages countries to make a firm commitment to basic principles -- principles that mean the government will listen to their people and respond to the needs of the people,'' Bush said in a Roosevelt Room ceremony with Mongolian President Nambaryn Enkhbayar.

''And today, Mr. President, we honor the success of your country and the commitment of your government to basic principles,'' Bush said.

Mongolia, a former communist country sandwiched between Russia and China, will receive the money over five years if it complies with all requirements. The largest share of the aid package will be used to improve the railroad system in Mongolia. Other money will go to support health and education.

Enkhbayar expressed thanks to Bush and the American people, and promised accountability and results.

He said Mongolia is pursuing an improved democratic society, built around an educated citizenry and a private-sector economy.

''I'm certain that this compact will inspire long-lasting, fruitful and mutually beneficial cooperation between the United States of America and Mongolia,'' he said. ''Now we will embark upon the task of successfully transforming our people's ideas and expectations into reality.''

Both leaders signed leather-bound copies of the compact and shook hands to a round of applause.

The Millennium Challenge Account has faced some skepticism in Congress, and criticism about the slow pace of money flowing to the countries.

Of the $5 billion committed, close to $400 million has been disbursed or contracted to be spent, said John Danilovich, chairman of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which oversees the effort. That's not bad, he said, for a foreign aid program that began in 2004.

''This is not an easy program,'' he added. ''It's not just, we're poor, here's the money. It's, we're poor and we're changing, we're reforming our system to deal with poverty and to sustain economic growth.''

Bush has asked for $3 billion this year. The Senate has proposed $1.2 billion and the House recommended $1.8 billion. Bush used the signing ceremony to prod lawmakers for more money, saying ''Congress must understand how important this program is for U.S. foreign policy.''

    Bush Awards Mongolia With $285M in Aid, NYT, 22.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/BC-Bush-Mongolia.html

Bush Imposes New Sanctions on Myanmar

October 20, 2007
Filed at 1:36 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush imposed new sanctions Friday to punish Myanmar's military-run government and its backers for a deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Expanding on sanctions imposed last month, Bush ordered the Treasury Department to freeze the U.S. assets of additional members of the repressive junta. He also acted to tighten controls on U.S. exports to Myanmar, also known as Burma. And he called on the governments of China and India to do more to pressure the government of the Southeast Asian nation.

''The people of Burma are showing great courage in the face of immense repression,'' Bush said in the Diplomatic Room of the White House. ''They are appealing for our help. We must not turn a deaf ear to their cries.''

Last month, tens of thousands of people turned out for rallies, which started as protests of sharp fuel increases and later snowballed into the largest show of government dissent in decades. The junta claims that 10 people were killed when troops opened fire on demonstrators to disperse them, but diplomats and dissidents say the death toll is much higher.

''I believe no nation can forever suppress its own people,'' Bush said. ''And we are confident that the day is coming when freedom's tide will reach the shores of Burma.''

The president directed the Treasury Department to bar almost a dozen more senior Myanmar government officials from using the U.S. financial system. These include the mayor of Rangoon and the ministers of electric power, health, education, industry, labor, science and technology, commerce, national planning and economic development, finance and revenue, telecommunications and construction.

Treasury banned 14 other officials last month, including the junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, and the No. 2 man in the military regime, Deputy Senior Gen. Maung Aye.

Bush also issued a new executive order that names an additional 12 individuals and business entities for sanctions. The order gives the Treasury Department expanded authority to sanction individuals responsible for public corruption, human rights abuses or for supporting and providing financial backing to the regime.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry had no comment on the sanctions. China, a close ally of Myanmar and a major source of economic support, has said in the past that it has taken a ''constructive and responsible attitude'' on the issue and that sanctions would not be effective in resolving the situation.

''Sanctions do have an impact,'' White House press secretary Dana Perino said. ''We believe that tightening the noose around the leaders in Burma, as well as their cronies who help them by carrying out their bank transactions and buying their luxury goods, is a way to increase the pressure so that the Burmese can be relieved of the dictatorship.''

Derek Mitchell, an expert on Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the new sanctions further squeeze the leaders of Myanmar. But he said the international community should also offer them incentives, such as affirming the territorial integrity of Myanmar or guaranteeing their personal safety should they lose their authority.

''There have to be some incentives because they're fearful that if they release their grip on power, they will go the way of other dictators -- at best, imprisoned or ruined, at worst, a bullet in the back of the head,'' Mitchell said.

Bush was joined in the Diplomatic Room by first lady Laura Bush who has made personal appeals in support of Myanmar citizens, saying the acts of violence ''shame the military regime.''

''Burmese authorities claim they desire reconciliation. Well, they need to match those words with actions,'' the president said.

He said the Myanmar government needs to provide the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations access to political prisoners; allow pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other detained leaders to communicate with one another; and to permit U.N. Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari to enter the country immediately.

''Ultimately, reconciliation requires that Burmese authorities release all political prisoners and begin negotiations with the democratic opposition under the auspices of the United Nations,'' he said.

Gambari met with the junta leader in Myanmar earlier this month, as well as twice with Suu Kyi, but he has so far failed to bring about a dialogue between the two sides. U.N. diplomats said Friday that Gambari is unlikely to return to Myanmar before mid-November as the Security Council had wanted.

Gambari has said he was invited to return to Myanmar in mid-November, but might try to go earlier. Diplomats said, however, it appears that Myanmar's military rulers have not given him a visa for an earlier visit.

    Bush Imposes New Sanctions on Myanmar, NYT, 20.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Myanmar.html

Bush and Congress Honor Dalai Lama

October 18, 2007
The New York Times
By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 — Over furious objections from China and in the presence of President Bush, Congress on Wednesday bestowed its highest civilian honor on the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists whom Beijing considers a troublesome voice of separatism.

Dressed in flowing robes of dark burgundy and bright orange, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, beamed and bowed as the president and members of Congress greeted him with a standing ovation and then praised him as a hero of the Tibetan struggle. President Bush called him “a man of faith and sincerity and peace.”

But the Dalai Lama said he felt “a sense of regret” over the sharp tensions with China unleashed by his private meeting on Tuesday with Mr. Bush and by the Congressional Gold Medal conferred on him in the ornate Capitol Rotunda.

In gentle language and conciliatory tones, he congratulated China on its dynamic economic growth and recognized its rising role on the world stage, but also gently urged it to embrace “transparency, the rule of law and freedom of information.”

The 72-year-old spiritual leader made clear that “I’m not seeking independence” from China, something that is anathema to Beijing. Nor, he said, would he use any future agreement with China “as a steppingstone for Tibet’s independence.”

What he wanted, he said, was “meaningful autonomy for Tibet.”

The Dalai Lama has lived in exile in India since the Chinese Army crushed an uprising in his homeland in 1959.

Speeches by the president and the top leaders of each party emphasized the Dalai Lama’s humble beginnings and humanitarian achievements, as well as a long history of American support for him. He was also lauded by the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, a fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a previous winner of the Congressional Gold Medal, which is cast in the image of the recipient.

When the speaker of the House, Representative Nancy Pelosi, noted that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had given the Dalai Lama, then very young, a watch that displayed the phases of the moon — and that he still had it — the honored guest tugged on his robe, held his wrist out before President Bush, tapped on the watch and grinned.

Earlier, Beijing offered a sharp new rebuke of the award ceremony, which the top Chinese religious affairs official condemned as a “farce.”

“The protagonist of this farce is the Dalai Lama,” said Ye Xiaowen, director general of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, Reuters reported. Other officials have warned, without specifying, of a “serious impact” on relations between the United States and China.

Mr. Bush, during a news conference, appeared unconcerned.

“I don’t think it ever damages relations,” he said, “when an American president talks about, you know — religious tolerance and religious freedom is good for a nation.”

The two have met three times before. But in the face of the Chinese broadsides, their encounter on Tuesday was held with the maximum discretion: in the White House residence, not the Oval Office, with no cameras present, and shorn of the trappings of a meeting of the president and a political leader.

Mr. Bush reminded reporters that he had told President Hu Jintao of China, when they met recently in Sydney, Australia, that he would meet the Dalai Lama. During the award ceremony, he urged the Chinese to do the same.

“They will find this good man to be a man of peace and reconciliation,” he said.

Apparently in a protest over the award, China pulled out of a multiparty meeting this month to discuss Iran. It also canceled a human rights meeting with Germany, displeased by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s meeting last month with the Dalai Lama.

    Bush and Congress Honor Dalai Lama, NYT, 18.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/washington/18lama.html

Rice Prays in Bethlehem for Peace

October 17, 2007
Filed at 12:21 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday lit a candle and paused for prayer at the grotto where Christians believe Jesus was born, urging the people of the Holy Land to ''make religion a power of healing.''

But in a stark reminder of the region's divisions, Rice also got a firsthand look at Israel's contentious separation barrier on her way to Bethlehem.

Rice has been meeting with Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian leaders this week as part of preparations for a U.S.-hosted peace conference in November or December. She said her visit to Bethlehem was part of an attempt to assure ordinary people that the U.S. is serious about helping them reach peace.

Rice, a devout Christian, began her day in this biblical West Bank town with a tour of the Church of the Nativity, built over Jesus' traditional birth grotto.

''Being here at the birthplace of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, has been a very special and moving experience,'' said Rice, the daughter and granddaughter of Presbyterian ministers, after the tour. ''It is also, I think, a personal reminder that the prince of peace is still with us.''

She said the three monotheistic religions of the Holy Land -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- ''have an opportunity to overcome differences, to put aside grievances, to make religion a power of healing and a power of reconciliation, rather than a power of divisions.''

Later, she met with civic leaders and local security chiefs, who told her about the daily difficulties of life under Israeli occupation. ''We told her that people don't trust any peace process,'' said Maha Abu Dayyeh, head of a Palestinian women's rights center. ''We said that a sense of security is the basis for any peace, and that this is a Palestinian need.''

Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem, is lined on two sides by Israel's West Bank separation barrier, along some stretches a towering wall of cement blocks. Town residents need difficult-to-obtain permits to cross through a wall terminal into Jerusalem, and long lines often form during rush hour.

On Rice's way to and from Bethlehem, her convoy drove through a large gate in the wall, illustrating the stark reality of separation. Rice was also able to see the wall and an Israeli army watchtower from the Bethlehem hotel where she met with the civic leaders.

''I hope that Rice has understood by her visit in Bethlehem the situation on the ground in a new light,'' said Issa Qaraqa, a Palestinian lawmaker from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party. ''We talked to her and said 'you came to a city to which you crossed many miles and crossed checkpoints and crossed the barrier and saw in Bethlehem how the barrier is suffocating the holy city.'''

Israel started building the West Bank barrier in 2002 as a defense against Palestinian attackers who have killed hundreds of Israelis in recent years. However, Palestinians say the barrier's meandering route cuts off large chunks of land they want for a future state -- and several Israeli politicians have suggested the barrier could become Israel's border.

Without addressing the Rice visit directly, David Baker, an official in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office, reiterated the importance of the barrier.

''This is one of the primary means we have of thwarting Palestinian terrorism and keeping our citizens safe,'' he said. ''The barrier continues to be a highly efficient means of keeping suicide bombers out.''

Rice did not comment about the barrier. She told an interfaith group of religious leaders earlier this week that she believes people are more likely drawn to violence if they don't have hope, her aides said. She said she saw that risk while growing up in the segregated South, then witnessed how people turned away from violence because they thought they could get ''a fair shake.''

    Rice Prays in Bethlehem for Peace, NYT, 17.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Rice-Bethlehem.html

Bush Opposes Turkish Offensive

October 17, 2007
Filed at 11:59 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday opposed Turkey's possible military offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

''We are making it very clear to Turkey that we don't think it is in their interest to send troops into Iraq,'' Bush said at a White House news conference.

He spoke shortly before Turkey's parliament approved a possible cross-border offensive.

The president also urged the Democratic-controlled Congress not to infuriate Turkey, a key ally in the war on Iraq, by approving a resolution labeling as genocide the World War I-era killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

With all the pressing responsibilities facing the nation, ''One thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical record of the Ottoman Empire,'' he said.

Bush seemed less concerned, however, about offending China. He defended his decision to attend a ceremony on Capitol Hill later Wednesday honoring the Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibet's Buddhists. The ceremony angered Chinese leaders.

''One, I admire the Dalai Lama a lot; two, I support religious freedom, he supports religious freedom,'' Bush said.

On talk in Turkey about mounting a military strike inside Iraq, Bush said, ''Actually they have troops already stationed in Iraq and they've had troops stationed there for quite a while.''

''We don't think it's in their interest to send more troops in.''

Bush said he talked about Turkey with Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, on Wednesday. He also noted that Tariq al-Hashimi, one of Iraq's vice presidents, was in Istanbul expressing that Iraq shares Turkey's concerns about terrorist activities, but that there's a better way to deal with the issue than having turkey send additional troops into the country.

''What I'm telling you is that there's a lot of dialogue going on and that's positive,'' he said.

Bush used the news conference -- his first since Sept. 20 -- to prod the Democratic-controlled Congress to approve spending, education and health bills. It came just a day before the House will try to override his veto of a bill expanding a popular children's health program.

''It's unlikely that veto override will succeed,'' Bush said noting that Democratic leaders knew that ''when they sent me the bill.''

''Congress has little to show for all the time that has gone by'' since Democrats gained control in January of both the House and the Senate, he added.

At a White House news conference, the president also said that Congress needs to act on mortgage relief for homeowners hit by the housing crisis, trade deals that would strengthen allies, legislation expanding U.S. markets and aid to military veterans.

Bush also defended his style of dealing with Vladimir Putin as the Russian president works to expand his control on power.

Bush said he can speak frankly with Putin, and ''that's good diplomacy.''

Putin is manuevering to maintain influence and remain in power after his term ends next year. ''I have no idea what he's going to do,'' said Bush.

Bush said that when he saw Putin in Austalia last month at an international conference, he tried to get the Russian leader to talk about his plans. ''And he was wily. He wouldn't tip his hand.''

On other subjects, Bush:

--Said it was important for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a diplomatic mission to the Middle East, to help Israelis and Palestinians make progress leading to a scheduled upcoming peace conference in Annapolis, Md. ''The Palestinians that have been made promises all these years need to see there's a serious focused effort'' to set up a Palestinian state, he said.

--Declined to counter retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who said recently that the American mission in Iraq was a ''nightmare with no end in sight'' because of U.S. misjudgments. ''The situation on the ground has changed quite dramatically since he (Sanchez) left Iraq,'' Bush said.

-- Said he is looking forward to the final 15 months of his presidency and denied that he was losing leverage as a lame duck president. ''Quite the contrary. I've never felt more engaged and more capable of helping people recognize -- American people recognize -- that there's a lot of unfinished business.''

-- Continued to fend off questions about a recent Israeli bombing raid inside Syria, suggesting reporters were not going to get any different answers from him no matter how hard they tried. ''This is not my first rodeo,'' he said.

    Bush Opposes Turkish Offensive, NYT, 17.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html

Bush Defends Honoring Dalai Lama

October 17, 2007
Filed at 11:30 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday staunchly defended his participation in a U.S. ceremony honoring the Dalai Lama, saying ''I support religious freedom, he supports religious freedom.''

At a White House news conference just hours before he was to travel to the U.S. Capitol to witness the spiritual head of Tibet's Buddhists getting the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal, Bush told reporters, ''I admire the Dalai Lama a lot'' and said that U.S. relations with China would not be damaged by his position on this issue.

China has vehemently protested the elaborate public ceremony.

''I'm going because I want to honor this man,'' Bush told reporters. ''I have consistently told the Chinese that religious freedom is in their nation's interest. I've also told them that it's in their interest to meet with the Dalai Lama and will say so at the ceremony.''

The Bush administration had taken pains Tuesday to keep a private meeting with the president and the Dalai Lama from further infuriating China: no media access, not even a handout photo.

It is a delicate bit of diplomatic balancing. Bush wants to ease anger in China, a growing economic and military powerhouse that the United States needs to manage nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea. He also wants to be seen as a champion of religious freedom and human rights.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday staunchly defended his participation in a U.S. ceremony honoring the Dalai Lama, saying ''I support religious freedom, he supports religious freedom.''

At a White House news conference just hours before he was to travel to the U.S. Capitol to witness the spiritual head of Tibet's Buddhists getting the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal, Bush told reporters, ''I admire the Dalai Lama a lot'' and said that U.S. relations with China would not be damaged by his position on this issue.

China has vehemently protested the elaborate public ceremony.

''I'm going because I want to honor this man,'' Bush told reporters. ''I have consistently told the Chinese that religious freedom is in their nation's interest. I've also told them that it's in their interest to meet with the Dalai Lama and will say so at the ceremony.''

    Bush Defends Honoring Dalai Lama, NYT, 17.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Dalai-Lama.html

Rice Seeking Support for Mideast Talks

October 16, 2007
Filed at 6:55 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought support from Egypt Tuesday in her quest to nudge Israelis and Palestinians closer together before a Mideast peace conference.

Egypt's foreign minister, however, warned that planned meeting might have to be postponed unless a substantive agreement can be reached ahead of time.

Rice arrived in Cairo and was scheduled to speak with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has played a key role in mediating large and small conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians and among squabbling Palestinians factions.

Ahead of Rice's stop in Egypt, the country's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit accused some in Israel of trying to ''deplete American efforts'' to have a real peace agreement between the two sides for the peace meeting, tentatively set to take place in the Annapolis, Md., in late November.

''Without addressing these attempts, then we have to seriously think of postponing the conference to another appropriate time,'' Aboul Gheit said in a statement late Monday. ''Rushing into holding the meeting without an agreement over a substantive and positive document may damage opportunities to achieve a just peace.''

On Monday, after talks in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Rice said Israel and the Palestinians must agree on how and when to start formal peace talks.

In one of her strongest statements yet on the issue, Rice declared that creation of a Palestinian state is a key U.S. interest and urged the two sides to drop contentious demands and reach consensus on a substantive joint statement ahead of the international conference.

''Frankly, it's time for the establishment of a Palestinian state,'' Rice told a news conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who she saw on the second of an intense four-day Middle East shuttle diplomacy mission.

''The United States sees the establishment of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution as absolutely essential for the future, not just of Palestinians and Israelis but also for the Middle East and indeed to American interests,'' she said.

''That's really a message that I think only I can deliver,'' Rice said, explaining her mission to prepare for the conference to be held in Annapolis, Md., as early as late November.

The secretary is facing daunting challenges in trying to bring the two sides close enough to make the conference worthwhile and played down the chances for any breakthroughs before her arrival. She expects to return to the region at least once more before the conference takes place.

Rice will see both sides again on Wednesday after visiting Egypt. Then she will travel to London to meet Jordan's King Abdullah II in a bid to build support for the meeting among skeptical Arab nations.

In her talks in Jerusalem and the West Bank, she is seeking to bridge wide gaps between Israel and the Palestinians over the declaration to be endorsed in Annapolis that President Bush hopes will lead to negotiations for a final settlement of long-running conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he does not see the document as a prerequisite for the conference. He wants it as vague as possible on critical so-called ''final status issues'' like the borders of a Palestinian state, the status of disputed Jerusalem, Israeli settlements and Palestinian refugees.

At the same time, Olmert hinted Monday that he is ready to share control of Jerusalem, saying for the first time that Israel could do without controlling some of the holy city's outlying Arab neighborhoods.

The Palestinians, meanwhile, have said they will not attend the conference without a document that contains details on these matters as well as a specific timeline for their resolution. Arab states share the Palestinian concerns.

''No doubt that before we go to (the conference), the document will be ready,'' said Abbas, whose authority has been limited to the West Bank since the militant Islamic Hamas movement seized control of the Gaza Strip in June.

''The negotiations should not be open-ended, but subject to a certain time period,'' he added.

Negotiating teams headed by Israel's foreign minister and a former Palestinian premier met in Jerusalem Monday for more than two hours, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said. No progress was reported.

    Rice Seeking Support for Mideast Talks, NYT, 16.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mideast-Rice.html

Rice: Time for 'a Palestinian state' is now



14 October 2007
AP
USA Today

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The time has come for establishing a Palestinian state and it's in the interest of the U.S. to do so, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday in one of her most forceful statements yet on the issue.

The comments from Rice, after a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, suggested that the Bush administration is determined to try to bridge the wide gaps between Israel and the Palestinians ahead of a U.S.-hosted Mideast conference.

The gathering is expected to take place next month, though a date has not been announced. Moderate Arab countries, whose participation is widely viewed as critical, have not committed to attending.

Standing next to Abbas, Rice defined Palestinian statehood as a U.S. interest.

"Frankly, it's time for the establishment of a Palestinian state," Rice said.

"I wanted to say in my own voice to be able to say to as many people as possible that the United States sees the establishment of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution as absolutely essential for the future, not just of Palestinians and Israelis but also for the Middle East and indeed to American interests," she said. "That's really a message that I think only I can deliver."

Tensions arose Sunday when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet that he did not regard a joint declaration of principles for a future peace deal to be a prerequisite for the conference. The Palestinians said that without such a document, they would not attend.

Rice did not say whether she wants the document completed before the conference, set in Annapolis, Md. However, the U.S. has said it wants a substantive working paper dealing with all the key disputes before the start of the conference. The issues include borders, Jerusalem, Israeli settlements and Palestinian refugees.

"We frankly have better things to do than invite people to Annapolis for a photo op," she said.

She said ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a top priority of the Bush administration.

Rice praised Israel and Palestinians for making their "most serious effort" in years to end the conflict. Olmert and Abbas have held a series of meetings in recent months, and the two sides have appointed negotiating teams to hammer out their joint vision for peace in time for the gathering.

Abbas said he expects the conference to launch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and that a deadline should be set for completion. However, Israel rejects a timetable and U.S. officials have been cool to the idea.

The Palestinian president said he also asked for U.S. help in halting Israeli settlement expansion and the ongoing construction of Israel's West Bank separation barrier.

The Palestinians have protested recent Israeli land expropriations for a West Bank road project. They fear the land seizures are meant to tighten Israeli control over strategic West Bank areas near Jerusalem that they claim.

Addressing such concerns, Rice said: "I have said we need to at this particular point in time be certain to avoid any steps that would undermine confidence because the building of confidence is something that takes time."

Rice is on a four-day shuttle mission, trying to create common ground ahead of the Mideast meeting. A State Department official hinted on Sunday that the conference might be postponed. However, Abbas aides suggested Monday that the gathering would at most be rescheduled for early December.

Abbas and Rice met for 3 1/2 hours Monday at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Her trip was briefly delayed by what turned out to be a false security alert. Her convoy stopped at an Israeli fire station after Israeli police said they spotted a suspicious vehicle near a crossing point into the West Bank. The convoy moved on after 15 minutes.

On Sunday, Rice held a first round of talks with Israeli leaders.

    Rice: Time for 'a Palestinian state' is now, UT, 14.10.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-10-14-mideasttalks_N.htm

Rice Appeals for 'Restraint' by Turks

October 13, 2007
Filed at 10:57 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) -- Acknowledging ''a difficult time'' in relations with Turkey, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday appealed to the U.S. ally for restraint against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and in reaction to a genocide resolution in Congress.

The Bush administration sent two high-ranking officials to Turkey for talks Saturday with government leaders. Eric Edelman is undersecretary of defense for policy and was U.S. ambassador to Turkey from July 2003 to June 2005. Dan Fried is assistant secretary of state for European Affairs.

''It's a difficult time for the relationship,'' Rice told reporters during her trip to Russia.

U.S. officials said Friday there are about 60,000 Turkish troops along the country's southern border with Iraq. The U.S. military had not seen activity to suggest an imminent offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

But Turkey's parliament was expected to approve a government request to authorize an Iraq campaign as early as next week. The U.S. opposes a possible Turkish incursion into northern Iraq, which is one of the country's few relatively stable areas, and urged a diplomatic solution between Iraq and Turkey.

Kurdish rebels killed more than 15 Turkish soldiers in the past week and are blamed for an ambush that killed 12 people the week before. The government responded to the deaths by announcing tougher measures against the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

The preparations come amid concern by the U.S. about what effect the genocide resolution that passed a U.S. House committee this past week could have on supply routes the American military has used to move armored vehicles to troops in Iraq.

''I came here to express our regret (for the measure),'' Edelman was quoted as saying by private CNN-Turk television. The officials were expected to discuss military plans against the rebels before leaving the country later Saturday.

At issue in the measure is the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks. Turkey denies that the World War I-era deaths constituted genocide and says the toll has been inflated. Turkey also contends the dead were victims of civil war and unrest that killed Muslims as well as the overwhelmingly Christian Armenians.

Rice said she spoke Friday by telephone with Turkey's president, prime minister and foreign minister about the resolution. ''They were dismayed,'' she said.

In discussing their reaction to the resolution and activities of the PKK in northern Iraq, she said, ''I urged restraint.''

''The Turkish government, I think, is trying to react responsibly. They recognize how hard we worked to prevent that vote from taking place,'' the secretary added.

Turkey has recalled its ambassador to Washington for consultations and warned of serious repercussions if Congress passes the resolution.

''We'll continue to try to deal with anti-American sentiment that has been heightened by this vote,'' Rice said. ''We'll keep working to try to prevent it from winning on the floor.''

The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the nonbinding measure by a 27-21 vote Wednesday, defying warnings by President Bush. The administration, led by Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, warned lawmakers that passage of the resolution could put U.S. troops in Iraq at risk.

------

Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Moscow contributed to this report.

    Rice Appeals for 'Restraint' by Turks, NYT, 13.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Turkey.html

Putin Criticizes U.S. Officials on Missile Defense

October 13, 2007
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and STEVEN LEE MYERS

MOSCOW, Oct. 12 — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sharply upbraided the visiting American secretaries of state and defense on Friday as highly anticipated negotiations produced no specific accords to resolve growing disagreements over missile defense and other security issues.

Mr. Putin followed a pattern of recent criticisms of American policy, whether speaking in Moscow, Munich or even Maine, and he shaped the initial public tone on Friday when he greeted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates at his residence outside Moscow with a derisive lecture in front of the television cameras.

Mr. Putin dismissed with sarcasm the American plan to build components of a missile defense system in formerly Communist nations of Central Europe as a reaction to a threat that had not yet materialized.

“Of course, we can some time in the future decide that some antimissile defense should be established somewhere on the moon,” Mr. Putin said, “but before we reach such an arrangement we will lose an opportunity of fixing some particular arrangements between us.”

However, American officials said things had been different behind the scenes, a view not completely contradicted by Russian negotiators.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, concluded the negotiations by describing new proposals from the Americans as constructive if still insufficient.

The American and Russian ministers of foreign affairs and defense agreed to have experts analyze the fresh American offerings debated Friday and to meet again in six months.

American officials said that while the Russians may have showed hostility in public, their approach during closed-door sessions was far more constructive.

“What you saw playing out before the cameras did not reflect the substance and the progress of the private meetings that followed,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary.

The new American proposals presented by Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates included an invitation for Russia to join the United States and NATO as a full partner in designing and operating an antimissile system guarding all of Europe.

The offer even could include invitations for Russian and American officers to inspect and even be stationed as liaison officers at each other’s missile defense sites.

This concept of a new “Joint Regional Missile Defense Architecture” was described by senior administration officials as the most advanced and elaborate proposal on missile defense cooperation between Washington and Moscow.

“We remain eager to be full and open partners with Russia on missile defense,” Mr. Gates said.

Acknowledging that the two sides differed sharply on how to preserve the best aspects of treaties reducing nuclear warheads and guaranteeing verification, the American secretaries also proposed that issues involving missile defense, conventional forces and nuclear arms be treated as “a strategic framework,” to be discussed in an organized, parallel manner.

Mr. Lavrov, however, called for the United States to freeze its plans for developing missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic while discussions continue on a compromise.

But Ms. Rice made it clear that the Bush administration would not halt its efforts in those two countries. The United States, Ms. Rice said, “is engaged in discussions, negotiations, with our allies, and those will continue.”

Although the sides agreed that their ministers of foreign affairs and defense would meet again in six months, the talks did little to dispel Russian concerns over American intentions on missile defense, or to persuade the Kremlin to cancel its threat to suspend compliance with a treaty covering the array of conventional forces in Europe.

Mr. Putin often veers from the diplomatic language typical of such high-level meetings. On Friday, meeting with the Americans at his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, outside of Moscow, the outwardly warm interactions that once marked relations, at least between the countries’ two leaders, had clearly chilled in public.

Mr. Putin seemed to catch Mr. Gates and Ms. Rice off guard with his remarks, since no public statements were planned in advance.

Mr. Putin, though, arrived with notes and spent eight minutes welcoming the opportunity to talk about where Russia strongly disagreed with the Bush administration.

His remarks seemed to anger Ms. Rice, though Mr. Gates reacted impassively.

Mr. Putin kept the Americans waiting 40 minutes before he appeared. But Mr. Putin hardly rushed his guests away, as the private meeting went far longer than scheduled.

In addition to Mr. Putin’s remarks on missile defense, he suggested that Russia would withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which barred short- and medium-range missiles from Europe, unless it were renegotiated and expanded to include other countries.

Mr. Putin also suggested that the Bush administration was pressing ahead with its security plans in Eastern Europe at the expense of relations with Russia.

“We hope that in the process of such complex and multifaceted talks,” Mr. Putin said, referring to the format of the meetings on Friday, “you will not be forcing forward your relations with the Eastern European countries.”

A senior American official summarized the day’s efforts by saying the long-term goal of talks with the Russians remains “to create a virtuous cycle of cooperation.”

The two sides agreed to discuss a method for jointly monitoring and assessing the ballistic missile threat — taken to mean Iran — and to use that information to guide plans for antimissile systems in Europe that would benefit Russia, the United States and NATO.

Mr. Gates described American plans to place 10 antimissile interceptors in Poland and an advanced targeting radar in the Czech Republic as no threat to Moscow’s nuclear missiles.

“I would just like to emphasize that the missile defense system proposed for Central Europe is not aimed at Russia,” Mr. Gates said. “It would have no impact on Russia’s strategic deterrent.”

Mr. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, insisted however that the American missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic were “a potential threat for us.” He threatened that if the two bases were completed, “We will have to take some measures to neutralize this threat.”

He did not elaborate, but Russian military officials have warned they would consider reorienting their missiles’ targets to Europe if American missile defense bases were installed in Poland and the Czech Republic.

    Putin Criticizes U.S. Officials on Missile Defense, NYT, 13.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/world/europe/13russia.html

Bush to Honor Dalai Lama

October 11, 2007
Filed at 11:49 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Risking heightened tensions with China, President Bush will attend a ceremony to award Congress' highest civilian honor to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader whom Beijing reviles as a separatist.

Bush will go to the Capitol on Wednesday to speak at the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal, whose recipients have included Mother Teresa, former South African President Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II and Ronald and Nancy Reagan. The president also will welcome the Dalai Lama in the White House residence Tuesday.

Beijing expressed its unhappiness about honoring the Dalai Lama, the winner of the 1989 Peace Prize.

''China resolutely opposes the U.S. Congress awarding the Dalai its so-called Congressional Gold Medal, and firmly opposes any country or any person using the Dalai issue to interfere in China's internal affairs,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said at a news conference in Beijing.

Liu said China had ''presented a representation'' to Washington over Congress' move, but gave no details.

In his remarks on Wednesday, Bush will say that ''the Dalai Lama is a great spiritual leader whose aim is for the Tibetan people to be able to worship freely and to protect their land, but that they are not seeking independence from China,'' National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. ''The leaders of China should get to know the Dalai Lama like we've gotten to know him.''

The Dalai Lama will be honored for his ''many enduring and outstanding contributions to peace, nonviolence, human rights, and religious understanding.''

The Dalai Lama has been based in India since fleeing his Himalayan homeland in 1959 amid a failed uprising against Chinese rule. He remains immensely popular among Tibetans, despite persistent efforts to demonize him by Beijing, which objects vigorously to all overseas visits by the Dalai Lama.

China claims Tibet has been its territory for centuries, but many Tibetans say they were effectively independent for most of that period.

In its announcement, Congress said that the Dalai Lama was ''recognized in the United States and throughout the world as a leading figure of moral and religious authority.''

It praised him for fighting for democracy, freedom, and Tibet's cultural heritage, saying he promoted peace for Tibet ''through a negotiated settlement of the Tibet issue, based on autonomy within the People's Republic of China.''

The Dalai Lama insists he wants ''real autonomy,'' not independence for Tibet, but Beijing continues to accuse him of seeking to split the region from China.

------

Christopher Bodeen contributed to this report from Beijing

    Bush to Honor Dalai Lama, NYT, 11.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Dalai-Lama.html

Turkey Angry Over House Armenian Genocide Vote

October 12, 2007
The New York Times
By SEBNEM ARSU and STEVEN LEE MYERS

ISTANBUL, Oct. 11 — Turkey reacted angrily today to a House committee vote in Washington on Wednesday that condemned the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during World War I as an act of genocide, calling the decision “unacceptable.”

In a rare and uncharacteristically strong condemnation, President Abdullah Gul criticized the vote by the House Foreign Relations Committee and warned that the decision could work against the United States.

“Unfortunately, some politicians in the United States have once more dismissed calls for common sense, and made an attempt to sacrifice big issues for minor domestic political games,” Mr. Gul said in a statement to the semi-official Anatolian News Agency. “This is not a type of attitude that works to the benefit of, and suits, representatives of a great power like the Unites States of America. This unacceptable decision of the committee, like similar ones in the past, has no validity and is not worthy of the respect of the Turkish people.”

The House decision prompted reaction on the streets of Turkey’s capital, Ankara, where the youth branch of the extreme leftist Workers’ Party laid a black wreath at the entrance to the United States Embassy and spray-painted the Turkish flag onto an Embassy wall. The group held Turkish flags, posters of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, and banners reading, “Armenian genocide is an imperialistic lie,” the Anatolian agency reported. The protesters called for the closing of the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey, which American troops use to supply the military in central Iraq. “The U.S. once more showed that it is not our strategic ally but an enemy,” the Workers’ Party branch said in a statement.

Ross Wilson, the American ambassador, tried to calm relations, issuing a statement today in which he said the partnership between Turkey and the United States was strong and would remain so, and that he, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice regretted the committee decision.

Nevertheless, the Turkish Foreign Ministry warned that relations with the United States will be made more complicated. “The committee’s approval of this resolution was an irresponsible move which, at a greatly sensitive time, will make relations with a friend and ally” more difficult, the Anatolian News Agency quoted a Foreign Ministry statement as saying.

The Associated Press reported that the Armenian president, Robert Kocharian, today welcomed the resolution but also urged Turkey to join in talks with Armenia to restore bilateral relations.

The House decision rebuffed an intense campaign by the White House and earlier warnings from Turkey’s government that the vote would gravely strain its relations with the United States.

The vote was nonbinding and so largely symbolic, but its consequences could reach far beyond bilateral relations and spill into the war in Iraq.

Turkish officials and lawmakers warned that if the resolution was approved by the full House, they would reconsider supporting the American war effort, which includes permission to ship essential supplies through Turkey and northern Iraq.

Mr. Erdogan, speaking on CNN Turk television station on Wednesday, refused to say immediately what effect the resolution might have on the Incirlik base, a major transit station for American troops in Iraq.

Before the Wednesday vote, President Bush appeared on the South Lawn of the White House and implored the House not to take up the issue, only to have a majority of the committee disregard his warning at the end of the day, by a vote of 27 to 21.

“We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915,” Mr. Bush said in remarks that, reflecting official American policy, carefully avoided the use of the word genocide. “This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings, and its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror.”

A total of 1.5 million Armenians were killed beginning in 1915 in a systematic campaign by the fraying Ottoman Empire to drive Armenians out of eastern Turkey. Turks acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died but contend that the deaths, along with thousands of others, resulted from the war that ended with the creation of modern Turkey in 1923.

The House resolution was introduced early in the current session of Congress and has quietly moved forward over the last few weeks. But it provoked a fierce lobbying fight that pitted the politically influential Armenian-American population against the Turkish government, which hired equally influential former lawmakers like Robert L. Livingston, Republican of Louisiana, and Richard A. Gephardt, the former Democratic House majority leader, who backed a similar resolution when he was in Congress.

Backers of the resolution said Congressional action was overdue.

“Despite President George Bush twisting arms and making deals, justice prevailed,” said Representative Brad Sherman, a Democrat of California and a sponsor of the resolution. ”For if we hope to stop future genocides we need to admit to those horrific acts of the past.”

The issue of the Armenian genocide has perennially transfixed Congress and bedeviled presidents of both parties. Ronald Reagan was the only president publicly to call the killings genocide, but his successors have avoided the term.

When the issue last arose, in 2000, a similar resolution also won approval by a House committee, but President Clinton then succeeded in persuading a Republican speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, to withdraw the measure before the full House could vote. That time, too, Turkey had warned of canceling arms deals and withdrawing support for American air forces then patrolling northern Iraq under the auspices of the United Nations.

The new speaker, Nancy Pelosi, faced pressure from Democrats — especially colleagues in California, New Jersey and Michigan, with their large Armenian populations — to revive the resolution again after her party gained control of the House and Senate this year.

There is Democratic support for the resolution in the Senate, but it is unlikely to move in the months ahead because of Republican opposition and a shortage of time. Still, the Turkish government has made it clear that it would regard House passage alone as a harsh American indictment.

The sharply worded Turkish warnings against the resolution, especially the threats to cut off support for the American war in Iraq, seemed to embolden some of the resolution’s supporters. “If they use this to destabilize our solders in Iraq, well, then shame on them,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, a Democrat from New York who voted for it.

The Democratic leadership, however, appeared divided. Representative Rahm Emanuel, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, who worked in the Clinton White House when the issue came up in 2000, opposes the resolution.

In what appeared to be an effort to temper the anger caused by the issue, Democrats said they were considering a parallel resolution that would praise Turkey’s close relations with the United States even as the full House prepares to consider a resolution that blames the forerunner of modern Turkey for one of the worst crimes in history.

“Neither of these resolutions is necessary,” a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said Wednesday evening. He said that Mr. Bush was “very disappointed” with the vote.

Mr. Bush discussed the resolution in the White House on Wednesday with his senior national security aides. Speaking by secure video from Baghdad, the senior American officials in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, raised the resolution and warned that its passage could harm the war effort in Iraq, senior Bush aides said.

Appearing outside the West Wing after that meeting, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates noted that about 70 percent of all air cargo sent to Iraq passed through or came from Turkey, as did 30 percent of fuel and virtually all the new armored vehicles designed to withstand mines and bombs.

“They believe clearly that access to airfields and to the roads and so on in Turkey would be very much put at risk if this resolution passes and the Turks react as strongly as we believe they will,” Mr. Gates said, referring to the remarks of General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker.

Turkey severed military ties with France after its Parliament voted in 2006 to make the denial of the Armenian genocide a crime.

As the committee prepared to vote Wednesday, Mr. Bush, the American ambassador to Turkey, Ross Wilson, and other officials cajoled lawmakers by phone.

Representative Mike Pence, a conservative Republican from Indiana who has backed the resolution in the past, said Mr. Bush persuaded him to change his position and vote no. He described the decision as gut-wrenching, underscoring the emotions stirred in American politics by a 92-year-old question.

“While this is still the right position,” Mr. Pence said, referring to the use of the term genocide, “it is not the right time.”

The House Democratic leadership met Wednesday morning with Turkey’s ambassador to Washington, Nabi Sensoy, and other Turkish officials, who argued against moving ahead with a vote. But Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, who now holds Mr. Gephardt’s old job as majority leader, said he and Ms. Pelosi would bring the resolution to the floor before Congress adjourned this year.

In Turkey, a fresh wave of violence raised the specter of a Turkish raid into northern Iraq, something the United States is strongly urging against. A policeman was killed and six others were wounded in a bomb attack in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey on Wednesday, the state-run Anatolian News Agency reported.

The Associated Press reported from the town of Sirnak that Turkish warplanes and helicopters were attacking positions along the southern border with Iraq that are suspected of belonging to Kurdish rebels who have been fighting Turkish forces for years.

The Turkish government continued to prepare to request Parliament’s permission for an offensive into Iraq, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggesting that a vote could be held after the end of Ramadan. Parliamentary approval would bring Turkey the closest it has been since 2003 to a full-scale military offensive into Iraq. Sadullah Ergin, a senior government official, said today that the request was likely to be brought to Parliament next week, possibly as early as Monday after a cabinet meeting that day, according to the Anatolian News Agency. Sedat Laciner, from the International Strategic Research Institution, said that the Turkish public felt betrayed by what was perceived as a lack of American support for Turkey in its battle against the Kurds.

“American officials could think that Turkish people would ultimately forget about the lack of U.S. support in this struggle,” Mr. Laciner said, using words that could apply equally to views about the Armenian genocide. “Memories of Turks, however, are not that easy to erase once it hits sensitive spots.”

Sebnem Arsu reported from Istanbul, and Steven Lee Myers from Washington. Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington, and Sabrina Tavernise from Baghdad.

    Turkey Angry Over House Armenian Genocide Vote, NYT, 12.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/europe/12turkey.html?hp

Bush Urges Defeat of Genocide Bill

October 10, 2007
Filed at 12:42 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Just hours before a crucial vote, President Bush strongly urged Congress on Wednesday to reject legislation that would declare the World War I-era killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians a genocide.

Bush spoke as the House Foreign Affairs Committee was preparing to vote on the measure that Turkey insists could severely damage U.S. relations with a NATO ally that has been a major portal for U.S. military operations in the region.

''Its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror,'' the president said.

Shortly before the president spoke, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates stood before microphones on the White House driveway to express the administration's concerns.

''The passage of this resolution at this time would be very problematic for everything we are trying to do in the Middle East,'' Rice said.

Gates said that 70 percent of U.S. air cargo headed for Iraq goes through Turkey, as does about a third of the fuel used by the U.S. military in Iraq.

''Access to air fields and to the roads and so on in Turkey would very much be put at risk if this resolution passes and Turkey reacts as strongly as we believe they will,'' Gates said. He also said that 95 percent of the newly purchased Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles are flying through Turkey to get to Iraq.

Turkey made a final direct appeal to U.S. lawmakers to reject the resolution. The U.S. vote comes as Turkey's government was seeking parliamentary approval for a cross-border military operation to chase separatist Kurdish rebels who operate from bases in northern Iraq. The move, opposed by the United States, could open a new war front in the most stable part of Iraq.

''I have been trying to warn the (U.S.) lawmakers not to make a historic mistake,'' said Egemen Bagis, a close foreign policy adviser to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

A measure of the potential problem came in a warning the U.S. Embassy in Ankara issued Tuesday to U.S. citizens in Turkey of ''demonstrations and other manifestations of anti-Americanism throughout Turkey'' if the bill passes the committee and gets to the House floor for a vote, the embassy statement said.

On Wednesday, hundreds of Turks marched to U.S. missions in Turkey to protest the bill. In Ankara, members of the left-wing Workers' Party chanted anti-American slogans in front of the embassy, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported. A group of about 200 people staged a similar protest in front of the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul, private NTV television said.

Anatolia quoted a party official as saying that the ''genocide claim was an international, imperialist and a historical lie.''

The basic dispute involves the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, says the toll has been inflated, and insists that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

Armenian-American interest groups also have been rallying supporters in the large diaspora community to pressure lawmakers to make sure that a successful committee vote leads to consideration by the full House.

The bill seemed to have enough support on the committee for passage, but the majority was slight and some backers said they feared that Turkish pressure would narrow it. Most Republicans, who are a minority on the committee, were expected to vote against the resolution.

On Tuesday, Bryan Ardouny, executive director of the Armenian Assembly of America, sought to shore up support in letters to the committee's chairman, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., and its ranking Republican member, Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

''We have a unique opportunity in this Congress, while there are still survivors of the Armenian genocide living among us, to irrevocably and unequivocally reaffirm this fact of history,'' he said.

The head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Karekin II, was to give the opening invocation to the House's session ahead of the vote Wednesday.

Erdogan adviser Bagis said the resolution would make it hard for his government to continue close cooperation with the United States and resist calls from the public to go after the Kurdish rebels after deadly attacks on soldiers in recent weeks. Turkey previously has said it would prefer that the United States and its Iraqi Kurd allies in northern Iraq crack down on the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

The United States reiterated on Tuesday its warnings against an incursion.

------

On the Net:

House Foreign Affairs Committee: http://foreignaffairs.house.gov

    Bush Urges Defeat of Genocide Bill, NYT, 10.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Armenia-Genocide.html

An Israeli Strike on Syria Kindles Debate in the U.S.

October 10, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — A sharp debate is under way in the Bush administration about the significance of the Israeli intelligence that led to last month’s Israeli strike inside Syria, according to current and former American government officials.

At issue is whether intelligence that Israel presented months ago to the White House — to support claims that Syria had begun early work on what could become a nuclear weapons program with help from North Korea — was conclusive enough to justify military action by Israel and a possible rethinking of American policy toward the two nations.

The debate has fractured along now-familiar fault lines, with Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative hawks in the administration portraying the Israeli intelligence as credible and arguing that it should cause the United States to reconsider its diplomatic overtures to Syria and North Korea.

By contrast, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her allies within the administration have said they do not believe that the intelligence presented so far merits any change in the American diplomatic approach.

“Some people think that it means that the sky is falling,” a senior administration official said. “Others say that they’re not convinced that the real intelligence poses a threat.”

Several current and former officials, as well as outside experts, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the intelligence surrounding the Israeli strike remains highly classified.

Besides Ms. Rice, officials said that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was cautious about fully endorsing Israeli warnings that Syria was on a path that could lead to a nuclear weapon. Others in the Bush administration remain unconvinced that a nascent Syrian nuclear program could pose an immediate threat.

It has long been known that North Korean scientists have aided Damascus in developing sophisticated ballistic missile technology, and there appears to be little debate that North Koreans frequently visited a site in the Syrian desert that Israeli jets attacked Sept. 6. Where officials disagree is whether the accumulated evidence points to a Syrian nuclear program that poses a significant threat to the Middle East.

Mr. Cheney and his allies have expressed unease at the decision last week by President Bush and Ms. Rice to proceed with an agreement to supply North Korea with economic aid in return for the North’s disabling its nuclear reactor. Those officials argued that the Israeli intelligence demonstrates that North Korea cannot be trusted. They also argue that the United States should be prepared to scuttle the agreement unless North Korea admits to its dealing with the Syrians.

During a breakfast meeting on Oct. 2 at the White House, Ms. Rice and her chief North Korea negotiator, Christopher R. Hill, made the case to President Bush that the United States faced a choice: to continue with the nuclear pact with North Korea as a way to bring the secretive country back into the diplomatic fold and give it the incentive to stop proliferating nuclear material; or to return to the administration’s previous strategy of isolation, which detractors say left North Korea to its own devices and led it to test a nuclear device last October.

Mr. Cheney and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, also attended the meeting, administration officials said.

The Israeli strike occurred at a particularly delicate time for American diplomatic efforts. In addition to the North Korean nuclear negotiations, the White House is also trying to engineer a regional Middle East peace conference that would work toward a comprehensive peace accord between Arabs and Israelis.

The current and former American officials said Israel presented the United States with intelligence over the summer about what it described as nuclear activity in Syria. Officials have said Israel told the White House shortly in advance of the September raid that it was prepared to carry it out, but it is not clear whether the White House took a position then about whether the attack was justified.

One former top Bush administration official said Israeli officials were so concerned about the threat posed by a potential Syrian nuclear program that they told the White House they could not wait past the end of the summer to strike the facility.

Last week, Turkish officials traveled to Damascus to present the Syrian government with the Israeli dossier on what was believed to be a Syrian nuclear program, according to a Middle East security analyst in Washington. The analyst said that Syrian officials vigorously denied the intelligence and said that what the Israelis hit was a storage depot for strategic missiles.

That denial followed a similar denial from North Korea. Mr. Hill, the State Department’s assistant secretary for East Asia and Pacific affairs, raised the Syria issue with his North Korean counterparts in talks in Beijing in late September. The North Koreans denied providing any nuclear material to Syria.

Publicly, Syrian officials have said Israeli jets hit an empty warehouse.

Bruce Riedel, a veteran of the C.I.A. and the National Security Council and now a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, said that American intelligence agencies remained cautious in drawing hard conclusions about the significance of the suspicious activity at the Syrian site.

Still, Mr. Riedel said Israel would not have launched the strike in Syria if it believed Damascus was merely developing more sophisticated ballistic missiles or chemical weapons.

“Those red lines were crossed 20 years ago,” he said. “You don’t risk general war in the Middle East over an extra 100 kilometers’ range on a missile system.”

Another former intelligence official said Syria was attempting to develop so-called airburst capability for its ballistic missiles. Such technology would allow Syria to detonate warheads in the air to disperse the warhead’s material more widely.

Since North Korea detonated its nuclear device, Ms. Rice has prodded Mr. Bush toward a more diplomatic approach with North Korea, through talks that also include Japan, Russia, South Korea and China. Those talks led to the initial agreement last February for North Korea to shut down its nuclear reactor in exchange for fuel and food aid.

That deal angered conservatives who believed that the Bush administration had made diplomacy toward North Korea too high a priority, at the expense of efforts to combat the spread of illicit weapons in the Middle East.

“Opposing the Israeli strike to protect the six-party talks would be a breathtaking repudiation of the administration’s own national security strategy,” said John R. Bolton, former United States ambassador to the United Nations.

But other current and former officials argue that the diplomatic approach is America’s best option for dealing with the question of North Korean proliferation.

“You can’t just make these decisions using the top of your spinal cord, you have to use the whole brain,” said Philip D. Zelikow, the former counselor at the State Department. “What other policy are we going to pursue that we think would be better?”

    An Israeli Strike on Syria Kindles Debate in the U.S., NYT, 10.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/washington/10diplo.html?hp

US Backs NKorea Nuclear Facilities Plan

October 3, 2007
Filed at 12:21 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday hailed an agreement for North Korea to detail its nuclear programs and disable its main reactor complex, a key step toward what the United States hopes will be a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.

''Today's announcement reflects the common commitment of the participants in the six party talks to realize a Korean Peninsula that is free of nuclear weapons,'' Bush said.

He was referring to the six parties -- North Korea, the United States, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan -- that have teamed up on a deal to shut down North Korea's nuclear program.

Under an agreement reached in February, Pyongyang was required to shut down and seal its Yongbyon reactor facility, which it did in July. The second phase required it to disable its sole functioning reactor at Yongbyon and provide a full description of all its nuclear programs.

Wednesday's agreement calls for that to happen by the end of the year. China proposed the joint statement at last weekend's end of a new round of the six-party talks, and it was accepted by all the parties.

Bush said the deal ''will help secure the future peace and prosperity of the Northeast Asian region.''

The United States has agreed to lead disablement activities and provide the initial funding for them. Washington also reiterated its willingness to remove North Korea from a list of countries that sponsor terrorism, a key demand of Pyongyang.

    US Backs NKorea Nuclear Facilities Plan, NYT, 3.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Koreas-Nuclear.html

Iran Labels CIA 'Terrorist Organization'

September 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:14 p.m. ET
The New York Times

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army ''terrorist organizations,'' in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, using depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombing and killing Iraqi civilians, and torturing terror suspects in prisons.

''The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror,'' said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio.

The resolution, which is seen as a diplomatic offensive against the U.S., urges Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to treat the two as terrorist organizations. It also paves the way for the resolution to become legislation that -- if ratified by the country's hardline constitutional watchdog -- would become law.

The government is expected to wait for U.S. reaction before making its decision. In Washington, the White House declined to comment Saturday.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 76-22 in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. While the proposal attracted overwhelming bipartisan support, a small group of Democrats said they feared labeling the state-sponsored organization a terrorist group could be interpreted as a congressional authorization of military force in Iran.

The Bush administration had already been considering whether to blacklist an elite unit within the Revolutionary Guard, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial sanctions.

The U.S. legislative push came a day after Ahmadinejad told world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly that his country would defy attempts to impose new sanctions by ''arrogant powers'' seeking to curb its nuclear program, accusing them of lying and imposing illegal penalties on his country.

He said the nuclear issue was now ''closed'' as a political issue and Iran would pursue the monitoring of its nuclear program ''through its appropriate legal path,'' the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated over Washington accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and has been supplying Shiite militias in Iraq with deadly weapons used to kill U.S. troops. Iran denies both of the allegations.

    Iran Labels CIA 'Terrorist Organization', NYT, 29.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-US.html

Washington Sees an Opportunity on Iran

September 27, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — A year and a half after President Bush told top aides that he feared he might be forced someday to choose between acquiescing to Iran’s nuclear ambitions and ordering military action, the struggle to find an effective alternative — sanctions with real bite — is entering a new phase.

The speech at the United Nations on Tuesday by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is already being used by American officials in an effort to convince European allies that Iran’s leadership will respond only to a sharp new wave of economic pressure, far greater than anything it has endured so far. Mr. Ahmadinejad, trying to make the case that no additional sanctions would derail Iran’s uranium enrichment program, declared that “the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed.”

Until now, Washington has relied on gradually escalating sanctions, including convincing a growing number of banks that it is risky to lend new funds to Iran for major oil projects. Yet in interviews, American diplomats, White House officials and military officers acknowledge that the strategy has been largely ineffective.

So have veiled threats of military action. While President Bush and his aides insist that “all options are on the table,” senior officials say there is little enthusiasm in the White House or the Pentagon for military attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, though they acknowledge that such war plans are always being refined.

The officials say the Iranians fully understand that while the United States could destroy Iran’s major nuclear facilities, it would be far harder to manage the probable response, which could include heightened attacks on American forces in Iraq, possible retaliation on Israel or the destabilization of governments from Lebanon to Pakistan.

Administration officials say that the chances appear slim that the United States can enlist Russia and China behind really tough sanctions against Iran, and that it could take several months for such sanctions to emerge, if they do at all.

But for the first time, administration officials say, the European allies are talking about a far broader cutoff of bank lending and technology to Iran than any tried so far. The lead is being taken by the new government in France, whose president, Nicolas Sarkozy, issued a starker warning to the United Nations this week about a nuclear Iran than did Mr. Bush.

That has created a new initiative between Washington and Paris unlike any since they split over the invasion of Iraq. The effort, said Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, is intended to convince Iranians that the nuclear program is “taking us into the ditch,” and to make the pressure so great “that they finally have to make a strategic choice.”

In a meeting on Tuesday with editors and reporters for The New York Times, Mr. Hadley conceded that the United States was still struggling to understand how much pressure it would take to force Iran to make what he called a “strategic choice” and said that intelligence estimates “vary widely” about how much time remained before the Iranians could have a weapon.

One senior European official who is taking part in conversations in New York this week to design sanctions that the entire European Union might agree to said it was now “a race between how fast they can build centrifuges and we can turn up the pain.”

So the discussions now center on cutting off even more lending to the Iranians and — for the first time — supplies of technology and other goods. But that would require severing, one by one, deep ties between European and Iranian businesses, and necessitate what Mr. Hadley called a consensus for “aggressive action, even if that means compromising their commercial interests.”

A range of officials acknowledged the difficulty of designing a military strike option effective enough to set the Iranian program back for many years.

While many of the sites have long been known — especially the giant underground complex at Natanz, where just shy of 2,000 centrifuges have been installed — there is no certainty that military action could destroy the entire system of well-disguised factories and laboratories, some known and some hidden.

And the turmoil certain to follow such an attack may not be worth military action that simply delays nuclear development, officials say.

That probably explains why Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have both vowed to pursue the diplomatic track, saying that military action is a last resort. But those comments have not silenced the speculation here, in Europe and in the Middle East that America is planning for an attack.

“This constant drumbeat of war is not helpful, and it’s not useful,” said Adm. William J. Fallon, the senior American commander in the region.

In a telephone interview this week as he visited various regional capitals, Admiral Fallon pledged that the United States would “maintain our capabilities in that region of the world in an attempt to make sure that if they opt for military activity there, that is not going to be very useful to them.”

At the same time, he said, “we will pursue avenues that might result in some kind of improvement in Iranian behavior.”

“I am not talking about a war strategy, but a strategy to demonstrate our resolve,” Admiral Fallon said. “We have a very, very robust capability in the region, especially in comparison to Iran. That is one of the things that people might want to keep in mind. Our intention is to make sure they understand that, but we are being prudent in our actions and certainly not trying to be provocative.”

In recent days others have begun to speak openly about what the United States would face if Iran successfully fielded nuclear weapons or manufactured enough uranium to make clear that it could produce weapons in short order. It is that second possibility — in which Iran would stay within the strict rules of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty — that worries many intelligence officials.

Gen. John P. Abizaid, who retired this year as senior American commander in the Middle East, said that while the United States must do all it can to prevent Iran from going nuclear, the world could live with a nuclear Iran and could contain it.

“I believe that the United States, with our great military power, can contain Iran, that the United States can deliver clear messages to the Iranians that makes it clear to them that while they may develop one or two nuclear weapons, they’ll never be able to compete with us in our true military might and power, and they should not underestimate either our resolve or our ability to deal with them in the event of war,” General Abizaid said in a speech last week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington policy institute

He said the broad rules of deterrence that kept a nuclear peace between the United States and the Soviet Union during the cold war, and remain in effect with nuclear Russia and China today, would be effective against a nuclear Iran.

“I believe nuclear deterrence will work with the Iranians,” General Abizaid said.

Inside the administration, senior officials say they have also considered organizing a regional forum to confront Iran, using as a model the “six party” talks with North Korea, an effort to put pressure on that country from all its neighbors. But in the Middle East, officials say, the idea has hardly gotten off the ground.

“As we talk to the regional leaders, we have yet to hear a single good idea for ways to find common ground, or a forum or framework for dealing with Iran,” said one senior official involved in Iran policy. The problem, officials say, is that none of Iran’s neighbors are willing and able to play the decisive role alongside the United States.

    Washington Sees an Opportunity on Iran, NYT, 27.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/washington/27iran.html?hp

Editorial

The ‘Crazies’ and Iran

September 27, 2007
The New York Times

Like Mohamed ElBaradei, we want to make sure what he calls the “crazies” don’t start a war with Iran. We fear his do-it-yourself diplomacy is playing right into the crazies’ hands — in Washington and Tehran.

Last month, Mr. ElBaradei, the chief nuclear inspector for the United Nations, cut his own deal with Iran’s government, intended to answer questions about its secretive nuclear past. Unfortunately, it made no mention of Iran’s ongoing, very public refusal to stop enriching uranium — usable for nuclear fuel or potentially a nuclear weapon — in defiance of Security Council orders.

In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly this week, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wasn’t shy about explaining what a great deal he’d gotten: gloating that the dispute over his country’s nuclear program is now “closed.” That’s not true, but the deal has given Russia and China another reason to delay imposing new sanctions on Iran for its continued defiance.

We’d like to hear the answers to a lot of those outstanding questions. Among our favorites: Has Iran built more sophisticated uranium centrifuges for a clandestine program? And, what were Iran’s scientists planning to do with designs, acquired from Pakistan, to mold uranium into shapes that look remarkably like the core of a nuclear weapon?

According to the so-called work plan agreed to by Mr. ElBaradei, Iran will address one set of questions at a time, and move on to the next set only after his inspectors have closed the file on the previous set. If, true to form, the Iranians dole out just enough information to keep the inspectors asking, the process could drag on and on.

That would give Iran more time, cover and confidence to continue mastering enrichment and producing nuclear fuel. The further along the Iranians get, the greater our fear that President Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney, will decide that one more war isn’t going to do their reputation much harm.

Some critics charge that the Nobel Prize has gone to Mr. ElBaradei’s head and that he’s decided that international peacemaker (and holding off George Bush) is his true life calling — not nuclear inspector. The more charitable explanation is that he believes he’s the only one who can stop what he fears is an imminent war.

We fervently wish that Mr. Bush and the American Congress had listened to Mr. ElBaradei in 2003 when he said there was no evidence that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program. But the key to Mr. ElBaradei’s credibility then, and what makes the International Atomic Energy Agency so indispensable, is he was offering his agency’s clear scientific judgment.

Once he started making diplomatic deals, that judgment — essential not only for ensuring that Iran, but also a half-dozen other states, don’t go nuclear — immediately becomes suspect.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice complained last week that the I.A.E.A. shouldn’t be in the business of diplomacy. Yes, that’s her job. And she’s not done nearly enough to try to get the Iranians to sit down at the table with a credible offer of comprehensive talks. Sanctions alone are unlikely to restrain Iran’s nuclear program, especially at the rate the Security Council is moving.

We can see why Mr. ElBaradei was tempted. The only way he can recoup now is by insisting that Iran do what the Security Council has ordered: Suspend enrichment and answer all the questions about its nuclear past.

    The ‘Crazies’ and Iran, NYT, 27.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/opinion/27thur1.html

US Rebukes Iranian President

September 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:18 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- A top U.S. diplomat issued a strong rebuke Wednesday to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his declaration that the nuclear case ''is closed'' and that Tehran will defy any further U.N. Security Council efforts to impose new sanctions on the Islamic regime.

''I am sorry to tell President Ahmadinejad that the case is not closed,'' said Nicholas Burns, the No. 3 diplomat at the State Department. ''The Iranian president is badly mistaken if he thinks the international community is going to forget about the fact that his country is continuing -- against the will of the United Nations Security council -- its nuclear research programs.''

''The international community is not going to let him forget that his country is operating against the wishes of the Security Council,'' Burns said, speaking to reporters after meeting with Haitian President Rene Preval.

The comments from Burns, the undersecretary of state, came hours before he was scheduled to meet with senior diplomats from the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany to craft elements of a new resolution calling for fresh sanctions against Iran.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to meet Friday with her counterparts on the issue as well.

The permanent members of the security council are the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.

Ahmadinejad told world leaders his country will defy any further U.N. Security Council resolutions imposed by ''arrogant powers'' seeking to curb its nuclear program, accusing them of lying and imposing illegal sanctions against Tehran.

He said the nuclear issue was now ''closed'' as a political issue and Iran would pursue the monitoring of its nuclear program ''through its appropriate legal path,'' the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.

    US Rebukes Iranian President, NYT, 26.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iran.html

Columbia Still Reeling Over Visit

September 26, 2007
The New York Times
By KAREN W. ARENSON

Before Iran’s president took the stage at Columbia University on Monday, the university’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, sent out an early-morning e-mail message, calling on students and faculty “to live up to the best of Columbia’s traditions.” Yesterday, many critics questioned whether Mr. Bollinger had met that test himself.

On campus and in editorials across the nation, on political blogs and throughout academia, there was a sharp division of opinion about Mr. Bollinger’s pointed introduction of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a man who exhibited “all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator” and whose denial of the Holocaust was “either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”

Some said Mr. Bollinger’s remarks were just the rebuke that Mr. Ahmadinejad deserved. Others said they were embarrassing and offensive. And there were still questions about whether Mr. Ahmadinejad should have been afforded a public platform at a prestigious university at all.

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies and director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia, said, “The tone from the host of an event was uncivil and uncalled for.

“The president of the university had every right to state his differences,” he said. “That was more than acceptable. But I believe it was embarrassing to the university, frankly, that they should decide to invite him and then treat him in this manner.”

But Emily Steinberger, a sophomore who is a spokeswoman for LionPAC, a pro-Israel group at Columbia that had vehemently opposed Mr. Ahmadinejad’s invitation, applauded Mr. Bollinger.

“President Bollinger was caustic in his criticism of Ahmadinejad, but anything else would have been inappropriate and troubling,” said Ms. Steinberger, of Teaneck, N.J. “Bollinger repeatedly said that his invitation in no way represented a condoning of Ahmadinejad’s worldviews and policies, and yesterday he proved that.”

Columbia’s provost, Alan Brinkley, said the controversy “was of a magnitude we hadn’t seen before.”

“This really was the biggest event I’ve seen since I’ve started as provost,” said Dr. Brinkley, who called it too early to judge the fallout for Columbia.

A university spokesman, David M. Stone, said that Mr. Bollinger, a legal scholar whose specialty is freedom of speech and freedom of the press, was not available to comment yesterday because he had a tight schedule.

A number of Iranian-born scholars — experts about the Middle East who now live in the United States — said they were shocked by Mr. Bollinger.

“If I as a faculty member had done this in front of my president, I would been out the next day,” said Ali Akbar Mahdi, a professor of sociology at Ohio Wesleyan University. Dr. Mahdai, who is a critic of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s, added, “I was taken aback.”

So was Hamid Zangeneh, a professor of economics at Widener University in Pennsylvania and editor of The Journal of Iranian Research and Analysis. “I was disgusted by the uncivilized behavior by President Bollinger,” he said. “I don’t think it is becoming for the president of a university to engage in such behavior. It wasn’t academic. It wasn’t common sense.

“Instead of behaving like a scholar, a president,” he said, “he behaved like a hooligan.”

Some Jewish groups that were among the most vocal critics of the Ahmadinejad invitation applauded Mr. Bollinger, but remained critical of giving the Iranian president a stage.

“He definitely came out swinging, with the whole world watching,” said Elliot Mathias, director of Hasbara Fellowships, a pro-Israel organization, said of Mr. Bollinger.

“I was glad to hear how strongly he condemned him,” he added. “But I don’t think it makes up for the invitation. With someone who denies the Holocaust, who wants to destroy Israel and to turn the Western world into an Islamic caliphate, there is not room to have discussion. It is like discussing with the Ku Klux Klan whether blacks are inferior.”

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said Mr. Bollinger’s speech was counterproductive.

“If you invite someone, you have to be polite,” he said. “Ahmadinejad scored points, especially in their culture. If you permit an enemy to come into your home, you still treat him with dignity and respect. Therefore, we lost. The points that President Bollinger made were fine. But to close with insulting words almost undid everything he said before. It was not a good teaching experience.”

Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor who was a consultant to the Coalition Provisional Authority set up in Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, said he did not consider Mr. Bollinger’s performance to be rude.

“There are some issues where it is appropriate to be delicate and careful, and to use exaggerated politeness,” he said. “But there are some issues of such grave importance that being too polite to your guest is actually a betrayal of your beliefs. For Lee Bollinger, the Holocaust is one. I applaud him for that.”

Gary G. Sick, a senior research scholar at Columbia’s Middle East Institute, said he would be surprised if there were “any long-term price” for Mr. Bollinger’s remarks.

“A lot of people will be pleased that he came out swinging, that he was willing to tell like it is, to be tough,” he said. “I bet right now that his in-box has a lot more congratulatory cables than negative ones.”

    Columbia Still Reeling Over Visit, NYT, 26.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/nyregion/26columbia.html

Ahmadinejad at Columbia: Sparks Fly

September 26, 2007
The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Ahmadinejad, at Columbia, Parries and Puzzles” (front page, Sept. 25) and “Mr. Ahmadinejad Speaks” (editorial, Sept. 25):

What was there ever to fear or loathe about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia University? That such a forum would boost his credibility? That he might inspire terrorists here or abroad to rise up against America?

The results speak for themselves. The Iranian president’s words and actions did more to discredit him than all the declamations in Washington ever could. Such is the beauty of free speech in an open democracy: intelligence is rewarded; irrationality is not.

Robert J. Inlow

Charlottesville, Va., Sept. 25, 2007

•

To the Editor:

The visit to Columbia University by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a theater of the absurd. The eloquent and on-target attack on the Iranian president by Lee C. Bollinger, the president of Columbia, lacked the impact that similar words would have had when courageously voiced by Iranian academics in Iran, where they would face imprisonment.

Moreover, Columbia’s Middle East studies faculty invited the wrong guy! It is well known that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei runs Iran, not Mr. Ahmadinejad, who is given more credibility at Columbia University than in his own country.

In repeated e-mail discussions I had with Mr. Bollinger and other administrators, they justified inviting Mr. Ahmadinejad to speak at our campus because he would be engaged in “debate” and asked hard questions. Yet Mr. Bollinger admitted at the conclusion of his remarks that he did not expect Mr. Ahmadinejad to answer any of his “hard” questions.

Columbia’s Middle East studies faculty owes it to the students to invite more credible representatives of Iranian culture and politics. In my field of biomedical sciences, a scholar of such low repute would not be invited to speak at Columbia University. This theater of the absurd was staged by a tiny minority of faculty whose political agenda supersedes the academic standards that Columbia University should stand for.

Andrew R. Marks, M.D.

New York, Sept. 25, 2007

The writer is professor and chairman, department of physiology and cellular biophysics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

•

To the Editor:

Lee C. Bollinger’s speech before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s showing at Columbia was another display of America’s foreign policy of late: If we don’t like your policies or your president, we insult, we bully and, just maybe, we bomb. Then, as Mr. Bollinger did, we applaud ourselves and our actions because we support freedom. Constructive dialogue: never heard of it. If Mr. Bollinger didn’t really want to open dialogue, as was clear from his speech, he shouldn’t have extended the invitation.

Iran isn’t a naughty child who needs to be beaten into cooperating; history and Iraq show that this strategy rarely works in the long term. By attacking and vilifying Mr. Ahmadinejad, an invited guest to Columbia, Mr. Bollinger distracted from and tainted what could have been a different showing from Mr. Ahmadinejad and effectively dashed any hopes of the lecture’s being a constructive one — and one that could have perhaps been the beginning of substantive dialogue with Iran. Reem Ali Abu-Libdeh

Boston, Sept. 25, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said a fair number of outrageous and offensive things at Columbia University on Monday, among them that there are no homosexuals in Iran (if so, who exactly is being jailed and hanged for homosexuality in Iran?), and repeating his usual refusal to accept the Holocaust as fact.

But the bottom line is that, in allowing him to speak, the Columbia president, Lee C. Bollinger, made the most important point of all: that the American democratic system is superior to Iran’s current political system.

It’s as simple as this: an American political leader would have never been allowed to freely address the Iranian public, unfiltered and in real time.

Do not those protesting Mr. Ahmadinejad’s presence realize that the fact of his appearance at Columbia will have been noted and quite eloquently understood throughout the Middle East and the world? Mark Hagland

Chicago, Sept. 25, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Lee C. Bollinger’s “introduction” of the president of Iran was outrageous. There’s a lot to be said about Mideast politics and the Iranian and United States entanglements there.

Certainly, as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and as a historian of German history, I find Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s approach to the Holocaust execrable.

However, if we wish to take the high moral road on grounds of freedom of speech, we fail by insulting an officially invited guest speaker before he has even spoken. This does not do credit to the principle of free speech.

Renate Bridenthal

New York, Sept. 25, 2007

To the Editor:

The emotional, irrational and hateful reaction of certain aspects of the American media, as well as the public, particularly in New York and at one of its esteemed academic institutions, against the visiting Iranian president is a sad reminder of the forces of intolerance in the bosom of American civil society.

From the CBS “60 Minutes” reporter who opted to speak for the “American people” to express his outrage at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s simple request to lay a wreath at ground zero, pursuant to his letter to American people last year, where he condemned the 9/11 atrocities in the strongest language, to the impolite and outright rude introduction by Columbia University’s president, reeking intolerance has become all-infecting and, obviously, in dire need of rethinking by those who spew it.

Kaveh L. Afrasiabi

Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 25, 2007

The writer is a former adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team.

To the Editor:

We need to thank Columbia University for inviting to serious discussion Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, something our national leaders should be doing.

Partial truths, half truths and outright falsehoods have obviously clouded the whole situation on all sides for a long time. Time may be running out for unbloody meetings or possibility of enlightenment, as we are again hearing drumbeats for more and extended war.

(Rev.) David W. Long

West Chester, Pa., Sept. 25, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Columbia University’s treatment of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is appalling. It would have been understandable had Columbia simply condemned Mr. Ahmadinejad’s ideas or remarks in a debate or discussion forum.

However, not only did the university set the tone for the forum by launching ad hominem attacks, but the school then asserts that the forum was intended for the ideal of open discussion of ideas — a discussion that Columbia aborted in its infancy.

In doing so, Columbia has demonstrated again the temptation of Orientalism: for us to humiliate and caricature a feared Other, put it on open display, and then pat ourselves on the back for being enlightened enough to make the display case.

Columbia needs to either fully exclude or fully include Mr. Ahmadinejad in its discussions of him. Setting him up as a simple straw man to be knocked down does a disservice to academic discourse. Michael Chen

Mount Prospect, Ill., Sept. 25, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Will George W. Bush appear at an Iranian university and take questions from Iranians? They surely would like to ask about C.I.A. activity in their own and surrounding nations, about our support of “our” shah and Savak, about American aid to Iraq during the war in which Iranians were victims of poison gas, about “coalition” attacks on and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, about corruption and contracts, and about human rights at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and secret prisons.

Jean Kathleen Ranallo

Englewood, Fla., Sept. 25, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Re “Mr. Ahmadinejad Speaks” (editorial, Sept. 25): In commenting on the appearance of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia, you say, “Unlike Iran’s citizens, Americans have the right to laugh at leaders.” Yes, we do have that right, and I’m glad for it.

But when was the last time President Bush appeared before an audience that laughed at him? His audiences are always screened for potential troublemakers. People wearing T-shirts or carrying signs with critical messages are kept out of view. He barely has to face a difficult question from a member of the public.

It would be nice if we could exercise the right to laugh at our leaders where they might actually hear the cackles.

Doug Henwood

New York, Sept. 25, 2007

    Ahmadinejad at Columbia: Sparks Fly, NYT, 26.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/opinion/l26iran.html

Cubans Walk Out During Bush UN Speech

September 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:42 p.m. ET
The New York Times

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Cuba's foreign minister walked out of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday in protest of President Bush's speech in which he said the ''long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end'' on the communist island.

The Cuban delegation later issued a statement saying the decision by Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque to leave the session was a ''sign of profound rejection of the arrogant and mediocre statement by President Bush.''

In his speech, Bush looked ahead to a Cuba no longer ruled by Fidel Castro, the ailing 81-year-old leader of the communist-run government.

''In Cuba, the long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end,'' Bush said. ''The Cuban people are ready for their freedom. And as that nation enters a period of transition, the United Nations must insist on free speech, free assembly and, ultimately, free and competitive elections.''

    Cubans Walk Out During Bush UN Speech, NYT, 25.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Cuba-Protest.html

Bush Urges U.N. to Spread Freedom

September 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:24 a.m. ET
The New York Times

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- President Bush announced new sanctions Tuesday against the military dictatorship in Myanmar, accusing it of imposing ''a 19-year reign of fear'' that denies basic freedoms of speech, assembly and worship. ''Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma,'' the president said in an address to the U.N. General Assembly.

Bush is expected to mention Iran in his speech -- but only briefly, citing Iran in a list of countries where people lack freedoms and live in fear. The White House wants to avoid giving any more attention to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose splash of speeches and interviews has dominated the days leading to the U.N. meeting.

Instead of Iran, the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, also known as Burma, was drawing Bush's ire. He was announcing new visa restrictions and financial sanctions against the regime and those who provide it financial aid.

The policies come as Myanmar's military government issued a threat Monday to the barefoot Buddhist monks who led 100,000 people marching through a major city. It was the strongest protest against the repressive regime in two decades.

Bush spent Monday trying to revive the Mideast peace process. He was reminded of the hurdles as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas insisted that a U.S. peace conference deal with ''issues of substance'' -- a sign of old skepticism that accompanies new hope.

Late Tuesday morning, Bush planned to meet with another friend under tense circumstances, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The Iraqi leader is deeply frustrated over the killing of 11 Iraqi civilians by Blackwater USA security guards.

By calling on the U.N. to take up a ''mission of liberation,'' Bush was posing a challenge to the U.N. to uphold its original goal of ensuring freedom in many forms -- from tyranny, disease, illiteracy and poverty. He was expected to lean heavily on the U.N.'s Declaration of Human Rights, approved more than 50 years ago.

His aim is to remind the body that the expansion of freedom is not a Western goal, nor even just a Bush doctrine, but rather one that underpins the U.N. itself. The president heads to the forum, though, with his clout weakened by the plodding war in Iraq.

His speech, said White House spokesman Dana Perino, is about ''upholding the promise of the U.N. founding.'' Bush aides say that by design, the address will stick to broad themes.

What it is not about, Perino said plainly, is Iran.

''The president wanted this speech to focus on many other issues that are facing the world -- issues that people in Sudan and Zimbabwe and Burma and countless other countries are dealing with,'' she said.

Still, Iran's leader, Ahmadinejad, managed to cause a stir.

In an interview with The Associated Press, he denied all the chief accusations against Iran: that it is providing weapons to kill U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting terrorism or breaking international law by developing nuclear weapons.

Behind the scenes, the U.S. is aggressively pushing for a new round of Security Council sanctions against Iran for its defiance on the nuclear issue.

Bush did not expect to cross paths with Ahmadinejad in the U.N. building.

The Iranian leader also would not be attending the president's reception for fellow world leaders at his hotel in the evening.

''Lost in the mail,'' Perino said of Ahmandinejad's invitation.

Bush later will participate in a roundtable on democracy; take part in a U.N. Security Council session on crisis in Africa; host a reception; and attend a dinner of leaders.

He had spent Monday trying to add some life to the Mideast peace process.

Appearing before reporters with Abbas after an hour-long meeting that also included Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Bush didn't mention the fall conference he has championed.

He promised the United States ''will be a strong partner'' in establishing an independent state for Palestinians. ''I believe that the vision of two states side by side in peace is achievable,'' Bush said.

But Abbas said the meeting should be the precursor to ''full negotiations on the permanent status.'' A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to more freely discuss the president's private talks, said ''there will not be a negotiation'' at the November meeting.

    Bush Urges U.N. to Spread Freedom, NYT, 25.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush.html?hp

Ahmadinejad, at Columbia, Parries and Puzzles

September 25, 2007
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER

He said that there were no homosexuals in Iran — not one — and that the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews should not be treated as fact, but theory, and therefore open to debate and more research.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, aired those and other bewildering thoughts in a two-hour verbal contest at Columbia University yesterday, providing some ammunition to people who said there was no point in inviting him to speak. Yet his appearance also offered evidence of why he is widely admired in the developing world for his defiance toward Western, especially American, power.

In repeated clashes with his hosts, Mr. Ahmadinejad accused the United States of supporting terrorist groups, and characterized as hypocritical American and European efforts to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“If you have created the fifth generation of atomic bombs and are testing them already, who are you to question other people who just want nuclear power,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, adding, pointedly: “I think the politicians who are after atomic bombs, politically, they’re backwards. Retarded.”

His speech at Columbia, in advance of his planned speech today at the United Nations, produced a day of intense protests and counterprotests around the campus. It was a performance at once both defiant — he said Iran could not recognize Israel “because it is based on ethnic discrimination, occupation and usurpation and it consistently threatens its neighbors” — and conciliatory — he said he wanted to visit ground zero to “show my respect” for what he called “a tragic event.”

And he said that even if the Holocaust did occur, the Palestinians should not pay the price for it.

He began the afternoon on the defensive.

Lee C. Bollinger, the president of Columbia, under intense attack for the invitation — one protester outside the campus auditorium where Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke passed out fliers that said, “Bollinger, too bad bin Laden is not available” — opened the event with a 10-minute verbal assault.

He said, “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,” adding, “You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”

The Iranian president, who was seated 10 feet away from him on the stage, wore a frozen smile. The anti-Ahmadinejad portion of the audience, which looked to be about 70 percent of it, cheered and chortled.

Mr. Bollinger praised himself and Columbia for showing they believed in freedom of speech by inviting the Iranian president, then continued his attack. He said it was “well documented” that Iran was a state sponsor of terrorism, accused Iran of fighting a proxy war against the United States in Iraq and questioned why Iran has refused “to adhere to the international standards” of disclosure for its nuclear program.

“I doubt,” Mr. Bollinger concluded, “that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad did not directly answer the questions, but he did address them. Before doing so though, he said pointedly:

“In Iran, tradition requires when you invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students enough to allow them to make their own judgment, and don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of complaints to provide vaccination to the students and faculty.”

He added, to some cheers, “Nonetheless, I shall not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s much-talked-about appearance at Columbia was the opening act of a week of dramatic theater here as the United Nations General Assembly opened its annual session. He and his nemesis, President Bush, are scheduled to address the General Assembly today.

Mr. Bush, asked about Columbia’s decision to invite Mr. Ahmadinejad, told Fox News that it was “O.K. with me,” but added that he might not have extended the invitation himself.

“When you really think about it,” Mr. Bush said, “he’s the head of a state sponsor of terror, he’s — and yet an institution in our country gives him a chance to express his point of view, which really speaks to the freedoms of the country. I’m not sure I’d have offered the same invitation.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad is allowed under international law and diplomatic protocols to travel freely within a 25-mile radius of Columbus Circle. But the police said last week that he would not be allowed near ground zero.

Inside the auditorium, the Columbia students laughed appreciatively when Mr. Ahmadinejad pushed back against the attempts by Dean John H. Coatsworth, the event’s moderator, to get him to stop rambling and answer questions directly.

“Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel?” Mr. Coatsworth asked.

“We love all people,” Mr. Ahmadinejad dodged. “We are friends of the Jews. There are many Jews living peacefully in Iran.” He went on to say that the Palestinian “nation” should be allowed a referendum to decide its own future.

Mr. Coatsworth persisted: “I think you can answer that question with a simple yes or no.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad was having none of it. “You ask the question and then you want the answer the way you want to hear it,” he shot back. “I ask you, is the Palestinian issue not a question of international importance? Please tell me yes or no.”

For that, he got a round of applause from the students, who had lined up four hours before the speech to get into the auditorium. Online tickets evaporated in 90 minutes last week, they said, almost on par with a Bruce Springsteen concert.

“I’m proud of my university today,” said Stina Reksten, a 28-year-old graduate student from Norway. “I don’t want to confuse the very dire human rights situation in Iran with the issue here, which is freedom of speech. This is about academic freedom.”

It remains unclear whether Columbia’s leaders were able to mollify critics through their critical treatment of Mr. Ahmadinejad. But they made some headway: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee sent out an e-mail message shortly after the speech with the subject line, “A Must Read: Columbia University President’s Intro of Iran’s Ahmadinejad today.”

Inside was a transcript of Mr. Bollinger’s introduction.

Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.

    Ahmadinejad, at Columbia, Parries and Puzzles, NYT, 25.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/world/middleeast/25iran.html?hp

Quotes by Iran's Ahmadinejad

September 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times
Filed at 3:34 p.m. ET

Comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose remarks were translated from Farsi.

-- On a toughly worded criticism in the introduction by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, who called him a ''petty and cruel dictator'':

I think the text read by the dear gentleman here, more than addressing me, was an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here, present here. In a university environment we must allow people to speak their mind, to allow everyone to talk so that the truth is eventually revealed by all.

-- On the Holocaust:

Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?

-- On Holocaust deniers:

My question was simple: There are researchers who want to approach the topic from a different perspective. Why are they put into prison? Right now, there are a number of European academics who have been sent to prison because they attempted to write about the Holocaust or research it from a different perspective, questioning certain aspects of it. My question is: Why isn't it open to all forms of research?

-- On Israel as a Jewish state:

We love all nations. We are friends with the Jewish people. There are many Jews living in Iran with security. You must understand that in our constitution and our laws and the parliamentary elections for every 150,000 people we get one representative in the parliament. For the Jewish community one-fifth of this number they still get one independent representative in the parliament. Our proposal to the Palestinian plight is a humanitarian and a democratic proposal. What we say is that to solve this 60-year problem, we must allow the Palestinian people to decide about its future for itself.

-- On nuclear research:

Some big powers create a monopoly over science and prevent other nations in achieving scientific development as well. This, too, is one of the surprises of our time. Some big powers do not want to see the progress of other societies and nations. They turn to thousands of reasons, make allegations, place economic sanctions to prevent other nations from developing and advancing, all resulting from their distance from human values and the teachings of the divine prophets. Regretfully, they have not been trained to serve mankind.

-- On 9/11:

Why did this happen? What caused it? What conditions led to it? .. Who truly was involved? Who was really involved and put it all together?

-- On executions of homosexuals in Iran:

In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that like in your country. ... In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have this.

    Quotes by Iran's Ahmadinejad, NYT, 24.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Ahmadinejad-Quotes.html

Amid Protests, President of Iran Speaks at Columbia

September 24, 2007
The New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran faced questions today about his perspective on the Holocaust and Israel during an appearance at Columbia University which provoked anger and was overshadowed by protests even before he had taken the lectern.

In opening remarks, Lee C. Bollinger, the university’s president, defended the decision to allow the Iranian president to speak at the Columbia University forum. But he also criticized at length Iran’s human rights record, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s call for the destruction of Israel and his description of the Holocaust as a myth, among other positions.

Mr. Ahmadinejad strode onto the stage in a packed auditorium, smiling slightly. Before he sat down, he held up his hands to the crowd, to some applause.

He then gave a speech that meandered from science and religion to creation of human beings and the misuse of wisdom. But it was during the question-and-answer session that he was confronted about some of his most controversial positions.

He said that as an academic, he questioned whether there was “sufficient research” about what happened after World War II. “We know quite well that Palestine is an old wound” for 60 years, he said at one point.

“We need to still question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it or not.”

He was asked to answer directly whether he or his government seeks the destruction of Israel. He did not. But he said that to solve the “60-year old problem,” “we must allow the Palestinian people to decide on its future itself.”

Earlier, the university had been the scene of gathering protests as it came under criticism for giving Mr. Ahmadinejad a platform.

Before he turned the lectern over to Mr. Ahmadinejad, Mr. Bollinger said that he wanted to emphasize that “this is the right thing to do” to have him speak at the university, because of the American tradition of openness and free speech.

But addressing Mr. Ahmadinejad, he said, “You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.”

Just before Mr. Ahmadinejad began his speech, he responded to Mr. Bollinger’s remarks, saying he did “not think it is necessary before the speech is even given to attempt” to “provide a vaccination” of sorts to students and faculty, according to a translator.

He described some of Mr. Bollinger’s remarks as an “insult” and “incorrect, regretfully.”

Earlier, Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke at the National Press Club at midday in Washington via videolink from New York.

Mr. Ahmadinejad has been trying to cast a positive light on his policies during his visit to a country where they have been criticized. Iran has been accused by the Bush administration of arming Shiite militias in Iraq as well as developing a nuclear weapons program, charges that the Iranian government denies.

At the National Press Club event, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, in a videolink from New York, that Iran sought only peace and security for Iraq; he appeared to deny that Iran was providing weapons for Iraqi insurgents, and he said any talk of war with the United States was “a propaganda tool” by the West.

But Mr. Ahmadinejad, in his first real dialogue with the Washington press corps, expressed no great admiration for the United States. “We oppose the way the U.S. government tries to manage the world,” he said. “We believe it’s wrong; we believe it leads to war, discrimination and bloodshed.”

And he defended or repeated his earlier comments raising questions about the Holocaust, saying Iran could not recognize Israel “because it is based on ethnic discrimination, occupation and usurpation, and it consistently threatens its neighbors.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad was participating in Columbia University’s World Leader’s Forum. He is also scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

At Columbia this morning, protesters, including students bused in from other schools, gathered at the university grounds ahead of the speech. Student groups and individuals started covering the campus with fliers. Columbia security guards closed off the grounds to anyone without a campus identification card, and the police set up barriers outside of campus.

“The events in Iran are disturbing,” said Lauren Steinberg, a political science major who was hanging up signs. “We don’t want to turn a blind eye to them. I personally don’t think he should have been invited to campus, but now that he’s here, I see it as an important opportunity for free speech and for us to denounce his views.”

The university has come under harsh criticism for the decision to have Mr. Ahmadinejad and for giving him a public stage, including from current presidential candidates in the United States, the New York City Council, Jewish organizations and others.

“With the amount of people we will have, we will most likely stretch down a couple of blocks,” said Dani Klein, the campus director for StandWithUs, one of the sponsors of the protests.

“We felt that this went above and beyond the issues of free speech,” Mr. Klein said, adding that his objections included the lack of human rights in Iran and the fact that the university had given Mr. Ahmadinejad a platform. “You can criticize his views without honoring him the way they are.”

Other protests against the Iranian president were expected in the streets outside the United Nations in New York.

“We have today an extraordinary opportunity to directly engage” Mr. Ahmadinejad, said John Coatsworth, a dean at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, in an atmosphere of “civility and restraint,” the audience was told. Mr. Ahmadinejad arrived in the United States on Sunday and addressed people invited by the Iranian mission in a closed event at the New York Hilton.

He also said in an interview, broadcast by CBS television Sunday and conducted in Tehran last week, that Iran did not need a nuclear weapon and the United States and his country were not on a path to war.

“Well, you have to appreciate we don’t need a nuclear bomb,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, according to the CBS transcript. “We don’t need that. What needs do we have for a bomb?”

Today at Columbia, a diversity of views was evident: A group of Iranian-Americans taped a large Iranian flag in the middle of campus and taped up printed and hand-written fliers focusing on positive aspects of the Iranian government.

“There are Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian representatives in Iran’s Parliament,” said a pink hand-written sign that was hanging on the side of Lerner Hall, where Mr. Ahmadinejad will be speaking.

“We want to show some of the positive things about Iran because we think there are a lot of the pictures in the past days that just create hatred and bigotry,” said Maryam Jazini, 23, who graduated from Columbia last year.

Another unsigned flier read: “Bollinger, too bad Bin Laden is not available. You could have presented him with some tough questions too.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad is allowed under international law and diplomatic protocols to travel freely within a 25-mile radius of Columbus Circle. But the police said last week that Mr. Ahmadinejad would not be allowed anywhere near Ground Zero during his trip.

Last night, at the New York Hilton, Mr. Ahmadinejad addressed people invited by the Iranian mission. The speech was closed to the news media, but a report on Iran’s IRNA news agency said that Mr. Ahmadinejad had said Iran did not need nuclear bombs and described his government as “peace-seeking.”

Some of those invited said that while they did not agree with all of the president’s positions on matters like the role of women in Iran, they stood behind him on the involvement of Israel and the United States in the Middle East.

After the speech, some in the audience said Mr. Ahmadinejad played down the interest Iran had in developing nuclear weapons. Mina Z. Siegel, an Iranian-American, said he called building a nuclear weapon “a waste of money” and characterized Iranians as “very peaceful.”

Yesterday, elected officials and students held a rally at Columbia to protest the university’s decision to invite him to speak on campus.

“He should be arrested when he comes to Columbia University, not speak at the university, for God’s sake,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who noted that his mother is a survivor of Auschwitz. “I call on New Yorkers to make the life of Ahmadinejad as he is in New York miserable.”

Brian Knowlton contributed reporting from Washington, and Leora Falk from New York.

    Amid Protests, President of Iran Speaks at Columbia, NYT, 24.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/worldspecial/24cnd-iran.html?hp

Obama: Would Meet Iranian As President

September 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:06 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Democrat Barack Obama says he probably wouldn't have invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University but would be willing as president to meet with the Iranian leader as a way to protect U.S. interests.

''The hateful lies that he may utter about Israel, the Holocaust -- the answer is for us to promote the truth and show the world the values and ideals that we hold dear,'' Obama said Monday. ''One of the values we believe in is the value of academic freedom. He has a right to speak.''

Obama earned a bachelor's degree in 1983 from Columbia, where the Iranian president spoke on Monday. The Illinois senator was asked about the appearance at a news conference where he was endorsed by New York City's Correction Officers' Benevolent Association.

Columbia has come under heavy criticism for providing a forum to Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust ''a myth'' and has said Israel should be ''wiped off the map.''

Democratic candidate John Edwards said Monday of such statements: ''I find all those things abhorrent.'' He added, ''I think this is for Columbia to decide whether they want a man like this to speak at their university.''

As for meeting with foreign leaders the U.S. does not have good relations with, Edwards said in Washington that he would ''do what's in the best interest of the security of the United States of America. ... In the case of a leader like Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, Hugo Chavez, any of these leaders, you have to be extraordinarily careful they would not use such a meeting for PR purposes and for propaganda purposes.''

Separately, Republican Mitt Romney began running radio ads in South Carolina and Iowa urging the United Nations to withdraw its invitation to Ahmadinejad to speak to the General Assembly on Tuesday. He said, ''What we should be doing is indicting Ahmadinejad under the Genocide Convention.''

The ad says that Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, opposed former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's 2006 visit to Harvard and refused to give Khatami a state police escort.

Obama said there was no contradiction between his willingness to meet with Ahmadinejad as president and his statement that he probably would not have invited him to Columbia.

''As president of the United States, my job is to look out for the national security interests of this country. Iran, in particular because of the bad decision this administration has made by invading Iraq, is a major player in the Middle East,'' Obama said. ''If it is in the United States' interest to make certain that we can stabilize the situation and avoid further military confrontation and curb state sponsored terrorism they've been involved with, that's something we should be willing to do.''

He said the Columbia appearance was unnecessary because Ahmadinejad would have other opportunities during his visit to New York to make his views known.

Obama was criticized by rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and other Democrats after a debate in July in which he said he would be willing to meet with Ahmadinejad and leaders of other nations the U.S. is not on good terms with ''without precondition'' as president. Clinton called Obama's remark irresponsible and naive and suggested it was evidence he did not have sufficient experience to be president.

President Bush said Monday that if Columbia ''thinks it's a good idea to have the leader from Iran come and talk to the students as an educational experience, I guess it's OK with me.''

Bush, in an interview with Fox News Channel, said, ''I'm not so sure I 'd have offered the same invitation.'' However, he said, ''I mean when you really think about it, he's the head of a state sponsor of terror, he's -- and yet an institution in our country gives him a chance to express his point of view, which really speaks to the freedoms of the country.''

------

Associated Press Writers Joan Lowy and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this article from Washington.

    Obama: Would Meet Iranian As President, NYT, 24.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Candidates-Ahmadinejad.html

Columbia’s President Confronts Iranian Leader;
Ahmadinejad Calls Remarks Insulting

September 24, 2007, 1:31 pm
The New York Times > City Room
By Sewell Chan

Live Blogging From Columbia University

Updated, 3:04 p.m. | President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran completed his appearance by thanking his audience. “I ask Almighty God to assist all of us to work hand in hand for a future filled with peace, justice and brotherhood,” he said. “Best of luck to all of you.”
John H. Coatsworth, the acting dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, said he regretted that Mr. Ahmadinejad did not have time to answer all the questions from the audience (and did not fully answer some of the questions that were asked). Then he thanked the Iranian president, and the audience.
Updated, 3:03 p.m. | The final question from the audience was: What would take for Iran to engage in talks with the United States or the West? Mr. Ahmadinejad did not give a direct response, but spoke in general terms. He concluded this way: “If the U.S. government recognizes the rights of the Iranian people, respects all nations and extends a hand of friendship to all Iranians, they will see that Iranians will be among their best friends.”
He added that Columbia’s faculty members were “officially invited” to come to Iran to speak — to which the audience gave a rousing round of applause. “You are welcome to choose any university in Iran,” he said. “We’ll give you the platform, we’ll respect you 100 percent, we will have our students sit and listen to what you have to say.”
Updated, 2:59 p.m. | Mr. Ahmadinejad insisted that Iran’s nuclear program was not intended at the development of weapons. He maintained — without providing evidence — that inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency had “verified our activities are for peaceful purposes.” However, he said, some “two or three” world powers want to “monopolize all science or knowledge” and “they expect the Iranian nation to turn to others for fuel, science and knowledge that are indigenous to itself” and “to humble itself.”
He asked of the United States: “If you have created the fifth generation of atomic bombs and tested them already, what position are you in to question the peaceful purposes of others who want nuclear power? We don’t believe in nuclear weapons, period. It goes against the whole grain of humanity.”
He added that politicians interested in nuclear weapons “are backward, retarded.”
Updated, 2:53 p.m. | Asked what he hoped to achieve when he expressed a desire to visit the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Ahmadinejad said he wanted to “show my respect.”
He added: “Regretfully, some groups had very strong reactions, very bad reactions. It’s bad to prevent someone from showing sympathy to the families of the victims of the 9/11 event, a tragic event.” He added that he was puzzled when told that some viewed his desire to visit ground zero as an insult. “This is my way of showing my respect,” he said. “Why would you think that?”
Updated, 2:51 p.m. | In response to a question about the treatment of homosexuals in Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad was initially evasive, instead talking about the death penalty, which, he pointed out, exists in the United States. “People who violate the laws by using guns, creating insecurity selling guns, distributing guns at a high level are sentenced to execution in Iran,” he said. “Very few of these punishments are carried out in the public eye.”
Pressed by Dean Coatsworth on the original question about the rights of gay men and lesbians in Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad said: “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country.”
The audience booed and hissed loudly. Some laughed, uncomfortably.
“In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon,” Mr. Ahmadinejad continued, undeterred. “I do not know who has told you that we have it. But as for women, maybe you think that maybe being a woman is a crime. It’s not a crime to be a woman. Women are the best creatures created by God. They represent the kindness, the beauty that God instills in them. Women are respected in Iran.”
Updated, 2:46 p.m. | The third and fourth questions concerned the Holocaust and the rights of women in Iranian society.
Mr. Ahmadinejad said that the Holocaust should not be closed off to academic inquiry just as scientific fields continue to merit research.
On the issue of women’s rights, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, “Women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedom,” but he did not offer many specifics, other than citing several examples of women in high levels of government.
Updated, 2:43 p.m. | Mr. Ahmadinejad, in response to a second question from the audience, denied that his country sponsors terrorism, but he did not offer specifics.
“We need to address the root causes of terrorism and eradicate those root causes,” he said, adding that in the Middle East, “It’s clear what powers incite terrorists, support them, fund them.”
He added:
Our nation, the Iranian nation, through history, has always extended a hand of friendship to other nations. We’re a cultured nation. We don’t need to resort to terrorism. We’ve been victims of terrorism ourselves. It’s regrettable that people who argued they are fighting terrorism — instead of supporting the Iranian nation — are supporting the terrorists and then turn the finger at us. This is most regrettable.
Updated, 2:36 p.m. | Mr. Ahmadinejad just took the first question from the audience: Does he still call for the destruction of the State of Israel?
He declined to answer directly, but began his answer by saying, “We love all nations. We love the Jewish people. There are many Jews living in Iran, with peace and security.”
Instead, he turned his remarks again to the issue of Palestinian self-determination.
John H. Coatsworth, the acting dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, challenged Mr. Ahmadinejad to give a straight-up “yes or no” answer to the question of Israel.
Mr. Ahmadinejad retorted that he was being asked to give a certain answers. Where’s the free expression in that? he asked. He called for a “free referendum” in Palestine. “Let the people of Palestine freely chose what they want for their future,” he said.
Updated, 2:35 p.m. | Mr. Ahmadinejad concluded his speech by defending his country’s nuclear program. He said Iran once had contracts with American, French, German and Canadian contractors to provide nuclear energy.
“Unilaterally each and everyone of them canceled their contracts with us as a result of which the I people had to pay the heavy cost in billions of dollars,” he said. “Why do we need the fuel from you? You’ve not even given us spare aircraft parts that we do need for civilian aircraft, under the name of embargo and sanctions under the pretext that we are against human rights and freedom. We want the right to self-determination, to be independent.”
Mr. Ahmadinejad concluded his speech thus: “We are a peace-loving nation. We love all nations.”
Updated, 2:31 p.m. | Mr. Ahmadinejad took up the issues of Israel and the Holocaust, among the most explosive issues he has discussed. He said:
You know that my main job is as a university instructor. Right now, as president of Iran, I still continue teaching graduate and Ph.D.-level courses on a weekly basis. My students are working with me in scientific fields. I believe that I am an academic myself, so I speak to you from an academic point of view. And I raise two questions. But instead of a response, I got a wave of insults and allegations against me. And regretfully, they came mostly from groups who claimed most to believe in the freedom of speech and of information.
You know quite well that Palestine is an old wound –- as old as 60 years. For 60 years, these people are displaced. For 60 years, they are being killed. For 60 years, on a daily basis there’s conflict and terror, for 60 years, innocent women and children are destroyed and killed by helicopters and airplanes that rake the houses over their heads. Children in schools are being tortured, for 60 years, the slogan of expansionism, from the Nile to the Euphrates has been chanted.
Given that the Holocaust is a present reality of our time, a history that occurred, why is there not sufficient research that can approach the topic from different perspectives?
Interestingly, Mr. Ahmadinejad did not call the Holocaust a “myth,” as he has in the past, but instead argued that the Palestinians were paying the price for other people’s crimes:
We need to still question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it or not. After all, it happened in Europe. The Palestinian people had no role in it. Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?
They had no role to play in World War II. They were living with the Jewish and Christian communities in peace at the time. They didn’t have any problems. Today, too, Jews, Christians and Muslims live in brotherhood in many parts of the world. Why is it that Palestinians should pay a price -– innocent Palestinians -– for five million people to remain displaced and refugees abroad, for 60 years? Is this not a crime? Is asking about these crimes a crime in itself? Why should an academic like myself face insults for asking questions like this?
Updated, 2:23 p.m. | In his most pointed arguments yet, Mr. Ahmadinejad said that science and research had been used in the West as tools of oppression.
“They even violate individual and social freedoms in their own nations under that pretext,” he said. “They do not respect the privacy of their own people. They tap telephone calls … They create an insecure psychological atmosphere, in order to justify their war-mongering acts in different parts of the world.”
He added: “By using precise scientific methods and planning, they begin their onslaught on the domestic cultures of nations, which are the result of thousands of years of interaction, creativity and artistic activity. They try to eliminate these cultures in order to strip people of their identity.”
He said that Western science was often used to instill “intimidation” and values of “mere consumption” and “submission to oppressive powers.”
He also added, “Making nuclear, chemical and biological bombs and weapons of mass destruction is yet another result of the misuse of science and research by the big powers.” (Pointedly, Mr. Ahmadinejad did not speak to his own country’s uranium enrichment program.)
“Without the cooperation of certain scientists and scholars, we would not have witnessed production of different nuclear, chemical and biological weapons,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said. “Are these weapons to protect global security? What can a perpetual nuclear umbrella achieve for the sake of humanity? If nuclear war is waged between nuclear powers, what human catastrophe will take place?”
Updated, 2:18 p.m. | Mr. Ahmadinejad has been making an argument about science, but not one grounded in the Western empirical tradition. “In the teachings of the prophets, one reality shall always be attached to science: the reality of purity of spirit and good behavior,” he said. “Knowledge and wisdom are pure and clear reality. Science is a light.” He added that “only a pure researcher” free from “superstition, selfishness, material trappings” can discover that reality.
The protests outside, on the Columbia campus, have been largely quiet during the duration of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech inside Lerner Hall. Hundreds of students are sitting quietly, watching a live television simulcast on the southeast lawn of the campus, in front of Butler Library.
Updated, 2:13 p.m. | Mr. Ahmadinejad has devoted his talk so far to arguing that God is the source of knowledge. The Almighty is the ultimate “teacher of human beings, who taught human beings what they are ignorant of,” he said, adding that the Prophet Muhammad was “appointed as their prophet to ‘read for them the divine verses, and purify them from ideological and ethical contamination.’”
It was the wisdom of the prophets, from Abraham to Muhammad, that “delivered humans from ignorance” and “corrupted ways of thinking,” he added.
Updated, 2:10 p.m. | Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke about the importance of scholarship, but did not address Mr. Bollinger’s criticism of the Iranian regime’s crackdown on academics in Iran.
“The key to understanding the realities around us rests in the hands of researchers: those who seek to discover areas that are hidden,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said. “The unknown sciences, the windows of reality they can open, is only done through the efforts of scholars and learned people in this world.”
Without the instinct for learning and knowledge, he said, “Humans would have always remained stranded in ignorance and would never have discovered how to improve the life we are given.”
Updated, 2:07 p.m. | Mr. Ahmadinejad began his speech by reciting verses from the Koran in Arabic. Addressing Dean Coatsworth and the audience, he said he was grateful to God for the opportunity to be in an academic environment.
Mr. Ahmadinejad began: “At the outset, I want to complain a bit about the person who read this political statement against me. In Iran, tradition requires that when we invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students and the professors by allowing them to make their own judgment and we don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of claims…”
The room erupted in applause.
Mr. Ahmadinejad added: “…and to attempt to provide a vaccination of sorts to our faculty and students. The text, more than addressing me, was an insult to the audience here. In a university environment, we must allow people to speak their mind, to allow everyone to talk, so that the truth is eventually revealed by all.”
Updated, 2:04 p.m. | “Today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for,” Mr. Bollinger told Mr. Ahmadinejad. “I only wish I could do better.”
The auditorium erupted in thunderous applause.
Updated, 2 p.m. | In the style of a relentless cross-examination, Mr. Bollinger confronted Mr. Ahmadinejad over his statements about wiping Israel “off the face of the map” and on allegations that Iran has provided financing and support to terrorist groups.
“Why do you support well-documented terrorist organizations that continue to strike at peace and democracy in the Middle East, destroying lives and the civil society of the region?” he asked.
Mr. Bollinger, finally, confronted Iran about its aid to Shiite militias in Iraq and about its nuclear buildup.
“You continue to defy the world body” by claiming peaceful intent in a nuclear program while the world expresses concern about Iran’s military aims, Mr. Bollinger said.
Mr. Bollinger concluded: “Frankly, and in all candor Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions, but your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mind-set that characterizes what you say and do.”
He added that he believed Mr. Ahmadinejad’s failure to provide answers would only undermine the hard-line regime’s power in Iran.
Updated, 1:56 p.m. | Mr. Bollinger asked Mr. Ahmadinejad: “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator, and so I ask you, and so I ask you, why have women members of the Bahai faith, homosexuals and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?”
He asked whether Mr. Ahmadinejad was using a nuclear confrontation with the West to distract from his incompetent leadership at home. He also asked to be allowed to lead a delegation of scholars to Iran to speak freely, as Mr. Ahmadinejad can do today.
He confronted Mr. Ahmadinejad over his description of the Holocaust as “a fabricated legend,” calling him either “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.” He called Columbia a world center of Jewish studies that since the 1930s has provided a home for Jewish refugees. He called the Holocaust “the most documented event in human history.”
Updated, 1:53 p.m. | In a speech notable for its forcefulness, Mr. Bollinger just confronted Mr. Ahmadinejad on the crackdown of Iran’s scholars and intellectuals. He asserted that Iran had a poor human rights record and that “Iran leads the world in executing minors.” He also spoke of a “wider crackdown” on student activists, including the jailing and forced retirement of scholars.
Updated, 1:48 p.m. | Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia’s president, just took the stage. “If today proves anything, it will be that there is an enormous amount of work ahead of us,” he said, referring to the “critical and complex” role of Iran in world geopolitics.
In a remarkable and wide-ranging talk, with Mr. Ahmadinejad sitting just feet from him, Mr. Bollinger gave a passionate defense of free speech.
Mr. Bollinger said that since 2003, the World Leaders Forum had been a “major forum for robust debate” on global issues. “It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore” implies an endorsement of those ideas or a naïveté about the potential dangers of those ideas, he said.
“To those who believe that this event should never have happened, that it is inappropriate for the university to conduct such an event, I want to say that I understand your perspective and respect it as reasonable.” He said, “It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.” He added, “This is the right thing to do and indeed, it is required by the existing norms of free speech, of Columbia University” and of academic institutions.
He added that he regretted if people were hurt by the speech, and he called the “intellectual and emotional courage” to “confront the mind of evil.”
“We cannot make war or peace, we can only make minds,” he said.
Updated, 1:44 p.m. | After a short delay, the event has just begun. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, took his seat in the Roone Arledge auditorium.
John H. Coatsworth, acting dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia, told the audience to turn off their cellphones and reminded the crowd that flash photography was prohibited. He said that audience members may leave but would not be allowed by the Secret Service to reenter.
“We have today an extraordinary opportunity to directly engage the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Mr. Coatsworth said.
He urged the audience to display “civility and restraint.”
Updated, 1:31 p.m. | Hundreds of students have gathered on the southeast lawn of the Columbia University campus in Morningside Heights, where the university has set up a live telecast of the speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who is scheduled to speak shortly, at 1:30 p.m.
This campus has been sharply divided on whether Mr. Ahmadinejad should even be allowed to speak here.
“I feel most people do not understand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” said Chris Jo, 20, a junior from San Diego. “Why shouldn’t he be allowed to speak on campus?” Mr. Jo said that he supported the decision by Columbia’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, to allow Mr. Ahmadinejad to speak, and added that he believed most students were energized by the news. “I think everyone’s secretly excited that he’s here, even if they’re opposed to it,” Mr. Jo said.
Rabbi Charles E. Savenor, an associate dean at the Jewish Theological Seminar and a student at Columbia’s Teachers College, had a very different point of view.
“This isn’t just a matter of free speech, it’s a matter of hate speech,” Rabbi Savenor said. He said that Mr. Ahmadinejad was taking advantage of the kind of academic freedom that is denied in Iran, noting that last year, Mr. Ahmadinejad hosted an academic conference that primarily consisted of scholars denying the Holocaust happened. “He’s one-sided,” Rabbi Savenor said.
Despite his opposition to the speech, Rabbi Savenor said, “We can’t ignore what he has to say.” He called Mr. Ahmadinejad a dangerous figure, likening him to Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. “This is 1938 all over again,” Rabbi Savenor said.
For many Columbia students, this is likely to be the most exciting event of the school year.
Many, like Jessica Garcia, 20, said they skipped class to listen to what they believed would be an historic event. “I support Columbia for bringing him here,” said Ms. Garcia, a junior from Queens, who said she was missing a physics class to listen to the event on the southeast lawn. “It’s a forum. It’s not like Columbia is endorsing him. He’s the president of a nation and should be allowed to speak.”
The 600 tickets for the event were given away quickly late last week and so many journalists have asked to cover the event that Columbia officials set aside a large room in the Columbia Journalism School building for journalists who could not fit in to the Roone Arledge Auditorium at Lerner Hall, where Mr. Ahmadinejad will speak.
Ramin Mehdizadeh, 30, been in the United States for a year as a student in architecture at Columbia. (Previously, he had been denied a visa to do research at Harvard.) He and a group of fellow Iranian students gathered on the main steps at Columbia University, holding signs like “Ahmadinejad is not Iran like Bush is not America.”
“We appreciate the invitation at Columbia,” he said. Mr. Mehdizadeh said he did not support Mr. Ahmadinejad, but did support free speech at the university. As far as the threat of military action against Iran, he says, “It’s our problem. We have to solve it.”
Negar Mortazavi, 25, is getting her master’s at Brandeis University and is currently doing an internship in development at the United Nations. She has been in the United States for four years.
“I don’t believe the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Pure and simple,” she said. As far as being afraid to speak out because she will have to go back to Iran, she said, “It’s not as bad as the protests at the university,” referring to the student demonstrations in Tehran several years ago.
Ms. Mortavazi said that if she could ask Mr. Ahmadinejad a question, she would ask, “Why is the economy going down the drain?” She added: “He’s here to be heard, but it’s an opportunity for him to be challenged.”

Roja Heydarpour contributed reporting.

    Columbia’s President Confronts Iranian Leader; Ahmadinejad Calls Remarks Insulting, NYT, 24.9.2007, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/protests-at-columbia-over-iran-leaders-speech/index.html?hp

Iran’s President Faces Protests During Visit

September 24, 2007
The New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

NEW YORK, Sept. 24 — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran faced questions and protests today, during his first full day here of appearances that drew controversy even before he took the lectern.

The Iranian president, who has called for the destruction of Israel and described the Holocaust as a myth, spoke at the National Press Club at midday in Washington via videolink from New York. Later, he was scheduled to speak at Columbia University, where protesters have gathered. He is also scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

Mr. Ahmadinejad has been trying to cast a positive light on his policies during his visit to a country where they have been criticized. Iran has been accused by the Bush administration of arming Shiite militias in Iraq as well as developing a nuclear weapons program, charges that the Iranian government denies.

At the National Press Club event, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, in a videolink from New York, that Iran sought only peace and security for Iraq; he appeared to deny that Iran was providing weapons for Iraqi insurgents; and he said any talk of war with the United States was “a propaganda tool” by the West.

But Mr. Ahmadinejad, in his first real dialogue with the Washington press corps, expressed no great admiration for the United States. “We oppose the way the U.S. government tries to manage the world,” he said. “We believe it’s wrong; we believe it leads to war, discrimination and bloodshed.”

And he defended or repeated his earlier comments raising questions about the Holocaust, saying Iran could not recognize Israel “because it is based on ethnic discrimination, occupation and usurpation, and it consistently threatens its neighbors.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad is due to speak at Columbia University’s World Leader’s Forum at 1:30 p.m.

At Columbia this morning, protesters, including students bused in from other schools, gathered at the university grounds ahead of the speech. Student groups and individuals started covering the campus with fliers. Columbia security guards closed off the grounds to anyone without a campus identification card, and the police set up barriers outside of campus.

“The events in Iran are disturbing,” said Lauren Steinberg, a political science major who was hanging up signs. “We don’t want to turn a blind eye to them. I personally don’t think he should have been invited to campus, but now that he’s here, I see it as an important opportunity for free speech and for us to denounce his views.”

The university has come under harsh criticism for the decision to have Mr. Ahmadinejad and for giving him a public stage, including from current presidential candidates in the United States, the New York City Council, Jewish organizations and others.

“With the amount of people we will have, we will most likely stretch down a couple of blocks,” said Dani Klein, the campus director for StandWithUs, one of the sponsors of the protests.

“We felt that this went above and beyond the issues of free speech,” Mr. Klein said, adding that his objections included the lack of human rights in Iran and the fact that the university had given Mr. Ahmadinejad a platform. “You can criticize his views without honoring him the way they are.”

Other protests against the Iranian president were expected in the streets outside the United Nations in New York.

The Columbia University President, Lee C. Bollinger, will address the forum today ahead of a question-and-answer session with Mr. Ahmadinejad.

“It’s extremely important to know who the leaders are of countries that are your adversaries, to watch them to see how they think, to see how they reason or do not reason, to see whether they’re fanatical, or to see whether they are sly," Mr. Bollinger told ABC’s “Good Morning America” today.

John Coatsworth, a dean at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, told CNN that it was his obligation as a school official to present the Iranian president. “If I were not the dean, I would be out there with them,” he said of the protesters.

But he added, “Like it or not, he is an important guy.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad arrived in the United States on Sunday and addressed people invited by the Iranian mission in a closed event at the New York Hilton.

He also said in an interview, broadcast by CBS television Sunday and conducted in Tehran last week, that Iran did not need a nuclear weapon and the United States and his country were not on a path to war.

“Well, you have to appreciate we don’t need a nuclear bomb,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, according to the CBS transcript. “We don’t need that. What needs do we have for a bomb?”

Today at Columbia, a diversity of views was evident: A group of Iranian-Americans taped a large Iranian flag in the middle of campus and taped up printed and hand-written fliers focusing on positive aspects of the Iranian government.

“There are Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian representatives in Iran’s Parliament,” said a pink hand-written sign that was hanging on the side of Lerner Hall, where Mr. Ahmadinejad will be speaking.

“We want to show some of the positive things about Iran because we think there are a lot of the pictures in the past days that just create hatred and bigotry,” said Maryam Jazini, 23, who graduated from Columbia last year.

Another unsigned flier read: “Bollinger, too bad Bin Laden is not available. You could have presented him with some tough questions too.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad is allowed under international law and diplomatic protocols to travel freely within a 25-mile radius of Columbus Circle. But the police said last week that Mr. Ahmadinejad would not be allowed anywhere near Ground Zero during his trip.

Last night, at the New York Hilton, Mr. Ahmadinejad addressed people invited by the Iranian mission. The speech was closed to the news media, but a report on Iran’s IRNA news agency said that Mr. Ahmadinejad had said Iran did not need nuclear bombs and described his government as “peace-seeking.”

Some of those invited said that while they did not agree with all of the president’s positions on matters like the role of women in Iran, they stood behind him on the involvement of Israel and the United States in the Middle East.

After the speech, some in the audience said Mr. Ahmadinejad played down the interest Iran had in developing nuclear weapons. Mina Z. Siegel, an Iranian-American, said he called building a nuclear weapon “a waste of money” and characterized Iranians as “very peaceful.”

Yesterday, elected officials and students held a rally at Columbia to protest the university’s decision to invite him to speak on campus.

“He should be arrested when he comes to Columbia University, not speak at the university, for God’s sake,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who noted that his mother is a survivor of Auschwitz. “I call on New Yorkers to make the life of Ahmadinejad as he is in New York miserable.”

Brian Knowlton contributed reporting from Washington, D.C. and Leora Falk contributed reporting from New York.

    Iran’s President Faces Protests During Visit, NYT, 24.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/worldspecial/24cnd-iran.html?hp

Iran's Ahmadinejad: No Attack on Israel

September 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:03 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday that Iran would not launch an attack on Israel or any other country, and he does not believe the U.S. is preparing for war against Iran.

''Iran will not attack any country,'' Ahmadinejad told The Associated Press after being asked if it would ever make a first strike against Israel. Iran has always maintained a defensive policy, not an offensive one, he said, and has ''never sought to expand its territory.''

He said he did not believe the U.S. was preparing for war.

''I believe that some of the talk in this regard arises first of all from anger. Secondly, it serves the electoral purposes domestically in this country. Third, it serves as a cover for policy failures over Iraq.''

In a 30-minute interview at a hotel near the United Nations, Ahmadinejad struck a consistently soothing tone. He said Iranian foreign policy was based on humanitarian concerns and seeking justice, and that it is not in its interest to stir up problems for its neighbors.

He however reiterated his call for a debate at the United Nations with President Bush, suggesting throughout the interview that many of the tensions and the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan stem from American miscalculations, rather than Iranian provocations.

Referring to fears of a military campaign against Iran, he said: ''We don't think you can compensate for one mistake by committing more mistakes.''

A slightly built, physically unimposing figure dressed in a simple beige jacket and gray slacks, Ahmadinejad said that he was happy to be in New York as an opportunity ''to be with many friends.''

He affected an air of being oblivious to the anger that his visit has stirred here, including headlines like: ''The Evil Has Landed.''

Iran wants tensions to decline, he said.

''We oppose war because we believe that through negotiations and talks, all the problems can be resolved, provided that the parties to the talks believe in justice and uphold justice.''

Ahmadinejad said that Iran already has made proposals to U.S. politicians over Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine that are all based on seeking peace in the region.

''But we believe that for these to succeed we need two conditions in place: first, seriousness, and second, honesty and sincerity. If the two go hand-in-hand then the results can be effective,'' he said.

Does he believe there is seriousness and honesty from the U.S.?

''We have to wait -- we hope,'' he answered.

In what is believed to be his first comments on a reported attack Sept. 6 by Israeli bombers inside Syria, Ahmadinejad questioned why Israel would attack Syria at all. He accused Israel of ''expansionist policies'' and said the reported attack was ''an aimless policy in a way, just a show of power, and has nothing to do with Iran.''

As in his other replies, he referred to Israel as the ''Zionist regime,'' and not by its name.

Israel disagreed sharply with the Ahmadinejad's description of Iran's foreign policy. The Iranian government, ''through its words and actions, has an aggressive and expansionist policy,'' said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.

''They are supporting extremist groups in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon. They have their own aggressive nuclear weapons program. The president, before leaving for New York, reviewed a military parade. I think we would be irresponsible if we didn't take the threat that Iran poses to the region and the world seriously,'' Regev said.

Ahmadinejad is to speak and answer questions at a Columbia University forum Monday, followed by a scheduled address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday.

The president denied the Iran has closed its border with Iraq over the arrest of an Iranian citizen in northern Iraq by U.S. forces.

''On an annual basis, millions of Iranians visit Iraq and Iraq's holy sites for pilgrimage purposes,'' he said.

''Recently, as a result of some clashes and the explosion of some bombs, a number of Iranian civilian casualties arose. So the government has asked Iranian citizens to avoid traveling for pilgrimage purposes until security is restored. The commercial goods and freight transactions continue, and the travel across the border for those purposes continue,'' he said.

    Iran's Ahmadinejad: No Attack on Israel, NYT, 24.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Ahmadinejad-Interview.html

Memo From Tehran

U.S. Focus on Ahmadinejad Puzzles Iranians

September 24, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

TEHRAN — When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was first elected president, he said Iran had more important issues to worry about than how women dress. He even called for allowing women into soccer games, a revolutionary idea for revolutionary Iran.

Today, Iran is experiencing the most severe crackdown on social behavior and dress in years, and women are often barred from smoking in public, let alone attending a stadium event.

Since his inauguration two years ago, Mr. Ahmadinejad has grabbed headlines around the world, and in Iran, for outrageous statements that often have no more likelihood of being put into practice than his plan for women to attend soccer games. He has generated controversy in New York in recent days by asking to visit ground zero — a request that was denied — and his scheduled appearance at Columbia University has drawn protests.

But it is because of his provocative remarks, like denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, that the United States and Europe have never known quite how to handle him. In demonizing Mr. Ahmadinejad, the West has served him well, elevating his status at home and in the region at a time when he is increasingly isolated politically because of his go-it-alone style and ineffective economic policies, according to Iranian politicians, officials and political experts.

Political analysts here say they are surprised at the degree to which the West focuses on their president, saying that it reflects a general misunderstanding of their system.

Unlike in the United States, in Iran the president is not the head of state nor the commander in chief. That status is held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, whose role combines civil and religious authority. At the moment, this president’s power comes from two sources, they say: the unqualified support of the supreme leader, and the international condemnation he manages to generate when he speaks up.

“The United States pays too much attention to Ahmadinejad,” said an Iranian political scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “He is not that consequential.”

That is not to say that Mr. Ahmadinejad is insignificant. He controls the mechanics of civil government, much the way a prime minister does in a state like Egypt, where the real power rests with the president. He manages the budget and has put like-minded people in positions around the country, from provincial governors to prosecutors. His base of support is the Basiji militia and elements of the Revolutionary Guards.

But Mr. Ahmadinejad has not shown the same political acumen at home as he has in riling the West. Two of his ministers have quit, criticizing his stewardship of the state. The head of the central bank resigned. The chief judge criticized him for his management of the government. His promise to root out corruption and redistribute oil wealth has run up against entrenched interests.

Even a small bloc of members of Parliament that once aligned with Mr. Ahmadinejad has largely given up, officials said. “Maybe it comes as a surprise to you that I voted for him,” said Emad Afrough, a conservative member of Parliament. “I liked the slogans demanding justice.”

But he added: “You cannot govern the country on a personal basis. You have to use public knowledge and consultation.”

Rather than focusing so much attention on the president, the West needs to learn that in Iran, what matters is ideology — Islamic revolutionary ideology, according to politicians and political analysts here. Nearly 30 years after the shah fell in a popular revolt, Iran’s supreme leader also holds title of guardian of the revolution.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s power stems not from his office per se, but from the refusal of his patron, Ayatollah Khamenei, and some hard-line leaders, to move beyond Iran’s revolutionary identity, which makes full relations with the West impossible. There are plenty of conservatives and hard-liners who take a more pragmatic view, wanting to retain “revolutionary values” while integrating Iran with the world, at least economically. But they are not driving the agenda these days, and while that could change, it will not be the president who makes that call.

“Iran has never been interested in reaching an accommodation with the United States,” the Iranian political scientist said. “It cannot reach an accommodation as long as it retains the current structure.”

Another important factor restricts Mr. Ahmadinejad’s hand: while ideology defines the state, the revolution has allowed a particular class to grow wealthy and powerful.

When Mr. Ahmadinejad was first elected, it appeared that Iran’s hard-liners had a monopoly on all the levers of power. But today it is clear that Mr. Ahmadinejad is not a hard-liner in the traditional sense. His talk of economic justice and a redistribution of wealth, for example, ran into a wall of existing vested interests, including powerful clergy members and military leaders.

“Ahmadinejad is a phenomenon,” said Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president under the more moderate administration of Mohammad Khatami. “On a religious level he is much more of a hard-liner than the traditional hard-liners. But on a political level, he does not have the support of the hard-liners.”

In the long run, political analysts here say, a desire to preserve those vested interests will drive Iran’s agenda. That means that the allegiance of the political elite is to the system, not a particular president. If this president were ever perceived as outlasting his usefulness, he would probably take his place in history beside other presidents who failed to change the orientation of the system.

Iranians will go to the polls in less than two years to select a president. There are so many pressures on the electoral system here, few people expect an honest race. The Guardian Council, for example, controlled by hard-liners, must approve all candidates.

But whether Mr. Ahmadinejad wins or loses, there is no sense here in Iran that the outcome will have any impact on the fundamentals of Iran’s relations with the world or the government’s relation to its own society.

“The situation will get worse and worse,” said Saeed Leylaz, an economist and former government official. “We are moving to a point where no internal force can change things.”

    U.S. Focus on Ahmadinejad Puzzles Iranians, NYT, 24.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/middleeast/24iran.html

New York Grudgingly Opens Door to Ahmadinejad

September 24, 2007
The New York Times
By MANNY FERNANDEZ

Fidel Castro, visiting New York City in 1960, complained about the treatment he was getting at a Manhattan hotel and stormed out. Its managers later put up for auction the chicken feathers they said he left behind in Room 806.

Uganda’s brutal dictator, Idi Amin, had a statement read in 1975 at the United Nations General Assembly in which he called for the “extinction of Israel as a state.” He had started his day in a somewhat happier mood, smiling for the cameras at East 45th Street and First Avenue, where he and two of his children dedicated a plaque at the site of a future Uganda mission.

New York City — home to the United Nations and some of the most ethnically diverse communities on the planet — often finds itself in the curious position of being grudgingly hospitable to some of the world’s most controversial heads of state and loathsome tyrants.

The arrival yesterday of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president best known here for criticizing the United States and calling the Holocaust a myth, is the latest example of the diplomatic dance New York has long performed with international firebrands.

Last week the Police Department denied Iran’s request to allow Mr. Ahmadinejad to visit ground zero, but Columbia University is allowing him to participate in a World Leaders Forum today. The president spoke last night to a sympathetic and mostly Iranian audience at a Midtown hotel.

When such leaders visit New York, often to address the General Assembly, the smallest of gestures convey the most powerful of messages, and a polite snub can speak volumes. Security precautions, housing accommodations, travel itineraries and the raising of flags become matters of intense negotiations and dispute.

In 1974, as Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, made plans to visit, officials offered to house him and his delegation on Governors Island or some other secluded area, and suggested he travel by helicopter or boat to United Nations headquarters. An Army helicopter ended up flying him there from Kennedy Airport, and he and his colleagues lived not in seclusion but in style, at the Waldorf Towers in Manhattan.

In 1938, as Nazis persecuted the Jews overseas, Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia and Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine created a special police squad to protect visiting German officials and the German consul general in New York. It was led, not by accident, by Jews: Capt. Max Finkelstein, president of the department’s Shomrim Society; Lt. Jacob Lickers; and Sgt. Isaac Goldstein. The idea had perhaps been inspired by former President Theodore Roosevelt. When Mr. Roosevelt served as police commissioner in the late 1800s, he assigned 40 Jewish police officers to keep the peace at a speech given by Hermann Ahlwardt, a visiting anti-Semitic German author.

During his 1960 trip to the city, Mr. Castro complained of the “unacceptable cash demands” by the management of the Shelburne Hotel at Lexington Avenue and 37th Street. He and the Cuban delegation moved into the Hotel Theresa in Harlem instead. If forced to, he could have found housing anywhere, he told reporters, even in Central Park.

“We are mountain people,” Mr. Castro said. “We are used to sleeping in the open air.”

Mr. Castro, displeased with the reception at the Shelburne, the hotel that would later auction off the chicken feathers, was greeted by courteous crowds in Harlem.

He and other leaders soon discover this about their trips to New York: They may be unwanted by some New Yorkers, but they are loved by others.

In October 1979, when Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the deposed shah of Iran, was secretly flown to New York for treatment of a gall bladder ailment at a Manhattan hospital, anti-shah demonstrators marched outside as a plane towing a pro-shah banner flew overhead.

Even President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who came to New York last September and called President Bush the devil at the United Nations, was greeted by cheers and applause — and the actor Danny Glover — the next day when he spoke in Harlem. He spoke about the cheap heating oil he was sending to poor New Yorkers and mocked the president, who he said tried to walk “like John Wayne.”

Kenneth T. Jackson, a history professor at Columbia University and the editor of the Encyclopedia of New York City, said the city had more than a legal duty to accommodate controversial figures from abroad.

“It’s a moral obligation as a great city,” Professor Jackson said. “New York’s record is one of toleration of difference. Political difference, ethnic difference, whatever it is. It’s not a perfect record, but it’s better than the record of any other place in the world, and it’s something we need to celebrate.”

The city provides some of the most ardent critics of the United States with the same gifts it bestows on millions of ordinary tourists: the simple pleasures of sightseeing.

It was unclear how much of New York Mr. Ahmadinejad, who is to address the General Assembly tomorrow, would get to see on his trip. He is allowed under international law and diplomatic protocols to travel freely within a 25-mile radius of Columbus Circle.

Last night, at the New York Hilton, Mr. Ahmadinejad addressed people invited by the Iranian mission. The speech was closed to the news media.

Some of those invited said that while they did not agree with all of the president’s positions on matters like the role of women in Iran, they stood behind him on the involvement of Israel and the United States in the Middle East.

After the speech, some in the audience said Mr. Ahmadinejad downplayed the interest Iran had in developing nuclear weapons. Mina Z. Siegel, an Iranian-American, said he called building a nuclear weapon “a waste of money” and characterized Iranians as “very peaceful.”

Another Iranian, Ali Zareinejad, 68, said: “What he said is true, a reality that the whole world needs to accept. He said we are peaceful all over the world. So we don’t need an atomic bomb.”

Earlier yesterday, elected officials and students held a rally at Columbia to protest the university’s decision to invite him to speak on campus. Another demonstration is scheduled at the university today.

“He should be arrested when he comes to Columbia University, not speak at the university, for God’s sake,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who noted that his mother is a survivor of Auschwitz. “I call on New Yorkers to make the life of Ahmadinejad as he is in New York miserable.”

About the same time, another visiting dignitary received an altogether different greeting. President Leonel Fernández of the Dominican Republic went to the Bronx, where he was given one of the highest New York honors. He threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium.

Jason Grant, Trymaine Lee, Mathew R. Warren and Carolyn Wilder contributed reporting.

    New York Grudgingly Opens Door to Ahmadinejad, NYT, 24.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/middleeast/24iran.html

Ahmadinejad: Iran, US Not Headed for War

September 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:07 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in New York to protests Sunday and said in a television interview that Iran was neither building a nuclear bomb nor headed to war with the United States.

The president's motorcade pulled up to the midtown hotel where he will be staying while he appears at a series of events including the U.N. General Assembly and a forum at Columbia University, where about 40 elected officials and civic leaders decried his visit.

Ahmadinejad's public-relations push appears aimed at presenting his views directly to a U.S. audience amid rising strains and talk of war between the two nations.

Tensions are high between Washington and Tehran over U.S. accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, as well as helping Shiite militias in Iraq that target U.S. troops -- claims Iran denies.

''Well, you have to appreciate we don't need a nuclear bomb. We don't need that. What need do we have for a bomb?'' Ahmadinejad said in the ''60 Minutes'' interview taped in Iran on Thursday. ''In political relations right now, the nuclear bomb is of no use. If it was useful it would have prevented the downfall of the Soviet Union.''

He also said that: ''It's wrong to think that Iran and the U.S. are walking toward war. Who says so? Why should we go to war? There is no war in the offing.''

Before leaving Iran, Ahmadinejad said the American people have been denied ''correct information,'' and his visit will give them a chance to hear a different voice, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Washington has said it is addressing the Iran situation diplomatically, rather than militarily, but U.S. officials also say that all options are open. The commander of the U.S. military forces in the Middle East said he did not believe tensions will lead to war.

''This constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me, which is not helpful and not useful,'' Adm. William Fallon, head of U.S. Central Command, said in an interview with Al-Jazeera television, which made a partial transcript available Sunday.

Ahmadinejad's scheduled address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday will be his third time attending the New York meeting in three years.

But his request to lay a wreath at ground zero was denied by city officials and condemned by politicians who said a visit to the site of the 2001 terror attacks would violate sacred ground.

Police cited construction and security concerns in denying Ahmadinejad's request. Ahmadinejad told 60 Minutes he would not press the issue but expressed disbelief that the visit would offend Americans.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, hundreds of young Iranians held a series of candlelight vigils in Tehran.

''Usually you go to these sites to pay your respects. And also to perhaps air your views about the root causes of such incidents,'' Ahmadinejad told the network.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini also appeared dismayed that the request was rejected.

''What kind of damage will the U.S. face (by Ahmadinejad visiting the site)?'' Hosseini said at his weekly press conference Sunday.

Columbia canceled a planned visit by the Iranian president last year, also citing security and logistical reasons.

University President Lee Bollinger has resisted requests to cancel Ahmadinejad's speech this year but promised to introduce the talk himself with a series of tough questions on topics including the Iranian leader's views on the Holocaust, his call for the destruction of the state of Israel and his government's alleged support of terrorism.

Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust ''a myth'' and called for Israel to be ''wiped off the map.''

At the protests, New York state Assemblyman Dov Hikind said Ahmadinejad ''should be arrested when he comes to Columbia University, not invited to speak for God's sake.''

Ahmadinejad's visit to New York is also being debated back home. Some in Iran think his trip is a publicity stunt that hurts Iran's image in the world.

Political analyst Iraj Jamshidi said Ahmadinejad looks at the General Assembly as a publicity forum simply to surprise world leaders with his harsh rhetoric.

''The world has not welcomed Ahmadinejad's hardline approach. His previous address to the assembly didn't resolve any of Iran's foreign policy issues. And no one expects anything better this time,'' he said.

But conservative lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi said it was a good chance for Iran to air its position.

''This trip gives the president a good chance to meet world leaders and inform them of Iran's rightful position,'' IRNA quoted Boroujerdi as saying.

----------

Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi and Ali Akbar Dareini contributed to this report from Tehran, Iran.

    Ahmadinejad: Iran, US Not Headed for War, NYT, 24.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iran-US.html

U.S. says Iran sending missiles to Iraq

23 September 2007
USA Today

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. military accused Iran on Sunday of smuggling surface-to-air missiles and other advanced weapons into Iraq for use against American troops. The new allegations came as Iraqi leaders condemned the latest U.S. detention of an Iranian in northern Iraq, saying the man was in their country on official business.
Military spokesman Rear Adm. Mark Fox said U.S. troops were continuing to find Iranian-supplied weaponry including the Misagh 1, a portable surface-to-air missile that uses an infrared guidance system.

Other advanced Iranian weaponry found in Iraq includes the RPG-29 rocket-propelled grenade, 240 mm rockets and armor-piercing roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, Fox said.

An American soldier was killed Saturday and another wounded when an EFP hit their patrol in eastern Baghdad, the military said.

Iran has denied U.S. allegations that it is smuggling weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq, a denial that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" aired Sunday.

"We don't need to do that. We are very much opposed to war and insecurity," said Ahmadinejad, who arrived in New York Sunday to attend the U.N. General Assembly. "The insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests."

Tensions between Iran and the United States have worried Iraqi officials — many of whom are members of political parties with close ties to Tehran.

A 240 mm rocket was fired this month at the main U.S. headquarters base in Iraq, killing one person and wounding 11.

U.S. officials said the rocket was fired from a west Baghdad neighborhood controlled by Shiite militiamen.

On Thursday, U.S. troops arrested an Iranian in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah. U.S. officials said he was a member of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that smuggles weapons into Iraq.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the Iranian's arrest, saying he understood the man, who has been identified as Mahmudi Farhadi, had been invited to Iraq.

"The government of Iraq is an elected one and sovereign. When it gives a visa, it is responsible for the visa," he told The Associated Press in an interview in New York. "We consider the arrest ... of this individual who holds an Iraqi visa and a (valid) passport to be unacceptable."

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, also demanded the Iranian's release.

The U.S. military said the suspect was being questioned about "his knowledge of, and involvement in," the transportation of EFPs and other roadside bombs from Iran into Iraq and "his facilitation of travel and training in Iran for Iraqi insurgents." The military said no decision had been made about whether to file charges.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Farhadi was in charge of border transactions in western Iran and went to Iraq on an official invitation.

He said Iran expects the Iraqi government to provide security for Iranian nationals there and warned the arrest could affect relations between the two neighbors as well.

Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, said a shipment of chlorine had crossed the border from Jordan after concerns were raised about shortages of the chemical needed to prevent an outbreak of cholera from spreading.

Officials said earlier that as much as 100,000 tons of chlorine was being held up at the border for fear it would be hijacked and used in explosives. Several chlorine truck bombs blamed on suspected Sunni insurgents earlier this year killed scores of people.

Naeem al-Qabi, the deputy chief of Baghdad's municipal council, said warehouses in the capital were preparing to accept the chlorine, which would help purify water supplies.

"There is some administrative work needed to be done and it will be finished very soon," al-Qabi said.

Iraq now has a total of 1,652 confirmed cases of cholera after three new cases were confirmed in Salahuddin province, according to an update on the World Health Organization's website on Sunday. Earlier, cholera was confirmed in the provinces of Sulaimaniyah, Tamim and Irbil, as well as a case each in Baghdad and in Basra.

"As the weather cools and becomes more favorable for transmission, the organism is expected to spread to other provinces," the WHO's country office in Iraq said on its website.

Cholera is endemic to Iraq, with about 30 cases registered each year. The last major outbreak was in 1999, when 20 cases were discovered in one day.

Also Sunday, Iraq's minister of state for national security, Sherwan al-Waili, took over the security operations center in Basra as tensions rose in the southern city following the assassination of a local representative of Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

The region has been rocked by violence between rival Shiite militias linked to political parties, raising concerns about security as the British military has pulled back its troops from the city center to a nearby airport to allow Iraqi security forces to take over.

Al-Waili told reporters that he will temporarily head the operations center until a new security plan is implemented "very soon" in the city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.

    U.S. says Iran sending missiles to Iraq, UT, 23.9.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-09-23-iran-missiles_N.htm

Military Chief: 'No War' With Iran

September 23, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:07 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- The commander of U.S. military forces in the Middle East does not believe current tensions with Iran will lead to war and urges for greater emphasis on dialogue and diplomacy.

''This constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me which is not helpful and not useful,'' Adm. William Fallon said in an interview with Al-Jazeera television, which made a partial transcript available Sunday.

Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, wraps up a seven-nation tour of the region on Tuesday that included stops in Persian Gulf countries, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Many of the talks with military and political leaders were dominated by worries about expanding Iranian influence and U.S. accusations that Iran is supplying arms and training to Shiite militiamen in Iraq.

''I expect that there will be no war and that is what we ought to be working for,'' said Fallon during the Friday interview at Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar. ''We should find ways through which we can bring countries to work together for the benefit of all .... It is not a good idea to be in a state of war. We ought to try and to do our utmost to create different conditions.''

Al-Jazeera was expected to broadcast the complete interview later this week.

Fallon -- who leads U.S. forces in Central Asia, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa -- was in Iraq on Sunday for a second day of meetings.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Saturday that the world body plans to open a new office in Baghdad to encourage cooperation between Iraq and its neighbors, calling Iraq's stability ''a common concern.'' The U.N. greatly scaled back its presence in Iraq since a 2003 bombing at its Baghdad headquarters that killed 22 people.

    Military Chief: 'No War' With Iran, NYT, 23.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Fallon.html

President of Iran Says He’ll Avoid Ground Zero

September 21, 2007
The New York Times
By THOMAS J. LUECK and KAREN W. ARENSON

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said yesterday that he would not allow Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, anywhere near ground zero during his trip to New York next week, but the chance of a diplomatic showdown appeared to lessen when Mr. Ahmadinejad said he would abide by the decision.

The focus of protest over the visit by Mr. Ahmadinejad, who is to attend the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly, then shifted uptown to Columbia University, where he is scheduled to participate in a World Leaders Forum on Monday.

The university, while standing behind its invitation, came under harsh criticism yesterday from presidential candidates, the New York City Council, Jewish organizations and others for giving Mr. Ahmadinejad a public stage.

The remarks by Mr. Kelly, who spoke to reporters in Manhattan, and Mr. Ahmadinejad, who was interviewed in Tehran for a “60 Minutes” segment to be broadcast on Sunday, came amid widespread protest, which erupted Wednesday when Mr. Kelly said a ground zero visit by the Iranian president was being considered.

Hours later, the Police Department said Mr. Kelly had misspoken, but his remarks had already reverberated across the Internet.

“Our position is that President Ahmadinejad will not be permitted to go to ground zero,” Mr. Kelly said yesterday. He said that the area designated as off limits would be “the general vicinity of the World Trade Center,” and that the restriction had been imposed to protect public safety.

In the “60 Minutes” interview, parts of which were released late yesterday by CBS, Mr. Ahmadinejad said a visit to ground zero “was included in my program.” He added, “If we have the time and the conditions are conducive, I will try to do that.”

But when asked to respond to Mr. Kelly’s remarks, the Iranian president said: “Well, over there, local officials need to make the necessary coordinations. If they don’t do that, I won’t insist.” He also said he doubted that most Americans would be insulted if he visited the site of the 9/11 terror attack.

Iranian officials originally asked that Mr. Ahmadinejad be allowed to visit the area of ground zero where construction is under way. Although relatives of the Sept. 11 victims were allowed to visit the site briefly on the sixth anniversary of the attack, members of the public are not allowed into the area.

Columbia officials faced harsh criticism yesterday from two Republican presidential hopefuls, Senator John McCain and Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn urged the university to withdraw the invitation, saying that Mr. Ahmadinejad was “here for one reason: to spread his hate-mongering vitriol on the world stage.”

But William V. Campbell, chairman of the Columbia board of trustees, defended the decision to have the Iranian president appear. “The freedom of our deans and faculty to create challenging and even controversial programs for our students is essential and sets a powerful example to the world about the strength of American universities and society,” he said.

The political volatility of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York, in which he will be among hundreds of world leaders and diplomats attending the General Assembly session, was underscored yesterday by President Bush at a news conference. The Iranian president is a strident critic of the United States, has called the Holocaust a myth and has been the subject of repeated scorn by the Bush administration.

“My thoughts are that the local police will make the proper decision,” Mr. Bush said, “and that if they decide for him not to go — like it looks like they have — I can understand why they would not want somebody who is running a country who is a state sponsor of terror down there at the site.”

Speculation has been rife that Mr. Ahmadinejad might ignore police instructions and try to make his way to ground zero, provoking a confrontation that would most likely be seen in news broadcasts around the world.

Although the United States has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980, Mr. Ahmadinejad is allowed under international law and diplomatic protocols to travel freely within a 25-mile radius of Columbus Circle.

Mr. Kelly declined yesterday to say how the police would respond if Mr. Ahmadinejad ignored police instructions and traveled to the area of the World Trade Center. “I don’t want to go into hypotheticals,” Mr. Kelly said. But he added, “We’ve communicated our concerns to the Iranian mission,” and said he was “sure they’ll abide by our statement.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a news conference in Chinatown yesterday that a visit by the Iranian president to ground zero would be “an outrage.” He added, “We don’t expect him to go.”

The only doubts about Mr. Ahmadinejad’s scheduled appearance at Columbia came yesterday from his government. Mohammad Mohammadi, a spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations, said that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s schedule in New York was “still under discussion” and that his appearance at the Columbia forum could be canceled.

Columbia said yesterday that it was expecting a full house of 600 for the Monday forum, and was looking for ways to accommodate a larger audience.

Columbia said Lee C. Bollinger, its president, would introduce the event, which is part of the university’s World Leaders Forum, and challenge some of the Iranian president’s statements, including his call for the destruction of the state of Israel.

    President of Iran Says He’ll Avoid Ground Zero, NYT, 21.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/nyregion/21visit.html

Iran Leader: Bush Will Be Tried

September 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:49 a.m. ET
The New York Times

TEHRAN, Iran (AP)-- President Bush and other American officials will one day face trial just like deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for ''the catastrophes they caused in Iraq,'' Iran's supreme leader said Friday.

Speaking to thousands of worshippers during the first Friday prayer of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Bush will be called to account for the U.S.-led invasion.

''A day will come that the current U.S. president and officials will be tried in an international supreme court for the catastrophes they caused in Iraq,'' he said.

''Americans will have to answer for why they don't end occupation of Iraq and why waves of terrorism and insurgency have overwhelmed the country,'' he added. ''It will not be like this forever and some day they will be stopped as happened to Hitler, Saddam and certain other European leaders.''

Bush painted quite a different picture Thursday, describing an Iraq on the mend.

''One year ago, much of Baghdad was under siege,'' Bush said in a televised speech from the Oval Office. ''Today, most of Baghdad's neighborhoods are being patrolled by coalition and Iraqi forces who live among the people they protect. ... Sectarian killings are down. And ordinary life is beginning to return.''

But Khamenei mocked the U.S., describing the recent congressional testimony of the top American officials in Iraq as a sign of weakness and the failure of American policy in the war torn country.

''More than four years have passed since the occupation of Iraq and today everyone knows that America has failed and is frantically looking for a way out,'' he said.

In their testimony Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker raised allegations -- denied by Iran -- of Iranian meddling in Iraq by financial and military support of militias and insurgent groups. They warned that the U.S. was already embroiled in a proxy war with the Islamic republic.

Despite U.N. sanctions and efforts to isolate Iran internationally, the country is flourishing, maintained Khamenei.

''Today we are in a better political position compared to four to five years ago,'' he said. ''We have moved forward economically and the spiritual preparedness and happiness of our nation has improved.''

''A nation like ours, without an atomic bomb and not as wealthy as these other powerful governments, has foiled a whole series of their conspiracies and forced them to give up and withdraw,'' he added.

The U.S. accuses Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and has called for further international sanctions against the country. Iran denies the charge.

Iran and the U.S. have not had diplomatic relations since Washington cut its ties with Tehran after Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy there in 1979.

    Iran Leader: Bush Will Be Tried, NYT, 14.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-US-Iraq.html

Gunmen Hit U.S. Military Plane in Mali

September 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:11 p.m. ET
The New York Times

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) -- Suspected rebels hit a U.S. military plane with machine-gun fire after it dropped food to Malian troops pinned down in battle this week near the Algerian border, American and Malian officials said Thursday.

No one was wounded and the C-130 transport sustained only minor damage, said Maj. Pam Cook, a spokeswoman for the U.S. command in Stuttgart, Germany, which oversees Africa missions. The attack occurred between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning over the village of Tin-Zawatine.

Another U.S. official in Stuttgart, Air Force Maj. John Dorrian, said the plane was the only U.S. aircraft in Mali. It was there for a counter-terrorism training exercise when the rare call for help came from the government, he said.

The plane had completed an airdrop of about 14,000 pounds of food when it was hit, Cook said.

''We would do this for any partner nation that we're working with when their troops are pinned down,'' Cook said by telephone from Stuttgart.

It was unclear if the Malian troops' movements were restricted by rebel fire or because the area was heavily mined. Mali's military says delivering food by land to the region is no longer safe because rebels have mined much of the area.

Cook said the aircraft returned safely and did not return fire.

Malian officials gave similar accounts. They called the gunmen ''armed bandits,'' a phrase the government uses for Tuareg rebels active in the far north. Cook also cited U.S. officials in Mali as saying that the attack was perpetrated by ''armed bandits.''

Another senior Malian military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said the plane landed safely in the capital, Bamako. He said gunmen used automatic rifles in the attack and that the incident occurred early Wednesday.

Though Mali is often called one of the most stable countries in West Africa, it has seen rebellions several times since the 1990s. The Tuaregs are a semi-nomadic people, part of the Berber ethnic group, and many say they suffer discrimination at the hands of the Bambara-speaking majority.

Tuareg rebels signed a peace deal with the government in July 2006. A Tuareg faction led by Ibrahim Bahanga rejected the deal, however, saying it did not do enough to help Tuaregs.

The government blames Bahanga for a new spate of attacks and kidnappings. This month, rebels released 10 of about 30 soldiers they had held for more than week.

Mali's neighbor, uranium-rich Niger, is facing a similar Tuareg rebellion.

The U.S. military exercises do not normally involve the fight with the Tuareg. Instead, they are designed to help Mali prevent terrorist groups including al-Qaida from setting up training camps and other bases in northwest Africa's lawless, unpoliced deserts.

Tbe training missions typically involve only dozens of U.S. soldiers at a time. Dorrian said the U.S. military has no permanent presence in Mali and does not supply arms or ammunition to the government.

------

Associated Press Writer Heidi Vogt contributed to this report from Dakar.

    Gunmen Hit U.S. Military Plane in Mali, NYT, 13.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mali-US-Attack.html

Bush and South Korean Leader in Testy Exchange

September 8, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

SYDNEY, Australia, Sept. 7 — At the invitation of North Korea, an international delegation of nuclear experts from Russia, China and the United States will travel to the North next week to inspect nuclear sites that are to be shut down, the chief American envoy to the country said here today.

The announcement, by Assistant Secretary of State Ambassador Christopher R. Hill, came on a day when the North’s nuclear ambitions dominated the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum here, creating an awkward and testy exchange between President Bush and President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea, over what would seem like an historical anachronism, the lack of a peace treaty ending the Korean war.

With Mr. Roh scheduled to go to Pyongyang to meet his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-il, next month, the South Korean leader used his photo opportunity with the president to make a public issue of the peace accord. With television cameras rolling, and Mr. Bush by his side, Mr. Roh publicly pressed the American president to declare a formal end to the hostilities — something Mr. Bush has said he will not do until the North has completely scrapped its nuclear program.

“I said it’s up to Kim Jong-il,” Mr. Bush said, looking irked, “as to whether or not we’re able to sign a peace treaty to end the Korean War. He’s got to get rid of his weapons in a verifiable fashion. And we’re making progress toward that goal. It’s up to him.”

Officials said the inspections are an important step. Mr. Hill told reporters that the North, which has agreed to dismantle its nuclear facilities in return for economic aid, quietly proposed the inspections during talks with the United States last week in Geneva.

But Mr. Hill did not disclose the plan until Friday evening in Sydney, after American officials had secured the approval of the other nations in the so-called six-party talks, the discussions aimed at ending the North’s nuclear program. Five of the six nations — South Korea, China, Russia, Japan and the United States — are represented here.

Mr. Hill said the North had proposed several methods of disabling its plants; the experts will spend four days examining the “scope and the technical feasibility” of those plans. They will report back to the six parties, who reconvene in mid-September, Mr. Hill said. The administration is hoping the North’s entire program will be dismantled by Dec. 31.

“This was an idea the North Koreans came up with,” Mr. Hill told reporters in announcing the inspections. “I think it is a sign that this current phase of disabling is an ambitious phase. We have a lot of work to do and I think it’s a sign of seriousness of purpose.”

Signing a peace treaty to replace the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War has been a key demand from North Korea in the talks. The North has insisted that it was developing nuclear weapons because of military threats from the United States, and that it would find no use for them once peace and its regime’s survival are guaranteed.

South Korea, meanwhile, believes that an official cessation of hostilities would pave the way for a warming of relations between the south and the north. So when the two leaders emerged for a brief media appearance after their meeting, Mr. Roh pressed Mr. Bush.

“I think I might be wrong — I might be wrong — I think I did not hear President Bush mention the — a declaration to end the Korean War just now” Mr. Roh said. “Did you say so, President Bush?.”

After Mr. Bush told Mr. Roh it was up to the North Korean leader, Mr. Roh, apparently not satisfied, pressed again,

“If you could be a little bit clearer in your message,” he said.

Mr. Bush cut him off. “I can’t make it any more clear,” Mr. Bush said, ending the exchange with a very terse “Thank you.”

American officials chalked the exchange up to a translation problem, and dismissed any speculation of tension between the two men.

“I can tell you that they had a very warm meeting,” said Dana Perino, the deputy White House press secretary. “The president made a clear statement of his support for ending the Korean war once and for all. Both leaders agreed on that. There was no tension in the meeting.”

But Professor Kenneth Wells, the Director of the Center for Korean Studies at the Australian National University, said that although the two men share the same aims in regard to North Korea, they have very different instincts about how to get there.

South Korea has been pursuing a so-called sunshine policy, which stresses the importance of engaging North Korea in an attempt to encourage the regime to open up and pave the way for eventual reunification. But while President Roh wants a more open policy with North Korea, Mr. Bush has been suspicious, Professor Wells said.

Cheong Seong Chang, a senior analyst at Sejong Institute in South Korea, said the exchange had to do more with North-South politics than United States-Korea relations. By pressing Mr. Bush to clarify his position in public before journalists, Mr. Roh was clearly trying to help himself at home, Mr. Cheong said.

“Roh was likely trying to emphasize South Korea’s mediating role, to highlight his diplomatic achievement."

Mr. Bush’s offer to sign a peace treaty with North Korea, though it comes with conditions attached, is "significant, even shocking to hard line conservative analysts," Mr. Cheong said. "Now that will likely force Kim Jong-il to respond to this overture from the U.S. president."

Tim Johnston contributed reporting from Sydney, and Choe Sang-hun from Seoul.

    Bush and South Korean Leader in Testy Exchange, NYT, 8.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/world/asia/08korea.html?hp

Bush Urges Nations on Anti - Terror Fight

September 7, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:21 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- President Bush on Friday urged Asia-Pacific nations to keep up the anti-terror fight, deploying both military might and democratic ideals to turn the tide against extremists. ''Pressure keeps the terrorists on the run, and when on the run, we're safer,'' he said. ''We must be determined, we must be focused and we must not let up.''

In the speech to business leaders, Bush prodded Russia and China to honor democratic principles and allow more freedoms. He appealed for international pressure against the military government in Myanmar to stop its crackdown on pro-democracy activists in the Southeast Asian nation.

The president added that North Koreans should share the same liberties that citizens of their democratic neighbors enjoy.

Bush spoke optimistically about the war in Iraq and urged other nations not to turn away.

''We're going to succeed in Iraq,'' he said.

Bush said nations across Asia should understand the importance of fighting terrorism, since they have so often been its victims.

Bush was about 15 minutes late starting his speech, as aides hustled audience members down from the balcony to fill the many empty seats below. He started his remarks with a gaffe. In Sydney to attend the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, a 21-nation group of Pacific Rim countries whose economies account for nearly half of all global trade, Bush first referred to the group as OPEC, the cartel of major oil producers. The audience remained quiet through his speech.

Earlier Thursday, the president met with China's President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of the summit. Later Friday, he had lunch with South East Asian leaders and was meeting with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Bush and Hu, leaders of two of the world's worst polluting nations, both called on Thursday for greater international cooperation in tackling climate change without stifling economic growth. Bush repeated that theme in his speech Friday, calling on Pacific Rim nations to lead the way toward a worldwide trade agreement.

''Our challenge is to strengthen the forces of freedom and prosperity in this region,'' Bush said.

He said the best way to open markets was to achieve a breakthrough in global trade negotiations known in the economic world as the Doha round.

''The United States is committed to seizing this opportunity -- and we need partners in this region to help lead the effort,'' the president said. ''No single country can make Doha a success, but it is possible for a handful of countries that are unwilling to make the necessary contributions to bring Doha to a halt.''

Bush also asked the Asia-Pacific leaders for their cooperation on climate change. He acknowledged the fears of some that the United States was trying to construct a successor to the Kyoto Protocol outside of international efforts already under way.

''We agree these issues must be addressed in an integrated way,'' he said. ''We take climate change seriously in America.''

The U.S has called for a Sept. 27-28 conference in Washington of the 15 biggest polluters. And U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a broader conference in New York on Sept. 24.

The high-level discussions at APEC could shape talks at a U.N. conference in December in Bali, Indonesia, that will start to chart a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The United States never ratified Kyoto, which requires 35 nations to cut emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Bush has been criticized by environmentalists and others for his opposition to the 1997 Kyoto pact, and China has long been slammed for the huge amounts of greenhouse gases its power plants and industries pump into the atmosphere. The fact that neither China nor India, another major global polluter, were covered by Kyoto was one reason Bush has opposed it.

But both leaders seemed to be generally in agreement on the subject.

''We believe that the issue of climate change bears on the welfare of the whole humanity and sustainable development of the whole world,'' Hu told reporters after his meeting with Bush. ''And this issue should be appropriately tackled through stronger international cooperation.''

Climate control has been designated a top agenda item for this year's APEC meeting.

''We talked about climate change and our desire to work together on climate change,'' Bush said.

Bush has proposed eliminating tariffs on environmental and clean-energy technologies. In his talks with Hu, Bush invited the Chinese leader to consider doing the same, said Dan Price, a presidential economic adviser on the National Security Council.

Hu had suggested the United Nations should be the one to spearhead climate control efforts. Price said that wasn't necessarily contradictory with the Bush approach.

Bush said he accepted Hu's invitation to attend the 2008 Summer Olympics. And the two leaders talked about establishing a hot line like the longtime one between Washington and Moscow to alert each other to possible military situations that might seem threatening or be ambiguous.

    Bush Urges Nations on Anti - Terror Fight, NYT, 7.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush.html

Bush Delivering Speech in Australia

September 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:42 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao, leaders of two of the world's worst polluting nations, called Thursday for greater international cooperation in tackling climate change without stifling economic growth.

Bush also was to push for expanded trade with Pacific Rim nations and appeal for help in getting stalled global trade talks going again. He was laying out his views on the environment, energy security and the economic costs of terrorism in a speech to business leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

Climate change was high on the agenda of the U.S. and Chinese presidents in a 90-minute meeting and aides said it would be an important aspect of Bush's speech. The president also was to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, among heads of state here for the annual meeting of the 21-nation economic gathering.

Bush has been criticized by environmentalists and others for his opposition to the 1997 Kyoto treaty against global warming, and China has long been slammed for the huge amounts of greenhouse gases its power plants and industries pump into the atmosphere. The fact that neither China nor India, another major global polluter, were covered by Kyoto was one reason Bush has opposed it.

But both leaders seemed to be generally in agreement on the subject.

''We believe that the issue of climate change bears on the welfare of the whole humanity and sustainable development of the whole world,'' Hu told reporters after his meeting with Bush. ''And this issue should be appropriately tackled through stronger international cooperation.''

Climate control has been designated a top agenda item for this year's APEC meeting.

''We talked about climate change and our desire to work together on climate change,'' Bush said.

Aides said the president would give a more detailed account of his climate change proposals in his speech to APEC business leaders.

One of them is a proposal to eliminate tariffs on environmental and clean-energy technologies. In his talks with Hu, Bush invited the Chinese leader to consider doing the same, said Dan Price, a presidential economic adviser on the National Security Council.

''President Bush raised the issue of climate change, and both sides welcomed the attention of APEC to climate, and they confirmed the importance of addressing this pressing problem cooperatively and responsibly, and in a manner that did not stall or stunt economic growth,'' Price said.

Hu had suggested the United Nations should be the one to spearhead climate control efforts. Price said that wasn't necessarily contradictory with the Bush approach.

The U.S. and Chinese leaders also talked about North Korea, Iran and Chinese product safety. Hu ''was quite articulate about product safety, and I appreciated his comments,'' Bush said. White House aides later said Hu expressed a willingness to step up Chinese efforts to ensure the safety of products and to crack down on efforts to ship tainted foods.

Bush said he accepted Hu's invitation to attend the 2008 Summer Olympics. And the two leaders talked about establishing a ''hot line'' like the longtime one between Washington and Moscow to alert each other to possible military situations that might seem threatening or be ambiguous.

Both leaders expressed opposition to efforts within Taiwan to seek U.N. membership. The U.S. has opposed steps toward independence for the self-governing island, which Beijing considers a renegade province, preferring to adhere to its ''One China'' policy even as it continues to sell military supplies to Taiwan.

Bush has called for greater reliance on technology to combat global warming. Although early in his first term, he had insisted that the science of what causes global warming was not yet settled, more recently he has been less questioning of a link between human activity and higher global temperatures, and supportive of programs to tackle the problem.

Earlier this week, Bush said it was an ''urban legend that is preposterous'' for critics to suggest that his opposition to the Kyoto treaty showed a lack of environmental awareness or concern about climate change.

Bush was also having lunch with South East Asian leaders and meeting with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and Putin.

In his speech, the president was also issuing an appeal to Asia-Pacific business leaders for their help in getting stalled global trade liberalization talks restarted.

The trade talks known as the Doha round have stumbled since their inception in Qatar's capital in 2001, largely because of wrangling between rich and poor countries over eliminating barriers to farm trade and, more recently, manufacturing trade.

    Bush Delivering Speech in Australia, NYT, 6.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush.html

Bush Accepts Invitation to Beijing Olympics

September 6, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

SYDNEY, Australia, Sept. 6 — President Bush said today that he has accepted an invitation from President Hu Jintao of China to attend the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing, a move that is likely to inflame China’s critics, who are calling for a boycott of the games to protest human rights abuses in that country.

Mr. Hu extended the invitation — reiterating an offer he has made before — during a 90-minute private session with Mr. Bush here on the eve of an economic summit meeting of Asian nations. Their talk touched on a range of topics, from climate change to Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the recall of Chinese-made toys.

“It was a constructive and cordial conversation,” the president told reporters afterward. “And once again he extended an invitation to me and Laura and our family to come to the Olympics. And of course, I was anxious to accept.”

Mr. Bush had told aides privately that he would like to attend the 2008 games, but Thursday was the first time he said so publicly. Aides said the president would attend as a sports fan, and not to make any political statement.

But at a time when relations between the United States and China are delicate, to say the least, the move carries great symbolic significance, said Michael Green, an Asia expert and former Asia director at the National Security Council under Mr. Bush.

“For the Chinese, that’s a public vote of confidence that President Hu and the Chinese people will undoubtedly appreciate,” Mr. Green said.

He said that because China worries about criticism of its human rights policies, Mr. Bush’s decision to attend the games “in subtle ways raises pressure on the Chinese to perform.”

The president has repeatedly said the United States and China have a “complex relationship,” a phrase he reiterated earlier this week during a press conference with Prime Minister John Howard of Australia. Those complexities were readily apparent after today’s session with Mr. Hu, where Mr. Bush pressed the Chinese leader on two thorny issues: climate change and the buildup of the Chinese military.

On climate change, the president asked Mr. Hu to consider eliminating tariffs on environmental goods and clean energy technologies. China is one of the world’s biggest polluters, and climate change is one of the major topics on the agenda of the 21-nation summit here in Sydney. Mr. Bush is trying to prod China into joining an international effort to set long-range targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“I think the president saw this as a good opportunity to suggest to President Hu a concrete step that he could consider,” Dan Price, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Bush, said, referring to the president’s proposal on tariffs. Asked Mr. Hu’s reaction, Mr. Price said, “He took it on board.”

Mr. Hu said climate change was high on his own agenda as well.

“We believe that the issue of climate change bears on the welfare of the whole humanity and sustainable development of the whole world,” he said, with Mr. Bush by his side. “And this issue should be appropriately tackled through stronger international cooperation.”

Mr. Hu and Mr. Bush also agreed to create a new hotline to link the two countries’ militaries, a move that evokes memories of the Cold War era hotline that tied the United States to the former Soviet Union. Details of the hotline have not yet been worked out, but Jim Jeffrey, one of two deputy national security advisers to Mr. Bush who attended the meeting, said the idea was to build confidence and trust between the two nations as China grows as a military power.

“Hotlines have had a long history of basically serving as confidence building measures,” Mr. Jeffrey said. “I wouldn’t say it would relieve tension because right now we don’t have tension in the military sphere. What we do have is a developing military that, in order to assure regional security, should be as transparent as possible.”

Mr. Hu, apparently sensitive about the recall of his country’s consumer products, brought up the issue of product safety. Dan Price, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Bush, said Mr. Hu told the president that “the Chinese government took this problem very seriously.”

One issue that was not discussed, however, was the recent cyber attack on Defense Department computers, which has been attributed to Chinese hackers. At a press conference with Prime Minister John Howard of Australia on Wednesday, Mr. Bush acknowledged that the United States is vulnerable to such attacks and said he might bring up the issue during his meeting with Mr. Hu.

But aides later said that he did not.

    Bush Accepts Invitation to Beijing Olympics, NYT, 6.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/asia/05cnd-prexy.html?hp

Bush Meets Chinese Leader

September 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:39 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- President Bush engaged in high-stakes talks Thursday with Chinese President Hu Jintao, the leader of one of the world's fastest-growing economies and one of its most formidable military powers.

Bush said before the session that he would express both encouragement and concern to Hu. The two leaders, meeting on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific economic summit, were expected to talk about an hour.

Earlier, Bush conferred with an Australian opposition candidate who is anti-war and could soon be in a position to challenge Bush's Iraq policies.

Bush met with Labor Party candidate Kevin Rudd, who has vowed to bring Australian troops home from Iraq if elected. That's in sharp contrast to the strong support for the war and Bush's recent military buildup from the current prime minister, John Howard.

Rudd leads Howard by a wide margin in polls for elections expected to be held within the next three months. The White House kept the session with Rudd, held in Bush's hotel, as low key as possible.

Bush and his aides said he was eager to talk to Hu about increasing trade and climate controls and to express satisfaction with Beijing's role in pressing North Korea to agree to disavow nuclear weapons. But he was also ready to discuss product-safety issues following a rash of recalls in the United States, and to register his worries about China's exchange rate policies.

Bush was to urge the Chinese leader to be more aggressive on Iran, raise the issue of jailed dissidents, press Hu on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and on the treatment of the Dalai Lama, administration officials said. He may even bring up unsubstantiated reports that China's military has hacked into Pentagon computers.

''Our relationship with China is complex,'' Bush said Wednesday.

Bush suggested China could help reduce trade imbalances and allow its currency to be more responsive to market influences.

''We still have got a huge trade deficit with China, which then causes us to want to work with them to adjust -- to let their currency float,'' Bush said. ''We think that would be helpful in terms of adjusting trade balances.''

Dan Price, a presidential international economic adviser, said ''a whole range of economic issues, bilateral issues with China, are obviously on the table, and would naturally be subjects of discussion between the two presidents.'' Exchange rates are ''a very important issue'' to both countries, he said.

Analysts say China's yuan is undervalued, giving Chinese exporters an unfair advantage despite China's steps to revalue the currency by 2.1 percent in 2005 and then letting it appreciate a further 7.3 percent.

U.S.-Chinese tensions have also grown over the issue of defective products. Just Wednesday, Mattel Inc. announced a third major recall of Chinese-made toys in little more than a month because of excessive amounts of lead paint. The world's largest toy maker said the move affects about 800,000 toys.

China has denied reports that its military hacked into a computer system in the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates in June. Bush largely sidestepped the question, but said, ''We understand that we're vulnerable in some systems.'' The Financial Times, citing unidentified officials, said China was behind the attack that forced the Pentagon to temporarily take down the network. China has called the allegations ''groundless.''

In his meeting with Rudd, Bush and the Australian opposition party candidate were seated in chairs. There was no public handshake. Only still photographers were permitted into the room

That contrasts to the extensive coverage of Bush's sessions with Howard -- which included a picture-taking session during a morning meeting, a news conference, a boat ride, the two leaders' lunch with Australian troops, and Bush's arrival for dinner with the prime minister.

Bush warmly praised Howard on Wednesday and the Australian leader pledged to keep Australia's roughly 1,600 troops in Iraq until improved ground conditions justifies withdrawals.

Rudd later described his 45-minute meeting with Bush as warm, but refused to give details. ''We had a wide-ranging good-natured, very open discussion,'' he told Australian reporters. ''We talked at length about the history of the alliance between Australia and the United States and about Iraq, Afghanistan and climate change.''

Rudd said he gave Bush the same description of his Iraq position -- ''well known to Australians'' -- as he had to Vice President Dick Cheney earlier this year.

''I understand and accept fully that President Bush and Mr. Howard are good friends. That's just the reality,'' he said. Asked if he thought he could develop a similar friendship with Bush, Rudd replied: ''I'm a friendly sort of guy''.

    Bush Meets Chinese Leader, NYT, 6.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush.html

U.S. Says N. Korea Not Off Terror List

September 4, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:54 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- A senior U.S. diplomat said Tuesday that North Korea remains on a list of states that sponsor terrorism, dismissing North Korean claims that Washington decided to remove the designation.

''No, they haven't been taken off the terrorism list,'' Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told Japanese reporters as he arrived in Australia's business capital for a meeting of Pacific Rim nations. A State Department press officer separately confirmed the remarks.

Hill's comments were the first official denial since North Korea's Foreign Ministry, in a statement carried Monday by the country's official news agency, said that Washington agreed to remove the terror-sponsor designation and lift sanctions in a weekend meeting between Hill and his counterpart in Geneva.

An agreement reached in February called for such measures in exchange for North Korea's shutting down its nuclear reactor, disclosing its nuclear programs and disabling its related facilities.

After meeting with the North Koreans, Hill had made it clear during a news conference in Geneva that the North Koreans still had work to do before the U.S. was ready to take the country off the terror list.

''We have had some very good discussions on those issues, and we certainly believe we have a basis for continuing to go forward,'' Hill said when asked if the U.S. and North Korea ''share the same idea'' on what's needed to remove Pyongyang from the list.

North Korea was first added to the list for its alleged involvement in the 1987 bombing of a South Korean airliner that killed all 115 people aboard. North Korea is among five still on the list, along with Iran, Syria, Sudan and Cuba.

Hill said Sunday in Geneva that North Korea agreed in talks to account for and disable its nuclear programs by the end of 2007.

Kim Kye Gwan, the North's top nuclear envoy, said separately that he had shown willingness to declare and dismantle all nuclear facilities, but he mentioned no dates.

Hill said it was the first time the North has set a timeline for declaring and disabling its nuclear programs since the February deal in which Pyongyang pledged to shut down its nuclear reactor, disclose its nuclear programs and disable related facilities in exchange for economic and political concessions.

The nuclear accord mandates the U.S. to begin the process of delisting the North as a terrorism sponsor and advance the process of terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect with the North.

Besides being subject to economic sanctions, North Korea has also been on a U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism, effectively blocking the North from being able to obtain low-interest loans from international lending agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The Bush administration is the only U.S. government to remove a country from the list since its inception in 1979. It has removed Libya and, after the end of President Saddam Hussein's government, Iraq.

South Korean presidential spokesman Cheon Ho-seon also hailed the Geneva agreement, calling it ''a good signal'' for a process to bring peace to the divided Koreas.

Cheon also said Monday he expected the North to honor its commitment to a timeframe.

Associated Press Writers Kwang-tae Kim in Seoul and Chisaki Watanabe in Tokyo contributed to this report.

    U.S. Says N. Korea Not Off Terror List, NYT, 4.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-NKorea-US-Terror.html?hp

Iran Protests U.S. Detentions in Iraq

August 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:39 a.m. ET
The New York Times

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran on Wednesday summoned the Swiss diplomat representing American interests here to protest the U.S. forces' detention in Baghdad of eight Iranians, including two diplomats, the Foreign Ministry said.

The Iranian delegation was later released by U.S. forces just hours after being detained because unauthorized weapons were found in their cars, according to the U.S. military.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini called the U.S. action an act of ''interference'' in Iraq's internal affairs and ''inconsistent'' with the responsibilities of U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq.

The charge d'affaires at the Swiss Embassy was summoned to Iran's Foreign Ministry over the ''illegal'' detention of members of an Iranian Energy Ministry delegation, state-run television reported.

Switzerland looks after the U.S. interests in Tehran in the absence of formal diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington.

Troops seized an AK-47 assault rifle and two 9mm pistols that had been in the possession of the Iraqis in the group. The Iraqis were serving as a protective detail but had no weapons permits, the U.S. military said.

At the hotel later, U.S. troops confiscated a laptop, cell phones and a briefcase full of Iranian and U.S. currency in the hotel, the military said.

Video shot Tuesday night by AP Television News showed U.S. troops leading blindfolded and handcuffed men out of the hotel in central Baghdad.

Hosseini said delegation was in Baghdad to hold talks with Iraqi officials on building a power plant when they were detained by U.S. forces in the hotel they were staying.

''These actions are contrary to the responsibilities of foreign forces in Iraq and is another mistake in the erroneous behavior of the Americans,'' Hosseini was quoted by the broadcast as saying.

The incident came as tensions between Washington and Tehran were already strained by the detention of each other's citizens as well as U.S. accusations of Iranian involvement in Iraq's violence and alleged Iranian efforts to develop nuclear bombs.

On Tuesday, President Bush accused Iran's leadership of trying to destabilize Iraq, saying, ''I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities.''

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for his part, said that U.S. political influence in Iraq is ''collapsing rapidly'' and that Tehran is ready to help fill any power vacuum.

    Iran Protests U.S. Detentions in Iraq, NYT, 29.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-US.html

Sean Penn Meets Chavez in Venezuela

August 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:23 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Sean Penn applauded President Hugo Chavez as the Venezuelan leader lambasted the Bush administration and demanded an end to war in Iraq.

Chavez met privately with the 46-year-old actor for two hours Thursday, praising him as being ''brave'' for urging Americans to impeach President Bush.

''In the name of the peoples of the world, President Bush, withdraw the troops from Iraq. Enough already with so much genocide,'' Chavez said before an auditorium packed with his red-clad supporters.

Penn sat near the front, at times applauding and nodding in agreement. He is the latest in a series of celebrities who have visited Caracas, including Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte.

Chavez said he and Penn discussed the question of ''why the (U.S.) empire attacks Chavez so much,'' saying Venezuela's oil wealth is a key reason.

He also said Washington is ''afraid that the people of the United States will learn the real truth'' about the situation in Venezuela, citing his social programs for the poor.

''If the people of the United States, those millions and millions of poor people ... if that nation realizes what is truly happening here, there would be a revolution in the United States,'' Chavez said, eliciting applause from Penn.

Some Chavez opponents were angered by Penn's visit.

Cuban-born actress Maria Conchita Alonso, who grew up in Venezuela, said Penn is lending support to a ''totalitarian'' leader who wants increasing control of society -- a charge Chavez denies.

In a phone interview from her home in Beverly Hills, Calif., Alonso said although she respects Penn as an actor, she hopes he ''comes to his senses and he realizes that he's being used.''

Penn, who won an Oscar in 2004 for ''Mystic River,'' didn't speak publicly. Chavez said the actor came wanting to learn about Venezuela.

''That man has opposed the war in Iraq with all his strength, and not only that, he went to Baghdad ... and now he comes here. He's going around touring the 'axis of evil,''' Chavez said with a chuckle.

    Sean Penn Meets Chavez in Venezuela, NYT, 3.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-People-Sean-Penn.html

Rice, Gates Calm Nervous Arab Leaders

August 1, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:54 a.m. ET
The New York Times

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- Visiting U.S. Cabinet officers, hearing blunt concerns from nervous Arab leaders Tuesday, assured them the U.S. will not abruptly withdraw troops from Iraq and trigger chaos that could spread across the Gulf region.

Even as an increasingly impatient Congress presses for troops to come home, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said they told Gulf leaders that President Bush will take the region's stability into account as he plans long-term strategy for Iraq.

''There clearly is concern on the part of the Egyptians, and I think it probably represents concern elsewhere in the region, that the United States will somehow withdraw precipitously from Iraq, or in some way that is destabilizing to the entire region,'' Gates told reporters after he and Rice wrapped up meetings with Egypt's top leaders.

Gates, in fact, seemed to open the door a bit wider toward a more gradual pullout -- something commanders in Iraq have been angling for of late -- saying he is sensing greater openness on Capitol Hill to a more careful, deliberate withdrawal.

Rice said they told the allies that Bush's Iraq policies ''have at their core an understanding of the fundamental importance of a stable Iraq to the stability of this region.'' Those concerns, she said, will be a priority for Bush as he awaits the upcoming report from commanders and officials in Iraq, due in September.

During a joint press conference at this luxurious Red Sea resort, the two Cabinet secretaries also said their double-barreled show of diplomatic and military support for friendly Arab allies this week is not a shot across Iran's bow.

''We are out here to talk about the long term,'' Gates said as he and Rice began two days of meetings among Persian Gulf allies and Egypt. Gates noted that U.S. relationships in the Gulf and beyond predate the current unease over Iran's ambitions and influence.

If Iran perceives the joint visit and U.S. overtures differently, ''that's in the eye of the beholder,'' Gates said.

The defense secretary also said that in the last few weeks he has heard more sounds of caution from lawmakers when talking about how the U.S. will eventually leave Iraq.

''While there are still strong advocates clearly of withdrawal, some of withdrawing very quickly, what I have begun to hear is more and more undertones, even from those who oppose the president's policies,'' of the need to consider the consequences of a policy change and ''the dangers inherent in doing it unwisely,'' said Gates.

A number of his commanders in Iraq have made similar pleas for patience and caution in recent weeks, saying that while they believe the recent buildup of U.S. forces has begun to have an effect, they need more time to ensure the momentum does not reverse.

Gates and Rice made a rare joint tour of key Arab friends to renew long-standing pleas for more regional support for Iraq's struggling government. Many of the largely Sunni Arab states regard Iraq's Shiite-led government with suspicion, and have dragged their feet on fulfilling pledges of financial and other aid.

The crux of the argument Bush's advisers are making is that the ripple effects of chaos and failure in oil-rich Iraq would make it worth the allies' risk to get involved.

The duo -- who traveled together late Tuesday on Gates plan from Egypt to Saudi Arabia to meet with King Abdullah -- wrapped up sessions with nine allies in Egypt with no new specific promises of help, but Rice said she heard the right expressions of support after a gathering of several nations listed as recipients of an expanded aid and weapons package for friendly states in the region.

Iraq's Arab neighbors repeated a general pledge to promote stability in Iraq, torn by more than four years of war and bitter sectarian divisions that have killed thousands and driven far more from their homes.

The U.S. tour opens talks on a proposed U.S. arms package for Saudi Arabia and other Arab states worth more than $20 billion. The Cabinet secretaries are also trying to solidify what the U.S. sees as a bulwark of generally moderate Arab states against an increasingly ambitious and unpredictable Iran.

Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards said the proposed arms sales amounted to a foreign policy of convenience and he will take a tougher stance with Saudi Arabia if elected to the White House.

Edwards said the United States should require the Saudi government to shut down the movement of terrorists across its borders, help stabilize the Iraqi government and participate more seriously in regional security before they are offered weapons.

''Whether it's Iraq or terrorism, the Saudis have fallen way short of what they need to be doing,'' the 2004 vice presidential nominee told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. ''And the Bush administration's response is to sell them $20 billion worth of arms, which is short-term and convenient and not what the United States should be doing.''

The Bush administration also proposed a more than 25 percent increase in military aid to Israel over the next 10 years, an effort to balance the deal with Arab countries.

Contending that the increase of defense aid to Israel would ''initiate a dangerous armament race in the region,'' Syria's foreign minister on Tuesday said the proposal goes against Bush's call for an international Mideast peace conference.

''Anyone who wants to be an honest broker of the peace process must not be biased toward a party and isolate another party in the peace process,'' Walid al-Moallem told reporters at a news conference in Damascus.

    Rice, Gates Calm Nervous Arab Leaders, NYT, 1.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Mideast.html