Sorry for the silence around here, but am dealing with craziness in the day job, and it’s sucking all my bandwidth, not to mention my will to live…

Too much insanity in the day job to blog today, and in addition, the family and I will be taking a little trip over the holiday weekend. So, no blogging till probably Tuesday. Summer is here, enjoy the weekend.

A brief world news roundup for 21 May 2008.

United States & the Americas

• NY Times - Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the longtime Massachusetts Democrat and patriarch of the Kennedy family, has a malignant brain tumor, his doctors said on Tuesday.
• The Herald - A Scottish student has died on an exchange trip to America after being run over by a bus while she was jogging. Lisa Moran, 20, from Paisley, was running at the Chapel Hill campus in North Carolina when the accident happened.
• CSM - The surrender this week of a leading commander of Colombia’s leftist rebels is the latest in a string of devastating blows to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that has been fighting to take power for more than 40 years. That desertion, along with recent killings and captures of other top leaders – as well as the revelation of the inside workings of the rebels through seized computer files – show a weakened and fractured force, but analysts say it would be a mistake for the conservative US-backed government of President Álvaro Uribe to claim victory.
• NPR - The Canadian soft-wood lumber industry is in freefall. Sawmills are closing or switching to partial schedules, and unions are screaming for government aid to the affected communities. The reason? The American housing bust. But Canadian timber workers are angry at the U.S. for other reasons, too.
• Telegraph - Britons are among hundreds of terminally ill people flocking to Mexico to buy a cheap, widely available euthanasia drug which is illegal in most countries.
• Thaindian - At least 21 people have been killed and more than 20 injured when a bus plummeted 200 meters off a mountain highway in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, the police have said.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Washington Post - Georgia’s ruling party is likely to win a majority in a parliamentary election on Wednesday that the West says will be a test of President Mikheil Saakashvili’s democratic credentials as he pushes for NATO membership.
• BBC - Russian security services search the Moscow HQ of oil giant BP, the second time the firm has been targeted.
• Joshua Kucera - Travels in the Former Soviet Union; The Cult of Heydar Aliyev.
• RussiaToday - Eighteen tourists, including eleven children, have been injured in a bus crash in Ukraine. Most of the injured are believed to be Russian.
• Guardian - Thousands of English fans arrived in Moscow ahead of today’s Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester United at the Luzhniki stadium. Around 6,000 Russian police will be on duty today to prevent disturbances amid fears that the all-English final could lead to violence. Some 700 buses will take fans arriving today directly to the stadium, using special lanes to circumvent the city’s dismal traffic problem.
• EurasiaNet - Encouraged by improving ties to the West, Uzbekistan seems to want to wriggle out from Russia’s warm embrace – again. In recent weeks, Tashkent has made a series of gestures that signal a cooling in its relations with Moscow.
• Kommersant - Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow began his first visit to Baku yesterday and held talks with Azeri President Ilham Aliev. The main topic of their discussion was the construction of the Transcaspian natural gas pipeline bypassing Russia.
• RIA Novosti - Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company GNKAR said on Tuesday it had completed building an oil pipeline along the bottom of the Caspian Sea for a major Russian crude producer.

Middle East

• ABC - Thousands of Iraqi troops moved unchallenged into Baghdad’s Sadr City Tuesday to seize the Shiite militia stronghold, in the largest attempt yet by the government to impose control, an Iraqi military spokesman said.
• Jerusalem Post - Fearing that Damascus is acquiring advanced military platforms, Israel is closely following meetings being held in Moscow this week between a high-level Syrian military delegation and Russian Defense Ministry officials.
• FT - Arab mediators on Tuesday gave Lebanon’s Hizbollah-led opposition until Wednesday to sign up to proposals to defuse a crisis that drove the country close to civil war. After four days of tense negotiations in Doha, led by Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, Qatari prime minister, the pro-western governing coalition said it had accepted a proposed Arab League deal to end an 18-month political standoff and pave the way for the election of Michel Suleiman, Lebanon’s army chief, as president.
• MEMRI - From MEMRI TV: Hamas Minister of Culture Atallah Abu Al-Subh: Bush Is a Dracula-Style Vampire. The Blood of Afghan Children Drips from His Fangs onto His Lips and Chest.

Iran

• Times Online - Iran’s nuclear programme could be triggering a race to develop atomic weapons in the Middle East, a study warned today. The report noted a recent surge of nuclear activity in countries in the region.
• Payvand - The UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei has once again highlighted the lack of evidence to prove Iran is after a nuclear bomb. “We haven’t seen indications or any concrete evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon and I’ve been saying that consistently for the last five years,” ElBaradei asserted.
• AP - The top uniformed U.S. military officer told Congress on Tuesday that Iran is directly jeopardizing any potential for peace in Iraq, prompting fresh calls from senators that the U.S. pursue diplomatic talks with Tehran. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “irresponsible actions” by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard “directly jeopardize” peace in Iraq.
• MEMRI - Expediency Council Chairman Hashemi Rafsanjani, considered the No. 2 man in the Iranian regime hierarchy, has criticized the opposition of the government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the privatization process that was decided upon.

Southeast Asia

• The Economist - Afghanistan’s troubles are, of course, unique, especially in the viciousness and extent of its continuing insurgency, most often compared with Iraq’s. But this is in fact only one of four foreign interventions in conflict-ridden states in Asia in recent years. The others—in Cambodia, Timor-Leste and Nepal—offer revealing parallels with Afghanistan.
• UPI - Australian troops began an offensive Monday, pushing south into the Taliban stronghold of Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province.
• Reuters - On the western edge of Kabul, in the saddle between two hills, stands a flaking monument to what the city once aspired to be, a cosmopolitan destination drawing chic travelers from the world over.
• Dawn - Attacks around Afghanistan killed 17 people while police stopped a suicide bomber from driving a stolen police jeep packed with explosives into a base in Delaram district, officials said Tuesday.
• Al Arabiya - There is anecdotal evidence, supported by doctors concerned about the potential for the spread of HIV and AIDS, that more and more young women across northern regions of Afghanistan are turning to sex work to escape grinding poverty.
• AP - Thieves, feuding tribesmen and Taliban militants are creating chaos along the main Pakistan-Afghanistan highway, threatening a vital supply line for U.S. and NATO forces.
• AKI - Twenty Taliban prisoners are expected to be freed from Pakistan’s jails by Thursday in an exchange under which Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, was released at the weekend.
• Daily Star - Ten people were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a military vehicle in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, the third blast to hit the country in three days after an US missile strike on a senior militant, police said. The incident occurred in the northwestern garrison town of Kohat
• CBS - Amid cries of ‘Allah o Akbar’ (god is great), a young boy, barely 12 years old, lifts his machete and strikes at his victim who is lying on the ground, all tied up for the kill. Waving a ‘V’ for victory sign with his right hand, the boy picks up the severed head and shows it around to the chants of applause from an audience gathered in a remote part of the region straddling the mountainous range which divides Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• Hindu - Bangalore: The death toll in the hooch tragedy in several districts of Karnataka went up to 110 on Tuesday with another 55 people succumbing after consuming the illicit liquor, over the last 24 hours.
• Xinhua - Eleven people were killed and 41 others injured in a collision between two buses in Bangladesh’s northwestern Bogra district, about 170 km northwest of capital Dhaka, early Tuesday.
• TamilNet - Brigadier Balraj, a senior and a special commander of the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE), passed away Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. of a sudden heart attack in Vanni, LTTE’s Head Quarters said

Far East & Pacific

• Washington Post - The tales of survival came after the confirmed death toll from the disaster rose to 40,075, according to the State Council, China’s Cabinet. Officials have said the final number killed by the quake was expected to surpass 50,000. Five million people lost their homes in the quake, said Jiang Li, vice minister of civil affairs.
• AFP - Twenty-five pilgrims have been killed in a bus crash in Nepal and around 20 more are missing presumed dead, police said Tuesday.

Europe

• DW - Stabilizing food prices across Europe needs to be a top priority, Europe’s agriculture ministers agree. The hard part will be deciding how to best reform the system.
• AKI - Members of the Islamic community in the southern Italian city of Naples and surrounding areas will protest on Wednesday against the government’s proposed new security measures.
• BBC - As Iceland’s whale hunt begins, its foreign minister warns of damage to the country’s long term interests.
• France24 - The suspected top political leader of the Basque separatist group ETA was arrested Tuesday in southwestern France in a joint operation by French and Spanish police, Spanish anti-terrorism sources said.
• Times Online - A young woman crushed to death when a bus hit a tree in near Tower Bridge in South London this morning has been named as Emily Diamond.

Africa

• AFP - A wave of violence against foreigners in South Africa has forced 13,000 people to flee their homes, the UN said Tuesday, as President Thabo Mbeki pleaded for an end to a “shameful” show of xenophobia.
• CISA - A Catholic church was attacked and looted by government supporters during fierce fighting between the army and soldiers of the former liberation movement, SPLA, in the disputed oil-rich town of Abiyei.
• HRW - International action is needed to end the Lord’s Resistance Army’s reported new spree of abductions and sexual violence and to help execute arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for the group’s leaders, Human Rights Watch said. HRW has learned that since February 2008 the insurgent Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) group has carried out at least 100 abductions, and perhaps many more, in the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Southern Sudan. Boys are made to act as porters or subjected to military training and girls are being used as sex slaves, according to credible information.
• BBC - Three people have been killed and nine wounded in a blast on a minibus in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, state radio reports.
• Reuters - Global price rises and floods last year have caused severe food shortages in northeast Uganda, where nearly 30 people have died and some have been reduced to eating rats, officials said on Tuesday.
• Daily Times - Three Malawians and four Mozambicans died on the spot last Thursday evening near Mazoe Bridge in Mozambique, after a Linking Africa (Ingwe) bus was involved in an accident.
• ISN - The assassination of a Somali al-Qaida affiliate overshadows peace talks, with Kenya vulnerable to terrorist attacks in response.

The Global War

• Javno - A Saudi citizen who allegedly intended to be the “20th hijacker” on Sept. 11 tried to kill himself last month at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba after learning he faced charges that could carry the death penalty, his lawyer said on Monday.
• US News - Pakistan’s ungoverned tribal region has been both a Taliban haven and a constant headache for nato partners throughout the war here. But their frustration with the area is growing, as cross-border attacks coming from the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas of Pakistan, commonly known here as the fata, doubled from 20 in March 2007 to 41 in March 2008 in eastern Afghanistan alone.
• Press TV - Venezuela has declared that it is establishing a common bank with Iran to finance economic development projects in the two countries.
• MESH - MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Matthew Levitt is senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a member of MESH. His forthcoming book is Negotiating Under Fire: Preserving Peace Talks in the Face of Terror Attacks.

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

A brief world news roundup for 20 May 2008.

United States & the Americas

• CBS - Cuba accused America’s top diplomat in Havana of carrying mail to dissidents that contained private funds from an organization run by the benefactor of an alleged terrorist.
• contentions - As noted here, Barack Obama seemed to discount any real concern about Iran in remarks in Oregon last night. Today, at the beginning of an economic speech, John McCain responded to Obama’s conclusion that compared to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the threat now posed by Iran is “tiny:”
• AP - Venezuela wants the U.S. ambassador to explain a violation of its airspace by a U.S. Navy plane, the country’s foreign minister said Monday.
• CNN - The commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’s Force 47 has told reporters in Bogota, a day after surrendering, that “the solution is not through war. There must be dialogue.”
• McClatchy -Brazilians turned to cheaper sugar cane-based ethanol to fuel their vehicles. Now, fuels made from sugar cane have become Brazil’s second most-used energy source, only behind fossil fuels. Exploding demand has pushed mills here to plant on more farmland, harvest the crop more quickly and grow better-quality cane.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• EurasiaNet - The Upper Kodori Gorge, the only part of breakaway Abkhazia still governed by Georgia, has emerged in recent weeks as a flashpoint in relations between Tbilisi and Moscow. To Abkhaz separatists, it is the launch pad for a potential attack. To Georgians, it is a symbol of their intentions to regain Abkhazia without conflict.
• Kommersant - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has signed a resolution creating a government presidium – a special body within the cabinet. It will be made up of over half the cabinet members.
• DiD - Numerous sources are now reporting that a high-level Russian delegation in Algeria has closed $7.5 billion worth of arms contracts. The Algerian package would be post-Soviet Russia’s largest ever single arms deal, and compares to annual Russian weapons exports to all customers of $5-6 billion per year over the last couple of years.
• FSI - On May 5 a panel of Russia experts including CDDRL Director Michael McFaul presented analysis of the current state of Russia’s political and economic development and the likelihood of continuity or change in Dmitry Medvedev’s first term as president of Russia.
• Joshua Kucera - I have another series on Slate.com this week, this one dealing with the Caucasus and Central Asia. The first one is up; it’s on South Ossetia. Then there will be a new one every day for the rest of the week. The next three are on Azerbaijan, on nationalism and the cult of personality, Islam and the police state, and then final one will be on Uzbekistan’s beleaguered dissident community.

Middle East

• AINA - Iraqi officials said police on Monday arrested a man suspected of being a top al-Qaida in Iraq figure in the northern city of Mosul, where security forces have been carrying out an intensified crackdown to root out the terror network.
• BBC - Eleven Iraqi police recruits are shot dead near Mosul as US and Iraqi forces try to crack down on al-Qaeda.
• Reuters - A local Iraqi police chief was killed on Monday when a bomb placed under his bed in the local police headquarters exploded as he slept, police said.
• AFPS - Iraqi and coalition forces killed 11 militants, detained 24 others and seized weapons in Iraq over the past three days, military officials said.
• Stars and Stripes - It was once the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, based in Schweinfurt. It spent, all told, 27 months in Iraq, 15 of them in a second, grueling deployment as part of the “surge.” Now, with a new name, the unit is heading back to Iraq this fall, officials announced Monday.
• Press TV - Iraq has officially increased the size of its oil reserves and they could exceed Saudi Arabia’s to become the largest in the world.
• CTC Sentinel - Iraq’s Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Syrian-Iraqi Border Since 2003.
• Reuters - A Yemeni court has sent back to jail an al Qaeda suspect on the U.S. list of most wanted militants after his release earlier this year prompted U.S. complaints.
• Daily Star - Over-consumption, over-pumping and mismanagement are causing Lebanon’s fresh water wells to become contaminated with salt water, making the reserves unfit for human consumption, a recent study shows. The information was made public at a conference organized the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy & International Affairs.
• AP - Talks between rival Lebanese factions teetered near collapse Monday, as Arab League mediators in Qatar pressed the parties to resolve the political strife that erupted into bloody violence and pushed the country to the brink of a new civil war.

Iran

• BBC - Members of the Bahai faith say their entire leadership in Iran have been arrested by the authorities.
• Payvand - Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Chairman Alaeddin Borujerdi on Sunday called on Germany to expel terrorist organizations that are using the country as a base.
• Payvand - The import of Pakistani rice started through the southern Pakistani border on Sunday, the Sistan-Baluchestan governor general said. According to him, over 1,000 tons of rice were imported to Iran via Pishin border market in Sarbaz city yesterday.
• MEMRI - Iran has been attempting to persuade Syria to cancel the flour-for-rice deal it has concluded between it and Egypt, which is suffering from a severe bread shortage. The pressure comes in response to Egypt’s refusal to normalize relations with Iran.

Southeast Asia

• CNN - Australian soldiers have started “a major push” against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, the Australian government said Monday.
• Today Online - Insurgents are crossing from Pakistan into Afghanistan, where attacks have spiked in recent weeks, hidden among hundreds of families that make the trip daily, the NATO force here said Monday.
• Spiegel - German special forces had an important Taliban commander in their sights in Afghanistan. But he escaped, because the Germans were not authorized to use lethal force. The German government’s hands-tied approach to the war is causing friction with its NATO allies.
• Telegraph - A US Marine narrowly avoids death in this dramatic series of photos taken on the frontline of the battle against the Taliban.
• UK MoD - British forces were conducting operations in the Musa Qaleh area when a soldier patrolling on foot was caught in an explosion and tragically lost his life.
• Asia Times - The Pakistani Taliban will be pleased to have secured the release of 55 militants, including top Taliban commanders, not to mention a US$287,000 payment. In return, the government will welcome back its envoy to Afghanistan and dozens of security officials held captive by the militants. The real winners, though, are the militants, who orchestrated the prisoner exchange and who aim to step up the pressure on Islamabad.
• The News - Three people were killed and two injured in a remote-controlled bomb blast outside a mosque at village Dagar in Tehsil Momand of the Bajuar.
• AKI - The Pakistani Taliban on Monday claimed responsibility for Sunday’s suicide attack in the north-western Pakistan town of Mardan which killed at least 13 people and injured 20 others.
• AKI - The leader of Bangladesh’s largest Islamic party has been arrested over allegations of graft under the military-backed government’s drive to fight corruption.
• UPI - Police in India’s Rajasthan state have launched a massive drive to identify Bangladesh nationals following Tuesday’s series of deadly bomb blasts in Jaipur.
• AFP - An Indian army soldier died Monday in shooting across the line dividing the Himalayan region of Kashmir between India and Pakistan, the army said.
• MEMRI - At least eight militants have been killed during a 12-hour gun-battle in Indian-administered Kashmir. According to a report in the Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt, two district-level commanders of militant groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad were among those killed.
• Nosint - India has planned to progressively deploy its advanced Sukhoi-30MKI fighter aircraft along its western border with Pakistan, the Times of India reported on Sunday.
• Javno - Sri Lanka military attacked rebel positions in the island’s far north on Sunday, amidst daily land, air and sea raids, killing 61 Tamil Tiger rebels, the military said on Monday. The fresh attacks also saw 15 soldiers killed.
• AP - Southeast Asia’s most wanted terror suspect, Noordin Top, may have evaded a massive manhunt and fled Indonesia, according to police documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Far East & Pacific

• AFP - Ma Ying-jeou took the oath of office Tuesday as Taiwan’s new president, two months after sweeping to victory on a pledge to repair relations with rival China.
• NPR - In Mianyang, a sports stadium shelters approximately 20,000 survivors of last week’s earthquake. Among the refugees are children who have been separated from their parents in the chaos. Many are left wondering if they still have parents.
• BBC - A man has shot eight people dead, five of them children, in a village near the Philippines capital, Manila. The shooting comes three days after 10 people were shot dead in a bank raid in the same province - an incident that caused nationwide outrage.
• FT - Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s former prime minister, resigned from the ruling party he led for 22 years, raising the stakes in his public battle with Abdullah Badawi, the prime minister and party leader.
• Japan Times - Japan, self-sufficient in rice, may export 200,000 tons it imported under a World Trade Organization agreement, easing a global shortage, the government said Monday.

Europe

• ABC - France acknowledged on Monday that it had informal contacts with Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist organization for its campaign of violence against Israel.
• AP - Spain’s first female defense minister, who drew attention when she was appointed to the post while seven months pregnant, gave birth to a boy on Monday.
• BBC - Counterfeiting is a “growing problem” for Europe, a report finds, as cases of fraudulent goods seized last year soars.
• Islam in Europe - An Algerian man arrested after allegedly spraying a mixture of ‘urine, faeces and domestic products’ over food in two supermarkets last Friday was remanded in custody today to await committal to crown court.

Africa

• AKI - The humanitarian situation in Somalia is deteriorating quickly due to soaring food prices, a significantly devalued Somali currency, and worsening drought, said the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation on Monday.
• Press TV - Fighters of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) have taken control of the southern Somali town of Jamamme, after a fierce battle in the city.
• IRIN - Hundreds of Somali Bantu families have been displaced in the southern region of Lower Juba after days of inter-clan fighting in which 10 people were reportedly killed and more than 20 wounded, locals told IRIN.
• IRIN - The death toll in a wave of attacks targeting foreigners around South Africa’s main city of Johannesburg has reportedly risen to 32, with an estimated 6,000 people seeking shelter in police stations, churches and community halls.
• AllAfrica - Kenyan security officers have recovered more guns and witnessed “several” militiamen surrendering after the killing of a militia leader in the western Mt Elgon district, a police official told IRIN on 19 May.
• AKI - Police have arrested 11 people suspected of planning terrorist attacks in Morocco and in Belgium, the MAP news agency announced on Monday.
• BBC - Hundreds of Algerian police officers head to a southern town after days of clashes between Berbers and Arabs.
• Daily Mail - Zimbabwe’s opposition party has accused the country’s military of plotting to assassinate presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai using snipers. Secretary-General Tendai Biti, of the Movement for Democratic Change, made the allegation in Kenya’s capital.

The Global War

• ABC - Osama bin Laden released a new message on Sunday denouncing Arab leaders for sacrificing the Palestinians and saying the head of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah did not really have the strength to take on Israel.
• Charlotte Observer - For more than seven years now, billions of American government dollars, expense reimbursements of about $90 million a month, have sluiced directly into the Pakistani treasury, instantly becoming “sovereign government funds,” as a new government report puts it. Once there, the U.S. has no control over how the money is used. All of this money, about $6 billion so far, is intended to pay for counter-insurgency operations against al-Qaida and Taliban sanctuaries in the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan… In short, seven years and $6 billion later, the terrorist group that carried out 9-11 has grown ever more comfortable and secure in its new Pakistani home.
• WSJ - Blackwater’s inability to win local approval for a new training center in San Diego shows the private security company faces roadblocks as it tries to expand amid scrutiny of its controversial work protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq.
• Newt Gingrich - United States Security and the Strategic Landscape.
• Marshall Center - Because of its frontline position in the fight against terrorism, the military must understand how it can contribute to counteracting the ideologies that continue to fuel violent extremism, Italy’s chief of defense staff said in opening remarks at a conference here May 12.
• MEI - Pakistan reflects and affects many of the critical issues in South Asia that worry the US foreign policy establishment, the media, and the public. Yet US policy deals with Pakistan through one primary lens — that of the war on terrorism. As a consequence, neither America’s nor Pakistan’s best interests are being served.
• Foreign Policy Watch - It’s hard to know what to make of reports that suggest that American trade with Syria actually increased last year. Remember, this is despite the fact that the Syrian Accountability Act (2003) leveled strict trade sanctions and barred the sale of most American goods. General Motors, Coca-Cola, and a few others corporations are apparently doing a brisk trade, however, effectively skirting the restrictions by shipping in their goods from overseas factories. Nonetheless, overall market access between the two countries has diminished and Syria is reportedly feeling the effects.
• Dipnote - It wasn’t long ago that the remote part of Liberia, near the Sierra Leone border, was controlled by rebels. I was there a couple of weeks ago as part of a Kimberley Process review team that was visiting diamond mining sites to monitor Liberia’s compliance with the international diamond trading regime. In the 1990s, the diamonds from this region financed weapons and supported those who brutally abused, maimed and killed the local residents. Now, with any luck, these diamonds may help contribute to Liberia’s economic development and support reconstruction efforts.
• Terror Finance Blog - High-value crime, terror finance and the African Problem.

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

A brief world news roundup for 19 May 2008.

United States & the Americas

• McClatchy - A military commission judge Friday delayed the scheduled trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver until after the U.S. Supreme Court has decided another key detainee case.
• NY Sun - As an African American politician is set to assume for the first time in the country’s history the leadership of a major political party, a Geneva-based United Nations human rights investigator plans to come here next week to investigate whether racism plays a role in the presidential campaign, according to a statement released yesterday.
• New Zealand Herald - The Mexican army says it has captured a man it describes as a top lieutenant of the Carrillo Fuentes border drug cartel. The army has said Saturday that soldiers captured Pedro Sanchez Arras, also known as ‘The Tiger’ on May 13 in the city of Hidalgo del Parral, in the northern state of Chihuahua.
• LA Times - The recent killing of the country’s top drug cop has prompted a crackdown, but the cartels have struck back. To strike back at narcotics traffickers suspected of ordering the assassination of Mexico’s top drug cop, President Felipe Calderon dispatched 2,000 army troops and federal police to the gang’s home base, the western state of Sinaloa.
• France24 - Sixty Colombian soldiers were allegedly stopped within Venezuelan borders Friday, drawing official protests. The Venezuelan government said Colombian President Uribe was “seeking to destabilize the region.”
• Hudson Institute - It only took 61 years, but Paraguay’s conservative Colorado Party finally lost an election. In last month’s presidential poll, a plurality of voters cast ballots for Fernando Lugo, a left-wing candidate who does not belong to an organized political party. Lugo focused his campaign on poverty, rural land reform, and energy policy. Now comes the more difficult task of actually governing. Will Lugo favor pragmatic, market-friendly initiatives designed to boost Paraguay’s economy and ensure stability?

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• BBC - Georgia has shown the BBC footage which it says proves Russian troops are deploying heavy military hardware in the breakaway region of Abkhazia. An interior ministry official in Tbilisi said the video footage was from an unmanned Georgian spy plane.
• RussiaToday - Six Russian peacekeepers have been released following their detention by Georgian police. This follows an incident on the border with Georgia’s breakaway republic of Abkhazia. The exact circumstances of the incident are still unclear.
• Moscow Times - Georgia said Friday that it would block negotiations on Russian entry to the World Trade Organization until Moscow reverses a decision last month to step up ties with two breakaway Georgian provinces.
• Telegraph - The battle for “ownership” of the polar oil reserves has accelerated with the disclosure that Russia has sent a fleet of nuclear-powered ice breakers into the Arctic.
• Kavkaz Center - The AlKavkaz website has reported that on 11 Jumada Al-’Awwal 1429 (16 May 2008), a mobile unit of Mujahideen of Eastern Front of Armed Forces of the Caucasus Emirate under command of Amir Dr. Muhammad detonated an explosive device on a military convoy of Russian infidels in Nozhai-Yurt district of Wilayah Nokhchicho, destroying a BTR armored personnel carrier, damaging an Ural military truck, killing at least five Russian kuffar and wounding an unknown number of others.
• EurasiaNet - Mystery continues to engulf Tajikistan’s first family, which appears preoccupied with a destabilizing power struggle. The continuing uncertainty surrounding the president and his close relatives suggests that a bout of instability could be in the offing for Central Asia’s poorest nation.
• Silk Road Intelligencer - Almost a year after the adoption of the EU Strategy on Central Asia, the prioritization of issues within EU-Central Asian cooperation have become clearer. Hence, the strategy paper represented the minimal consensus among member states. Today, in spite of rhetoric, it has become clearer that in the implementation stage of the strategy the proponents of realpolitik have prevailed. On closer inspection of the strategy paper and its annexes one cannot help but noticing that rather than a fully-fledged political strategy, one is looking at a framework paper outlining a handful of issues that are deemed to be of some importance.

Middle East

• ABC - Nearly 1,000 people have been detained in a sweep to break al-Qaida in Iraq’s sway in Iraq’s third largest city, Mosul, but many of the fighters have fled to nearby areas, where troops are hunting for them, Iraqi officials said Saturday.
• AINA - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki on Friday offered amnesty to Sunni Arab militants in the northern city of Mosul and financial compensation for their surrendered weapons.
• UPI - Overnight fighting between Shiite rebels and U.S. and Iraqi soldiers in Baghdad killed four people and left 38 people injured, authorities said Sunday.
• MNF Iraq - Two female suicide bombers attacked the Sons of Iraq and the Iraqi Security Force in the Diyala Province, killing one and wounding 23, May 17.
• BBC - An American sniper has been sent home from Iraq for using a copy of the Koran for target practice at a shooting range near Baghdad, the US military says.
• CentCom - The security environment in Basra, Iraq, has improved dramatically since 1st Iraqi Army Quick Reaction Force fought its way into the city April 1.
• INN - Representatives of the Lebanese government and Hizbullah traded accusations and reported almost no progress on the second day of discussions between them in Doha, Qatar. Hizbullah’s chief negotiator at the talks, Mohammed Ra’ad, refused the government’s demand that the Iranian-backed group’s weapons be discussed at the talks.
• Michael Totten - Lebanon will not become the next Gaza. Commenters both inside and outside the country compared Hezbollah’s invasion of West Beirut last week to the Hamas takeover of Gaza last year, which is perhaps understandable: that’s what it looked like. If Lebanon’s mainstream Sunni-dominated party—Saad Hariri’s Future Movement—has a militia that is able and willing to fight, it didn’t make much of an appearance. Hezbollah seized the western half of the city in a walk. Far less attention has been paid to Hezbollah’s military and strategic failure in the Chouf mountains southeast of Beirut where Lebanon’s Druze community lives.
• Haaretz - Assailants detonated a bomb outside a popular cafe in Gaza City early Sunday morning, apparently part of a campaign by shadowy extremists to eliminate perceived symbols of Western influence.
• Jerusalem Post - Unknown assailants detonated a bomb outside a Christian school in Gaza City before dawn Friday, causing no injuries.
• AKI - An al-Qaeda cell in Yemen has issued a threat against non-Muslim foreign tourists, particularly those from the West, who visit the Arabian Peninsula.
• AP - Kuwait’s parliamentary elections showed strong gains for Muslim hardliners, official results found Sunday, but women candidates failed to win a single seat.
• Macleans - Turkey’s state-run media say six Kurdish rebels have been killed in a clash with soldiers in eastern Turkey. The Anatolia news agency says the clash erupted in Van province near the border with Iran Saturday.

Iran

• NY Times - Iran’s president faces growing criticism from Shiite clerics, who accuse him of using religion to distract attention from his government’s failures.
• Payvand - After the southeast province of Sistan Baluchestan, Tehran ranks second in illiteracy among 30 provinces of the country, the state Literacy Movement Organization announced in Tehran on Sunday.
• Press TV - Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki says Iran and Senegal are two strategic countries which enjoy good bilateral ties at all levels.
• MEMRI - In his Friday sermon, Tehran interim Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani said that the recent victories of Hizbullah in Lebanon against the Zionist regime belonged to the whole Islamic world, not just the Shi’ite community, and that all Muslims should be proud of Hizbullah. He said Hizbullah owes its victory today to unity among all Muslims, and that Muslims in turn must take that into consideration.”To Iran, there is no difference between Shi’ites and Sunnis.”
• Mianeh - Following the resignation of a key minister in April, the Iranian government continues to be dogged by rumours of impending changes. The rate of turnover has evoked protests from many significant religious and political players, from the reformist and fundamentalist factions alike. Critics argue that too many changes, carried out too fast, have left the government weak and unstable.
• Ray Takeyh - As President Bush addressed the Israeli parliament last week, denouncing negotiations with recalcitrant regimes as the “false comfort of appeasement,” his diplomats, in conjunction with their European counterparts, offered Iran another incentive package to stop enriching uranium. Even though they are making another effort to disarm Iran through mediation, the administration’s approach is hopelessly defective.

Southeast Asia

• BBC - At least 13 people are killed in a bomb attack in the north-western Pakistani town of Mardan, police say.
• CBS - Pakistan”s top military commander for the country”s Afghan-border region promised to keep his troops deployed in the area after last week”s peace agreement between the newly-elected government and a hardcore pro-Taliban tribal militant.
• BBC - Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, who was abducted by suspected Taleban militants in February, has been freed. Tariq Azizuddin was seized in the border area between the two countries, en route to the Afghan capital, Kabul.
• The News - The body of a soldier, kidnapped from the area a week ago, was found near Pusht Bazaar in Bajaur Agency on Friday. He was identified as Aftab Gul of Bajaur Scouts. Elders of Salarzai tribe formed a Jirga, which failed to secure the release of the kidnapped man. Political Tehsildar Mawaz Khan also confirmed that the body of the kidnapped scout was recovered near Pusht Bazaar. A note left on the body warned tribal elders against supporting the government or opposing ‘Mujahideen’, otherwise they would face the same fate.
• Daily Star - Pro-Taliban militants occupied a lawmaker’s house in a Pakistan tribal area Sunday, taking his relatives and servants hostage, witnesses and officials said. Shaukatullah Khan was out of town when up to 40 armed militants stormed his house in the restive Bajaur tribal district that borders Afghanistan.
• Macleans - A police chief says a suicide bomber has killed four civilians and wounded eight others in southern Afghanistan. Helmand provincial police Chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal says the target of Sunday’s attack was a district police chief in the town of Musa Qala.
• Dawn - Fifteen Taliban rebels were killed in an operation by the Afghan military in Ghormach district of Badghis province on Saturday, colonel Ghulam Sakhi told AFP Sunday.
• NY Times - The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come.
• US News - Two new problems are plaguing the U.S.-backed recovery of Afghanistan. Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador in Washington, tells us that the Pakistan-based Taliban is recruiting and training the handicapped and kids as young as 4 to be suicide bombers.
• Javno - Indian soldiers shot dead six separatist militants on Saturday in a gun battle, army officials said. The firefight broke out in Tral area, about 40 km (20 miles) south of Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital.
• Times of India - Gujarat police also recently added four new names to its list of 16 “recognized” terror outfits. Indian Mujaheedin is the 20th name to be added to this list. “The new names include Lashkar-e-Qahar, the organization responsible for the Mumbai train blasts on July 11 in 2006; Jamaat-ul-Mujaheedin, the front organization that carried out the Lumbini Park blasts in Hyderabad under HuJI; Dargah-Jihad-o-Shahadath and Indian Mujaheedin, the newest group which took responsibility for the Jaipur blasts,” said a state IB official.
• Intellibriefs - The public e-mail message from the Indian Mujahideen and a not so public e-mail from a section of the Psuedo-intellectual brigade bear an eerie similarity. It is this expose that Offstumped is focusing on in this post. So who exactly are these “Useful Idiot” Apologists for the Indian Mujahideen ?
• The Hindu - Eight persons were killed and 25 others injured in Murshidabad district as party supporters fought each other with guns and bombs during the third and final phase of the panchayat elections in West Bengal on Sunday.
• VOA - A Bangladesh court indicted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for alleged graft on Sunday, and police arrested the head of the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh party, Matiur Rahman Nizami, on similar charges.
• AKI - At least nine people have been killed in a suicide attack in the heart of the Sri Lankan capital Colombo on Friday, the army says. Six police officers and three civilians, including the bomber, were killed when a motorcycle packed with explosives rammed into a bus carrying police officers.
• Bloomberg - Sri Lankan soldiers captured a key town from the Tamil Tigers in the country’s north as heavy fighting killed at least 34 rebels, the government said.
• Strategy Page - The LTTE is declining and the economy is growing. The fighting has left over 4,000 dead so far this year, about 80 percent of the them LTTE fighters. The army is fighting a cautious war, using its greater numbers and firepower to destroy the LTTE defensive positions, without exposing itself to the kind of commando type attacks the LTTE has used in the past.

Far East & Pacific

• BBC - A UK minister, who is in Rangoon to press Burma’s leaders to do more for Cyclone Nargis victims, says the aid operation “is now starting to move”. His comments came just before a UN humanitarian envoy arrived in Burma for talks about widening the relief effort.
• Air Force - A total of six Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft have delivered more than 400,000 short tons of relief supplies to Burma as part of the ongoing U.S. relief efforts following Cyclone Nargis.
• Newsweek - Two weeks on, the scene suggests a halfhearted official relief effort at best. The junta’s strategy: keep it an internal affair—even if that triggers what the U.N. Office of Humanitarian Affairs calls “a second wave of deaths.” Yet the generals’ strategy implies a trade-off. Because government agencies have fallen so far short, various community networks, NGOs and religious groups are scrambling to fill the void.
• Javno - Thousands of Chinese fled to the hills on Saturday amid fears a lake formed near the epicentre of this week’s earthquake would burst its banks. The water level at the lake formed after aftershocks blocked a river was rising rapidly in Beichuan and “may burst its bank at any time”, the official Xinhua news agency said.
• MSNBC - A fire official says more than 16,000 people were evacuated from a Tokyo suburb while an unexploded 1-ton bomb believed was defused. The bomb was believed to have been dropped by the U.S. military during World War II.
• Radio Australia - United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice has agreed to a request from Tongan Prime Minister Fred Sevele to establish a consular office in the island kingdom.
• Washington Times - The United States will give North Korea 500,000 metric tons of food aid over the next year after the countries agreed on a “substantial improvement in monitoring” the food’s distribution, administration officials said yesterday.
• TIME - The jailing of two reporters for “abuse of power” is a blow to press freedom in Vietnam.
• Dawn - A policeman was killed and 14 other people injured when two bombs exploded in Thailand’s deep south, where authorities are battling a bloody separatist rebellion, police said Sunday. The first blast hit a busy night market in Narathiwat province on Saturday evening, injuring nine diners, local police said. A few hours later, a second bomb exploded in a car park near a police station in neighbouring Pattani province, killing one policeman instantly and injuring five of his colleagues.
• Bangkok Pundit - Thai journalist sentenced to nine months in prison on terrorism charges. He was charged with a terrorist offence for distributing pro-democracy fliers. Isn’t that an overreach?
• news.com.au - East Timor’s army will receive military training from Portuguese-speaking countries such as Brazil and Portugal as part of a military pact signed between the countries.
• The Australian - Six Australian-based Muslim clerics who are leaders of the Islamic community in the country are on the payroll of the Saudi Government, receiving allowances of up to $2000 a month.
• The Strategist - It’s well known that the British army has its own foreign legion in the form of the Gurkhas - Nepalese soldiers who have fought for the British since the early 19th century. At present, around 3500 Nepalese serve in the Brigade of Gurkhas. What’s less known is that over 2000 Fijians are also serving in the British army (h/t Glamdring).

Europe

• Spiegel - The Dalai Lama is currently visiting Germany. Only one member of the government is prepared to meet with him, sparking a storm of unrest within the government. “These days, being courageous means not meeting the Dalai Lama,” commented Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
• AKI - Police in France, Germany and the Netherlands have arrested 10 people suspected of financial links with an Uzbek organisation linked to al-Qaeda.
• UPI - The German government has accused foreign intelligence services, blaming mainly Russian agents, of having spied on German companies.
• Syria Comment - Here is a fascinating personal account of recent events in Lebanon from a German journalist and political analyst who resided in Beirut for the better part of the past fourteen years. He would like to share it with readers of Syria Comment.
• Canada.com - All eyes may not be on the beautiful bride Saturday when Autumn Kelly becomes the first Canadian to marry into the Royal Family before 300 witnesses at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.
• Global Voices - With the first of the semi-finals in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade, Serbia, just days away, the countries of the South Caucasus are becoming increasingly excited about the international song contest and how their representatives will fair. What makes the situation all the more interesting is that this year will be the first time when all three republics will compete.

Africa

• BBC - East African maritime officials say pirates have hijacked a Jordanian ship off the coast of Somalia. The Victoria, sailing from India with 4,000 tonnes of sugar donated by Denmark on board, was seized early on Saturday as it neared Mogadishu.
• AIR - In somalia Islamic insurgents have seized a major agricultural centre sending hundreds of people fleeing. A human rights leader said in Mogadishu that fighters from the Islamic Courts Union ousted militiamen loyal to Somalia’s fragile government in Jilib on Friday night and were patrolling the southern town.
• Press TV - At least six civilians have been shot dead by Ethiopian forces near Baidoa, Somalia and their vehicle set alight after the shooting.
• Press TV - Roadside bombs and heavy clashes have reportedly killed at least 91 Ethiopian troops near Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region, Weyne town. Ethiopian soldiers, leaving Afgoye and Baidoa towns were targeted by roadside bombs planted earlier by the fighters of the Union of Islamic Courts, Press TV correspondent reported on Sunday.
• Garowe - Unidentified gunmen have shot and killed a Somali aid worker in the southern port city of Kismayo, underscoring the continued dangers humanitarian aid workers face in the chaotic Horn of Africa country. Ahmed Bariyow, the director of Somalia’s Horn Relief aid agency, was shot and killed Saturday night by three masked men armed with pistols, a relative confirmed to Garowe Online. 
• NY Times - Somalia — and much of the volatile Horn of Africa, for that matter — was about the last place on earth that needed a food crisis. Even before commodity prices started shooting up around the globe, civil war, displacement and imperiled aid operations had pushed many people here to the brink of famine. But now with food costs spiraling out of reach and the livestock that people live off of dropping dead in the sand, villagers across this sun-blasted landscape say hundreds of people are dying of hunger and thirst.
• Reuters - Khartoum must sit down to Darfur peace talks by the end of the year or face all-out war, the leader of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) who launched an unprecedented attack on the capital this month said.
• Global Buzz - People to know: Hassan al-Turabi; Turabi is notable for his extreme Islamist views…
• ABC - Weekend attacks in Johannesburg on foreigners left at least 12 dead. “It’s spreading like wildfire and the police and the army can’t control it,” Ziso said, as he tried to help register about 500 people who sought refuge at the police station in Johannesburg’s Cleveland area. It was a scene repeated in other poor suburbs around the city. Angry residents accused foreigners of taking scarce jobs and housing, many of them Zimbabweans who had fled their own country’s economic collapse.
• AFP - Fears of an assassination plot against Zimbabwe’s opposition leader delayed his long-awaited homecoming on Saturday ahead of an election showdown with veteran President Robert Mugabe on June 27.
• New Vision - More than a third of the anti-malarial medicines sold in Kampala are either counterfeit or are not strong enough to cure the disease, a survey has revealed. Because of this, scientists warn, malaria could easily become resistant to the new generation of medicines that have replaced chloroquine.

The Global War

• ABC - The media wing of al-Qaida says Osama bin Laden soon will issue a new message addressed to the Islamic world. Al-Sahab posted a banner Sunday on a militant Web site known for carrying the terror network’s messages. It said a “powerful speech to the Islamic nation,” will be issued soon.
• NY Times - This is a stark example of the many problems that are coming to light in the world’s agricultural system. Experts say that during the food surpluses of recent decades, governments and development agencies lost focus on the importance of helping poor countries improve their agriculture.
• NPR - President Bush returns to the U.S. Sunday after a five-day visit to the Middle East. The aim of the trip: to reinforce Middle East peace process. Winding up the tour with a speech at the World Economic Forum in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, he got a frigid reception, however.
• Linda Chavez - President Bush gave a stunning speech at the World Economic Forum meeting in Sharm el Sheikh today in which he said, among other things: Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail.
• Nosint - Two weeks after photographs of China’s nuclear submarines set alarm bells ringing for the Indian authorities, a commercial satellite has revealed a launching site for over 50 nuclear ballistic missiles, capable of striking all north Indian cities.
• IWPR - Syria’s growing relationship with Russia has given it a rare ally in its generally isolated position. However, Moscow plays only a limited role in supporting Damascus internationally, say Syrian analysts. Syria has built stronger relations with Russia in the past few years. Moscow has refurbished some of its old military bases in the country, and has written off 70 per cent of Syria’s debt. Russia is rebuilding a base in the port of Tartus for use by its Black Sea fleet.
• Stars and Stripes - Air Force Staff Sgt. Travis Griffin was only 15 days from returning home on leave at the midway point of his Iraq tour when he was killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol in Baghdad. He was on his fourth Iraq deployment — his seventh to the Middle East.
• Stephen Johnson - Dust off the tinfoil hats: the 40-year-old USS Scorpion conspiracy theory has been revived.
• David Milband - I will be in the US Sunday through Friday… I want to say to my American and international counterparts that the UK has been a winner from globalisation; that along with other European countries we see the downsides of unsustainability and inequality; that the answer is not a retreat from international engagement; and that Britain wants to be part of a strengthened transatlantic partnership dedicated to building international rules and institutions that minimise the risks and maximise the gains of globalisation.
• Jules Crittenden - New Republic’s Scoblic beats conservatives with conservatives to defend Obama’s talk about talk with dictators. Talking worked with the Soviets, Scoblic opines, variously using a magnifying glass and a funhouse mirror to examine history’s miniscule details undistracted by any large inconvenient objects.
• Sharon Chadha - My colleague and the founder of Kabul Center for Strategic Studies, Wailiullah Rahmani, sent me a link to a fascinating study by RFE/RL senior analyst Daniel Kimmage, on Al-Qaeda’s media entities and the insurgents who operate in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

From The Real News, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterates controversial statements calling for an “end to the Zionist regime,” leading different news services to translate his words in different ways, some making them sound more belligerent than others. The Real News Network Senior Editor Paul Jay speaks to Babak Yektafar of Washington Prism to discuss the meaning of the statements.

A brief world news roundup for 16 May 2008.

United States & the Americas

• AFP - California’s Supreme Court ruled that a ban on gay marriage was unlawful Thursday, effectively leaving same-sex couples in America’s most populous state free to tie the knot in a landmark ruling.
• Javno - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday defeated legislation by a vote of 149-141 that would have funded the war in Iraq for another year, in a surprise move that the Senate could overturn. A large group of anti-war House Democrats voted against the funds. That, coupled with 132 Republicans voting “present,” meaning neither “yes” nor “no,” killed the measure for now.
• MSNBC - President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday warned Colombia not to allow a U.S. military base on its border with Venezuela, saying he would consider such an act an “aggression.”
• AP - European and Latin American leaders gathering for their fifth summit in a decade this week plan to tackle climate change, high food prices and poverty. But they may get sidetracked by an issue not on the agenda: Colombia’s March 1 raid on a rebel camp inside Ecuador. Chavez, Correa and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe are all expected to attend the Lima-based summit of nearly 60 leaders and top officials from Latin America, Europe and the Caribbean.
• BBC - The price of tortillas, a staple food in Mexico, are set to rise 18% in the next few weeks, an industry group says. Thousands of people protested against tortilla price rises in Mexico last year and they have become a big political issue.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• BBC - A Moscow court has sentenced eight men to prison terms ranging from two years to life for the bombing of a market in the city that killed 14 people in 2006. Investigators established that the defendants were members of an anti-immigration group called “Salvation”, Russian media say.
• AP - Tensions between Georgia and Russia got a jolt Thursday when a news agency quoted the head of the Russian air force as saying he favored putting military bases in a breakaway region of this former Soviet republic.
• Press TV - Georgia withdraws from the Commonwealth of Independent States Treaty on Cooperation in Air Defense, a treaty signed by post-soviet states. Georgian deputy Defense Minister, Batu Kuteliya said earlier that his country saw no practical benefit from the deal with Moscow.
• Thomas de Waal - If you’re deep in the trenches, stop digging. Both Russia and Georgia darkly warned last week of the danger of war over the Black Sea territory of Abkhazia, but they both keep digging.
• NY Times - In a Kyrgyz Garden, Unburied Soviet Memories; In this remote corner of the former Soviet Union, life has shrunk to the size of the basics: tomatoes; corn; apricot trees; baby goats.
• EurasiaNet - With Kazakhstan the choice for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s first official state visit, Russian and Kazakhstani officials are talking hard about plans to expand their governments’ partnership. However, the two former Soviet states are understood to remain divided over some divergent interests, notably oil transit, despite Russian claims to the contrary.
• Kommersant - Before Dmitry Medvedev’s inauguration, Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom had received a generous farewell gift from him. With no tender whatsoever, the monopoly obtained a third of gas fields of the federal reserve with the total resources of nearly 4 trillion cu meters. Gazprom’s wealth will step up by 13 percent as a result of that present.
• United Nations - Illicit Drug Trends in Central Asia.
• Oxford Analytica - Will Central Asia’s commodity boom help pave the way for a new Silk Road? That is the title of an article to appear in an edition of Standard & Poor’s CreditWeek devoted to Central Asia, released to coincide with the annual meeting of the European Bank For Reconstruction And Development in Kiev on Sunday.

Middle East

• ABC - U.S. and Iraqi troops moved against al-Qaida on two separate fronts Thursday, with house-to-house searches in Mosul and an operation in the desert to stanch the flow of insurgents and weapons to that northern city.
• AKI - A total of 833 people have been detained following the Iraqi military offensive in the city of Mosul targeting al-Qaeda militants.
• Javno - Gunmen opened fire on a car carrying two Iranian diplomats in Baghdad on Thursday, wounding them and two other people in the vehicle, an Iranian embassy official said.
• Reuters - Clashes between Shi’ite militiamen and security forces in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum killed seven people and wounded 19 overnight, Iraqi police and hospitals said on Thursday.
• Instapundit - BILL ARDOLINO: From Rusafa to Sadr City.
• Cardinalpark - One of the arguments posited by proponents of US withdrawal from Iraq has been that it stretches our resources in such a fashion that it reduces our commitment to, and therefore our ability to succeed in Afghanistan. I happen to think that’s bunk.
• France24 - Arab mediators clinched a deal on Thursday to defuse the latest crisis that pushed Lebanon to the brink of civil war, agreeing to relaunch a dialogue to end a prolonged political crisis. According to a copy of the six-point plan, which has yet to be formally announced, rival parties agree to return to the situation that prevailed in Lebanon prior to May 5, when deadly sectarian fighting erupted.
• NY Sun - Hezbollah has proven it can force Lebanon’s American-backed government to cave in on key issues. But the Shiite militant group’s power is not absolute — the government is still in place and Hezbollah has lost support among the people by turning its guns on them.
• Asharq Al Awsat - The Lebanese Army is facing one of the most difficult tests in keeping the military establishment cohesive and united. Asharq Al-Awsat has learned that the 40 officers, at the head of them Deputy Intelligence Director Brigadier General Ghassan Balah, who tendered a warning and unofficial resignations to Army Commander Gen. Michel Suleiman and will wait a few days before making their final decision on whether to leave or remain in the establishment according to how the army will act on the ground during the next two days.
• Ya Libnan - Last week’s fighting, in which at least 81 people were killed, pitted the opposition Shi’ite Muslim group Hezbollah against pro-government Sunni Muslim and Druze factions. But no major Christian group took part in the fighting or played a role in ending the violence. The Christians became divided over loyalties to rival leaders, leaving them marginalized during the latest crisis. Lebanese political scientist As’ad Abu Khalil said the community now had “no significant role” in Lebanese politics.
• Michael Young - The failure of Hezbollah’s latest effort to tilt the political and military balance in its favor was visible in the eyes of the mild inhabitants of the Shia village of Qomatiyeh on Tuesday, as they buried a young Hezbollah man killed by Druze fighters. According to the villagers, the young man, Suleiman Jaafar, was first wounded then executed by members of the Progressive Socialist Party. Such frightful ferocity will greet Hezbollah in every hostile location it would ever wish to control.
• Asharq Al Awsat - Palestinians marked the 60th anniversary of their uprooting Thursday, an annual ritual of mourning that turned even darker this year because of crippling internal divisions, diminishing independence hopes and the stark contrast to Israel’s all-out birthday bash.
• Haaretz - Israel Air Force aircraft struck twice in Gaza City late Wednesday, aiming for a group of Hamas militants, killing two and wounding four, witnesses and Hamas officials said.
• Carnegie Endowment - President Bush will conclude his trip to the Middle East this week with a brief stop in Egypt, which, along with Saudi Arabia, constitutes an important anchor for the moderate coalition resisting the growing influence of Iran in the region. Notwithstanding its geopolitical significance, Egypt has experienced unprecedented civil unrest in recent months and, despite its strong relationship with the United States, democratization efforts have effectively hit rock bottom in the nation.

Iran

• BBC - Iran played a crucial role in securing the recent ceasefire in the Sadr City area of Baghdad, just as it helped broker an earlier truce in the southern city of Basra. Its role in curbing fighting between Iraqi Shia factions sheds a revealing light on the extent of its influence in the country.
• Payvand - Saudi Arabia has charged Iran with seeking a coup in Beirut, and Tehran is sharply rejecting the charges. The war of words, which directly follows the recent street fighting in Lebanon, highlights a growing sense in Riyadh and some other Mideast capitals that Iran is building its influence in the region at their expense.
• Daily Star - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has sacked his interior minister, the ninth cabinet change in his near three-year presidency, the government daily Iran reported on Thursday. Ahmadinejad has appointed political ally Mehdi Hashemi as caretaker of the ministry, replacing the Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, the report said.
• MEMRI - New on MEMRI TV: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The Hidden Imam Manages All the Affairs of the World.
• State Dept - We strongly condemn the May 14 arrest of six leaders of the Iranian Baha’i community…

Southeast Asia

• AP - A top Taliban leader vowed Thursday to target the U.S. after an alleged missile strike killed several people in northwest Pakistan, a threat that could undermine the new government’s efforts to negotiate peace deals with militants. Faqir Mohammed, a cleric and deputy leader of Pakistan’s Taliban movement, vowed revenge after attending a funeral for seven men who were said to have been killed.
• MSNBC - Senior U.S. and Pakistani officials tell NBC News that Wednesday’s Predator attack on a village in northwest Pakistan was not insignificant, that a “high-value target … an Arab” was among those killed. U.S. officials believe the unnamed target was planning attacks outside Pakistan, “so we nailed him,” in the words of one.
• Daveed Gartenstein-Ross - In February, many commentators lauded the elections in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), in which the region’s religious parties were swept out of power in favor of secular-minded parties, as a major victory in the war on terror. Others warned at the time that the significance of the election results was being overstated. Developments in the past couple of months have shown that much of the celebratory commentary was indeed overly optimistic.
• The News - Differences among the local Taliban on Thursday left one of their leader dead here at the Baghzai village in Lower Kurram. Political administration said a local Taliban leader Nawab Khan was killed by his friends on differences among them.
• LA Times - A suicide bomber wearing a burqa killed 15 people and wounding 22 others when he blew himself up Thursday in a crowded market in western Afghanistan.
• Washington Post - Foreign intelligence agents are leading secret, deadly raids on suspected insurgents in Afghanistan and shirking responsibility when innocent civilians are killed, a U.N. official alleged Thursday. While he didn’t specifically mention any intelligence agencies, he appeared to imply American involvement. U.S. military officials declined to comment on the allegations.
• Globe and Mail - Road construction at this time of year is a fact of life around the world, including war-torn Afghanistan. However, work being currently done by a small army of Afghans on a key dirt road that snakes through the Panjwai district could mean the difference between life and death for Canadian soldiers deployed to the volatile area.
• Asia Times - Afghanistan has once again emerged as the “strategic knot” for the region’s security. From the perspective of China, which in addition sees the country as a potential trade and energy corridor, any substantial advancement in Sino-Afghan ties is contingent on stability returning to the war-ravaged country and foreign forces withdrawing.
• Bronwen Maddox - This week Afghanistan’s President has asked the world for $50 billion. It has not yet given its answer, beyond a sharp, sceptical yelp that the country could actually absorb funds on that scale.
• UK MoD - Responsibility for the security of thousands of personnel working at Camp Bastion, the UK military’s largest base in Helmand province, will for the next six months fall to Territorial Army soldiers from Northern Ireland
• AP - A previously unknown Islamic militant group claimed Thursday to have used explosive-laden bicycles to plant bombs that tore through this historic Indian city, warning in an e-mail of more attacks on popular tourists sites.
• UPI - India’s intelligence and security agencies are indulging in a blame game over a recent foiled infiltration bid by militants on the Pakistani border, with one agency accusing the paramilitary forces guarding the border of lacking alertness.
• Dawn - Indian police shot dead at least six Maoist rebels as they held a banquet ahead of a day of disruptive protests in eastern India against the jailing of senior Maoist leader Pramod Mishra, police said Thursday.
• Reuters - Indian village proud after double “honor killing”.
• Colombo Page - Sri Lankan troops engaged in operations along the frontlines in the embattled north killed 22 LTTE rebels and destroyed several bunkers, the military said today. Three soldiers were also killed in the battles.

Far East & Pacific

• BBC - More than 50,000 people may have died in the earthquake that devastated parts of China on Monday, state media say.
• Washington Times - Red Cross estimated yesterday that the cyclone death toll in Burma could be as high as 128,000 — a much higher figure than the government tally. The U.N. warned a second wave of deaths will follow unless the military regime lets in more aid quickly.
• PACOM - The United States sent another five military aircraft loaded with relief supplies to Burma today, and looks forward to the opportunity to send more, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said.
• BBC - Police in Vietnam say they have found nearly nine tons of cannabis in a shipment of blue jeans from Pakistan. The authorities say it is their largest ever drugs seizure - at a value of $90m.
• FT - Indonesia is losing $16bn a year in natural resources to illegal logging, fishing, and mining but will be able to do little about it until military and civil servant salaries are increased, according to the country’s defence minister.
• IPS - Outside the office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Compostela Valley province sits a pile of confiscated, milled hardwood — a monument to the deforestation caused mainly by parties to a festering armed conflict. Abalus admits that one of the difficulties in containing illegal logging activity is that “sometimes it is hard on the part of the local government to control the national elements”–those elements being the AFP, PNP and coast guard, all of whom have been accused of either protecting or operating illegal logging syndicates.
• Radio Australia - US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice has met the Tongan Prime Minister Dr Fred Sevele in Washington, to discuss relations between the two countries.
• The Economist - Australia’s Labor government unveiled its first budget on May 13th. The new government’s main goals in crafting the budget were to reward the electorate with tax cuts and to keep spending under control in order to curb inflation. A raft of tax breaks and benefits, especially for working-class households, will shift some of the tax burden to high-income earners while reducing taxes overall by A$46.7bn (US$43.5bn) over the next four years.
• The Australian - Counter-terrorism police have swooped on two Sydney homes, seizing documents and computer equipment. The nature of the investigation was not revealed but a NSW police spokesman said inquiries were continuing.
• Times Online - Devastating floods, surging international food prices and a collapse of diplomacy with Seoul threaten to plunge North Korea into a famine that may claim 300,000 lives, aid groups say.
• CSIS - On May 20, Ma Ying-jeou will be inaugurated as the president of Taiwan. This will solidify Kuomintang (KMT) party control of the government, as it previously gained a majority in the legislative Yuan. Ma was elected on a platform that in part emphasized a less confrontational approach to China. While there is an air of optimism in Taipei today, Ma and the KMT will have to ensure that they manage the expectations of their domestic constituency, Chinese officials, and the United States as they move forward.

Europe

• AKI - The threat of Islamic terrorism in Germany remained high in 2007, according to an annual report by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
• Spiegel - The dispute between Germany’s conservative Christian Democrats and left-leaning Social Democrats over what foreign and security policy strategy to follow reveals a deep divide between the partners in Angela Merkel’s government. Neither side can impose its will on the other, resulting in gridlock and crippling Germany’s influence in the world.
• Telegraph - Al-Qa’eda sympathisers are threatening to attack the Euro 2008 football tournament next month, according to Swiss police.
• Islam in Europe - A highly controversial Muslim political organisation, under constant watch by the Home Office, met in Ilford to discuss ways of responding to attacks on its religion. About 250 people joined the Stand for Islam gathering at the Ilford Community Centre, Eton Road, Ilford to hear speakers from the local branch of the Hizb ut-Tahrir (Liberation Party).
• ubiwar - On Monday 13 May, Dilwar Hussain of the Islamic Foundation led an evening seminar at King’s College London, ‘British Muslims: Identity, Integration and Policy’. Hussain is the well-respected head of the Policy Research Unit and Senior Research Fellow at the foundation, and also serves on the board of the Commission for Racial Equality in the UK.
• contentions - Last year, barely a month after the UN Security Council had approved Res. 1747, instituting new sanctions against Iran, Austrian energy giant, OMV, signed the biggest energy deal to date ($22 billion) with the Islamic Republic. The deal was the focus of attention at yesterday’s OMV annual shareholders’ meeting.
• Turkish Daily News - Azerbaijan, Turkey, Greece and Italy will sign a gas agreement at the end of May, said Natig Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s minister of Industry and Energy, the Web site Trend Capital reported. Under the agreement, Azerbaijani gas will be transported to Europe via Turkish territory.
• Turkish Daily News - Perhaps the most striking image of Spain’s drought, so severe it has forced Barcelona to ship in water, has been that of the underwater church which emerged from a drying dam. This year, receding waters have exposed the 11th-century church completely, attracting crowds of tourists who stand gazing around it on the dusty bed of the reservoir.
• Press TV - Italy’s foreign minister, Franco Frattini, says the new government of Rome is prepared to adopt a ‘very firm’ approach toward Tehran.
• Al Arabiya - Danish judges will not be allowed to wear Muslim headscarves in court, and the Christian cross, the Jewish skullcap and the Hindu turban will also be banned, the country’s justice minister said Wednesday.
• RIA Novosti - Danish coast guards detained two Russian trawlers on suspicion of poaching Thursday, Russia’s State Fisheries Committee said. Previously, detentions of Russian fishing vessels were frequent in a prime fishing area around the Arctic Ocean archipelago of Spitzbergen, which belongs to Norway. Russia does not recognize Norway’s exclusive rights in the 200-mile economic zone near Spitzbergen.
• Nosint - Poland has opted to become a full member of the EU and NATO-linked military club, Eurocorps, in a move designed to spur on the creation of a significant European defence capability.

Africa

• BBC - The central bank has issued a 500m Zimbabwe dollar banknote, worth US$2, to try to ease cash shortages amid the world’s highest rate of inflation. Meanwhile, the opposition has rejected the move to delay the presidential run-off, possibly until July, saying it was a government ploy to stay in power. It called for an emergency regional summit, urging neighbouring countries to take “firm resolutions”.
• Garowe - Five Somalis who landed at an airport in the country’s northern sub-state of Puntland were arrested Wednesday minutes after they get off an airplane from neighboring Djibouti, a government official told Radio Garowe. A Puntland government source said the five detained civilians are accused of receiving military training in Eritrea and of having alleged links with the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), ), an Ethiopian rebel movement made up of ethnic Somali fighters.
• Chicago Tribune - The U.N. peacekeeping chief warned Wednesday of an alarming increase in violence in Darfur that has spread to the Sudanese capital and could escalate further. The attack by rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement, based hundreds of miles to the west in Darfur, also has implications for the efforts to revitalize political negotiations on Darfur, Chad-Sudan relations, and Sudanese national politics, he said.
• AFP - Four Indian oil technicians and their Sudanese driver have been abducted in an area adjoining Sudan’s disputed oil rich region of Abyei, the Indian ambassador to Sudan told AFP on Thursday.
• Sudan Tribune - A continued Conflict among Konso and Borena tribes in a remote area in Southern part of Ethiopia has left 36 people dead and over 5,000 residents displaced.
• AKI - The Algerian army has closed in on two suspected terrorists belonging to the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb. The two suspected al-Qaeda members were identified on one of the mountains of the al-Balida province. It is believed that one of the suspected terrorists is Abu Labiya, the head of a local al-Qaeda cell who is said to be responsible for recruiting young people into the armed group.
• IRIN - The Comoros government has welcomed France’s rejection of a request for political asylum by Anjouan’s toppled rebel leader, Mohammed Bacar, but its refusal to extradite the ousted Colonel has sparked outrage in the impoverished Indian Ocean archipelago.
• AP - A road-grader accidentally tore open a fuel pipeline Thursday and sent an inferno raging over houses and a school, setting off a stampede of terrified children and killing about 100 people and injuring 20, a Red Cross official said.
• The Citizen - In Tanzania, five people are feared to have been killed and more than 100 homes and 20 granaries torched as the inter-clan clashes that broke out on Tuesday night in Tarime District intensified.
• The Namibian - A Russian couple found murdered at their smallholding near Okahandja on Tuesday were hacked to death with pangas. Lobanova and Pastouchkov had lived in Namibia for some eight years, Dr Andrey Yakovlev, the Third Secretary at the Russian Embassy in Windhoek and the personal assistant to the Russian Ambassador in Namibia.
• Times of Zambia - Illegal miners in Chingola rioted after two of their friends were shot and wounded by Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) and Cobra Security officers. KCM and Cobra Security on Tuesday shot two illegal miners who were part of the large number of mostly youths that raided the KCM mining area and disused pits to steal copper concentrates and ore.
• IHT - Algeria’s interior minister said Thursday that 115 people were kidnapped in his country last year under terrorism-related circumstances, in a rare public tally of abductions.

The Global War

• NPR - In a speech before the Knesset in Jerusalem, President Bush criticizes one of Israel’s enemies, Iran, saying it is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. He also says negotiating with terrorists and radicals is the false comfort of appeasement, an apparent swipe at Barack Obama.
• Reuters - China, India and Russia called on Thursday for the creation of a security belt around Afghanistan to halt the spread of heroin.
• Telegraph - A senior American counter-terrorism official has declared that the demise of al-Qa’eda is in sight because its failure to adapt its violent ideology and tactics has provoked growing dissent across the Islamic world.
• AFP - Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden will release a new audio-video message to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, US groups monitoring Islamist websites said Thursday.
• Moscow Times - There is a broad consensus in Brussels on the need for an external energy policy to diversify suppliers and routes and loosen Russia’s grip on the European natural gas market.
• Washington Realist - One “lure” the United States has tried to deploy vis-a-vis India in the past is to support India playing a greater global role. China and Russia are just as prepared to endorse that proposition.

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

A brief world news roundup for 15 May 2008.

United States & the Americas

• McClatchy - Leading legal defense groups Tuesday accused the Pentagon of foot-dragging on security clearances that would let civilian lawyers help their military counterparts defend the all