Well, I had intended to get my blogging done tonight, but life intervened again. I ended up having to do something for work all night. Argh. Sorry about that. Be back tomorrow, the fates willing…

A brief world news roundup for 9 March 2010.

United States & the Americas

• canada.com – Just days after the Conservative government’s throne speech pledged to resolve several outstanding Arctic territorial disputes, polar experts have revealed an unexpected twist in the long-running disagreement over the Canada-U.S. border in the southern Beaufort Sea.
• White House – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Major General Robert A. Harding, U.S. Army (Retired), as Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security (Transportation Security Administration). Robert A. Harding, Nominee for Assistant Secretary, Department of Homeland Security (Transportation Security Administration) Major General (Retired) Robert A. Harding has spent over 35 years working in the Intelligence Community, as a leader in both the military and the private sectors. General Harding served as CEO of Harding Security Associates (HSA), a company he founded in 2003 and sold in July 2009
• Brazil Sun – Brazil said Monday it would raise tariffs on 591 million dollars worth of US products in the latest twist in its showdown over US cotton subsidies it has blasted as unfair.
• IRNA – Iranian and Brazilian scientists will launch extensive cooperation in the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and science and technology policymaking under a working group formed based on an agreement signed by the two countries.
• El Universal – Exports of oil products to US fall by 67.6 percent in 10 years
• Columbia Reports – A Colombian intelligence report alleges that the FARC are collaborating with Peruvian insurgent group “Shining Path,” in an effort to revitalize the failing Maoist organisation.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Kremlin – Dmitry Medvedev will meet with Prime Minister of Sweden Fredrik Reinfeldt on March 9 to discuss economic ties and international issues. Agreements on space, energy, healthcare and other spheres of cooperation have been drafted for Reinfeldt’s visit.
• MEMRI – In an interview with the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour, Russian Ambassador to Jordan Alexander Kalugin said that Moscow was opposed to Iran, with whom it shares its southern border, obtaining nuclear weapons.
• Kavkaz Center – Statement of the Ingush Mujahideen Command regarding events in Ekazhevo
• Itar Tass – Active member of illegal armed groups Valery Etezov who is on the international wanted list has been liquidated in Nalchik. Offering resistance during the detention he wounded two policemen and a passer-by, an official of the Kabardino-Balkaria investigation department of the Russian Prosecutor’s Investigative Committee (SKP) told Itar-Tass on Monday.
• Caucasian Knot – Georgia and the European Union have signed the agreement on united air space. The document assumes to build, within 2 years after signing, the united Georgian-EU aviation space. According to the new agreement, Georgia will harmonize its legislation with EU standards on aviation safety, protection of environment, consumers’ rights, air traffic control and economic regulation.
• Russia Today – People in the South Ossetian town of Leningor say that since Georgia’s devastating attack in 2008, it has blocked vital gas supplies. Georgia claims the pipes are damaged, but people in Leningor say it’s a cruel pretext to deprive them of fuel.
• AP – Election officials in Tajikistan have declared the governing party the overwhelming winner of parliamentary elections that international observers say were marred by widespread fraud

Middle East

• Al Sumaria – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki is the front-runner in Iraq’s nine southern provinces, AFP quoted local official as saying. Al Iraqiya List led by Iyad Allawi came first in Anbar, Salahuddin, Diyala and Nineveh, estimates reported. In Kirkuk, Kurdistan Alliance topped the chart followed by Al Iraqiya then the State of Law Coalition, estimates added
• Michael Rubin – Yesterday’s elections in Iraq should be applauded. So too should be the role Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has played over the last four-plus years. Talabani has been a voice of moderation and has helped bring back different sectarian and ethnic groups from the brink on several occasions. He works well with Americans, Iranians, Turks, and Syrians, a useful skill for any Iraqi statesman. But it’s time for Talabani to go. Preliminary reports suggest Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) came in second in Sulaymani, Talabani’s stronghold, although the PUK appears to have eked out a victory in hotly contested Kirkuk.
• Jerusalem Post – For this reason, Israel carefully scrutinized every public statement made by Nasrallah, Assad and Ahmadinejad two weeks ago during their meeting in Damascus, on the sidelines of which Syria and Iran signed a number of new defense pacts. While the agreements do not bind Syria to defend Iran if it is attacked by Israel or the United States, the continued alliance between the countries is of major concern for the Israeli defense establishment, primarily considering that at the same time that Assad sat down for dinner with Ahmadinejad, the Obama administration announced that it had decided to return its ambassador to Damascus.
• Interpol – Interpol is to join a Dubai-based international task force investigating the murder of Palestinian national and Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on 19 January 2010. At the request of UAE/Dubai authorities, the world police body has also issued a further 16 Red Notices to assist in the arrest of additional suspects now linked to the murder of Al-Mabhouh, bringing the total to 27.
• NOW Lebanon – NOW’s correspondent reported on Monday that the Internal Security Forces (ISF) arrested in Marjayoun a citizen—identified only by his initials of M.P.M.—for allegedly spying for Israel.
• SANA – The March 8th Revolution in 1963 marked a major and important turning point in Syria’s history, the strength and endurance of which were inspired by the spirit of popular struggle. The Revolution boosted Syria Syria’s position as a country with political and economic power with independent political and economic decision-making.
• UPI – Yemeni forces Monday arrested more than 25 people allegedly involved in a secessionist uprising gripping the southern provinces of the embattled country

Iran

• Asharq Al Awsat – Baluchi Kamal Narui, spokesman for the armed Sunni Jundallah Organization, which opposes the current Iranian regime, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the organization — which has been engaged in confrontations to restore the rights of the Sunnis and Baluchi minority for years now — will soon publish confessions made by an Afghan agent who works for the Mossad who was involved in the arrest of Jundallah leader Abdolmalek Rigi. Speaking to Asharq al-Awsat by phone, Narui stressed that Rigi was arrested at a friend’s house in the Afghan City of Kandahar. He dismissed the Iranian version of events, which claims that Rigi was arrested after the plane on which he was traveling to Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, to meet with American officials, was forced to land at the airport of Bandar-Abbas City.
• Payvand – Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said on Monday the ringleader of PJAK terrorist group must be handed over to Iran to stand trial. Larijani’s remarks came after it was reported that PJAK terrorist group leader has been arrested in Germany
• ynet – Three of the world’s largest oil suppliers have clandestinely cut their ties with Iran, the Financial Times reported Monday. The move, which saw Holland-based Vitol and Switzerland’s Glencore and Trafigura cease all trading with Iran, stresses the United States’ success in pressuring global companies to cut commercial ties with the Islamic Republic.
• Fars – Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Monday underlined Tehran’s readiness to improve all-out ties with the south African state of Zimbabwe.
• Press TV – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has postponed a trip to Afghanistan devoted to providing “solutions for settling the problems” in Iran’s eastern neighbor. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the source added, has, however, arrived in Afghanistan on Monday morning on an unannounced visit.

A U.S. Army Soldier walks past damage from a suicide bombing at Combat Outpost Dand Patan, Afghanistan, Feb. 17, 2010. COP Dand Patan is home to B Company, 2-121, 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Georgia Army National Guard. (photo by Senior Chief Petty Officer Kevin Elliott)

South Asia

• RFERL – A roadside bomb attack has blown up a civilian vehicle in the southwestern Afghan province of Badghis, killing 10 passengers. Officials said the explosion took place in Muqur district on March 7. Another civilian and one police officer were reported killed in separate bomb blasts in the same region. Badghis has seen increasing militant activity as Taliban fighters spread their influence from traditional strongholds in the south and east of the country.
• TIME – A fierce battle last weekend in northern Afghanistan’s Baghlan province between fighters of the Taliban and their erstwhile allies Hezb-i-Islami killed more than 50 combatants and 19 civilians — and may prove to be a major boon to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
• AFPS – Afghan troops, assisted by coalition forces, cordoned and searched an insurgent supply route used to transport and harbor roadside bombs in Afghanistan’s Helmand province late last week.
• Pentagon – The Department of Defense announced the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Spc. Alan N. Dikcis, 21, of Niagara Falls, N.Y., died March 5 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 630th Engineer Company (Clearance), 7th Engineer Battalion (Combat Effects), 20th Engineer Brigade (Combat) (Airborne), Fort Drum, N.Y
• Dawn – According to official sources suspected US drone has fired five missiles in Maley Khan Sirai area located near Miranshah bazaar killing at least five people and wounded three. A security official in Peshawar confirmed the strike saying the missiles hit militants gathered in a compound in Miranshah.
• The News – In a surprising move in the militancy-stricken North Waziristan Agency, unknown assailants shot dead a senior Taliban commander, Maulvi Noor Mohammad, near Miramshah. Official sources told The News by phone from Miramshah on Sunday that Maulvi Noor Mohammad was travelling in a car near Gora Qabrestan when he came under attack.
• Geo – A suicide car bomber has struck a building where police interrogate high-profile suspects in Pakistan’’s eastern city of Lahore, killing at least 13 people and wounding 61 others, including women taking children to school, officials said. The attack shattered what had been a relative lull in major violence in Pakistan. The attack also showed that rebels retain the ability to strike the country’’s heartland, far from the Afghan border regions where al Qaida and the Taliban have long thrived, despite army offensives aimed at wiping them out. The authorities have found the head of the suicide bomber. No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion fell on the Pakistani Taliban and allied militant groups.
• Times of India – The government on Monday sounded a terror alert for three cities — Kolkata, Mumbai and Bangalore — after interrogation of Indian Mujahideen suspect Salman Ahmed.
• Nosint – The Indian Army is gearing up to test fire the indigenously-built Nag anti-tank missile from Rajasthan in May
• Colombo Page – The Summary of Evidence prepared in compliance with military proceedings against Sri Lanka’s former Army Chief, Retired General Sarath Fonseka has been completed and handed over to the Army Commander Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya. Legal officers in the Army Directorate of Legal Services are in the process of reviewing the contents and maintain that there is a prima facie case against General Fonseka on more than five charges under the Army Act.

Far East & Pacific

• Yonhap – South Korea is keeping a close watch over North Korea’s efforts to draw greater foreign investment to one of its ports, as the move might indicate Pyongyang is opening up to the outside world and signal its return to stalled international nuclear talks, officials said Tuesday. The North has agreed to give a 50-year lease on its Rajin port to Russia, and the country is also in talks with a Chinese company on extending its 10-year lease by another decade, according to an official from China’s Jilian Province, currently in Beijing for the National People’s Congress.
• Chosun Ilbo – The construction of a new bridge linking China and North Korea across the Apnok (or Yalu) River is expected to begin in October, a year after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao agreed to the project during his visit to the North
• Macleans – North Korea has recently created an army division in charge of newly developed intermediate-range missiles capable of striking U.S. forces in Japan and Guam, a South Korean news agency said Tuesday.
• Jakarta Post – Dozens of students from Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic Institute, grouped under Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, rallied outside their campus Tuesday to protest against the visit of US President Barack Obama next week.

Europe

• The Local – A 62-year-old Uighur living in Sweden as a political refugee since 1997 has been found guilty of spying for China on Uighur expatriates and sentenced to a year and four months in jail. The man, identified in court documents as Swedish citizen Babur Maihesuti, was found guilty of “aggravated illegal espionage activity”, the Stockholm district court said in a statement.
• Expatica – Nine alleged members of an Al Qaeda terror cell, suspected of having recruited jihadists and prepared attacks, go on trial in Brussels Monday.
• euobserver – Following Saturday’s referendum in Iceland in which 93.5 percent of voters voted No to plans to reimburse the Netherlands and the UK for monies lost following the collapse of online bank Icesave, there has been a mixed reaction on the part of the two EU governments. London has said it is open to fresh talks on the matter while the Hague has warned explicitly that the vote threatens the north Atlantic nation’s EU hopes.

Africa

• Garowe – Somalia’s hardline insurgents Al-Shabaab controlling the southern Somali town of Afmadow have banned English and Science studies in schools after the education centers reportedly ignored their call for fighters, residents and teachers reports
• Sudan Tribune – The Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) headed by Abdel-Wahid Al-Nur described as “false” the claims by the Sudanese army that they have control of the strategic Jebel Marra plateau in Darfur. Today the Sudanese army spokesperson Al-Sawarmi Khaled said that their forces have overran the area after fighting with SLM-AW troops.
• The East African – The recently reported seizure of a North Korean arms shipment supposedly intended for Congo-Brazzaville highlights the continuing flow of weapons into African conflict zones from multiple sources. Last week, South Africa reported to the United Nations that it had intercepted concealed North Korean military cargo in November. The shipment, it said, violated a UN arms embargo and may have been made in collusion with China. But larger-scale military transfers to unstable African states by other suppliers, including the United States, are regularly carried out without notice by the world press.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, center left, meets with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, center right, in Kabul, March 8, 2010. (photo by Cherie Cullen)

The Global War

• Asia Times – As China continues to consider joining the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project, with or without India, the United States needs to understand that Beijing’s eventual decision will have repercussions across Asia
• Kevin Stringer, Military Review – Interagency Command and Control at the Operational Level: A Challenge in Stability Operations

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

A brief world news roundup for 8 March 2010.

United States & the Americas

• Globe and Mail – Officers of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service have played a crucial and long-standing role as interrogators of a vast swath of captured Taliban fighters, The Canadian Press has learned.
• Press TV – Iran deplores Canada’s move to vote against a UN-backed resolution extending the deadline for a full and credible probe into Israeli war crimes during its last year assault on Gaza. “During the tenure of [Canadian Prime Minister Stephen] Harper, Canada followed the policy of turning a blind eye to realities and has always given priority to dual and contradictory behaviors,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast on Sunday.
• Press TV – Amid US efforts to unite Latin American nations against Iran, the newly sworn-in Uruguayan president expresses willingness to expand ties with the Islamic Republic
• Miami Herald – Police in northern Mexico protested Saturday hours after three of their colleagues were shot to death in an ambush and a fourth was wounded.
• Expatica – Members of the militant Basque separatist group ETA trained around 100 guerillas from Colombia’s rebel FARC group in camps in Venezuela, the Spanish daily El Pais reported Sunday.
• LAHT – The personal nurse who spent four years looking after “Mono Jojoy,” the military chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, turned herself in Saturday, the authorities said in a communique.
• Columbia Reports – 54 members of neo-paramilitary drug gangs were arrested and six were killed in an armed forces operation in northern Colombia, the Government Secretary of the Antioquia department told Caracol radio on Sunday
• ISNA – Bullying powers of the world are angry with the expansion of ties among independent countries, said Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Meeting with Ecuador’s First Vice President Lenin Moreno in Tehran on Saturday, he said Iran and Ecuador both consider the current global arrangement unjust and have common views towards global issues.
• Prensa Latina – Iran’s Vice President Mohamad Reza Rahimi said Sunday that his country will support Ecuador to seek the necessary funds to preserve the Yasuni Amazonian Park, through the international community joint responsibility. That strategy responds to Ecuador’s policy of preserving about 846 million of heavy oil barrels in the national Yasuni Amazonian Park’s subsoil, in return for an international joint responsibility formula.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• RIA Novosti – The construction of the Russia-China oil pipeline will be finished by the end of this year, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said on Sunday. The project is part of the East Siberia – Pacific oil pipeline, which was launched into operation in December 2009 and is designed to pump up to 1.6 million barrels (220,000 tons) of crude per day from Siberia to Russia’s Far East and then on to China and the Asia-Pacific region.
• Caucasian Knot – Local residents are afraid that after the special operation conducted by Russian power agencies on March 3 in Ekazhevo village the republic will face new terror acts. During the operation militants suffered losses and in the near future, most likely, they will strike back. If the fact of liquidation of the ideologist of extremism Said Buryatskiy (Alexander Tikhomirov) is confirmed, their response may be even tougher
• RFERL – Five years ago, on March 8, 2005, the Russian authorities announced the death in a shootout of Chechen President and resistance commander Aslan Maskhadov. His death was a milestone in Russia’s struggle to preserve control over the North Caucasus.
• RIA Novosti – Said Buryatsky, a notorious gang leader in Russia’s North Caucasus, killed in a special operation on Tuesday, was involved in the derailment of a Moscow-St. Petersburg train in November 2009, the head of the Federal Security Service said on Saturday.
• Kavkaz Center – The command of the Mujahideen of Ghalghaycho (AKA Ingushetia) Province of the Caucasus Emirate has officially confirmed the information on Martyrdom (inshaAllah) of Sheikh Sayeed al Buryati (AKA Sayeed Buryatsky/Sayeed Abu Saad). The report states that Sayeed Abu Saad was killed during the long-lasted fierce battle in the village of Ekazhevo 17 Rabi al-Awwal 1431 (3 March 2010)
• Itar Tass – A gunman from an illegal armed group, who participated in a recent attack against policemen, was killed in a special operation in Derbent on Saturday.

Middle East

• Al Jazeera – Iraqis have begun voting in their second full parliamentary elections since the 2003 US-led invasion against a backdrop of deadly attacks. But even as polls opened on Sunday, attacks across the country left at least 24 people dead and 50 more wounded.
• Al Sumaria – Elections in northern Iraq are as competitive as polls in Baghdad. Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by President Jalal Talabani has allied with Kurdistan Democratic Party headed by Kurdistan leader Massoud Barazani in face of Change Movement led by Neshervan Barazani.
• Lieutenant Junior Grade Robert J. Bebber, book review – The Intelligence Wars: Lessons from Baghdad
• Haaretz – In a letter to Hamas political chief Khaled Meshal, the group’s senior military commander has admitted losing control in Gaza, the Arabic-language newspaper A-Sharq Al-Awsat reported on Saturday.
• Jerusalem Post – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday continued his verbal assault on Israel, according to Saudi paper Al Wattan, which quoted him as saying that that al Aksa Mosque, the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb “were not and never will be Jewish sites, but Islamic sites.” Erdogan was referring to Israel’s recent inclusion of the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb on its national heritage list, but it was unclear why he mentioned the Aksa Mosque, since that site was not included.
• Asharq Al Awsat – The issue of Palestinian arms in Lebanon, both inside and outside of the Palestinian refugee camps is an issue that has returned to the fore following a statement from the Secretary-General of the Fatah al-Intifada group Colonel Abu Moussa. Abu Moussa announced that Fatah al-Intifada is ready to relocate its military bases that are currently inside the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon to other locations outside of these camps to be determined by the Lebanese army.
• Daily Star – Hizbullah’s Minister of State for Administrative Reform Mohammad Fneish said Sunday that his party’s weapons would not be “a subject for discussion,” during upcoming National Dialogue sessions on a defense strategy.
• SMH – An al-Qaeda militant has killed a police guard and seriously wounded another as he tried to escape from custody in a Yemeni hospital, the defence ministry says. “Guards at Sanaa’s Republican Hospital foiled a bid by an al-Qaeda member involved in several terrorist attacks who was hospitalised for several days,” the ministry’s 26sep.net website said a statement on Sunday.
• UPI – The United Arab Emirates aims to build a network of oil and gas pipelines to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway controlled in part by Iran.

Iran

• Payvand – The Defense Ministry inaugurated on Sunday the production line of a short-range cruise missile dubbed Nasr 1 (Victory 1). The Nasr 1 missile is capable of destroying 3000-ton boats, Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi told reporters during the inauguration ceremony (with photos)
• Defense Update – Massive Construction Visible at Iran’s Missile & Space Center at Semnan; Extensive infrastructure developments are evident in the following satellite imagery, obtained by the Israeli Eros-B satellite. The images are superimposed on an earlier image, available through Google Earth, taken around 2007.
• Russia Today – Iran is expelling Russian pilots who work for its civilian airlines in a move that may be connected with Moscow’s willingness to support international sanctions against Tehran
• CNN – Two days before his official trip to Afghanistan, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a “big lie” intended to pave the way for the invasion of a war-torn nation, according to Iranian state media.
• MEMRI – Iranian defense minister Ahmad Vahidi said that his country has signed bilateral mutual defense agreements with Qatar, Oman and Kuwait, which stipulate that the territory of each country will not be used to harm the other. Kuwaiti sources denied this statement, but said that Kuwait has signed non-aggression pacts with friendly countries in the past, and is committed to this principle.
• Mehr – Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani announced on Sunday that the judicial system has arrested members of a major ring of corrupt employees working for a state organization. In a meeting with senior Judiciary officials in Tehran, he said the members of the ring embezzled millions of dollars by forging government documents.
• Uskowi on Iran – These reports over the ID found on Rigi at the time of his arrest tend to dispel conspiracy theories of Pakistan directly turning him over to Iranian authorities

South Asia

• Press TV – Afghan police say up to 60 militants and 19 civilians may have been killed in bloody clashes between rival militant groups in the north of the country. The fighting reportedly erupted in Baghlan province between the Taliban and militants loyal to Hezb-e-Islami, Press TV correspondent reported.
• CentCom – General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), has issued a new Tactical Directive providing guidance and intent for the conduct of night raids by all Coalition Forces operating in Afghanistan. A “night raid” is any offensive operation involving entry into a compound, residence, building or structure that occurs in the period between nautical twilight and nautical dawn.
• VOA – International troops under the banner of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are continuing to fight Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. But, NATO field commanders are hindered by certain restrictions placed on troops by European governments.
• UK MoD – It is with great sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm the death of Rifleman Liam Maughan of 3rd Battalion The Rifles. Rifleman Liam Maughan died from wounds received as a result of small arms fire which occurred near Sangin, in Helmand Province.
• Terrence Smith and Teresita Schaffer, CSIS – Pakistan: In the Cauldron
• Dawn – Pakistani security forces along with help of US intelligence arrested Abu Yahya Mujahdeen Al- Adam (Adam Gadahn), who is a close associate of Osama Bin Laden. Abu Yahya was arrested on Sunday from an area surrounding the super highway, on the outskirts of Karachi. [this report may be false]
• AP – Al-Qaida’s American-born spokesman on Sunday called on Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces to emulate the Army major charged with killing 13 people in Fort Hood. In a 25-minute video posted on militant Web sites, Adam Gadahn described Maj. Nidal Hasan as a pioneer who should serve as a role model for other Muslims, especially those serving Western militaries.
• The News – Military officials on Friday said there were strong indications that senior Taliban commanders, including Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, Maulvi Abdul Wali, Qari Ziaur Rahman and Omar Rahman alias Fateh, were killed or injured in heavy bombing by the military gunship helicopters in Mohmand Agency’s Pindyali Yehsil.
• Dawn – Twelve people, two children and four women among them, were killed and 30 others wounded when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of civilians, escorted by paramilitary soldiers, in Thall town in Hangu district on Friday
• Daily Times – Unidentified motorcyclists gunned down Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Sardar Aziz Umrani and one of his guards in Khuzdar on Saturday
• Times of India – Even as BJP and other political parties came down on the government for its alleged assurance to World Bank that it will not seek finance for projects in Arunachal Pradesh, because of pressure from China, foreign minister S M Krishna and the finance ministry categorically denied that there had been any shift in India’s stated position that the state was an integral part of India.
• Times of India – At a time when India is still in the planning stage for bringing in High Speed Rail (HSR) network in the country, neighbouring China has embarked upon an ambitious plan to take its HSR length to 28,000 km, two- fold of the total global network, in the next four years.
• Colombo Page – Sri Lanka military denied reports that a former head of Sri Lanka Army Intelligence Unit is to be quizzed on the assassination of the Sunday Leader Editor, Lasantha Wickramathunga

A tug boat guides the U.S. 7th Fleet command ship USS Blue Ridge as it arrives in Busan, Republic of Korea. Blue Ridge and U.S. 7th Fleet staff arrived in Busan for Exercise Key Resolve/Foal Eagle 2010. (photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Bobbie Attaway)

Far East & Pacific

• Deutsche Welle – A current pipeline project in Myanmar will bring 12 million tonnes of crude oil from Africa and the Middle East through one pipeline and 12 billion cubic meters of Burmese gas through another pipeline each year into China. The nearly 1,000 kilometer long pipelines are said to be the longest in Asia. They will run through Myanmar (also known as Burma) to the south of China.
• Manila Times – Seven Islamist militants were killed by Philippine Marines early Sunday in a raid on their remote southern island hideout, the military said. The raid had targeted the group of a man who goes by the alias Abu Benhur, whom he described as a member of the Abu Sayyaf group with active ties to Jemaah Islamiah.
• NYT – Eleven soldiers were killed and several others were wounded Saturday in a firefight with Communist guerrillas in a province south of Manila, Philippine Army officials said.
• Jakarta Post – Survivors of a counterterrorism police squad ambushed by militants last week pressed on with their village-by-village search Sunday for members of a suspected new terrorist cell in the western Indonesian province of Aceh.
• Bangkok Post – The government is investigating whether the theft of war weapons and ammunition from an arms depot in the South is politically motivated amid reports the weapons are already on their way to Bangkok. Army spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd yesterday confirmed the theft but would not comment on the number of stolen weapons.

Europe

• Deutsche Welle – A few months down the line the Export Import Bank of China (China Eximbank) has granted Belgrade a billion euro ($1.3 billion) loan to upgrade two power plants and build a much-needed bridge over the beautiful blue Danube. The bridge project, which is due to get underway in the spring, is critical both as a means of easing the traffic situation in Belgrade, and as a test of how well China can work with its south-eastern European partner.
• Balkan Insight – The energy ministers of Serbia and Bulgaria signed an agreement on Friday in Brussels that will enable the construction of a gas interconnection between the gas grids of the two countries.
• Intellibriefs – Germen security forces arrested the ringleader and two senior members of an Iraq-based armed opposition of the Islamic Republic called Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) – an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
• Spiegel – With Germany lacking schools of Islamic theology, Muslim congregations have long imported religious leaders. As Germany considers steps to create more homegrown imams, countries like Turkey — which sends state-employed imams to Europe to serve large segments of the Turkish diaspora — are filling the gap.
• Iceland News – Official confirmation of huge Iceland ‘no’ vote in Icesave referendum; With final numbers now released in all voting districts, the resounding ‘no’ vote is official. Nationwide, 144,231 people voted of the roughly 230,000 registered voters. 2,599 (1.8 percent) of them voted to accept December’s Icesave repayment plan and 134,397 (93.2 percent) voted to reject it.
• Radio Netherlands – The French navy has dealt pirates in Somalia a heavy blow, rounding up 35 in two days. A French frigate captured four mother ships and six skiffs. The French were aided by Spanish colleagues who used an airplane and two helicopters to track down the pirates.

Africa

• NYT – The Somali government is preparing a major offensive to take back this capital block by crumbling block, and it takes just a listen to the low growl of a small surveillance plane circling in the night sky overhead to know who is surreptitiously backing that effort. That American assistance could be crucial to the effort by Somalia’s government to finally reassert its control over the capital and bring a semblance of order to a country that has been steeped in anarchy for two decades.
• Fars – Vice-Speaker of Somalia’s Parliament Mohamed Omar Dalha asked for the expansion of relations and cooperation with Iran in all the various fields.
• Garowe – The leader of Somalia’s Hizbul Islam group, Sheikh Hassan  Dahir Aweys has reiterated that Sheikh Ahmed Mohammed Islam ‘Madobe’ is still part of his group. Sheikh Aweys who was addressing congregation at Bakara Market, directly responded to a claim by one of the group’s top official in Gedo region, who accused Madobe of executing agendas backed by Ethiopia and Kenya.
• Shabelle – the Islamic adminstration of Hizbul Islam have said that they formed new adminstration for the district of Banadir region which are the areas under the control of the trnsitional government of Somalia, officials told Shabelle radio on sunday.
• UN – Two peacekeepers who were missing after an attack on an African Union-United Nations patrol in Darfur have made a safe return with the assistance of the local population, the joint mission reported today. The two were part of a patrol, which included UNAMID police and military observers, that was ambushed on Friday by unidentified armed men while on its way to Jebel Marra, the scene of recent clashes.
• Magharebia – Algerian soldiers killed six terrorists Saturday (March 6th) in an attack on a rebel hideout in Kedara, Boumerdes province, Tout sur l’Algerie reported. The security operation targeted the El Arkam brigade of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
• Scott Gration, State Dept – Recent Two-Week Trip to Chad, Sudan, Qatar and Rwanda
• Vanguard – Over 200 people, mostly women and children, were killed in three villages near Shen in Du District of Jos South Local Government Area of Plateau State by suspected Fulani herdsmen, on reprisal attacks. At least 45 children, including toddlers, were among those hacked to death, gunned down or roasted in their abodes by the marauders at about 2.30 a.m.

An MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 9 flies alongside the Virginia-class attack submarine USS New Mexico with the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in the distance. HSC-9 is assigned to the George H.W. Bush Strike Group and is underway in the Atlantic Ocean in support of fleet training operations (photo by Seaman Nicholas Hall)

The Global War

• RIA Novosti – China and Pakistan will hold joint antiterrorist exercises entitled Friendship-2010 in China in summer, the Renmin Ribao newspaper said on its website on Sunday citing the Chinese National Defense Ministry
• US Army – Eighth (Field) Army Soldiers are participating from March 8 – 18 in Key Resolve/Foal Eagle 2010, the first of two annual peninsula-wide exercises in South Korea.
• US Navy – USS Dewey (DDG105) was formally commissioned in a ceremony on Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, marking the first time a warship has been commissioned in the Orange County city. Dewey is the 55th Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
• Times Online – Even Captain Bligh might have blushed. The first woman captain of a US navy guided-missile destroyer was relieved of her command for using language so foul that it amounted to “cruelty and maltreatment”, it emerged yesterday

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

A brief world news roundup for 5 March 2010.

United States & the Americas

• NYT – The United States is circulating a draft of new, tougher sanctions against Iran that concentrate on the banking, shipping and insurance sectors of Iran’s economy and is now waiting for China and Russia to signal that they are willing to start negotiating over the measures, United Nations Security Council diplomats said.
• Hurriyet – The Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday endorsed a resolution calling for Washington’s recognition of World War I-era killings of Armenians during the last days of the Ottoman Empire as “genocide.” 24 of the panel’s 46 members voted for the resolution and 20 voted against it. The move may jeopardize Turkey’s ties with both the United States and Armenia.
• McClatchy – Behind several secure doors requiring top-secret clearance sit analysts who conduct counterterrorism investigations in the Philippines, analyze military buildups in Venezuela, and dissect confrontations between China and Taiwan in the strait that separates them. Hard to believe, perhaps, but beyond the rows of tactical aircraft and acres of runway at Naval Air Station Fort Worth is a rather small and publicity-shy unit of intelligence analysts overseen by the Navy Intelligence Reserve Command.
• Senate Cmte on Foreign Relations – Middle East Peace: Ground truths, Challengs ahead; with Daniel Kurtzer, Dr. Robert Malley, Dr. Ziad Asali and Mr. David Makovsky
• CFR – The obstacles to U.S. efforts to tighten UN sanctions against Iran were apparent in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s March 3 meetings in Brasilia. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, “It is not prudent to push Iran against the wall,” and Foreign Minister Celso Amorim called sanctions potentially “counterproductive.” There are three major factors behind Brazil’s posture on Iran today.
• Miami Herald – Antonio Gonzalez insists he has no idea why he was among 12 Mexican mayors arrested last year in an unprecedented roundup of elected officials accused of protecting drug traffickers. Now, Gonzalez and six other mayors are free for lack of evidence, embarrassing the government of President Felipe Calderon, which had set out to show Mexico that no politician would be immune in his U.S.-supported war with drug gangs.
• El Universal – State-run oil company Petróleos deVenezuela (Pdvsa), in association with a Belarus company, is searching for new fields for the production of hydrocarbons in an area of 1,930.5 square miles in the state of Apure, southwestern Venezuela, Pdvsa reported in a statement.
• Columbia Reports – Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said that Colombia has not fulfilled its promise to hand over evidence on its 2008 FARC raid, and that diplomatic relations between the countries therefore cannot be fully restored.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• RIA Novosti – Russia and India are expected to sign three contracts in military technical cooperation totaling $4 billion, including retrofitting the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier during Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to India, Vedomosti Russian daily reported.
• Caucasian Knot - A special division was set up at the regional department of the Committee for investigating kidnappings committed in Chechnya. The division will work in close interaction with relatives of kidnapped persons. Let us note here that according to the “Caucasian Knot”, for the 300 days that have elapsed after cancellation of the counterterrorist operation (CTO) regime in the territory of Chechnya, information about 32 kidnappings of civilians arrived from the republic, while for the same period prior to CTO lifting, 14 kidnappings had been reported.
• Kavkaz Center – KC sources report from the Caucasus Emirate’s Province of Dagestan with reference to local residents that the Mujahideen attacked a Russian military convoy, consisting of APCs, trucks and army vehicles. According to another reports it was a convoy belonging to the Russian terrorist organization of the FSB (former the KGB). In a successful ambush attack by the Mujahideen, an armored personnel carrier, a KAMAZ army truck and a Zhiguli vehicle, have been destroyed. The destroyed vehicles fell in a ditch, and local residents could see them. The exact the number of eliminated and wounded enemy troops is not available. Local residents say that over 10 Russians and minions were killed and wounded and that they were all removed from the site of the ambush.
• RSF – Reporters Without Borders is deeply shocked by the Ingush supreme court’s decision to release the policeman who fatally shot Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of the Ingushetiya.ru news website, on 31 August 2008. By reducing the gravity of the charge on which Ibragim Yevloyev (no relation) was convicted, the court was able to commute his two-year jail sentence to two years of “supervised residence,” which means he will be able to resume working as policeman
• Kavkaz Center – Russia is most likely preparing for another war against Georgia. As some sources in Tskhinvali report, Russian troops deployed missile systems Smerch (Tornado) in Russian-occupied Georgian province of South Ossetia. According to preliminary data, 12 units of this MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems) were moved to the province. It is reported that a military expert, Zaur Alborov who is known for his inside information, posted on the Milcaucasus webforum a report that Russia moved 12 Smerch MLRS units with support equipment to the Russian-occupied Tskhinvali Region of Georgia
• Russia Today – Russia has charged Georgia with genocide and the mass murders of Russian citizens in South Ossetia during the 2008 military conflict, while new criminal charges are pending.
• Asia Times – The government of Kazakhstan, heavily dependent on foreign partners to extract natural resources, is seeking to improve its hold on the onshore Karachaganak natural gas venture after tightening its control of the offshore Kashagan deposit

Middle East

• Al Jazeera – About one million Iraqis have cast their ballots during early voting in Iraq, three days ahead of the country’s parliamentary election. The vote on Thursday was overshadowed by violence as a series of blasts killed at least 14 people and wounded 57 others at polling stations in the capital, Baghdad.
• CBS – As the U.S. prepares to withdraw its forces from Iraq, Iran is said to be working hard to fill a potential power vacuum — an effort that faces its first big test in Sunday’s elections, in which Tehran is backing hard-liners against a coalition of moderates.
• Al Arabiya – Dubai Police Chief openly accused Israel of assassinating Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in one of the emirate’s hotels on Jan.19, adding that a Hamas member leaked travel information about the victim into Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
• Jerusalem Post – Fiercely backed by allied Iran, Syria on Thursday denied hiding nuclear activities from the world and said Israel was the source of suspicious uranium particles found at a Syrian desert complex, allegedly bombed two years ago by IAF jets. The Syrian and Iranian comments to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors came in response to Western demands that Damascus stop stonewalling IAEA attempts to investigate suspicions that it ran covert nuclear programs — some with possible weapons applications.
• Naharnet – Following a heated debate, 20 Cabinet ministers voted in favor of a series of appointments and the Council of Ministers is scheduled to hold an extraordinary session on Thursday to approve other designations. Those who voted in favor of the measure where ministers representing Future Movement, Progressive Socialist Party, AMAL, Lebanese Forces and Phalange Party. Three ministers from Michel Aoun’s Change and Reform bloc vetoed the appointments and two Hizbullah members abstained from voting.
• Asharq Al Awsat – Yemeni security forces arrested 11 Al-Qaeda suspects in a residential area of the capital Sanaa, killing one man during the operation, the defence ministry’s 26sep.net news website has reported.

Iran

• Atlantic Council – transcript of an interesting debate about Iran, between Michael Ledeen, the leading advocate of a strategy of regime change, and Flynt Leverett, the leading proponent of the theory that a grand bargain with Iran is possible
• UN Security Council – The Security Council committee monitoring the implementation of sanctions on Iran was continuing to explore options for an effective response to a pattern of repeated violations, its Chairman told the Council this morning
• Emanuele Ottolenghi – Last Friday, the New York Times ran an interesting piece by David Sanger about a puzzling element that emerged in the latest IAEA report on Iran — namely Iran’s decision to bring most of its LEU stockpile to the Natanz Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant for further enrichment to 19.75 percent levels. The move was puzzling for the simple reason that Iran did not need to feed its entire stockpile for further enrichment in order to address its shortage of 19.75 percent uranium needed at the Tehran Research Reactor for medical isotopes. But the transfer of so much uranium to the surface gave rise to wild theories: why would Iran put its entire stockpile at risk?
• Khamenei – Islamic Revolution Leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei highlighted the huge cultural and Islamic commonalities of D8 member states and said cooperation between the 8 Muslim countries can be a model for the world of Islam. Ayatollah Khamenei was addressing the participants of the first D8 Industrial Ministers Summit in Tehran.
• Press TV – Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has left Tehran for Kampala for an official visit to Uganda. Mottaki will also travel to Kenya on Saturday to follow up on agreements reached between Tehran and Nairobi

An Afghan service member on his bicycle passes in front MRAP vehicles that are a part of a massive convoy to help the 215th Corps of the Afghan national army move personnel and equipment to Helmand province where Operation Moshtarak is taking place. The convoy consisted of 140 vehicles. (photo by Sgt. Chris Florence)

South Asia

• SWJ – The current internationally agreed strategy for Afghanistan is unlikely to work as it has been based on flawed assumptions or hopes. What Afghanistan really needs is a central government with a light but effective footprint, empowered tribal leaders, and a small, professional, well-trained army and police force in support of tribal security forces, provided by and controlled by the tribes. If these could be established and put into effect, they could revolutionise the situation in Afghanistan.
• UK MoD – It is with regret that the Ministry of Defence must confirm that Corporal Richard Green from 3rd Battalion The Rifles (3 RIFLES) was killed in Afghanistan on Tuesday 2 March 2010. Corporal Green died as a result of small arms fire near Sangin in Helmand province.
• Dawn – Pakistan said ground fighting and an air strike killed 37 militants in its tribal belt on the Afghan border Thursday after dozens of Taliban stormed a paramilitary check post.
• BBC – Another leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban has been arrested in Pakistan, reports quoting Pakistani and US officials say. Agha Jan Mohtasim was arrested in the southern city of Karachi, intelligence officials said.
• B. Raman – The Pakistan Army and the US intelligence are making headway in the battle against jihadi terrorism — the indigenous as well as the global varieties— in Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal belt in the Malakand Division of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
• Times of India – An Army captain and a militant were killed in an encounter between security forces and militants in Pulwama district on Thursday. The captain is the second Army officer to be killed in an encounter in Kashmir in less than a fortnight.
• Colombo Page – Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao is to arrive in Sri Lanka on March 06 for a three day visit in the island, Foreign Ministry sources said.
• TamilNet – The inquiry into the killing of Lasantha Wickremathunge, Chief Editor of the Sunday Leader took a new turn with the arrest of fifteen soldiers of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) who earlier served in the SLA Intelligence Unit. They are now being detained by the Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) and being interrogated, police spokesman told media in Colombo
• Daily Star – Police arrested two Jamaat-e-Islami leaders of Kishoreganj district unit while leading a procession in the town protesting what they said repression by the government. The procession was part of the programme announced by Jamaat’s central body to protest the recent crackdown on its activists and leaders across Bangladesh.

Far East & Pacific

• VOA – China has announced plans to boost its military budget by 7.5 percent this year – the smallest increase in more than two decades.  The figures were unveiled at a news conference, Thursday, to preview the annual session of China’s legislature, which begins Friday.
• Foreign Policy – China’s Hacker Army; The myth of a monolithic Chinese cyberwar is starting to be dismantled. A look inside the teeming, chaotic world that exists instead — and that may be far more dangerous
• Chosun Ilbo – Violence is growing in North Korea amid a worsening food shortage after the disastrous currency revaluation last December, according to sources in the hermit country. One person was killed by armed guards on Feb. 16 when a group of people attempted to rob a food train at Komusan Railway Station in Puryong-gun, North Hamgyong Province, defector group North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity said. The attack came on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s birthday after a disastrous currency reform sent food prices skyrocketing.
• AP – Indonesian police clashed with suspected Islamic militants in a deadly gun battle in Aceh on Thursday hours after announcing that 14 prisoners in the restive province had been charged with planning terrorist attacks, officials said.
• NYT – For decades, the vast jungle interior that blankets the northern Indonesian province of Aceh provided a safe haven for thousands of rebel foot soldiers fighting a war of independence. Now, still marginalized and largely unemployed despite nearly five years of peace, many former separatists have fled back into the forest, this time to chop it down.
• Bangkok Post – Cambodia’s military mounted a rare public test of rockets on Thursday amid a lingering troop standoff over disputed territory with neighbouring Thailand. In their first public drill since the country’s civil war ended more than a decade ago, troops fired some 200 rockets from truck-mounted launchers at an airfield 180 kilometres from the Thai border. Cambodian defence ministry spokesman Chhum Socheat told AFP the display was “not about flexing our muscles” against Thailand
• Straits Times – Singapore’s Navy warned that a terrorist group is planning attacks on oil tankers in the Malacca Straits, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Terrorists may also be targeting other vessels in the shipping lane off Malaysia’s east coast, according to an advisory issued on Wednesday by the Navy’s Information
• news.com.au – Australia and Japan struggled to strike a deal in a bitter dispute on whaling yesterday, but the US negotiator in intense talks said nations would keep seeking a compromise
• China Daily – Prime Miniser Yukio Hatoyama said on Thursday that by the end of March Japan will come up with an alternative plan to one drafted in 2006 by Washington and Tokyo in 2006 that would see the relocation of US troops in Okinawa Prefecture by 2014.

Europe

• Radio Netherlands – The anti-Islam Freedom Party of far-right politician Geert Wilders has made major gains in local elections held in the Netherlands. Taking part in two cities it has become the largest party in Almere and the second largest in The Hague.
• France24 – A German court on Thursday jailed four Islamic militants who dreamed of “mounting a second September 11″ for a thwarted plot to attack US diplomats, soldiers and civilians. Sentencing the extremists to between five and 12 years, Judge Ottmar Breidling said that they planned to stage a “monstrous bloodbath.”
• European Commission – The European Commission selected today 43 major energy projects, which will significantly contribute to the economic recovery in the EU, while increasing our security of energy supply by creating cross-border infrastructure. With today’s decision, the Commission grants € 2.3 billion to 31 gas and 12 electricity projects. This is the second financial decision under the Economic Recovery Package which amounts to almost 4 billion Euros. It is the largest amount the EU has ever spent on energy infrastructure.
• ISN – Various diplomats appear to be questioning the supposed competition between the Nabucco and the South Stream natural gas pipelines. In fact, Russia and Turkey are collaborating to block the full implementation of the EU’s Southern Corridor energy strategy so as to assert a duopoly over natural gas supplies to Europe, Robert M Cutler writes for Security Watch
• euronews – 15 people have been arrested across Belgium in an operation against Turkish Kurd separatist group the Kurdistan Worker`s party or PKK. Police sources say more than 300 officers raided more than two dozen addresses as well as the offices of the Kurdish broadcaster ROJ Television.
• WSJ – Greece showed Europe on Wednesday that it is willing to tighten its belt. Now Athens wants Europe to show it the money. It is unlikely to get any—yet. When Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou visits German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Friday, he will argue that he has done his part, aides say—now it is Europe’s turn to prove that it won’t leave Greece at the mercy of financial markets.
• Earth Times – Greece’s main private and public sector labour unions called a 3-hour strike and demonstration for Friday while communist trade unionists occupied the finance ministry and prevented staff from entering. More than 300 demonstrators from Greece’s communist trade union (PAME) occupied the entrance to the Ministry of Finance in central Athens on Thursday, hanging a massive banner to protest a new wave of austerity measures designed to pull the country out of its financial crisis.

Africa

• Shabelle – Harakat Al-lshabab mujahideen forces have conducted operations destroyed several gaves in many neighborhoods of Baidoa town in Bakol region, official told Shabelle said on Thursday
• Camille Tawil – A Jihadist in the Sand: The Rise of Abdelmalek Droukdel, al-Qaeda’s Amir in Algeria
• Magharebia – Morocco’s’ National Police Service (DGSN) arrested six suspected members of a terror cell, MAP reported on Tuesday (March 2nd).
• IRIN – As Burundi approaches elections designed to cap the country’s democratic transition after years of civil conflict, there is growing concern about worsening security and limits to political freedom.
• BBC – People in Togo are voting in elections to chose a new head of state – five years after hundreds died after a disputed presidential election
• Mmegi – In response to delays in the Mmamabula Energy Project (MEP), Chinese energy and mining titan Golden Concord Holdings Limited has snapped up a 70-percent equity in the 300-megawatt power station being developed by CIC Energy.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates escorts Denmark's newly appointed Defense Minister Gitte Lillelund Bech through an honor cordon into the Pentagon, March 4, 2010. (photo by R. D. Ward)

The Global War

• AFP – China, now the sole holdout resisting new nuclear sanctions against Iran, will likely approve a weakened UN text if it secures concessions from the West, experts say. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev this week made his most explicit threat yet to act against Tehran, but the public position of China — which has longstanding energy interests in Iran — remains in support of more talks.
• HS Today – Intelligence collected by Western spy agencies strongly indicates Iran is hard at work developing nuclear weapons, as well as the means to deliver them atop at least medium-range ballistic missiles “that can certainly reach all the Gulf states, and perhaps even further beyond that,” warned a senior Defense Department (DOD) official who briefed a high-level group of oil company executives on Middle East and central Asia regional security issues in Houston late last month.
• Air Force – U.S. Airmen, Royal Thai Air Forces, and Royal Thai Air Force and army members conducted personnel airdrop training from a C-17 Globemaster III as part of Cope Tiger 2010, March 3, here. More than 60 qualified jumpmasters completed three separate jumps near Bangkok, Thailand, as the first major activity of the Cope Tiger field training exercise.
• Irrawaddy – The US and Bangladeshi navies on Tuesday began a three-day joint training exercise in the Bay of Bengal close to Burmese waters, according to Dhaka-based The Daily Star. The USS Ingraham docked on the Bangladeshi island of Kutubdia––situated just offshore between Cox’s Bazar and Chittagong––on Monday with 200 US naval personnel, including 25 officers, led by Commander Adam J Welter, the report said.
• David Wood – While the U.S. military and strategy community is focused on Afghanistan and the fight in Marja, others – Iran and China, to name two – are chipping away at America’s access to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf and the increasingly critical extraterrestrial realms.

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

A brief world news roundup for 4 March 2010.

United States & the Americas

• WSJ – The U.S. and its allies are working to create a new American-led military command in southern Afghanistan, setting the stage for a large-scale offensive into the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. Senior military officials say the new command will manage all military operations in Helmand province, including the continuing campaign in Marjah. The plan would allow the existing British-led command in southern Afghanistan to focus on the Kandahar campaign.
• News Yemen – The United States has confirmed its support to Yemen to face security, political and development challenges. The visiting US Department of State Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, said in an interview to official al-Thawra on Wednesday, the crisis in southern Yemen is a Yemeni internal affair, but he said issues behind the crisis should be solved.
• Montreal Gazette – A case before the Quebec Human Rights Commission has reignited the never-far-from-the-surface debate over reasonable accommodation of minorities. In November, the provincial government ordered an Egyptian immigrant to uncover her face if she wanted to continue taking a government-sponsored French class at CEGEP St. Laurent, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Yolande James confirmed yesterday. The woman, a permanent resident of Canada, refused and lodged a complaint with the rights commission.
• BBC – Brazil will not bow to pressure from the US to support further sanctions against Iran over its nuclear work, the country’s foreign minister has said.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• RFERL – A close look at Russia’s new military doctrine reveals interesting comparisons with the version issued in 2000. The earlier version was considered a “transitional” document, while the latest iteration hints that Moscow is uncertain about resetting relations with the West.
• Keith Smith, CSIS – Russia Europe Energy Relations: Implications for U.S. Policy
• RIA Novosti – Nino Burdzhanadze, a leading Georgian opposition figure, has flown to Moscow to seek to improve ties broken off after the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, a Georgian news agency reported on Wednesday.
• Kavkaz Center – Sources in the Province of Nokhchicho (AKA Chechnya/Ichkeria) of the Caucasus Emirate report that the Mujahideen have blown up yestersay a detachment of Russian mercenaries near the village of Tangi-Chu. As a result of explosion, at least 1 Russian infidel soldier was eliminated. Another blast was carried out near the village of Shalazhi.
• Itar Tass – Six gunmen were destroyed and other 15 gunmen were detained in a special operation in Ingushetia on Tuesday.
• SRI – Japan signed a civil nuclear agreement with Kazakhstan on Tuesday which gives it access to stable supplies of uranium in exchange for nuclear technology, Reuters reported
• OGJ – GDF Suez SA reported it will take a 9% stake in Nord Stream AG before construction of that 1,200-km natural gas pipeline that will link Russia and the European Union via the Baltic Sea. GDF Suez also will receive as much as 1.5 billion cu m (bcm) of gas from the line starting in 2015. This will be added to the 12 bcm/year that OAO Gazprom already sends to GDF Suez.

A rocket from the C Battery, 1st Battalion, 14th Field Artillery, Task Force Leader, departs its high mobility artillery rocket system launcher at Contingency Operating Location Q-West, Iraq, on its way to destroy an enemy mortar position, March 2. The launch was the first fire mission for the members of C Battery. (photo by Staff Sgt. Rob Strain)

Middle East

• Al Jazeera – At least 32 people have been killed and 42 more wounded in three powerful co-ordinated suicide attacks in the central Iraqi city of Baquba. Just days before parliamentary elections are due to be held, attackers targeted a government building, a nearby traffic intersection and, later, the hospital where the wounded were being treated.
• MEMRI – Former Iraqi intelligence organization director Muhammad Shahwani has said that Iranian IRGC Al-Qods militias are responsible for the large-scale attacks in Iraq in August 2009.
• Fred Burton and Ben West – Using Intelligence from the al-Mabhouh Hit
• NOW Lebanon – The Lebanese army issued a statement on Wednesday that Israeli warplanes entered Lebanese airspace at 2:15 p.m., flying from Kfar Fila in the South to Chekka in the North, before exiting the country at 4:05 p.m.
• Armies of Liberation – A senior Yemeni defense official admitted on Wednesday that a December 17 air strike against al Qaeda in southern Yemen killed scores of civilians and not 30 al Qaeda operatives as the government previously insisted.

Iran

• IRNA – Iran and Turkey inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on issues of mutual interests here on Tuesday. According to the MoU, the two sides have agreed to cooperate in the fields of car manufacturing and spare parts industry, construction and constructing materials, textile, wood and paper industry
• IRIB – The Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a joint company for investment in Qazvin-Rasht-Astara railway.
• Fars – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated on Wednesday that despite the US statesmen’s improper attitude and cruel treatment of the Iranian nation in the last few decades, Iran is still a friend of the American people. Meantime, the Iranian president reminded that Tehran will never recognize the Zionist regime and considers the regime as basically fake and illegal.

South Asia

• AFPS – Operation Moshtarak, now in its 18th day in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, is “progressing extraordinarily well” and is moving from the clearing phase to the holding phase, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said today. Because of the operation, the Afghan government now is in control of the Helmand cities of Marja and Nad Ali, Morrell said. (transcript)
• Jeffrey Dressler – This Backgrounder is the second installment in a series of reports analyzing the battle for Marjah in Helmand province. (PDF)
• UK MoD – It is with sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm that Rifleman Carlo Apolis of 4th Battalion The Rifles (4 RIFLES), serving as part of the 3 RIFLES Battle Group, was killed in Afghanistan on 1 March 2010. Rifleman Apolis was killed by a gunshot wound resulting from small arms fire in Sangin, Helmand province.
• Pentagon – The Department of Defense announced the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Lance Cpl. Carlos A. Aragon, 19, of Orem, Utah, died March 1 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.  He was assigned to 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve.
• Paul Cruickshank, New America Foundation – The Militant Pipeline: Between the Afghanistan-Pakistan Border Region and the West
• AKI – Taliban militants have blown up a boys’ school in the Khyber Agency in Pakistan’s tribal region while others threw grenades at a concert, killing a student, officials said on Wednesday. The boys’ school attack took place overnight in the Spin Qabar area of Khyber near the Afghan border.
• Daily Times – A tense calm prevailed in North Waziristan’s headquarters of Miranshah on Wednesday after “the arrival of eight tanks and [army] reinforcements”, sparking fear among locals that the army was preparing to launch an offensive against the Taliban.
• Dawn – Investigations into murder of Benazir Bhutto take a new turn as Pakistani officials said they are searching for four military personnel who had disappeared just before the assassination of the former prime minister.
• The News – Two phases of the Operation ‘Spring Cleaning’, which was launched in the Frontier Regions (FRs), Peshawar, and Kohat on February 24, were completed on Wednesday while the number of miscreants killed during the action rose to 38.
• AFP – Pakistan’s military said Wednesday that a supplier of suicide jackets and explosives who operated a key inter-city network had been killed during a gun battle with soldiers. “Two important terrorist commanders named Muhammad Tufail alias Abdullah and Muhammad Iqbal were killed by security forces in an exchange of fire,” the military announced overnight in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
• Times of India – In an effort to better coordinate anti-Naxal operations, the government has set up combined Special Operation Groups of state police forces and CRPF to take on Left wing extremists.

Far East & Pacific

• Yonhap – Two or three North Korean soldiers had crossed the border with the South to capture a defecting compatriot, but returned to their territory after warning shots were fired by South Korean troops, a military official here said Thursday.
• Asia Times – Taking aim at Japan’s plans for the remote Okinotori Island, China has argued that Tokyo cannot create an economic zone there as atolls or reefs do not have an “independent economic life”. But Vietnam is crying foul, saying Beijing argued the exact opposite regarding Hanoi’s claims in the East Sea. China now hopes the world will overlook the dozens of other little “Okinotoris” dotting the South China Sea
• China Daily – China’s military development will not challenge the United States, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) major general and member of the country’s top political advisory body said on Wednesday
• Irrawaddy – The Burmese military has tightened security along Sino-Burmese trade routes in northern Shan State following the expiration of the deadline on Sunday for compliance to its border guard force order, local sources said.

Europe

• Russia Today – NATO has announced, it plans to carry out a series of air force exercises over Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia from March 17-20. The training mission will involve French Mirage, Polish F-16 fighters, Lithuanian L-39 Albatross aircraft, as well as U.S. aerial tankers.
• AKI – Police in Italy have arrested five Italians and two suspected Iranian spies for allegedly trafficking weapons to Iran. Arrest warrants were issued for two Iranians still at large who are suspected of involvement in the alleged arms trafficking ring, police said on Wednesday in Milan.
• Norway MFA – On 24 February, the Norwegian Ambassador in Teheran was summoned to the Iranian Foreign Ministry. During the meeting he was given an official note and a letter addressed to Foreign Minister Støre, in which Iran protested against Norway having granted asylum to Mohammed Reza Heydari. At the same meeting, the Iranian authorities requested that a Norwegian diplomat should leave Iran. The reason given for this was that Mr Heydari had been granted asylum in Norway.
• UPI – Nine Turkish nationals in France were charged with rounding up recruits to fight for the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, French officials said Wednesday.
• Haaretz – There have always been journalists who “crossed the lines” and switched to being spokespersons, advisers or investigators of bodies that were previously the object of their coverage and commentary. There have presumably always been journalists whose work serves as a cover for clandestine work, but only a few are willing to admit it. One such person is Herbert Pundik (Nahum Pundak), a veteran Israeli-Danish journalist with an international reputation who a week ago in an interview with the Danish daily Dagbladet Information said that for about 10 years, he worked for the Mossad while doing his journalism job. His admission sent a shock wave through the serene Scandinavian country and aroused considerable media interest.
• Carnegie – Greece has been profligate and fiscally irresponsible. Still, the contrasting experiences of Argentina and Latvia in dealing with excessive spending and currency overvaluation—problems that now plague Greece—hold a warning for Europe: leaving the Euro area and defaulting—while almost unthinkable now—could become the best of very bad options for Greece, though it would have disastrous implications for both the European Union (EU) and the world. The EU must support Greece with all available means to prevent this from happening.
• UPI – The government of Croatia agreed to join Russian gas giant Gazprom in its effort to build the South Stream gas pipeline to Europe.
• Prague Monitor – Czech Defence Minister Martin Bartak faces a legal complaint on suspicion of abuse of power of public office in connection with the purchase of 90 Iveco light armoured vehicles, the Euro.cz server reported

Africa

• Al Arabiya – Fighting between al-Shabaab rebels and African Union (AU) troops in the heart of the capital Mogadishu killed at least 12 people and wounded 49, a human rights group and witnesses said on Wednesday.
• Vanguard – The Anglo-Dutch oil group Shell said Wednesday that its oil flow station in the Niger Delta had been damaged by an explosion, in what appeared to have been an attack by a militant splinter group.
• Magharebia – Algeria continued to reproach Mali’s decision to release four prison inmates in exchange for a French hostage held by al-Qaeda, Tout sur L’Algerie reported. “We hope this initiative in Mali is not repeated. Any release of a terrorist could, at that stage, bring an added danger to innocent victims,” Benchaa Dani, the foreign ministry’s director of multilateral relations, said on national radio.
• Times Online – It has been an open secret for years that if an aid organisation wants to work in some parts of Africa, it has to pay a bribe or — more likely — several.  Often, particularly in rebel-held areas, it is presented as a tax, a levy or toll, and can take many forms: an arrival fee at a dirt landing strip, a charge to dismantle a rickety barricade at a makeshift roadblock or the price of a security detail to escort you to town.

A V-22 Osprey, assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 162, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit makes its final approach for landing on the island of Crete for a stopover. Marines of the 24th MEU are assigned to the Nassau Amphibious Ready Group on a six-month deployment. (photo by Paul Farley)

The Global War

• Flightglobal – The China National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC) has ordered nine MA60 transports on behalf of two Asian customers, according to a Xian Aircraft official. Sri Lanka will be buying six of the turboprop-powered aircraft from CATIC, while the remaining three will go to Myanmar, says the official. The countries are acquiring the aircraft with the help of a Chinese government preferred loan scheme, the source adds.
• DoD Buzz – It could be a long range strike platform. It could use SAR and electro-??optical sensors to spy on an enemy. About the only thing it won’t do is serve as an attack fighter. It is Boeing’s Phantom Ray, an unmanned aerial system being developed by the company’s Phantom Works.
• Press TV – Former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency Hamid Gol says the United States is seeking to create and train terrorist groups in the region. In a Wednesday interview with Fars news agency, Gol said Washington had been making efforts to destabilize the region through supporting groups like the Pakistan-based Jundallah terrorist group. Gol went on to say that such attempts by the US intelligence agencies were in particular directed at fomenting unrest in Iran.

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

A brief world news roundup for 3 March 2010.

United States & the Americas

• McClatchy – Negotiations to complete a new U.S.-Russia nuclear arms treaty have stalled over a Russian demand for the option to withdraw unilaterally if Moscow determines that U.S. missile defenses would threaten its intercontinental nuclear missile force, a senior U.S. official said Monday.
• Business Week – The Alavi Foundation, alleged by the U.S. to be controlled by the Iranian government, was sued by family members of U.S. marines killed in a 1983 bombing, who previously won a $2.7 billion judgment against Iran. The suit was filed in federal court in Manhattan by the families and representatives of the estate of 241 servicemen killed in the bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. In 2007, they won a $2.7 billion judgment against the Islamic Republic of Iran stemming from the attack.
• Times Online – Despite being cleared for release and officially declared no threat to the US, five Uighurs held at Guantánamo Bay for eight years had their bid for freedom blocked by the Obama Administration.
• Washington Times -  A CIA technical-support official has been arrested on charges of selling more than $60,000 worth of pilfered agency electronic gear. Todd Brandon Fehrmann, a communications-technology specialist with the agency, was arrested Friday morning at his office in Virginia and charged in a criminal complaint with stealing government equipment and selling it to a Massachusetts-based electronics equipment broker.
• Press TV – Venezuela has denied allegations by Spain that the socialist nation has ties to terrorist groups active in South America and Europe. “We do not house guerrillas, nor do we have a pact with guerrillas,” said Venezuelan Congressman Hayden Pirela.
• Miami Herald – Authorities arrested Guatemala’s anti-drug czar and national police chief Tuesday in a case involving stolen cocaine and slain police, acting just two days before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrives to discuss the drug war.
• Mohammad Asif Rahimi and M. Ashraf Haidari – The development of Afghanistan’s agricultural sector has been overlooked by the international community, despite the fact that roughly 80 percent of the Afghan population lives in rural areas and scratches out a meager existence from the land. In trying to rectify the existing situation, the international community would do well to look to Brazil for answers.
• VOA – Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner urged the United States on Monday to engage in “friendly mediation” between Argentina and Britain in their dispute over the Falkland or Malvinas Islands off the southern Argentine coast. The request came at a meeting in Buenos Aires with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• RIA Novosti – India and Russia are negotiating a new contract on the delivery of 42 Su-30MKI to the Indian Air Force, an Indian newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing military sources.
• Kavkaz Center – An information was received yesterday saying that a car with a apostate in the rank of officer of the puppet interior ministry, a so-called district commissioner, had been blown up in the Cossack village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya, Ingushetia Province of the Caucasus Emirate. Russian invaders reported that a group of Mujahideen had been surrounded in the village of Ekazhevo in Ingushetia on early Tuesday morning and that at 5 am the gun battle began in this village. As for Tuesday noon, the battle in the village continued. Russian infidel soldiers say that several Mujahideen had been killed during a fierce exchange of fire.
• RFERL – Police began detaining the leaders of people protesting the reported torture of five murder suspects in Makhachkala, the capital of Daghestan, RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service reports. Between 500-1,000 people participated in a 17-hour demonstration in Makhachkala on March 1 to protest reports that five suspects in the June 2009 murder of Daghestan’s interior minister, Lieutenant General Adilgirey Magomedtagirov, were subjected to torture so that they would confess to the murder.
• Russia Today – Viktor Yanukovich’s victory in the presidential race has led to the disintegration of a Timoshenko-led coalition of three parties. What’s next for Ukrainian politics? The parliament’s majority coalition comprised of Yulia Timoshenko’s party, Our Ukraine, People’s Self Defense and The Litvin Block has been disbanded, according to parliamentary speaker Vladimir Litvin.
• SRI – Tajikistan’s main opposition party said Tuesday it plans to sue the Central Asian nation’s elections board amid claims it abetted fraud in this weekend’s parliamentary vote. Preliminary results show the pro-government party won Sunday’s elections by a landslide in a vote that international monitors said was marred by widespread fraud.
• APA – Azerbaijani Defense Ministry refuted the claim of the Armenian side that ceasefire was violated and an Armenian soldier was killed by Azerbaijani soldiers.
• SANA – Prime Minister Engineer Naji Otri held talks here today with the visiting Azerbaijani Minister of Industry and Energy, Natig Aliyev, on cooperation relations between Syria and Azerbaijan. Syria and Azerbaijan agreed to sign a memo of understanding for buying 1 to 1, 5 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas annually through Turkey.

Middle East

• Al Sumaria – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki’s office denied reports about orders to arrest Sayyed Moqtada Al Sadr once he returns to Iraq. Al Maliki’s office denied firmly the news which it considered was driven by electoral motives, the office told Alsumaria.
• NYT – The cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s senior Shiite spiritual leader, has repeatedly refused to endorse any of the electoral coalitions fighting for votes among the country’s Shiite majority. He did so most recently three days ago. He has urged Iraqis to vote — implored them, in fact, in edicts that carry the weight of religious law — but insisted on maintaining the neutrality of the Shiite religious elite, known as the marjaiya, that he and three other senior clerics now represent.
• Voices of Iraq – A police director in Kirkuk has survived an assassination attempt when an explosive device hit his motorcade in southwestern Kirkuk, a local police chief said on Tuesday.
• Jerusalem Post – Arab countries may be complicit in the January 19 assassination of Hamas terror chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Hamas sources said on Tuesday, according to various reports. Citing a report by Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Reuters quoted Hamas official Mahmoud Nasser as saying that Jordanian and Egyptian intelligence agencies had probably tracked Mabhouh prior to his assassination.
• ynet – The right-hand man of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, assassinated in Dubai last month has confirmed Israeli claims that his boss supplied weapons to Palestinians in Gaza. Mohammed Nassar, who was an aide to Mabhouh, spoke to Hamas’ al-Aqsa radio in Gaza from Damascus. A transcript was released Tuesday.
• CSM – The Hamas assassination in Dubai involved a number of people who traveled under the stolen identities of Israeli dual nationals. The pre-paid debit cards the alleged assassins used to pay their hotel bills while in Dubai also have connections to Israel.
• CNN – The son of a founder of the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, Tuesday told CNN that he was a spy for Israel. For 10 years, Mosab Yousef said he gathered information about Hamas terrorist plots and fed them to Israel’s domestic security service Shin Bet.
• Asharq Al Awsat – Well informed Palestinian sources have confirmed that relations between the Palestinian Authority and its President Mahmoud Abbas and Libya and Tunisia have become strained. The sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that tensions with Libya arose following President Abbas’s visit to the country last month where he refused a request by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to meet with Hamas chief Khalid Mishal.
• NOW Lebanon – NOW correspondent Amal Shehadeh reported on Tuesday that the head of Israel’s Military Intelligence research division, Yossi Baidatz, said Syria was supplying Hezbollah with large unprecedented quantities of military equipment.
• NOW Lebanon – As-Safir newspaper reported on Tuesday that the Lebanese army raided the shop of Jawdat Khoja – who is in custody and charged with espionage activity for Israel – and confiscated advanced spy equipment.
• Asia Times – Yemen’s claim this week to have killed a separatist leader linked to al-Qaeda illustrates the government’s ongoing efforts to use force to tackle unrest. If President Ali Abdullah Saleh is to get increased aid from the United States, though, he will also have to seek a political solution to the country’s troubles.
• Al Arabiya – Turkish prosecutors have charged the highest-ranking serving officer yet, a four-star general, in a widening circle of arrests of officers in a nation that has hitherto regarded its military as virtually untouchable. The charges against General Saldiray Berk follow the detention of scores of officers last week over an alleged conspiracy to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, which has its roots in political Islam.

Iran

• Press TV – After Kyrgyzstan denied that one of its passenger planes was carrying Jundallah terror chief Abdulmalek Rigi, Iran released a video footage proving Bishkek wrong. In protest, the Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador to Tehran to clarify the reasoning behind Bishkek government’s denial of Rigi’s capture.
• MEMRI – Metransparent.com stated that Jundallah leader Abdolmalek Rigi was extradited to Iran in a deal with Saudi intelligence, in exchange for Iran ceasing its support for the Houthi rebels in Yemen. A ceasefire has been in effect there for the past two weeks, supported by Iran.
• Washington Institute – On February 26, Syrian president Bashar al-Asad hosted Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah for a dinner in Damascus. Nasrallah is a routine guest in the capital, but the timing of this high-profile trip — just a week after the United States dispatched Undersecretary of State William Burns to Damascus and nominated its first new ambassador in five years — seemed calculated not only to irritate Washington, but also to highlight the central role Hizballah plays in Iran and Syria’s strategic planning.
• ISNA – Russia must fulfill its commitments on Bushehr nuclear power plant and delivery of S-300 missile system to Iran to improve its image in Iran’s public opinion, said Rapporteur of Iran’s Parliament National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Kazem Jalali on Tuesday.
• Reuters – The new U.N. nuclear agency chief said on Monday his report Iran could be trying to develop a nuclear-armed missile was factual and impartial, rejecting Iranian suggestions he was biased towards Western powers. Yukiya Amano spelled out a “clear” approach to Iran’s nuclear activity after what diplomats said was the reluctance of his predecessor Mohamed ElBaradei to confront Iran due to his scepticism about the veracity of Western intelligence on Tehran.
• Fars – Iran and Pakistan are slated to sign a final agreement to launch implementation of a project for exporting Iran’s rich gas reserves to the energy-hungry south-Asian nation through a long-waited multi-billion-dollar pipeline, a senior Iranian oil official announced on Tuesday.
• ITIC – Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a Religious Authority and Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s Spiritual Mentor, Implies in a Theological-Political Book that Iran Must Acquire a Nuclear Weapon
• Mehr – Assembly of Experts Chairman Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani visited Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi in hospital on Monday. Yazdi, the Assembly of Experts deputy chairman, has been hospitalized since days ago.
• Payvand – Prominent Iranian filmmaker, Jafar Panahi was arrested by Iranian security forces at his home along with his wife, daughter and 15 other guests. Jafar Panahi has repeatedly come out in support of election protesters and the Green Movement in the post-election events for which the government has in turn confronted him on several occasions.

South Asia

• AFPS – The first phase of a Marine offensive in a former Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan’s Helmand province is nearing completion, the Pentagon’s No. 2 official said. As the military operations of the roughly 15,000 NATO and Afghan forces that have been engaged in Operation Moshtarak since Feb. 13 begin to wind down, the focus in the Marja section of central Helmand is shifting from clearing out the enemy to holding the gains the operation has brought about.
• Washington Post – An Afghan intelligence official said Tuesday that the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba orchestrated the deadly attack that targeted two guesthouses in the capital last week.
• UK MoD – An experienced Taliban IED-laying team was recently destroyed by a Royal Artillery strike after having been discovered by soldiers from 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland (1 SCOTS) on a routine patrol.
• Dawn – Pakistan’s army said Tuesday it had captured a key Taliban and Al-Qaeda complex dug into rocky mountains close to the Afghan border after killing 75 local and foreign militants. “There were Egyptians, Uzbeks, Chechens and Afghans killed in the operation,” Major General Tariq Khan told reporters. “The Pakistan flag has been raised for the first time since (independence in) 1947,” said Khan.
• Times of India – India has asked Saudi Arabia to persuade Pakistan to stop using terrorism as an instrument to promote its objectives, in a significant move seen as aimed at leveraging the uneasiness of the crucial Islamic country over the growing collaboration between Pakistan-backed terror groups working against India and Al Qaida that has vowed to dislodge the rulers in the oil-rich kingdom.
• BBC – One of India’s top Maoist leaders, Venkateswar Reddy alias Telegu Deepak, has been arrested in Calcutta, police have told the BBC. Mr Deepak is known to be a close associate of Maoist military wing head Koteswara Rao and is believed to have masterminded numerous attacks. He is the latest of several senior Maoists to be arrested.
• Colombo Page – Sri Lanka Criminal Investigations Division (CID) has arrested a high ranking member of the LTTE’s international finance wing, the state-owned radio reported. The CID arrested the suspect, who has arrived in the country from Geneva in Switzerland on January 10th, while hiding in a house at Pallidora road in Dehiwala.

A landing craft air cushion vehicle assigned to Assault Craft Unit 5 transports Marines to the island of Iwo To in support of the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima. The island was renamed in 2007 from Iwo Jima to Iwo To, it's original name before World War II. (photo by Daniel Hinton)

Far East & Pacific

• Chosun Ilbo – The North Korean regime is purging senior military and party officials. In the Workers’ Party, the heads of the financial and economic sections have been sacked over the disastrous currency reform and international sanctions, and in the military, officers in their 70s and 80s from the era of North Korean founder Kim Il-sung are making way for younger military leaders in their 50s and 60s.
• Yonhap – A North Korean soldier defected to the South at the eastern front line Tuesday, a government source said.
• Bangkok Pundit – Thanong of The Nation excerpts (scroll down to 3:30pm) a Sri Lankan report quoting some opposition politicians in Sri Lanka linking the Tamil Tigers with Thaksin and stating that Thaksin accepted money from the Tigers
• news.com.au – Thirteen men have been arrested since police launched a major anti-terror raid in a remote region of Indonesia’s Aceh province last week, police said today. Reporting the arrests of seven men on Monday, Mr Aritonang said they had possibly been given military training overseas and added that the suspects had been charged with terrorism-related activities.
• Irrawaddy – Thai army soldiers patrolling the Thai-Burmese border seized 650,000 amphetamine pills in a clash with drug traffickers in which one smuggler was killed.
• Graeme Dobell – Potential jihadists have quite a few Canberra careers to support. A large edifice is being erected, based on the claim in the Counter-Terrorism White Paper that the jihadist threat is ‘persistent and permanent.’ At the centre of this counter-terrorism edifice stands the Prime Minister. The White Paper is another moment that demonstrates the shift of power to the PM’s Department.

Europe

• DPA – The arrest of former president of Bosnia-Herzegovina Ejup Ganic for alleged war crimes has caused an uproar in Bosnia, with one party describing it as an attack on the country and calling for legal action against top Serbian leaders.Ganic was arrested on Monday evening at London’s Heathrow airport for alleged war crimes on an extradition warrant issued by the Serbian government.
• Javno – An alleged Serbian “war criminal”, Veselin Vlahovic, who is wanted for over 100 killings during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war has been detained in Spain, the interior ministry said Tuesday.
• AKI – Italian magistrates on Tuesday issued new terrorism charges against a Libyan immigrant suspected of setting off a bomb outside a military barracks in the northern Italian city of Milan last October. Mohammed Game will now be charged with an act of terrorism using an explosive device.
• RIA Novosti – France has put aside some $1 billion to buy 14 Soyuz carrier rockets from Russia, French satellite launch firm Arianespace CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall said Tuesday.
• UPI – An Iranian role in the Nabucco natural gas pipeline for Europe is an “interesting” proposition, said the chief of Austrian energy giant OMV. Europe aims to ease its dependence on politically sensitive transit arteries through Ukraine and diversify its energy sector through the Nabucco pipeline, which would move non-Russian gas through Turkey.
• euobserver – German energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger on Tuesday (2 March) for the first time signaled openness on behalf of the EU executive towards South Stream, a Russian gas pipeline running through the Black Sea, and seen as a rival to Europe’s similar project, Nabucco. “South Stream could be backed by the European Commission on condition that it meets the technical requirements for security,” he said on the sidelines of an energy forum in Bulgaria, AFP reports.
• Copenhagenn Post – Police, working in cooperation with intelligence service PET, arrested two people during raids on a number of addresses on Sunday, reports Berlingske Tidende newspaper. The action was part of a major operation targeting violent political extremism, and those arrested were said to be left-wing activists.

Africa

• Mareeg – Government soldiers and Islamist rebels have clashed in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Tuesday, witnesses say.
• State Dept – The United States is extremely concerned about reports that Government of Sudan forces are conducting offensive operations against Sudan Liberation Army/Abdel Wahid (SLA/AW) positions in the Jebel Marra area of Darfur that have reportedly caused significant civilian casualties, displacement, and the evacuation of humanitarian organizations. The United States urges the Government of Sudan and SLA/AW to refrain from further violence and to allow the Joint African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur access to Jebel Marra to assess the humanitarian situation and restore stability.
• Sudan Tribune – The Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM), formed by ten rebel groups on Tuesday February 23, announced today in Doha the names of its executive bureau and other bodies, ahead of talks with the Sudanese government on a framework agreement.
• BBC – The BBC has evidence that millions of dollars, earmarked for victims of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85, went to buy weapons
• New Vision – A massive landslide swept the slopes of Mt. Elgon in eastern Uganda on Monday night, killing at least 80 people, with 350 missing and feared dead. The landslide erased three villages in Bududa district known as Kubehwo, Namakansa and Nametsi located in Bukalasi sub-county.
• SW Radio Africa – An independent monitor ordered by the international diamond trade watchdog the Kimberley Process, has arrived in Zimbabwe, to determine if human rights standards are being met at the controversial Chiadzwa fields. The Kimberley Process, which has been tasked with ending the global trade in ‘blood diamonds,’ has given Zimbabwe until June to fall in line with international trade standards.
• Intellibriefs – It is striking to know that Ghana’s potential oil wealth is not all about who benefits and what infrastructure should be developed and harnessed. It completely goes beyond that. The concerns about security impacts with regard to managing the oil and gas industry have increasingly gained prominence at the top of international development agenda

A tug boat comes alongside the Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Houston as she arrives in Subic Bay, Philippines.

The Global War

• John Arguilla, Foreign Policy – Every day, the U.S. military spends $1.75 billion, much of it on big ships, big guns, and big battalions that are not only not needed to win the wars of the present, but are sure to be the wrong approach to waging the wars of the future. In this, the ninth year of the first great conflict between nations and networks, America’s armed forces have failed, as militaries so often do, to adapt sufficiently to changed conditions, finding out the hard way that their enemies often remain a step ahead.
• Air Force – Airmen arrived in Thailand Feb. 26 to join servicemembers from Singapore and Thailand for the Cope Tiger 2010 field training exercise. This year’s exercise will take place March 1 through 12 at Korat and Udon Thani Royal Thai Air Force bases in Thailand.
• DPN – The government of Tunisia has signed a contract with Lockheed Martin for the purchase of two C-130J Super Hercules airlifters with an initial three years of logistics support. Tunisia’s new C130Js, scheduled to be delivered in 2013 and 2014, will be the longer fuselage or “stretched” variant of the C-130J.

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »