History > 2008 > USA > International (I)

U.S. Embrace of Musharraf

Irks Pakistanis

February 29, 2008
The New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Bush administration’s continued backing of President Pervez Musharraf, despite the overwhelming rejection of his party by voters this month, is fueling a new level of frustration in Pakistan with the United States.

That support has rankled the public, politicians and journalists here, inciting deep anger at what is perceived as American meddling and the refusal of Washington to embrace the new, democratically elected government. John D. Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state, said Thursday during a Senate panel hearing that the United States would maintain its close ties to Mr. Musharraf.

Pakistanis say the Bush administration is grossly misjudging the political mood in Pakistan and squandering an opportunity to win support from the Pakistani public for its fight against terrorism. The opposition parties that won the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections say they are moderate and pro-American. By working with them, analysts say, Washington could gain a vital, new ally.

The American insistence that Mr. Musharraf play a significant role, they say, will only draw out a power struggle with the president and distract the new government from pushing ahead with alternatives to Mr. Musharraf’s policies on the economy and terrorism, which are widely viewed here as having failed.

“I’ve never seen such an irrational, impractical move on the part of the United States,” said Rasul Baksh Rais, a political scientist at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. “The whole country has voted against Musharraf. This was a referendum against Musharraf.”

Over the last week, more than a dozen editorials and commentaries have appeared in Pakistan’s leading newspapers accusing the United States of “meddling” in the country’s affairs. Many have taken particular umbrage at statements by President Bush and other senior officials praising Mr. Musharraf, despite his lack of support among voters.

A series of postelection meetings between American Embassy officials and Asif Ali Zardari, the head of the victorious Pakistan Peoples Party, have also been criticized.

American officials have met three times with Mr. Zardari since the election. They have met twice with Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister whose own opposition party won the second most seats in Parliament.

In the meetings, American officials urged both leaders to work with moderate forces and Mr. Musharraf, according to officials from the two parties and the United States. It is the insistence to include Mr. Musharraf that rankles Pakistanis.

American officials said the meetings were routine. “This is standard diplomacy,” said an American official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But Pakistani observers called the request that the parties work with Mr. Musharraf inappropriate, given his sweeping defeat. Typical of the outrage was an editorial published Sunday by The News, an English-language newspaper, with the headline “Hands Off, Please!”

“No further efforts must be made to intervene in the democratic process in Pakistan,” the editorial read. “The man who the U.S. continues to back has in many ways become a central part of Pakistan’s problems.”

A senior American official in Washington acknowledged that there was worry within the Bush administration about being seen as meddling. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue, conceded that American attempts last year to construct a power-sharing deal between Mr. Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto “didn’t really work out quite as we’d hoped.” Differences remained between the president and Ms. Bhutto, who was killed Dec. 27.

“The last thing we need is to be seen by the Pakistanis as interfering again,” he said.

But while American officials have sought to portray the United States as neutral, their statements underscore that Mr. Musharraf remains at the center of the United States policy here.

On Monday, Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, said President Bush continued to support Mr. Musharraf for “all of the work that he’s done to help us in counterterrorism.”

“Now it will be up to the people of Pakistan to see what their new government will look like,” she said. “But the president does certainly support him.”

During his Senate hearing on Thursday, Mr. Negroponte said, “I think we would, as a general proposition, urge that the moderate political forces work together, and of course President Musharraf is still the president of his country, and we look forward to continuing to work well with him as well.”

Mr. Negroponte refused to call for the reinstatement of the judges dismissed last year by Mr. Musharraf when he imposed emergency rule. “We have been silent on this subject,” he said. Then he added, “to the best of my knowledge.”

That silence by American officials has led Pakistanis to accuse the United States of ignoring the will of voters, analysts say. The issue fueled anger against Mr. Musharraf and the protest vote against him.

In Pakistan, each American statement has been dissected in the media and widely perceived as overt American pressure.

In an editorial on Monday, the Daily Business Recorder, a leading English-language newspaper, criticized a call Mr. Bush made to Mr. Musharraf after learning of what it called his allies’ “electoral debacle.” It also cited Richard A. Boucher, an assistant secretary of state, as saying after the election that Mr. Musharraf “remains important to Washington.”

Mr. Bush and other administration officials still regard Mr. Musharraf as a significant player and as a force for stability in Pakistan, and one who could regain his standing, said an official involved in the policy deliberations.

The official said that American officials were waiting to see if the opposition could form the two-thirds majority needed to render Mr. Musharraf a powerless, ceremonial president, or even impeach him. The Americans recognize that the opposition parties have long feuded and think they could fail to unite.

“Musharraf still thinks he has options, which he does,” said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The administration thinks so as well, but only so long as he does not overplay his hand.”

Over the last year, American assessments have repeatedly proven wrong. Before the Feb. 18 elections, a senior American intelligence official predicted in a briefing to journalists that no party would win a clear majority and that Mr. Musharraf would remain the strongest political figure in the country.

Wamiq Zuberi, chief editor of the Daily Business Recorder, said Washington “obviously doesn’t have the correct appreciation of the environment here.” He and others said the American backing for Mr. Musharraf had generated consternation among analysts who believe that Mr. Musharraf is not only deeply unpopular but also that he has performed poorly of late in the campaign against terrorism, polarizing Pakistan and striking a series of truces with militants.

“I’ve followed this for years, and I’ve never seen it so clear, apparent and continuous,” Nasim Zehra, a Pakistani analyst and writer, said of what she considered the American interference. “It’s not surprising, given the mindset in Washington.”

Central to the Bush administration’s support is the feeling that Mr. Musharraf retains the loyalty of the Pakistani Army, even though he stepped down as army chief in December. Current and former administration officials say they fear that withdrawing American support from Mr. Musharraf would alienate Pakistan’s military, country’s most powerful institution.

“He is still valuable for his relationship with the army,” said Daniel Markey, who helped coordinate Pakistan policy in the State Department from 2003 to 2007. “He is someone who the United States should work with — and will work with — for fear of alienating that important partner.”

Western military officials say Pakistan’s armed forces — Mr. Musharraf’s last potential bastion of support — have shifted loyalty to his chosen successor, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

And they say General Kayani will choose stability over saving Mr. Musharraf. “If Kayani and Musharraf were diametrically opposed,” said a Western military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, “I think Kayani would prevail.”

Ms. Zehra, the analyst, said that General Kayani had distanced himself from Mr. Musharraf by issuing a surprise order in January barring all officers from holding government posts or engaging in politics.

The move effectively prevented Mr. Musharraf from using Pakistan’s military intelligence agencies to manipulate the election. The loyalty of Pakistan’s military is irrevocably shifting behind General Kayani, she said. “The army will be led by its chief always,” she said. “The former chief is always the former chief.”
 

Jane Perlez and Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Helene Cooper from Washington.

U.S. Embrace of Musharraf Irks Pakistanis, NYT, 29.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/world/asia/29pstan.html

US Distances Itself From Musharraf

February 28, 2008
Filed at 11:44 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States' second-ranking diplomat on Thursday signaled that the Bush administration is distancing itself from Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf after opposition victories in last week's elections.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told senators that the United States is supporting Pakistan's people as they choose their leaders after the parliamentary elections. But he made scant mention of Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, during his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Senior Bush administration officials, including Negroponte, have previously underlined their view that Musharraf has been ''indispensable'' to the U.S.-led fight against extremists along Pakistan's rugged border with Afghanistan.

Negroponte testified that ''Pakistan has been indispensable'' to that fight and said the U.S. looks ''forward to working with the leaders who emerge'' from the formation of a new government.

When pressed by a lawmaker about whether the U.S. would continue to back Musharraf, Negroponte acknowledged that ''Musharraf is still the president of his country, and we look forward to continuing to work with him.''

U.S. lawmakers and Pakistani opposition leaders have criticized the administration for its steadfast support of the former army general despite his crackdown on the opposition, judiciary and media. The U.S. administration promoted Musharraf as a moderate leader able to hold together the nuclear-armed country.

But Musharraf has faced intense criticism since he declared a state of emergency in November and purged the Supreme Court before it could rule on the disputed legality of his re-election as president a month earlier.

Republican Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana said the United States should make it clear to Pakistan's people that U.S. interests ''lay not in supporting a particular leader or party, but in democracy, pluralism, stability and the fight against violence.''

The parties of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, finished first and second in the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections. The Pakistan Muslim League-Q, a party loyal to Musharraf, lost heavily.

Negroponte said Pakistan's recent elections were a ''big step'' toward civilian democracy and reflected the will of the voters, despite the deaths of more than 70 people on election day.

''The violence could have been worse,'' Negroponte said. ''The Pakistani people refused to be intimidated by a wave of murderous terrorist attacks prior to election day.''

Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., also urged the administration to move from ''a policy focused on a personality, Musharraf, to one based on an entire country.''

Biden proposed that the United States triple nonmilitary aid for schools, roads and clinics and demand accountability in the military aid the U.S. gives Pakistan.

The United States has pumped nearly $10 billion in aid into Pakistan since Musharraf sided with Washington in the drive to topple the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan and hunt down al-Qaida after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

US Distances Itself From Musharraf, NYT, 28.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Pakistan.html

U.S. and India to Strengthen Security Ties

February 28, 2008
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and SOMINI SENGUPTA

NEW DELHI — With a landmark nuclear energy pact between the United States and India stalled, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that the nations would nonetheless strengthen their security ties as India looked to embark on a closer — and still contentious — level of military cooperation with the United States.

With its booming economy and a strong desire to upgrade Soviet-era weaponry, India has emerged as one of the world’s most prosperous arms markets.

During two days of meetings with Indian officials, Mr. Gates pressed the case of American defense companies competing for multibillion-dollar contracts with the Indian government, including a coveted $10 billion fighter jet deal.

But beyond the economic benefits of Indian military modernization, American officials contend that India can be an important stabilizing force in Asia and a critical counterweight to China’s regional ambitions.

On Wednesday, Mr. Gates denied that the Bush administration’s effort to strengthen ties to India and other Asian nations was planned specifically with China in mind.

But Pentagon officials said that during Mr. Gates’s meetings with Indian officials, more time was spent discussing China than Pakistan, India’s longtime rival.

Mr. Gates has logged thousands of miles on stops around Asia to deepen military ties and pave the way for future arms deals with three of Asia’s most important democracies: India, Indonesia and Australia.

A senior defense official traveling with Mr. Gates said that, given China’s military ambitions, it was essential to cement security relationships with other powers in Asia “not in an aggressive sense, but certainly as a hedge.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to talk publicly about American defense policy.

During a stop in Indonesia, Mr. Gates pledged more active Pentagon support for the Indonesian military, after more than a decade of estrangement over the Indonesian military’s past human rights abuses.

In Canberra, Australia, Mr. Gates promised to investigate whether a Congressional prohibition on foreign nations from buying the Air Force’s F-22 fighter jet could be lifted. Australian officials have expressed interest in buying the high-tech fighter.

India and Australia are formidable naval powers in the Indian Ocean, a vital strategic corridor for oil supplies as well as for terrorist organizations and trafficking groups.

Security analysts predict that India’s spending for weapons could grow to as much as $40 billion over the next several years, more than its entire annual armament budget today. India is trying to upgrade its arsenal of submarines, tanks, jet fighters and transport aircraft. It has conducted several military exercises with the United States in recent years.

India announced last month that it would buy six C-130 cargo planes from the American military contractor Lockheed Martin, a deal worth about $1 billion. Earlier, the Indian Navy bought an American warship, the Trenton, which it renamed the Jalashva. The vessel increases India’s capacity to project its power in the Indian Ocean region.

Lockheed and Boeing are among the companies competing for the $10 billion contract to supply India with 126 fighter jets, to upgrade an aging fleet of Russian-built MIGs.

The Indians want to expand their strategic relationship with the United States, but not necessarily at the expense of traditional military partners, like Russia.

India has also insisted on high-technology transfer, which would have been unimaginable even a decade ago, when mutual distrust lingered from the cold-war era. India traditionally relied on Russia for its military hardware. In recent years, Israel has become a more important partner, and now so has the United States.

    U.S. and India to Strengthen Security Ties, NYT, 28.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/world/asia/28gates.html

Australia, U.S. affirm alliance

Sat Feb 23, 2008
6:11pm EST
Reuters
By Kristin Roberts

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia and the United States reaffirmed their strong alliance on Saturday, saying their security and defense partnership would not change with the election of Canberra's new government and plans for a partial withdrawal from Iraq.

The foreign and defense ministers of both countries sought to play down differences over Iraq, while on Afghanistan both sides struck the same chord, calling on Europe to dedicate more resources to the fight.

Australia also appeared ready to act as a bridge between Beijing and Washington, as Canberra's foreign minister urged both sides to have a more open dialogue and called on China for more transparency in its activities.

"The alliance between Australia and the United States is fundamental to Australia's defense, security and strategic arrangements," Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told reporters after the annual Australia-United States ministerial consultations.

"The alliance relationship transcends a Labor or Liberal government here, or a Democrat or Republican administration in the United States," he said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte are the highest ranking Bush administration officials to visit since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's centre-left Labor Party won power. U.S. officials had looked for Australia to renew its commitment to their alliance during Saturday's session.

They also sought to press Australia for an assessment of China's growing strategic and economic role in the region. Some officials have said they hoped Rudd, a former diplomat with China expertise, would act as a bridge between China and the West.

But other officials and some security experts questioned what impact China's growing economic links to Australia might have on Canberra's commitment to partnership with Washington. China is on the verge of replacing Japan as Australia's top trading partner, due to China's demand for Australia's mineral resources.

Smith, however, said the United States and Japan remained Australia's key strategic allies.

"We can have a very good economic relationship with China which doesn't impact on the United States," he said.

COMBAT ROLES

The Rudd government has already broken with the Bush administration on Iraq, promising to pull 550 of its 1,500 troops out. The remaining force will begin to transition to non-combat roles to help build Iraqi capabilities, Smith said.

He said Australia would also look to increase its non-military support to Afghanistan to help build schools and roads and improve Afghanistan's police and judiciary.

But Australia had no plans to increase its force of about 1,000 troops in Afghanistan, including engineers and special forces commandos who are fighting in one of the more restive areas of that war zone.

"We are currently giving consideration to the capacity building and development assistance in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.

The ministers also discussed missile defense and the possibility of joint defense system with the United States, something considered by the previous John Howard government. defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon would not offer details of those discussions.

But he said Australia had noted America's successful shoot-down of a defunct U.S. spy satellite last week, a mission seen by the Pentagon as proving the capability of its limited missile defense system.

"I can say to our American friends and in particular to Secretary Gates that we watched their activity in terms of bringing down the satellite with great interest," Fitzgibbon said.

"Bob, nice shot," he told to Gates.

(Additional reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Alex Richardson)

    Australia, U.S. affirm alliance, R, 23.2.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSSYD20367120080223

McCain Hopes Castro to "Meet Marx Soon"

February 22, 2008
By REUTERS
Filed at 11:18 a.m. ET

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner John McCain suggested on Friday that he hoped retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro would die soon and said Castro's brother will be a worse leader.

"I hope he has the opportunity to meet Karl Marx very soon," McCain told a town-hall style meeting of about 150 people, referring to communist theoretician Marx who died on March 14, 1883.

Castro, 81, announced on Tuesday he was stepping down as president and commander-in-chief of Cuba's armed forces after 49 years in power. His brother Raul Castro is expected to be named Cuba's new head of state on Sunday.

"Apparently he is trying to groom his brother Raul," McCain said. "Raul is worse in many respects than Fidel was."

Castro has not appeared in public since undergoing stomach surgery and handing power temporarily to Raul in July 2006.

McCain, a four-term Arizona senator, has an almost insurmountable lead over his last major Republican rival, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

McCain's approach to Cuba has generally echoed that of U.S. President George W. Bush, who has tightened a decades-long trade embargo and has rejected easing sanctions without a transition to democracy.

McCain, who is popular among conservative Cuban-Americans, also has said that if he wins the November 4 U.S. presidential election he would keep up pressure for political change in Cuba's one-party state.

That includes a travel ban and trade and financial sanctions enforced a few years after Castro's 1959 revolution on the Caribbean island.

McCain, 71, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, has accused Cubans of participating in the torture of some of his fellow prisoners in Hanoi during the Vietnam War.

(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at http://blogs.reuters.com/trail08/)

(Editing by Bill Trott)

    McCain Hopes Castro to "Meet Marx Soon", R, 22.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-usa-politics-mccain-castro.html

Protesters Attack U.S. Embassy in Belgrade

February 22, 2008
The New York Times
By BOSTJAN VIDEMSEK and DAN BILEFSKY

BELGRADE, Serbia — Demonstrators attacked the United States Embassy and set part of it ablaze on Thursday as tens of thousands of angry Serbs took to the streets of Belgrade to protest Kosovo’s declaration of independence.

The United States has been a strong advocate of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia and was among the first countries to recognize the new state, stoking deep resentment. Rian Harris, an embassy spokeswoman, said that a body had been found inside the building, but that all embassy staff members were accounted for.

Witnesses said that at least 100 people broke into the embassy, which was closed, and burned some of its rooms. One protester ripped the American flag from the facade of the building. An estimated 1,000 demonstrators cheered as the vandals, some wearing masks, jumped onto the building’s balcony waving a Serbian flag and chanting “Serbia, Serbia!” the witnesses said. A police convoy firing tear gas dispersed the crowd.

The Associated Press reported that the small fires at the embassy were quickly extinguished.

Serbian television reported that the Croatian Embassy had also been attacked, and the state news agency said that the Bosnian and Turkish Embassies were also targets. The police said at least 140 people had been injured in the incidents, 32 of them police officers. Security sources estimated that 150,000 people joined the protests.

Groups also broke into a McDonald’s in central Belgrade and destroyed its interior. Witnesses said vandals were attacking foreign-owned shops, including a Nike store, and were seen carrying off shoes and other goods as the Serbian police looked on.

The United States Embassy had been closed since Sunday after it was stoned.

R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, telephoned Serbian officials to formally complain about the breaching of the embassy, said a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack. Mr. McCormack told reporters on Thursday that “we would hold the Serbian government personally responsible for the safety and well-being of our embassy employees.”

He added that the security that had been provided was completely inadequate.

The United Nations Security Council issued a unanimous statement of the 15 members saying they “condemn in the strongest terms the mob attacks against embassies in Belgrade which have resulted in damage to embassy premises and have endangered diplomatic personnel.” The action was taken at the urging of Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador.

The violence fueled fears in Washington and Brussels that Serbia was turning to the virulent nationalism of the past. But Serbian analysts predicted the country would ultimately embrace the West as it came to terms with losing its medieval heartland.

In recent days, Western leaders have watched with growing alarm as Serbia’s hard-line prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, who helped lead the revolution that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, has replicated the nationalist talk of the late dictator, who used Serbs’ outrage that their ancestral heartland was dominated by Muslim Albanians to come to power in Serbia.

“As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia,” Mr. Kostunica told the crowd in Belgrade. “We’re not alone in our fight. President Putin is with us,” he said of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

In a sign of the divisions within Serbia’s government, the pro-Western president, Boris Tadic, was absent from the rally, on a state visit to Romania.

Western diplomats said their hope for a moderate Serbia had been buttressed by the recent re-election of Mr. Tadic, who campaigned on the argument that holding on to Kosovo did not justify sacrificing Serbia’s future in Europe. Their optimism, however, was tempered by the strong election showing for Mr. Tadic’s opponent, Tomislav Nikolic, a far-right nationalist who has exploited Serbs’ discontent over Kosovo by arguing that Serbia should reject Europe and look to Moscow and China instead.

But while Moscow has gained in popularity in Serbia by blocking Kosovo’s integration into the international community, leading Serbian intellectuals said most Serbs realized that the Kremlin’s willingness to fight for their cause was limited. “Russia wasn’t there to help Serbs during the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, it wasn’t there to help Serbs in 1999 during the NATO bombing, and most people realize it will not go that far now,” said Zoran Dogramadziev, a leading Serbian writer.

In the short term, analysts said an anti-European Union backlash would gain force after the West’s support for an independent Kosovo. But Marko Blagojevic, an analyst with the Center for Democracy and Free Elections in Belgrade and a pollster, stressed that recent polls showed that 65 percent of Serbs saw their future in the European Union.

Mr. Blagojevic said he did not believe this had drastically changed. He noted that only about 10 percent of Serbs supported going to war over Kosovo.

Serbian analysts said that rather than reflecting a resurgence of dangerous nationalism, the protests over Kosovo reflected disenchantment by the “losers of the transition” — those Serbs who have not benefited from the country’s democratic transformation during the eight years since Mr. Milosevic fell.

Unemployment hovers at about 21 percent, while the country’s annual per capita gross domestic product of about $7,400 has made Serbia one of Europe’s poorest countries.

Without European Union membership, Serbs do not enjoy the open borders of their neighbors. Many Serbs say they feel isolated and closed in. Yet many of the younger generation say they would happily trade poor, landlocked Kosovo for better jobs and economic security.

“For my generation, the opportunity to have a good life is far more important than this piece of land,” said Aleksandar Obradovic, a 23-year-old political scientist from Belgrade who did not protest on Thursday and, like many Serbs, has never been to Kosovo.

Ljubica Gojgic, a leading Serbian commentator, noted that Mr. Milosevic had been overthrown by the Serbian people, who had recently put their faith in a newly elected moderate president, backed by the West. “If Tadic is good enough for the E.U. and Washington, why is he not acceptable to the Albanians in Kosovo?” she asked. “Milosevic is dead.”

Bostjan Videmsek reported from Belgrade, and Dan Bilefsky from Pristina, Kosovo. Warren Hoge contributed reporting from New York, and David Stout from Washington.

    Protesters Attack U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, NYT, 22.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/world/europe/22kosovo.html

Op-Ed Contributor

Attack Iran, With Words

February 20, 2008
The New York Times
By REUEL MARC GERECHT

Prague

FOR those who believe — as I do — that the clerics who rule Iran must never have an arsenal of nuclear weapons, the United States’ course of action ought to be clear: The Bush administration should advocate direct, unconditional talks between Washington and Tehran. Strategically, politically and morally, such meetings will help us think more clearly. Foreign-policy hawks ought to see such discussions as essential preparation for possible military strikes against clerical Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The consensus among Iran’s ruling elite is that a hard-line stance on the nuclear question has paid off: uranium enrichment, the most industrially demanding part of developing nuclear weapons, has rapidly advanced. And, unexpectedly and gratifyingly, the Bush administration’s National Intelligence Estimate of November, which found that “in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” damaged Western resolve to invoke economy-crippling sanctions, let alone the American threat to use force against Tehran.

And perhaps the best news for Iran: the unclassified “key judgments” of the intelligence estimate reveal that the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency did not — and in all probability, still do not — have human and technical sources inside the inner circles of the Iranian nuclear program. The mullahs, who are quite savvy about American intelligence, having made mincemeat of C.I.A. networks in the past, surely see this. The great American debate about what to do about Iran’s nuclear capacity — a debate that may divide Americans from Europeans more than Iraq — could well return with a vengeance before next year. It will quickly bedevil the next administration.

Negotiations are likely the only way we can confront this threat before it’s too late. The administration’s current approach isn’t working. For selfish and malevolent reasons, China and Russia will not back tough sanctions. Neither likely will the trade-obsessed Germans and the increasingly self-absorbed, America-leery British. Washington and Paris cannot play bad cop alone. We must find a way to restore the resolve of all those parties and hit Iran with a tsunami of sanctions if we are to diminish the victorious esprit in Tehran and the centrifuge production at Natanz.

Yet, what has been the response of most American hawks to this mess? Prayer. They are essentially waiting for the clerical regime to do something stupid so that they can galvanize an awareness among Americans that mullahs should not have the bomb. True, the Iranian clerics have often done the wrong thing at the right time, from aiding the bombers of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and our African embassies in 1998, to the kidnapping of British sailors and marines last year. It is possible that Tehran, which wants to cause us great harm in Iraq and Afghanistan, could again back a terrorist attack that kills enough Americans to make preventive military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities mandatory.

But the Iranians know this. They know they are in the final nuclear stretch: they will likely play it sufficiently cool to make it difficult for the United States to strike them pre-emptively.

Thus the best reason to offer to begin talks with Tehran is that the regime will almost certainly refuse any offer to normalize relations. In the late 1990s, President Bill Clinton almost begged Iran’s reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, to sit and chat. The mullahs, who knew that Mr. Clinton was playing down Tehran’s role in the Khobar Towers bombing, spurned the offer. Since then, Iran’s internal politics have become more hard-core. In January, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s clerical overlord, re-rejected the idea, quite popular among average Iranians, that the Islamic Republic should re-establish relations with “Satan Incarnate.”

If the mullahs don’t want to negotiate, fine: making the offer is something that must be checked off before the next president could unleash the Air Force and the Navy. To make the threat of force against clerical Iran again credible, there needs to be a consensus among far more Democrats and Republicans that a nuclear-armed Iran is intolerable. If the White House tried more energetically to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear threat, if it demonstrated that it had reached out to Iranian “pragmatists” and “moderates,” and that again no one responded, then the military option would likely become convincing to more Americans.

Critics of any discussions might respond that the Iranians might say yes, but to only low-level talks in Switzerland, not in Washington and Tehran. In so doing, the mullahs could bind the United States to meaningless, stalling discussions while the regime perfected uranium enrichment, increased the range and accuracy of its ballistic missiles and advanced its nuclear warhead designs.

But so what? Minus the direct talks, this is more or less what is happening now. Would a President John McCain tolerate pointless discussions? Probably not. Would Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? Perhaps. Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton may well prefer to see the clerical regime go nuclear than strike it preventively. But if that is where they would go, their opponents can do little about it. The only thing that could conceivably change their minds would be direct talks on the big issues separating the two countries. The mullahs have a way of driving their foreign interlocutors nuts. Just ask the European negotiators who’ve had to deal with them. Meeting Iranian leaders is perhaps the best way to turn doves into hawks.

For far too long, the United States has failed to wage a war of ideas with the Iranian regime over the proposal that scares them the most: the reopening of the American Embassy. Washington has the biggest bully pulpit in the world, and we are faced with a clerical foe that constantly rails against the intrusion of American values into the bloodstream of Iranian society. There are profound social, cultural and political differences among Iran’s ruling elites, let alone between that class and ordinary Iranians. Some of these differences could conceivably have a major effect on the progress of Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. And the way to make these differences increasingly acute is to apply American soft and hard power.

Ayatollah Khamenei needs to be put off balance, as he was in 1997 when Mr. Khatami unexpectedly tapped into a huge groundswell of popular discontent and became president. What we need now is a psychological repeat of 1997: a shock to the clerical system that again opens Iran to serious debate.

When dealing with the mullahs, it is always wise to follow the lead of one of Iran’s most audacious clerical dissidents, former Interior Minister Abdallah Nuri. In 1999, he mocked the regime for its organic fear of the United States. Is the revolution’s Islam so weak, he said, that it cannot sustain the restoration of relations with the United States?

It would be riveting in Tehran — and millions of Iranians would watch on satellite TV — if Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice challenged the regime in this way: Islam is a great faith; the United States has relations with all Muslim nations except the Islamic Republic; we have diplomatic relations with Hugo Chávez and American diplomats in Havana. Why does the Islamic Republic fear us so? Is the regime so fragile? President Khatami repeatedly said that he wanted a “dialogue of civilizations.” The United States should finally say, “O.K., let’s start.”

If the Bush administration were to use this sort of diplomatic jujitsu on the ruling clerics, it could convulse their world. No, this is absolutely no guarantee that Tehran will stop, or even suspend, uranium enrichment. But a new approach would certainly put the United States on offense and Iran on defense. We would, at least, have the unquestioned moral and political high ground. And from there, it would be a lot easier for the next administration, if it must, to stop militarily the mullahs’ quest for the bomb.
 

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

    Attack Iran, With Words, NYT, 20.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/opinion/20gerecht.html

Bush Greets Castro Resignation

February 20, 2008
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

KIGALI, Rwanda — President Bush said Tuesday that the resignation of Fidel Castro “ought to be a period of democratic transition” for Cuba, and said the country must hold free and fair elections to pick a successor after half a century of Communist rule.

“And I mean free and I mean fair,” Mr. Bush added, “not these kind of staged elections that the Castro brothers try to foist off as true democracy.”

The president spoke during a joint news conference with President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, after the two signed a treaty intended to open up trade between the two countries.

Mr. Bush also visited a memorial to victims of the 1994 genocide here, and announced that the United States would redirect $100 million of money already being used for camps into training African peacekeeping forces who might help settle other conflicts, notably in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Aides said Mr. Bush was informed of the Castro resignation by his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, after the presidential delegation visited the genocide memorial. At the press conference, the president sounded somber, not joyful about the announcement from Cuba.

“The question really should be what does this mean for the people in Cuba?” Mr. Bush said during the news conference, in response to a question about what Mr. Castro’s resignation would mean for United States-Cuban relations.

“They’re the ones who suffered under Fidel Castro,” he said. “They’re the ones who were put in prison because of their beliefs. They’re the ones who have been denied a right to live in a free society. So I view this as a period of transition and it should be the beginning of a democratic transition in Cuba.”

Mr. Bush has met frequently with the families of political prisoners in Cuba, and he said those prisoners must be freed as a first step toward democracy. He went on to say that some people might argue this is a time for ensuring stability in Cuba.

“In the meantime,” he said, “political prisoners will rot in prison and the human condition will remain pathetic in many cases.”

Mr. Bush’s brief stop in Rwanda — he arrived here from Tanzania on Tuesday morning and will fly on to Ghana later Tuesday afternoon — is part of a six-day, five-country tour of Africa to promote his foreign aid agenda. And he came bearing gifts: in addition to the trade treaty, he said $12 million of the money for training peacekeeping troops will go to Rwanda.

Rwanda was the first African nation to send peacekeepers to the Darfur region of Sudan, where 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in a conflict Mr. Bush has termed a genocide. The United States has already trained 7,000 peacekeepers in Rwanda; the $12 million will pay to train 2,400 more.

Mr. Bush has repeatedly said he is frustrated by bureaucratic delays in getting a joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force into Darfur, and with the memory of the Rwandan genocide still so fresh here, the president was asked if he regretted not sending in American troops. He said he had no regrets.

“I’m comfortable with the decision I made,” he said. “I’m not comfortable with how quick the response has been.”

    Bush Greets Castro Resignation, NYT, 20.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/world/americas/20rwanda.html

Fidel Castro Resigns as Cuba’s President

February 20, 2008
The New York Times
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

MEXICO CITY — Fidel Castro stepped down Tuesday morning as the president of Cuba after a long illness, ending one of the longest tenures as one of the most all-powerful communist heads of state in the world, according to Granma, the official publication of the Cuban Communist Party.

In late July 2006, Mr. Castro, who is 81, handed over power temporarily to his brother, Raúl Castro, 76, and a few younger cabinet ministers, after an acute infection in his colon forced him to undergo emergency surgery. Despite numerous operations, he has never fully recovered but has remained active in running government affairs from behind the scenes.

Now, just days before the national assembly is to meet to select a new head of state, Mr. Castro resigned permanently in a letter to the nation published Tuesday morning on the Granma Web site, and signaled his willingness to let a younger generation assume power. He said his failing health made it impossible to return as president.

“I will not aspire to neither will I accept — I repeat I will not aspire to neither will I accept — the position of President of the Council of State and Commander in chief,” he wrote in the letter.

He added: “It would betray my conscience to occupy a responsibility that requires mobility and the total commitment that I am not in the physical condition to offer.”

President Bush, traveling in Rwanda on a tour of African nations, greeted the news by saying that the resignation should be the beginning a democratic transition in Cuba that would lead to free elections. “The United States will help the people of Cuba realize the blessings of liberty,” he said.

Mr. Bush called for Cuba to release political prisoners and to begin building “institutions necessary for democracy that eventually will lead to free and fair elections.”

But the announcement puts Raúl Castro in position to be anointed as the Cuban head of state when the National Assembly meets on Sunday, cementing the power structure that has run the country since Mr. Castro fell ill.

However, Mr. Castro’s unexpected announcement left it unclear what role other high-level government ministers — among them the vice president, Carlos Lage Davila, and the foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque — would play in the new government.

Mr. Castro also made it clear he is not fading into the sunset but pledged to continue to be a force in Cuban politics through his writings, just as he has over the last year and a half. “I am not saying goodbye to you,” he wrote. “I only wish to fight as a soldier of ideas.”

That statement raised the possibility little would change after Sunday’s vote, that Cuba will continue to be ruled in essence by two presidents, with Raúl Castro on stage while Fidel Castro lurks in the wings. At times over the last year and a half, the current government has seemed paralyzed when the two men disagree. For his part, Mr. Castro has sent several signals in recent months that it was time for a younger generation to take the helm. He said in December, for example, “My primary duty is not to weld myself to offices, much less obstruct the path of younger people.”

In Tuesday’s letter, he expressed confidence that the country would be in goods hands with a government composed of elements of “the old guard” and “others who were very young when the first stage of the revolution began.”

Mr. Castro asserted he declined to step down earlier to avoid dealing a blow to the Cuba government before “the people” were ready for a traumatic change “in the middle of the battle” with the United States over control of the country’s future. “To prepare the people for my absence, psychologically and politically, was my first obligation after so many years of struggle,” he said.

The charismatic Cuban leader seized power in January 1959 after waging a guerrilla war against the then-dictator Fulgencio Batista, promising to restore the Cuban constitution and hold elections.

But he soon turned his back on those democratic ideals, embraced a totalitarian brand of communism and allied the island with the Soviet Union. He brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in the fall of 1962, when he allowed Russia to build missile launching sites just 90 miles off the American shores. He weathered an American-backed invasion and used Cuban troops to stir up revolutions in Africa and Latin America.

Those actions earned him the permanent enmity of Washington and led the United States to impose decades of economic sanctions that Mr. Castro and his followers maintain have crippled Cuba’s economy and have kept their socialist experiment from succeeding completely.

The sanctions also proved handy to Mr. Castro politically. He cast every problem Cuba faced as part of a larger struggle against the United States and blamed the abject poverty of the island on the “imperialists” to the north.

For good or ill, Mr. Castro is without a doubt the most important leader to emerge from Latin America since the wars of independence of the early 19th century, not only reshaping Cuban society but providing inspiration for leftists across Latin America and in other parts of the world.

His record has been a mix of great social achievements, but a dismal economic performance that has mired most Cubans in poverty. He succeeded in establishing universal health care, providing free education through college and largely rooting out racism.

But he never broke the island’s dependence on commodities like sugar, tobacco and nickel, nor did he succeed in industrializing the nation so that Cuba could compete in the world market with durable goods. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of its aid to the island, Cuba has limped along economically, relying mostly on tourism and money sent home from exiles to get hard currency.

Yet Mr. Castro’s willingness to stand up to the United States and break free of American influence, even if it meant allying Cuba with another superpower, has been an inspiration to many Latin Americans, among them the new crop of left-leaning heads of state like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil..

Though he never restored democracy and has ruled with absolute power, in the minds of many Latin Americans, he stood in stark contrast to right-wing dictators like the one he overthrew, who often put the interests of business leaders and the foreign policy goals of Washington above the interests of their poorest constituents.

Whether Mr. Castro’s remaking of Cuban society will survive the current transition remains to be seen. Some experts note Raúl Castro is more pragmatic and willing to admit mistakes than his brother. He has given signals he might try to follow the Chinese example of state-sponsored capitalism.

Others predict that, without Fidel Castro’s charismatic leadership, the government will have to make fundamental changes to the economy or face a rising tide of unrest among rank-and-file Cubans.

Graham Bowley contributed reporting from New York.

    Fidel Castro Resigns as Cuba’s President, NYT, 20.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/world/americas/20castro.html

Fidel Castro retires

Tue Feb 19, 2008
3:38am EST
Reuters
By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday that he will not return to lead the country as president or commander-in-chief, retiring as head of state 49 years after he seized power in an armed revolution.

Castro, 81, said in a statement to the country that he would not seek a new presidential term when the National Assembly meets on February 24.

"To my dear compatriots, who gave me the immense honor in recent days of electing me a member of parliament ... I communicate to you that I will not aspire to or accept -- I repeat not aspire to or accept -- the positions of President of Council of State and Commander in Chief," Castro said in the statement published on the Web site of the Communist Party's Granma newspaper.

The National Assembly or legislature is expected to nominate his brother and designated successor Raul Castro, 76, as president in place of Castro, who has not appeared in public for almost 19 months after being stricken by an undisclosed illness.

The title of "Comandante en Jefe" or commander-in-chief, was created for him in 1958 as the leader of a guerrilla movement that swept down from the mountains of eastern Cuba to overthrow U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Castro's retirement draws the curtain on a political career that spanned the Cold War and survived U.S. enmity, CIA assassination attempts and the demise of Soviet Communism.

A charismatic leader famous for his long speeches delivered in his green military fatigues, Castro is admired in the Third World for standing up to the United States but considered by his opponents a tyrant who suppressed freedom.

His illness and departure from Cuba's helm have raised doubts about the future of the Western Hemisphere's only communist state.

"Fortunately, our Revolution can still count on cadres from the old guard and others who were very young in the early stages of the process," Castro said in his statement.

"They have the authority and the experience to guarantee the replacement," he said.

The bearded leader who took power in an armed uprising against a U.S.-backed dictator in 1959 had temporarily ceded power to his younger brother after he underwent emergency surgery to stop intestinal bleeding in mid-2006.

Castro has only been seen in pictures since then, looking gaunt and frail, though his health improved enough a year ago to allow him to keep in the public mind writing reams of articles published by Cuba's state press.

"This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas. I shall continue to write under the heading of 'Reflections by comrade Fidel.' It will be just another weapon you can count on. Perhaps my voice will be heard. I shall be careful," Castro said.

Castro could remain politically influential as first secretary of the ruling Communist Party and elder statesman.

Raul Castro, Cuba's long-standing defense minister, has run the country since July 31, 2006 as acting president. He has raised expectations of economic reforms to improve the daily lot of Cubans, but has yet to deliver.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle, Editing by Eric Walsh)

    Fidel Castro retires, R, 19.2.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1941945720080219

Fidel Castro Was Long in Anti - US Camp

February 19, 2008
Filed at 9:14 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It wasn't the Bay of Pigs invasion or the U.S. embargo against Cuba that turned Fidel Castro against the United States. He was in the anti-American camp long beforehand.

He never wavered in his loathing of his powerful neighbor to the north.

His feelings were dramatized in a handwritten note he sent to a colleague in 1958, as a guerrilla commander, six months before taking power.

''I am going to launch another, much longer and bigger war against them (the Americans). I realize now that this is going to be my true destiny,'' Castro, then 31, wrote.

He kept his word. His differences with the United States were more than just political; they were cultural as well. He ridiculed American elections, American consumerism, the American penchant for changing cars every few years and the perceived American indifference to society's less fortunate

President Bush expressed hope Tuesday that the end of Fidel Castro's presidency would launch a transition to democracy in Cuba after nearly 50 years of hardline, communist rule. Long a target of U.S. criticism and sanctions, the ailing Castro, 81, announced he would not accept a new term.

''What does this mean for the people in Cuba?'' Bush said at a news conference during his trip to Africa. ''They're the ones who suffered under Fidel Castro. They're the ones who were put in prison because of their beliefs. They're the ones who have been denied their right to live in a free society. So I view this as a period of transition and it should be the beginning of the democratic transition in Cuba.''

Fidel Castro has contended that American domination of Cuba during the last century was such that the island did not achieve genuine independence until his revolution in 1959. He once denounced American imperialism 88 times in a single speech. His government confiscated, without compensation, almost 6,000 properties belonging to Americans.

Cuba under Castro had a 30-year partnership with the Soviet Union. When it came to Moscow's worldwide quest to pick up new allies for the socialist camp, no country was a more faithful supporter than Cuba. Castro also struck up friendships with other bitter enemies of the U.S.: North Korea, Iran and Iraq under Saddam Hussein -- all members of Bush's ''axis of evil.''

Castro dreamed of Cuban-style communist revolutions throughout the Third World and was displeased about the global trend toward the embrace of free markets and representative democracy.

But he welcomed the emergence in recent years of left and center-left governments in Latin America, most notably in Venezuela, whose petrodollars, mostly from the United States, finance Venezuela's anti-American policies.

A major sore point for Cuba was the frequency with which anti-Castro militants launched attacks on Cuba, using Florida as a staging area.

During the early years of his rule, American missteps played into Castro's hands. The botched Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 made him the country's unquestioned leader and sullied the American image around the world. Later, that image was further damaged by disclosures of repeated CIA attempts in the early 1960s to assassinate Castro.

Between 1959 and 1962, Castro had an enormous impact on American policy toward Latin America. Fearful of a wave of Castro-type revolutions in the hemisphere, President Kennedy promoted a dramatic expansion of U.S. assistance to -- and involvement in -- Latin America.

It was only after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 -- in which Castro was essentially a bystander -- that U.S. concerns about Castro's influence in the region began to ebb.

The centerpiece of American policy toward Cuba has been the economic embargo, first instituted in limited form in 1960 and strengthened in 1962.

Castro persistently called the embargo ''criminal,'' and claimed that its economic impact on the island ran well into the tens of billions of dollars. Politically influential anti-Castro militants have beaten efforts over the years to lift the embargo.

Internationally, the embargo has virtually no support. Each fall, the U.N. General Assembly takes up a Cuban-sponsored proposal to condemn the measure. Normally, the United States can count on few votes beyond its own.

Migration issues have repeatedly roiled the U.S.-Cuban relationship. In 1980, 125,000 Cuban boat people fled to South Florida. Castro outraged many Americans by allowing criminals and the mentally ill to join the exodus.

The last president to make a serious effort to establish normal relations with Cuba was Jimmy Carter; he gave up the effort after less than a year. The two countries have not had discussions on political issues since 1982.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the focus of Washington's complaints has shifted from Cold War concerns to the absence of freedom in Cuba and its treatment of dissidents.

When Cuban authorities arrested 75 regime opponents and sentenced them to lengthy prison terms in March of 2003, the Bush administration's response was predictably harsh. Cuba accused the dissidents of engaging in subversive activities at U.S. behest.

Washington insists that there can be no normal relations until Cuba releases political prisoners and takes credible steps toward establishing democratic rule.

Bush said in May 2002: ''The goal of the United States policy toward Cuba is not a permanent embargo on Cuba's economy. The goal is freedom for Cuba's people.''

On Tuesday from Africa, Bush struck up the same theme, noting that he had met with the families of some of prisoners, and that their release should be the first step of any transition to democracy. ''It just breaks your heart to realize that people have been thrown in prisons because they dare speak out,'' he said.

Castro has expressed belief that his revolution will survive him. The administration sees the Cuban people as starved for freedom and is trying to hasten a transition to democracy. It has been assisting non-governmental groups in Cuba to achieve that goal. To reduce Castro's access to dollars, it has sharply restricted travel by Americans to Cuba.

Only rarely during Castro's rule did the United States and Cuba find common ground. One such occasion was the Elian Gonzalez affair in 1999-2000.

When the Clinton administration allowed the shipwreck survivor, age 7, to be returned to Cuba over the objection of Cuban-American relatives in South Florida, Castro expressed gratitude to the Clinton administration -- but made clear his appreciation was only temporary.

''Tomorrow the struggle continues,'' Castro said.

    Fidel Castro Was Long in Anti - US Camp, NYT, 19.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Fidel-Castro.html

Fidel Castro, 20th century revolutionary

Tue Feb 19, 2008
3:25am EST
Reuters
By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - Fidel Castro, who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States from a guerrilla uprising and defied attempts to oust him by 10 U.S. presidents, retired on Tuesday after almost half a century at Cuba's helm.

The bearded revolutionary, whose cigar-smoking guerrillas ousted U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, has not appeared in public for 19 months since emergency intestinal surgery forced him to hand over power to brother Raul Castro on July 31, 2006.

Castro, 81, has kept himself in the minds of Cubans, however, through a prolific flow of sick bed articles that ranged from denunciations of the U.S. war in Iraq to claiming that U.S. capitalism threatens the survival of humanity.

He said on Tuesday he would not return to lead his country, closing one chapter of the 20th century.

Vilified by opponents as a totalitarian dictator, Castro is admired in many Third World nations for standing up to the United States and providing free education and health care.

The Jesuit-educated lawyer and charismatic orator sought to transform Cuba into an egalitarian society and achieved health and literacy levels on a par with industrialized nations.

But critics, led by the United States and the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who left to live abroad, maintained that he turned the Caribbean island into a police state and his rejection of free enterprise ruined the economy.

Castro survived a CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, assassination attempts, Washington's longest trade embargo and the collapse of the Soviet Union that for three decades supplied Cuba with everything from guns to oil and butter.

"I'm really happy to reach 80. I never expected it, not least having a neighbor -- the greatest power in the world -- trying to kill me every day," he said on July 21, 2006 at a summit of South American presidents in Argentina, where crowds greeted him like a rock star.

Anti-globalization youths the world over saw the leftist firebrand as a hero along with revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara, his Argentine-born comrade-in-arms.

Castro caught the imagination of the left by pitting his small country against the United States and declaring Cuba a Marxist state even before the Berlin Wall was erected.

His brazen risk-taking took the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 when he allowed Moscow to place ballistic missiles in Cuba, leading to a 13-day stand-off between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in one of the most dangerous episodes of the Cold War.

Castro supported guerrilla groups in Latin America and sent more than 350,000 Cubans troops to fight in Angola, where they defeated South African forces, leading to the independence of Namibia and hastening the end of apartheid.

POST-SOVIET CRISIS

But the loss of billions of dollars in subsidies from Moscow after the Soviet collapse plunged Cuba into severe economic crisis in the early 1990s.

Social gains were undermined and widespread hardship sowed discontent that triggered a renewed exodus of tens of thousands of rafters to Florida -- just 90 miles away -- in search of a better life.

The crisis forced Castro to grudgingly open up Cuba to foreign investment and tourism, and legalize the currency of his enemy, the U.S. dollar.

In the last years of his rule, Castro tried to grapple with some of Cuba's glaring failures -- decrepit housing, poor transport, power outages and corruption -- while denying his critics a voice in the West's last communist society.

Castro won friends by sending 30,000 Cuban doctors abroad to treat the poor, mainly in Venezuela, but also as far afield as Pakistan, Indonesia and East Timor, while training thousands of doctors from developing counties in Cuba free of charge.

Cuba won annual votes condemning the U.S. embargo at the United Nations backed by all but a handful of U.S. allies.

Castro, who gave up smoking cigars in 1985, stamped his image on history by thumping the lectern during lengthy tirades against imperialism and capitalism or striding at the head of mass marches in his trademark military fatigues.

Cubans call him simply "Fidel." Seventy-percent of them were born after 1959 and have known no other leader. Until he fell ill, Castro was omnipresent in their lives through hours-long speeches and nonstop public activity, but he has not allowed statues of himself or streets named after him.

His pace slowed after fracturing a knee in a serious tumble after a speech in October 2004 seen live on television.

In 2006, the health of the man who said he had survived 638 assassination plots caved in. He underwent life-threatening operations to stop intestinal bleeding and infection. Pictures showed the once robust leader had lost weight and become gaunt and shuffling.

Castro was born on August 13, 1926, in Biran in eastern Cuba, the son of a Spanish immigrant who became a landowner. His family's farm was the first land Castro ordered confiscated by the state after his revolution.

"History will absolve me," Castro declared during his trial for a near-suicidal assault on July 26, 1953 on the Moncada barracks in the eastern city of Santiago, which launched his revolutionary movement.

In December, 1956, he returned from exile in Mexico on a overcrowded yacht called the "Granma" and landed with 81 followers in eastern Cuba. They were ambushed and only 12 made it to the rugged Sierra Maestra mountains with seven rifles.

The ragtag band of rebels grew into a guerrilla force of several thousand that swept down from the hills in 1958 to drive the dictator Batista from Cuba on New Year's Day 1959.

(Editing by Michael Christie and Eric Walsh)

    Fidel Castro, 20th century revolutionary, R, 19.2.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1922504220080219

FACTBOX: Facts about Fidel Castro

Tue Feb 19, 2008
3:25am EST
Reuters

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba's Fidel Castro announced his retirement on Tuesday after almost half a century as leader of his country.

Here are some facts about him:

* Fidel Castro was the world's third longest-serving head of state, after Britain's Queen Elizabeth and the King of Thailand. He was not been seen in public since illness forced him to hand over day-to-day control of the country to his brother Raul Castro in July 2006.

* Castro holds the Guinness Book of Records title for the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations: 4 hours and 29 minutes, on September 29, 1960. His longest speech on record in Cuba was 7 hours and 10 minutes in 1986 at the III Communist Party Congress in Havana.

* Castro claims he survived 634 attempts on his life, mainly masterminded by the Central Intelligence Agency. They allegedly included poison pills, a toxic cigar, exploding mollusks, and a chemically-tainted diving suit as well as powder to make his beard fall out so as to undermine his popularity.

* Despite the CIA plots, a U.S.-backed exile invasion at the Bay of Pigs and four and a half decades of economic sanctions, Castro outlasted nine U.S. presidents, from Eisenhower to Clinton, and faced increased hostility under President George W. Bush, who tightened enforcement of financial sanctions and a travel ban.

* Castro, once a cigar-chomping guerrilla fighter, gave up cigars in 1985. Years later he summed up the harm of smoking tobacco by saying: "The best thing you can do with this box of cigars is to give them to your enemy."

* Castro has at least eight children. His eldest son Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, who is the image of his father and is known as Fidelito, is a Soviet-trained nuclear scientist. Daughter Alina Fernandez, the result of an affair with a Havana socialite when Castro was underground in the 1950s, escaped from Cuba disguised as a tourist in 1993 and is a vocal critic of her father's rule from her Miami radio program. Castro has five sons with his second wife Dalia Soto. Their names all begin with A. The youngest, Antonio, is the national baseball team's doctor.

* One of Castro's pet projects was a cow called Ubre Blanca, or "White Udder", that produced prodigious quantities of milk and became a propaganda tool for Cuba's collectivized agriculture in the 1980s. Ubre Blanca is in the Guinness Book of Records for the highest milk yield by a cow in one day: 110 liters.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Kieran Murray)

    FACTBOX: Facts about Fidel Castro, R, 19.2.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1922553520080219

TIMELINE: Key events in Fidel Castro's life

Tue Feb 19, 2008
3:25am EST
Reuters

(Reuters) - The following are key events in the political life of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who retired on Tuesday after almost half a century at Cuba's helm.

August 13, 1926 - Fidel Castro Ruz born in eastern Cuban hamlet of Biran, son of a well-off Spanish-born landowner.

July 26, 1953 - Castro leads armed uprising against military dictator Fulgencio Batista, captured in failed attack on Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba.

May, 1955 - Castro, who stated "History will absolve me" at his trial, is given amnesty and leaves prison for Mexico.

December 2, 1956 - Castro and 81 other would-be revolutionaries land in Cuba on the yacht "Granma.". Most are routed, but 12 survivors -- including Castro, his brother Raul Castro and Argentine Ernesto "Che" Guevara -- regroup in Sierra Maestra mountains where they launch a guerrilla war.

January 1, 1959 - Batista flees to Dominican Republic.

January 8, 1959 - Castro enters Havana after triumphal journey across Cuba. As supreme "Comandante" of the armed forces, he begins the political, economic and social transformation of Cuba, launching agrarian reform and nationalizing most foreign and local businesses.

Feb 13, 1959 - Castro named prime minister.

January 3, 1961 - U.S. breaks diplomatic ties with Havana.

April 16, 1961 - Castro declares his revolution socialist.

April 19, 1961 - Castro directs troops in defeat of invasion attempt by U.S.-backed Cuban exiles at Bay of Pigs.

February 7, 1962 - United States imposes full economic embargo.

October 1962 - Missile Crisis. Presence of Soviet warheads in Cuba provokes standoff between Moscow and Washington. Many fear nuclear war, but Soviet Union decides to withdraw missiles after President John F. Kennedy imposes naval blockade.

October 1965 - Castro founds new Cuban Communist Party and is named First Secretary.

1971-80 - Castro visits Chile, Panama and Nicaragua to support left-wing governments there.

1975 - Castro sends troops to Angola to help left-wing government fight South-African backed rebels.

1976 - Castro becomes president, ratified by newly-created National Assembly.

Summer, 1980 - Mariel boat-lift. Cuba allows exodus of 125,000 Cubans to United States, mostly via Mariel port.

1991 - Soviet Union's collapse plunges Cuba into economic crisis.

August 14, 1993 - Castro government ends ban on use of U.S. dollars, one of a series of limited economic openings that government says are aimed at saving revolution.

August 5, 1994 - Hundreds of Havana residents riot in biggest anti-Castro disturbance since revolution.

August-September 1994 - More than 35,000 people leave Cuba in flimsy rafts and boats during summer crisis, prompting a migration agreement with the United States to allow a minimum of 20,000 legal entry visas to Cubans annually.

February 24, 1996 - Cuban MiG fighters shoot down two small U.S. planes in the Florida Straits belonging to Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue. Four crew members killed.

January 21-25, 1998 - Castro welcomes Pope John Paul in first visit by a pontiff to Cuba.

November 25, 1999-June 28, 2000 - Elian Gonzalez custody saga. Castro launches mass anti-U.S. campaign for the return of six-year-old Cuban boy rescued at sea off U.S. coast after surviving a shipwreck that kills his mother. Elian eventually returns to Cuba.

June 23, 2001 - Two hours into speech at public rally, Castro suffers brief fainting fit due to exhaustion and sun.

June 12, 2002 - Castro leads march by one million Cubans along Havana waterfront in campaign to defend socialist system in face of growing dissent and U.S. pressures.

June 26, 2002 - Cuba declares socialism "irrevocable" in constitutional amendment passed by National Assembly.

March 18, 2003 - Castro launches crackdown on dissidents: 75 pro-democracy activists and independent journalists jailed, prompting international criticism.

Oct 20, 2004 - Castro smashes left knee in fall after speech on steps of Che Guevara mausoleum in Santa Clara.

July 31, 2006 - Castro forced to hand over the reins of power to his brother Raul after undergoing emergency surgery to stop intestinal bleeding caused by undisclosed illness.

March 29, 2007 - Castro takes to writing prolific flow of articles on world issues, mainly attacks on the U.S. government.

Dec 17, 2007 - Castro hints he will not cling to power or block rise of younger leaders in message read on television.

Feb 19, 2008 - Almost 19 months since he last appeared in public, Castro said he would not return as head of state and government.
 

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle in Havana, Editing by Michael Christie)

    TIMELINE: Key events in Fidel Castro's life, R, 19.2.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1922589220080219

U.S. wants Kenya crisis solution "yesterday"

Mon Feb 18, 2008
11:48am EST
Reuters
By C. Bryson Hull and Andrew Cawthorne

NAIROBI (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Kenya's feuding parties on Monday to hurry up with a pact to end a post-election crisis that has killed 1,000 people and dented their nation's global status.

"The time for a political settlement was yesterday," Rice said after meeting separately with President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga during her one-day visit.

"The current stalemate and the circumstances are not going to permit business as usual with the United States or with any other part of the international community."

Dispatched to Kenya by President George W. Bush during his Africa tour, Rice was the most senior U.S. official to visit since the disputed December 27 vote triggered protests and ethnic conflict that also displaced more than 300,000.

"They need to have a power-sharing arrangement ... There needs to be a coalition," she said, echoing the line being pushed by mediator and former U.N. boss Kofi Annan.

Odinga says Kibaki, for whom he once served in cabinet, stole the 2007 election through fraud.

Kibaki's team says its man won fairly and points to the official declaration by the election board.

The election crisis took the lid off grievances between different communities over wealth, land and power that date back to British colonial rule and have been aggravated by Kenyan politicians since then, especially at election time.

"KENYANS IMPATIENT"

Government officials have become increasingly prickly over foreign pressure. On the eve of Rice's visit, Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula warned that nobody should "make any mistake of putting a gun to anybody's head."

But Rice, noting she had been "especially moved" listening to Kenyan civil society and business representatives, said the pressure was coming from within not abroad.

"Kenya is a friend. Kenya is also an independent and proud country ... So this is not a matter of dictating a solution to Kenyans," she said. "What I hear is the impatience and insistence of Kenyans that this is resolved."

Both sides of Kenya's political divide have agreed to an independent review of the contested ballot -- but not what to do about it or what form a shared administration might take.

Having missed Annan's target for a deal by last week, negotiators are due to resume talks on Tuesday.

Government officials have said the only power-sharing being considered is giving opposition members ministries in Kibaki's half-filled cabinet.

After meeting Rice, Odinga gave a news conference outlining his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party's proposals for a new position of prime minister, shared executive authority, and a fresh presidential election within two years.

"This is not a love affair. It's something they must do, as the whole world is telling them," Odinga said, when asked if Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) would agree.

Earlier, Kibaki's office issued a statement after his meeting with Rice, saying he remained committed to dialogue and "will continue looking for an amicable solution".

Though emphasis at the moment is on a possible power-sharing deal, many Kenyans also want solutions to complicated, underlying issues such as wealth inequalities, land policies, and the need for constitutional reform.

(Additional reporting by Daniel Wallis and Duncan Miriri; Editing by Giles Elgood)

(For special coverage from Reuters on Kenya's crisis see: http://africa.reuters.com/elections/kenya/ )

    U.S. wants Kenya crisis solution "yesterday", R, 18.2.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1766035820080218

U.S. Will Work to Prevent Kosovo Backlash, Bush Says

February 17, 2008
Filed at 12:30 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP) -- President Bush said Sunday the U.S. will work to prevent violent clashes following Kosovo's declaration of independence. The State Department was reviewing the development with European allies as the province sought swift recognition from the West.

''The United States will continue to work with our allies to do the very best we can to make sure there's no violence,'' Bush said several hours before Kosovo's parliament approved a declaration of independence from Serbia.

That vote outraged Serbia and its ally Russia, which worries the independence move sets a dangerous precedent for separatist groups worldwide. Serbia's president said his country would never accept an independent Kosovo. The U.N Security Council planned to meet in emergency session Sunday afternoon at Russia's request.

In advance of the declaration, the White House reaffirmed its support of a plan by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari that recommended granting Kosovo internationally supervised independence.

''On Kosovo, our position is that its status must be resolved in order for the Balkans to be stable,'' Bush said during his trip to Africa.

''Secondly, we have strongly supported the Ahtisaari plan. Thirdly, we are heartened by the fact that the Kosovo government has clearly proclaimed its willingness and its desire to support Serbian rights in Kosovo. We also believe it's in Serbia's interests to be aligned with Europe, and the Serbian people can know that they have a friend in America.''

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a recorded statement after the independence declaration that the U.S. welcomed Kosovo's ''clear commitment to implementing far-reaching provisions'' of Ahtisaari's plan to protect ethnic minority communities. ''The U.S. is now reviewing this and discussing the matter with its European partners.''

He added, ''We long believed that the Ahtisaari plan ... was the best way to promote regional stability and enable both Serbia and Kosovo to move forward on the Euro-Atlantic path. The United States will remain steadfast in its support for the rights of all ethnic and religious communities in Kosovo.''

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, traveling with Bush, said shortly before the Kosovo parliament convened that the U.S. was aware ''there are a lot of deep-rooted emotions that go with this. We are sensitive to this.''

Kosovo formally had stayed a part of Serbia even though the province was administered by the U.N. and NATO since the war ended in 1999. The province is still protected by 16,000 NATO-led peacekeepers, and the alliance has boosted its patrols in hopes of discouraging violence.

In April 2007, U.N. envoy Ahtisaari recommended that Kosovo be granted internationally supervised independence. But talks that followed failed to yield an agreement between the ethnic Albanian leadership, which pushed for full statehood, and Serbia, which was willing to offer only autonomy.

With Russia, a staunch Serbian ally, determined to block the bid for independence, Kosovo has looked to the U.S. and Europe for swift recognition of its status as the continent's newest nation. That recognition was likely to come Monday at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium.

    U.S. Will Work to Prevent Kosovo Backlash, Bush Says, NYT, 17.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Kosovo.html

Bush Calls on Congress to Renew AIDS Program

February 17, 2008
Filed at 5:52 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP) -- President Bush on Sunday said Congress should renew his global AIDS program and preserve a requirement that steers money into abstinence efforts.

''We don't want people guessing on the continent of Africa whether the generosity of the American people will continue,'' Bush said in Tanzania, the second stop of his African trip.

Congress, in fact, strongly backs the program, which is credited with getting medicine and preventive treatment to millions of people -- most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet its renewal has gotten hung up over ideology and political debate about disease prevention.

Some Democrats want to eliminate a provision in the bill that requires one-third of all prevention spending go to abstinence-until-marriage programs. Critics say that while they don't oppose abstinence programs, the inflexible requirement hampers the effort.

Bush said the time for debate is over, and that those seeking changes on both ends of the political spectrum should ''stop the squabbling.''

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEFPAR, expires this year.

''My attitude toward Congress is, see what works,'' Bush said. ''PEPFAR is working. It is a balanced program. It is an ABC program -- abstinence, be faithful and condoms. It is a program that's been proven effective.''

Tanzania is one of the countries targeted by Bush's emergency AIDS relief effort; more than two-thirds of all people infected with HIV across live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Standing with Bush, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete thanked U.S. lawmakers for the program, but also prodded them to keep it moving. ''If this program is discontinued or disrupted, there will be so many people who will lose hope,'' he said.

Bush is pushing to renew the program at $30 billion over five years, double his original commitment. Congress has put more than $18 million into it so far. It is the largest effort to ever target an infectious disease.

Bush, nearing the end of a presidency dominated by the war in Iraq, is targeting disease and poverty in his visits to five African nations. The president and first lady, Laura Bush, began their African trip in Benin in West Africa, then flew to the east coast of the continent to Tanzania. He also plans to visit Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia.

Unlike in the United States, where his approval rating hovers near his record lows, Bush is treated here with reverence. A crowd of people, some wearing clothing bearing Bush's image, waved tiny U.S. and Tanzanian flags to welcome him as he walked down a red carpet toward the State House.

The president, who started his remarks at a news conference with a conference with a folksy ''Howdy'' in Swahili, signed a nearly $700 million aid pact with Kikwete to help Tanzania build up its infrastructure. It's the largest deal under a Bush program that offers economic aid to countries that treat their people fairly, rule justly and root out corruption.

''I'll just put it bluntly, America doesn't want to spend money on people who steal the money from the people,'' Bush said. ''We like dealing with honest people, and compassionate people. We want our money to go to help human condition and to lift human lives as well as fighting corruption in marketplace economies.''

At the news conference, both leaders dodged a question about the presidential race in the United States and the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., whose father was Kenyan.

Bush, momentarily taken aback by a question about the excitement surrounding Obama's candidacy, said: ''Seems like there was a lot of excitement for me.''

Kikwete would say only: ''Let him be as good a friend of Africa as President Bush has been.''

    Bush Calls on Congress to Renew AIDS Program, NYT, 17.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush-Africa.html

Bush, in Africa, Emphasizes Successes

February 17, 2008
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — As violence in Africa threatened to overshadow his six-day tour of the continent, President Bush on Saturday defended his decision not to visit strife-torn nations like Kenya and Sudan, saying he wanted to focus instead on successes like his programs to fight AIDS and malaria.

“This is a large place with a lot of nations, and no question, everything is not perfect,” Mr. Bush said during a brief visit to Benin before arriving Saturday evening here in the capital of Tanzania. “On the other hand, there’s a lot of great success stories, and the United States is pleased to be involved with those success stories.”

Mr. Bush’s short stay in Benin — just three hours, enough time for an airport news conference with President Thomas Yayi Boni and for Air Force One to refuel — made him the first American president to visit that tiny West African nation. It was on Mr. Bush’s itinerary because it represents the kind of success he wants to highlight — how American aid has helped fight poverty and disease in some of the world’s poorest nations.

But with Kenya ravaged by post-election violence, and a worsening humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, Mr. Bush could not escape Africa’s crises, and the White House spent much of Saturday fending off suggestions that the president should be more engaged as a peacekeeper.

Instead, Mr. Bush is leaving that to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is with him but will break off on Monday to go to Kenya, where Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, is trying to broker a power-sharing deal.

“President Bush does not need to go to Kenya at this point,” Jendayi E. Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told reporters on Air Force One. “At the right moment in time, the president will engage, but right now it’s occurring in a very systematic way to back Annan’s mediation.”

A senior administration official said on Saturday that the main purpose of Ms. Rice’s trip would be to step up pressure on Kenya’s president, warning him that he risked losing American support if he did not compromise. The message, the official said, was, “If you can’t make a deal, you’re not going to have good relations.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Bush assured reporters that he was not ignoring the bloodshed in Kenya or in Darfur, where 200,000 have died and 2.5 million have been chased from their homes in an ethnic conflict that he has called genocide.

“As you know, I had a tough decision to make early on, and that is whether to send troops into Darfur,” he said; he decided against it in favor of African Union peacekeeping troops. But he said he would bring up Darfur while visiting Rwanda, a country that has sent American-trained peacekeepers to the region.

The White House had hoped to use the Africa trip to burnish Mr. Bush’s legacy as a “compassionate conservative,” reminding not only Africans, but also Americans, that his administration had done more than wage a controversial war in Iraq. Despite small protests here on Friday before his arrival, the welcome for Mr. Bush has been warm.

When Air Force One landed here at dusk on Saturday, Mr. Bush was feted with an elaborate ceremony of drummers, dancers and a marching band. Women, including the wife of President Jakaya Kikwete, dressed in traditional African garb with an American twist — the likenesses of Mr. Bush and Mr. Kikwete woven into the fabric.

Tens of thousands of people lined the president’s motorcade route from the airport into the city. Outside his hotel, a billboard said, “Feel at Home.”

Perhaps it is no wonder people are happy to see him. Mr. Bush comes to Tanzania bearing a big gift — a promise of $700 million from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, created by Mr. Bush to help nations that embrace democracy and fight corruption. In Benin, which signed a five-year, $307 million compact with the corporation in 2006, the president had high praise for Mr. Bush.

“Virtue,” Mr. Boni said of Mr. Bush, “means a lot to him.”

    Bush, in Africa, Emphasizes Successes, NYT, 17.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/world/africa/17prexy.html

Bush: US Is Engaged in African Conflicts

February 16, 2008
Filed at 11:32 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

COTONOU, Benin (AP) -- President Bush insisted his administration is ''plenty active'' in the turmoil now roiling nearly every corner of Africa, but said his trip to the continent that began Saturday is focused more on its successes than its conflicts.

''When you herald success, it helps others realize what it possible,'' the president said in this tiny sliver of a West African nation, the first of five countries on Bush's schedule. ''This is a large place with a lot of nations and no question not everything is perfect. On the other hand, there are a lot of great success stories and the United States is pleased to be involved with those success stories.''

Even as Bush defended an emphasis on the positive, he stepped into one of Africa's most disturbing developments. December's presidential elections in Kenya unleashed weeks of ethnic violence that left more than 1,000 people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands, a worrisome sign in a country typically regarded as one of Africa's most stable.

Bush endorsed a power-sharing agreement to help resolve the dispute. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling with Bush, will go separately to Kenya on Monday and said she would deliver his message.

''The key is that the leaders hear from her firsthand U.S desires to see that there be no violence, that there be a power-sharing agreement that will help this nation resolve its difficulties,'' the president said.

Kenya's political rivals announced a 10-point plan on Friday to resolve their political crisis after weeks of negotiations. They remained deadlocked over power sharing, however.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer said the purpose of Rice's trip was to support former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is mediating the political talks. Bush does not need to go to Kenya, she said. ''Right now, we don't want to supplant Kofi Annan's mediation. That is not the intention.''

She said both sides or the political crisis in Kenya understand the U.S. position that any individuals who obstruct the process will be subject to U.S. penalties. ''The message is to both sides that they have to find a deal that's credible and that will lead to reconciliation over the long term,'' she said.

''I think that both have heard our message that there will be not be business as usual.''

On the worsening violence in Sudan's western Darfur region, Bush said he ''had a tough decision early on as to whether to send troops to Darfur.'' Once he decided against that, Bush said ''there's not many other avenues except for the United Nations and the peacekeeping forces.''

But he said he hopes to shine a spotlight on the need to speed up the deployment of a joint African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force to Darfur while in Rwanda on Tuesday. Bush intends to thank Rwandans for contributing the largest contingent of troops so far to that mission.

Bush spent only three hours in Benin, becoming the first U.S. president to visit the country. He then flew to the other side of Africa for three nights in Tanzania. He arrived in Dar es Salaam to a rousing airport welcome, greeted by men and women in clothes bearing Bush's likeness. President Jakaya Kiwete escorted Bush and his wife, Laura, off their plane.

On a trip that will also take him to Rwanda in Central Africa and back to West Africa to Ghana and Liberia, Bush is highlighting America's commitment to improved health and economic development on the continent, an aspect of his foreign policy overshadowed by the war in Iraq. The image of the U.S. has declined in many parts of the world, but remains high in Africa.

Benin was chosen for a Bush visit because it is one of Africa's most-stable democracies -- and because its location made it a convenient refueling stop. The nation has many political parties, a strong civil society and press freedoms, yet is one of world's poorest countries, is severely underdeveloped and continues to struggle with corruption. The 2006 elections were nearly derailed when the government ran out of funds to finance its election machinery. Voters stepped in, raising cash, loaning computers and using motorcycle headlights to illuminate ballot-counting centers.

Thomas Boni Yayi, the president of Benin, reiterated his commitment to battling corruption.

''Your fight against corruption is visible and easy for the people to see,'' Bush said. ''This is such a good lesson ... because leaders around the world have got to understand that the United States wants to partner with leaders and the people, but we're not going to do so with people that steal money, pure and simple.''

Benin gave Bush the chance to tout one of the initiatives underpinning his trip to Africa, the Millennium Challenge Account. It provides U.S. aid to countries that agree to govern justly, shun corruption, help their own people and support economic freedoms.

''My trip here is a way to remind future presidents and future congresses that it's in the national interest and the moral interest, for the United States of America to help people,'' he said. ''I reject the old-style type of grants.''

Benin has a five-year, $307 million compact under the program. The money is designed to build up a physical infrastructure and justice system, and to spur commerce and investment. Yet the program has had trouble, too. The flow of money has been slow and many countries have struggled to get their projects going, prompting criticism in Congress.

Benin is also one of 15 African countries targeted by a Bush effort to reduce malaria, a disease that is spread by infected mosquitoes. Malaria kills more than 1 million people a year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

    Bush: US Is Engaged in African Conflicts, NYT, 16.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush-Africa.html

Bush Begins Six-Day Tour of Africa

February 16, 2008
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — Opening a six-day tour of Africa, President Bush defended on Saturday his decision not to visit violence-stricken nations, like Kenya and Sudan, saying he wanted to focus on “success stories” like his programs to fight AIDS and malaria instead.

“This is a large place with a lot of nations, and no question everything is not perfect,” Mr. Bush said in a brief visit to Benin before arriving Saturday evening here in the Tanzanian capital. “On the other hand, there’s a lot of great success stories, and the United States is pleased to be involved with those success stories.”

The stop in Benin makes Mr. Bush the first American president to visit that tiny West African nation of 7.86 million people. It was on his itinerary because it represents the kind of success Mr. Bush wants to highlight — how American foreign aid has helped improve water, schools, infrastructure and health care in some of the poorest nations in the world.

In 2006, Benin signed a five-year, $307 million agreement with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, created by Mr. Bush to assist nations that embrace democracy and free markets and commit to fighting corruption. Benin also benefits from America’s anti-malaria programs, as well as an education initiative that provides money to train teachers, build schools and buy textbooks.

So it was no surprise that Benin’s president, Thomas Yayi Bon, had high praise for Mr. Bush when the two appeared together for a short news conference at the airport in Cotonou, the country’s economic capital, while Air Force One refueled. Vowing that “everything that would stain democracy will be suppressed” under his leadership, Mr. Yayi Boni said Mr. Bush’s visit was an important symbol.

“Perhaps it’s a signal to us,” he said, adding of Mr. Bush, “Virtue means a lot to him.”

The White House is hoping that the Africa trip will remind not only Africans, but also Americans, that Mr. Bush has done more during his presidency than fight a controversial war with Iraq. Dar es Salaam was festooned with billboards bearing Mr. Bush’s likeness, including one on the road from the airport to downtown that declared, “We Cherish Democracy,” and another outside his hotel, the Kempinski, that said, “Feel at Home.”

There were some undercurrents of resentment. Two thousand people protested here on Friday in advance of Mr. Bush’s arrival, waving signs that suggested he was a terrorist. And he cannot seem to avoid crisis elsewhere on the continent.

Before he left Washington, Mr. Bush said he would send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Kenya, where post-election violence has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people since late December. But at Saturday’s news conference in Benin, he was peppered with questions about why his administration was not taking a more active role, not only in Kenya but also in Darfur, where 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been chased from their homes in an ethnic conflict that Mr. Bush has termed genocide.

He said he had “a tough decision to make early on” about whether to send troops into Darfur, but had decided against doing so in favor of allowing African Union and United Nations peacekeeping troops to intervene. He also said he intended to bring up Darfur during his visit to Rwanda, where he planned to thank that country’s president for sending in peacekeeping troops — and remind Americans that the peacekeepers were trained by United States soldiers.

As to Kenya, Mr. Bush said Secretary Rice’s visit was “aimed at having a clear message that there be no violence and that there ought to be a power-sharing agreement.”

The former United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, has been in Kenya trying to negotiate a peace agreement between the two sides. Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen G. Hadley, told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday that Mr. Annan appeared to be “making incremental progress.”

Mr. Hadley said that Ms. Rice, who is traveling with the president, would spend only a few hours in Kenya. He described the visit as an opportunity “to show the president’s concern — but also get on the ground and help support Kofi Annan and maybe move things forward a little further and a little faster.”

    Bush Begins Six-Day Tour of Africa, NYT, 16.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/world/africa/16cnd-prexy.html?hp

Turmoil in Africa Alters Focus of Bush’s 5-Nation Tour

February 15, 2008
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — On the eve of a planned trip to Africa, President Bush thrust himself into the role of peacemaker on Thursday, as his plans to promote American efforts against poverty and disease gave way to a more pressing imperative: addressing the violence and turmoil on the continent.

Mr. Bush injected his administration directly into the political crisis in Kenya, calling for a “full return to democracy” and announcing that he would send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice there to “deliver a message directly to Kenya’s leaders.” Ms. Rice will not have far to go; she and the president will be right next door, in Tanzania.

The six-day, five-country Africa tour would be one of a string of foreign trips, to Eastern Europe, Israel, Japan and China, that will keep Mr. Bush busy overseas in the twilight of his administration, as his influence over domestic policy wanes and attention at home turns increasingly to the campaign to elect his successor.

Mr. Bush is scheduled to leave for Africa on Friday evening. The trip will take him to Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia — all countries that have benefited from American foreign aid.

Mr. Bush’s presence is intended to celebrate each country’s political and economic progress, while sending a not-so-subtle reminder of the role the United States has played.

But with Kenya racked by violence over a disputed election, unrest in Chad and a worsening crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, it had become increasingly clear that Mr. Bush could not take what analysts have dubbed “a victory lap” in Africa while steering clear of troubles on the continent — especially in Kenya, where more than 1,000 have died in the recent violence.

“There must be an immediate halt to violence,” Mr. Bush said, using his toughest language to date about the crisis in Kenya, in a speech intended to preview his Africa trip. “There must be justice for the victims of abuse and there must be a full return to democracy.”

When he last spoke publicly about Kenya, more than a month ago, Mr. Bush called only for a “peaceful dialogue” between the rival parties. In another public display of concern, he will meet with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations on Friday before he is scheduled to leave.

(On Thursday, Mr. Bush suggested that he might postpone the trip if Congress failed to quickly revise and extend a law governing communications surveillance counterterrorism investigations, a top White House priority.)

The official focus of the trip is Mr. Bush’s development agenda, money for roads, schools, clean water and health. By putting the spotlight on American soft power, especially his initiatives to combat AIDS and malaria, the White House had hoped to burnish Mr. Bush’s legacy — and by extension, the United States.

“The focus of this trip is legacy, legacy, legacy,” said J. Anthony Holmes, an Africa expert at the Council on Foreign Relations and former ambassador to the West African nation of Burkina Faso under Mr. Bush. “They clearly want to highlight and enshrine what the president has accomplished, as well as to get some political points.”

Advocates for combating poverty and disease in Africa say Mr. Bush has reason to be proud. The Irish singer Bob Geldof, who along with the rock star Bono has made a cause of aid to Africa, will accompany Mr. Bush in Rwanda and Ghana.

In a statement, Bono said he hoped “the next president will build on Mr. Bush’s accomplishments.”

Mr. Bush concluded early in his tenure that Africa, a continent rich with natural resources but also fraught with poverty and the potential for crisis, was too important to ignore. The billions he has committed in foreign aid stem also in part from his belief, reinforced by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, that it is in American self-interest to prevent poor nations with fragile governments from deteriorating into breeding grounds for terrorism.

“We’ve seen that conditions on the other side of the world can have a direct impact on our own security,” Mr. Bush said in his speech on Friday at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of African Art. “We know that if Africa were to continue on the old path of decline, it would be more likely to produce failed states, foster ideologies of radicalism and spread violence across borders.”

Africa remains one corner of the world where, despite the war in Iraq, the United States is viewed relatively favorably. Even so, Mr. Bush may face suspicion about his intentions. There is deep skepticism among Africans and their leaders about the Pentagon’s new “Africa command” aimed at coordinating military and diplomatic activities, with headquarters on the continent.

Only one country, Liberia, has expressed interest in being a host to the command. Last October, the legislative body of the African Union voted to encourage all African governments “not to accede” to the American plan, forcing the Pentagon, at least for now, to keep the headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, instead.

The United States is increasingly interested in Africa’s substantial oil reserves. Some see Mr. Bush’s visit as a means of countering the rising influence of China on the continent. On Wednesday, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, delivered a message to China to invest responsibly in Africa.

“Obviously, the continent is rich with resources,” Mr. Hadley said, asked if the United States is concerned about China’s influence there. “We think those resources need to be used in a way that enhance and accelerate the development of the continent, and we think countries need to be responsible in their activities.”

Mr. Bush is also facing questions about whether he is putting his money where his mouth is. His $15 billion, five-year initiative to fight global H.I.V. and AIDS is up for reauthorization, and he has asked for $30 billion over the next five years. But Democrats and advocates for AIDS patients say that is not enough. They are calling for $50 billion.

At the same time, Mr. Bush’s proposed budget for 2009 would reduce money for international peacekeeping efforts and for child health programs. “He may face questions focused more on what he’s not talking about than what he is,” said Gayle Smith, an Africa expert at the Center for American Progress here.

The trip will be Mr. Bush’s second visit to Africa. His wife, Laura, who has already visited Africa four times as first lady, will accompany him. Their itinerary is carefully arranged to spotlight what Mr. Bush described as his administration’s efforts to help African leaders “lift up their nations and write a new chapter in their history.”

In Tanzania, he will sign a compact entering that country into his Millennium Challenge Corporation, a four-year-old federal agency that allocates foreign aid based on a country’s track record in good government and helping its own people. In Rwanda, Mr. Bush will visit a memorial to the 1994 genocide and will visit with American-trained Rwandan troops. Rwanda deployed troops as peacekeepers in the Darfur region of Sudan.

But the emotional highlight of his trip may well be his brief stop in Liberia, a country with historic connections to the United States and one that overshadowed Mr. Bush’s last trip to Africa, in 2003, in much the same way that Kenya overshadows this trip.

At that time, Liberia was reeling from more than two decades of civil war that had plunged the country into chaos under the strongman Charles Taylor. Mr. Bush spent the entire trip dogged by questions about why the United States had not intervened.

Eventually, he sent a small contingent of troops, and Mr. Taylor was pushed out. Today, Liberia is recovering under Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman in Africa to be elected president in a democratic vote — just the kind of story the White House likes to tell.

    Turmoil in Africa Alters Focus of Bush’s 5-Nation Tour, NYT, 15.2.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/world/africa/15prexy.html?ref=africa

Bush Prods Saudi Arabia on High Oil Prices

January 16, 2008
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Bush urged the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on Tuesday to take into account the toll that high oil prices are having on the American economy, gingerly touching on an issue that has begun to color the last year of his presidency and dominate the presidential election campaign.

Speaking to a group of Saudi entrepreneurs and later in an interview with reporters, Mr. Bush expressed his concern about the economy in some of his starkest language yet, saying that rising oil and gasoline prices are causing hardship for American families.

“It’s affected our families,” Mr. Bush said in the interview with reporters, adding he would raise the issue with the Saudi leader, King Abdullah, during a meeting on Tuesday evening at the king’s lush horse farm in the desert outside of Riyadh. “Paying more for gasoline hurts some of the American families,” he said.

As Mr. Bush himself acknowledged, it was not clear that the president’s entreaties could have any significant effect on oil prices. Mr. Bush said the demand for oil, especially from expanding markets in China and India, as well as the United States, was rising faster than supplies.

Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, appeared to rebuff the president’s appeal, though he did so gently. “We will raise production when the market justifies it,” he said at press conference after Mr. Bush’s remarks.

Mr. Naimi said that his country shared Mr. Bush’s concern that a downturn in the American economy could have profound effects around the world, including in the oil market. He even raised the prospect of “recession,” a word Mr. Bush studiously avoided in his interview with reporters even when pressed.

“Presidents and kings have every right, every privilege, to comment or ask or say whatever they want,” Mr. Naimi said. “The concern for the U.S. economy is valid, but what affects the U.S. economy is more than the price of oil. We are very much concerned. We don’t want the U.S. economy go into recession in the future.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Bush urged OPEC to consider increasing production, saying it would be helpful. His remarks, coming as voters went to the primary polls in Michigan, appeared to underscore worry inside the White House that the economy, which Mr. Bush again called “fundamentally sound”, could sour on his watch.

Mr. Bush, nearing the end of an eight-day trip to the Middle East, has not generally been inclined to weigh in directly on economic matters, but with rising energy costs taking a toll, the price of oil has come up in meetings with the leaders of several Persian Gulf states, including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and now Saudi Arabia.

The response has been muted, according to the presidential counselor, Ed Gillespie. “They talked about the nature of the market and the vast demand that’s on the world market today for oil,” he said on Monday night, referring to the leaders Mr. Bush met. “That was a point that was obviously made in the course of these conversations by our friends, and that’s a legitimate and accurate point.”

Mr. Bush last met King Abdullah in Crawford, Tex., in April 2005, before the king’s father died and he assumed the Saudi throne. At the time, concern about rising oil prices prompted the Bush administration to ask Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer, to raise production to ease prices. At the time, oil was selling for $54 a barrel; it is now hovering above $90 a barrel.

Since the beginning of the year, oil futures have touched the symbolic mark of $100-a-barrel twice because of tensions between Iran and the United States. But prices have fallen in recent days as concerns grow that a possible recession in the United States might cut petroleum consumption. Crude oil for February delivery fell 2.6 percent to $91.78 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Tuesday.

There have been many factors behind the rise in oil prices in recent years, including high demand from China, tight global supplies, and a lack of enough exploration investments in the 1990s. Political tensions, especially in the Persian Gulf, where more than 60 percent of the world’s oil reserves are located, has also played a big part in a quadrupling of oil prices since around 2000.

For the most part, a growing American economy has had little trouble absorbing higher oil prices even at near-historic high levels. The United States consumes about a quarter of the world’s oil every day. Petroleum consumption last year in America still managed to grow, barely, by 0.2 percent to 20.7 million barrels a day, according to the Energy Department. Global oil demand, meanwhile, has been boosted by strong growth in China and the Middle East, which together accounted for two-thirds of consumption growth last year.

The risk today is that these high energy prices will act as an additional weight on the sputtering economy just as consumers are cutting down on their spending.

While oil producers blame market speculators for rising prices, OPEC’s behavior in recent years has largely contributed to the rising prices as well.

Since the oil prices collapse of the late 1990s, OPEC has been patiently propping up oil prices through a careful policy of supply management led mainly by Saudi Arabia.

Because it is the world’s largest producer, Saudi Arabia has the biggest clout within the disparate OPEC group and its decisions are typically followed by other members.

OPEC members do not directly set oil prices. Those are determined on commodity exchanges in New York or London. But through its decisions to lower or boost output, OPEC affects global oil supplies, and therefore plays a key role in influencing global prices. OPEC’s 13 member countries account for 40 percent of the world’s oil exports.

Last year, thanks to Saudi leadership. OPEC cut its production twice in order to lower the level of commercial oil stocks held by developed economies. The strategy succeeded in forcing refineries to draw on their oil reserves instead of buying more oil on the market.

“OPEC started the snowball rolling,” said Lawrence Goldstein, an economist at the Energy Policy Research Foundation. “By reducing inventories last year, they created the environment where noise from Nigeria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, you name it has an impact on the market. They were very successful with the two quota cuts.”

Mr. Goldstein estimates that American consumers paid an extra $75 billion to $90 billion more in petroleum products last year than they did in 2006, because of higher prices.

“One of the real risk is that they start to believe in their own propaganda and think they are entitled to high prices,” Mr. Goldstein said.

    Bush Prods Saudi Arabia on High Oil Prices, NYT, 15.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/world/middleeast/16prexy.html?hp

Iran says Bush's accusations "words without value"

Mon Jan 14, 2008
11:51am EST
Reuters

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran denounced on Monday as "words without value" President George W. Bush's remarks that the Islamic state was threatening security around the world by backing militants.

Speaking in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, Bush said Iran was the world's top sponsor of terrorism and accused it of undermining peace by supporting the Hezbollah guerrilla group in Lebanon, Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and Shi'ite militants in Iraq.

"Bush should understand that the hatred towards his policies exists ... it has real and logical roots," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini was quoted as saying by state radio.

"Bush's remarks display his desperation and disappointment because of his failures in the region ... He is trying to divert attention from his failed policies," he said, adding Bush's comments were "repeated words without value".

Iran blames sectarian violence in Iraq on the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003 and has repeatedly called on the United States to withdraw its forces.

Tehran and Washington are at odds over Iran's nuclear work, which the West fears is a cover to build nuclear weapons, and Washington is pushing for a third set of sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt enrichment work, as demand by the United Nations.

Tehran says it wants nuclear technology for civilian purposes.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Dominic Evans)

    Iran says Bush's accusations "words without value", R, 14.1.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSHAF45102720080114

Bush Urges Unity Against Iran

January 14, 2008
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — President Bush on Sunday urged wary Persian Gulf allies to rally against Iran “before it is too late,” even as the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that the country had agreed, yet again, to answer outstanding questions about its nuclear programs within four weeks.

In an address to government and business leaders in an opulent hotel here, Mr. Bush focused not only on what the United States believes are Iran’s nuclear ambitions but also its suspected support for Islamic militants in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. He called Iran’s government “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism” and accused it of imposing repression and economic hardship at home.

“Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere,” he said. “So the United States is strengthening our longstanding security commitments with our friends in the gulf and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late.”

The announcement about Iran’s pledge of cooperation on its nuclear program, however, could undercut efforts to build international support against Tehran. It came after a visit to Iran this weekend by Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring agency, who met with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran agreed to carry out its pledges, made last year, to resolve suspicions about its nuclear programs, though the state news agency said it expected the United Nations Security Council to drop its sanctions in return. The announcement essentially delayed for another month what had been an end-of-the-year deadline to disclose all of its nuclear work, including any covert or undeclared military research.

Over the past year and a half the Iranians have repeatedly made declarations that they would answer outstanding questions within a week, but each of those deadlines has passed with only partial answers offered.

With Mr. Bush in the middle of a trip to the region intended to build a united Arab front against Iran, the White House acknowledged that the announcement represented progress, but expressed skepticism about Iran’s willingness to provide complete information. It also said Iran was still obliged to suspend its enrichment of uranium, as required by the Security Council.

“Answering questions about their past nuclear activities is a step,” said Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman. “But they still need to suspend their enrichment and reprocessing activity. Another declaration is no substitute for complying with the U.N. sanctions.”

Administration officials say many Arab states are wary of Iran’s growing power and influence in the region, especially among Shiite minorities in predominately Sunni nations like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

In recent months, however, the gulf states have shown signs of reaching out diplomatically to Iran. Saudi Arabia gave permission to Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, and the Gulf Cooperation Council also extended him an invitation to a summit meeting last month.

Mr. Bush began his Middle East trip in Israel, focused on brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace, but Iran has loomed large in his travels, particularly after a confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz a week ago between three American warships and five Iranian speedboats.

The Pentagon has appeared to back away from part of its initial account of that encounter. In Bahrain, where Mr. Bush began his day on Sunday, the commanders of the two American ships involved said that a threatening radio message may not have come from the Iranian boats.

The commanders said they took the radio warning seriously nevertheless, because it was broadcast as the Iranian speedboats were maneuvering in what they viewed as a provocative manner around the American ships. Because the warning, that the American ships would explode, was broadcast over an open maritime radio channel, it could have come from another ship in the area or from somewhere on shore.

In a news conference at the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet, the officers also said they had determined that boxes dropped into the water by the Iranians were not dangerous, as feared at the time, and were probably a ruse to study the reaction of the Navy warships. “Whether it was coincidental or not, it occurred at exactly the same time that these boats were around us,” Cmdr. Jeffery James of the Hopper, a destroyer, said of the radioed threat, “and they were placing objects in the water so the threat appeared to be building.”

For the second time in two months, Mr. Bush found himself making a case about Iran’s threat in the face of developments that seemed to undercut it. In December, an American intelligence report concluded that Iran had suspended a nuclear weapons program in 2003, a finding that has delayed a new round of United Nations sanctions.

In his meetings, in Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Bush and his aides have tried to press leaders to do more to help the United States to isolate Iran’s leaders. Privately, Mr. Bush has urged Persian Gulf leaders to restrict Iran’s access to banks and other financial institutions, one administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss internal deliberations.

In addition to sanctions already imposed by the United Nations Security Council over Iran’s failure to comply with demands involving its nuclear programs, the administration has lobbied for countries to enforce American sanctions against four state-owned banks in Iran and the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards. Ayatollah Khamenei appeared to be referring to the administration’s efforts on Sunday when he declared, “Americans mistakenly think they can bring the Iranian nation to its knees with pressure,” according to the news agency ISNA.

Mr. Bush used his speech here on Sunday to call for greater political freedom in the region.

“You cannot build trust when you hold an election where opposition candidates find themselves harassed or in prison,” he said at the Emirates Palace, a large hotel on the Persian Gulf, built at a cost of $3 billion.

“You cannot expect people to believe in the promise of a better future when they are jailed for peacefully petitioning their government,” he continued. “And you cannot stand up a modern and confident nation when you do not allow people to voice their legitimate criticisms.”

Except for Iran, though, Mr. Bush did not single out any country, including his host, the United Arab Emirates, whose record on human rights “remained problematic,” according to the State Department’s most recent human rights report.
 

Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington, and Nazila Fathi from Tehran.

    Bush Urges Unity Against Iran, NYT, 14.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/world/middleeast/14prexy.html

Khamenei: U.S. won't bring Iran to its knees

Sat Jan 12, 2008
12:21pm EST
Reuters
By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday the United States would not be able to bring Iran to its knees in a row over sensitive nuclear work the West suspects is aimed at making bombs.

Khamenei also told the visiting head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog that Iran's nuclear file should be handled by the International Atomic Energy Agency not the U.N. Security Council, which has imposed two rounds of sanctions on Tehran.

"There is no justification for Iran's case to remain at the U.N. Security Council," official media quoted Iran's most powerful figure as telling IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei.

ElBaradei met Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a two-day visit to Tehran to push for more cooperation in resolving questions about Iran's atomic activity, which the United States fears will be used to make warheads.

His visit coincides with fresh Iranian-U.S. tension over a naval incident in Gulf on Sunday. Washington says its ships were threatened by Iranian craft, Tehran calls it a routine contact.

It was not immediately clear what, if any, concrete results were achieved during ElBaradei's first trip to Iran since 2006.

The IAEA chief told reporters on Friday he was looking forward to "accelerated cooperation" from Iran.

The official IRNA news agency quoted him as telling Khamenei on Saturday: "In recent months there has been good cooperation between Iran and the agency to clarify Iran's activities."

"PRESSURING IRAN"

President George W. Bush is also visiting the Middle East this week to seek Arab support in reining in Iran and has repeated his assertion that Iran was a "threat to world peace".

Washington is pushing for a third set of sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment work, as demanded by the United Nations. Iran says it wants to master enrichment technology so it can make fuel to generate electricity.

Khamenei was defiant in his meeting with ElBaradei, who is seeking to defuse a standoff that has helped send oil prices to record levels and sparked fears of a military confrontation.

"America's problem with Iran is beyond the nuclear issue," state television quoted Khamenei as saying.

"Americans are mistaken by thinking that by pressuring Iran over the nuclear issue they can break Iran. By bringing this and other issues to the fore, they cannot bring the Iranian nation to its knees," he said.

The IAEA has sought to verify that Iran's uranium enrichment program is geared solely to producing civilian energy.

Khamenei said that "building or using nuclear weapons is against" Islamic sharia law.

A diplomat close to the IAEA said before ElBaradei's visit that an agency inquiry stonewalled by Iran for years until August had entered a final phase with Iran addressing U.S. intelligence about past attempts to "weaponize" atomic material.

Iran said in August it would answer outstanding questions about its nuclear past but an end-of-year target for completing the process passed with the sensitive issues still unresolved.
 

(Writing by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Alison Williams)

    Khamenei: U.S. won't bring Iran to its knees, R, 12.1.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSDAH22070020080112

White House Times Arms Sale, Bush Trip

January 11, 2008
Filed at 11:41 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration will notify Congress on Monday of its intent to sell $20 billion in weapons, including precision-guided bombs, to Saudi Arabia, moving up the announcement to coincide with the president's arrival in Riyadh, The Associated Press has learned.

Despite vocal opposition to the deal from some lawmakers, the State Department, which last month said it would delay the notification until Jan. 15 at the earliest, will announce the proposed sale on Jan. 14, said a senior official with knowledge of the decision.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations on the matter.

The official said the new timing was ''appropriate'' and ''symbolic'' as it would come within hours of Bush's arrival in Saudi Arabia, the penultimate stop on his current Middle East trip. Air Force One is scheduled to land in Riyadh on Monday after a stop in Dubai.

The official announcement will kick off a 30-day review period during which lawmakers could move to block the sale.

Faced with congressional unease and requests from senior lawmakers for more time to review the sale, the administration agreed in December to put back the notification until Congress returns to session this month.

Although the new session does not officially begin until Jan. 15, Senate Democrats have been briefly opening and closing the body each day during its holiday break, meaning the upper house remains technically at work.

The sale is a key element in the U.S. strategy to bolster the defenses of its Arab allies in Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing majority Sunni Muslim Gulf nations against threats from Shiite Iran.

A main aim of Bush's Mideast visit is to convince the Saudi leadership as well as those in Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates that he remains committed to preventing Iran from destabilizing the region, despite U.S. intelligence findings that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons development in 2003.

Although administration has staunchly defended the sale as critical to U.S. interests, its desire to sell Saudi Arabia sophisticated weaponry has raised eyebrows from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who say the transfer of Joint Direct Attack Munitions technology would lend it highly accurate targeting abilities that could threaten Israel.

Those concerns have not been assuaged by the administration's plan to counterbalance the Saudi sale with $30 billion in military assistance to Israel -- a more than 25 percent increase over the next 10 years -- and statements from Israeli officials who say they understand the rationale for the sale and will not oppose it.

In a letter to Bush sent last fall after plans for the sale first became public, 186 House members expressed serious reservations about the plan and at least one, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., has said he plans to introduce a resolution to block the sale. His resolution has nearly three dozen co-sponsors.

    White House Times Arms Sale, Bush Trip, NYT, 11.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Saudi-Arms-Sales.html

Bush Says U.S. Should Have Bombed Auschwitz

January 11, 2008
Filed at 11:41 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

JERUSALEM (AP) -- President Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel's Holocaust memorial Friday and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial's chairman said.

Bush emerged from a tour of the Yad Vashem memorial calling it a ''sobering reminder'' that evil must be resisted, and praising victims for not losing their faith.

Wearing a yarmulke, Bush placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps. He also lit a torch memorializing the victims.

Bush was visibly moved as he toured the site, said Yad Vashem's chairman, Avner Shalev.

''Twice, I saw tears well up in his eyes,'' Shalev said.

At one point, Bush viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz camp taken during the war by U.S. forces and called Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site, Shalev said.

''We were talking about the often-discussed 'Could the United States have done more by bombing the train tracks?''' Rice told reporters later aboard Air Force One. ''And so we were just talking about the various explanations that had been given about why that might not have been done.''

The Allies had detailed reports about Auschwitz during the war from Polish partisans and escaped prisoners. But they chose not to bomb the camp, the rail lines leading to it, or any of the other Nazi death camps, preferring instead to focus all resources on the broader military effort, a decision that became the subject of intense controversy years later.

Between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people were killed at the camp.

''We should have bombed it,'' Bush said, according to Shalev.

In the memorial's visitors' book, the president wrote simply, ''God bless Israel, George Bush.''

The memorial was closed to the public and under heavy guard Friday, with armed soldiers standing on top of some of the site's monuments and a police helicopter and surveillance blimp hovering in the air overhead.

''I was most impressed that people in the face of horror and evil would not forsake their God. In the face of unspeakable crimes against humanity, brave souls -- young and old -- stood strong for what they believe,'' Bush said.

''I wish as many people as possible would come to this place. It is a sobering reminder that evil exists, and a call that when evil exists we must resist it,'' he said.

It was Bush's second visit to the Holocaust memorial, a regular stop on the visits of foreign dignitaries. His first was in 1998, as governor of Texas. The last U.S. president to visit was Bill Clinton in 1994.

Bush, making the most extensive Mideast trip of his presidency, was accompanied on his tour by a small party that included Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

At the compound, overlooking a forest on Jerusalem's outskirts, Bush visited a memorial to the 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust, featuring six candles reflected 1.5 million times in a hall of mirrors. At the site's Hall of Remembrance, he heard a cantor sing a Jewish prayer for the dead.

Shalev presented Bush with illustrations of the Bible drawn by the Jewish artist Carol Deutsch, who perished in the Holocaust.

Deutsch created the works while in hiding from the Nazis in Belgium. He was informed upon, and died in 1944 in the Buchenwald camp. After the war, his daughter Ingrid discovered that the Nazis had confiscated their furniture and valuables but had left behind a single item: a meticulously crafted wooden box adorned with a Star of David and a seven-branched menorah, containing a collection of 99 of the artist's illustrations of biblical scenes.

The originals are on display at Yad Vashem. The memorial recently decided to produce a special series of 500 replicas, the first of which was to be presented to Bush.

Debbie Deutsch-Berman, a Yad Vashem employee whose grandfather was Deutsch's brother, said she was proud that Bush would be given her relative's artwork.

''These are not just his paintings, they are his legacy, and the fact that they survived shows that as much as our enemies tried to destroy the ideas that these paintings embody, they failed,'' she said.

Later Friday, Bush was to wrap up his three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories with a visit to Christian holy sites in Galilee before departing for Kuwait, the next stop on his Mideast tour.

    Bush Says U.S. Should Have Bombed Auschwitz, NYT, 11.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush-Israel-Holocaust.html

Bush Visits Biblical Holy Sites

11 January 2008
AP
By ANNE GEARAN – 7 hours ago

SEA OF GALILEE, Israel (AP) — After two days immersed in the intense and arcane world of Mideast peacemaking, President Bush on Friday toured holy sites, listening as robed clerics read him biblical passages about Jesus' days of ministry there centuries ago.

Bush visited Capernaum, a site where Jesus is said to have performed miracles, toured churches and the site of an ancient synagogue and gazed across the Sea of Galilee where Jesus is said to have walked on water.

Earlier in the day, Bush toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. The president, who first visited the memorial in 1998 when he was governor of Texas, was wearing a yarmulke as he rekindled an eternal flame and placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps.

Bush was misty-eyed during the visit the the memorial, which he said was a "sobering reminder that evil exists and a call that when we find evil we must resist it."

"I was most impressed that people in the face of horror and evil would not foresake their god. In the face of unspeakable crimes against humanity, brave souls — young and old — stood strong for what they believe," he said.

From Israel, Bush was headed to Kuwait, a tiny oil-rich nation his father fought a war over and one of only two invited guests to skip the splashy Annapolis, Md., rollout Bush hosted for the new U.S.-backed peace talks. The other no-show was Iraq.

Bush has laid out U.S. expectations for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, saying on Thursday that the two sides needed to get serious about talks "starting right now." Preparing to visit Sunni Arab allies, he asked Arabs to "reach out" to the Jewish state.

He closed his two days of formal talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders with a stern summation of his bottom lines for a peace pact he said should be completed this year. Although the goals and terms were not markedly different from past U.S. statements, it was an unusually detailed list of benchmarks and tough on close ally Israel.

Bush came away with no significant breakthroughs after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but the White House said Bush did not expect dramatic progress while he was here.

The nascent peace talks haven't made much headway, with old disputes about land and terrorism clouding the negotiators' early meetings. U.S. officials say Bush and his aides will be back to check up on the progress from here, and goad both sides. Bush promised to "be a pain" when necessary.

Bush wants Arab states to thrown support to Abbas in his internal fight with Palestinian militants and give him the regional support necessary to sustain any peace deal he could work out with Israel. Arabs came in force to Bush' Annapolis summit, and he had flattered them with frequent references to an Arab draft for peace that, like past U.S. efforts, did not stick.

Close Arab allies including Egypt and Saudi Arabia had urged Bush to get more directly involved in Mideast peacemaking, saying the Palestinian plight seeded other conflicts and poisoned public opinion throughout the region. Those states and others have adopted a wait-and-see attitude since Annapolis, and Bush's visit is partly meant to nudge them off the fence.

The peace effort is the centerpiece of Bush's eight-day tour, but the balance of the trip is likely to focus as much on the uncertain ambitions of Shiite Iran. Bush's Sunni allies are nervous about the rise of Iran in their midst, and the threat its adherents may one day pose to their authoritarian regimes, but also are sometimes at odds with the United States over the best strategy to address or confront Tehran.

Some Arab states are worried by a new U.S. intelligence estimate downgrading the near-term threat that Iran will build nuclear weapons. Although Bush and other U.S. officials have said Iran remains a threat, allies with less powerful militaries fear that the United States is taking itself out of a potential fight. Bush says he wants to solve the Iran puzzle through diplomacy but takes no options off the table.

In Kuwait, Bush was meeting Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, emir of the wealthy nation that sits at the top of the Persian Gulf. Kuwait is flanked by large and powerful neighbors Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran to the east. While in Kuwait, Bush was getting an update on Iraq's security and political status from his top military commander there, Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker.

    Bush Visits Biblical Holy Sites, AP, 11.1.2008, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hkf--m78S6F3LZAcz4sVHGGCQSTgD8U3JR4G0

Bush Outlines Mideast Peace Plan

January 11, 2008
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

JERUSALEM — President Bush outlined Thursday in the clearest terms so far the shape of a two-state peace treaty he is hoping to broker between Israel and the Palestinians by the end of his term.

He called for redrawing borders and compensating Palestinians and their descendants for homes they left in what is now Israel.

Speaking after two days of meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Bush said, “I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous.”

He added, “I believe we need to look to the establishment of a Palestinian state and new international mechanisms, including compensation, to resolve the refugee issue.”

In the face of deep skepticism from both sides, Mr. Bush expressed confidence that a final treaty would be signed during his last year in office.

“I’m on a timetable,” he said when he met Mr. Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank, only minutes after saying he would not impose timetables on the negotiators for both sides. “I’ve got 12 months left in office.”

Mr. Bush did not offer specific detailed prescriptions for the core issues he addressed: where to draw new borders, how many Israeli settlements in the West Bank will have to be uprooted in a final deal or how to compensate a Palestinian diaspora numbering in the millions now for homes and lands lost long ago, let alone how to pay for it.

Many of the issues Mr. Bush addressed in his statement, delivered alone at his hotel, have been at the center of previous peace talks that ultimately failed, and reflected American policy long pursued by Mr. Bush and his predecessor, Bill Clinton. But having faced criticism for speaking of peace only in the broadest way, Mr. Bush publicly addressed what are known as the core issues, even if those remain subject to intense negotiations.

By endorsing compensation for refugees, Mr. Bush sided, at least indirectly, with an Israeli view that the return of Palestinians to Israel was unacceptable since it would change the identity of Israel as a Jewish state. Similarly, he endorsed the notion of Israel as “a homeland for the Jewish people,” and “Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people.”

At the same time, he emphasized that a new Palestine would have to be “viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent,” a stance somewhat at odds with Israeli desires to retain some security controls even after a treaty.

“Achieving an agreement will require painful political concessions by both sides,” he said after spending the day traveling to the West Bank.

On Jerusalem, the city each side claim as its capital, he endorsed no view, calling its status “one of the most difficult challenges on the road to peace.”

“But that is the road we have chosen to walk,” he said.

Mr. Bush’s visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, his first as president, reflected his deepening involvement in the kind of shuttle diplomacy he once scorned. And in his appearances here he displayed a new urgency for the process he set in motion at an international meeting in Annapolis, Md., in November.

Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said Mr. Bush would return to Israel and the region at least once, in all likelihood for the 60th anniversary of Israel’s founding in 1948, to be commemorated in May.

The White House also announced the appointment of a senior Air Force commander, Lt. Gen. William M. Fraser III, to serve as a mediator of disputes between the Israelis and Palestinians over their compliance with their previous agreements. That role was a crucial part of the agreement reached between Mr. Abbas and Mr. Olmert in Annapolis, thrusting the United States squarely in the role of adjudicating between the sides. General Fraser, who accompanied Mr. Bush to Ramallah, serves as an assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Neither Mr. Olmert, who dined with Mr. Bush after his statement, nor Mr. Abbas, responded publicly to Mr. Bush’s statement. An Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the statement was not unexpected and “would serve as the basis for further negotiation.” Aides to Mr. Abbas declined to comment, though during their meeting earlier, Mr. Abbas praised Mr. Bush, addressing him in effusive formality.

“Our people will not forget Your Excellency, your invitation and your commitment toward the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” he said.

Mr. Hadley, speaking to reporters afterward, emphasized that details must be ironed out in talks that Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas agreed to accelerate earlier this week. But he added that Mr. Bush was articulating terms that the two sides had begun to discuss in their negotiations, though neither leader has been so specific in outlining the shape of a compromise.

Mr. Bush’s choice of language was clearly intended to comfort both sides. He declared that it was time “to end the occupation that began in 1967,” when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza in a war. While he has used the word “occupation” before, he does so rarely because of Israeli sensitivities.

He avoided a reference to the “borders of 1967,” a mantra of Palestinian and Arab leaders, by referring instead to the armistice lines of 1949. Still, the fundamental point, and one strongly held by Israelis, was that the line dividing Israel from a future state of Palestine would have to change from the current division between Israel and the occupied West Bank.

Appearing with Mr. Abbas in Ramallah, Mr. Bush also expressed strong support for a future state without pockets of Israeli settlements. “Swiss cheese isn’t going to work when it comes to the outline of a state,” Mr. Bush said.

He also delivered some of his strongest criticism of Israel yet when he responded to a question about what are widely viewed among Palestinians as efforts to undermine Mr. Abbas’s government and security forces.

The Israelis, Mr. Bush said, “ought to help, not hinder, the modernization of the Palestinian security force.” Mr. Bush also reiterated the requirement by both sides to abide by their agreements in the “road map,” including a halt to any Israeli expansion of settlements.

Foul weather brought Mr. Bush unexpectedly in contact with Israel security measures that have become a main grievance for Palestinians and their leaders. His helicopter grounded, Mr. Bush drove in a motorcade to Ramallah, passing through an Israeli checkpoint in the hulking concrete barrier the Israelis have erected along and inside parts of the border with the West Bank.

Asked about his own impressions seeing the barrier for the first time, Mr. Bush acknowledged Israel’s security measures and the hardships they cause.

“Checkpoints create frustrations for people,” he said. “They create a sense of security for Israel; they create massive frustrations for the Palestinians. You’ll be happy to hear that my motorcade of a mere 45 cars was able to make it through without being stopped, but I’m not so exactly sure that’s what happens to the average person.”

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Ramallah and Jerusalem.

    Bush Outlines Mideast Peace Plan, NYT, 11.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/world/middleeast/11prexy.html

Bush Predicts Completion of Mideast Peace Treaty

January 10, 2008
Filed at 9:21 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- President Bush on Thursday predicted that a Mideast peace treaty would be completed by the time he leaves office, and named a U.S. Air Force general to oversee compliance with a U.S.-backed peace plan.

Bush said he's convinced that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders understand ''the importance of democratic states living side by side'' in peace, and noted that he has a one-year deadline for progress on his watch.

''I'm on a timetable,'' he told reporters. ''I've got 12 months.''

He named Lt. Gen. William Fraser III, assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to monitor progress that both sides are making on the peace process known as the ''roadmap,'' a U.S. official told The Associated Press.

Bush told Abbas about the position being filled by Fraser, who is expected to return to the region before the end of the month, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House has not formally announced the appointment.

Fraser has traveled to the region with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Bush briefly alluded to Fraser's role in a news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas earlier on Thursday.

Bush said he had introduced Abbas to the ''three-star Air Force General who will be running this process,'' meaning the process by which the United States will try to help Israelis and Palestinians resolve their differences.

Bush said he's convinced that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders understand ''the importance of democratic states living side by side'' in peace, and noted that he has a one-year deadline for progress on his watch.

''I'm on a timetable,'' he told reporters. ''I've got 12 months.''

He said he is not sure that the problem of Hamas, a militant Islamic group that took over the Gaza Strip in June, can be solved within that time frame. Hamas, he said, was elected to help improve the lot of Palestinians, but ''has delivered nothing but misery.''

Standing alongside Abbas at the news conference, Bush said he is confident that ''with proper help, the state of Palestine will emerge.''

''I am confident that the status quo is unacceptable, Mr. President, and we want to help you,'' Bush said.

Bush is on a three-day visit to Israel and the West Bank to show support for renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks following seven years of violence.

''The question is whether or not hard issues can be resolved and the vision emerges, so that the choice is clear amongst the Palestinians,'' Bush said. ''The choice being, `Do you want this state? Or do you want the status quo? Do you want a future based upon a democratic state? Or do you want the same old stuff?'''

''We want a state, of course,'' Abbas said in English.

The Palestinian leader called on Israel to fulfill its commitments under a 2003 U.S.-backed Mideast peace plan. The plan calls on Israel to halt settlement activity in the West Bank, while requiring the Palestinians to dismantle militant groups. Neither side has fully carried out its obligations.

''We start with you a new year, hoping that this will be the year for the creation of peace,'' Abbas told Bush.

Even though it's Bush's first trip to the Palestinian West Bank, it generated little excitement among Palestinians, who are largely skeptical of his promises to try to move along Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The U.S. is perceived in the Palestinian areas as a staunch ally of Israel, at the expense of the Palestinians, but Abbas said Bush's visit ''gives our people great hope.''

The naming of a U.S. military leader to help prod along the Israeli-Palestinian talks is another sign of Bush's late-term effort to forge a peace deal. He has repeatedly said that the United States will not dictate the terms of an agreement, but has sought to show that his country is fully engaged in the process.

In the Mideast peace conference Bush led in Annapolis, Md., last November, he promised that the United States would ''monitor'' the negotiations.

Heavy fog, which forced Bush to drive, rather than fly to Ramallah, meant that he got an unexpected glimpse of the daily frustrations faced by Palestinians trying to move around the West Bank, nominally a Palestinian territory but one heavily controlled by the Israeli military. On his drive, Bush passed through a security checkpoint, and drove within sight of the Israeli separation barrier that Palestinians call an unacceptable wall.

Bush said he expects both Israelis and Palestinians to honor their obligations under the peace plan backed by the U.S., and that Israelis should help the Palestinians modernize their security forces.

''In order for there to be lasting peace, President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert have to come together and make tough choices,'' Bush said. ''And I'm convinced they will. And I believe it's possible -- not only possible, I believe it's going to happen -- that there be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office (in January 2009).

Bush's trip through the Mideast does not include a stop in Gaza, an area controlled by Hamas, which swept Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. Hamas later led a violent takeover of the Gaza Strip, essentially splitting Palestinian governance. Hamas, which does not recognize Israel's right to exist, now runs Gaza, while Abbas and his secular Fatah Party, backed by the United States, now run the West Bank.

That split is a major stumbling block to any negotiated peace pact.

While Bush claims that Hamas has failed to help improve the lives of Palestinians living in Gaza, the president acknowledged that he doesn't know whether Abbas' government can resolve the Palestinian division before the end of the year.

''There is a competing vision taking place in Gaza,'' Bush said. ''And in my judgment, Hamas -- which I thought ran on the campaign, 'We're going to improve your lives through better education and better health' -- has delivered nothing but misery.''

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, quickly dismissed Bush and Abbas' hopeful comments.

''This meeting was for public relations only, it was an empty meeting without results, only more dreams and waste of time,'' the Hamas spokesman said. ''The meeting focused on the so-called security topics which mean to act against the interests of the Palestinian majority and the resistance.''

Bush also jabbed Israel for security polices that could carve up Palestinian territory into unworkable or ungovernable chunks.

''Swiss cheese isn't going to work when it comes to the outline of a state,'' Bush said.

The president also said that he understands Palestinian frustrations over checkpoints throughout the West Bank but says they're necessary for now to give Israelis a sense of security.

In Jerusalem, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said his government shares the belief that the ''current status quo is far from desirable.''

Once the fog lifted, Bush flew from Ramallah to Bethlehem after his news conference with Abbas. Along the way, signs in English proclaimed ''Occupation is terrorism'' and commanded the United States to ''stop giving aid to occupation and death to our children.''

The president toured the Church of the Nativity, which is jointly administered by three Christian denominations -- Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian. Bush walked around the church with clerics in black robes and toured the grotto or cave beneath, which many believe is the birthplace of Christ. The president also is visiting the Roman Catholic Church of St. Catherine where Christmas decorations adorned 19th Century stone walls.

Outside the Church of the Nativity, Bush thanked some monks individually. He said he was happy to be in Bethlehem, and lamented the walls and checkpoints that restrict Palestinian life there.

''It's been a moving moment for me and the delegation to be here,'' Bush said. ''For those of us who practice the Christian faith, there's no more holy site than the place where our Savior was born.''

------

Associated Press Writers Mohammed Daraghmeh and Diaa Hadid in Ramallah contributed to this report.

    Bush Predicts Completion of Mideast Peace Treaty, NYT, 10.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush-Mideast.html?hp

From Palestinians, Harsh View of Bush

January 10, 2008
The New York Times
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERICHO, West Bank — President Bush will not be coming to this oasis city of beige hills, lush green plantations and ancient ruins on his visit to the Palestinian Authority on Thursday. Given the apparent antipathy of the local population, it is probably just as well.

“It would be much better if he didn’t visit our land at all,” said Bashar Fadl Ahmed, 34, an orthopedic surgeon who was shopping in the town square early this week, echoing the sentiment of many here. “He won’t achieve anything. He is trying to do something in his last year, but where was he before?”

Jericho, a relatively tranquil town of about 25,000 Palestinians north of the Dead Sea, was on the short list of West Bank Palestinian Authority destinations for the presidential visit, with Bethlehem and Ramallah, the site of the Palestinian authority headquarters. The governor of Jericho, Arif Jaabari, said that American security and diplomatic staff had been to his compound twice and checked the area where Yasir Arafat’s helicopter used to land.

But Jericho was not included in the president’s final schedule, causing little disappointment among residents. “He’s the worst, Bush,” said a 64-year-old man who identified himself only by his nickname, Abu Muhammad. “He supports Israel and mocks and deceives us.”

On his official visits to Ramallah and Bethlehem, Mr. Bush is likely to be received with the utmost respect. After all, the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah has received significant American backing as a bulwark against the rise of the militant Islamic group Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip last June.

For Mr. Abbas, the Bush visit is an honor and an opportunity that he hopes will advance nascent Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the outline of a Palestinian state. The visit will be “historic and important,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Mr. Abbas.

By contrast, many ordinary Palestinians are angry with Mr. Bush for, among other things, going to war in Iraq and spurning Mr. Arafat while he was alive. They point to the many checkpoints and the West Bank separation barrier, and they say that Mr. Bush’s support for Israel comes at their expense.

Ghassan Khatib, the vice president of Bir Zeit University, in the West Bank, said on Wednesday, “The Palestinians are in agreement that in the history of the United States, Bush is more biased than any other American president toward Israel.”

Consequently, the Palestinians are deeply skeptical about the goal of a deal on Palestinian statehood by the end of Mr. Bush’s term.

“He has destroyed everything, and now he is coming to see the results,” said Moussa Al Hilou, 63, a clothing store owner. “What Palestinian state is he talking about? What he says is nonsense, even our leadership knows that.”

The same skepticism seems to prevail throughout the West Bank and Gaza. In a December poll of 1,270 Palestinians by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an independent research institute based in Ramallah, only 23 percent of those surveyed anticipated that the sides would reach a permanent agreement before the end of 2008, and 72 percent thought they would not succeed. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus three percentage points.

But the criticism is all the more pointed from Jericho, the location of significant Christian, Muslim and Jewish archaeological sites and the first West Bank city to have been handed over to Palestinian Authority rule in 1994 as a result of the Oslo peace accords.

For a while, Jericho was best known for its highly profitable casino that opened up in 1998 and was mostly frequented by Israelis. But it closed after the outbreak of the intifada in 2000.

Today, Jericho, a Fatah stronghold, is the hub of the authority’s Western-backed efforts to rebuild and train the Palestinian security forces, one of the foundations of the future state.

“I follow the security situation hour by hour,” Mr. Jaabari said. “There is full security control here.” The goal, he said, was for “everyone to live in peace in two states, next to each other, in love, security and stability.”

“Unfortunately, from 1967 until this moment, there has been no real progress,” he said.

In October, an Israeli security chief told the Israeli cabinet that a plot had been foiled to assassinate Mr. Olmert during a planned visit to Jericho in June, which was canceled. The suspects, two of them still being detained, were Jericho residents affiliated with Fatah, the security chief said.

Mr. Jabari said the plot never amounted to more than idle chatter.

Jericho’s flagship institution, the Palestinian Security Sciences Academy, opened in October. There 150 officers from various security organizations all over the West Bank are studying for academic and security diplomas. A courtyard with a trickling fountain and flowerbeds leads to a spotless and elegant building.

Mr. Bush would be welcomed here, the academy officials say. “We are trying to build the institutions to manage our country in the near future,” said the college president, Nour Eddin Abu al-Rub, an academic from Jenin. “I am proud of this place. We are eliminating the competition” among the security apparatuses, he said.

The Palestinians’ future, he added, “depends on the United States, and especially on President George Bush.”

“We hope he will see our suffering, and how the Israeli occupation deals with the Palestinian people and land,” he said. “I hope he is sincere and honest and will do something.”

    From Palestinians, Harsh View of Bush, NYT, 10.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/world/middleeast/10jericho.html?ref=world

Bush Begins Peace Effort Bonded With Olmert

January 10, 2008
The New York Times
By STEVEN ERLANGER and STEVEN LEE MYERS

JERUSALEM — They share an enthusiasm for sports, fitness and the occasional cigar. They are both unpopular leaders, scarred by terrorism and zealous in their warnings about the threat of Islamic extremism. And yet they profess grand ambitions to accomplish what other leaders have failed to do for decades: make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

President Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel have in two years forged the sort of empathetic relationship that Mr. Bush had with the former prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and one that many in Israel and the United States thought unlikely to be repeated when Mr. Olmert came to power.

On Wednesday, as Mr. Bush arrived in Israel for his first visit as president, the bond between the men was clearer than ever. And it is the strength of their trust in each other, especially Mr. Olmert’s faith in Mr. Bush’s commitment to Israel’s security, that many here say may offer the best foundation for an agreement with the Palestinians before the end of Mr. Bush’s term.

“We certainly don’t want to delay the negotiation process,” Mr. Olmert said, “when we have such political assistance, assistance with respect to our security, too, when it comes to the most important power in the world being led by a person who is so deeply committed to the security of the state of Israel and to realizing the vision of two states, a person who is fair, who does not hide his viewpoints, who speaks openly about his will to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel.”

Mr. Bush was here on Wednesday, and will go to the Palestinian territories on Thursday, to push Mr. Olmert and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to get serious about their negotiations and their obligations to each other, as written in the first stage of the “road map” outlining steps to be taken.

Appearing with Mr. Olmert after a day of pomp including an English and Hebrew version of “Over the Rainbow” sung by Israeli youngsters, Mr. Bush declared this a “historic moment, a historic opportunity” to overcome the deep skepticism here and elsewhere that the peace efforts begun in Annapolis, Md., in November would succeed.

“I’m under no illusions,” Mr. Bush said after two and a half hours of meetings, including an hour privately with Mr. Olmert. “It’s going to be hard work. I fully understand that there’s going to be some painful political compromises. I fully understand that there’s going to be some tough negotiations, and the role of the United States is to help in those negotiations.

“It’s essential that people understand, America cannot dictate the terms of what a state will look like,” he added. “The only way to have lasting peace, the only way for an agreement to mean anything is for the two parties to come together and make the difficult choices, but we’ll help and we want to help.”

In interviews before and during Mr. Bush’s visit, officials described the evolution of the deep bond between the leaders, reinforced by their shared views of Israel’s security, and their own political problems in selling their approach to their respective constituencies.

Mr. Bush’s relationship with the two Israeli leaders he has known best, Mr. Sharon and Mr. Olmert, have differed in detail, if not in spirit. Mr. Bush admired Mr. Sharon as “an old warrior” who took him, when he was governor of Texas in 1998, on a helicopter ride over the settlements and battlefields that crystallized Mr. Bush’s sympathies for Israel’s security concerns, a senior official who worked for both Israeli leaders said.

“With Olmert, it’s completely different,” the Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing private interactions between the leaders. “They’re the same age. They’re both runners. They both feel that most of the world is against them, which, I think, is not far from the truth.”

Mr. Bush often relies on the personal in his foreign policy, responding to world leaders based on his own gut sense of their trustworthiness, as he expressly and, some say, wrongly did with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

In this case, the men’s friendship was cemented during Mr. Olmert’s first visit as prime minister to Washington in May 2006. They sat on the Truman balcony at the White House, without aides, and smoked cigars. They talked for more than an hour about family and sports and not, the Israeli official said, about politics.

Their relationship is politically useful to both of them, as both seek, in their own ways, to shore up their legacies as leaders. A large photograph of Mr. Bush and Mr. Olmert, walking shoulder to shoulder, hangs prominently in the West Wing of the White House. In Mr. Olmert’s private study, there are two photos of him with Mr. Bush, one like the one in the White House and the other with Mr. Olmert’s hand on the president’s shoulder.

For Michael Oren, an Israeli historian of American-Israeli relations, “the message is very clear” that Mr. Bush is a strong supporter of Israel and of its current prime minister.

However warm, the relationship is not one of equals. “They have a strong personal rapport,” said Miri Eisin, who just left the job as Mr. Olmert’s spokeswoman. “But in the end, Bush is the leader of the free world, someone whose decisions affect the entire world. And you see the dynamics of that in the room.”

Mr. Olmert’s effusive praise of Mr. Bush can embarrass Israelis, but they also understand that the relationship with Washington is central. Mr. Bush, as usual, is more circumspect in his public comments. Part of that may be personality, but part also reflects the power of Washington and the need to try to seem even-handed between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Mr. Olmert, who is said to have begun his acquaintance with Mr. Bush with a little skepticism, fed by his dovish wife, Aliza, has come to admire and trust Mr. Bush, his aides say. They say he believes that Mr. Bush, with his post-9/11 stance against terrorism and his belief in Israel’s democratic values, is a dependable ally who understands Israel’s security problems, both with the Palestinians and regionally, with Iran, and who is committed to defending Israel’s existence.

For Mr. Olmert, the close connection to Mr. Bush is both a lifeline and an insurance policy, that Israel will not be pressed to sacrifice its security to satisfy the American desire for a peace treaty.

Greeting Mr. Bush on Wednesday, Mr. Olmert told him, “Since I took office two years ago, you have become my personal friend and confidant.”

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanot, Mr. Bush praised Mr. Olmert as a man with a vision. “I trust him, I like him, and I think he’s a man of strength,” the president said.

Mr. Bush was said to have admired Mr. Sharon, incapacitated by a stroke, as a war hero and resilient politician, and to have treated him with respect. “With Olmert, there’s not the awe Bush had of Sharon as a great warrior, a little like Bush’s father,” Mr. Oren said.

Mr. Sharon also infuriated Mr. Bush at times, once by indirectly comparing him, in 2001, to Neville Chamberlain when he warned Mr. Bush not to appease Arab nations the way that “enlightened democracies in Europe” appeased Hitler in 1938 by sacrificing Czechoslovakia.

Daniel Levy, an Israeli analyst with the New American Foundation in Washington, said Mr. Bush and Mr. Olmert had grown so close that the president was now invested in his political future, willing to visit Israel so soon after Annapolis at least in part to bolster his standing before the Winograd report on the Lebanon war is made public later this month.

“He’ll make sure he knows the extracurricular interest of his interlocutor,” Mr. Levy said. He called it “an act of fidelity to Olmert.”

Their exchanges of gifts were also telling. Mr. Bush gave Mr. Olmert, a soccer fanatic, a soccer ball, a sports bag and cufflinks. Mr. Olmert gave Mr. Bush, who has traded running for biking, an Israeli national bike-team uniform, a water canteen emblazoned with “George W. 43” and a global positioning system for the handlebars, loaded with the trails on his Texas ranch and riding paths in Israel.

When the G.P.S. is turned on, the American and Israeli flags appear, and the sentence: “To my friend George Bush, from one athlete to another, happy trails.”

    Bush Begins Peace Effort Bonded With Olmert, NYT, 10.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/world/middleeast/10prexy.html

Bush Begins Week in Middle East

January 10, 2008
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

JERUSALEM — President Bush arrived in Israel on Wednesday to begin a weeklong trip in the Middle East intended to overcome deep skepticism by Israelis and Palestinians about the prospects of a negotiated peace in the last year of Mr. Bush’s presidency.

Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and its president, Shimon Peres, greeted Mr. Bush warmly during a ceremonial arrival at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, with Mr. Olmert telling him he had “the love and admiration of all the citizens of Israel.”

But Mr. Bush, making his first visit to Israel as president, almost immediately found himself confronted with the political and diplomatic controversies that have thwarted previous efforts to forge a Palestinian-Israeli peace.

A sign in a field, visible from his helicopter during the quick flight to Jerusalem, declared, “Hands off Jerusalem,” the city whose ultimate status remains among the most difficult issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians. A new barrage of rockets landed in Israel from the Gaza Strip. And Israeli settlers began erecting new outposts on Palestinian lands before dawn in Hebron.

The settlements and rocket attacks have threatened to derail the nascent progress Mr. Bush nurtured during an international conference in November in Annapolis, Md., where the Israelis and Palestinians committed themselves to trying to negotiate a peace agreement in 2008.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also stirred controversy in remarks made to reporters on the eve of Mr. Bush’s visit and published here on Wednesday in which she suggested that the United States opposed any Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, including those in Har Homa, an Israeli development in East Jerusalem.

Official American policy has been deliberately ambiguous on the matter. Officials traveling with Mr. Bush declined to clarify immediately whether Ms. Rice’s remarks reflected a shift in American policy or were intended to press the Israelis as part of the peace effort.

Israel’s decision in December to authorize 300 new homes in Har Homa infuriated Palestinians, who said it showed that Israel was not serious about commitments it made at the Annapolis conference.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem and expanded the city’s boundaries after the 1967 war and considers areas like Har Homa to be part of Israel. The United States does not recognize the annexation.

“The important point here is that one reason that we need to have an agreement is that we can stop having this discussion about what belongs in Israel and what doesn’t,” Mr. Rice said in a roundtable interview with journalists from the region. She added that there had been “important changes since the ‘49 armistice and since the events of ‘67.”

“And those are going to have to be accommodated in an agreement.

Mr. Bush is scheduled to meet Mr. Olmert for extended discussions later on Wednesday, and to meet the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, on Thursday at his administration headquarters in Ramallah, in the West Bank. American officials have played down expectations about any breakthrough during his visit here, the first leg of a trip that will also take him to Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Mr. Bush, though, spoke broadly of the promise of peace, while praising the American alliance with Israel as a guarantee of “Israel’s security as a Jewish state.”

Mr. Bush’s statement was loaded with its own significance, since the reference to Israel as a Jewish nation is seen by Palestinians as an acceptance of Israel’s refusal to allow Palestinian refugees who left in 1948 and their descendants to return to their homes in what is now Israeli territory.

“We will do more than defend ourselves,” Mr. Bush said at Ben-Gurion Airport. “We seek lasting peace. We see a new opportunity for peace here in the Holy Land, and for freedom across the region.”

His national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, briefing reporters on Air Force One en route, acknowledged that difficult issues continued to dog the process Mr. Bush nudged forward in Annapolis.

“There have been a lot of, obviously, distractions,” he said, before pausing to ask an aide whether the discussion was on the record and then continuing with carefully chosen words. “By distractions I mean some serious issues that have appeared. The Palestinians are very concerned, obviously, about settlements; the Israelis are very concerned, obviously, about the rocket attacks coming out of Gaza. These issues need to be addressed.”

When Mr. Bush met with Mr. Peres at his residence, a group of young singers presented him with a rose while singing an English and Hebrew version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

    Bush Begins Week in Middle East, NYT, 10.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/world/middleeast/10prexy.html?hp

Iran Accuses U.S. of Faking Persian Gulf Video

January 10, 2008
The New York Times
By NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN — Iran’s Revolutionary Guard accused the United States on Wednesday of fabricating video showing armed Iranian speedboats confronting United States Navy warships in the Persian Gulf over the weekend, according to a report carried by the semi-official Fars news agency as well as state-run television.

“Images released by the U.S. Department of Defense about the navy vessels, the archive, and sounds on it are fabricated,” an unnamed Revolutionary Guard official said, according to Fars. The news agency has close links to the Revolutionary Guard. It was the first time Iran had commented on a video the Pentagon released Tuesday.

President Bush chastised Iran on Tuesday for committing a “provocative act.” On Wednesday, Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, again warned Iran, saying at the start of a trip with Mr. Bush to the Middle East, that Iran has “to be very careful about this, because if it happens again, they are going to bear the consequences of that incident.”

The unnamed Revolutionary Guard official asserted that the video had been released to coincide with Mr. Bush’s trip and “was in line with a project of the Western media to create fear.” The official said the sounds and the images on the video did not go together. “It is very clear that they are fake,” the official said.

The video and audio were recorded separately and then matched, Naval and Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

The episode took place Sunday in the strategic Strait of Hormuz and was initially described by American officials on Monday.

They said five armed Iranian speedboats approached three United States Navy warships in international waters, then maneuvered aggressively as radio threats were issued that the American ships would be blown up.

The confrontation ended without shots fired or injuries.

The video runs just over four minutes and, according to Pentagon officials, was shot from the bridge of the guided missile destroyer Hopper. It supported the American version of events, showing Iranian speedboats maneuvering around and among the Navy warships.

“I am coming to you,” a heavily accented voice says in English. “You will explode after a few minutes.”

Navy officials said the voice was recorded from the internationally recognized bridge-to-bridge radio channel.

An American sailor then is heard repeating the threat, stating, “He says, ‘You will explode after a few minutes.’ ” The American is also heard identifying the Navy vessel as a “coalition warship” and announcing: “I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law. I intend no harm.”

Bush administration officials say they believe that Iran was trying to provoke the United States on the eve of the president’s visit to the Middle East.

“We viewed it as a provocative act,” Mr. Bush told reporters in the Rose Garden on Tuesday, just hours before he left for the weeklong trip to the Middle East. “It is a dangerous situation, and they should not have done it, pure and simple.”

Mr. Bush said pointedly that he would use the trip to remind American friends and allies in the region that Iran poses a danger.“I’m going to remind them what I said in that press conference when I sat there and answered some of your questions,” Mr. Bush said.

“Iran was a threat, Iran is a threat, and Iran will continue to be a threat if they are allowed to learn how to enrich uranium,” he added. “And so I’m looking forward to, you know, making it clear that the United States of America sees clearly the threats of this world, and we intend to work with our friends and allies to make that part of the world more secure.”

Mr. Bush made his comments, his first on the event, during an appearance intended to put a spotlight on the first anniversary of his speech announcing a troop buildup in Iraq.

After conducting a videoconference with combat commanders and members of civilian “provincial reconstruction teams,” he sounded upbeat about progress in Iraq, saying that 2007, particularly the end of the year, had been “incredibly successful beyond anybody’s expectations.”

Mr. Bush has repeatedly said he will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. But his efforts to convince the world that Iran is, in fact, a nuclear threat, have grown more complicated since the release of a new National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear arms program.

Mr. Bush conceded that the report had complicated his efforts. “One of the problems we have is that the intelligence report on Iran sent a mixed signal,” he said.

Mr. Bush will visit three Gulf states — Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates — during his stay in the Middle East. Experts on Iran said the episode in the Strait of Hormuz gave Mr. Bush an opening to press his message that Iran is a danger.

“I think he’s realized that a lot of the international steam on Iran has been lost in the wake of the N.I.E.,” said Michael Jacobson, an expert on Iran at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research organization in Washington. “I think he’s doing what he can to try to refocus the international community on the dangers that Iran poses.”

The video may also help Mr. Bush make his case.

While it is difficult to judge exact distances, Pentagon officials said at least one Iranian boat came within about 200 yards of the Hopper, a distance that could have been covered in a matter of seconds at top speed.

In the tape, horns are sounded, and the American crew member also radios to the Iranian vessels: “Inbound small craft: You are approaching a coalition warship operating in international waters. Your identity is not known. Your intentions are unclear.”

The American warns the Iranians that if they do not “alter course immediately to remain clear,” then the small boat will be “subject to defensive measures.”

Pentagon officials said the commander of the Hopper had been on the verge of issuing an order to fire on the Iranian speedboat with a high-powered machine gun when the Iranian craft suddenly steered away.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington.

    Iran Accuses U.S. of Faking Persian Gulf Video, NYT, 9.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/world/middleeast/10iran.html?hp

Bush Castigates Iran, Calling Naval Confrontation ‘Provocative Act’

January 9, 2008
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — President Bush chastised Iran on Tuesday for committing a “provocative act” by confronting United States Navy warships in the Persian Gulf over the weekend. The Pentagon released video showing Iranian speedboats maneuvering around the American convoy.

“We viewed it as a provocative act,” Mr. Bush told reporters in the Rose Garden, just hours before he left for a weeklong trip to the Middle East. “It is a dangerous situation, and they should not have done it, pure and simple.”

The episode took place Sunday in the strategic Strait of Hormuz and was initially described by American officials on Monday. They said five armed Iranian speedboats approached three United States Navy warships in international waters, then maneuvered aggressively as radio threats were issued that the American ships would be blown up.

The confrontation ended without shots fired or injuries.

The video runs just over four minutes and, according to Pentagon officials, was shot from the bridge of the guided missile destroyer Hopper. It supported the American version of events, by showing Iranian speedboats maneuvering around and among the Navy warships, quite close to the convoy.

“I am coming to you,” a heavily accented voice says in English. “You will explode after a few minutes.”

Navy officials said the voice was recorded from the internationally recognized bridge-to-bridge radio channel.

An American sailor then is heard repeating the threat, stating, “He says, ‘You will explode after a few minutes.’” The American is also heard identifying the Navy vessel as a “coalition warship” and announcing: “I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law. I intend no harm.”

Iranian officials have played down the encounter, but administration officials say they believe that Iran was trying to provoke the United States on the eve of the president’s visit to the Middle East. Mr. Bush said pointedly on Tuesday that he would use the trip to remind American friends and allies in the region that Iran poses a danger.

“I’m going to remind them what I said in that press conference when I sat there and answered some of your questions,” Mr. Bush said.

“Iran was a threat, Iran is a threat, and Iran will continue to be a threat if they are allowed to learn how to enrich uranium,” he added. “And so I’m looking forward to, you know, making it clear that the United States of America sees clearly the threats of this world, and we intend to work with our friends and allies to make that part of the world more secure.”

Mr. Bush made his comments, his first on the event, during an appearance intended to put a spotlight on the first anniversary of his speech announcing a troop buildup in Iraq.

After conducting a videoconference with combat commanders and members of civilian “provincial reconstruction teams,” he sounded upbeat about progress in Iraq, saying that 2007, particularly the end of the year, had been “incredibly successful beyond anybody’s expectations.”

Mr. Bush has repeatedly said he will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. But his efforts to convince the world that Iran is, in fact, a nuclear threat, have grown more complicated since the release of a new National Intelligence Estimate, or N.I.E., that concluded that Iran had abandoned its efforts to enrich uranium.

Mr. Bush conceded that the report had complicated his efforts. “One of the problems we have is that the intelligence report on Iran sent a mixed signal,” he said.

Mr. Bush will visit three Gulf states — Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates — during his stay in the Middle East. Experts on Iran said the episode in the Strait of Hormuz gave Mr. Bush an opening to press his message that Iran is a danger.

“I think he’s realized that a lot of the international steam on Iran has been lost in the wake of the N.I.E.,” said Michael Jacobson, an expert on Iran at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research organization in Washington. “I think he’s doing what he can to try to refocus the international community on the dangers that Iran poses.”

The video may also help Mr. Bush make his case.

While it is difficult to judge exact distances, Pentagon officials said at least one Iranian boat came within about 200 yards of the Hopper, a distance that could have been covered in a matter of seconds at top speed.

In the tape, horns are sounded, and the American crew member also radios to the Iranian vessels: “Inbound small craft: You are approaching a coalition warship operating in international waters. Your identity is not known. Your intentions are unclear.”

The American warns the Iranians that if they do not “alter course immediately to remain clear,” then the small boat will be “subject to defensive measures.”

Pentagon officials said the commander of the Hopper had been on the verge of issuing an order to fire on the Iranian speedboat with a high-powered machine gun when the Iranian craft suddenly steered away.

    Bush Castigates Iran, Calling Naval Confrontation ‘Provocative Act’, NYT, 9.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/washington/09prexy.html

White House Bemoans Gulf Incident

January 8, 2008
Filed at 10:33 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House said Tuesday that an incident between U.S. and Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz was hardly routine, as Tehran is claiming.

''It was not normal behavior,'' White House press secretary Dana Perino said. ''It was out of the ordinary. It was reckless.''

The top U.S. Navy commander in the area said an Iranian fleet of high-speed boats charged at and threatened to blow up a three-ship U.S. Navy convoy passing near but outside Iranian waters on Monday, as they headed into the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian fleet ''maneuvered aggressively'' and then vanished as the American ship commanders were preparing to open fire, said Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff. No shots were fired.

In Tehran, Iran's Foreign Ministry suggested the Iranian boats had not recognized the U.S. vessels. Spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini played down the incident. ''That is something normal that takes place every now and then for each party,'' he told the state news agency IRNA.

''It's hard for us to tell what they were thinking or what they doing or whether or not they plan any such actions in the future,'' Perino said. ''What I can tell you is our position is that they should not do it again.''

The incident came a day ahead of President Bush's Tuesday evening departure for an eight-day Mideast trip designed in part to counter Iran's influence in the region. Bush is expected to discuss the U.S. posture toward Tehran with Arab allies also worried about Tehran's desire for greater regional power.

''It's just another point of reference for people in the region who are concerned about the behavior of Iran,'' Perino said of Monday's skirmish. But, she said that while Iran will be ''part of the discussion'' during Bush's travels, ''it's certainly not the main reason for the trip.''

    White House Bemoans Gulf Incident, NYT, 8.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iran.html

U.S. Describes Confrontation With Iranian Boats

January 8, 2008
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON — Five armed Iranian speedboats approached three United States Navy warships in international waters in the strategic Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, then maneuvered aggressively as radio threats were issued that the American ships would be blown up, military officials said Monday.

The confrontation, which ended after just under 30 minutes without damage, shots fired or any injuries, took place during daylight on Sunday as the three American ships were entering the Persian Gulf.

On Monday, the senior Navy officer in the region, Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff, criticized the Iranian actions as “unnecessarily provocative.” Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Iranians had acted in a “reckless and dangerous” manner.

Iranian officials played down the significance of the encounter. “This is an ordinary occurrence, which happens every now and then for both sides,” said Muhammad Ali Hosseini, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, as quoted by the state-run news agency IRNA.

But several Pentagon officials said the commander of a Navy destroyer involved in the episode had been on the verge of issuing an order to fire on one of the small, high-speed boats sailing near the American naval convoy.

The commander of the Hopper, a guided-missile destroyer, was “very close to giving the order to fire,” said one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution. “We were perilously close to an incident where we would have taken out at least one of the Iranian small boats.”

The Hopper had trained an M240 machine gun — which fires upward of 10 armor-piercing slugs per second — on one of the Iranian boats that had pulled to within 200 yards of the American vessel, well within the gun’s range, Pentagon officials said. But before the order to fire was issued, the Iranian boat suddenly steered away from the Hopper.

The United States has conducted major war games to prepare for just the kind of event that unfolded over the weekend, because Navy officers have expressed concerns that the weaker Iranian fleet might choose to confront American warships by “swarming” with larger numbers of smaller craft.

Admiral Cosgriff, commander of the Fifth Fleet, said the episode was “more serious than we have seen,” in particular because it occurred in an important maritime choke point vital to the global economy.

“I am concerned with what I consider unnecessary and irresponsible maneuvering and behavior like this on the part of those patrol boats in, again, international waters in an area that’s traversed by numerous ships of all nations peacefully day in and day out,” he said during a video news conference from his headquarters in Bahrain.

In addition to the Hopper, the American ships involved in the episode were the cruiser Port Royal and the Ingraham, a frigate.

Commanders and crews sailing in the region are especially mindful of the damage small craft can inflict on American warships. In October 2000, 17 American sailors died when a small boat was detonated next to the destroyer Cole while it was docked for refueling in Yemen.

This is a time of considerable tensions between the countries, as President Bush is to visit the region for a weeklong tour aimed both at encouraging Middle East talks and at conveying a message that Iran continues to pose a serious threat.

Defense Department and military officials said that as the Iranian boats neared the American vessels, a radio threat was issued that the American ships would explode. The verbal warnings broadcast over the internationally recognized bridge-to-bridge radio channel said, “I am coming at you, and you will explode in a few minutes,” an American official said.

Two of the Iranian boats also dropped boxes in the path of the final American ship in the maritime convoy. The boxes could have been mines or simply dummy boxes meant to test — and learn from — the reaction, officials said.

Defense Department officials said the five speedboats belonged to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Traditionally, the Revolutionary Guards maritime forces have operated in a far more hostile manner than the regular Iranian Navy. In addition, the United States Government describes the Revolutionary Guards as being involved with unconventional weapons and its most elite organization, the Quds Force, as a supporter of terrorism.

In Tehran on Monday, the news agency FARS, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, wrote in an analysis that the accusations were baseless and aimed at depicting Iran as a threat ahead of Mr. Bush’s trip to the region.

The White House warned Iran against any further confrontations. “We urge the Iranians to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future,” said Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman.

Admiral Cosgriff said that, in the past, relations with the regular Iranian Navy had been courteous and professional, and that many interactions at sea with the Revolutionary Guards vessels have been normal.

But the allied navies operating in the region have been especially watchful since last March, when sailors believed to be from the Revolutionary Guards captured 15 British sailors in waters the British insisted were international, and held them for nearly two weeks.

The Pentagon said last year that there were signs that Iran had turned command of its naval missions in the Persian Gulf over to the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ maritime forces, stripping Iran’s regular navy of that responsibility.

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran.

    U.S. Describes Confrontation With Iranian Boats, NYT, 8.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/washington/08military.html

U.S. Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan

January 6, 2008
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS, DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT

This article is by Steven Lee Myers, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt.

WASHINGTON — President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. There was also talk of how to handle the period from now to the Feb. 18 elections, and the aftermath of those elections.

Several of the participants in the meeting argued that the threat to the government of President Pervez Musharraf was now so grave that both Mr. Musharraf and Pakistan’s new military leadership were likely to give the United States more latitude, officials said. But no decisions were made, said the officials, who declined to speak for attribution because of the highly delicate nature of the discussions.

Many of the specific options under discussion are unclear and highly classified. Officials said that the options would probably involve the C.I.A. working with the military’s Special Operations forces.

The Bush administration has not formally presented any new proposals to Mr. Musharraf, who gave up his military role last month, or to his successor as the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who the White House thinks will be more sympathetic to the American position than Mr. Musharraf. Early in his career, General Kayani was an aide to Ms. Bhutto while she was prime minister and later led the Pakistani intelligence service.

But at the White House and the Pentagon, officials see an opportunity in the changing power structure for the Americans to advocate for the expanded authority in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country. “After years of focusing on Afghanistan, we think the extremists now see a chance for the big prize — creating chaos in Pakistan itself,” one senior official said.

The new options for expanded covert operations include loosening restrictions on the C.I.A. to strike selected targets in Pakistan, in some cases using intelligence provided by Pakistani sources, officials said. Most counterterrorism operations in Pakistan have been conducted by the C.I.A.; in Afghanistan, where military operations are under way, including some with NATO forces, the military can take the lead.

The legal status would not change if the administration decided to act more aggressively. However, if the C.I.A. were given broader authority, it could call for help from the military or deputize some forces of the Special Operations Command to act under the authority of the agency.

The United States now has about 50 soldiers in Pakistan. Any expanded operations using C.I.A. operatives or Special Operations forces, like the Navy Seals, would be small and tailored to specific missions, military officials said.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who was on vacation last week and did not attend the White House meeting, said in late December that “Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and Pakistani people.”

In the past, the administration has largely stayed out of the tribal areas, in part for fear that exposure of any American-led operations there would so embarrass the Musharraf government that it could further empower his critics, who have declared he was too close to Washington.

Even now, officials say, some American diplomats and military officials, as well as outside experts, argue that American-led military operations on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan could result in a tremendous backlash and ultimately do more harm than good. That is particularly true, they say, if Americans were captured or killed in the territory.

In part, the White House discussions may be driven by a desire for another effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. Currently, C.I.A. operatives and Special Operations forces have limited authority to conduct counterterrorism missions in Pakistan based on specific intelligence about the whereabouts of those two men, who have eluded the Bush administration for more than six years, or of other members of their terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, hiding in or near the tribal areas.

The C.I.A. has launched missiles from Predator aircraft in the tribal areas several times, with varying degrees of success. Intelligence officials said they believed that in January 2006 an airstrike narrowly missed killing Mr. Zawahri, who had attended a dinner in Damadola, a Pakistani village. But that apparently was the last real evidence American officials had about the whereabouts of their chief targets.

Critics said more direct American military action would be ineffective, anger the Pakistani Army and increase support for the militants. “I’m not arguing that you leave Al Qaeda and the Taliban unmolested, but I’d be very, very cautious about approaches that could play into hands of enemies and be counterproductive,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. Some American diplomats and military officials have also issued strong warnings against expanded direct American action, officials said.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani military and political analyst, said raids by American troops would prompt a powerful popular backlash against Mr. Musharraf and the United States.

In the wake of the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, many Pakistanis suspect that the United States is trying to dominate Pakistan as well, Mr. Rizvi said. Mr. Musharraf — who is already widely unpopular — would lose even more popular support.

“At the moment when Musharraf is extremely unpopular, he will face more crisis,” Mr. Rizvi said. “This will weaken Musharraf in a Pakistani context.” He said such raids would be seen as an overall vote of no confidence in the Pakistani military, including General Kayani.

The meeting on Friday, which was not publicly announced, included Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and top intelligence officials.

Spokesmen for the White House, the C.I.A. and the Pentagon declined to discuss the meeting, citing a policy against doing so. But the session reflected an urgent concern that a new Qaeda haven was solidifying in parts of Pakistan and needed to be countered, one official said.

Although some officials and experts have criticized Mr. Musharraf and questioned his ability to take on extremists, Mr. Bush has remained steadfast in his support, and it is unlikely any new measures, including direct American military action inside Pakistan, will be approved without Mr. Musharraf’s consent.

“He understands clearly the risks of dealing with extremists and terrorists,” Mr. Bush said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday. “After all, they’ve tried to kill him.”

The Pakistan government has identified a militant leader with links to Al Qaeda, Baitullah Mehsud, who holds sway in tribal areas near the Afghanistan border, as the chief suspect behind the attack on Ms. Bhutto. American officials are not certain about Mr. Mehsud’s complicity but say the threat he and other militants pose is a new focus. He is considered, they said, an “Al Qaeda associate.”

In an interview with foreign journalists on Thursday, Mr. Musharraf warned of the risk any counterterrorism forces — American or Pakistani — faced in confronting Mr. Mehsud in his native tribal areas.

“He is in South Waziristan agency, and let me tell you, getting him in that place means battling against thousands of people, hundreds of people who are his followers, the Mehsud tribe, if you get to him, and it will mean collateral damage,” Mr. Musharraf said.

The weeks before parliamentary elections — which were originally scheduled for Tuesday — are seen as critical because of threats by extremists to disrupt the vote. But it seemed unlikely that any additional American effort would be approved and put in place in that time frame.

Administration aides said that Pakistani and American officials shared the concern about a resurgent Qaeda, and that American diplomats and senior military officers had been working closely with their Pakistani counterparts to help bolster Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations.

Shortly after Ms. Bhutto’s assassination, Adm. William J. Fallon, who oversees American military operations in Southwest Asia, telephoned his Pakistani counterparts to ensure that counterterrorism and logistics operations remained on track.

In early December, Adm. Eric T. Olson, the new leader of the Special Operations Command, paid his second visit to Pakistan in three months to meet with senior Pakistani officers, including Lt. Gen. Muhammad Masood Aslam, commander of the military and paramilitary troops in northwest Pakistan. Admiral Olson also visited the headquarters of the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force of about 85,000 members recruited from border tribes that the United States is planning to help train and equip.

But the Pakistanis are still years away from fielding an effective counterinsurgency force. And some American officials, including Defense Secretary Gates, have said the United States may have to take direct action against militants in the tribal areas.

American officials said the crisis surrounding Ms. Bhutto’s assassination had not diminished the Pakistani counterterrorism operations, and there were no signs that Mr. Musharraf had pulled out any of his 100,000 forces in the tribal areas and brought them to the cities to help control the urban unrest.

Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Islamabad, and David Rohde from New York.

    U.S. Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan, NYT, 6.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/washington/06terror.html?hp

Peace Plan, Iran on Bush Mideast Agenda

January 5, 2008
Filed at 10:08 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Saturday tied his fresh push for Mideast peace to the fight against terrorism and U.S. efforts to counter Iran's quest for greater influence in the region.

''As we saw on September the 11th, 2001, dangers that arise on the other side of the world can bring death and destruction to our own streets,'' Bush said in his weekly radio address. ''Since then, extremists have assassinated democratic leaders from Afghanistan to Lebanon to Pakistan. They have murdered innocent people from Saudi Arabia to Jordan and Iraq.

''They are seeking new weapons and new operatives so they can attack America again, overthrow governments in the Middle East and impose their hateful vision on millions.''

In his radio broadcast, Bush briefly sketched the agenda for his eight-day trip to the Middle East, which begins Tuesday, the same day as the New Hampshire presidential primary.

Bush is visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories, plus Arab allies Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. He said he will encourage Israelis and Palestinians to make ''tough decisions on complex questions'' so an elusive peace deal could be reached.

''I am optimistic about the prospects,'' Bush said.

His advisers, however, have all but ruled out a three-way meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders during the trip, dampening any thoughts that the president's personal diplomacy would yield a concrete peace accord at this time.

Bush said he will urge Arab leaders to support negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians and stress the ''importance of countering the aggressive ambitions of Iran.''

The president argued that success in Mideast peace is crucial to success in the battle against extremists, to whom the violent, intractable Israeli-Palestinian dispute is a potent recruiting tool.

''I know it is not always obvious why events in the nations of the Middle East should matter to the American people,'' Bush said. ''But in the 21st century, developments there have a direct impact on our lives here.''

Bush's series of bilateral meetings begin Wednesday in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres. On Thursday, Bush travels to the West Bank, an Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory, to see Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad at their headquarters in Ramallah.

Before leaving Israel on Friday for Kuwait, Bush will also meet with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, now the Mideast representative for the so-called Quartet -- the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States.

    Peace Plan, Iran on Bush Mideast Agenda, NYT, 5.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html