USA > History > 2010 > Politics > International (II)

Daryl Cagle

political cartoon

MSNBC.com

Cagle

24 August 2010

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/world/asia/20pstan.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/asia/15pstan.html

On the Eve of the Mideast Talks

August 30, 2010
The New York Times

To the Editor:

In the stifling atmosphere of punditocratic gloom surrounding the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, Martin Indyk’s Aug. 27 Op-Ed article, “For Once, Hope in the Middle East,” is a breath of fresh air.

The reasons for hope cited by Mr. Indyk are indeed grounds for cautious optimism, but the likelihood of a successful outcome will depend on the United States, including President Obama personally, playing a strong role in bridging gaps that pessimists on all sides have deemed unbridgeable.

And the president’s willingness to do so will in turn depend to a great extent on the support his efforts receive from the American public — and especially from the Jewish community.

Everyone who cares about the future of Israel as a secure and democratic Jewish state, as I do, should openly encourage and support President Obama’s willingness to lead the way to peace. It is the last best hope for peace in the Middle East in our lifetimes.

Gil Kulick
New York, Aug. 27, 2010

The writer is communications chairman of J Street-New York City.

•

To the Editor:

The ball is in Israel’s court, as it has been for many years.

If Israeli leaders are serious about peace, then they have to withdraw from the Palestinian lands they occupy by force and dismantle most of the illegal settlements there.

Israel is the stronger party and has the power to change the situation for the better.

Marwan D. Hanania
Stanford, Calif., Aug. 27, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Re “Hamas, the I.R.A. and Us” (Op-Ed, Aug. 29):

Ali Abunimah poses what he perceives to be his trump card when he asks, “Why should Hamas or any Palestinian accept Israel’s political demands, like recognition, when Israel refuses to recognize basic Palestinian demands like the right of return for refugees?”

The simple response to Mr. Abunimah is that the recognition of sovereignty, as well as the rejection of force to achieve political ends, are core principles of international law that govern relations between nations. By its refusal to accept these principles, Hamas places itself outside the family of nations and surrenders its place at the negotiating table.

Mr. Abunimah’s effort to equate Palestinian political demands with international law are as misplaced as Palestinian demands for a Palestinian state free of Jews. Similarly, his attempt to compare the level of violence inflicted on Israeli civilians by Hamas rockets and missiles with the damage to Palestinians resulting from Israel’s self-defensive measures is misplaced.

Let Hamas forswear violence, and Israel’s need to resort to arms will evaporate.

It may well be that Hamas participation in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations is necessary, but that will be achieved only when Hamas subscribes to the basic principles of international law.

Jay N. Feldman
Port Washington, N.Y., Aug. 29, 2010

The writer is a lawyer.

•

To the Editor:

Ali Abunimah restates the obvious, but misses the point. As long as Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army were willing to speak only through the end of a gun or the blast of a bomb there was no room for talk.

Progress was possible only when they were prepared to make real efforts to achieve peace, for the sake of their own people, rather than their own agenda. This is the kernel of truth that Mr. Abunimah conveniently overlooks.

Hamas is not simply an organization committed to a Palestinian state, by violence if necessary. The Hamas charter specifically calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, expulsion of Jews and imposition of Sharia law.

No other state in history would be expected to negotiate with an entity committed to its own destruction. Until Hamas renounces destruction of the Jewish state there is no reason to include it in talks of peace.

Alan Pollack

Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Aug. 30, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Thanks for printing “Hamas, the I.R.A. and Us,” by Ali Abunimah. Only by including all of the representatives of the Palestinian people, including the democratically elected Hamas, can a durable agreement between Israel and Palestine be worked out.

Negotiations need to be based on the equality of both peoples. The United States needs to become an honest broker and stop acting as Israel’s lawyer. If we are to impose preconditions that Palestinian parties need to recognize Israel’s right to exist, we must also insist on the same preconditions — that the Israelis recognize Palestine’s right to exist.

Better yet, we must insist that both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have the same rights to exist as equal human beings in the Holy Land: that both people deserve liberty and justice for all.

William L. Dienst Jr.
Omak, Wash., Aug. 29, 2010

On the Eve of the Mideast Talks, NYT, 30.8.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/opinion/l31mideast.html

New U.S. Sanctions

Aim at North Korean Elite

August 30, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — The latest target for the United States, as it tries to tighten the screws on North Korea, is a shadowy party organization, known as Office 39, which raises hard currency to buy fine liquor, exotic food and luxury cars for cronies of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il.

The Obama administration on Monday singled out Office 39 as one of several North Korean entities that it says are engaged in illicit activity — fleshing out new sanctions that were first announced in July by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a visit to South Korea.

Under a new executive order, the United States will try to choke off the flow of luxury goods into North Korea, which officials say Mr. Kim uses to buy the loyalty of the political elite, as well as the sale of conventional weapons by the North. The Treasury Department also designated entities suspected of trafficking in nuclear technology, using existing authority.

“We need to send a signal to the North that provocative behavior will not go unpunished,” said Robert J. Einhorn, the State Department’s special adviser on arms control and nonproliferation issues. “They are not directed at the people of North Korea, but at their leaders.”

The administration finds itself at something of a crossroads in its North Korea policy: determined to keep up the pressure on the North, while starting to question whether and when to engage the government. A wide range of outside experts have counseled Mrs. Clinton to restore some contact, contending that the sanctions have done little to change North Korea’s behavior and that the impasse is becoming increasingly dangerous.

The administration’s moves came as Mr. Kim returned from a mysterious visit to China last week, during which he met with President Hu Jintao.

The North Korean leader passed up an opportunity to meet former President Jimmy Carter, who was in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, to win the release of a jailed American citizen. Mr. Kim’s decision puzzled administration officials and North Korea experts.

Among the possible explanations, said one official: North Korea is now so economically and politically dependent on China that Mr. Kim felt that he could not afford to delay a planned visit to China. Then, too, Mr. Carter was not carrying any diplomatic message from the Obama administration, which may have made it easier for Mr. Kim to skip the meeting.

In a letter to Congress on Monday, President Obama said the new sanctions were justified after North Korea’s “unprovoked attack” in March on a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors; as well as its nuclear and missile tests, and a variety of other illicit activities.

Eager to demonstrate solidarity with South Korea, Mrs. Clinton previewed the measures during a visit to Seoul with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in which he announced joint American-South Korean military exercises. At the time, though, officials had few details.

On Monday, the Treasury filled in the blanks, designating five entities and three individuals linked to weapons of mass destruction. Some of these entities, like the Korea Taesong Trading Company, have already been sanctioned, either by the State Department or the United Nations Security Council.

Mr. Obama, in his new executive order, identified two entities and one individual suspected of involvement in conventional arms sales. The best known is the Reconnaissance General Bureau, an intelligence agency. The order also designates the commander of the agency, Gen. Kim Yong Chol.

The focusing on Office 39 builds on longstanding efforts to deprive the North Korean elite of luxury goods. Sometimes known as Room 39, Office 39 is a branch of the Korean Workers’ Party that raises and manages a slush fund of hard currency for Mr. Kim’s family and friends.

While some of Office 39’s dealings are believed to be legitimate — it exports exotic mushrooms, ginseng and seaweed, for example — the organization is suspected of being involved in the counterfeiting of American currency and drug trafficking.

The Treasury Department said Office 39 had been involved in methamphetamine distribution and the production of heroin and opium.

Office 39, which answers directly to Mr. Kim and has its headquarters not far from his villa, also procures luxury goods for the leadership. Last year, American officials said, the Italian government foiled its attempt to buy two Italian-made luxury yachts worth more than $15 million for Mr. Kim.

Critics say that most of North Korea’s luxury goods flow through China, which is unenthusiastic about sanctions. Mr. Einhorn said that he would travel to Beijing soon to encourage the government to enforce the measures rigorously.

Stuart A. Levey, the undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said the designations of entities would have global impact because “there is already a real wariness” among foreign banks and companies about doing business with North Korean enterprises.

    New U.S. Sanctions Aim at North Korean Elite, NYT, 30.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/world/asia/31diplo.html

New Chance for Peace

August 30, 2010
The New York Times

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, will open talks on a two-state solution on Thursday in Washington. These will be the first direct negotiations between the two sides in 20 months, and there will be an early test of the two leaders’ seriousness of purpose.

Mr. Netanyahu’s moratorium on settlement construction expires on Sept. 26. Mr. Abbas has threatened to withdraw from the face-to-face talks if the moratorium is not extended; Mr. Netanyahu has signaled that he plans to let building resume. The two leaders may be jockeying for political advantage, but the idea that the negotiations could collapse before they really have a chance to get off the ground is worrisome. The Obama administration needs to work hard — and creatively — to help find a solution to get by the Sept. 26 flash point.

Palestinians are justifiably concerned that settlement projects nibble away at the land available for their future state. If Mr. Abbas is engaging in serious direct talks, Mr. Netanyahu should have no excuse to resume building. To Mr. Netanyahu’s credit, settlement has slowed considerably since the 10-month moratorium was put in place, and that has improved the atmosphere for negotiations.

There are other positive currents. Violence against Israelis is down. Palestinian security forces are increasingly competent at policing the West Bank. Palestinian authorities have clamped down on incitement, including removing imams and teachers who encourage attacks against Israelis. More can still be done.

The biggest plus may be President Obama’s commitment. His predecessor ignored the conflict for seven years before arranging a peace conference in 2007 that had insufficient preparation and inadequate presidential investment. Mr. Obama made Middle East peace an early priority. He correctly sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a factor in wider regional instability. He is more balanced in his approach that his predecessor, and his chief envoy, George Mitchell, has spent countless hours bringing the parties together.

There are serious obstacles. Mr. Abbas is a weak leader, representing only the Fatah faction and ruling only the West Bank while the rival Hamas controls Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu heads a hard-line government, and even if he is serious about making peace (the jury is out on that) will his political allies let him? We are encouraged by reports that he wants to participate in the negotiations with Mr. Abbas and that he named a trusted longtime friend as his chief negotiator.

Mr. Obama has set an ambitious one-year timetable for the two sides to settle their longstanding final status issues: borders of a new Palestinian state, security, refugees and the future of Jerusalem. The parameters and the solutions are well known from years of past peace talks. But there is deep mistrust between the parties, and the administration must be willing to point fingers when needed and put forward its own proposals when progress slows.

Mr. Obama will kick the talks off on Wednesday night with a White House dinner attended by Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas, and by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, whose countries have peace treaties with Israel. Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, will represent the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia — the “Quartet” supporting Middle East peace.

That will make for a fine ceremony and important symbolism, but Mr. Obama’s involvement cannot end there. He needs to keep pressing everybody — his dinner guests and other regional leaders, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey — to stand behind peace efforts.

Pessimism about these talks is understandable, given the depressing history of failed peace attempts, but it is no excuse for the leaders not to make a serious effort, and Mr. Obama is right to try to compel them to do that.

    New Chance for Peace, NYT, 30.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/opinion/31tue1.html

For Once, Hope in the Middle East

August 26, 2010
The New York Times
By MARTIN INDYK

Washington

NOW that President Obama has finally succeeded in bringing the Israelis and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, the commentariat is already dismissing his chances of reaching a peace agreement. But there are four factors that distinguish the direct talks that will get under way on Sept. 2 in Washington from previous attempts — factors that offer some reason for optimism.

First, violence is down considerably in the region. Throughout the 1990s, Israel was plagued by terrorist attacks, which undermined its leaders’ ability to justify tangible concessions. Israelis came to believe that the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat was playing a double game, professing peace in the negotiations while allowing terrorists to operate in territory he was supposed to control.

Today, the Palestinian Authority is policing its West Bank territory to prevent violent attacks on Israelis and to prove its reliability as a negotiating partner. Hamas — mainly out of fear of an Israeli intervention that might remove it from power — is doing the same in Gaza.

These efforts, combined with more effective Israeli security measures, have meant that the number of Israeli civilians killed in terrorist attacks has dropped from an intifada high of 452 in 2002 to 6 last year and only 2 so far this year.

Second, settlement activity has slowed significantly. As a result of Israel’s 10-month settlement moratorium, no new housing starts in the West Bank were reported by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics in the first quarter of this year. What’s more, there have been hardly any new housing projects in East Jerusalem since the brouhaha in March, when Vice President Joe Biden, during a visit to Israel, condemned the announcement of 1,600 additional residential units. The demolition of Palestinian houses there is also down compared with recent years.

The settlement moratorium, however, is due to expire on Sept. 26. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, seems unlikely to extend it, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, has declared that he will withdraw from negotiations if settlement activity resumes.

However, there could be a workable compromise if Mr. Netanyahu restricts building to modest growth in the settlement blocs that will most likely be absorbed into Israel in the final agreement, while offering changes that would make a real difference to West Bank Palestinians. Israel could promise that there would be no more Israeli Army incursions into areas under Palestinian control; it could also allow the Palestinian police to patrol in most West Bank villages.

Third, the public on both sides supports a two-state solution. So do a majority of Arabs. The simple truth is that most people in the Middle East are exhausted by this conflict, and if Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas can reach a viable agreement, the public on all sides will likely support it by a large majority.

Yes, Mr. Netanyahu would face strident opposition from within his Likud party, but he could lean on the support of the Israeli center and left to ensure a Knesset majority. And because a referendum on Palestinian statehood would likely receive overwhelming support in Gaza as well as the West Bank, Hamas — always attuned to Palestinian public opinion — would have a hard time standing in the way.

Fourth, there isn’t a lot to negotiate. In the 17 years since the Oslo accords were signed, detailed final status negotiations have dealt exhaustively with all the critical issues. If an independent Palestinian state is to be established, the zone of agreement is clear and the necessary trade-offs are already known.

Security arrangements were all but settled in 2000 at Camp David before the talks collapsed. The increased threat of rocket attacks since then, among other developments, require the two sides to agree on stricter border controls and a robust third-party force in the Jordan Valley. But one year is ample time to resolve this. In fact, if the leaders are sincere in their intent to make a deal, dragging out the negotiations would only weaken them politically and give time for the opponents of peace to rally.

In short, the negotiating environment is better suited to peacemaking today than it has been at any point in the last decade. The prospects for peace depend now on the willpower of the leaders.

Does President Abbas, already a weakened figure, have the courage to defend the necessary concessions to his people, particularly when it comes to conceding the “right of return” to Israel? Does Prime Minister Netanyahu have the determination to withdraw from at least 95 percent of the West Bank and to accept a Palestinian capital in Arab East Jerusalem? And does President Obama have the statesmanship to persuade both parties to make the deal and to reassure them that the United States will be there with a safety net if it fails?

At the end of the Clinton administration, Shimon Peres observed that “history is like a horse that gallops past your window and the true test of statesmanship is to jump from that window onto the horse.” Arafat failed that test, leaving Palestinians and Israelis mired in conflict. We cannot know whether Mr. Abbas and Mr. Netanyahu will take the politically perilous leap. But for the time being, we should suspend disbelief and welcome the fact that American diplomacy has ensured they will soon be put to the test.


Martin Indyk, the director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution and the author of “Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East,” was the United States ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration.

    For Once, Hope in the Middle East, NYT, 26.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/opinion/27indyk.html

U.S. Weighs Possibility

of North Korea Engagement

August 27, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — The last time a former American president traveled to North Korea on a rescue mission — Bill Clinton, a year ago — he was feted by its leader, Kim Jong-il, who seized on the visit to reach out to the Obama administration. This week, Mr. Kim chose to go to China during a visit by former President Jimmy Carter to free another jailed American.

Whatever the motivation for Mr. Kim’s snub, analysts said it underscored the deep freeze between North Korea and the United States. The State Department greeted the news on Friday that Mr. Carter had secured the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes by warning other Americans not to go to North Korea, saying they risked “heavy fines and long prison sentences with hard labor.”

Even as it keeps up its tough tone, however, the United States has begun weighing a fresh effort at engagement with Mr. Kim’s government, officials and analysts briefed on the deliberations say.

Such an overture would come “several moves down the chessboard,” a senior official said, and would be preceded by additional pressure tactics. But it suggests that the administration has concluded that pressure alone will not be enough to move North Korea’s ailing, reclusive dictator.

At a high-level meeting last week on North Korea, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton solicited ideas from outside experts and former officials about the next steps in policy toward the North. The consensus, even among the hawks, was that the United States needed to resume some form of contact with Mr. Kim, according to several people who took part.

Mrs. Clinton, these people said, expressed impatience with the current policy, which is based on ever more stringent economic sanctions and joint American-South Korean naval exercises — both in response to the sinking in March of a South Korean warship, for which South Korea blamed the North.

Among those advocating a fresh overture is Stephen W. Bosworth, the special envoy for North Korea. He visited Pyongyang, the North’s capital, in December to explore the prospect of talks, but the administration could not decide whether to schedule a follow-up meeting, and then the warship was torpedoed.

“The question is, what are we going to do now?” said Joel S. Wit, a former State Department negotiator with North Korea who founded a Web site, 38 North, which follows North Korean politics. “The answer is re-engagement. There aren’t any other tools in the toolbox.”

Far from abandoning pressure tactics, officials said, the United States is likely to increase them. In July, it announced new measures aimed at choking off sources of hard currency for the government and its allies. Mrs. Clinton sent a senior adviser, Robert J. Einhorn, to Asia to drum up support for the sanctions. The military, defying threats from North Korea and anger from China, has held several days of joint drills with South Korea in the Yellow Sea.

“We don’t want to go down the old road and repeat the experiences of the past,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council. “We are looking for behavior change by the North Koreans.”

Still, there is growing concern, even among hawkish analysts, that pressure, without any dialogue, raises the risk of war. Some critics also contend that there is little evidence the sanctions have forced the North to retreat from its nuclear program or its belligerence toward South Korea.

Mr. Kim’s deteriorating health, and the succession struggle it has set off, have increased the pressure on the administration to reach out, in the view of some analysts. While some officials argue that the United States can wait out the political transition, others fear that heightening the confrontation with North Korea could foreclose future opportunities for contact.

As Victor Cha, a former Bush administration official who was responsible for North Korea, put it, “If they look like they’re preparing for war, there’s no opportunity to talk to the new leadership.”

The administration, analysts said, is also losing confidence in China’s willingness to press the North. During a visit to Beijing in May, Mrs. Clinton invested a lot of energy in trying to persuade Chinese officials to accept the South Korean government’s finding that the North had sunk its ship. Her efforts were futile: Beijing never accepted the North’s culpability and it blunted Seoul’s drive for a United Nations statement condemning the attack.

Symbolically, analysts said, Mr. Kim’s choice of a trip to China over a meeting with Mr. Carter highlighted North Korea’s economic and political dependence on Beijing. China has long pushed for the United States to talk to the North, and reopening a dialogue could help ease the tension between Beijing and Washington. One problem for the administration is the form and content of talks. Few analysts have much enthusiasm for the six-party format, under which North Korea has negotiated over its nuclear program with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. But the talks are probably necessary to retain support of allies like South Korea and Japan.

Another problem is that the administration has been uncompromising in its demands. Officials have repeatedly said that the United States will not negotiate until North Korea agrees to dismantle its nuclear weapons. Their fear is that the North will extract concessions, as it did during the Bush and Clinton administrations, only to test another nuclear bomb.

An option, experts said, would be to engage North Korea on issues other than the nuclear program. But others said the issue was unavoidable. For now, the administration offers a more pragmatic strategy. “Americans should heed our travel warning and avoid North Korea,” said the State Department’s spokesman, Philip J. Crowley. “We only have a handful of former presidents.”

    U.S. Weighs Possibility of North Korea Engagement, NYT, 27.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/world/asia/28diplo.html

Carter Wins Release of American in North Korea

August 27, 2010
The New York Times
By CHOE SANG-HUN and SHARON LaFRANIERE

SEOUL, South Korea — Former President Jimmy Carter left North Korea on Friday with Aijalon Mahli Gomes, an American who was sentenced to eight years of hard labor for illegally entering the country, the Carter Center said. Mr. Gomes was granted amnesty by the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, the Carter Center said in an e-mail. Mr. Gomes, 31, and Mr. Carter boarded a plane at the Pyongyang Airport.

“It is expected that Mr. Gomes will be returned to Boston, Mass., early Friday afternoon, to be reunited with his mother and other members of his family,” the statement said.

Mr. Carter had been visiting Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on a private humanitarian mission to win the release of Mr. Gomes, who was sentenced in April to eight years in a North Korean prison and fined $700,000 for entering the country illegally. There has also been speculation that North Korea might try to use Mr. Carter as a conduit to ease tensions with the United States.

Mr. Carter had arrived on Wednesday at the invitation of the North Korean government, but it was not known whether he met with Mr. Kim, the North Korean leader.

South Korean officials said Thursday that a special train believed to be carrying Mr. Kim had entered China around midnight on Wednesday, setting off speculation over what might have compelled him to travel to his isolated government’s closest ally while Mr. Carter was visiting.

After watching Mr. Kim’s movements for the past few days, the South Korean authorities said his train had crossed the border with China, traveling from the North Korean town of Manpo to Jian in China, according to an official at the presidential Blue House in Seoul.

Two South Korean intelligence sources who, like the presidential aide, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter, said Mr. Kim might be taking his son with him to introduce him formally to Chinese leaders. South Korean news outlets raised the same possibility.

Mr. Kim is grooming his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as successor, according to South Korean officials. North Korea is to convene a congress of its ruling Workers’ Party early next month, where Mr. Kim is expected to rally popular support for his succession plans.

If confirmed, this would be Mr. Kim’s sixth trip to China, his impoverished country’s largest trading partner and aid provider. His last trip was in May, when he met President Hu Jintao during a five-day visit. North Korea and China usually do not confirm a trip by Mr. Kim until it is over.

News of the possible trip by Mr. Kim led to rampant speculation in South Korea. Possible motives cited by analysts in Seoul included the North’s need for Chinese aid because of flooding and the possibility of a decline in Mr. Kim’s health, which might have forced aides to take him to China for treatment. Many intelligence officials believe Mr. Kim had a stroke in 2008. Around the time that Mr. Kim’s train crossed the border, North Korean news media reported that China would provide emergency flood relief.

With North Korea’s relations with the South and the United States at a low point, “China is the only one Kim Jong-il can go to for aid,” said Kim Keun-sik, an analyst at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. “He badly needs aid before the party meeting to make it a national festival, as it is meant to be.”

Even so, leaving North Korea without meeting Mr. Carter would be a notable breach of diplomatic etiquette, the analyst said. “A possible political message of this is that North Korea gives its priority to China over the United States,” he said.

Mr. Carter was the second former United States president to visit Pyongyang on a humanitarian mission in recent years. In August last year, Bill Clinton met Mr. Kim there and returned with Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two American journalists held there for trespassing in the North.

Mr. Gomes is believed to have entered North Korea in support of Robert Park, a fellow Christian activist from the United States, who crossed into the country from China in December to call on Mr. Kim to release all political prisoners. Mr. Park was expelled after some 40 days.

In South Korea, where he had worked as an English teacher, Mr. Gomes attended rallies calling for Mr. Park’s release. In January, North Korean announced his arrest. In April, it sentenced him to eight years of hard labor and fined $700,000 for illegal entry and and committing a “hostile act.”

China’s Foreign Ministry had no comment on reports of Mr. Kim’s visit. Two teachers told The Associated Press that Mr. Kim spent 20 minutes Thursday at Yuwen Middle School in Jilin, in the northeast, where his father, Kim Il-sung, attended classes from 1927 to 1930.

On Friday Mr. Kim had reportedly left Jilin and was heading to Changchun. There was no word on whether his son was accompanying him.


Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, and Sharon LaFraniere from Beijing.

    Carter Wins Release of American in North Korea, NYT, 27.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/world/asia/28korea.html

Talks ‘Doable,’ Says Palestinian Official

August 23, 2010
The New York Times
By ISABEL KERSHNER

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The chief Palestinian negotiator said Monday that he believed reaching an agreement with Israel within a year was “doable,” echoing remarks by the Israeli prime minister a day earlier that a peace agreement would be difficult but “possible.”

But the otherwise sharply differing declarations presented as the basis for going into the direct talks, scheduled to start in Washington on Sept. 2, reflect the complexity of the effort required to get the two sides to this point, and the daunting challenges that lie ahead.

At a news conference here at the administrative headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator, said the leadership had accepted the invitation to return to direct talks, which broke off in late 2008, based on the statement issued Friday by the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers: the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.

When asked what had changed to move the Palestinian leadership to return to direct talks, despite what appeared to be only a vague international response to Palestinian demands for assurances on the talks’ goal, he pointed again to the quartet’s statement.

“This statement was not there on Aug. 19,” Mr. Erekat said, “only on Aug. 20.”

Earlier this month, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, complained to reporters in Ramallah that he was under almost unbearable international pressure to return to direct talks.

The quartet’s statement, issued alongside the announcement of the start of talks by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, was intended to satisfy Palestinian demands for terms of reference for the talks, given that Israel and Mrs. Clinton rejected any “preconditions.” The Palestinians wanted assurances that the goal of the talks would be a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967-war lines and that the talks would be accompanied by a freeze of all Israeli settlement construction.

In reality, the carefully worded statement was itself a compromise. It reaffirmed the quartet’s commitment to previous statements, which called for a settlement that “ends the occupation which began in 1967” and results in the emergence of a Palestinian state, and which called on Israel to freeze all settlement activity and to refrain from demolitions, evictions and other provocative acts in East Jerusalem.

But the quartet’s statement made no new, explicit call for a settlement freeze, adding to a cloud of uncertainty hanging over the talks.

The first major test for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is expected around Sept. 26 when Israel’s partial, 10-month moratorium on settlement construction is to expire.

“If Mr. Netanyahu decides to renew settlement tenders come Sept. 26, he will have decided to stop negotiations,” Mr. Erekat said. He added that Mr. Abbas had sent letters to President Obama and other quartet leaders urging them to take a “strong and unequivocal position regarding Israel’s obligation to freeze all settlement activity, without exceptions.”

Mr. Netanyahu faces tough internal opposition from his right-wing ministers to any extension of the moratorium; it was under intense American pressure that he persuaded them to back the temporary, partial freeze in the first place. One minister, Dan Meridor, has proposed a formula whereby Israel would build only in the settlement blocks it intends to keep under any deal.

A State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, said Monday that the United States was “very mindful” of this issue and that it would be “among the topics discussed early on” in the negotiations.

In remarks at the start of the cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu did not mention the settlement issue, but said a historic agreement with the Palestinians would be based on “three initial components”: sustainable security arrangements; recognition of Israel as the “national state of the Jewish people,” meaning that any return of Palestinian refugees would be “realized in the territory of the Palestinian state”; and the end of conflict between Israel and a demilitarized Palestinian state.

Mr. Erekat said that amounted to Mr. Netanyahu’s setting conditions for the outcome before having started the talks. “It seems that he wants to negotiate with himself and his coalition,” Mr. Erekat said.

Both Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Erekat addressed the skepticism and frustration among their respective publics after 17 years of an on-and-off peace process. Both also said they hoped to find a true partner on the other side.

Mr. Abbas comes to the talks in a particularly weak position, having lost control of Gaza to Hamas, the Islamic militant group. Hamas defeated Mr. Abbas’s Fatah party in parliamentary elections in 2006, then routed forces loyal to Mr. Abbas from Gaza after months of bloody factional fighting in 2007.

Mahmoud al-Ramahi, a Hamas-affiliated politician, is the general secretary of the Palestinian Legislative Council, or Parliament. He said in Ramallah on Monday that from Hamas’s point of view, negotiations with Israel were “useless” and would not lead anywhere. But he said that Mr. Abbas and the Palestinian Authority had no alternative but to go to the negotiations, since they rely so heavily on the West for financial support.

    Talks ‘Doable,’ Says Palestinian Official, NYT, 23.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/world/middleeast/24mideast.html

Pakistan Receives More Flood Aid,

but Need Grows

August 19, 2010
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

JAMPUR, Pakistan — In some places, the water covers everything, dotted only by the tops of mango trees. Even here, with homesteads and roads on slightly raised lands, mud-brick houses have dissolved and all that remains are pitiful piles of debris where they once stood.

Livestock and people camp on dirt roads that are often the only dry spots between acres of water. People cram into boats ferrying between villages, while a few motorbikes wend their way through the shallows.

As Pakistan grapples with a staggering disaster that has left millions homeless and many more cut off without food or clean water, the urgency of the situation was made clear to Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who broke up a visit to Afghanistan to view the flood damage here on Thursday.

He flew over a vast expanse of flooded villages in Punjab Province with Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, as the waters spread across the plain for miles; crowds swarmed at the edge of their landing pad. More than 1,100 people were housed in neat blue tents in an army compound, but their anxiety and frustration was palpable.

As Pakistani officials briefed Mr. Kerry beside his helicopter, the governor of Punjab asked aloud whether the people were very angry. “Naturally they are angry,” the district commissioner, Hassan Iqbal, answered. Mr. Zardari frowned.

Both here and at home, American officials spoke of the vast humanitarian task ahead, hoping to bolster the relationship between the nations, which is widely viewed as critical for stability in the region.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged countries to step up their response to the devastating floods, pledging an additional $60 million in aid. That raised the total American commitment to $150 million.

Speaking to a special session of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, she referred to the feebleness of the global fund-raising effort so far.

“I realize that many countries, including my own, are facing tough economic conditions and very tight budgets,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And we’ve also endured an unrelenting stream of disasters this year — from the earthquake in Haiti to the wildfires in Russia. But we must answer the Pakistani request for help.”

Closer to the devastation, Mr. Kerry spoke at an air base where United States Marines and members of the Pakistani Army were flying joint missions to take food to the northern mountain valley of Swat and rescue stranded villagers. “All of us are cooperating to deal with insurgency and violence,” Mr. Kerry told Marines and Pakistani troops in a hangar at the base. “This is an additional test.”

Last year, the picturesque hillsides and towns in the Swat Valley were transformed into a battleground when government troops tried to drive out the Taliban forces that had set up a haven there. Millions were displaced, fleeing both the Taliban and the shelling and fighting that followed as the Pakistani military retook control last spring.

But months after residents began returning, the flooding has ruined their hopes for a respite from the relentless upheaval and renewed their fears that Taliban forces might now seize on the disorder to re-establish a foothold.

In helping the mountainous region now, Mr. Kerry openly acknowledged a double concern. “The objective is humanitarian, but obviously there is a national security interest,” he said. “We do not want additional jihadis, extremists, coming out of a crisis.”

In Pakistan’s northwest, some hard-line Islamic groups have been providing shelter and food to flood victims, exploiting gaps in the government’s slow and haphazard initial response.

More aid is now flowing, but the concerns remain. While in New York to draw the world’s attention to the crisis, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, said that extremist organizations would capitalize on any vacuum in humanitarian assistance.

“Obviously, they would like to exploit the situation,” he said. “The possibility is there, and we have to guard against it.”

Trying to cast a positive light on the calamity, Mr. Kerry suggested that the humanitarian effort would force the nation’s civilian government to step up to the challenge and improve its performance to meet the needs of the population.

“There is a real willingness to build capacity, and that can strengthen the government,” he said.

Yet the fear is that another disaster after years of turmoil — Pakistan lost 73,000 people in a devastating earthquake in Kashmir in 2005, and has suffered thousands of casualties in the war against Islamist militants since 2007 — will set the country back decades.

“The economic impact is going to be huge,” said Anne W. Patterson, the American ambassador to Pakistan, who was traveling with Mr. Kerry.

Pakistan was expecting a food surplus this year, so even with the huge losses of food and grain from the floods the country could probably still feed itself, Ms. Patterson said. But food prices will soar, she said, affecting the poorest sector of the population.

“The price rises are going to be terrible, and the poor people are going to be crowded out,” Ms. Patterson said.

Here in Jampur, Nazar Hussein, 35, described how his family of nine had to flee in the night, carrying the children through chest-high water.

“We were in our house sleeping; it was about 9 p.m. at night when we heard the neighbors shouting,” he said.

“We were very frightened,” he added as his small daughters pressed against him. His house, built of mud bricks and plaster, had collapsed under the weight of the water, he said.

Mr. Hussein, a laborer, said that even when the water receded he would not be able to afford the $6,000 it would cost to rebuild his house. “We are waiting for the government,” he said. “Without government help we cannot do it.” To enable the reconstruction effort, Mr. Zardari said, “we will provide debit cards so they can receive money directly and rebuild their houses.”

The system of paying money directly to households so that they can do their own rebuilding worked well after the earthquake, as well as for people displaced by fighting last year.

But officials were still working out how much damage has been done. Though the waters were receding in Punjab Province, they were still rising in the southernmost province of Sindh, where the waters will eventually spill into the Arabian Sea.

The scale of the disaster is clearly tremendous. On Thursday, the United Nations raised the number of people left homeless by the floods to 4.6 million.

“This is a rough estimate and includes hundreds of thousands still on the move,” said Maurizio Giuliano, the United Nations spokesman in Pakistan. “In this context, we have decided to increase the number of targeted beneficiaries for tents and plastic sheeting from the initial figure of two million to at least six million.”

The Asian Development Bank, meanwhile, said it would loan Pakistan $2 billion to rebuild from the floods, which have covered at least one-fifth of the country and claimed as many as 1,600 lives.

Mrs. Clinton also urged American families to donate. “More than 20 million Pakistanis have been affected by the worst natural disaster in Pakistan’s history,” she said. “The enormity of this crisis is hard to fathom, the rain continues to fall, and the extent of the devastation is still difficult to gauge.”


Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan; Ismail Khan from Jaray, Pakistan; and Mark Landler from Washington.

    Pakistan Receives More Flood Aid, but Need Grows, NYT, 19.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/world/asia/20pstan.html

U.S. Offers Aid to Rescue Pakistanis

and Reclaim Image

August 14, 2010
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — As the Obama administration continues to add to the aid package for flood-stricken Pakistan — already the largest humanitarian response from any single country — officials acknowledge that they are seeking to use the efforts to burnish the United States’ dismal image there.

Administration officials say their top priority is providing much-needed help to a pivotal regional ally in the fight against Al Qaeda. But when senior officials from the White House, State Department, Pentagon and Agency for International Development hold their daily conference calls to coordinate American assistance, they are also strategizing about how that aid could help improve long-term relations with Pakistan.

According to a survey conducted last month by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, 68 percent of Pakistanis have an unfavorable view of the United States. American officials hope that images of Navy and Marine Corps helicopters ferrying supplies and plucking people from rain-swollen rivers will at least begin to counteract the bad will generated by American drone strikes against militants in Pakistan. Many Pakistanis blame the strikes for a devastating series of insurgent attacks in Pakistan.

“If we do the right thing, it will be good not only for the people whose lives we save but for the U.S. image in Pakistan,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Thursday on the PBS program “The Charlie Rose Show.”

“The people of Pakistan will see that when the crisis hits,” Mr. Holbrooke continued, “it’s not the Chinese. It’s not the Iranians. It’s not other countries. It’s not the E.U. It’s the U.S. that always leads.”

American officials say they also hope to build greater trust with the Pakistani military, which has become increasingly wary that President Obama plans to withdraw American troops quickly from neighboring Afghanistan, leaving the Pakistanis to deal with the consequences.

The flooding, which has swamped a fifth of the country and killed at least 1,384 people, according to Pakistani government figures, has led to a sizable and high-level American response, including $76 million in donations.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates sent 19 more helicopters last week to replace six aircraft on loan from the military campaign in Afghanistan, and he invoked Mr. Obama’s personal directive to “lean forward” in providing assistance. American aircraft have rescued more than 4,000 people since Aug. 5.

The Pentagon announced Friday that ships carrying more relief supplies and helicopters had left the East Coast and would arrive in the waters off Pakistan in late September.

How much credit the United States will receive in the eyes of the Pakistanis is not clear. Some of the aid has been channeled through Pakistani and international groups because the government did not want to be associated with the unpopular Americans.

But the magnitude of the disaster, which the government says has now driven 20 million people from their homes, may be changing those calculations and, the Americans hope, breaking down that taboo.

The American response is putting to a practical test Mr. Obama’s strategy to engage Pakistan as a strategic partner on multiple levels, including economic development, counterinsurgency, law enforcement and judicial reforms, and intelligence sharing.

It comes as the American ally in that effort, President Asif Ali Zardari, is facing withering criticism at home for paying a state visit to France and Britain during the flooding, the worst in Pakistan’s history.

“This is a country where we have an enormous interest in their going after the Taliban and other extremist jihadi groups,” said Mark L. Schneider, a senior vice president at the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that focuses on conflict resolution. “If this kind of activity supports the Pakistani government and people supporting the Pakistani government, it’s all to the good.”

Some experts on the region had recently warned that public resentment of the government generated by the floods could wear away public support for the military campaign against militants, integral to American goals in the region. Those worries only deepened as hard-line Islamist charities rushed to fill the void in humanitarian aid left by the government’s slow and chaotic response.

Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who leads the Foreign Relations Committee, said Friday that he would visit Pakistan this week to assess the damage and whether the United States needed to rethink how $7.5 billion in long-term, nonmilitary aid to Pakistan would be spent as a result of the flooding.

American officials say they are trying to rekindle the same good will generated five years ago when the United States military played a major role in responding to an earthquake in Kashmir in 2005 that killed 75,000 people.

Many of the same American and Pakistani leaders who worked together during that crisis have reunited in this calamity, including Nadeem Ahmad, a retired Pakistani lieutenant general, and Vice Adm. Michael A. LeFever, the senior American officer in Pakistan. But American officials warn that the glow from the earthquake assistance faded quickly without more enduring development programs.

“LeFever clearly understands the P.R. value of flood assistance, but he also knows that absent other high-profile public diplomacy efforts, the half-life of any improvement to Pakistani impressions of the U.S. will be short,” said John K. Wood, a retired Army colonel who was senior director for Afghanistan on the National Security Council in the Bush and Obama administrations.

The American aid drawn from giant warehouses in Dubai and in Pisa, Italy, includes 500,000 halal meals, 12 prefabricated bridges to help replace the hundreds that have washed away, 14 rescue boats, and six large-scale water-filtration systems. Last week Pakistan submitted a several-page request for additional supplies, including more boats and bridges, a senior Defense Department official said.

“The U.S. has been forthcoming on providing what we need,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States.

Still, the United States is aware that the relief effort could backfire, or at least include some negatives. Mr. Gates said relief would be paced according to Pakistan’s request, in part to avoid any perception that the United States is running the relief effort.

The United States will also have to be mindful of how the Pakistani public perceives what will be a growing American military presence in country, though largely restricted to an isolated military base. By the end of this week, when the last of the 19 helicopters begin rescue and aid missions in the Swat Valley, about 250 American troops will be operating with Pakistani troops.

It remains difficult to calculate the long-term effects of the floods on America’s goals in the country, which include focusing the Pakistani government on fighting the militants that threaten it and use Pakistan as a base to attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.

It has been difficult to assess, for instance, how far the flooding has set back reconstruction efforts in the Swat Valley. The rebuilding is considered crucial to keeping the area from falling back under the influence of militants the government drove out in an offensive last year.

The scale of the flooding is also demanding a greater role from the Pakistani military, which in turn leaves some American military officials concerned that the army’s counterinsurgency campaign could falter in the northwest border regions.

Mr. Gates told reporters last week that the Pakistani military had not been expected to launch any new offensives against militants in the short term, and he said it remained to be seen whether the flood would have a significant impact on the Pakistani government’s campaign against extremists.

“Clearly, they’re going to have to divert some troops, and already have, in trying to deal with the flooding,” Mr. Gates said.


Reporting was contributed by Salmon Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan, Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations, and Thom Shanker from Washington.

    U.S. Offers Aid to Rescue Pakistanis and Reclaim Image, NYT, 14.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/asia/15pstan.html

Who Will Help the Palestinians?

August 6, 2010
The New York Times

To the Editor:

Efraim Karsh’s Aug. 2 Op-Ed article, “The Palestinians, Alone,” is brilliantly observed. Arab leaders long ago abandoned Palestine; now it seems clear that the majority of their Arab brethren have done so as well.

It’s up to the Palestinians and their representatives to negotiate with Israel. Both have a right to exist; neither needs permission from outside supporters, only the will to make it happen.

In doing so, they might, I suspect, find common ground in their love of their land, in their outsider status and in their desire to provide peace, security and freedom for their citizens. Imagine how much it might upset the neighbors — reason enough to see it through.

Nikki Stern
Princeton, N.J., Aug. 2, 2010

The writer is the author of “Because I Say So: The Dangerous Appeal of Moral Authority.”

•

To the Editor:

Any person who spends even a small amount of time studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict realizes that Arab leaders have manipulated “the Palestinian cause for their own ends while ignoring the fate of the Palestinians,” as Efraim Karsh writes.

But to claim that the abandonment of the cause of Palestine by Arab leaders, and now even the Arab street, will somehow make it more likely for Palestinians “to make peace with the existence of the State of Israel and to understand the need for a negotiated settlement” seems to ignore some important realities.

Indeed, a divided Palestinian leadership is a central obstacle, but so are the continuing expansion of settlements and a system of checkpoints that strangles economic and social life in the West Bank; an economic embargo on the Gaza Strip (perhaps eased in light of the flotilla incident, but not eliminated); and a current Israeli leadership that is neither terribly interested in recognizing the political existence of the Palestinians nor understanding of the need for negotiations either.

Stefanie Nanes
Brooklyn, Aug. 2, 2010

The writer is an assistant professor of political science at Hofstra University.

•

To the Editor:

There’s only one thing missing from Efraim Karsh’s masterful portrayal of Arab manipulation of the Palestinian cause: Israel.

A blind spot for Israel’s own contribution to the conflict (witness the continuing West Bank settlement project) is as dangerous as denying the interconnectedness with regional instability, to which American military and political leaders have so passionately testified.

Scott B. Lasensky
Silver Spring, Md., Aug. 2, 2010

The writer is a senior research associate, U.S. Institute of Peace.


•

To the Editor:

I agree with Efraim Karsh. The Arab countries have failed the Palestinians in every way. Their rhetoric about the rights of Palestinians has been uttered to serve their own causes rather than those of the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are alone and, with the exception of extremists among them, there is nothing they would like better than to have peace with Israel, have jobs, send their children to school, have easy access to hospitals, and have the ability to move around without checkpoints, walls and fear of eviction or house demolition.

There is an opportunity to agree to a solution now. For Mahmoud Abbas to get the support of his population for face-to-face negotiations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to demonstrate that he means what he says when he talks about the Israeli government’s willingness to negotiate.

He can do this by halting the settlements, easing the siege of Gaza and discontinuing the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem. This is his challenge.

Mr. Abbas’s challenge is to get the support of the whole Palestinian population and negotiate with a united front.

Being alone is not a sufficient motivator for the Palestinian people, who are suffering daily from life under occupation. It must be accompanied by confidence that Israel is sincere in its desire to negotiate.

Hanan Watson
New York, Aug. 3, 2010

    Who Will Help the Palestinians?, NYT, 6.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/opinion/l07mideast.html

President Obama and Iran

August 6, 2010
The New York Times

At first glance, President Obama’s policy on Iran and its illicit nuclear program is not all that different from President George W. Bush’s. They both committed themselves, on paper, to sanctions and engagement.

Mr. Bush, however, was never really that serious about the carrots, and he spent so much time alienating America’s friends that he was never able to win broad support for the sticks: credible international sanctions.

Mr. Obama has done considerably better on the sanctions front — at the United Nations and from the European Union, Canada and Australia. But the other piece of a credible strategy — serious engagement — seemed to be getting lost. So it was encouraging that he made the effort this week to reassert his commitment to talks with Tehran. Meeting with journalists from The Times and other publications on Wednesday, he said his pledge to change the United States-Iran relationship after 30 years of animosity “continues to be entirely sincere.”

Mr. Obama reaffirmed his interest in bilateral talks within an existing framework for dealing with the nuclear program that involves Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany. And he endorsed separate talks on issues like Afghanistan, drug trafficking and regional stability.

He also stressed the need to outline a clear “pathway” of steps that Iran could take to convince the world that it is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program. “They should know what they can say yes to,” he said.

We agree. So we were surprised that Mr. Obama would not provide specifics on what the “pathway” might entail. That’s the kind of detail that Iranian leaders need to know now when they appear to be debating whether to engage Washington. If Mr. Obama didn’t want to share the information publicly with journalists, we hope he is sharing it privately with Tehran.

The United States and its allies should also present a vision of what normalized relations would look like if Tehran heeds repeated demands from the United Nations Security Council to curb its nuclear program. A package of inducements first proposed in 2006 — diplomatic ties, trade, nuclear energy technology — needs to be on the table so Iran fully understands its choices. Otherwise, Mr. Obama’s talk of an open door for Tehran will be almost as hollow as Mr. Bush’s.

Mr. Obama and his team deserve credit for a fourth round of Security Council sanctions and even tougher national sanctions — adopted by the United States, the European Union, Canada and Australia — that aim to restrict business with Iranian banks and oil and gas enterprises. The European Union’s penalties were strong and could make it impossible for Tehran to do business in euros. Western leaders need to make sure they are enforced. German compliance is a particular concern.

The administration has had some success getting Russia, Iran’s longtime enabler, to implement sanctions. But it seems to be losing ground with China. A vice premier said on Friday that Beijing would continue investing in Iran’s oil wealth despite voting for the United Nations penalties. Washington also must persuade Japan, South Korea, Turkey and India to make maximum effort.

President Obama says he hears “rumblings” that sanctions are beginning to bite. Aides believe that technical problems with Iran’s nuclear program have bought at least a year for sanctions and diplomacy to work.

The Iranian government continues to churn out nuclear fuel and block international inspections. There’s no guarantee it will ever agree to curb its nuclear program. But Washington and its partners are creating a plan that might have a chance of affecting Iran’s calculations.

    President Obama and Iran, NYT, 6.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/opinion/07sat1.html

U.S. Envoy Attends Hiroshima Event

August 6, 2010
The New York Times
By MARTIN FACKLER

HIROSHIMA, Japan — With the mournful gong of a Buddhist temple bell and the release of a flock of doves, a crowd of 55,000 on Friday solemnly marked the moment 65 years ago when the world’s first atomic attack incinerated this city under a towering mushroom cloud.

For first time, a representative of the United States, Ambassador John V. Roos, participated in the annual ceremony, raising hopes here of a visit soon by a more prominent guest, President Obama, who is scheduled to be in Japan in November.

Mr. Obama has become a popular figure here since his speech in Prague last year calling for the for elimination of nuclear weapons. The mayor and other residents of Hiroshima have offered him repeated invitations to come to their city, which — along with Nagasaki — has become one of the world’s most recognized symbols of the horrors of nuclear war.

American officials have traditionally skipped the annual ceremony, fearing their presence would renew the debate over whether the United States should apologize for the World War II bombings, which together killed more than 200,000 people in explosions so intense that many victims were simply vaporized, leaving only ghostly shadows on walls, while others died in slow agony from burns and radiation sickness.

Such a debate would be politically divisive in the United States and could drive a wedge between the United States and Japan, now one of Washington’s closest allies. American officials have long defended the bombings as having shortened the war and avoided an invasion, which they say would have cost untold thousands of American and Japanese lives. But many Japanese see them as the epitome of the indiscriminate slaughter of modern warfare, and a principal reason for the nation’s postwar pacifism.

In interviews this week, political leaders here, including aging survivors of the bombing, sought to allay such concerns, saying they had no intention of asking the president to make an apology. Instead, they said they would feel some measure of solace if a visit to their city could help Mr. Obama to realize his vision of a denuclearized world.

“There is no point in apologizing now, after 65 years,” said Akihiro Takahashi, 79, the former head of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and a survivor of the bombing, who has spearheaded the effort to bring Mr. Obama by writing four letters of invitation. “We want President Obama to see with his own eyes what really happened here. This will give him stronger willpower to eliminate nuclear weapons.”

Calls have spread in Japan for Mr. Obama to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki since the Prague speech and his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. Speculation has focused on his November visit, which will coincide with a gathering in Hiroshima of other Nobel Peace laureates.

During a visit to Washington in January, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima personally extended an invitation to Mr. Obama. In a speech during the ceremony Friday, Mr. Akiba praised the president’s “powerful influence” in pushing nuclear disarmament.

Indeed, a new sense of hope seems to permeate this city that the world’s nuclear powers, and particularly the United States, may finally share its desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons. In front of city hall, a large sign proclaims Hiroshima to be part of an “Obamajority” backing Mr. Obama’s call in Prague.

While some Japanese still consider the bombings a war crime, mainstream opinion appears to be more complex, largely out of recognition of Japan’s militaristic past. In interviews with more than two dozen Japanese who visited the Hiroshima peace memorial this week, only one said with any conviction that the United States should apologize.

Their views largely echoed the message of the peace memorial, which sidesteps the issue of responsibility and presents Hiroshima as a tragic warning to all against the use of nuclear weapons.

Younger Japanese said that while they were appalled by the graphic depictions of individual suffering in the peace memorial’s museum, they did not view Hiroshima as an atrocity on the same moral level as the Holocaust, because the Japanese were not solely victims.

“Japan has its past, too, including Pearl Harbor,” said Akeo Fuji, 50, who came from Mie Prefecture. “This is not about hating the United States, but about hating nuclear war.”

Inatomi Takashi, 27, of Nagasaki, said “We became prosperous because of America, so we don’t see America darkly.”

Historians say such sentiments are widely if quietly shared in this nation, where the war remains a touchy, often taboo topic. They said the moral ambiguity was one reason for the almost total lack of hostility toward Americans in Hiroshima, now a pleasant city of trolley cars in the shadow of forested mountains.

Yet, this is a city that remains intensely aware of its historical significance.

When it rebuilt, Hiroshima set aside a large swath of its former center as a peace park, including the Atomic Bomb Dome — the skeletal steel and concrete remains of an industrial exhibition hall that was one of the few structures spared by the blast.

The dome served as an eerie backdrop for the ceremony on Friday. While Mr. Roos, the American ambassador, did not speak, he seemed to draw more attention than the other guests, including the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who also attended for the first time.

Mr. Ban also called for the elimination of nuclear weapons, saying that it was time to move from “ground zero to global zero.”

“For many of you,” he said, “that day endures as vivid as the white light that seared the sky, as dark as the black rain that followed.”

In a statement, the United States Embassy said that Mr. Roos’s visit had reflected “a common goal of advancing President Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Not everyone welcomed the ambassador. A few blocks away, at an impromptu alternative memorial, leftist groups demanded an American apology and expulsion of United States military bases in Japan. But even there, many said they would appreciate a visit by Mr. Obama, even without an apology.

“I want President Obama to apologize,” said Tadashi Takahashi, 84, a survivor who became an antiwar activist. “But even more, I want what he wants, a world without nuclear weapons.”

Experts here said that a healthy dialogue, instead of dividing the two nations, could bring them closer together. They said that many Japanese did not necessarily deny the bombs had hastened the war’s end but that they felt that Americans did not appreciate their appalling human cost.

“Japan and the United States are not so far apart,” said Kazumi Mizumoto, a professor at Hiroshima City University. “Maybe they should offer a joint apology of all the terrible things that happened in that war.”

    U.S. Envoy Attends Hiroshima Event, 6.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/world/asia/07japan.html

The Palestinians, Alone

August 1, 2010
The New Yorf Times
By EFRAIM KARSH

London

IT has long been conventional wisdom that the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a prerequisite to peace and stability in the Middle East. Since Arabs and Muslims are so passionate about the Palestine problem, this argument runs, the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate feeds regional anger and despair, gives a larger rationale to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and to the insurgency in Iraq and obstructs the formation of a regional coalition that will help block Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

What, then, are we to make of a recent survey for the Al Arabiya television network finding that a staggering 71 percent of the Arabic respondents have no interest in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks? “This is an alarming indicator,” lamented Saleh Qallab, a columnist for the pan-Arab newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat. “The Arabs, people and regimes alike, have always been as interested in the peace process, its developments and particulars, as they were committed to the Palestinian cause itself.”

But the truth is that Arab policies since the mid-1930s suggest otherwise. While the “Palestine question” has long been central to inter-Arab politics, Arab states have shown far less concern for the well-being of the Palestinians than for their own interests.

For example, it was common knowledge that the May 1948 pan-Arab invasion of the nascent state of Israel was more a scramble for Palestinian territory than a fight for Palestinian national rights. As the first secretary-general of the Arab League, Abdel Rahman Azzam, once admitted to a British reporter, the goal of King Abdullah of Transjordan “was to swallow up the central hill regions of Palestine, with access to the Mediterranean at Gaza. The Egyptians would get the Negev. Galilee would go to Syria, except that the coastal part as far as Acre would be added to the Lebanon.”

From 1948 to 1967, when Egypt and Jordan ruled the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the Arab states failed to put these populations on the road to statehood. They also showed little interest in protecting their human rights or even in improving their quality of life — which is part of the reason why 120,000 West Bank Palestinians moved to the East Bank of the Jordan River and about 300,000 others emigrated abroad. “We couldn’t care less if all the refugees die,” an Egyptian diplomat once remarked. “There are enough Arabs around.”

Not surprisingly, the Arab states have never hesitated to sacrifice Palestinians on a grand scale whenever it suited their needs. In 1970, when his throne came under threat from the Palestine Liberation Organization, the affable and thoroughly Westernized King Hussein of Jordan ordered the deaths of thousands of Palestinians, an event known as “Black September.”

Six years later, Lebanese Christian militias, backed by the Syrian Army, massacred some 3,500 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in the Beirut refugee camp of Tel al-Zaatar. These militias again slaughtered hundreds of Palestinians in 1982 in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, this time under Israel’s watchful eye. None of the Arab states came to the Palestinians’ rescue.

Worse, in the mid-’80s, when the P.L.O. — officially designated by the Arab League as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people” — tried to re-establish its military presence in Lebanon, it was unceremoniously expelled by President Hafez al-Assad of Syria.

This history of Arab leaders manipulating the Palestinian cause for their own ends while ignoring the fate of the Palestinians goes on and on. Saddam Hussein, in an effort to ennoble his predatory designs, claimed that he wouldn’t consider ending his August 1990 invasion of Kuwait without “the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Israel from the occupied Arab territories in Palestine.”

Shortly after the Persian Gulf War, Kuwaitis then set about punishing the P.L.O. for its support of Hussein — cutting off financial sponsorship, expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinian workers and slaughtering thousands. Their retribution was so severe that Arafat was forced to acknowledge that “what Kuwait did to the Palestinian people is worse than what has been done by Israel to Palestinians in the occupied territories.”

Against this backdrop, it is a positive sign that so many Arabs have apparently grown so apathetic about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For if the Arab regimes’ self-serving interventionism has denied Palestinians the right to determine their own fate, then the best, indeed only, hope of peace between Arabs and Israelis lies in rejecting the spurious link between this particular issue and other regional and global problems.

The sooner the Palestinians recognize that their cause is theirs alone, the sooner they are likely to make peace with the existence of the State of Israel and to understand the need for a negotiated settlement.


Efraim Karsh, a professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King’s College London, is the author, most recently, of “Palestine Betrayed.”

    The Palestinians, Alone, NYT, 1.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02karsh.html

The Roots of the Misery in Gaza

July 14, 2010
The New York Times
 

To the Editor:

“Trapped by Gaza Blockade, Locked in Despair” (front page, July 14) clearly and graphically describes the deplorable conditions in Gaza — the squalid, listless existence of its inhabitants — and the intense discord between Hamas, which controls Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank.

Add to this the rampant corruption and ineptitude of the leadership of both groups, and the fact that Hamas denies Israel’s right to exist, aptly expressed by a resident of Gaza: “All the land is ours. We should turn the Jews into refugees and then let the international community take care of them.”

All of which raises the question: What is the point of pushing for any peace talks when the likelihood of anything positive resulting from them is virtually zero?

At an absolute minimum, the Palestinians need to put their own house in order and unequivocally recognize Israel’s existence. Without that, peace talks that once again raise unrealistic expectations may be worse than no talks at all.

Jerry Rapp
New York, July 14, 2010

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To the Editor:

The situation in Gaza as described by your article illustrates the real tragedy the Palestinians face in Gaza: leadership that prefers to demonize Israel and the Palestinians controlling the West Bank, to build nostalgia for a Palestine of the past and to hold a kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, than to offer positive steps for economic and social development.

These leaders point with pride to a tunnel-based smuggling culture and prepare for the next war instead of teaching the people of Gaza about peace. Instead of fulminating about the Israeli occupation, we need to help the Palestinian people to overthrow the Hamas leadership that has brought them war and despair.

Samuel Heilman
New Rochelle, N.Y., July 14, 2010

The writer is a professor of sociology and Jewish studies at Queens College, CUNY, and the Graduate Center.

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To the Editor:

The most chilling part of your report from Gaza is this observation: “Direct contact between the peoples, common in the 1980s and ’90s when Palestinians worked daily in Israel, is nonexistent.”

Travel restrictions between Israel, Gaza and the West Bank not only undermine the economic stability of the region, but also foster a continued “us versus them” mentality. Imposed by Israel as security measures, they will ironically undermine Israel’s security by prolonging and deepening the conflict.

Ryan Gee
Brooklyn, July 14, 2010

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To the Editor:

Heart-wrenching civilian deprivation in Gaza is paralleled by similar and worse conditions in many other places in the world where despotic regimes reign. Innocent residents of Gaza, though, have the right to feel particularly dejected, as their murderous, peace-rejecting Hamas government came about through votes cast by a majority of their fellow Gazans.

May we one day soon see a broad Arab endorsement of peaceful co-existence with Israel, after which prosperity will quickly come to Gaza and the entire region.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran
Director of Public Affairs
Agudath Israel of America
New York, July 14, 2010

    The Roots of the Misery in Gaza, 14.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/opinion/l15gaza.html

Trapped by Gaza Blockade,

Locked in Despair

July 13, 2010
The New York Times
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and ETHAN BRONNER

GAZA CITY — The women were bleary-eyed, their voices weak, their hands red and calloused. How could they be expected to cook and clean without water or electricity? What could they do in homes that were dark and hot all day? How could they cope with husbands who had not worked for years and children who were angry and aimless?

Sitting with eight other women at a stress clinic, Jamalat Wadi, 28, tried to listen to the mental health worker. But she could not contain herself. She has eight children, and her unemployed husband spends his days on sedatives.

“Our husbands don’t work, my kids are not in school, I get nervous, I yell at them, I cry, I fight with my husband,” she blurted. “My husband starts fighting with us and then he cries: ‘What am I going to do? What can I do?’ ”

The others knew exactly what she meant.

The Palestinians of Gaza, most of them descended from refugees of the 1948 war that created Israel, have lived through decades of conflict and confrontation. Their scars have accumulated like layers of sedimentary rock, each marking a different crisis — homelessness, occupation, war, dependency.

Today, however, two developments have conspired to turn a difficult life into a new torment: a three-year blockade by Israel and Egypt that has locked them in the small enclave and crushed what there was of a formal local economy; and the bitter rivalry between Palestinian factions, which has undermined identity and purpose, divided families and caused a severe shortage of electricity in the middle of summer.

There are plenty of things to buy in Gaza; goods are brought over the border or smuggled through the tunnels with Egypt. That is not the problem.

In fact, talk about food and people here get angry because it implies that their struggle is over subsistence rather than quality of life. The issue is not hunger. It is idleness, uncertainty and despair.

Any discussion of Gaza’s travails is part of a charged political debate. No humanitarian crisis? That is an Israeli talking point, people here will say, aimed at making the world forget Israel’s misdeeds. Palestinians trapped with no future? They are worse off in Lebanon, others respond, where their “Arab brothers” bar them from buying property and working in most professions.

But the situation is certainly dire. Scores of interviews and hours spent in people’s homes over a dozen consecutive days here produced a portrait of a fractured and despondent society unable to imagine a decent future for itself as it plunges into listless desperation and radicalization.

It seems most unlikely that either a Palestinian state or any kind of Middle East peace can emerge without substantial change here. Gaza, on almost every level, is stuck.

Disunity

A main road was blocked off and a stage set up for a rally protesting the electricity shortage. Speakers shook nearby windows with the anthems of Hamas, the Islamist party that has held power here for the past three years. Boys in military camouflage goose-stepped. Young men carried posters of a man with vampire teeth biting into a bloodied baby.

The vampire was not Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. It was Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

“We stand today in this furious night to express our intense anger toward this damned policy by the illegitimate so-called Fayyad government,” Ismail Radwan, a Hamas official, shouted.

As if the Palestinian people did not have enough trouble, they have not one government but two, the Fatah-dominated one in the West Bank city of Ramallah and the Hamas one here. The antagonism between them offers a depth of rivalry and rage that shows no sign of abating.

Its latest victim is electricity for Gaza, part of which is supplied by Israel and paid for by the West Bank government, which is partly reimbursed by Hamas. But the West Bank says that Hamas is not paying enough so it has held off paying Israel, which has halted delivery.

“They are lining their pockets and they are part of the siege,” asserted Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader and a surgeon, speaking of the West Bank government. “There will be no reconciliation.”

John Ging, who heads the Gaza office of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as U.N.R.W.A., says the latest electricity problem “is a sad reflection of the divide on the Palestinian side.”

He added, “They have no credibility in demanding anything from anybody if they show such disregard for the plight of their own people.”

Today Hamas has no rival here. It runs the schools, hospitals, courts, security services and — through smuggler tunnels from Egypt — the economy.

“We solved a lot of problems with the tunnels,” Dr. Zahar said with a satisfied smile.

Along with the leaders has come a new generation that has taken the reins of power. Momen al-Ghemri, 25, a nurse, and his wife, Iman, 24, an Arabic teacher, are members of it.

University educated, the grandchildren of refugees, still living in refugee camps, both of the Ghemris got their jobs when Hamas took over full control by force three years ago, a year after it won an election. Neither has ever left Gaza.

Mr. Ghemri works as a nurse for the security services, earning $500 a month, but is spending six months at the intensive care unit of Shifa Hospital.

Spare parts for equipment remain a problem because of the blockade. But on a recent shift, the I.C.U. was well staffed. In the office next door, there was a map on the wall of Palestine before Israel’s creation.

Mr. Ghemri’s grandparents’ village, Aqer, is up there, along with 400 other villages that no longer exist. A wall in another office offered instructions on the Muslim way to help a bedridden patient pray.

Mr. Ghemri’s wife greets visitors at home wearing the niqab, or face veil, only her eyes visible. She believes in Hamas and makes that clear to her pupils. But her husband sees the party more as a means toward an end.

“You can’t go on your own to apply for a job,” he said. “For me, Hamas is about employment.”

He does like the fact that, as he put it, Hamas “refuses to kneel down to the Jews,” but like most Gazans, he is worried about Palestinian disunity and blames both factions.

In fact, there is a paradox at work in Gaza: while Hamas has no competition for power, it also has a surprisingly small following.

Dozens of interviews with all sorts of people found few willing to praise their government or that of its competitor.

“They’re both liars,” Waleed Hassouna, a baker in Gaza City, said in a very common comment.

People here seem increasingly unable to imagine a political solution to their ills. Ask Gazans how to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict — two states? One state? — and the answer is mostly a reflexive call to drive Israel out.

“Hamas and Fatah are two sides of the same coin,” Ramzi, a public school teacher from the city of Rafah, said in a widely expressed sentiment. “All the land is ours. We should turn the Jews into refugees and then let the international community take care of them.”

Dried-Up Fortunes

Hamza and Muhammad Ju’bas are brothers, ages 13 and 11. They sell chocolates and gum on the streets after school to add to their family income. Once they have pulled in 20 shekels, about $5, they go home and play.

On one steamy afternoon they were taking refuge in a cellphone service center. The center — where customers watch for their number on digital displays and smiling representatives wear ties, and the air-conditioning never quits — seems almost glamorous.

The boys were asked about their hopes.

“My dream is to be like these guys and work in a place that’s cool,” Muhammad said.

“My dream is to be a worker,” Hamza said. He hears stories about the “good times” in the 1990s, when his father worked in Israel, as a house painter, making $85 a day. Later, their father, Emad Ju’bas, 45, said, “My children don’t have much ambition.”

The family is typical. They live in Shujaiya, a packed eastern neighborhood of 70,000, a warren of narrow, winding alleys and main roads lined with small shops.

The air is heavy with dust and fumes from cars, scooters and horse-drawn carts. Every shop has a small generator chained down outside. Roaring generators and wailing children are the sounds of Shujaiya.

Families are big. From 1997 through 2007, the population increased almost 40 percent, to 1.5 million. Palestinians say that large families will help them cope as they age, and more children mean more fighters for their cause.

Mr. Ju’bas and his wife, Hiyam, have seven boys and three girls. Two of their children have cognitive disabilities. Since Israel’s three-week war 18 months ago here aimed at stopping Hamas rockets, their children frequently wet the bed. Their youngest, Taj, 4, is aggressive, randomly punching anyone around him.

For six years Mr. Ju’bas worked in Israel, and with the money he bought a house with six rooms and two bathrooms. In 2000, when the uprising called the second intifada broke out, Israel closed the gates.

After that, Mr. Ju’bas found small jobs around Gaza, but with the blockade that dried up. His only source of work is at the United Nations relief agency, where two months a year he is a security guard.

He admits that at times he lashes out at his family. Domestic violence is on the rise. The strain is acute for women. Men can go out and sit in parks, in chairs right on the sidewalk or visit friends. Women are expected to stay off the streets.

The women at the stress clinic gathered about 10 a.m. They entered silently, wearing the ubiquitous hijab head scarf and ankle-length button-down overcoat known as the jilbab. Two wore the niqab over their faces.

They spoke of sending their children to work just to get them out of the house and of husbands who grew morose and violent.

They blamed Hamas for their misery, for seizing the Israeli soldier, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, which led to the blockade. But they also blamed Fatah for failing them.

“My own children tell me it is better to die,” Jamalat Wadi said to the group.

Ms. Wadi’s home was next door and she ran over to check on the family. She found her eight children wandering aimlessly in an open paved area, a courtyard filled with piles of clothes and plastic containers. The house had one unfurnished room and her husband, Bahjat, 28, was on the floor, unconscious, his arm over his head, his mouth open.

“He sleeps all the time,” Ms. Wadi said, motioning as though throwing a pill in her mouth.

The Wadis are refugees, so they receive flour, rice, oil and sugar from U.N.R.W.A. Tens of thousands of others here receive salaries from the Ramallah government to stay away from their jobs in protest over Hamas rule. They wait, part of a literate society with nothing to do.

Ms. Wadi said that when she visited her mother, her two brothers fought bitterly because one backs Hamas and the other backs Fatah. Recently they threw bottles at each other. Her mother kicked them out.

In another meeting, Mr. Ju’bas was unshaven and unwashed. The previous night he had hit his wife, one of his children said. The washing machine had broken and he had no money to fix it.

He told his wife to use the neighbors’. But she was embarrassed. She stayed up all night cleaning clothes and crying.

“My only dream,” Mr. Ju’bas said, “is to have patience.”

Inside Looking Out

The waves were lapping the beach. It was night. Mahmoud Mesalem, 20, and a few of his friends were sitting at a restaurant.

University students or recent graduates, they were raised in a world circumscribed by narrow boundaries drawn hard by politics and geography. They all despaired from the lack of a horizon.

“We’re here, we’re going to die here, we’re going to be buried here,” lamented Waleed Matar, 22.

Mr. Mesalem pointed at an Israeli ship on the horizon, then made his hand into a gun, pointed it at his head. “If we try to leave, they will shoot us,” he said.

There are posters around town with a drawing of a boot on an Israeli soldier, who is facedown, and the silhouette of a man hanging by his neck. The goal is to get alleged collaborators to turn themselves in. The campaign has put fear in the air.

Israel is never far from people’s minds here. Its ships control the waters, its planes control the skies. Its whims, Gazans feel, control their fate.

And while most here view Israel as the enemy, they want trade ties and to work there. In their lives the main source of income has been from and through Israel.

Economists here say what is most needed now is not more goods coming in, as the easing of the blockade has permitted, but people and exports getting out.

That is not going to happen soon.

“Our position against the movement of people is unchanged,” said Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, the Israeli in charge of policy to Gaza’s civilians. “As to exports, not now. Security is paramount, so that will have to wait.”

Direct contact between the peoples, common in the 1980s and ’90s when Palestinians worked daily in Israel, is nonexistent.

Jamil Mahsan, 62, is a member of a dying breed. He worked for 35 years in Israel and believes in two states.

“There are two peoples in Palestine, not just one, and each deserves its rights,” he said, sitting in his son’s house. He used to attend the weddings of his Israeli co-workers. He had friendships in Israel. Today nobody here does.

The young men sitting by the beach contemplating their lives were representative of the new Gaza. They have started a company to design advertisements, and they write and produce small plays.

Their first performance in front of several hundred people involved a recounting of the horrors of the last war with Israel, with children speaking about their own fears as video of the war played.

Their second play, which they are rehearsing, is a black comedy about the Palestinian plight. It assails the factions for fighting and the Arabs for selling out the Palestinians.

“Our play does not mean we hate Israel,” said Abdel Qader Ismail, 24, a former employee of the military intelligence service, with no trace of irony. “We believe in Israel’s right to exist, but not on the land of Palestine. In France or in Russia, but not in Palestine. This is our home.”


Mona El-Naggar and Fares Akram contributed reporting.

    Trapped by Gaza Blockade, Locked in Despair, NYT, 13.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/world/middleeast/14gaza.html

U.S. Training of Pakistani Forces Faces Hurdles

July 11, 2010
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT and JANE PERLEZ

WARSAK, Pakistan — The recent graduation ceremony here for Pakistani troops trained by Americans to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda was intended as show of fresh cooperation between the Pakistani and American militaries. But it said as much about its limitations.

Nearly 250 Pakistani paramilitary troops in khaki uniforms and green berets snapped to attention, with top students accepting a certificate from an American Army colonel after completing the specialized training for snipers and platoon and company leaders.

But this new center, 20 miles from the Afghanistan border, was built to train as many as 2,000 soldiers at a time. The largest component of the American-financed instruction — a 10-week basic-training course — is months behind schedule, officials from both sides acknowledge, in part because Pakistani commanders say they cannot afford to send troops for new training as fighting intensifies in the border areas.

Pakistan also restricts the number of American trainers throughout the country to no more than about 120 Special Operations personnel, fearful of being identified too closely with the unpopular United States — even though the Americans reimburse Pakistan more than $1 billion a year for its military operations in the border areas. “We want to keep a low signature,” said a senior Pakistani officer.

The deep suspicion that underlies every American move here is a fact of life that American officers say they must work through as they try to reverse the effects of the many years when the United States had cut Pakistan off from military aid because of its nuclear weapons program.

That time of estrangement, which lasted through the 1990s, left the Pakistanis feeling scorned and abandoned by the United States, and its military distant and seeded with officers and soldiers sympathetic to conservative Islam — and even at times the very militants they are today charged with fighting.

Today the American-led war in Afghanistan and its continuing campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas have made the United States suspect at all levels of the military, and among the Pakistani population, as anti-Americanism has hit new heights. This training program is among the first steps to repair that relationship. “This is the most complex operating environment I’ve ever dealt with,” said Col. Kurt Sonntag, a West Point graduate who handed out the graduation certificates here.

Such are the limits on the Americans that dozens of Pakistani enlisted “master trainers,” taught by the Americans, do the bulk of the hands-on instruction here. Since January 2009, about 1,000 scouts from Pakistan’s Frontier Corps have completed the training, which is designed to help turn the 58,000-member paramilitary force that patrols the tribal areas from a largely passive border force into skilled and motivated fighters.

The personnel training is just one piece of what is now a multipronged relationship. With combating Al Qaeda and the Taliban now the overriding priority, the United States provides Pakistan with a wide array of weapons, shares intelligence about the militants, and has given it more than $10 billion toward the cost of deploying nearly 150,000 troops in and around the border areas since 2001 — with the promise of much more to come.

On June 27, the United States delivered to Pakistan the first of three new F-16 jet fighters equipped with precision targeting instruments for day and night use. A half dozen United States Air Force pilots traveled here to train and qualify Pakistani aviators on night operations.

Washington is stressing that these upgraded fighters will be used by Pakistan against the militants in the tribal areas, but they also augment the F-16 fleet that the United States has financed over the years as part of the country’s arsenal that is directed against India.

By urging Pakistan to embrace counterinsurgency training, the United States is trying to steer the Pakistani Army toward spending more resources against what Washington believes is Pakistan’s main enemy, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, rather than devoting almost the entire military effort against India, American officials said. Central to this approach is an array of training that the Americans tailor to what Pakistani says it needs for the Frontier Corps, its conventional army and its Special Operations forces.

About a dozen American trainers are assigned to yearlong duty at this training center, a cluster of classrooms and dormitories and adjacent training ranges on a large campus, which the United States spent $23 million to build, plus another $30 million for training and equipment requested by the Pakistani military.

The most gifted Frontier Corps marksmen are selected for sniper training, a skill in need against the Taliban who have been using Russian-made Dragonov sniper rifles to deadly effect against the Pakistani Army.

Five two-man sniper teams, trained to use American-made M24 rifles as well as how to work with a spotter, measure wind speeds and camouflage their positions, received awards from Colonel Sonntag. But five two-man teams were dropped during the training because their math skills were not good enough, another American trainer said.

Much of the training here is aimed at building the confidence of the Frontier Corps scouts, some of whom have relatives in the Taliban, and who speak the same language, Pashto, as many militants. Often the militants are better armed and more handsomely paid than the scouts.

Three basic skills were built into the course, one of the American trainers said: How to shoot straight, how to administer battlefield first aid, and how to provide covering fire for advancing troops.

Until a few years ago, the Frontier Corps was widely ridiculed as corrupt and incompetent. But under the leadership of Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, salaries have quadrupled to about $200 a month, new equipment is flowing in, and the scouts are winning praise in combat. Still, General Khan acknowledged in an interview that the training here was still “settling down and maturing.”

The scouts face a battle-hardened enemy that has lived in the mountains around here for decades. “We’ve been here one-and-a-half years,” said Col. Ahsan Raza, the training center’s commandant. “They have been preparing for the last 20 years.”

The Pakistani Army also conducts training on its own without direct American aid. At the Pabbi Hills training center, halfway between Islamabad and Lahore, a visitor drives up a rutted dirt road, past clusters of troop tents pitched amid acacia trees, to a sprawling, 2,500-acre series of ranges and obstacle courses.

Every Pakistani Army unit assigned to the fight in the country’s tribal belt now receives at least four weeks of training in what the Pakistani Army calls “low-intensity conflict.”

Atop a 30-foot-high observation tower that doubles as a rappelling wall, Maj. Shaukat Hayat, second in command of the 55 Baloch Regiment, a 700-man infantry unit, oversees as his troops drill in how to clear a militant’s house. A billowing white smoke grenade offers advancing forces cover as they go room to room, exchanging gunfire with mock militants.

A Pakistani trainer stands on a walkway above the roofless rooms that allows him to observe and grade the troops’ performance. “When they’re done, they’ll go back and review what they did, and do it again,” said Major Hayat, 36.

The instructors are veterans of the campaigns in the tribal areas. Troops conduct live-fire drills on outdoor ranges with popup targets of militants. Similar drills at indoor ranges have paper targets with pictures of guerrillas and civilians, testing the troops’ split-second skills to judge friend or foe under fire.

But simulating the fight with the militants goes only so far, Pakistani officers say.

“It’s good textbook training, but the final training has to take place on the ground and must deal with the idea of a bullet coming at you,” said Lt. Gen. Asif Yasin Malik, who commands all Pakistani forces in the tribal areas. “After that first encounter, it’s done. They’re O.K.”

    U.S. Training of Pakistani Forces Faces Hurdles, NYT, 11.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/world/asia/12training.html

Spy Suspects Leave U.S.

in Swap With Russia

July 9, 2010
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER and BENJAMIN WEISER

WASHINGTON — Ten convicted Russian sleeper agents were whisked out of the United States on a plane headed over the Atlantic Ocean late Thursday as part of a deal with Moscow to put a quick end to an episode that threatened to disrupt relations between the two countries.

Even as the Russian spies were being hastily deported, four Russian men deemed spies for the United States and its allies were being pardoned by the Kremlin and prepared for release to the West in exchange. President Dmitri A. Medvedev signed an order to free them and they were expected to leave Russia promptly.

Neither government would say where their respective prisoners were heading initially, but one official familiar with the situation said the Russian spies were flying first to Vienna, where they would be handed over before traveling onto Moscow or any other final destination. The four Russians were to be released Friday morning Moscow time and also head first to Vienna as both sides made clear they hoped to put the incident behind them soon.

The swift conclusion to the cases just 11 days after the arrest of the Russian agents evoked memories of cold war-style bargaining but underscored the new-era relationship between Washington and Moscow. President Obama has made the “reset” of Russian-American relations a top foreign policy priority, and the quiet collaboration over the spy scandal indicates that the Kremlin likewise values the warmer ties.

“The agreement we reached today provides a successful resolution for the United States and its interests,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement.

Within hours of the New York court hearing, the Kremlin announced that President Dmitri A. Medvedev had signed pardons for the four men Russia considered spies after each of them signed statements admitting guilt.

The Kremlin identified them as Igor V. Sutyagin, an arms control researcher held for 11 years; Sergei Skripal, a colonel in Russia’s military intelligence service sentenced in 2006 to 13 years for spying for Britain; Aleksandr Zaporozhsky, a former agent with Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service who has served seven years of an 18-year sentence;and Gennadi Vasilenko, a former K.G.B. major who was arrested in 1998 for contacts with a C.I.A. officer but eventually released only to be arrested again in 2005 and later convicted on illegal weapons charges.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry attributed the agreement to the warming trend between Washington and Moscow. “This action was carried out in the overall context of improved Russian-American relations,” it said. “This agreement gives reason to hope that the course agreed upon by Russia and the United States will be accordingly realized in practice and that attempts to derail the course will not succeed.”

A White House spokesman, Ben Rhodes, said the episode would not affect the reset and that the two sides would cooperate when possible “even as we will defend our interests when we differ.” Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, said the president was fully briefed on the decision. Mr. Emanuel said the case showed that the United States was still watchful even as relations improved. “It sends a clear signal to not only Russia but other countries that will attempt this that we are on to them,” he told the PBS program “NewsHour.”

The sensational case straight out of a spy novel — complete with invisible ink, buried cash and a red-haired beauty whose romantic exploits have been excavated in the tabloids — came to a dramatic denouement in court.

The 10 defendants sat in the jury box, while their lawyers and prosecutors filled the well of the packed courtroom. Some of the Russian agents wore jail garb over orange T-shirts, while others wore civilian clothes. Natalia Pereverzeva, for example, known as Patricia Mills, sat in jeans with a dark sweater.

Few of the defendants conversed with one another. Some looked grim. One, Vicky Peláez, appeared to be weeping as she gestured to her sons at the close of the hearing.

At one point, Judge Kimba M. Wood asked each of the 10 to disclose their true names.

The first to rise was the man known as Richard Murphy, who lived with his wife and two children in Montclair, N.J. He said his name was Vladimir Guryev.

Then his wife rose. “My true name is Lydia Guryev,” she said.

All but three — Anna Chapman, Mikhail Semenko and Ms. Peláez — had assumed false names in the United States.

The 10 each pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without properly registering; the government said it would drop the more serious count of conspiracy to launder money, which eight of the defendants also faced. They had not been charged with espionage, apparently because they did not obtain classified information.

All of them agreed never to return to the United States without permission from the attorney general. They also agreed to turn over any money made from publication of their stories as agents, according to their plea agreements with the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan. Several also agreed to forfeit assets, including real estate, in the United States.

At one point, the prosecutor, Michael Farbiarz, told the judge that although Russian officials had met with the defendants, they had done nothing to force them to plead guilty or entice them into doing so. Defense lawyers concurred.

One lawyer, though, John M. Rodriguez, said Russian officials had made promises to his client, Ms. Peláez, but he assured the judge that they were not inducements to make her plead guilty. He said Ms. Peláez was told that upon her arrival in Russia, she could go to Peru or anywhere else; she was promised free housing in Russia and a monthly stipend of $2,000 for life and visas for her two children.

Ms. Peláez was not formally trained as a spy, her lawyer has said. He has also said that she had no desire to go to Russia as part of a swap. “I know we were the last to sign” a plea agreement, Mr. Rodriguez said after the hearing on Thursday.

The defendants included several married couples with children. American officials said after the court hearing that they would be free to leave the United States with their parents.

Perhaps the most recognizable of the agents was Ms. Chapman, who ran her own real estate firm and who had attained a degree of notoriety after tabloid newspapers worldwide chronicled her sex life and reprinted photographs of her in skimpy attire.

Administration officials who insisted on the condition of anonymity to discuss the delicate decision would not say who initially proposed a swap but added that they considered it a fruitful idea because they saw “no significant national security benefits from their continued incarceration,” as one put it. Some of the four Russians to be freed are in ill health, the official added.

Another American official, who was not authorized to speak about the case, said officials of the intelligence agencies were the channel for most of the negotiations, particularly Leon E. Panetta, the director of the C.I.A., and Mikhail Y. Fradkov, director of the S.V.R., Russia’s foreign intelligence agency.

The official said the American side decided “we could trade these agents — who really had nothing to tell us that we didn’t already know — for people who had never stopped fighting for their freedom in Russia.”

The spy ring case further fueled debate in Washington about Mr. Obama’s outreach to Russia even as he tries to persuade the Senate to ratify the New Start arms control pact he signed last spring with Mr. Medvedev.

“The lesson here is this administration may be trying to reset the relationship, but I don’t have any confidence that the Russians are,” said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “They got caught.”

David J. Kramer, a former assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush, wondered whether the administration could have gotten a better deal. “The White House risks appearing overeager to sweep problems under the rug,” he said.

But supporters of the administration said the spy case should not undermine the relationship or support for the treaty. Richard R. Burt, a former arms control negotiator who now heads a pro-disarmament group called Global Zero, pointed out that the United States ratified treaties during the cold war when there was an active espionage campaign waged between the two powers. “No arms treaty, including the New Start agreement, is based on trust,” Mr. Burt said.


Peter Baker reported from Washington, and Benjamin Weiser from New York. Reporting was contributed by Ellen Barry from Moscow, Scott Shane and Charlie Savage from Washington, and Colin Moynihan from New York.

    Spy Suspects Leave U.S. in Swap With Russia, NYT, 9.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/world/europe/10russia.html

Obama Promises Push on Trade Pacts

July 7, 2010
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — President Obama, who vowed in his State of the Union address to double American exports over the next five years, said on Wednesday that he would renew his efforts to renegotiate long-stalled free trade agreements with Panama and Colombia and persuade Congress to adopt them.

The two trade pacts, and a third one with South Korea, were negotiated by the administration of former President George W. Bush, but all three have languished in Congress because of deep opposition from Democrats. Mr. Obama said in Toronto last month that he intended to make a new push for the South Korean agreement, and on Wednesday he pledged to press ahead with the two Latin American pacts as well.

“For a long time, we were trapped in a false political debate in this country, where business was on one side and labor was on the other,” Mr. Obama said in the East Room of the White House, at an event intended to highlight his administration’s efforts to promote exports. “What we now have an opportunity to do is to refocus our attention where we’re all in it together.”

Trade is a particularly difficult issue for many Democrats, especially in an election year when jobs are already scarce, because of a widespread view that American workers suffer disproportionately when the United States lowers trade barriers.

On the South Korea pact, for instance, Democrats have expressed concerns about that country’s restrictions on automobile and beef imports from the United States — concerns that Mr. Obama has vowed to address before sending the agreement to Congress for passage.

But Mr. Obama, who has been under pressure from business leaders, does have some Democratic allies on the issue. After the president’s announcement in Toronto, Representative Steny Hoyer, the House Democratic leader, called for Mr. Obama to renegotiate all three stalled pacts and send them to Congress.

The president made his call as part of a broader push to increase American exports under conditions that he said would “keep the playing field level” for American companies that send their products overseas. He appointed 18 corporate and labor leaders — including the chief executives of Ford Motor and Walt Disney — to a council to advise him.

The White House said there has been a 17 percent increase in American exports during the first four months of this year, compared with the same period from last year.

“We’re upping our game for the playing field of the 21st century,” Mr. Obama said. “But we’ve got to do it together. We’ve got to all row in the same direction.”

    Obama Promises Push on Trade Pacts, 7.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/us/politics/08exports.html

In the Mideast, Points of Contention

July 6, 2010
The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Tax-Exempt Funds Aiding Settlements in West Bank” (front page, July 6):

I compliment you for reporting on this scandalous use of American taxpayers’ funds to support illegal and ill-conceived activities in the occupied territories of the West Bank. You clearly point out how the actions of groups of naïve American evangelists are obstructing any eventual peace process for the Middle East.

And while the total of $200 million in tax-deductible funds spent over the last decade is shocking, it pales when compared with the more than $30 billion in economic and military aid that the United States government has given to Israel over the last decade. This is much more than we have given the whole impoverished continent of Africa and is by far the largest single destination of official foreign aid. This aid should be stopped immediately.

Richard L. Huber
New York, July 6, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Some questions:

Why should it be controversial for tax-exempt charities to aid people who live in disputed territory?

Why is it that Jews living in the ancient Jewish cities of Hebron or Jerusalem on Jewish-owned land are constantly called an obstacle to peace, while the Arabs of Jaffa or Haifa are not?

Why is it that the term “apartheid” is applied to Israel, where Arabs and Jews live together, while it is assumed that ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank must precede the establishment of a Palestinian state?

The hypocrisy is blatant.

I repeatedly see in your newspaper the phrase “a two-state solution.” The solution under discussion is not a two-state solution at all. It is a state and a half for the Palestinians, and half a state for the Jews. In other words, it is just a subtle plan for the dissolution of Jewish sovereignty.

If the creation of a Palestinian state necessitates transfer of Jews from Har Bracha in the West Bank, then the creation of the redefined Israel ought to necessitate the transfer of its Arab minority as well.

Richard Gertler
Teaneck, N.J., July 6, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Re “Nudge on Arms Further Divides U.S. and Israel” (Diplomatic Memo, front page, July 4):

We give and give to the Israelis, and for what? We ask them not to build settlements on Palestinian land, and they do it anyway. We ask them to sign on to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and they refuse. Why do we continue to waste time and money?

Their actions cause many of the troubles that we encounter around the world, and the Israelis don’t lift a finger to help us. What kind of an ally is that?

Mike Kelly
Huntington Beach, Calif., July 4, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Of all the demands being placed on Israel, the demand to give up its nuclear deterrent is the most unreasonable. Israel has proved itself to be a responsible steward of nuclear arms.

It has held back from using them even when its existence was threatened during the Yom Kippur war in 1973.

Israel is an established democracy, with little possibility of a military coup.

It has never threatened the existence of any other state.

There are only two reasons for asking Israel to disarm: to assuage Arab pride hurt by not having something Israel has, and to rekindle Arabs’ dreams of someday destroying Israel with impunity.

Israel has no moral obligation to cater to either of these goals.

Ilya Shlyakhter
Cambridge, Mass., July 5, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Re “Burrowing Through a Blockade” (column, July 4):

Nicholas D. Kristof finally admits that there is no “full-fledged humanitarian crisis in Gaza” but still condemns Israel, this time arguing that the siege helps gain public support for Hamas in Gaza. Even when Israel took the initiative to leave Gaza in 2005, it was the extremist Hamas that was supported in elections. Mr. Kristof’s notion that Israeli concessions will undermine Hamas is belied by historical experience.

Despite the fact that Hamas won in elections, there is no freedom in Gaza. In 2007 Hamas viciously eliminated a Palestinian Authority presence through violence. There is no civil society, no independent press and no judicial independence. Hamas maintains control by brutal force. The notion that Israeli behavior determines Hamas’s position is pure fantasy.

Every day Israel has to find ways to prevent Hamas from getting weapons to attack Israeli civilians while making sure that the Palestinian civilians have necessary items to live.

Kenneth Jacobson
Deputy National Director
Anti-Defamation League
New York, July 5, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Nicolas D. Kristof is right. The Gaza blockade should be lifted. Collective punishment is illegal and immoral. It is no different than if the Arab world joined in a blockade to starve Israelis to force an end to the 43-year-old occupation.

That would be monstrous, just like the Gaza blockade — and it wouldn’t work. But it would be no different from what Israel is doing.

M. J. Rosenberg
Chevy Chase, Md., July 4, 2010

The writer is a senior fellow at Media Matters Action Network.

    In the Mideast, Points of Contention, NYT, 6.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/opinion/l07mideast.html

U.S. and Israel Shift Attention

to Peace Process

July 6, 2010
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Tuesday that he expected direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to begin “well before” a moratorium on settlement construction expired at the end of September, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel pledged to take “concrete steps” in the coming weeks to get the talks moving.

The president’s comments, after a 79-minute, one-on-one session in the Oval Office, were the first in which he articulated a timetable for peace negotiations. They also reflected a palpable shift in the administration’s approach to a relationship that has been rife with tension since soon after Mr. Obama took office.

The meeting was laden with theatrics as the men shook hands vigorously in front of the cameras after a series of steps by the Israelis over the past few days to reduce tensions with the United States. But it was also deeply substantive, the leaders’ aides said, with Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu touching on a wide variety of contentious issues, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program, as well as the peace process.

A single session in the Oval Office is not likely to have resolved a year and a half of deep policy differences, and the two leaders could hit more bumps in the months ahead, especially if Mr. Obama grows impatient with a lack of progress in the peace process. But on Tuesday, they sought to accentuate the positive.

After publicly pressing Mr. Netanyahu for months to curb the building of Jewish settlements — an American policy that fanned resentment in Israel — Mr. Obama pointedly did not push Mr. Netanyahu to extend the existing moratorium. Instead, he said that moving from American-brokered “proximity talks” to direct talks would give Mr. Netanyahu the incentive and domestic political leeway to act on his own.

“My hope is, that once direct talks have begun, well before the moratorium has expired, that that will create a climate in which everybody feels a greater investment in success,” Mr. Obama said, adding, “There ends up being more room created by more trust.”

The Palestinian Authority reacted cautiously to the meeting, saying that it, too, wanted direct talks, but that the onus was on Mr. Netanyahu to halt the building of settlements and to agree on negotiations that would resume where the last direct talks, in 2008, left off.

“It is about words not deeds,” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, by phone late Tuesday. “We need to see deeds.”

Tuesday’s much-publicized meeting in the Oval Office was in stark contrast to the frosty reception Mr. Netanyahu received during his last trip to the White House in March, when Mr. Obama left the prime minister waiting in the Roosevelt Room while he went upstairs to have dinner with his wife and daughters.

The mood was so sour then that Mr. Obama barred news cameras. On Tuesday, photographers clicked away in the Oval Office as Mr. Obama praised the prime minister as someone “willing to take risks for peace” and blamed the press for reports of discord. Mr. Netanyahu loosely quoted Mark Twain, saying, “The reports about the demise of the special relationship aren’t just premature; they’re just flat wrong.”

In another gesture to the Israelis, Mr. Obama emphasized that there had been no shift in American policy on Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program, despite the United States’ signature on a recent United Nations document that singled out Israel for its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, binding 189 countries.

Israeli officials were alarmed by the American decision to allow Israel to be named, which came at the prodding of Arab states. Some in Israel viewed it as a sign of the unreliability of the United States, Israel’s most important ally.

Mr. Obama also tried to soothe Israeli jitters about calls for a regional conference on a nuclear-free Middle East. Any such meeting, he said, would only be a discussion of regional security, not an opportunity to press Israel on its nuclear program.

“We strongly believe that, given its size, its history, the region that it’s in and the threats that are leveled against us — against it, that Israel has unique security requirements,” Mr. Obama said, briefly correcting himself in midsentence. “It’s got to be able to respond to threats or any combination of threats in the region.”

The source of the friction during Mr. Netanyahu’s last visit was Israel’s announcement, during a visit by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., that it was approving plans for Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. Now, settlements are again at issue, but the president’s modulated response seemed intended to return the American-Israeli relationship to one in which difficult issues are thrashed out in private, rather than through public lectures.

Some analysts suggested that Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu might have reached a private understanding that Israel would extend the construction moratorium in return for direct talks.

“This enables Israel to say it didn’t pay for direct talks, but there’s an understanding that once the expiration date rolls around, the moratorium will be extended,” said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Among the other “concrete steps” Israel is expected to take toward the Palestinians, analysts said, is greater cooperation with the Palestinian Authority on security matters and increased economic aid for the West Bank. Mr. Netanyahu has suggested to aides that he has other steps in mind, Israeli officials said, but he has not yet disclosed them.

Mr. Obama’s stance reflected domestic political pressures on both men. Mr. Netanyahu, who is struggling to keep his fractious right-wing coalition together, has been under pressure at home not to appear to pay an additional price to lure the Palestinians to the negotiating table.

And with Democrats facing a tough time in the midterm elections in November, Mr. Obama has reasons for softening his public stance on Israel. Republican candidates have been courting Jewish voters, who ordinarily back Democrats, by trying to portray the president as anti-Israel.

Some analysts say Tuesday’s session reflects what Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East peace negotiator, calls a “false calm” in the relationship. Mr. Miller predicts fissures in the relationship, the result of a “fundamental expectations gap” in which Mr. Obama expects more from the peace talks than Mr. Netanyahu will be able to deliver.

For now, though, Mr. Netanyahu is receiving, if not the red-carpet treatment, at least the customary cordialities that the United States extends to friendly world leaders. The Israeli flag was flying Tuesday over Blair House, the official guest residence, in a sign that Mr. Netanyahu was staying there; in March, he was quartered blocks away, at the Mayflower Hotel.

And this time, Mr. Netanyahu was treated to a meal: after their Oval Office session, the president and the prime minister and other top officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, convened in the Cabinet Room for a “working lunch.”

In the Oval Office, Mr. Netanyahu told Mr. Obama that, after repeated trips to the United States, it was time to “redress the balance” by having the president and the first lady visit Israel.

“I’m ready,” Mr. Obama replied.


Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

    U.S. and Israel Shift Attention to Peace Process, NYT, 6.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/world/middleeast/07prexy.html

Mr. Netanyahu at the White House

July 6, 2010
The New York Times
 

President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel satisfied their short-term political goals with an Oval Office meeting on Tuesday. It is less clear that they achieved much of substance.

Both were desperate to show their voters that their frigid relationship has warmed. So they posed — smiling — for an official photo, spoke with reporters and shared lunch. There was plenty of upbeat rhetoric. The two leaders expressed hope that direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks — following the current “proximity talks” conducted by George Mitchell, the American envoy — would begin before Israel’s limited moratorium on settlement construction is due to expire in September.

We would like to have confidence in Mr. Netanyahu’s declaration that he is “committed to that peace” with Palestinians and President Obama’s assertion that the Israeli leader is “willing to take risks for peace.” Mr. Netanyahu didn’t offer any specifics about what he will do to help move peace negotiations forward.

Unlike Mr. Obama, the Israeli prime minister did not publicly mention a two-state solution. Mr. Netanyahu committed to that goal in June 2009 — but only under pressure from Washington. Each time he neglects to repeat it, he feeds doubts about his government’s sincerity.

President Obama has made a serious effort when it comes to Israel’s main security concern, Iran’s nuclear program. Mr. Obama rightly recognizes the threat to Israel and this country. He and his aides pushed the United Nations Security Council to pass a fourth round of sanctions and have worked with the Europeans and others, pressing them to adopt even tougher punishments on Iran. More pressure is needed, but the president’s commitment appears solid.

Mr. Obama is going to have to keep working hard to persuade Mr. Netanyahu that a peace deal with the Palestinians is also essential for Israel’s long-term security, the health of its democracy and its international standing — and not just something he has to try to mollify Washington.

Mr. Netanyahu promised after Tuesday’s meeting to take unspecified “concrete” steps in the coming weeks to move the peace process along in a “robust way.” He could start by committing to extend the moratorium on settlement construction past the Sept. 26 deadline and by outlining his plan for reaching a two-state solution.

The United States has an unshakeable bond with Israel. Still Israelis must worry about the battering their country’s reputation has taken — and the bolstering Hamas’s extremist government has gotten — since Israeli commandos killed nine activists on an aid ship trying to break the Gaza blockade.

Mr. Netanyahu took an important step when his government lifted restrictions on most imports into Gaza, except military-related items. It must go further and allow exports from the territory, as well as greater freedom of movement for people living there.

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and his government also must do their part, doing more to discourage incitement against Israel — and seriously preparing to make the hard choices that peace will inevitably require.

We know that it will not be easy, but Mr. Abbas needs to drop his insistence that he will begin direct talks only after Israel agrees to a complete freeze on settlement construction.

That is what the White House had promised him originally — and it would have been better for all. But more stalemate only feeds extremism. The only way to test Mr. Netanyahu is to get back to the table.

Arab states must do a lot more to support the Palestinians — with aid and political support for the tough compromises ahead. They also need to demonstrate to Israel their willingness to improve relations as negotiations move forward.

At their press conference, Mr. Netanyahu invited the American president to visit Israel, and Mr. Obama said: “I’m ready.” He should go and explain to Israelis directly why it is in the clear interest of both Israel and the United States to move ahead with a peace deal.

    Mr. Netanyahu at the White House, NYT, 6.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/opinion/07wed1.html

Tax-Exempt Funds

Aid Settlements in West Bank

July 5, 2010
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG, MIKE McINTIRE and ETHAN BRONNER

HAR BRACHA, West Bank — Twice a year, American evangelicals show up at a winery in this Jewish settlement in the hills of ancient Samaria to play a direct role in biblical prophecy, picking grapes and pruning vines.

Believing that Christian help for Jewish winemakers here in the occupied West Bank foretells Christ’s second coming, they are recruited by a Tennessee-based charity called HaYovel that invites volunteers “to labor side by side with the people of Israel” and “to share with them a passion for the soon coming jubilee in Yeshua, messiah.”

But during their visit in February the volunteers found themselves in the middle of the fight for land that defines daily life here. When the evangelicals headed into the vineyards, they were pelted with rocks by Palestinians who say the settlers have planted creeping grape vines on their land to claim it as their own. Two volunteers were hurt. In the ensuing scuffle, a settler guard shot a 17-year-old Palestinian shepherd in the leg.

“These people are filled with ideas that this is the Promised Land and their duty is to help the Jews,” said Izdat Said Qadoos of the neighboring Palestinian village. “It is not the Promised Land. It is our land.”

HaYovel is one of many groups in the United States using tax-exempt donations to help Jews establish permanence in the Israeli-occupied territories — effectively obstructing the creation of a Palestinian state, widely seen as a necessary condition for Middle East peace.

The result is a surprising juxtaposition: As the American government seeks to end the four-decade Jewish settlement enterprise and foster a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the American Treasury helps sustain the settlements through tax breaks on donations to support them.

A New York Times examination of public records in the United States and Israel identified at least 40 American groups that have collected more than $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the last decade. The money goes mostly to schools, synagogues, recreation centers and the like, legitimate expenditures under the tax law. But it has also paid for more legally questionable commodities: housing as well as guard dogs, bulletproof vests, rifle scopes and vehicles to secure outposts deep in occupied areas.

In some ways, American tax law is more lenient than Israel’s. The outposts receiving tax-deductible donations — distinct from established settlements financed by Israel’s government — are illegal under Israeli law. And a decade ago, Israel ended tax breaks for contributions to groups devoted exclusively to settlement-building in the West Bank.

Now controversy over the settlements is sharpening, and the issue is sure to be high on the agenda when President Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, meet in Washington on Tuesday.

While a succession of American administrations have opposed the settlements here, Mr. Obama has particularly focused on them as obstacles to peace. A two-state solution in the Middle East, he says, is vital to defusing Muslim anger at the West. Under American pressure, Mr. Netanyahu has temporarily frozen new construction to get peace talks going. The freeze and negotiations, in turn, have injected new urgency into the settlers’ cause — and into fund-raising for it.

The use of charities to promote a foreign policy goal is neither new nor unique — Americans also take tax breaks in giving to pro-Palestinian groups. But the donations to the settler movement stand out because of the centrality of the settlement issue in the current talks and the fact that Washington has consistently refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid in the settlements. Tax breaks for the donations remain largely unchallenged, and unexamined by the American government. The Internal Revenue Service declined to discuss donations for West Bank settlements. State Department officials would comment only generally, and on condition of anonymity.

“It’s a problem,” a senior State Department official said, adding, “It’s unhelpful to the efforts that we’re trying to make.”

Daniel C. Kurtzer, the United States ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005, called the issue politically delicate. “It drove us crazy,” he said. But “it was a thing you didn’t talk about in polite company.”

He added that while the private donations could not sustain the settler enterprise on their own, “a couple of hundred million dollars makes a huge difference,” and if carefully focused, “creates a new reality on the ground.”

Most contributions go to large, established settlements close to the boundary with Israel that would very likely be annexed in any peace deal, in exchange for land elsewhere. So those donations produce less concern than money for struggling outposts and isolated settlements inhabited by militant settlers. Even small donations add to their permanence.

For example, when Israeli authorities suspended plans for permanent homes in Maskiot, a tiny settlement near Jordan, in 2007, two American nonprofits — the One Israel Fund and Christian Friends of Israeli Communities —raised tens of thousands of dollars to help erect temporary structures, keeping the community going until officials lifted the building ban.

Israeli security officials express frustration over donations to the illegal or more defiant communities.

“I am not happy about it,” a senior military commander in the West Bank responded when asked about contributions to a radical religious academy whose director has urged soldiers to defy orders to evict settlers. He spoke under normal Israeli military rules of anonymity.

Palestinian officials expressed outrage at the tax breaks.

“Settlements violate international law, and the United States is supposed to be sponsoring a two-state solution, yet it gives deductions for donation to the settlements?” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. The settlements are a sensitive issue among American Jews themselves. Some major Jewish philanthropies, like the Jewish Federations of North America, generally do not support building activities in the West Bank.

The donors to settlement charities represent a broad mix of Americans — from wealthy people like the hospital magnate Dr. Irving I. Moskowitz and the family behind Haagen-Dazs ice cream to bidders at kosher pizza auctions in Brooklyn and evangelicals at a recent Bible meeting in a Long Island basement. But they are unified in their belief that returning the West Bank — site of the ancient Jewish kingdoms — to full Jewish control is critical to Israeli security and fulfillment of biblical prophecies.

As Kimberly Troup, director of the Christian Friends of Israeli Communities’ American office, said, while her charity’s work is humanitarian, “the more that we build, the more that we support and encourage their right to live in the land, the harder it’s going to be for disengagement, for withdrawal.”

Sorting Out the Facts

Today half a million Israeli Jews live in lands captured during the June 1967 Middle East war. Yet there is a strong international consensus that a Palestinian state should arise in the West Bank and Gaza, where all told some four million Palestinians live.

Ultimately, any agreement will be a compromise, a sorting out of the facts on the ground.

Most Jewish residents of the West Bank live in what amount to suburbs, with neat homes, high rises and highways to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Politically and ideologically, they are indistinguishable from Israel proper. Most will doubtless stay in any peace deal, while those who must move will most likely do so peacefully.

But in the geographically isolated settlements and dozens of illegal outposts, there are settlers who may well violently resist being moved. The prospect of an internal and deeply painful Israeli confrontation looms.

And the resisters will very likely be aided by tax-deductible donations from Americans who believe that far from quelling Muslim anger, as Mr. Obama argues, handing over the West Bank will only encourage militant Islamists bent on destroying Israel.

“We need to influence our congressmen to stop Obama from putting pressure on Israel to self-destruct,” Helen Freedman, a New Yorker who runs a charity called Americans for a Safe Israel, told supporters touring the West Bank this spring.

Israel, too, used to offer its residents tax breaks for donations to settlement building, starting in 1984 under a Likud government. But those donations were ended by the Labor Party, first in 1995 and then, after reversal, again in 2000. The finance minister in both cases, Avraham Shohat, said that while he only vaguely recalled the decision-making process, as a matter of principle he believed in deductions for gifts to education and welfare for the poor, not to settlement building per se.

In theory, the same is true for the United States, where the tax code encourages citizens to support nonprofit groups that may diverge from official policy, as long as their missions are educational, religious or charitable.

The challenge is defining those terms and enforcing them.

There are more than a million registered charities, and many submit sparse or misleading mission summaries in tax filings. Religious groups have no obligation to divulge their finances, meaning settlements may be receiving sums that cannot be traced.

The Times’s review of pro-settler groups suggests that most generally live within the rules of the American tax code. Some, though, risk violating them by using the money for political campaigning and residential property purchases, by failing to file tax returns, by setting up boards of trustees in name only and by improperly funneling donations directly to foreign organizations.

One group that at least skates close to the line is Friends of Zo Artzeinu/Manhigut Yehudit, based in Cedarhurst, N.Y., and co-founded by Shmuel Sackett, a former executive director of the banned Israeli political party Kahane Chai. Records from the group say a portion of the $5.2 million it has collected over the last few years has gone to the Israeli “community facilities” of Manhigut Yehudit, a hard-right faction of Mr. Netanyahu’s governing Likud Party, which Mr. Sackett helps run with the politician Moshe Feiglin.

American tax rules prohibit the use of charitable funds for political purposes at home or abroad. Neither man would answer questions about the nature of the “community facilities.” In an e-mail message, Mr. Sackett said the American charity was not devoted to political activity, but to humanitarian projects and “educating the public about the need for authentic Jewish leadership in Israel.”

Of course, groups in the pro-settler camp are not the only ones benefiting from tax breaks. For example, the Free Gaza Movement, which organized the flotilla seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, says on its Web site that supporters can make tax-deductible donations to it through the American Educational Trust, publisher of an Arab-oriented journal. Israeli civil and human rights groups like Peace Now, which are often accused of having a blatant political agenda, also benefit from tax-deductible donations.

Some pro-settler charities have obscured their true intentions.

Take the Capital Athletic Foundation, run by the disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In its I.R.S. filings, the foundation noted donations totaling more than $140,000 to Kollel Ohel Tiferet, a religious study group in Israel, for “educational and athletic” purposes. In reality, a study group member was using the money to finance a paramilitary operation in the Beitar Illit settlement, according to documents in a Senate investigation of Mr. Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to defrauding clients and bribing public officials.

Mr. Abramoff, documents show, had directed the settler, Shmuel Ben Zvi, an old high school friend, to use the study group as cover after his accountant complained that money for sniper equipment and a jeep “don’t look good” in terms of complying with the foundation’s tax-exempt status.

While the donations by Mr. Abramoff’s charity were elaborately disguised — the group shipped a camouflage sniper suit in a box labeled “Grandmother Tree Costume for the play Pocahontas” — other groups are more open. Amitz Rescue & Security, which has raised money through two Brooklyn nonprofits, trains and equips guard units for settlements. Its Web site encourages donors to “send a tax-deductible check” for night-vision binoculars, bulletproof vehicles and guard dogs.

Other groups urge donors to give to one of several nonprofits that serve as clearinghouses for donations to a wide array of groups in Israel and the West Bank, which, if not done properly, can skirt the intent of American tax rules.

Americans cannot claim deductions for direct donations to foreign charities; tax laws allow deductions for domestic giving on the theory that charities ultimately ease pressure on government spending for social programs.

But the I.R.S. does allow deductions for donations to American nonprofits that support charitable projects abroad, provided the nonprofit is not simply a funnel to another group overseas, according to Bruce R. Hopkins, a lawyer and the author of several books on nonprofit law. Donors can indicate how they would like their money to be used, but the nonprofit must exercise “some measure of independence to deliberate on grant-making,” he said.

A prominent clearinghouse is the Central Fund of Israel, operated from the Marcus Brothers Textiles offices in the Manhattan garment district. Dozens of West Bank groups seem to view the fund as little more than a vehicle for channeling donations back to themselves, instructing their supporters that if they want a tax break, they must direct their contributions there first. The fund’s president, Hadassah Marcus, acknowledged that it received many checks from donors “who want them to go to different programs in Israel,” but, she said, the fund retains ultimate discretion over the money. It also makes its own grants to needy Jewish families and monitors them, she said, adding that the fund, which collected $13 million in 2008, was audited and complies with I.R.S. rules.

“We’re not a funnel. We’re trying to build a land,” she said, adding, “All we’re doing is going back to our home.”

Support From a Preacher

Late one afternoon in March, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. landed in Israel and headed to his Jerusalem hotel to prepare for a weeklong effort to rekindle Middle East peace talks.

Across town, many of the leading Israeli officials on Mr. Biden’s schedule, among them Prime Minister Netanyahu, were in a convention hall listening to the Rev. John Hagee, an influential American preacher whose charities have donated millions to projects in Israel and the territories. Support for the settlements has become a cause of some leading conservative Republicans, like Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin.

“Israel exists because of a covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 3,500 years ago — and that covenant still stands,” Mr. Hagee thundered. “World leaders do not have the authority to tell Israel and the Jewish people what they can and cannot do in the city of Jerusalem.”

The next day, Israeli-American relations plunged after Israel announced plans for 1,600 new apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their future capital.

Israeli officials said Mr. Hagee’s words of encouragement had no effect on government decision making. And the preacher’s aides said he was not trying to influence the peace talks, just defending Israel’s right to make decisions without foreign pressure.

Still, his presence underscored the role of settlement supporters abroad.

Nowhere is that effort more visible, and contentious, than in East Jerusalem, which the Netanyahu government says must remain under Israeli sovereignty in any peace deal.

The government supports privately financed archaeological projects that focus on Jewish roots in Arab areas of Jerusalem. The Obama administration and the United Nations have recently criticized a plan to raze 22 Palestinian homes to make room for a history park in a neighborhood where a nonprofit group called El’Ad finances digs and buys up Arab-owned properties.

To raise money, groups like El’Ad seek to bring alive a narrative of Jewish nationalism in living rooms and banquet halls across America.

In May, a crowd of mostly Jewish professionals — who paid $300 a plate to benefit the American Friends of Ateret Cohanim — gathered in a catering hall high above Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens to dine and hear John R. Bolton, United Nations ambassador under President George W. Bush, warn of the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran.

A few days earlier, the group’s executive vice president, Susan Hikind, had gone on a Jewish radio program in New York to proclaim her group’s resistance to American policy in the Middle East. The Obama administration, she said, did not want donors to attend the banquet because it believed Jerusalem should “be part of some future capital of a Palestinian state.”

“And who’s standing in the way of that?” Ms. Hikind said. “People who support Ateret Cohanim’s work in Jerusalem to ensure that Jerusalem remains united.”

The Jerusalem Reclamation Project of Ateret Cohanim works to transfer ownership of Arab homes to Jewish families in East Jerusalem. Such efforts have generated much controversy; Islamic judicial panels have threatened death to Palestinians who sell property in the occupied territories to Jews, and sales are often conducted using shell companies and intermediaries.

“Land reclamation is actually sort of a bad name — redeeming is probably a better word,” said D. Bernard Hoenig, a New York lawyer on the board of American Friends of Ateret Cohanim. “The fact of the matter is, there are Arabs who want to sell their homes, and they have offered our organization the opportunity to buy them.”

Mr. Hoenig said that Ateret Cohanim bought a couple of buildings years ago, but that mostly it helps arrange purchases by other Jewish investors. That is not mentioned, however, on its American affiliate’s tax returns. Rather, they describe its primary charitable purpose as financing “higher educational institutions in Israel,” as well as children’s camps, help for needy families and security for Jews living in East Jerusalem.

Indeed, it does all those things. It houses yeshiva students and teachers in properties it helps acquire and places kindergartens and study institutes into other buildings, all of which helps its activities qualify as educational or religious for tax purposes.

The American affiliate provides roughly 60 percent of Ateret Cohanim’s funding, according to representatives of the group. But Mr. Hoenig said none of the American money went toward the land deals, since they would not qualify for tax-deductible donations.

Still, acquiring property has been an integral part of Ateret Cohanim’s fund-raising appeals.

Archived pages from a Web site registered to the American affiliate — taken down in the last year or so — described in detail how Ateret Cohanim “quietly and discreetly” arranged the acquisition of buildings in Palestinian areas. And it sought donations for “the expected left-wing Arab legal battle,” building costs and “other expenses (organizational, planning, Arab middlemen, etc.)”

An Unyielding Stance

Deep inside the West Bank, in the northern region called Samaria, or Shomron, lie 30 or so settlements and unauthorized outposts, most considered sure candidates for evacuation in any deal for a Palestinian state. In terms of donations, they do not raise anywhere near the sums produced for Jerusalem or close-in settlements. But in many ways they worry security officials and the Palestinians the most, because they are so unyielding.

Out here, the communities have a rougher feel. Some have only a few paved roads, and mobile homes for houses. Residents — men with skullcaps and sidelocks, women with head coverings, and families with many children — often speak in apocalyptic terms about the need for Jews to stay on the land. It may take generations, they say, but God’s promise will be fulfilled.

In November, after the Netanyahu government announced the settlement freeze, Shomron leaders invited reporters to watch them shred the orders.

David Ha’Ivri, the public liaison for the local government, the Shomron Regional Council, has positioned himself as a fierce yet amiable advocate. As a leader of an American-based nonprofit, he also brings a militant legacy to the charitable enterprise.

Mr. Ha’Ivri, formerly David Axelrod, was born in Far Rockaway, Queens, and was a student of the virulently anti-Arab Rabbi Meir David Kahane and a top lieutenant and brother-in-law to the rabbi’s son, Binyamin Kahane. Both Kahanes, who were assassinated 10 years apart, ran organizations banned in Israel for instigating, if not participating in, attacks against Arabs. The United States Treasury Department later added both groups, Kach and Kahane Chai, to its terrorism watch list.

As recently as four years ago, Mr. Ha’Ivri was involved in running The Way of the Torah, a Kahanist newsletter designated as a terrorist organization in the United States. He has had several run-ins with the authorities in Israel over the last two decades, including an arrest for celebrating the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in a television interview and a six-month jail term in connection with the desecration of a mosque.

Treasury officials said a group’s presence on the terror list does not necessarily extend to its former leaders, and indeed Mr. Ha’Ivri is not on it.

Mr. Ha’Ivri said he no longer engaged in such activism, adding that, at 43, he had mellowed, even if his core convictions had not. “I’m a little older now, a little more mature,” he said.

A Sunday in late May found him in New York, on a stage in Central Park, speaking at the annual Salute to Israel celebration. “We will not ever, ever give up our land,” Mr. Ha’Ivri said.

He posed for pictures with the Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, and distributed fliers about the “501 c3 I.R.S. tax deductible status” of his charity, Shuva Israel, which has raised more than $2.6 million since 2004 for the Shomron communities.

Although I.R.S. rules require that American charities exhibit “full control of the donated funds and discretion as to their use,” Shuva Israel appears to be dominated by Israeli settlers.

Mr. Ha’Ivri, who lives in the settlement of Kfar Tapuach, was listed as the group’s executive director in its most recent tax filing; Gershon Mesika, the Shomron council’s leader, is the board’s chairman; and Shuva Israel’s accountant is based in the settlement of Tekoa. Its American presence is through a post office box in Austin, Tex., where, according to its tax filings, it has two volunteers who double as board members.

“I’ve never been to the board,” said one of them, Jeff Luftig.

When asked about his dual status as leader of the charity and an official with the council it supports, Mr. Ha’Ivri said he was no longer executive director, though he could not recall who was. He said he was confident the charity was following the law, adding that the money it raises goes strictly toward improving the lives of settlers.

Exacting a Price

If Mr. Ha’Ivri has changed tactics, a new generation has picked up his aggressive approach. These activists also receive American support.

Their campaign has been named “Price Tag”: For every move by Israeli authorities to curtail settlement construction, the price will be an attack on an Arab mosque, vineyard or olive grove.

The results were on display during a recent tour through the Arab village of Hawara, where the wall of a mosque had been desecrated with graffiti of a Jewish star and the first letters of the Prophet Muhammad’s name in Hebrew. In the nearby Palestinian village of Mikhmas, the deputy mayor, Mohamed Damim, said settlers had come in the dark of night and uprooted or cut down hundreds of olive and fig trees.

“The army has done nothing to protect us,” he said. Though the attacks are small by nature, Israeli commanders fear they threaten to scuttle the uneasy peace they and their Palestinian Authority partners have forged in the West Bank.

“It can bring the entire West Bank to light up again in terror and violence,” a senior commander said in an interview.

Israeli law enforcement officials say that in investigating settler violence in the north, they often turn to people connected to the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement. After the arson of a mosque in Yasuf in December, authorities arrested the yeshiva’s head rabbi, Yitzhak Shapira, and several students but released them for lack of evidence. Rabbi Shapira denied involvement. He is known in Israel for his strong views. He was co-author of a book released last year that offered religious justification for killing non-Jews who pose a threat to Jews or, in the case of young children, could in the future.

A plaque inside the recently built yeshiva thanks Dr. Moskowitz, the hospitals entrepreneur, and his wife, Cherna, for their “continuous and generous support.” Another recognizes Benjamin Landa of Brooklyn, a nursing home operator who gave through his foundation, Ohel Harav Yehoshua Boruch. Mr. Landa said he donated to the yeshiva after its old building was destroyed in an Arab ransacking. None of the American donations have been linked to the campaign of attacks.

The Israeli military has activated outstanding permit violations that have set the stage for the yeshiva’s threatened demolition. And officials have barred some of the yeshiva’s students from the West Bank for months on end.

Od Yosef Chai’s director, Itamar Posen, said in an interview that the military was unfairly singling out the yeshiva because “the things that we publish are things that are against their ideas, and they are frightened.” Mr. Ha’Ivri and Mr. Mesika have charged the military with jeopardizing the men’s livelihoods without due process.

A settler legal defense fund, Honenu, with its own American charitable arm, has sought to provide a safety net.

An online appeal for tax-deductible donations to be sent to Honenu’s Queens-based post office read, “If the 3 men can have their families supported it will cause others at the Hilltops to brave military and government threats against them.”

Reached last month, one of the men, Akiva HaCohen, declined to say how much support he had received from American donors; Honenu officials in Israel declined to comment as well.

There is no way to tell from Honenu’s American tax returns; none was available through Guidestar, a service that tracks tax filings by nonprofits. Groups that raise less than $25,000 a year are not required to file. But a review of tax returns filed by other charities showed that one American family foundation gave it $33,000 in a single year, enough to have required filing.

Asked whether it had ever filed a tax return, Aaron Heimowitz, a financial planner in Queens who collects Honenu’s donations there, responded, “I’m not in a position to answer that.”

Opaque Finances

Religious charities are still more opaque; the tax code does not require them to disclose their finances publicly.

Mr. Hagee is one of the few Christian Zionists who advertises his philanthropy in Israel and its territories, at least $58 million as of last year, distributed through a multimedia empire that spins out a stream of books, DVDs and CDs about Israel’s role in biblical prophecy.

Mr. Hagee’s aides say he makes a large majority of his donations within Israel’s 1967 boundaries and seeks to avoid disputed areas. Yet a sports complex in the large settlement of Ariel — whose future is in dispute — bears his name. And a few years ago, according to officials at the yeshiva at Har Bracha, Mr. Hagee donated $250,000 to expand a dormitory.

The yeshiva is the main growth engine of the settlement, attracting students who put down roots. (Some are soldiers, and the head rabbi there has called upon them to refuse orders to evict settlers.) After the yeshiva was started in 1992, “the place just took off,” growing to more than 200 families from 3, said the yeshiva’s spokesman, Yonaton Behar. “The goal,” he added, “is to grow to the point where there is no question of uprooting Har Bracha.”

Various strains of American pro-settlement activity come together in Har Bracha. The Moskowitz family helped pay for the yeshiva’s main building. Nearby, a winery was built with volunteer help from HaYovel ministries, which brings large groups of volunteers to prune and harvest. Mr. Ha’Ivri’s charity promotes the program.

The winery’s owner, Nir Lavi, says his land is state-sanctioned. But officials in the neighboring Palestinian village of Iraq Burin say part of the vineyard was planted on ground taken from their residents in a parcel-by-parcel land grab.

Such disputes are typical for the area, as are the opposing accounts of what happened that February day when HaYovel’s leader, Tommy Waller, and his volunteers say they came under attack and the shepherd was shot.

“They came up screaming, slinging their rock-slings like David going after a giant,” Mr. Waller said. A Har Bracha security guard came to the rescue by shooting in the air, not aiming for the attackers, he added.

But, in an interview, the shepherd, Amid Qadoos, said settlers started the scuffle by throwing rocks at him as he was grazing his sheep on village land a few yards from the vineyard, telling him, “You are not allowed here.” He and his friends then threw rocks in retaliation, he said, prompting the security guard to shoot him in the back of his leg. His father, Aref Qadoos, added, “They want us to go so they can confiscate the land, through planting.”

Though two volunteers were hurt, Mr. Waller said neither he nor his group would be deterred. “People are drawn to our work who believe the Bible is true and desire to participate in the promises of God,” he said. “We believe the restoration of Israel, including Samaria and Judea, is part of that promise.”

In the last year, he said, he brought 130 volunteers here. This coming year, he said, he expects as many as 400.


Isabel Kershner and Myra Noveck contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

    Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank, NYT, 5.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/world/middleeast/06settle.html

Waiting for a Trade Policy

July 5, 2010
The New York Times

The White House has announced that it wants to move ahead with a long-ignored trade pact with South Korea. The deal was reached by former President George W. Bush, but with President Obama planning to visit South Korea for a summit meeting of the Group of 20 major economies in November, he has now committed to resolving the outstanding issues and submitting the treaty for ratification after the fall elections.

This is good news, to be sure. But it is hardly enough at a time when protectionism is rising around the world.

Until now, the Obama administration’s trade strategy has been limited to hoping that a world economic rebound and a rising Chinese currency would double American exports in five years. Beyond this new enthusiasm, Mr. Obama’s approach to trade still appears to be hamstrung by strong opposition from his party’s union base.

The United States must become a leading voice for open international trade. It must press harder for the completion of the stalled round of global trade talks started nine years ago in Doha, Qatar, and to undo the myriad protectionist measures that governments around the globe — including our own — have adopted since the financial crash.

The United States and China both put buy-at-home provisions in their stimulus programs. Russia introduced incentives to develop products to substitute for imports. According to the Global Trade Alert from the Center for Economic Policy Research, a European economic research forum, countries around the world have imposed at least 443 discriminatory measures against imports since November 2008.

Things are about to get worse. At a recent meeting in Toronto, the Group of 20 biggest economies agreed to cut their budget deficits in half by 2013. Without that crucial support for internal demand, most of these countries will have to rely on exports to try to achieve economic growth. Not everybody can do that at the same time. Fiercer competition for international markets is likely to lead to new domestic barriers, unfair dumping and tit-for-tat punishments that could disrupt trade flows and further hamper the global recovery.

Politicians aren’t even giving lip service to free trade. In Toronto, the G-20 leaders dropped their 2009 pledge to finalize the Doha round of trade negotiations this year. A day before, the meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations agreed that countries should instead pursue their own bilateral and regional trade deals.

Those may be better than no trade deals. But without a strong set of agreed international rules — the sort that come with a global accord — there is a real danger that these side deals could create more mistrust and unfair competition. The sudden hurry for a South Korean deal is being driven in good part by the fact that the United States is losing South Korean market share and both the European Union and Canada are looking to sign their own agreements with Seoul.

South Korea is an important ally in a dangerous neighborhood, and the White House should push hard to get this deal finished and through the Senate. It should push just as hard for ratification of pending agreements with Colombia and Peru. But it can’t stop there. It must also push for more open global trade bound by multilateral rules and obligations. The world’s economy, and the American economy, are too fragile to risk a trade war.

    Waiting for a Trade Policy, NYT, 5.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/opinion/06tue1.html

Nudge on Arms Further Divides U.S. and Israel

July 3, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — It was only one paragraph buried deep in the most plain-vanilla kind of diplomatic document, 40 pages of dry language committing 189 nations to a world free of nuclear weapons. But it has become the latest source of friction between Israel and the United States in a relationship that has lurched from crisis to crisis over the last few months.

At a meeting to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May, the United States yielded to demands by Arab nations that the final document urge Israel to sign the treaty — a way of spotlighting its historically undeclared nuclear weapons.

Israel believed it had assurances from the Obama administration that it would reject efforts to include such a reference, an Israeli official said, and it saw this as another sign of unreliability by its most important ally. In a recent visit to Washington, Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, raised the issue in meetings with senior American officials.

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled to meet President Obama on Tuesday at the White House, the flap may introduce a discordant note into a meeting that both sides are eager to portray as a chance for Israel and the United States to turn the page after a rocky period.

Other things have changed notably for the better in American-Israeli relations since Mr. Netanyahu called off his last visit to the White House to rush home to deal with the crisis after Israel’s deadly attack on a humanitarian aid flotilla sailing to Gaza in late May. His agreement to ease the land blockade on Gaza, which came at the request of the United States, has helped thaw the chill between the governments, American and Israeli officials said.

Meanwhile, the raft of new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, after the passage of the United Nations resolution, has reassured Israelis, who viewed Mr. Obama’s attempts to engage Iran with unease. Mr. Obama signed the American sanctions into law on Thursday.

“The overall tone is more of a feel-good visit than we’ve seen in the past,” said David Makovsky, director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It has been more focused on making sure that the Ides of March have passed.”

He was referring to the dispute during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in March, when Israel approved plans for Jewish housing in East Jerusalem. Mr. Obama was enraged by what he perceived as a slight to Mr. Biden, and when Mr. Netanyahu visited a few weeks later, the While House showed its displeasure by banning cameras from recording the visit.

But despite the better atmospherics, some analysts said the nuclear nonproliferation issue symbolizes why Israel remains insecure about the intentions of the Obama administration. In addition to singling out Israel, the document, which has captured relatively little public attention, calls for a regional conference in 2012 to lay the groundwork for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Israel, whose nuclear arsenal is one of the world’s worst-kept secrets, would be on the hot seat at such a meeting.

At the last review conference, in 2005, the Bush administration refused to go along with any references to Israel, one of several reasons the meeting ended in acrimony, without any statement.

This time, Israel believed the Obama administration would again take up its cause. As a non-signatory to the treaty, Israel did not attend the meeting. But American officials consulted the Israelis on a text in advance, which they found acceptable, a person familiar with those discussions said. That deepened their surprise at the end.

Administration officials said the United States negotiated for months with Egypt, on behalf of the Arab states, to leave out the reference to Israel. While the United States supports the goal of a nuclear-free Middle East, it stipulated that any conference would be only a discussion, not the beginning of a negotiation to compel Israel to sign on to the treaty.

The United States practices a policy of ambiguity with respect to Israel’s nuclear stockpile, neither publicly discussing it nor forcing the Israeli government to acknowledge its existence.

The United States, recognizing that the document would upset the Israelis, sought to distance itself even as it signed it.

In a statement released after the conference ended, the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, said, “The United States deplores the decision to single out Israel in the Middle East section of the NPT document.” He said it was “equally deplorable” that the document did not single out Iran for its nuclear ambitions. Any conference on a nuclear-free Middle East, General Jones said, could only come after Israel and its neighbors had made peace.

The United States, American officials said, faced a hard choice: refusing to compromise with the Arab states on Israel would have sunk the entire review conference. Given the emphasis Mr. Obama has placed on nonproliferation, the United States could not accept such an outcome.

It also would complicate the administration’s attempts to build bridges to the Arab world, an effort that is at the heart of some of the disagreements between the United States and Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Obama will have plenty of other things to discuss this week. After several rounds of indirect talks, brokered by the administration’s special envoy, George J. Mitchell, the United States is pushing the Israelis and the Palestinians to begin direct negotiations.

A central question, analysts said, is whether Mr. Netanyahu will extend Israel’s self-imposed moratorium on new residential construction in West Bank settlements, which expires in September. He is unlikely to take such a step unless the Palestinians agree to face-to-face talks, they said.

For Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu, the most basic priority may be establishing trust between them — which is why the flap over the nuclear conference, though small, is potentially troublesome.

“Most American presidents who end up being successful on Israel manage to create, even amid great mistrust and suspicion, a pretty good working relationship,” said Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East peace negotiator. “This has been a real crisis of confidence, which cuts to the core of how each leader sees his respective world.”

    Nudge on Arms Further Divides U.S. and Israel, NYT, 3.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/world/middleeast/04mideast.html

Congress, Sanctions and Iran

July 2, 2010
The New York Times

The United States already bars nearly all trade with Iran. Congress tightened those restrictions even further last week when it voted to punish foreign companies and banks and American overseas subsidiaries that do business with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Iran and its many front companies. Firms selling gasoline to Iran also are targeted.

The legislation, which President Obama signed into law on Thursday, is part of an intensifying international campaign to pressure Tehran into abandoning its illicit nuclear program — a goal we strongly support. Extraterritorial sanctions are always problematic. They can open American companies to retaliation and provoke a political backlash.

If these sanctions give foreign companies more reason to cut their ties with Iran, that would be good news. Unless they are used sparingly, they could strain relations and make it even harder to persuade governments of the need to isolate Iran.

Iran has ignored repeated demands by the United Nations Security Council to halt enriching uranium. After four rounds of Security Council sanctions, many governments and businesses still find Iran’s oil wealth too hard to resist. There are some signs that may be changing, but Washington will have to keep pressing.

The latest Security Council sanctions are mainly focused on cutting off Iran’s access to the international financial system and ending dealings the Revolutionary Guards Corps, which runs the nuclear program and a lot more. They still leave countries too much room to maneuver.

The resolution urges — rather than requires — states to close Iranian banks with any links to the nuclear program and calls on — rather than requires — states to deny insurance coverage to Iranian shipping and other businesses with links to proliferation.

The new American law goes further and mandates real penalties from a range of options. Foreign banks that do business with certain Iranian banks or with the Revolutionary Guards Corps or its front companies could be banned from doing credit transactions or foreign exchange activity through American banks. Foreign companies could be denied United States government contracts, export credits and access to American markets.

The Security Council resolution does not bar companies from doing business in Iran’s energy sector. The new American law would punish companies that supply Iran with gasoline or the means to expand its own refining capacity. Companies that finance, broker or insure the shipments or deliver the gasoline could also be sanctioned. That frankly worries us.

If Tehran keeps pressing ahead with its nuclear program, the international community may have to restrict gasoline sales to Iran. That could hurt ordinary Iranians and rally support for the government. Since the demand on foreign companies goes beyond what the Security Council is requiring, it could shift international anger away from Tehran and toward Washington.

Many of the banks and companies most affected by the new law are in Europe (especially Germany), China and Dubai. Russia, Malaysia, Turkey, India and Pakistan could feel its sting as well. The Europeans, who bitterly fought previous rounds of extraterritorial sanctions, seem less worried now. The European Union recently adopted its own tougher sanctions, including a ban on new investment in Iran’s energy sector. Dozens of European firms claim to be pulling back or out of Iran — a commitment that has yet to be tested.

Previous American administrations have waived similar extraterritorial sanctions. Congress is insisting that President Obama enforce this new law. It also gave him some room to waive punishments, on a case-by-case basis, on companies in countries that are cooperating with efforts to isolate Iran. Political and business leaders should give Mr. Obama every reason to do that. For this to work, the White House will also have to exercise considerable diplomatic finesse.

    Congress, Sanctions and Iran, NYT, 2.7.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/03/opinion/03sat1.html

Israelis, Palestinians and the Divide

July 1, 2010
The New York Times

To the Editor:

In “The Two Sides of a Barbed-Wire Fence” (column, July 1), Nicholas D. Kristof does not mention the very relevant fact that it was Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian leadership that turned down the Israeli offer of a two-state solution at the Camp David meeting in 2000 without making a counteroffer.

If Mr. Arafat had listened to President Bill Clinton and accepted the Israeli offer, we would now be celebrating the 10th anniversary of a Palestinian state.

The occupation is highly unfortunate, but if Mr. Kristof is looking for someone to blame, he should look at 60 years of a failed Palestinian leadership that has been more interested in personal gain and consolidating power than improving the lives of its people.

Yitzhak Bronstein
Gush Etzion, West Bank, July 1, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Nicholas D. Kristof acknowledges what has been obvious for decades: that the occupation of the Palestinian territories is an immoral degradation of the Palestinian people, not to mention an international illegality.

The great tragedy for our own country is that we participate by sending annual “aid” to Israel (a rich and prosperous country) of more than $3 billion a year.

William D. LeMoult
Barrington, R.I., July 1, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Nicholas D. Kristof criticizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians after being taken to Palestinian villages by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. As a supporter of Israel, I take great pride in knowing that it is a nation that fosters a culture wherein a self-critical humanitarian group calls its citizens to task when it suspects a wrong has been committed.

Where is B’Tselem’s Palestinian counterpart?

Gilad Shalit, a captured Israeli soldier, has been wallowing in prison — or worse — for more than four years. Yet the Red Cross and other humanitarian groups continue to be denied access to him.

Where is the voice of Palestinian outrage?

(Rabbi) Yosie Levine
New York, July 1, 2010

•

To the Editor:

I would like to express my appreciation for Nicholas D. Kristof’s column on the wrongness of the Israeli occupation. The wall of silence and misrepresentation surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is slowly beginning to crack in this country, and new voices that disagree with the slogans of uncritical supporters of Israel are emerging among Jews.

Unfortunately, many still refuse to see that Israel now behaves as a colonial power trampling on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which arose from the ashes of World War II.

Daniele Armaleo
Durham, N.C., July 1, 2010

Israelis, Palestinians and the Divide, NYT, 1.7.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/opinion/l02mideast.html

The Two Sides of a Barbed-Wire Fence

June 30, 2010
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

KARMEL, West Bank

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is widely acknowledged to be unsustainable and costly to the country’s image. But one more blunt truth must be acknowledged: the occupation is morally repugnant.

On one side of a barbed-wire fence here in the southern Hebron hills is the Bedouin village of Umm al-Kheir, where Palestinians live in ramshackle tents and huts. They aren’t allowed to connect to the electrical grid, and Israel won’t permit them to build homes, barns for their animals or even toilets. When the villagers build permanent structures, the Israeli authorities come and demolish them, according to villagers and Israeli human rights organizations.

On the other side of the barbed wire is the Jewish settlement of Karmel, a lovely green oasis that looks like an American suburb. It has lush gardens, kids riding bikes and air-conditioned homes. It also has a gleaming, electrified poultry barn that it runs as a business.

Elad Orian, an Israeli human rights activist, nodded toward the poultry barn and noted: “Those chickens get more electricity and water than all the Palestinians around here.”

It’s fair to acknowledge that there are double standards in the Middle East, with particular scrutiny on Israeli abuses. After all, the biggest theft of Arab land in the Middle East has nothing to do with Palestinians: It is Morocco’s robbery of the resource-rich Western Sahara from the people who live there.

None of that changes the ugly truth that our ally, Israel, is using American military support to maintain an occupation that is both oppressive and unjust. Israel has eased checkpoints this year — a real improvement in quality of life — but the system is intrinsically malignant.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization that I’ve long admired, took me to the southern Hebron hills to see the particularly serious inequities Palestinians face here. Apparently because it covets this area for settlement expansion, Israel has concocted a series of feeble excuses to drive out Palestinians from villages here or make their lives so wretched that they leave on their own.

“It’s an ongoing attempt by the authorities to push people out,” said Sarit Michaeli, a B’Tselem spokeswoman.

In the village of Tuba, some Palestinian farmers live in caves off the grid because permanent structures are destroyed for want of building permits that are never granted. The farmers seethe as they struggle to collect rainwater while a nearby settlement, Maon, luxuriates in water piped in by the Israeli authorities.

“They plant trees and gardens and have plenty of water,” complained Ibrahim Jundiya, who raises sheep and camels in Tuba. “And we don’t even have enough to drink. Even though we were here before them.”

Mr. Jundiya said that when rainwater runs out, his family must buy tankers of water at a price of $11 per cubic meter. That’s at least four times what many Israelis and settlers pay.

Violent clashes with Israeli settlers add to the burden. In Tuba, Palestinian children walking to elementary school have sometimes been attacked by Israeli settlers. To protect the children, foreign volunteers from Christian Peacemaker Teams and Operation Dove began escorting the children in the 2004-05 school year — and then settlers beat the volunteers with chains and clubs, according to human rights reports and a news account from the time.

Attacks on foreign volunteers get more attention than attacks on Palestinians, so the Israeli Army then began to escort the Palestinian children of Tuba to and from elementary school. But the soldiers don’t always show up, the children say, and then the kids take an hour and a half roundabout path to school to avoid going near the settlers.

For their part, settlers complain about violence by Palestinians, and it’s true that there were several incidents in this area between 1998 and 2002 in which settlers were killed. Partly because of rock-throwing clashes between Arabs and Israelis, the Israeli Army often keeps Palestinians well away from Israeli settlements — even if Palestinian farmers then cannot farm their own land.

Meanwhile, the settlements continue to grow, seemingly inexorably — and that may be the most odious aspect of the occupation.

In other respects, some progress is evident. Mr. Orian’s Israeli aid group — Community, Energy and Technology in the Middle East — has installed windmills and solar panels to provide a bit of electricity for Palestinians kept off the grid. And attacks from settlers have dropped significantly, in part because B’Tselem has equipped many Palestinian families with video cameras to document and deter assaults.

Still, a pregnant 19-year-old Palestinian woman in the village of At-Tuwani was hospitalized this month after an attack by settlers.

Israel has a point when it argues that relinquishing the West Bank would raise real security concerns. But we must not lose sight of the most basic fact about the occupation: It’s wrong.


•

I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

    The Two Sides of a Barbed-Wire Fence, NYT, 30.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/opinion/01kristof.html

Despite Arrests,

Working to Rebuild Russia Ties

June 30, 2010
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — They doffed their jackets and bonded over burgers, talking about everything from trade and geopolitics to their families. Everything, that is, except the spies that the government of one had hidden in a house just a few miles away and that the government of the other was about to arrest.

The roundup of a suspected Russian spy ring did more than disrupt a years-old deep-cover operation inside the United States — it cast a shadow over President Obama’s effort to transform the relationship between the two countries. The timing of the arrests, coming barely 72 hours after President Dmitri A. Medvedev’s White House visit, frustrated Mr. Obama’s team. But as prosecutors assemble their case, Mr. Obama has resolved not to let the ghosts of the 20th century get in the way of his goals in the 21st.

Mr. Obama’s administration said Wednesday that it would not expel Russian diplomats and it expressed no indignation that its putative partner was spying on it. Mr. Obama’s plan is to largely ignore the issue publicly, leaving it to diplomats and investigators to handle, while he moves on to what he sees as more important matters.

“We would like to get to the point where there is just so much trust and cooperation between the United States and Russia that nobody would think of turning to intelligence means to find out things that they couldn’t find out in other channels,” Philip Gordon, the assistant secretary of state in charge of Russia, told reporters. “We’re apparently not there yet. I don’t think anyone in this room is shocked to have discovered that.”

But the spy scandal could embolden critics who argue that Mr. Obama has been overly optimistic about his capacity to reset a relationship freighted by longstanding suspicion and clashing interests. The episode could complicate Mr. Obama’s efforts to persuade the Senate to approve the new arms control treaty he negotiated with Mr. Medvedev.

“It ought to reset our rosy view of Russia and remind us that Russia is not a trustworthy ally,” Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, said in an interview. Harking back to Ronald Reagan’s approach, Mr. Bond said: “We have to deal with them. But wasn’t there a great president who said, ‘Trust but verify’?”

Even if Mr. Obama can assuage doubts on the treaty, the scandal has underscored the limits of the new relationship.

“The spy scandal is unlikely to derail the reset because both sides have too much invested in the success of the current agenda,” said Angela E. Stent, a former National Intelligence Council official now at Georgetown University. “But it is a cautionary reminder that the U.S.-Russian relationship remains a selective partnership where cold war legacies persist.”

Part of the problem for Mr. Obama is that his desire to redefine the relationship has been misinterpreted as an effort to redefine Russia itself, said Samuel Charap, a scholar at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research organization close to the White House. “It’s a reminder that yes, Russia is still Russia and Putin is still Putin,” he said of the spy case, referring to Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, a former K.G.B. colonel. “None of that is Obama’s fault. The intention was never to reset Russia.”

It should come as little surprise, of course, that the two countries still spy on each other two decades after the end of the cold war. Even close allies like Israel have been caught spying here. Recent history shows that Washington and Moscow have been able to get past such moments when they were determined to pursue other agendas.

George W. Bush faced such a challenge at the start of his presidency with the arrest of Robert Hanssen, a longtime F.B.I. agent caught working for Russia. Mr. Bush kicked out 50 Russian diplomats and Moscow did the same to 50 American diplomats. But three months later, he met Mr. Putin, then president, and declared that he had seen the soul of a partner he could work with.

This case should be easier to overcome without tit-for-tat expulsions because the suspected spy ring did not seem to achieve any serious breach of national security. As Leon Aron, a Russian expert at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative research organization, noted: “The relationship survived Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. That was serious stuff and everybody rolled with the punches.”

Russian leaders appear interested in playing down the situation. Although Moscow initially called the charges “baseless,” the Foreign Ministry later took that statement off its Web site and confirmed that the suspects were Russian citizens. Mr. Putin said the American authorities had gotten out of control in making the arrests, but then minimized it by saying relations “will not suffer.” Much of the Russian commentary suggested that the arrests were an effort by dark forces in the American government to undermine Mr. Obama’s reset policy.

In a telephone call between Sergei Prikhodko, Mr. Medvedev’s foreign policy adviser, and Gen. James L. Jones, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, the Russian emphasized that Moscow wanted to resolve the issue without jeopardizing positive changes in the relationship, people briefed on the call said.

“The timing of this was obviously a bit awkward,” coming just after Mr. Medvedev’s visit, said Andrew C. Kuchins, a Russia scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But, he said, “we have a fair amount of history of delinking spy scandals from the rest of Russia policy.”

Suspect Disappears in Cyprus

ATHENS — The 11th suspect in the Russian spy ring case has disappeared on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where he was arrested but released on bail Tuesday.

Late Wednesday, a police spokesman told the Cyprus state news agency that the suspect, Christopher Metsos, 54, had failed to report as required to a precinct in the island’s southwest, where he had been apprehended. The police obtained a warrant for his arrest and a manhunt was under way.

Mr. Metsos, who is accused of being the spy ring’s paymaster, was arrested early Tuesday at the airport in the southern city of Larnaca as he was about to fly to Budapest.

In a move that dismayed American law enforcement authorities, a local court ordered his release on bail of around $25,000 on the condition that he surrender his passport while arrangements were made for his extradition to the United States.

NIKI KITSANTONIS

    Despite Arrests, Working to Rebuild Russia Ties, NYT, 30.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/world/europe/01reset.html

U.S. Says New Sanctions on Iran

Could Impact Pakistan

June 20, 2010
Filed at 3:44 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By REUTERS

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan should be wary of committing to an Iran-Pakistan natural gas pipeline because anticipated U.S. sanctions on Iran could hit Pakistani companies, the U.S. special representative to the region said on Sunday. While sympathetic to Pakistan's energy needs, the U.S. special representative to the region, Richard Holbrooke, told reporters that new legislation, which targets Iran's energy sector, is being drafted in the U.S. Congress and that Pakistan should "wait and see."

"Pakistan has an obvious, major energy problem and we are sympathetic to that, but in regards to a specific project, legislation is being prepared that may apply to the project," he said, referring to the pipeline. "We caution the Pakistanis not to over-commit themselves until we know the legislation." Pakistan is plagued by chronic electricity shortages that have led to mass demonstrations and battered the politically shaky government of President Asif Ali Zardari.

U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman said last week he expects Congress to finish shortly legislation tightening U.S. sanctions on Iran that will include provisions affecting the supply of refined petroleum products to Tehran, and add to sanctions on its financial sector.

Lieberman, an independent, is a member of a House-Senate committee of negotiators working on final details of the bill and said it could pass by July 4.

The $7.6 billion natural gas pipeline deal, signed in March, doesn't directly deal with refined petroleum products and was hailed in both Iran and Pakistan as highly beneficial.

The U.S. has so far been muted in its criticism of the deal, balancing its need to support Pakistan, a vital but unstable ally in the global war against al Qaeda, with its desire to isolate Iran.

But the legislation could be comprehensive enough to have major implications for Pakistani companies, Holbrooke said.

"We caution Pakistan to wait and see what the legislation is."

This was Holbrooke's tenth trip to Pakistan since President Barack Obama appointed him special representative to the region. His visit followed a series of working groups this week that are part of the U.S.-Pakistan strategic dialogue, which both countries say will lay the groundwork for a new relationship.

Afghanistan was on the agenda in meetings with the Pakistani leadership, Holbrooke said, including talks on a Pakistani role in talks between the Afghan Taliban and the Kabul government.

But the United States would not support Pakistan pushing the Haqqani network, one of the strongest factions of the Afghan insurgency and mostly based in Pakistan's North Waziristan, into talks with Kabul as Washington sees the group as intransigent, brutal and too tightly allied with al Qaeda.

The United States has said any groups wishing to lay down their weapons must renounced al Qaeda and agree to participate peacefully in the Afghan political process.

"It's just hard to see that happening," Holbrooke said of the Haqqani network.

Regardless of what happens in Afghanistan, he said, the United States would remain engaged with Pakistan.

"Pakistan matters in and of itself. Whatever happens in Afghanistan, the U.S. cannot turn away from Pakistan again," he said. "We are not going to repeat the mistakes that occurred - at least not on our watch -- of the last 20 years."

    U.S. Says New Sanctions on Iran Could Impact Pakistan, NYT, 19.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/06/20/us/politics/politics-us-pakistan-holbrooke.html

After the Security Council Vote

June 18, 2010
The New York Times
 

There has been a lot of talk, for a long time, about reining in Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Far too many countries have found Iran’s oil wealth simply too hard to resist. There are encouraging signs that for at least some major players, patience with Tehran may be running out.

A week after the United Nations Security Council approved a fourth round of sanctions on Iran, the European Union adopted even tougher penalties. Japan, South Korea and Australia are expected to follow soon.

American sanctions on Iran — many dating from the 1979 Islamic Revolution — are already the most stringent in the world. But four years after the Security Council first ordered Iran to stop enriching uranium, Europe is still Iran’s biggest trading partner.

The latest Security Council sanctions are primarily focused on cutting off Iran’s access to the international financial system and ending dealings with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which runs Iran’s illicit nuclear program and much more. The resolution still gives countries too much discretion. It calls on — rather than requires — states to close Iranian banks with any links to the country’s nuclear or missile programs. And it urges them to deny insurance coverage to Iranian shipping and other businesses with any links to proliferation.

At a meeting this week in Brussels, European heads of state adopted rules that could close many of those potential gaps and added more restrictions, banning European companies from making new investments in, or otherwise assisting, Iran’s oil and gas industry.

European ministers will now have to decide which Iranian companies are off limits and which European products and deals are affected. We are sure there will be considerable lobbying in Brussels by countries and companies to let favorites off the hook. The leaders need to instruct their ministers to hang tough.

That means closing all of Iran’s suspect banking operations in Europe and strictly limiting business between European and Iranian banks. It means banning all business with Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-affiliated entities (no matter how hard the Iranians try to disguise those links) and sanctioning European companies that violate this prohibition. It also means banning European companies from selling insurance services to any Iranian entities with ties to the Revolutionary Guards or the nuclear program.

European banks have been gradually weaning themselves from business with Iran, and industry giants like Siemens of Germany say they will make no new investments there. But Siemens also has insisted on fulfilling existing contracts, raising doubts about its sincerity.

Russia has played a cynical double game with Iran for far too long, watering down sanctions resolutions and then ignoring them. So we were — cautiously — encouraged when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia told France last week that Russia would freeze the planned delivery of S-300 air defense missiles to Iran. (American officials say that is not required under the United Nations sanctions.) We found it encouraging that the state oil company, Lukoil, has announced it is dropping an Iranian oil project. Those commitments will need to be closely monitored.

China — despite voting for all four rounds of sanctions — is increasing its investments in Iran. Washington, Moscow and Brussels all need to call Beijing out.

As it pressed its offer of engagement, the Obama administration intentionally downplayed possible punishments for Tehran. Iran’s leaders have responded with bluster and insults — all the while churning out more enriched uranium. On Wednesday, the White House blacklisted more than a dozen additional Iranian companies and individuals with links to Tehran’s illicit nuclear and missile programs.

Congress — rarely known for its subtlety on such matters — is working on its own, even tougher sanctions legislation. Details are still being negotiated, but it is expected to call for punishing foreign companies that sell refined gasoline to Iran and do other business there. At a time when Europe is finally putting some real pressure on Iran, any bill must be worded very carefully and give the White House sufficient waiver power.

    After the Security Council Vote, NYT, 18.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/opinion/19sat1.html

U.S. Imposes New Penalties on Iran

June 16, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, seeking to build on the momentum of the Iran resolution passed last week by the United Nations, announced Wednesday that it had imposed sanctions on more than a dozen Iranian companies and individuals with links to the country’s nuclear and missile programs.

The list includes two top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which has control over Iran’s nuclear program and is expanding its grip on the nation’s economy.

It also includes a major Iranian bank and five front companies for the Iranian state shipping line, as well as 71 ships with names that had been changed to skirt previous sanctions.

“Iran will never cease looking for ways to evade our sanctions,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in announcing the measures at the White House. “So our effort must be ongoing and unrelenting. And we will keep working on ways to intensify financial pressure on Iran.”

Administration officials said they hoped the steps would be the first of a new round of sanctions against Iran by the European Union, Australia and other countries.

On Thursday, European leaders are expected to endorse their own unilateral measures, while Congress is drafting legislation that would go much further than the United Nations sanctions.

But the Treasury Department’s sanctions lay bare the loopholes that continue to plague efforts to isolate Iran commercially: many of the companies on the list acted as fronts for entities already the subject of previous sanctions. Others have ties to entities that were already sanctioned.

Moreover, a senior administration official acknowledged that the United States would have had the authority to designate all these companies on its own without the passage of the latest United Nations resolution. The sanctions require that the companies’ assets under American jurisdiction be frozen.

The administration’s move came hours after a defiant speech by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said the West deserved to be punished for its action against Tehran and laid out ambitious plans to increase uranium enrichment and build four new atomic research facilities.

Iran justified the need to expand enrichment to supply fuel for a research reactor that produces radioactive isotopes. It plans to build the research complexes in four corners of the country and said that one of them would be “more powerful” than the American-built research reactor in Tehran, which has been the subject of intense negotiations among Iran, Western nations, Brazil and Turkey.

“You showed bad temper, reneged on your promise, and again resorted to devilish manners,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, addressing the countries that voted to pass the resolution in the United Nations Security Council.

“You have behaved badly,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, “but we have terms which will punish you and make you sit at the negotiating table like a polite child.”

He also said in the speech, which was broadcast live on state television, that Iran would announce new conditions for talks, suggesting that he was open to dialogue in the wake of the Security Council vote.

The administration met these mixed signals with sanctions that aimed to show how Iran used its banks and shipping industry to aid its nuclear program.

The United States designated Post Bank of Iran, which American officials said handled foreign transactions for Bank Sepah after it was penalized in 2007 for providing financing to Iran’s missile industry.

Also named were five companies — two based in Hong Kong — that are affiliated with, or owned by, the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines. Iran has evaded previous sanctions by renaming, repainting and reflagging its ships.

It also has changed the ownership of the vessels, officials said.

The administration kept its focus on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, designating the corps’ air force and missile command, which it says have links to Iran’s ballistic missile program. And it named two top commanders: Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander in chief of the corps since late 2007, and Mohammad Reza Naqdi, who has served as head of the Basij Resistance Force since October 2009 and was notorious earlier for suppressing protests at Iranian universities.

Basij paramilitaries led the government’s bloody crackdown on antigovernment protests after the disputed presidential election last June, though that is not the main reason that Mr. Naqdi was sanctioned.

As a former deputy chief of staff of the armed forces general staff, he was involved in efforts to evade previous sanctions, according to the United Nations.

The Treasury Department also identified 22 companies in the Iranian insurance, petroleum and petrochemical industries that it said were owned by the Iranian government.

American citizens are barred from doing business with such companies; the designations are also devised as a warning to foreign companies with business dealings in Iran, officials said.

Some critics said the sanctions, particularly those against well-established figures like Mr. Jafari, showed how hard it was for the United States to keep up with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The Revolutionary Guards “is morphing, and expanding, and drifting into every part of the Iranian private sector every day,” said Danielle Pletka, a vice president and an expert on Iran at the American Enterprise Institute. “We have a handful of people in Treasury who do this, and we’re not keeping up.”


David E. Sanger and Yeganeh June Torbati contributed reporting from Washington, and William Yong from Tehran.

    U.S. Imposes New Penalties on Iran, NYT, 16.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/world/middleeast/17sanctions.html

Children Carry Guns

for a U.S. Ally, Somalia

June 13, 2010
The New York Times
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Awil Salah Osman prowls the streets of this shattered city, looking like so many other boys, with ripped-up clothes, thin limbs and eyes eager for attention and affection.

But Awil is different in two notable ways: he is shouldering a fully automatic, fully loaded Kalashnikov assault rifle; and he is working for a military that is substantially armed and financed by the United States.

“You!” he shouts at a driver trying to sneak past his checkpoint, his cherubic face turning violently angry.

“You know what I’m doing here!” He shakes his gun menacingly. “Stop your car!”

The driver halts immediately. In Somalia, lives are lost quickly, and few want to take their chances with a moody 12-year-old.

It is well known that Somalia’s radical Islamist insurgents are plucking children off soccer fields and turning them into fighters. But Awil is not a rebel. He is working for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, a critical piece of the American counterterrorism strategy in the Horn of Africa.

According to Somali human rights groups and United Nations officials, the Somali government, which relies on assistance from the West to survive, is fielding hundreds of children or more on the front lines, some as young as 9.

Child soldiers are deployed across the globe, but according to the United Nations, the Somali government is among the “most persistent violators” of sending children into war, finding itself on a list with notorious rebel groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Somali government officials concede that they have not done the proper vetting. Officials also revealed that the United States government was helping pay their soldiers, an arrangement American officials confirmed, raising the possibility that the wages for some of these child combatants may have come from American taxpayers.

United Nations officials say they have offered the Somali government specific plans to demobilize the children. But Somalia’s leaders, struggling for years to withstand the insurgents’ advances, have been paralyzed by bitter infighting and are so far unresponsive.

Several American officials also said that they were concerned about the use of child soldiers and that they were pushing their Somali counterparts to be more careful. But when asked how the American government could guarantee that American money was not being used to arm children, one of the officials said, “I don’t have a good answer for that.”

According to Unicef, only two countries have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the use of soldiers younger than 15: the United States and Somalia.

Many human rights groups find this unacceptable, and President Obama himself, when this issue was raised during his campaign, did not disagree.

“It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land,” he said.

All across this lawless land, smooth, hairless faces peek out from behind enormous guns. In blown-out buildings, children chamber bullets twice the size of their fingers. In neighborhoods by the sea, they run checkpoints and face down four-by-four trucks, though they can barely see over the hood.

Somali government officials admit that in the rush to build a standing army, they did not discriminate.

“I’ll be honest,” said a Somali government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject, “we were trying to find anyone who could carry a gun.”

Awil struggles to carry his. It weighs about 10 pounds. The strap digs into his bony shoulders, and he is constantly shifting it from one side to the other with a grimace.

Sometimes he gets a helping hand from his comrade Ahmed Hassan, who is 15. Ahmed said he was sent to Uganda more than two years ago for army training, when he was 12, though his claim could not be independently verified. American military advisers have been helping oversee the training of Somali government soldiers in Uganda.

“One of the things I learned,” Ahmed explained eagerly, “is how to kill with a knife.”

Children do not have many options in Somalia. After the government collapsed in 1991, an entire generation was let loose on the streets. Most children have never sat in a classroom or played in a park. Their bones have been stunted by conflict-induced famines, their psyches damaged by all the killings they have witnessed.

“What do I enjoy?” Awil asked. “I enjoy the gun.”

Like many other children here, the war has left him hard beyond his years. He loves cigarettes and is addicted to qat, a bitter leaf that, for the few hours he chews it each day, makes grim reality fade away.

He was abandoned by parents who fled to Yemen, he said, and joined a militia when he was about 7. He now lives with other government soldiers in a dive of a house littered with cigarette boxes and smelly clothes. Awil does not know exactly how old he is. His commander says he is around 12, but birth certificates are rare.

Awil gobbles down greasy rice with unwashed hands because he does not know where his next meal is coming from. He is paid about $1.50 a day, but only every now and then, like most soldiers. His bed is a fly-covered mattress that he shares with two other child soldiers, Ali Deeq, 10, and Abdulaziz, 13.

“He should be in school,” said Awil’s commander, Abdisalam Abdillahi. “But there is no school.”

Ali Sheikh Yassin, vice-chairman of Elman Peace and Human Rights Center in Mogadishu, said that about 20 percent of government troops (thought to number 5,000 to 10,000) were children and that about 80 percent of the rebels were. The leading insurgent group, which has drawn increasingly close to Al Qaeda, is called the Shabab, which means youth in Arabic.

“These kids can be so easily brainwashed,” Mr. Ali said. “They don’t even have to be paid.”

One of the myriad dangers Awil faces is constant gunfire between his squad and another group of government soldiers from a different clan. The Somali government is racked by divisions from the prime minister’s office down to the street.

“I’ve lost hope,” said Sheik Yusuf Mohamed Siad, a defense minister who abruptly quit in the past week, like several other ministers. “All this international training, it’s just training soldiers for the Shabab,” he added, saying defections had increased.

“Go ask the president what he’s accomplished in the past year,” Sheik Yusuf said, laughing. “Absolutely nothing.”

Advisers to President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed say they have fine-tuned their plans for a coming offensive, making it more of a gradual military operation to slowly take the city back from the insurgents.

Awil is eager for action. His commanders say he has already proven himself fighting against the Shabab, who used to bully him in the market.

“That made me want to join the T.F.G.,” he said. “With them, I feel like I am amongst my brothers.”

    Children Carry Guns for a U.S. Ally, Somalia, NYT, 13.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/africa/14somalia.html

Israel and the Blockade

June 1, 2010
The New York Times

The supporters of the Gaza-bound aid flotilla had more than humanitarian intentions. The Gaza Freedom March made its motives clear in a statement before Monday’s deadly confrontation: “A violent response from Israel will breathe new life into the Palestine solidarity movement, drawing attention to the blockade.”

There can be no excuse for the way that Israel completely mishandled the incident. A commando raid on the lead, Turkish-flagged ship left nine activists dead and has opened Israel to a torrent of criticism.

This is a grievous, self-inflicted wound. It has damaged Israel’s ties with Turkey, once its closest ally in the Muslim world; given the Hamas-led government in Gaza a huge propaganda boost; and complicated peace talks with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

It also has made it much tougher for the Obama administration to persuade the United Nations Security Council to put new sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program — which Israeli officials insist is their top priority.

The questions raised by the confrontation — and there are many — demand an immediate and objective international investigation.

Why did Israel, which has blocked some ships but allowed others to pass, decide to take a stand now? Did it make a real effort to find a compromise with Turkey, which sanctioned the flotilla? Israel has a right to stop weapons from going into Gaza, but there has been no suggestion that the ships were carrying a large cache.

Was boarding, especially in the dark, the only means of stopping the ships? What happened once Israeli forces got on board? The Israeli Defense Forces have distributed a video showing that the commandos were attacked. Why weren’t they better prepared to defend themselves without using lethal force?

There is a bigger question that Israel — and the United States — must be asking: Is the blockade working? Is it weakening Hamas? Or just punishing Gaza’s 1.4 million residents — and diverting attention away from abuses by Hamas, including its shelling of Israeli cities and its refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist?

At this point, it should be clear that the blockade is unjust and against Israel’s long-term security.

After Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel — with Egypt’s help — imposed a blockade on many goods and most people going into and out of the territory. The goal was to quickly turn residents against their new government. Three years later, Hamas is still in charge — and the blockade has become an excuse for any and all of the government’s failures.

The situation in Gaza is grim. Eight out of 10 people depend on international aid agencies to survive. Basic foodstuffs are available, but medical supplies and construction materials are severely lacking. The desperation could be seen on Tuesday when Egypt lifted the blockade and several thousand Gazans rushed the border but were later sent home after police officers said they did not know when the crossing would be opened.

On Tuesday, President Obama expressed his “deep regret” over the flotilla incident. He is doing Israel no favors with such a tepid response. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown time and again that he prefers bullying and confrontation over diplomacy. Washington needs to make clear to him just how dangerous and counterproductive that approach is.

Mr. Obama needs to state clearly that the Israeli attack was unacceptable and back an impartial international investigation. The United States should also join the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, France, Russia and China — in urging Israel to permanently lift the blockade.

That would lessen the suffering of the people in Gaza. And it would give the United States more credibility as it presses both Israelis and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to negotiate a peace deal.

    Israel and the Blockade, NYT, 1.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/opinion/02wed1.html

After Israel Raids Flotilla,

U.S. Is Torn Between Allies

June 1, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — Struggling to navigate a bitter split between two important allies, the Obama administration on Tuesday tried to placate an outraged Turkish government while refusing to condemn Israel for its deadly raid on a flotilla of aid ships bound for Gaza.

President Obama telephoned Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to express his “deep condolences” for the deaths of Turkish citizens in clashes with Israeli soldiers on the ship, the White House said. He told Mr. Erdogan that the United States was pushing Israel to return their bodies, as well as 300 Turks who were taken from the ship and being held in Israel.

Mr. Obama called for a “credible, impartial and transparent investigation of the facts surrounding this tragedy,” the White House said. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said such an investigation could include international participation, something the Israelis said they opposed.

It is far from clear that these efforts will mollify Turkey, which accused Israel of state-sponsored terrorism and likened the psychological impact of the raid to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. “No one should think we will keep quiet in the face of this,” Mr. Erdogan declared during a visit to Chile.

The deep rift between Israel and Turkey, which had cultivated close ties, puts the Obama administration in a tough spot on two of its most pressing foreign-policy issues: the Middle East and Iran.

The United States does not want to abandon Israel, which has been subjected to international opprobrium since the raid. The administration is desperate to keep alive indirect peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians brokered by its special envoy, George J. Mitchell.

But it also does not want to alienate Turkey, which is playing an increasingly vocal role on the world stage. Relations were already tender after the United States threw cold water on a Turkish and Brazilian effort to resolve the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program. Turkish officials complain that they negotiated the deal with the encouragement and agreement of the administration.

“Turkey and Israel are both good friends of the United States, and we are working with both to deal with the aftermath of the tragic incident,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters at the State Department after meeting with Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.

She conferred with Mr. Davutoglu for more than two hours, rearranging her schedule. Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, went to see him at his hotel before Mr. Obama called Mr. Erdogan.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Davutoglu harshly criticized the cautious American response to the raid, saying: “We expect full solidarity with us. It should not seem like a choice between Turkey and Israel. It should be a choice between right and wrong, between legal and illegal.”

He complained that the United States had delayed and watered down the United Nations Security Council statement on Israel, which condemned the actions on the ship rather than Israel itself.

Mr. Davutoglu demanded that Israel apologize for the attack, release the detained passengers, return the bodies of the dead, agree to an independent investigation and lift its blockade of Gaza. He said Turkey was prepared to go back to the United Nations for further action against Israel.

Israel, which defended the actions of its soldiers as a legitimate response to armed attacks by those on the ship, said it could not release the 300 passengers more quickly because they were illegal aliens and had to be held for at least 42 hours under Israeli law. Israel was also questioning 20 to 30 people who it says were directly involved in clashes with the soldiers.

“We’re going to do our best to heal the wounds with the Turks,” said Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, who also met with General Jones and other White House officials.

But Mr. Oren said Israeli authorities had asked Turkey to divert the flotilla to the Israeli port of Ashdod to avoid a confrontation with Israeli forces. He said Israel would have unloaded the cargo of construction material and humanitarian aid and arranged for it to be shipped to Gaza.

Mr. Oren said the Israelis would undertake their own investigation, but he resisted calls for international involvement. Israel has been leery of international investigations since the Goldstone report, which faulted Israel for excessive force in its military strike on Gaza in 2008.

More recently, the South Korean government has won praise for an investigation into the torpedoing of one of its warships, which was aided by the United States, Australia, Sweden and other countries. The report found that a North Korea submarine fired the torpedo.

“The Israelis have traditional and well-founded concerns about international investigations,” said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “But everyone recognizes that for an investigation to be credible, others have to be able to vouch for the results.”

The flotilla case seems likely to harden Turkey’s skepticism about a United Nations resolution on Iran. Imposing more sanctions now, Mr. Davutoglu said, would only precipitate a confrontation with Iran in a few months, one that would be even riskier because of the broader tensions.

Asked what the best policy toward Iran is, he said, “Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy and more diplomacy.”


Ethan Bronner contributed reporting.

    After Israel Raids Flotilla, U.S. Is Torn Between Allies, NYT, 1.6.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/world/middleeast/02policy.html

Analysis:

High-Seas Raid Deepens Israeli Isolation

June 1, 2010
Filed at 12:33 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's bloody, bungled takeover of a Gaza-bound Turkish aid vessel is complicating U.S.-led Mideast peace efforts, deepening Israel's international isolation and threatening to destroy the Jewish state's ties with key regional ally Turkey.

And while Israel had hoped to defend its tight blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza with Monday's high-seas raid, it instead appeared to be hastening the embargo's demise, judging by initial international condemnation.

The pre-dawn commando operation, which killed nine pro-Palestinian activists, was also sure to strengthen Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas rulers at the expense of U.S. allies in the region, key among them Hamas' main rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as Egypt and Jordan.

''The attack on a humanitarian mission ... will only further alienate the international community and isolate Israel while granting added legitimacy to Hamas' claim to represent the plight of the Palestinian people,'' said Scott Atran, an analyst at the University of Michigan.

The Mediterranean bloodshed dealt another blow to the Obama administration's efforts to get peace talks back on track. It raised new questions about one of the pillars of U.S. policy -- that Hamas can be left unattended as Washington tries to broker a peace deal between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The raid tested U.S.-Israeli ties that have not yet fully recovered from their most serious dispute in decades, triggered by Israeli construction plans in disputed east Jerusalem.

In the most immediate fallout, the interception of the six-boat flotilla carrying 10,000 tons of supplies for Gaza trained the global spotlight on the blockade of the territory. Israel and Egypt sealed Gaza's borders after Hamas overran the territory in 2007, wresting control from Abbas-loyal forces.

The blockade, under which Israel allows in only essential humanitarian supplies, was intended to squeeze the militants. Instead, it has failed to dislodge Hamas, driven ordinary Gazans deeper into poverty and emerged as a constant source of friction and instability. In trying to shake off the blockade, Hamas intensified rocket fire on Israeli border towns, provoking Israel's three-week military offensive against Gaza 16 months ago.

After the war, the international community remained reluctant to push hard for an end to the blockade, for fear it could prolong the rule of Hamas, branded a terrorist organization by the West.

But after Monday's deadly clash, Israel may find itself under growing pressure to at least ease the blockade significantly.

European diplomats on Monday demanded a swift end to the border closure, while U.S. officials said statements would call for greater assistance to the people of Gaza. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.

The fate of U.S.-led indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians was uncertain.

Netanyahu canceled a scheduled Tuesday meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington, and the status of a planned visit to Washington by Abbas next week was not immediately clear.

Abbas temporarily walked away from the negotiations in March, after Israel announced more housing for Jews in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem.

But while the Palestinian leader denounced Monday's ship raid as a ''sinful massacre,'' he signaled he would keep going with the indirect talks. Abbas told senior officials of his Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization that there is no need to quit since the Palestinians are talking to the U.S. and not to Israel, according to his adviser Mohammed Ishtayeh.

Relations between Abbas and Hamas have become increasingly vitriolic, and extending Hamas rule by lifting the blockade would run counter to Abbas' objectives.

Abbas must now make a credible effort to open Gaza's borders, said Palestinian analyst Hani al-Masri. ''Otherwise, he will be viewed as weak or part of the siege and lose the support of his people,'' al-Masri said.

Israel dismissed the condemnation, saying its forces came under attack when they tried to board one of the Turkish-flagged aid vessels. However, its point of view seemed to fall on deaf ears.

''Militarily, we can feel quite safe, but not regarding our political international standing,'' said Alon Liel, a former Israeli diplomat posted in Turkey.

Israel also appears close to destroying its relationship with key strategic ally Turkey.

Turkey decided to scrap three military drills involving Israel and withdrawal of its ambassador.

Turkey, NATO's sole Muslim member, established close military relations with Israel in 1996 under U.S. pressure. Today, the Islamic-rooted government's sensitivities about the plight of Muslims anywhere and aspirations to have a say in the Middle East and Europe are reshaping Turkish foreign policy.

------

Lee reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, and Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.

    Analysis: High-Seas Raid Deepens Israeli Isolation, NYT, 1.6.2010; http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/01/world/AP-ML-Israel-Fallout-Analysis.html

Deadly Israeli Raid Draws Condemnation

May 31, 2010
The New York Times
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — Israel faced intense international condemnation and growing domestic questions on Monday after a raid by naval commandos that killed nine people, many of them Turks, on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza.

Turkey, Israel’s most important friend in the Muslim world, recalled its ambassador and canceled planned military exercises with Israel as the countries’ already tense relations soured even further. The United Nations Security Council met in emergency session over the attack, which occurred in international waters north of Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was flying home after canceling a Tuesday meeting with President Obama.

With street protests erupting around the world, Mr. Netanyahu defended the Israeli military’s actions, saying the commandos, enforcing what Israel says is a legal blockade, were set upon by passengers on the Turkish ship they boarded and fired only in self-defense. The military released a video of the early moments of the raid to support that claim.

Israel said the violence was instigated by pro-Palestinian activists who presented themselves as humanitarians but had come ready for a fight. Organizers of the flotilla accused the Israeli forces of opening fire as soon as they landed on the deck, and released videos to support their case. Israel released video taken from one of its vessels to supports its own account of events.

The Israeli public seemed largely to support the navy, but policy experts questioned preparations for the military operation, whether there had been an intelligence failure and whether the Israeli insistence on stopping the flotilla had been counterproductive. Some commentators were calling for the resignation of Ehud Barak, the defense minister.

“The government failed the test of results; blaming the organizers of the flotilla for causing the deaths by ignoring Israel’s orders to turn back is inadequate,” wrote Aluf Benn, a columnist for Haaretz, on the newspaper’s Web site on Monday, calling for a national committee of inquiry. “Decisions taken by the responsible authorities must be probed.”

The flotilla of cargo ships and passenger boats was carrying 10,000 tons of aid for Gaza, where the Islamic militant group Hamas holds sway, in an attempt to challenge Israel’s military blockade of Gaza.

The raid and its deadly consequences have thrown Israel’s policy of blockading Gaza into the international limelight; at the Security Council on Monday voices were raised against the blockade, and the pressure to abandon it is bound to intensify.

Israel had vowed not to let the flotilla reach the shores of Gaza, where Hamas, an organization sworn to Israel’s destruction, took over by force in 2007.

Named the Freedom Flotilla, and led by the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement and a Turkish organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi, the convoy had converged at sea near Cyprus and set out on the final leg of its journey on Sunday afternoon. Israel warned the vessels to abort their mission, describing it as a provocation.

The confrontation began shortly before midnight on Sunday when Israeli warships intercepted the aid flotilla, according to a person on one boat. The Israeli military warned the vessels that they were entering a hostile area and that the Gaza shore was under blockade.

The vessels refused the military’s request to dock at the Israeli port of Ashdod, north of Gaza, and continued toward their destination.

Around 4 a.m. on Monday, naval commandos came aboard the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, having been lowered by ropes from helicopters onto the decks.

At that point, the operation seems to have gone badly wrong.

Israeli officials say that the soldiers were dropped into an ambush and were attacked with clubs, metal rods and knives.

An Israeli official said that the navy was planning to stop five of the six vessels of the flotilla with large nets that interfere with propellers, but that the sixth was too large for that. The official said there was clearly an intelligence failure in that the commandos were expecting to face passive resistance, and not an angry, violent reaction.

The Israelis had planned to commandeer the vessels and steer them to Ashdod, where their cargo would be unloaded and, the authorities said, transferred overland to Gaza after proper inspection.

The military said in a statement that two activists were later found with pistols taken from Israeli commandos. It accused the activists of opening fire, “as evident by the empty pistol magazines.”

Another soldier said the orders were to neutralize the passengers, not to kill them.

But the forces “had to open fire in order to defend themselves,” the navy commander, Vice Adm. Eliezer Marom, said at a news conference in Tel Aviv, adding, “Their lives were at risk.”

At least seven soldiers were wounded, one of them seriously. The military said that some suffered gunshot wounds; at least one had been stabbed.

Some Israeli officials said they had worried about a debacle from the start, and questioned Israel’s broader security policies.

Einat Wilf, a Labor Party member of Parliament who sits on the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that she had warned Mr. Barak and others well in advance that the flotilla was a public relations issue and should not be dealt with by military means.

“This had nothing to do with security,” she said in an interview. “The armaments for Hamas were not coming from this flotilla.”

The fatalities all occurred aboard the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish passenger vessel that was carrying about 600 activists under the auspices of Insani Yardim Vakfi, an organization also known as I.H.H. Israeli officials have characterized it as a dangerous Islamic organization with terrorist links.

Yet the organization, founded in 1992 to collect aid for the Bosnians, is now active in 120 countries and has been present at recent disaster areas like Haiti and New Orleans.

“Our volunteers were not trained military personnel,” said Yavuz Dede, deputy director of the organization. “They were civilians trying to get aid to Gaza. There were artists, intellectuals and journalists among them. Such an offensive cannot be explained by any terms.”

There were no immediate accounts available from the passengers of the Turkish ship, which arrived at the naval base in Ashdod on Monday evening, where nearly three dozen were arrested, many for not giving their names. The base was off limits to the news media and declared a closed military zone.

The injured had been flown by helicopter to Israeli hospitals. At the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv, relatives of injured soldiers were gathered outside an intensive care unit when a man with a long beard, one of the wounded passengers, was wheeled by, escorted by military police.

Organizers of the flotilla, relying mainly on footage filmed by activists on board the Turkish passenger ship, because all other communications were down, blamed Israeli aggression for the deadly results.

The Israeli soldiers dropped onto the deck and “opened fire on sleeping civilians at four in the morning,” said Greta Berlin, a leader of the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement, speaking by phone from Cyprus on Monday.

Israeli officials said that international law allowed for the capture of naval vessels in international waters if they were about to violate a blockade. The blockade was imposed by Israel and Egypt after the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007. Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, said Monday that the blockade was “aimed at preventing the infiltration of terror and terrorists into Gaza.”

Despite sporadic rocket fire from the Palestinian territory against southern Israel, Israel says it allows enough basic supplies through border crossings to avoid any acute humanitarian crisis. But it insists that there will be no significant change so long as Hamas continues to hold Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured in a cross-border raid in 2006.

The Free Gaza Movement has organized several aid voyages since the summer of 2008, usually consisting of one or two vessels. The earliest ones were allowed to reach Gaza. Others have been intercepted and forced back, and one, last June, was commandeered by the Israeli Navy and towed to Ashdod. This six-boat fleet was the most ambitious attempt yet to break the blockade.


Reporting was contributed by Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul, Dina Kraft from Tel Aviv, Rina Castelnuovo from Ashdod, Fares Akram from Gaza and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.

    Deadly Israeli Raid Draws Condemnation, NYT, 31.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/middleeast/01flotilla.html

Israeli Raid Complicates

U.S. Ties and Push for Peace

May 31, 2010
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and ETHAN BRONNER

WASHINGTON — Israel’s deadly commando raid on Monday on a flotilla trying to break a blockade of Gaza complicated President Obama’s efforts to move ahead on Middle East peace negotiations and introduced a new strain into an already tense relationship between the United States and Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel canceled plans to come to Washington on Tuesday to meet with Mr. Obama. The two men spoke by phone within hours of the raid, and the White House later released an account of the conversation, saying Mr. Obama had expressed “deep regret” at the loss of life and recognized “the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances” as soon as possible.

While the administration’s public response was restrained, American officials expressed dismay in private over not only the flotilla raid, with its attendant deepening of Israel’s isolation around the world, but also over the timing of the crisis, which comes just as long-delayed American-mediated indirect talks between Israelis and Palestinians were getting under way.

Some foreign policy experts said the episode highlighted the difficulty of trying to negotiate peace with the Palestinian Authority without taking into account an element often relegated to the background: how to deal with Hamas-ruled Gaza. Hamas, the Islamist organization that refuses to recognize Israel’s existence, operates independently of the Palestinian Authority and has rejected any peace talks. Gaza has repeatedly complicated Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

“This regrettable incident underscores that the international blockade of Gaza is not sustainable,” Martin S. Indyk, the former United States ambassador to Israel, said Monday. “It helps to stop Hamas attacks on Israelis, but seriously damages Israel’s international reputation. Our responsibility to Israel is to help them find a way out of this situation.”

The Obama administration officially supports the Gaza blockade, as the Bush administration did before it. But Mr. Obama, some aides say, has expressed strong frustration privately with the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

At a time when the United States is increasingly linking its own national security interests in the region to the inability of Israelis and Palestinians to make peace, heightened tensions over Monday’s killings could deepen the divide between the Israeli government and the Obama administration just as Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu were trying to overcome recent differences.

“We’re not sure yet where things go from here,” one administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic delicacy of the issue. The White House statement said that Mr. Obama “understood the prime minister’s decision to return immediately to Israel to deal with today’s events” and that they would reschedule their meeting “at the first opportunity.”

No matter what happens, foreign policy experts who advise the administration agreed that if Mr. Obama wanted to move ahead with the peace talks, preceded by the so-called proximity or indirect talks, the flotilla raid demonstrated that he may have to tackle the thornier issue of the Gaza blockade, which has largely been in effect since the takeover of Gaza by Hamas in 2007.

Since then, Israel, the United States and Europe have plowed ahead with a strategy of dealing with the Palestinian Authority, which has control over the West Bank, while largely ignoring Gaza, home to some 1.5 million Palestinians.

Gaza was left with a deteriorating crisis as Hamas refused to yield to Western demands that it renounce violence and recognize Israel.

“You can talk all you want about proximity talks, expend as much energy as Obama has, but if you ignore the huge thorn of Gaza, it will come back to bite you,” said Robert Malley, program director for the Middle East and North Africa with the International Crisis Group.

For the Obama administration, the first order of business may be figuring out a way to hammer out a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas that will end the blockade of Gaza. Several attempts in the past two years to reach such an agreement have come close, but ultimately failed, the last time when the two sides were unable to reach a consensus on the release of an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas, Gilad Shalit.

Mr. Indyk, the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, says that after things cool down, the administration needs to work on a package deal in which Hamas commits to preventing attacks from, and all smuggling into, Gaza. In return, Israel would drop the blockade and allow trade in and out. “That deal would have to include a prisoner swap in which Gilad Shalit is finally freed,” he said.

It was unclear whether the indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority would suffer an immediate delay. George J. Mitchell, the Obama administration envoy to the Middle East, was still planning to attend the Palestine Investment Conference in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Wednesday and Thursday.

The indirect talks involved American negotiators shuttling between the Israelis and Palestinians, and are widely viewed as a step back from nearly two decades of direct talks.

But their structure may actually serve the purpose of keeping them going. Mr. Mitchell and his staff have been shuttling between the two sides for more than a year, meaning that the preparation for indirect talks and the talks themselves do not look different from the outside. As a result, the American brokers could continue their shuttles despite the flotilla attack.

While the blockade of Gaza has been widely criticized around the world, Israeli officials say it has imposed political pressure on Hamas. The group has stopped firing rockets at southern Israel and is fighting discontent among the people in Gaza.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 31, 2010


An earlier version of this article misstated the stance of the European Union on the Gaza blockade.

    Israeli Raid Complicates U.S. Ties and Push for Peace, NYT, 31.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/middleeast/01policy.html

Obama Administration

Concerned About Gaza Incident

May 31, 2010
Filed at 12:49 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 

CHICAGO (AP) -- President Barack Obama voiced ''deep regret'' over Monday's deadly Israeli commando raids, and the White House said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed by phone to reschedule White House talks ''at the first opportunity.''

In a statement issued by presidential aides in Chicago, where Obama and his family have been spending the Memorial Day weekend, the president was said to have ''expressed the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances'' surrounding the incident involving aid ships seeking access to the blockaded Gaza Strip.

''He said he understood the prime minister's decision to return immediately to Israel to deal with today's events,'' the statement said. Netanyahu had been scheduled to meet with Obama Tuesday at the White House.

The United States has been trying to restart direct peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, but progress toward this achievement has lagged severely in recent months. At least nine people were killed and dozens wounded in the incident Monday.

The raid brought heightened attention to Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, imposed after the Palestinian militant group Hamas seized control of the tiny Mediterranean territory in 2007. The blockade -- along with Israel's fierce offensive against Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009 to stop Hamas rocket fire -- has fueled anti-Israeli sentiment around the Arab world.

Obama, who has been pushing to reinvigorate the peace process, also has a meeting scheduled here June 9 with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In a statement last week, the White House said that Obama and Abbas planned to discuss the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks and ways the U.S. can work with both parties to move into direct talks. They also will discuss U.S. efforts to support the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Obama and fellow Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel discussed the need for a renewed Middle East peace process earlier this month during a private lunch at the White House.

Speaking to reporters afterward, Wiesel said the meeting was a ''good kosher lunch'' between friends. But he said the conversation did turn serious, as the two Nobel Peace Prize winners discussed the administration's attempts to break the deadlock in the Israel-Palestinian peace talks.

Obama's meeting with Wiesel, a strong supporter of Israel, comes during a period of strained relations between the U.S. and Israel. The author said he believes tensions between the two countries are lessening.

Wiesel survived the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Last June, when Obama visited Germany, Wiesel accompanied the president on a tour of Buchenwald.

Relations between the two countries were tested when Israel announced plans for additional settlements in a part of Jerusalem that Palestinians consider as the likely capital of a new Palestinian state. The announcement came as Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, were preparing to have dinner with Netanyahu, in an incident that turned out to be an embarrassment for the Israeli leader.

    Obama Administration Concerned About Gaza Incident, NYT, 31.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/31/us/politics/AP-US-Israel-Palestinians-Obama.html

White House:

Obama, Netanyahu, Rescheduling Talks

May 31, 2010
Filed at 12:33 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICAGO (AP) -- President Barack Obama has agreed to reschedule a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in light of the deadly Israeli commando raid on ships bringing aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip.

The White House said Obama talked by telephone with Netanyahu on Monday and that the president ''understood the prime minister's decision to return immediately to Israel to deal with today's events.''

The statement issued by administration officials accompanying Obama on his visit to Illinois said the pair agreed to reschedule their meeting ''at the first opportunity.'' It also said Obama expressed ''deep regret'' over the loss of life and cited ''the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances'' behind the incident. Nine pro-Palestinians were killed and dozens of people were injured.

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

CHICAGO (AP) -- The Obama administration voiced concern Monday about the Israel's deadly commando attack on ships carrying pro-Palestinian activists on an aid mission to the blockaded Gaza Strip.

White House spokesman Bill Burton, speaking a day before President Barack Obama had been scheduled to host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for talks at the White House, said the United States ''deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained'' in the incident.

Netanyahu's office in Jersusalem said later that the prime minister had canceled the White House meeting to attend to the crisis at home.

There was no immediate administration comment on that.

Burton said U.S. officials are ''currently working to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragedy.'' The United States, among others, has been trying to restart direct peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, but progress toward this achievement has lagged severely in recent months. At least 10 people were killed and dozens wounded in the incident Monday.

The raid brought heightened attention to Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, imposed after the Palestinian militant group Hamas seized control of the tiny Mediterranean territory in 2007. The blockade -- along with Israel's fierce offensive against Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009 to stop Hamas rocket fire -- has fueled anti-Israeli sentiment around the Arab world.

Obama, who has been pushing for a reinvigoration of the peace process, also has a meeting scheduled here June 9 with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Obama was in Chicago Monday, and had an appearance at a Memorial Day event nearby on his schedule.

In a statement last week, the White House said that Obama and Abbas planned to discuss the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks and ways the U.S. can work with both parties to move into direct talks. They also will discuss U.S. efforts to support the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Obama and fellow Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel discussed the need for a renewed Middle East peace process earlier this month during a private lunch at the White House.

Speaking to reporters afterward, Wiesel said the meeting was a ''good kosher lunch'' between friends. But he said the conversation did turn serious, as the two Nobel Peace Prize winners discussed the administration's attempts to break the deadlock in the Israel-Palestinian peace talks.

Obama's meeting with Wiesel, a strong supporter of Israel, comes during a period of strained relations between the U.S. and Israel. The author said he believes tensions between the two countries are lessening.

Wiesel survived the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Last June, when Obama visited Germany, Wiesel accompanied the president on a tour of Buchenwald.

Relations between the two countries were tested when Israel announced plans for additional settlements in a part of Jerusalem that Palestinians consider as the likely capital of a new Palestinian state. The announcement came as Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, were preparing to have dinner with Netanyahu, in an incident that turned out to be an embarrassment for the Israeli leader.

    White House: Obama, Netanyahu, Rescheduling Talks, NYT, 31.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/31/us/politics/AP-US-Israel-Palestinians-Obama.html

Ten Dead as Israel Storms Aid Ships

May 31, 2010
Filed at 7:07 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By REUTERS

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli commandos stormed a convoy of Gaza-bound aid ships on Monday and more than 10 of the mostly international activists aboard were killed, provoking a diplomatic crisis and Palestinian charges of a "massacre."

The violent end to a Turkish-backed attempt to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip by six ships carrying some 600 people and 10,000 tonnes of supplies raised an outcry across the Middle East and far beyond.

As the navy escorted the vessels into Israel's port of Ashdod, accounts remained sketchy of the pre-dawn interception out in the Mediterranean, in which marines stormed aboard from dinghies and rappelled down from helicopters. Israel said "more than 10" activists died. Israeli media spoke of up to 19 dead.

The bloodshed sparked street protests and government ire in Turkey, long Israel's lone Muslim ally in the region, which had supported the convoy. Ankara recalled its ambassador from Israel and Turkish President Abdullah Gul demanded that the culprits be punished.

The European Union demanded an inquiry and France and Germany said they were "shocked." The United Nations condemned violence against civilians in international waters.

Israeli officials said the marines were met with gunfire and knives when they boarded the ships, which included a large ferry flying the Turkish flag. Activists seized at least two pistols from the boarding party, the officials said.

Israel's attempts to maintain its three-year-old blockade on the Hamas Islamist-ruled enclave while avoiding bloodshed that would spark an international incident collapsed in spectacular fashion: "It's going to be a big scandal, no doubt about it," Israel's Trade Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Reuters.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said: "What Israel has committed on board the Freedom Flotilla was a massacre." He declared three days of official mourning for the dead.

Israel's deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, blamed the activists for the violence and branded them allies of Israel's Islamist enemies Hamas and al Qaeda. Had they got through, he said, they would have opened an arms smuggling route to Gaza.

There was no question of easing the blockade, he said.

In a statement, the Israeli military said that in addition to the dead, numerous activists and five soldiers were injured.

Israeli signal jamming and military censorship prevented much independent reporting of the drama at sea.

Turkish television aired video apparently showing a commando shinning down a rope and clashing with a man wielding a stick.

Israeli television showed video of an activist apparently trying to stab a soldier.

HIGH ALERT, PEACE TALKS DOUBT

Israeli forces were on high alert on the Gaza, Syrian and Lebanese borders as well as around Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and areas of northern Israel where much of the country's Arab population lives. Israeli officials denied reports that a leading Israeli Arab Islamist had been killed on the convoy.

Angry Palestinians gathered in Ramallah, their West Bank center, and near a checkpoint to Jerusalem, which Israel closed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Ottawa. Officials said he was considering whether to cancel a White House meeting on Tuesday with U.S. President Barack Obama and fly home early.

Those talks had been expected to focus on U.S. efforts to move along tentative negotiations with Abbas. But peace talks, mediated by Obama's envoy, seem unlikely to continue for now.

Israel's Arab enemy Syria, which hosts exiled leaders of the Hamas movement that rules Gaza, called for an emergency Arab League meeting. The Cairo-based League condemned what it called Israel's "terrorist act." Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called it "inhuman" and evidence of the Jewish state's weakness.

More worryingly for Israel, its allies were unlikely to show much sympathy. The Turkish government, long Israel's lone friend in the Muslim Middle East, "strongly protested." It marked a new low in an already crumbling Israeli relationship with Ankara.

"Israel will have to suffer the consequences of this behavior," a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement said.

Some 300 demonstrators chanted anti-Israeli slogans outside the Jewish state's Istanbul consulate. Police kept them at bay. The Israeli government advised Israeli tourists in Turkey to stay in their hotels.

Greece, which had citizens aboard the convoy, halted a joint naval exercise with Israel and summoned the Israeli ambassador in Athens. Ireland, with citizens also engaged in the venture, said it was "gravely concerned."

U.N. officials responsible for aid in Gaza said: "We are shocked by reports of killings and injuries of people on board boats carrying supplies for Gaza, apparently in international waters. We condemn the violence and call for it to stop."

"Such tragedies are entirely avoidable if Israel heeds the repeated calls of the international community to end its counterproductive and unacceptable blockade of Gaza."

DEFIANCE, AID REQUESTS

The convoy set off from international waters near Cyprus on Sunday in defiance of warnings that it would be intercepted. Israel had hoped to end the operation without bloodshed and had prepared air-conditioned tents at Ashdod for detainees.

Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev said: "We made repeated offers that they should bring the boats to the port of Ashdod and from there we guaranteed that all humanitarian cargo would be transferred to the people of Gaza."

Greta Berlin, a spokeswoman for the Free Gaza Movement that organized the convoy, said: "How could the Israeli military attack civilians like this? Do they think that because they can attack Palestinians indiscriminately they can attack anyone?"

Israel's Western allies have been critical of the embargo on the 1.5 million people of Gaza, which the Jewish state says is aimed at preventing arms supplies from reaching Hamas.

Turkey and Arab states were highly critical of Israel's attack on Gaza 18 months ago, in which 1,400 Palestinians died.

The United Nations and Western powers have urged Israel to ease its restrictions to prevent a humanitarian crisis and allow for postwar reconstruction. Israel says food, medicine and medical equipment are allowed in regularly.

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald, Additional reporting by Michele Kambas in Nicosia and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara bureau; editing by Paul Taylor)

    Ten Dead as Israel Storms Aid Ships, NYT, 31.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/05/31/world/international-us-palestinians-flotilla.html

U.S. to Aid South Korea

With Naval Defense Plan

May 30, 2010
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — Surprised by how easily a South Korean warship was sunk by what an international investigation concluded was a North Korean torpedo fired from a midget submarine, senior American officials say they are planning a long-term program to plug major gaps in the South’s naval defenses.

They said the sinking revealed that years of spending and training had still left the country vulnerable to surprise attacks.

The discovery of the weaknesses in South Korea caught officials in both countries off guard. As South Korea has rocketed into the ranks of the world’s top economies, it has invested billions of dollars to bolster its defenses and to help refine one of the oldest war plans in the Pentagon’s library: a joint strategy with the United States to repel and defeat a North Korean invasion.

But the shallow waters where the attack occurred are patrolled only by South Korea’s navy, and South Korean officials confirmed in interviews that the sinking of the warship, the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors, revealed a gap that the American military must help address.

The United States — pledged to defend its ally but stretched thin by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — would be drawn into any conflict. But it has been able to reduce its forces on the Korean Peninsula by relying on South Korea’s increased military spending. Senior Pentagon officials stress that firepower sent to the region by warplanes and warships would more than compensate for the drop in American troop levels there in the event of war.

But the attack was evidence, the officials say, of how North Korea has compensated for the fact that it is so bankrupt that it can no longer train its troops or buy the technology needed to fight a conventional war. So it has instead invested heavily in stealthy, hard-to-detect technologies that can inflict significant damage, even if it could not win a sustained conflict.

Building a small arsenal of nuclear weapons is another big element of the Northern strategy — a double-faceted deterrent allowing it to threaten a nuclear attack or to sell the technology or weapons in order to head off retaliation even for an act of war like sinking South Korean ships.

In an interview last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the joint training exercise with South Korea planned just off the country’s coast in the next few weeks represented only the “near-term piece” of a larger strategy to prevent a recurrence of the kind of shock the South experienced as it watched one of its ships sunk without warning. But the longer-range effort will be finding ways to detect, track and counter the miniature submarines, which he called “a very difficult technical, tactical problem.”

“Longer term, it is a skill set that we are going to continue to press on,” Admiral Mullen said. “Clearly, we don’t want that to happen again. We don’t want to give that option to North Korea in the future. Period. We want to take it away.”

American and South Korean officials declined to describe details of the coming joint exercises, except to say that they would focus on practicing antisubmarine warfare techniques and the interdiction of cargo vessels carrying prohibited nuclear materials and banned weapons.

To counter the unexpected ability of midget submarines to take on full warships, the long-term fix will mean greatly expanding South Korea’s antisubmarine network to cover vast stretches of water previously thought to be too shallow to warrant monitoring closely — with sonar and air patrols, for instance. That would include costly investment in new technologies, as well as significant time spent determining new techniques for the South Korean military.

North Korea presents an adversary with a complicated mix of strengths and weaknesses, said senior American officers.

According to a recent strategic assessment by the American military based on the Korean Peninsula, the North has spent its dwindling treasury to build an arsenal able to start armed provocations “with little or no warning.” These attacks would be specifically designed for “affecting economic and political stability in the region” — exactly what happened in the attack on the Cheonan, which the South Korean military and experts from five other countries determined was carried out by a North Korean midget submarine firing a powerful torpedo.

Admiral Mullen and other officials said they believed the Cheonan episode might be just the first of several to come. “North Korea is predictable in one sense: that it is unpredictable in what it is going to do,” he said. “North Korea goes through these cycles. I worry a great deal that this isn’t the last thing we are going to see.”

High-ranking South Korean officials acknowledge that the sinking was a shock.

“As the Americans didn’t anticipate 9/11, we were not prepared for this attack,” one South Korean military official said. “While we were preoccupied with arming our military with high-tech weapons, we have not prepared ourselves against asymmetrical-weapons attack by the North.”

The South Korean military was well aware that the North had submarines — around 70, according to current estimates. But the focus had been on North Korea’s using larger conventional submarines to infiltrate agents or commandos into the South, as it had in the past, not on midget submarines sophisticated enough to sink a major surface warship.

“We believe that this is the beginning of North Korea’s asymmetrical military provocations employing conventional weapons,” said the South Korean official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the military’s internal analysis. “They will use such provocations to ratchet up pressure on the U.S. and South Korea. The Cheonan sinking is an underwater terrorist attack, and this is the beginning of such attacks.”

Though it is considered unlikely, the threat of a conventional war with North Korea is still an issue, too, officials said.

The American military’s most recent “strategic digest” assessing both the strengths of the United States-South Korea alliance and the continuing threat from the North notes that North Korea’s military is “outfitted with aging and unsophisticated equipment.”

Even so, 70 percent of North Korea’s ground forces — part of the fourth-largest armed force in the world — remain staged within about 60 miles of the demilitarized zone with the South. In that arsenal are 250 long-range artillery systems able to strike the Seoul metropolitan area.

“While qualitatively inferior, resource-constrained and incapable of sustained maneuver, North Korea’s military forces retain the capability to inflict lethal, catastrophic destruction,” said the assessment, approved by Gen. Walter L. Sharp, commander of American and United Nations forces in South Korea.

There are about 28,500 American forces in South Korea today, significantly fewer than before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The South Korean military has maintained its armed forces at a consistent number between 600,000 and 700,000, and has steadily modernized based on its economic dynamism.

The North has an active-duty military estimated at 1.2 million, with between five million and seven million in the reserves.

But many are poorly trained, or put to work building housing or seeking out opponents of Kim Jong-il’s government. The best trained, best equipped and best paid of them are North Korea’s special operations forces, numbering about 80,000 and described by the American military as “tough, well-trained and profoundly loyal.” Their mission is to infiltrate the South for intelligence gathering and for “asymmetric attacks against a range of critical civilian infrastructure and military targets.”


Choe Sang-hun contributed reporting from Seoul, South Korea.

    U.S. to Aid South Korea With Naval Defense Plan, NYT, 30.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/world/asia/31koreanavy.html

Dealing With Pakistan

May 28, 2010
The New York Times

Nine years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States is still trying to figure out how to manage relations with Pakistan — and what mix of inducements and public and private pressures will persuade Islamabad to fully commit to the fight against extremists.

The Obama administration is working hard to cultivate top Pakistani officials. There are regular high-level visits. In March, a senior Pakistani delegation visited Washington for a strategic dialogue with the Americans that seems to be building trust and cooperation across a range of government agencies.

An April visit to Islamabad by the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, and Leon Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was a reminder of the limits of American power. They warned officials of severe consequences if an attack on American soil is traced back to Pakistan. Given Pakistan’s proximity to Afghanistan, its nuclear arsenal and the fragility of its government, it is not clear how much punishment Washington would ever mete out.

Pakistan has its own horrifying reminders that the fight against terrorism is not just America’s fight. On Friday, gunmen and suicide bombers stormed two mosques in Lahore, killing at least 80 worshipers.

Pakistan’s Army has mounted big offensives against Pakistani Taliban factions in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan. It has hesitated in North Waziristan where Faisal Shahzad, the suspect in the failed Times Square bombing, reportedly received support and training. Intelligence-sharing has improved, but there is a lot more to be done as the Shahzad case showed.

So why isn’t Pakistan doing all it needs to?

Part of that is the strategic game. Islamabad has long used extremist groups in its never-ending competition with India. Part is a lack of military capability and part political cowardice. While some of Pakistan’s top leaders may “get it,” the public definitely does not.

The United States still does not have a good enough strategy for winning over Pakistan’s people, who are fed a relentless diet of anti-American propaganda.

As The Times reported on Wednesday, the United States is often blamed for everything from water shortages to trying to destroy the Pakistani state. The Obama administration came in determined to change that narrative. When he was in the Senate, Joseph Biden, now the vice president, worked with Richard Lugar on a $7.5 billion, five-year aid package that would prove American concern for the Pakistani people (not just the military) by investing in schools, hospitals and power projects.

Congress approved the first $1.5 billion for 2010, but the State Department is still figuring out how to spend it. The projects need to move as quickly as possible. And Pakistani leaders who demand more help, but then cynically disparage the aid, need to change their narrative.

The State Department also needs to move faster to implement its public diplomacy plan for Pakistan. Officials need to think hard about how to make sure Pakistanis know that aid is coming from the United States — like the $51 million for upgrading three thermal power plants announced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in October. It is a delicate issue, but the “made in America” label has to be affixed.

The State Department has committed to spend $107 million over two years to help Pakistanis better understand the United States. Plans include bringing 2,500 Pakistani academics and others on exchange visits and expanding after-school English classes in Pakistan. There also are proposals to bring more American academics to Pakistan and to reopen cultural centers. They should move ahead. An initiative to make more American officials available to speak directly to Pakistanis has shown promise.

Changing Pakistani attitudes about the United States will take generations. The Shahzad case is one more reminder that there is no time to lose.

    Dealing With Pakistan, NYT, 28.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/opinion/29sat1.html

Clinton:

World Must Act on SKorean Ship Sinking

May 26, 2010
Filed at 2:38 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday the world must respond to sinking of a South Korean warship that has been blamed on North Korea.

''This was an unacceptable provocation by North Korea and the international community has a responsibility and a duty to respond,'' Clinton told reporters after talks with South Korean leaders.

The ship sinking ''requires a strong but measured response,'' she said, although she did not elaborate.

Clinton said the United States would be consulting with South Korea and members of the U.N. Security Council on what the appropriate action would be, but she declined to offer a timeline for action.

''We're very confident in the South Korean leadership, and their decision about how and when to move forward is one that we respect and will support,'' she said.

She spent just a few hours in Seoul discussing possible international responses with South Korean leaders. North Korea denies it was responsible for the incident and has threatened to retaliate if action is taken against it.

Clinton touched down in the South Korean capital Wednesday after intense discussions on the deteriorating situation with Chinese officials in Beijing.

''I believe that the Chinese understand the seriousness of this issue and are willing to listen to the concerns expressed by both South Korea and the United States,'' she said Wednesday. ''We expect to be working with China as we move forward in fashioning a response.''

Asked about the possibility of China or Russia blocking action by the U.N. Security Council, South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said they ''will take time, I'm sure, but they will not be able to deny the facts.''

Clinton called the investigation into the sinking, which killed 46 sailors, ''very thorough, highly professional'' and ''very convincing.'' She said both the United States and South Korea had offered China ''additional information and briefings about the underlying facts of that event.''

''We hope that China will take us up on our offer to really understand the details of what happened and the objectivity of the investigation that led to the conclusions,'' she said.

    Clinton: World Must Act on SKorean Ship Sinking, 26.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/26/world/AP-AS-Clinton-South-Korea.html

U.S. Is Said

to Expand Secret Military Acts

in Mideast Region

May 24, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents.

The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.

While the Bush administration had approved some clandestine military activities far from designated war zones, the new order is intended to make such efforts more systematic and long term, officials said. Its goals are to build networks that could “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” Al Qaeda and other militant groups, as well as to “prepare the environment” for future attacks by American or local military forces, the document said. The order, however, does not appear to authorize offensive strikes in any specific countries.

In broadening its secret activities, the United States military has also sought in recent years to break its dependence on the Central Intelligence Agency and other spy agencies for information in countries without a significant American troop presence.

General Petraeus’s order is meant for small teams of American troops to fill intelligence gaps about terror organizations and other threats in the Middle East and beyond, especially emerging groups plotting attacks against the United States.

But some Pentagon officials worry that the expanded role carries risks. The authorized activities could strain relationships with friendly governments like Saudi Arabia or Yemen — which might allow the operations but be loath to acknowledge their cooperation — or incite the anger of hostile nations like Iran and Syria. Many in the military are also concerned that as American troops assume roles far from traditional combat, they would be at risk of being treated as spies if captured and denied the Geneva Convention protections afforded military detainees.

The precise operations that the directive authorizes are unclear, and what the military has done to follow through on the order is uncertain. The document, a copy of which was viewed by The New York Times, provides few details about continuing missions or intelligence-gathering operations.

Several government officials who described the impetus for the order would speak only on condition of anonymity because the document is classified. Spokesmen for the White House and the Pentagon declined to comment for this article. The Times, responding to concerns about troop safety raised by an official at United States Central Command, the military headquarters run by General Petraeus, withheld some details about how troops could be deployed in certain countries.

The seven-page directive appears to authorize specific operations in Iran, most likely to gather intelligence about the country’s nuclear program or identify dissident groups that might be useful for a future military offensive. The Obama administration insists that for the moment, it is committed to penalizing Iran for its nuclear activities only with diplomatic and economic sanctions. Nevertheless, the Pentagon has to draw up detailed war plans to be prepared in advance, in the event that President Obama ever authorizes a strike.

“The Defense Department can’t be caught flat-footed,” said one Pentagon official with knowledge of General Petraeus’s order.

The directive, the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force Execute Order, signed Sept. 30, may also have helped lay a foundation for the surge of American military activity in Yemen that began three months later.

Special Operations troops began working with Yemen’s military to try to dismantle Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an affiliate of Osama bin Laden’s terror network based in Yemen. The Pentagon has also carried out missile strikes from Navy ships into suspected militant hideouts and plans to spend more than $155 million equipping Yemeni troops with armored vehicles, helicopters and small arms.

Officials said that many top commanders, General Petraeus among them, have advocated an expansive interpretation of the military’s role around the world, arguing that troops need to operate beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to better fight militant groups.

The order, which an official said was drafted in close coordination with Adm. Eric T. Olson, the officer in charge of the United States Special Operations Command, calls for clandestine activities that “cannot or will not be accomplished” by conventional military operations or “interagency activities,” a reference to American spy agencies.

While the C.I.A. and the Pentagon have often been at odds over expansion of clandestine military activity, most recently over intelligence gathering by Pentagon contractors in Pakistan and Afghanistan, there does not appear to have been a significant dispute over the September order.

A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to confirm the existence of General Petraeus’s order, but said that the spy agency and the Pentagon had a “close relationship” and generally coordinate operations in the field.

“There’s more than enough work to go around,” said the spokesman, Paul Gimigliano. “The real key is coordination. That typically works well, and if problems arise, they get settled.”

During the Bush administration, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld endorsed clandestine military operations, arguing that Special Operations troops could be as effective as traditional spies, if not more so.

Unlike covert actions undertaken by the C.I.A., such clandestine activity does not require the president’s approval or regular reports to Congress, although Pentagon officials have said that any significant ventures are cleared through the National Security Council. Special Operations troops have already been sent into a number of countries to carry out reconnaissance missions, including operations to gather intelligence about airstrips and bridges.

Some of Mr. Rumsfeld’s initiatives were controversial, and met with resistance by some at the State Department and C.I.A. who saw the troops as a backdoor attempt by the Pentagon to assert influence outside of war zones. In 2004, one of the first groups sent overseas was pulled out of Paraguay after killing a pistol-waving robber who had attacked them as they stepped out of a taxi.

A Pentagon order that year gave the military authority for offensive strikes in more than a dozen countries, and Special Operations troops carried them out in Syria, Pakistan and Somalia.

In contrast, General Petraeus’s September order is focused on intelligence gathering — by American troops, foreign businesspeople, academics or others — to identify militants and provide “persistent situational awareness,” while forging ties to local indigenous groups.


Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

    U.S. Is Said to Expand Secret Military Acts in Mideast Region, NYT, 24.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/world/25military.html

U.S. Backs South Korea

in Cutting Trade With the North

May 24, 2010
The New York Times
By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — Tensions escalated sharply Monday on the Korean peninsula, as South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said that his nation would cut nearly all trade with North Korea, deny North Korean merchant ships use of South Korean sea lanes and ask the United Nations Security Council to punish the North for what he called the deliberate sinking of a South Korean warship two months ago.

In Washington, the Obama administration said the South Korean measures were “entirely appropriate.”

“U.S. support for South Korea’s defense is unequivocal,” a White House statement said, “and the president has directed his military commanders to coordinate closely with their Republic of Korea counterparts to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression.”

The steps outlined by Mr. Lee in a nationally televised speech — coupled with new moves by South Korea’s military to resume “psychological warfare” propaganda broadcasts at the border after a six-year suspension — amounted to the most serious action the South could take short of an armed retaliation for the sinking of the ship, the South’s worst military loss since the Korean War ended in a truce in 1953.

“We have always tolerated North Korea’s brutality, time and again,” Mr. Lee said. “But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts. Trade and exchanges between South and North Korea will be suspended.”

North Korea’s military immediately warned that if South Korea put up propaganda loudspeakers and slogans at the border, it would destroy them with artillery shells, the North’s official K.C.N.A. news agency reported.

Mr. Lee’s speech came as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was visiting Beijing and pressing China to take a much tougher position toward North Korea, China’s historical ally.

The speech was bound to intensify pressure on the Chinese, who have called for restraint.

North Korea has denied responsibility for the sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, on March 26, which left 46 sailors dead. A growing body of evidence assembled by the South has suggested a North Korean torpedo sank the ship.

Cutting off trade with North Korea is the most punishing unilateral action the South could take against the impoverished North. South Korea imports $230 million worth of seafood and other products from the North a year. North Korea earns $50 million a year making clothes and carrying out other business deals with South Korean companies.

Mr. Lee also said that South Korea would block North Korean merchant ships from using South Korean waters, which would force the ships to detour and use more fuel.

Besides these unilateral measures, South Korea will “refer this matter to the U.N. Security Council, so that the international community can join us in holding the North accountable,” Mr. Lee said. “Many countries around the world have expressed their full support for our position.”

In a separate announcement, the Defense Ministry announced the resumption of propaganda blitzes aimed at the North, a cold war tactic with loudspeaker broadcasts along the border, propaganda radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped by balloon. The resumption was bound to irritate the North Korea leader, Kim Jong-il, whose grip on power rests partly on denying outside information to citizens.

North Korea has already warned that such a move would prompt it to shut down the border with the South completely, raising the possibility of stranding 1,000 South Korean workers at a joint industrial park in the North Korean town of Kaesong.

President Lee cited evidence that a multinational team of investigators released last week on the sinking of the ship, saying “no responsible country in the international community will be able to deny the fact that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea.”

But he did not mention China by name.

Mr. Lee also stopped short of terminating the Kaesong industrial complex.

Delivering his speech from the Korean War Memorial in Seoul, Mr. Lee drew an analogy between the North’s surprise invasion that started the three-year Korean War on June 25, 1950, and the blast that sank the Cheonan.

“Again, the perpetrator was North Korea. Their attack came at a time when the people of the Republic of Korea were enjoying their well-earned rest after a hard day’s work,” he said. “Once again, North Korea violently shattered our peace.”

    U.S. Backs South Korea in Cutting Trade With the North, NYT, 24.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/world/asia/25korea.html

Iran, the Deal and the Council

May 18, 2010
The New York Times

Every time it looks as if the big powers have finally run out of patience with Iran’s nuclear misdeeds, Tehran’s leaders suddenly decide they’re in the mood to compromise. And every time the big powers let up on the pressure, Tehran’s compromises turn to smoke.

It was no surprise on Monday when Iran announced it was ready to accept a deal to ship some of its nuclear fuel out of the country — similar to the deal it accepted and then rejected last year. So it is welcome news that the United States, Europe, Russia and China will press ahead with new United Nations Security Council sanctions.

The deal to exchange enriched uranium — which could, with more enrichment, be used in a weapon — for fuel rods is worth pursuing. We also are sure that there is no chance of reining in Iran’s nuclear ambitions without sustained unified pressure by the major powers.

The resolution, circulated late on Tuesday, takes aim at Iran’s financial institutions, including those supporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which runs much of the nuclear program. It would also require countries to inspect ships or aircraft into or out of Iran if there are suspicions they are carrying banned materials.

Like the three resolutions that preceded it, it is probably not tough enough to change minds in Tehran. But the fact that Russia and China — Iran’s longtime enablers — have signed on is likely to make some players in Iran’s embattled government nervous. (We know we can’t wait to hear what changed Beijing’s mind.)

Several European governments have signaled that they are ready to impose tougher bilateral sanctions after the Security Council moves, and that might unsettle Iran’s shaky political and economic system even more.

Since 2006, Tehran has defied repeated demands from the Security Council to curb its nuclear program. It continues to churn out more nuclear fuel, block international inspectors from visiting suspect nuclear sites and refuses to answer questions about possible research into weapons designs.

The 11th-hour agreement announced this week with the leaders of Brazil and Turkey was much like one reached with the big powers last fall. Iran would transfer about 2,640 pounds of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey within one month and receive — within one year — fuel rods for use in a medical research reactor.

There are big differences, however. In October, 2,640 pounds represented nearly 80 percent of Iran’s stock of enriched uranium. Now it is only about half of its supply.

The original deal was intended to measurably delay Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon while opening the door to serious negotiations. The current deal leaves Iran with too much fuel, puts no brakes on enrichment at a higher rate, lets Tehran take back the fuel stored in Turkey when it wants and makes no commitment to talks.

Brazil and Turkey — both currently hold seats on the Security Council — are eager to play larger international roles. And they are eager to avoid a conflict with Iran. We respect those desires. But like pretty much everyone else, they got played by Tehran.

American officials have not rejected the deal completely. They say that Iran will have to do more to slow its nuclear progress and demonstrate its interest in negotiating, rather than just manipulating the international community.

Brazil and Turkey should join the other major players and vote for the Security Council resolution. Even before that, they should go back to Tehran and press the mullahs to make a credible compromise and begin serious negotiations.

    Iran, the Deal and the Council, NYT, 18.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/opinion/19wed1.html

Shuttle Talks Begin Again in Mideast

May 9, 2010
The New York Times
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — The Obama administration announced Sunday that indirect, American-brokered talks had resumed between Israel and the Palestinians, capping a year of efforts by Washington to revive the peace process.

The American envoy, George J. Mitchell, is expected to shuttle between the two sides over the next four months as mediator of the so-called proximity talks. They are aimed at forging a joint vision of the outlines of a solution based on the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, released a statement warning both sides that “if either takes significant actions during the proximity talks that we judge would seriously undermine trust, we will respond to hold them accountable and ensure that negotiations continue.”

But he praised recent steps by both Israel and the Palestinians to help ensure that the talks could take place, including a statement from the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, that he would work to keep factions from trying to scuttle the talks through attacks or incitement, and from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there would be no more construction at the Ramat Shlomo settlement in East Jerusalem for two years.

“They are both trying to move forward in difficult circumstances, and we commend them for that,” Mr. Crowley said.

Mr. Mitchell left the Middle East on Sunday after completing what the State Department characterized as the first round of talks, and was to return next week.

Expectations of an early breakthrough are low. Mr. Netanyahu, a conservative, has repeatedly stated his preference for direct talks, and had been hoping to limit the proximity talks to procedural matters. The Palestinians want the indirect talks to deal with the substantive issues of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and have refused to engage in direct talks unless Israel declares a halt to all settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a Palestinian Liberation Organization official and adviser to Mr. Abbas, said Saturday that the Palestinians had received assurances that all the core issues would be broached in the indirect talks, including the future of Jerusalem, the fate of the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and their descendants, borders and security.

The talks were supposed to have started two months ago, but they were canceled after the Israeli government announced plans for 1,600 new housing units for Jews in contested East Jerusalem, causing a rift in Israeli-American relations.

Israel has since agreed to allow preliminary discussion of core issues in the indirect talks.

Ghassan Khatib, an analyst and spokesman for the Palestinian government in the West Bank, said this week that Israeli internal politics were “not conducive at all” for the prospects of an agreement.

“But on the other hand,” he said, “we are encouraged by the international community, and especially the United States, whose efforts can have an effect on the Israeli position and on public opinion.”

    Shuttle Talks Begin Again in Mideast, NYT, 9.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/world/middleeast/10mideast.html

Editorial

Fixing the Treaty

May 9, 2010
The New York Times

The world has a chance this month to send a powerful message about its determination to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. To do that, 189 nations, whose diplomats have gathered in New York, must strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

At a frightening time — when Iran and North Korea are defying the Security Council and pressing ahead with their nuclear programs, and terrorists are actively trying to buy or steal their own weapon — there has to be a law to make clear that proliferation will not be tolerated. The treaty is that law. But it is badly fraying.

Iran, which is a “non-weapons” state, managed for years to hide its nuclear activities. North Korea secretly diverted fuel and built weapons, then suddenly withdrew from the treaty and tested a weapon.

Ideally, the treaty would be strengthened with legally binding amendments. But that requires a consensus, and even then could take years of votes. A strong political document from the conference could make the world safer. That should include:

¶An insistence that all treaty members accept tougher nuclear monitoring, giving the International Atomic Energy Agency greatly expanded access to suspected nuclear sites and related data.

¶An agreement to penalize any state that violates its treaty commitments and then withdraws from the pact, as North Korea did.

¶A requirement that states that do not already make their own nuclear fuel stay out of the fuel business — it is too easy to divert to make a nuclear weapon. States with fuel programs must commit to guarantee supplies for peaceful energy programs.

¶A strong call for the United States and Russia to quickly begin negotiations on deeper weapons reductions, and a commitment to quickly draw other nuclear powers into arms reduction talks.

¶A firm agreement that there will be no more India-like exemptions from nuclear trade rules, and that any state that tests a weapon would be denied nuclear trade.

Four decades ago, a bargain was struck. Countries without nuclear weapons signed the treaty and forswore them in return for access to peaceful nuclear energy. The five weapons states — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China — promised to eventually disarm and provide nuclear energy technology to non-weapons states.

The bargain was always tenuous, and countries that gave up nuclear arms have some right to feel aggrieved. For too long the United States and Russia did little to shrink their huge arsenals. China’s arsenal is still expanding. Washington’s agreement to sell nuclear energy technology to India (which like Pakistan boycotted the nonproliferation treaty so it could develop weapons) enshrined unequal treatment.

President Obama has shown that he is willing to lead by example. He has downgraded the importance of nuclear arms, pledged to build no new weapons, and signed a new arms reduction treaty with Moscow. All five weapons states issued a useful joint statement pledging not to test a weapon and promising to cooperate with countries seeking peaceful nuclear energy programs.

A successful conference — with robust commitments — would give real momentum as the Security Council tries to negotiate a fourth round of sanctions for Iran. That is why Iran is working so hard to dilute or block a strong consensus document.

Egypt, which leads the Nonaligned Movement, is also playing games by pressing for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East that seeks to force Israel to give up its nuclear arsenal. That is not going to happen any time soon. All states need to ante up and reverse the treaty’s slide. The world’s security depends on it.

    Fixing the Treaty, NYT, 9.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/opinion/09sun1.html

U.S. Urging NATO to Maintain Nuclear Deterrent

April 22, 2010
The New York Timesq
By MARK LANDLER

TALLINN, Estonia — Fresh from signing a strategic nuclear arms deal with Russia, the United States is parrying a push by NATO allies to withdraw its aging stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons from Europe.

At a meeting of foreign ministers of NATO countries here, officials from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and other countries are prodding the United States to begin negotiations with Russia for steep reductions in what are called nonstrategic nuclear weapons — mostly aerial bombs which, in the case of the United States, are stored in underground vaults on air bases in five NATO countries.

But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to urge caution when she addresses the ministers on Thursday evening. A senior American official said she would underscore the need for NATO to maintain a deterrent, and for the alliance to act together on this issue. The Obama administration is also pushing for NATO to embrace the American missile-defense system planned for Eastern Europe as a core mission of the alliance.

Some officials worry that the debate over tactical nuclear weapons, if not properly handled, could splinter the alliance — pitting longtime NATO members against newer members like Turkey and the former Soviet satellites, which are more reluctant to see these weapons removed.

“There won’t be any decision on this issue,” said a senior administration official, who characterized the talks as less a debate than a seminar on the changing role of nuclear weapons in today’s world.

“We haven’t had a real discussion about nuclear weapons in NATO for a long time,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting Mrs. Clinton’s speech.

The meeting comes at a time when NATO’s 28 members are rethinking much of the rationale for the alliance, which has its roots in the cold war. The United States, for its part, is pushing to streamline NATO’s bureaucracy and make it more responsive to modern threats in places like Afghanistan that are beyond the alliance’s original areas of focus, Europe and the North Atlantic.

American officials say that NATO has grown into a sprawling institution with 320 committees, 14 agencies, 6,000 employees, and an annual budget of some $6.7 billion. They would like it to spend less at its headquarters in Brussels and funnel more money to combat missions in Afghanistan.

“This alliance is bloated,” the American official said. “It needs to be reorganized for the 21st century.”

The meeting almost did not happen. The cloud of ash from the Icelandic volcano hung over Tallinn all week, leading many people to assume that the gathering would have to be canceled. When the winds nudged the cloud away from Estonia, officials said, NATO decided to go ahead, with some ministers arriving on propeller planes that flew at low altitudes below the ash.

Mrs. Clinton’s jet flew first to Spain, well south of Iceland, but faced a tense moment when the ash cloud suddenly drifted back over Estonia. After a delay, her plane headed for Tallinn early on Thursday, with the pilots unsure if they would be able to land until the skies cleared. Mrs. Clinton had scratched a one-day visit to Finland planned for Wednesday because of the flight restrictions.

On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton met with Estonia’s foreign minister, Urmas Paet, and reiterated America’s commitment to defend it and other NATO allies from aggression. Estonia, which languished under Soviet domination for decades, was more recently the target of a sophisticated cyberattack, which its government believes originated inside the Russian government.

“He’s old enough to remember the Soviet occupation,” Mrs. Clinton said of Mr. Paet, who turned 36 this week.

“We believe there is no sphere of influence, that there is no veto power that Russia or any country has over any country in Europe, or in this region, concerning membership in NATO,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton also had stern words for Syria, which was accused by the Israeli government last week of selling Scud missiles to the radical Islamic group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Scud missiles have much longer ranges than the rockets Hezbollah has been using, and would be able to reach nearly anywhere in Israel.

American intelligence officials have not confirmed that the missiles were actually delivered to Hezbollah. But Mrs. Clinton said the United States was deeply disturbed by the reports, as well as the transfer of missile technology to Syria. Iran has often been a source for that technology.

Still, Mrs. Clinton said the Obama administration would not abandon its efforts to reach out to the Syrian government. It is trying to win Senate confirmation for a new ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, who would be the first American envoy to Damascus in five years.

The Bush administration withdrew the last ambassador in 2005 to protest Syria’s suspected role in the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Syria has denied any role in his killing.

“This is not some kind of reward for the Syrians, and the actions they take, which are deeply disturbing,” Mrs. Clinton said of Mr. Ford’s appointment. “It’s a tool that we believe can give us extra leverage, insight, analysis, information, with respect to Syria’s actions and intentions.”

    U.S. Urging NATO to Maintain Nuclear Deterrent, NYT, 22.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/world/europe/23diplo.html

Decrying U.S.,

Iran Begins War Games

April 21, 2010
The New York Times
By NAZILA FATHI and DAVID E. SANGER

Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared that President Obama’s new nuclear strategy amounted to “atomic threats against Iranian people,” and Iranian state television reported Thursday that the military had begun a large exercise in the Persian Gulf, where the United States and Israel have both increased their presence in recent months.

The ayatollah’s statement on Wednesday referred to the section of Mr. Obama’s “Nuclear Posture Review” that guaranteed non-nuclear nations that they would never be threatened by a United States nuclear strike — as long as they are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as judged by the United States.

Speaking in Washington on Wednesday, Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top adviser on unconventional weapons, said the wording of the nuclear review was “deliberately crafted” to exclude Iran and North Korea from the security guarantee, creating an incentive for both countries to come into compliance with the treaty. (While North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and is believed to have fuel for eight or more weapons, the United States has never acknowledged it as a nuclear-weapons state.)

Mr. Samore insisted that Mr. Obama’s decision did not amount to making a nuclear threat against Iran, which many Western countries believe is pursuing a weapon. The policy, Mr. Samore said, referred only to the use of nuclear weapons in the most extreme circumstances, which most experts believe means in retaliation for a strike against the United States or its allies.

Still, Ayatollah Khamenei’s statement struck at the heart of one of the criticisms of Mr. Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review: That it could give Iran a pretext to argue that it should develop nuclear weapons to defend itself. The ayatollah’s remarks suggested that the Iranian leadership regarded the administration policy as a new level of intimidation, or perhaps a justification for pursuing its nuclear program.

“How can the U.S. president make atomic threats against Iranian people?” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a speech to Iranian medical workers, the Fars news agency reported from Tehran. “This threat is a threat against humanity and international peace and no one in the world should dare to articulate such words.”

Ayatollah Khamenei said Wednesday that countries that had nuclear ability were themselves “brazenly lying” about their commitment to nonproliferation. He argued that nuclear-armed states sought to keep non-nuclear states from developing such weapons because they did not want competition. “We have repeatedly said that we do not intend to use weapons of mass destruction, but the Iranian people do not surrender to these threats and will force those who make such threats to come to their knees,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

“We will not allow America to renew its hellish dominance over Iran,” he added.

To meet the United States’ demands, Iran would need to take several important steps, including halting uranium enrichment and allowing broad inspections of the country to ensure that Iran had no secret plants.

The Iranian military defined its military exercise as a three-day naval, ground and air-war game in the Persian Gulf, including the sensitive Strait of Hormuz, a narrow transit way through which a large amount of the world’s oil passes.

The deputy chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, Brig. Gen. Hussein Salami, said that the exercise, which is being called the Great Prophet 5, was aimed at showing “Iran’s strength and will against the threats of the enemies,” Fars reported. Iran regularly stages drills to show off its military power.

Iran has refused to suspend its nuclear program despite existing United Nations sanctions and calls by the United States for new, more stringent sanctions.

Iranian officials have floated in recent days the possibility of revisiting a deal to swap a portion of the country’s nuclear fuel. The Iranians had agreed in principle to a deal last year that would have allowed the fuel to be converted overseas and then returned in a form that would be difficult to convert for weapons use, but they later renounced the agreement.

While some officials have suggested recently that they might reconsider, they have recently insisted that all the fuel they gave up would have to be stored on Iranian soil. To the Obama administration, the main advantage of the original deal was that it would take the fuel out of Iranian hands for about a year, in the hopes of slowing their program.

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Salehi, said Wednesday that Iran would be willing to discuss a deal on the sidelines of a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review meeting in New York, which begins next month, the state-run Press TV reported.

    Decrying U.S., Iran Begins War Games, NYT, 21.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/world/middleeast/22iran.html

Obama Calls for Joint Action

to Safeguard Nuclear Stocks

April 13, 2010
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — Saying that the prospect of nuclear terrorism had emerged as one of the greatest threats to global security, President Obama called on world leaders “not simply to talk, but to act” to secure or destroy vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear materials.

Mr. Obama, addressing a plenary session of the 47-nation nuclear security conference he had convened here, told fellow leaders Tuesday morning that it was time “not simply to make pledges, but to make real progress for the security of our people.”

“All this, in turn, requires something else, something more fundamental,” Mr. Obama continued. “It requires a new mindset — that we summon the will, as nations, as partners, to do what this moment in history demands.”

Seeking to lend force to his warning, Mr. Obama said that dozens of countries held nuclear materials that could be sold or stolen, and that a weapon fashioned from an apple-size piece of plutonium could kill or injure hundreds of thousands of people.

“Terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda have tried to acquire the material for a nuclear weapon, and if they ever succeed, they would surely use it. Were they to do so, it would be a catastrophe for the world.”

A day after Ukraine, Canada and Malaysia offered individual undertakings to tighten controls or reduce nuclear stocks, Mr. Obama said that “the problems of the 21st century cannot be solved by nations acting in isolation — they must be solved by all of us coming together.”

Joint undertakings toward that end will be spelled out in a communiqué from the group to be issued at day’s end, and more individual commitments are expected as well.

Mr. Obama also announced that there would be another nuclear security conference in two years, and that the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, had agreed to be the host. That would seem to ensure a particularly close focus on the North Korean nuclear program, just as Iran has drawn particular attention at this meeting.

On Monday, Mr. Obama secured a promise from President Hu Jintao of China to join negotiations on a new package of sanctions against Iran, administration officials said, but Mr. Hu made no specific commitment to backing measures that the United States considers severe enough to force a change in direction in Iran’s nuclear program.

In a 90-minute conversation here, Mr. Obama sought to win more cooperation from China by directly addressing one of the main issues behind Beijing’s reluctance to confront Iran: its concern that Iran could retaliate by cutting off oil shipments to China. The Chinese import nearly 12 percent of their oil from Iran.

Mr. Obama assured Mr. Hu that he was “sensitive to China’s energy needs” and would work to make sure that Beijing had a steady supply of oil if Iran cut China off in retaliation for joining in severe sanctions.

American officials portrayed the Chinese response as the most encouraging sign yet that Beijing would support an international effort to ratchet up the pressure on Iran and as a sign of “international unity” on stopping Iran’s nuclear program before the country can develop a working nuclear weapon.

On Tuesday, though, Chinese officials in Beijing seem to strike a more cautious note.

“We believe that the Security Council’s relevant actions should be conducive to easing the situation and conducive to promoting a fitting solution to the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations,” Jiang Yu, a foreign ministry official, said at a regular news briefing in Beijing.

“China supports a dual-track strategy and has always believed that dialogue and negotiations are the optimal channels for resolving the Iranian nuclear issue. Sanctions and pressure cannot fundamentally resolve the issues.”

Iran’s state-financed Press TV satellite broadcaster highlighted news agency reports saying that China still favored diplomacy to resolve dispute over Tehran’s nuclear intentions.

The developments had distinct echoes of former President George W. Bush’s three efforts to corral Chinese support for penalties to be imposed on Iran by the United Nations Security Council. Those penalties were intended to make it prohibitively expensive for Iranian leaders to enrich uranium or to refuse to answer questions posed by international nuclear inspectors.

In those cases, former American officials said, the Chinese agreed to go along with efforts to address Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but then used Security Council negotiating sessions to water down the resolutions that were ultimately adopted.

Mr. Obama also used his meeting with Mr. Hu, the fourth face-to-face meeting between the leaders of the world’s largest economy and its biggest lender, to keep up the pressure on Beijing to let market forces push up the value of China’s currency. That is a critical political task for Mr. Obama, because the fixed exchange rate has kept Chinese goods artificially cheap and, in the eyes of many experts, handicapped American exports and cost tens of thousands of American jobs.

In anticipation of Monday’s meeting, Chinese officials told Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner last week that they were about to resume a controlled loosening of their exchange rate, which would increase the relative costs of Chinese exports.

Mr. Obama’s senior Asia adviser, Jeffrey A. Bader, told reporters after the meeting on Monday that Mr. Obama told Mr. Hu that a market-oriented exchange rate would be “an essential contribution” to a “sustained and balanced economic recovery.”

The session with Mr. Hu came just before the opening of the first summit meeting devoted to the challenges of keeping nuclear weapons and material out of the hands of terrorists. At a dinner Monday evening in the cavernous Washington Convention Center, Mr. Obama led a discussion of the nature of the threat and the vulnerability of tons of nuclear material that could be fashioned into a weapon.

Earlier in the day, John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, offered a sampling of Mr. Obama’s argument when he told reporters that the United States had continuing evidence of Al Qaeda’s interest in obtaining highly enriched uranium or plutonium, the only materials from which a nuclear weapon can be made, and that it would be used “to threaten our security and world order in an unprecedented manner.”

But he cited no incidents beyond the now-famous campfire conversations that Osama bin Laden held in August 2001 with two Pakistanis who had deep ties to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons laboratories. While Al Qaeda has tried repeated purchases, Mr. Brennan said, “fortunately, I think they’ve been scammed a number of times, but we know that they continued to pursue that. We know of individuals within the organization that have been given that responsibility.”

The main focus of Mr. Obama’s meeting is to obtain commitments from each of the 47 countries attending to lock up or eliminate nuclear material.

One such agreement was announced Monday with Ukraine which, after the fall of the Soviet Union, was, because of its remainder stockpiles of nuclear missiles and bombs, briefly the world’s third-largest nuclear power. It gave up the arsenal, but for the past 10 years had resisted surrendering its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, held at research reactors and another nuclear center.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group that studies proliferation, has estimated Ukraine’s stockpile at about 360 pounds, or roughly enough for seven weapons.

According to a senior administration official, under the deal announced Monday the United States will pay to secure the highly enriched uranium, which will probably be sent to Russia for conversion into low-enriched uranium for nuclear power plants. As part of the deal, the United States will also help supply Ukraine with new low-enriched fuel and a new research facility.

But over all, it was Iran that dominated the day, because the administration has a goal of putting sanctions in place this spring, Mr. Obama said in an interview with The New York Times last week.

On Monday, Mr. Obama laid out the details of the sanctions package for Mr. Hu, according to a senior White House official familiar with the discussion. These are likely to include additional measures to deny Iran access to international credit, choke off foreign investment in Iran’s energy sector and punish companies owned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls swaths of Iran’s economy, as well as its nuclear program.

The administration is betting that a large segment of Iranian society detests the Revolutionary Guards for its role in suppressing the protests that followed elections last June, and may welcome properly targeted sanctions.

“Until two weeks ago, the Chinese would not discuss a sanctions resolution at all,” the official said. But the Obama administration, in hopes of winning over Beijing, has sought support from other oil producers to reassure China of its oil supply. Last year, it sent a senior White House adviser on Iran, Dennis B. Ross, to Saudi Arabia to seek a guarantee that it would help supply China’s needs, in the event of an Iranian cutoff.

“We’ll look for ways to make sure that if there are sanctions, they won’t be negatively affected,” said the senior official.

There was little evidence in the meeting of the succession of spats that have soured Chinese-American relations over the last several months, American officials said. While Mr. Hu raised Chinese complaints about American weapons sales to Taiwan, an official said, he did so fleetingly. And he did not mention Mr. Obama’s decision to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.


Brian Knowlton, contributed reporting from Washington, Andrew Jacobs from Beijing and Alan Cowell from Paris.

    Obama Calls for Joint Action to Safeguard Nuclear Stocks, NYT, 14.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/world/14summit.html

Russia and U.S. Sign

Nuclear Arms Reduction Pact

April 8, 2010
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER and DAN BILEFSKY

PRAGUE — The United States and Russia opened what they called a new era in their tumultuous relationship on Thursday as they signed an arms control treaty and presented a largely united front against Iran’s nuclear program, marking a sharp change since they broke over the Georgia war two years ago.

In a ceremony filled with flourish and the echoes of history, President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev put aside the tensions of recent years to seal the New Start pact paring back their nuclear arsenals. The two leaders used the moment to showcase their growing personal relationship and a mutual commitment to cooperation on a host of issues.

The celebratory mood in the majestic, gilded hall of Prague Castle masked stubborn divisions on matters like missile defense and European security. Mr. Obama avoided any public criticism of Russia’s human rights record. And while they resolved to seek even deeper cuts in nuclear weapons, such an agreement would be much harder to reach than the one they signed Thursday.

The overthrow of the government in Kyrgyzstan likewise could quickly test the new bonds proclaimed in Prague given that the two countries have vied for influence there in recent years. As both sides struggled to figure out what the violent uprising would mean, the United States took a cautious approach while Russia embraced the new government and a senior official in Mr. Medvedev’s delegation told reporters that Moscow still wanted an American base in Kyrgyzstan closed.

But harmony was the message of the day. “When the United States and Russia are not able to work together on big issues, it’s not good for either of our nations, nor is it good for the world,” Mr. Obama said. “Together, we’ve stopped that drift, and proven the benefits of cooperation. Today is an important milestone for nuclear security and nonproliferation, and for U.S.-Russia relations.”

Mr. Medvedev called the treaty “a truly historic event” that would “open a new page” in Russian-American relations. “What matters most is that this is a win-win situation,” he said. “No one stands to lose from this agreement. I believe that this is a typical feature of our cooperation. Both parties have won.”

The Russian signaled support for the American-led drive to impose new sanctions on Iran, saying that Tehran’s nuclear program had flouted international rules. “We cannot turn a blind eye to this,” Mr. Medvedev said, while adding that sanctions “should be smart” and avoid hardship for the Iranian people.

Mr. Medvedev said he “outlined our limits for such sanctions” to Mr. Obama in their private talks, without elaborating. Sergei Ryabkov, the deputy Russian foreign minister, said later that Mr. Medvedev supported sanctions “that are targeted, that are tailored,” and opposed an embargo on refined oil products because it would be “a huge shock for the whole society.”

The friendly tone stood in contrast to the rupture between Washington and Moscow after Russia’s war with its tiny neighbor of Georgia in 2008, when President George W. Bush shelved a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement in protest and supplied financial aid to the Georgians. Neither president mentioned Georgia in public on Thursday or the broader issue of Russia’s assertiveness with its neighbors.

The two played down their quarrel over American plans to build missile defense in Europe, despite recent comments by Russian officials threatening to withdraw from the treaty if the United States pressed too far. And Mr. Obama expressed no public concern about Russian authoritarianism, a topic that routinely flavored discussions during Mr. Bush’s presidency, and even he was sometimes criticized for not raising it more strenuously.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev smiled and whispered with each other as they sat side by side signing the treaty. Mr. Obama called his counterpart a “friend and partner” and said “without his personal efforts and strong leadership, we would not be here today.” For his part, Mr. Medvedev said the two had developed a “very good personal relationship and a very good personal chemistry, as they say.”

White House officials described the relationship in effusive terms. “We’re having a real conversation,” said Michael McFaul, the president’s Russia adviser. “We’re not reading talking points.” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Obama “genuinely feels like they can sit down and call each other and work through a series of issues in a very frank and honest way.”

Russian officials likewise expressed optimism that was absent from such meetings not long ago. “Our mutual trust was below zero,” said Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of Parliament. “Now we have to correct the mistakes of the past and move forward.”

Under the treaty, if ratified, each side within seven years would be barred from deploying more than 1,550 strategic warheads or 700 launchers. Because of counting rules and past reductions, neither side would have to eliminate large numbers of weapons to meet the new limits. But the treaty re-establishes an inspection regime that lapsed in December and could serve as a foundation for deeper reductions later.

The rapprochement worries many in a region once dominated by Moscow. The cover of the influential Czech weekly Reflex showed Mr. Obama kissing Leonid Brezhnev, along with the warning, “dangerous kisses with Moscow.” The leading Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza ran a snide commentary titled “Obama is coming, but it’s no longer our Obama.”

Lubos Dobrovsky, a former Czech defense minister who presided over the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, said he feared that Mr. Obama was appeasing Russia. “This treaty is a diplomatic and military victory for Moscow,” he said in an interview, “and I am not happy that this American defeat is being showcased in Prague.”

Hoping to soothe such concerns, Mr. Obama spoke by phone with President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia before leaving Washington and then hosted 11 leaders from the region here for a dinner of devil’s fish, scallops and California wine.

“He gave us reassurances that we are not in a vacuum, that we are anchored in Europe and NATO, that we belong somewhere,” Prime Minister Jan Fischer of the Czech Republic said in an interview afterward. But history is hard to ignore, he added. “The people of the Czech Republic will be viewing relations with Russia through the rear view mirror, but we need to look through the front screen, which is much larger.”

Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland told reporters that he asked Mr. Obama directly how the renewed Russian-American ties “may affect the security of countries in the region,” and added that “we received assurances on the part of the United States” that its commitment to its partners here remained undiminished.


Michal Piotrowski contributed reporting from Warsaw, and Jan Krcmar from Prague.

    Russia and U.S. Sign Nuclear Arms Reduction Pact, NYT, 8.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/world/europe/09prexy.html

Iran Derides Obama's

''cowboy'' Nuclear Stance

April 7, 2010
Filed at 12:04 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- U.S. allies on Wednesday lined up behind President Barack Obama's new policy aimed at reducing the likelihood of nuclear conflict. But Iran -- classified as a possible target under the guidelines -- dismissed it as a ''cowboy'' policy by a political newcomer doomed to fail.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in the Slovak capital Bratislava for an official visit, did not address the issue before leaving for Prague to sign a landmark treaty Thursday with Obama aimed at paring U.S.-Russian strategic nuclear weapons by 30 percent. But Washington's supporters in Asia and Europe welcomed Obama's pledge Tuesday to reduce America's nuclear arsenal, refrain from nuclear tests and not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them.

North Korea and Iran were not included in that pledge because they do not cooperate with other countries on nonproliferation standards.

The U.S. considers them nuclear rogues -- Pyongyang for developing and testing nuclear weapons and Tehran because it is suspected of trying to do the same under the cover of a peaceful program, something Iran denies. Outlining the policy Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the focus would now be on terror groups such as al-Qaida as well as North Korea's nuclear buildup and Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Addressing thousands in the country's northwest, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad derided Obama over the plan.

''American materialist politicians, whenever they are beaten by logic, immediately resort to their weapons like cowboys,'' Ahmadinejad said in a speech before a crowd of several thousand in northwestern Iran.

''Mr. Obama, you are a newcomer (to politics). Wait until your sweat dries and get some experience. Be careful not to read just any paper put in front of you or repeat any statement recommended,'' Ahmadinejad said in the speech, aired live on state TV.

Ahmadinejad said Obama ''is under the pressure of capitalists and the Zionists'' and vowed Iran would not be pushed around.

''(American officials) bigger than you, more bullying than you, couldn't do a damn thing, let alone you,'' he said, addressing Obama.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- whose country is the only mideast nation considered to have nuclear weapons -- dismissed speculation that the Jewish state could come under pressure.

''I'm not concerned that anyone would think that Israel is a terrorist regime,'' he said. ''Everybody knows a terrorist and rogue regime when they see one, and believe me, they see quite a few around Israel.''

Washington's key European partners on its efforts to contain Iran's nuclear activities welcomed the Obama initiative.

British Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth said it ''delivers strong progress'' on pledges first made a year ago, adding Britain ''looks forward to working closely with the US and other key allies and partners in the future.''

Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero of France, like Britain a nuclear weapons state that backs global disarmament efforts, said Obama's nuclear posture ''is convergent with our views.''

Hailing the U.S. policy review as a historic shift in U.S. nuclear strategy, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle urged Iran to see it -- and Thursday's planned Obama-Medvedev treaty signing -- as a sign that the international community is ''serious about disarmament.''

In Asia, key allies benefiting from being under the U.S. nuclear defense umbrella expressed support, suggesting the Obama statement helped defuse concerns that they would be left vulnerable by a change in Washington's policy.

''This is a first step toward a nuclear-free world,'' said Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. ''Deterrence is important, but so is reducing nuclear arsenals.''

Katsuya Okada, Japan's foreign minister, noted that Japan, which is located near North Korea, China and Russia but has decided not to develop nuclear weapons of its own, was concerned about how the policy will affect its security.

''The United States had assured its allies that this position will not endanger them,'' he said. ''This is important.''

In South Korea, the foreign and defense ministries issued a joint statement saying the new U.S. stance would strengthen Washington's commitment to its allies and pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons development.

''The government welcomes and supports'' Obama's announcement, they said. There was no immediate reaction to Obama's plan from North Korean state media.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key also welcomed the announcement.

''President Obama made good on his pledge a year ago to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. security policies and set the world on a path to a nuclear-weapons-free world,'' he said in a statement. ''The review clearly states the long-term objective of U.S. policy is the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, and implements the first of the actions that will be needed to get there.''

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai refused to comment on the new U.S. nuclear defense policy, which also calls on China to explain its nuclear intentions more clearly.

''China's nuclear policy and China's strategic intentions are clear. Since the 1960s we have repeated our position on many occasions and our position has never been changed,'' Cui said, without elaborating. ''I believe people with fair and just minds will not question China's position.''

Beijing, which is said to have 100 nuclear warheads, has said it would not be the first to attack with nuclear weapons.

Chinese President Hu Jintao is to travel to Washington to take part in an April 12-13 nuclear summit that will focus on securing nuclear material to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. The meeting is expected to bring together about 46 leaders.

------

Jahn reported from Bratislava, Slovakia. Associated Press writers Anita Chang, Angela Charlton, Eric Talmadge, Geir Moulson. Matti Friedman and Danica Kirka and researcher Zhao Liang contributed to this report from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

    Iran Derides Obama's ''cowboy'' Nuclear Stance, NYT, 7.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/07/world/AP-US-Nuclear-Policy-Reaction.html

Editorial

Mr. Obama’s Nuclear Policy

April 7, 2010
The New York Times

President Obama has spoken eloquently about his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. It is a lofty goal that will not be achieved during his presidency — or for years after that. But in a very dangerous time, he is taking important steps to make the world safer and bolster this country’s credibility as it tries to constrain the nuclear ambitions of Iran, North Korea and others.

Two decades after the end of the cold war, the United States and Russia still have a combined total of more than 20,000 nuclear weapons. Mr. Obama has revived arms control negotiations, and later this week, he and President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia will sign a new agreement (the first since 2002) that will reduce the number of strategic warheads each side has deployed from 2,200 to 1,550.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama released his Nuclear Posture Review. It does not go as far as it should, but it is an important down payment on a saner nuclear policy.

The document substantially narrows the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons. The last review — done in 2002 by the George W. Bush administration — gave nuclear weapons a “critical role” in defending the country and its allies and suggested that they could be used against foes wielding chemical, biological or even conventional forces.

The new review says the “fundamental role” of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States and its allies, and it rules out the use of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear countries, even if they attack the United States with unconventional weapons.

There is an important caveat. That assurance only goes to countries that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which leaves out North Korea and Iran. It would have been better if Mr. Obama made the “sole” purpose of nuclear weapons deterring a nuclear attack. No one in their right mind can imagine the United States ever using a nuclear weapon again. America’s vast conventional military superiority is more than enough to defend against most threats.

This formulation seems mainly intended to deter hard-line critics on Capitol Hill. But any loophole undercuts Washington’s arguments that nonnuclear states have no strategic reason to develop their own arms.

Mr. Obama has wisely made the prevention of nuclear terrorism and proliferation a central strategic priority. And the administration has rightly decided to lead by example. We were especially encouraged to see the review’s statement that the country “will not develop new nuclear warheads.” There is still some wiggle room, which we hope is not exercised. New nuclear warheads are not needed.

The review commits to pursuing further arms reductions with Russia. And it says that future talks must also focus on cutting back the 15,000 warheads, in total, that the United States and Russia keep as backup — the so-called hedge — and short-range nuclear weapons.

The United States has 500 tactical nuclear weapons, which are considered secure, but Russia has 3,000 or more that are far too vulnerable to theft. Any agreement will take years to complete, and Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev should start talking now. The review also commits to talking to China about its arsenal.

Mr. Obama has committed to maintaining the safety and security of America’s nuclear stockpile. He has already backed that up with an extra $624 million in next year’s budget for the nuclear labs and promised — far too generously, in our view — an additional $5 billion over the next five years to build up their aging infrastructure. Mr. Obama has also promised support for more advanced conventional arms.

None of those measures are likely to quiet his critics, who already are charging that Mr. Obama is weakening America’s defenses. They will likely get even louder when it comes time to ratify the New Start treaty with Russia and the long-deferred Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The stakes for this country’s security are high. And most Americans aren’t paying attention. Mr. Obama has a strong argument. He will need to push back hard.

    Mr. Obama’s Nuclear Policy, NYT, 7.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/opinion/07wed1.html

U.S. Approves

Targeted Killing of American Cleric

April 6, 2010
The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and spent years in the United States as an imam, is in hiding in Yemen. He has been the focus of intense scrutiny since he was linked to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in November, and then to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25.

American counterterrorism officials say Mr. Awlaki is an operative of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate of the terror network in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. They say they believe that he has become a recruiter for the terrorist network, feeding prospects into plots aimed at the United States and at Americans abroad, the officials said.

It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president.

But the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told a House hearing in February that such a step was possible. “We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community,” he said. “If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.” He did not name Mr. Awlaki as a target.

The step taken against Mr. Awlaki, which occurred earlier this year, is a vivid illustration of his rise to prominence in the constellation of terrorist leaders. But his popularity as a cleric, whose lectures on Islamic scripture have a large following among English-speaking Muslims, means any action against him could rebound against the United States in the larger ideological campaign against Al Qaeda.

The possibility that Mr. Awlaki might be added to the target list was reported by The Los Angeles Times in January, and Reuters reported on Tuesday that he was approved for capture or killing.

“The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words,” said an American official, who like other current and former officials interviewed for this article spoke of the classified counterterrorism measures on the condition of anonymity. “He’s gotten involved in plots.”

The official added: “The United States works, exactly as the American people expect, to overcome threats to their security, and this individual — through his own actions — has become one. Awlaki knows what he’s done, and he knows he won’t be met with handshakes and flowers. None of this should surprise anyone.”

As a general principle, international law permits the use of lethal force against individuals and groups that pose an imminent threat to a country, and officials said that was the standard used in adding names to the list of targets. In addition, Congress approved the use of military force against Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. People on the target list are considered to be military enemies of the United States and therefore not subject to the ban on political assassination first approved by President Gerald R. Ford.

Both the C.I.A. and the military maintain lists of terrorists linked to Al Qaeda and its affiliates who are approved for capture or killing, former officials said. But because Mr. Awlaki is an American, his inclusion on those lists had to be approved by the National Security Council, the officials said.

At a panel discussion in Washington on Tuesday, Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California and chairwoman of a House subcommittee on homeland security, called Mr. Awlaki “probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us.”

    U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric, NYT, 6.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html

U.S. Consulate in Pakistan

Is Attacked by Militants

April 5, 2010
The New York Times
By ISMAIL KHAN and SABRINA TAVERNISE

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Militants mounted an assault against the United States Consulate in this northern Pakistani city on Monday, using a powerful bomb and rocket launchers in a multipronged attack, said a senior Pakistani intelligence officer.

Six people were killed outside the consulate and at least 20 were wounded, according to a senior government official. None of those killed were Americans.

The United States Embassy in Islamabad said that at least two Pakistani security guards employed by the consulate were killed in the attack, and that a number of others were seriously wounded. The embassy confirmed that the attack was coordinated, and said it involved “a vehicle suicide bomb and terrorists who were attempting to enter building using grenades and weapons fire.”

Employees of the consulate were evacuated after the attack, according to the Pakistani official. Pakistani television reported that the consulate would be closed on Tuesday, but a United States Embassy spokeswoman could not immediately confirm that.

Militants managed to damage barracks that formed part of the outer layer of security for the heavily fortified consulate area, but did not penetrate inside, the Pakistani intelligence officer said.

Pakistani television networks showed a giant cloud of dust and debris rising from the Saddar area, where the consulate is located, shortly after 1 p.m. Local media reported that there had been three blasts. Authorities cordoned off the area and gunfire was heard long after the explosions.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, and warned that “we plan more such attacks,” Reuters reported.

The assault was a chilling reminder of just how close the militants are still able get to their targets in Pakistan, where months of operations by the Pakistani military in Taliban-controlled northern areas have dramatically reduced violence.

On March 31, a militant who identified himself as Qari Hussein, the head of suicide bomber training for the Taliban, spoke to a Pakistani reporter for Dawn, an English-language daily, saying that the Taliban would soon begin attacks on important and sensitive targets in order “to refresh memories of the attack on the Khost base.” That attack, on an American military base in Afghanistan, killed eight Americans, seven of them Central Intelligence Agency officers.

A short time before the blasts in Peshawar, a bomb exploded at a ceremony in Dir Province, killing more than 40 people, according to the provincial information minister, Iftikhar Hussein, and media reports.

The strike, which came after several months of calm, was an attempt on the part of the militants to show they still have power, said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a defense analyst. It was also a message to the United States, which has been conducting operations against Taliban militants in neighboring Afghanistan, that the Taliban can assault American interests in other places.

“They were lying low for the last three months, but they are trying to demonstrate that they are still alive and kicking,” Mr. Rizvi said. He added that Peshawar, which had been tormented by almost daily bomb strikes last fall, remains the easiest target for militants to strike.

“It is very easily accessible,” he said. “From tribal area you can walk right into Peshawar.”

The senior Pakistani intelligence officer said that the consulate attack had been well-coordinated. It involved several militants, all with suicide vests and some firing rocket launchers, as well as a large bomb.

Media reports quoted witnesses as saying the attackers were wearing uniforms of the Pakistani security services but officials did not immediately verify this.

The ceremony in Dir was to celebrate the renaming of North-West Frontier Province, and was held by a Pashtun political party, the Awami National Party. Fifty people were injured.

“They want to give us a message not to hold activities like this,” Mr. Hussein said.

The bombing took place in the same area where several American military personnel were killed earlier this year, in a bomb attack at the opening of a girls’ school.


Ismail Khan reported from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Sabrina Tavernise from Islamabad. Pir Zubair Shah contributed reporting from Islamabad.

    U.S. Consulate in Pakistan Is Attacked by Militants, NYT, 5.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/asia/06pstan.html

Amid Thaw,

Obama Talks With Chinese Leader

April 1, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER and ANDREW JACOBS

WASHINGTON — Tensions between China and the United States have ebbed significantly in recent days, with the countries now working together to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions and with the Obama administration backing off a politically charged clash over China’s currency.

The warming trend was evident in the Chinese government’s announcement on Thursday that President Hu Jintao will attend a nuclear security summit meeting in Washington later this month. American officials had feared that Mr. Hu would skip the talks to express China’s anger over recent diplomatic clashes, including a White House decision to sell arms to Taiwan and President Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader.

But this week, the drumbeat of bad news — and an underlying narrative of a rising China flexing its muscles against a debt-laden United States — has suddenly given way to talk of collaboration.

On Thursday night, President Obama spoke with Mr. Hu for about an hour by telephone, a chat that lasted so long that Air Force One had to be held for 10 minutes on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base after landing so that Mr. Obama could finish up the conversation. Chinese television reported that Mr. Hu expressed a desire for healthier ties, while stressing Beijing's sensitivity about Taiwan and Tibet.

For now, the United States is setting aside potentially the most divisive issue in the relationship, deferring a decision on whether to accuse China of manipulating its currency, the renminbi, until well after Mr. Hu’s visit, according to a senior administration official. That decision, the official said, reflects a judgment that threatening China is not the best way to persuade it to allow the renminbi to appreciate against the dollar.

Many economists expect China to act on its own to loosen the tight link of the renminbi to the dollar — a policy that keeps the currency’s value depressed and makes China’s exports more competitive in global markets.

Still, the administration’s decision not to force the currency issue now could carry political risks at home. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have introduced legislation calling for trade sanctions against China if it does not change its currency policy. And unions and manufacturers cite the undervalued Chinese currency as a major culprit for lost jobs.

The White House would not comment on the currency issue, but an official said that if China did not take action on its own, the administration could raise the issue again at the Group of 20 summit meeting in June. The White House welcomed Mr. Hu’s visit as proof that its policy of engaging with China on strategic issues of common interest had paid off.

“We have an important relationship with China, one in which there are many issues of mutual concern that we work on together,” said a White House spokesman, Bill Burton. “But there also will be times where we disagree. I think this proves the point that despite those disagreements, we can work together on issues like nuclear proliferation.”

The relationship between the countries was also affected last week when Google, citing Chinese censorship, began redirecting users in China to its uncensored Hong Kong search engine.

On Wednesday, China appeared to throw its support behind new United Nations sanctions aimed at putting pressure on Iran over its nuclear program. The Security Council has been stymied by China’s insistence on diplomacy over sanctions.

American officials said they expected China to wrangle over the wording of a United Nations resolution, with a goal of watering down the measures against Tehran. Indeed, on Thursday, Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, arrived in Beijing for talks with China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi. The ministry appeared to steer clear from any commitment for sanctions.

Still, earlier this week, Mr. Obama expressed optimism that the major powers could unite this spring behind a resolution that would apply new pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

The administration has engaged in intensive talks with Chinese officials to demonstrate to Beijing the destabilizing effect of a nuclear-armed Iran. A crucial advance, officials said, came in early March when an American delegation, led by Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg and the National Security Council’s senior director for Asia, Jeffrey A. Bader, visited Beijing.

Mr. Hu’s visit will take place only two days before the Obama administration faces a deadline to decide whether to label China a “currency manipulator,” meaning that it intervenes in currency markets to gives its exporters an artificial advantage. Pressure in the United States has been building to take that step, which could initiate a Congressional process that would lead to slapping tariffs on Chinese imports.

But given the potential for embarrassing Mr. Hu — and for sending bilateral relations into another tailspin — the administration decided not to report on April 15, one of the deadlines set by Congress and the Treasury Department to issue a report on possible currency manipulation.

Nicholas R. Lardy, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said the Treasury Department could delay the deadline for weeks. “As a practical matter, they’ve got a lot of wiggle room,” he said. Mr. Lardy added that he thought it was unlikely that China would have agreed to a visit by Mr. Hu unless there was at least an informal assurance by the Treasury that China would not immediately be named a currency manipulator.

Lawmakers signaled that they would not be easily mollified if the administration gave Beijing a pass on its currency.

“The most important issue in the Chinese-American relationship is currency,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who introduced a bill threatening China with trade sanctions. “It relates to American jobs, American wealth and the future of this country. This issue should not be traded for another.”

Relations between the countries began to fray in November, soon after Mr. Obama went to China on a state visit that was more circumscribed than American officials would have liked.

In the months that followed, tensions increased. American officials accused China of thwarting a climate change deal in Copenhagen and Chinese leaders threatened to punish the United States for a $6 billion weapons deal for Taiwan. In February, China’s Foreign Ministry called in the American ambassador for a scolding about Mr. Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, whom China calls a separatist.

But then came a thaw. In recent days, public statements in Beijing and Washington hinted at fading tensions. Mr. Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, declared that United States did not support independence for Taiwan and Tibet. And Mr. Obama, at an event on Monday for China’s new ambassador to Washington, offered generous praise for China.


Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Andrew Jacobs from Beijing. Sewell Chan contributed reporting from Washington.

    Amid Thaw, Obama Talks With Chinese Leader, NYT, 2.4.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/world/asia/02china.html

Letters

Who Froze the Mideast Peace Process?

April 2, 2010
The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Mr. Obama and Israel” (editorial, March 27):

One doesn’t have to agree with every action and policy of the government of Israel to recognize that the fundamental problems that have surfaced are far more a product of Palestinian rejectionism and extremism than alleged Israeli intransigence.

It is the Palestinians, not Israel, who have refused to return to negotiations. Unfortunately, the Obama administration gave the Palestinians an excuse not to come to the table by making settlements the central issue. In fact, over the years there have been negotiations despite the settlement issue. Had the Palestinians accepted Israel’s generous offers under two prime ministers for a Palestinian state, the issue of settlements would have been resolved.

The Obama administration has gone off track not only in its excessive focus on settlements and its overreaction to Israel’s faux pas in announcing new construction while the vice president was in Israel, but also by suggesting that Israel is harming American interests in the region. This is a misguided and counterproductive view.

Ultimately, America’s interests in the region will rise or fall on its willingness to support its true friends there and its ability to distinguish between moderates who want peace and rejectionists who want to undermine it. There is no doubt that Israel is a true ally and peacemaker.

Abraham H. Foxman
National Director
Anti-Defamation League
New York, March 28, 2010

•

To the Editor:

The rift between the United States and Israel will continue until Israel makes a concession on East Jerusalem settlement expansion. You say Palestinians are “justifiably worried that these projects nibble away at the land available for their future state.” That is true, and the construction, as Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recently told the Security Council, is also illegal.

The issues at stake are too important in terms of United States interests and the safety of the American military to allow the Israeli right wing to dictate policy. The Israeli right does not want a Palestinian state to emerge alongside Israel. Yet that is exactly the international consensus, and the only way to resolve the continuing conflict.

Jeff Warner

La Habra Heights, Calif.
March 27, 2010
The writer is the action coordinator for L.A. Jews for Peace.

•

To the Editor:

Since the start of Barack Obama’s presidency, Israeli-Palestinian talks have reverted from face to face to “proximity” ones, in which the special envoy for the Middle East, George J. Mitchell, carries messages between the two sides.

Mr. Obama’s sense of history is lacking if he thinks the Israeli-Palestinian conflict contributes to the wider instability in that region. Israel’s problem has always been an existential one, with other countries in the region continuing to deny its right to exist.

The settlements are a red herring. And since when is Jerusalem a settlement?

Francyne Teisch
Hillsborough, Calif., March 27, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Why do critics seem mystified by Israel’s persistent, decades-old refusal to abandon expanding settlements? There’s no incentive as long as American presidents and successive Congresses dole out billions of dollars each year in aid without attaching necessary conditions.

This is tantamount to rewarding Israel for bad behavior.

Pat Murphy
Ketchum, Idaho, March 27, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Your editorial chastises Israel’s government for not backing down from its plan to build homes in East Jerusalem. It claims, as does the Obama administration, that such a policy is obstructing the peace process. But you do not mention that the same week that the Interior Ministry of Israel made its announcement, as ill timed as it might have been, Palestinians in the West Bank were dedicating a square to honor the memory of a terrorist who killed dozens of civilians in Israel (including an American).

The peace process can become a reality only when governments around the world express their horror at such travesties and make demands of the Palestinians as they do of Israel.

Renana Kadden
West Hartford, Conn., March 27, 2010

Who Froze the Mideast Peace Process?, NYT, 2.4.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/opinion/l02israel.html