A brief world news roundup for 20 November 2008.

United States & the Americas

• Washington Times – The top U.S. intelligence panel this week is expected to issue a snapshot of the world in 2025, in a report that predicts fading American economic and military dominance and warns of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. The predictions come from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), part of Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell’s office.
• America.gov – A telephone call between President Bush and a world leader is a common enough event to not merit much attention, but when the president called Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi November 17 it represents a remarkable turnaround in U.S.-Libyan relations.
• HS Today – The chief military judge at Guantanamo Bay announced his immediate retirement yesterday, effectively scuttling the slim chances that the trial of conspirators in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks could get underway before the Bush administration ends.
• Javno – An accused Syrian arms dealer on trial for agreeing to sell weapons to Colombian rebels was driven by greed and was not working with Spanish intelligence as the defense claims, prosecutors said on Tuesday. Monzer al-Kassar is accused of conspiring to sell $1 million of weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. U.S. prosecutors have called him one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers and in closing arguments rejected the defense assertion that Kassar was a legitimate arms merchant who, when dealing with U.S. informants on the FARC deal in 2007, was instead spying on them for Spanish intelligence.
• Stratfor – On Nov. 3, a U.S. District Court in El Paso, Texas, began hearing a case concerning members of a criminal enterprise that calls itself Barrio Azteca (BA). The group members face charges including drug trafficking and distribution, extortion, money laundering and murder. The proceedings represent the first major trial involving BA, which operates in El Paso and West Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The testimony is revealing much about how this El Paso-based prison gang operates, and how it interfaces with Mexican drug cartel allies that supply its drugs.
• IPS – Another chapter in U.S.-Mexico border relations is about to close. In the waning days of the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is completing construction of a 22-kilometre triple fence along the San Diego-Tijuana border.
• Claudia Rosett – People around the world may be tightening their belts, but at the United Nations in Geneva it was party time on Tuesday, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on hand to celebrate the new ceiling decor for the chamber now named “the Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room” — meeting place for the UN’s so-called Human Rights Council. The chamber’s new ceiling, product of Spanish artist and moneypit maestro Miguel Barcelo, rang up a price tag of — take a guess: Yep, if you guessed $23 million, you got it right.
• Fars – Iranian Foreign Ministry released a book under the title of “Human Rights Violation by Canada”. According to a statement released by the Foreign Ministry’s Press Bureau here on Wednesday, the book examines different subjects through an analytic view. Iran also presented world diplomats at the United Nations headquarters in New York in September with a 70-page booklet on Canada’s human rights violations.
• APEC Peru 2008 – Vice-admiral Luis Giampietri Rojas, Chairman of the APEC 2008 High-Level Commission, was optimistic about the closing of negotiations for the signature of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the People’s Republic of China, in the frame of the visit of this Economic Leader, Hu Jintao, to Peru to participate in APEC 2008 Leaders’ Week.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• RIA Novosti – Russia’s foreign minister rejected on Wednesday media allegations that President Dmitry Medvedev’s upcoming November tour of Latin American countries is aimed against the United States.
• RIA Novosti – A new nuclear-powered attack submarine will be delivered to the Russian Navy in 2010, a Russian shipyard said on Wednesday. Severodvinsk is the first Project 855 Yasen (Graney) series of the Severodvinsk class nuclear submarines, combining the ability to launch a variety of long-range cruise missiles (up to 3,100 miles) with nuclear warheads, and effectively engage hostile submarines and surface warships.
• Kommersant – Russia’s military bases in South Ossetia and Abkhazia have been completely manned with military, RIA Novosti reported with reference to General Staff Chief Nikolay Makarov. Some 3,700 servicemen of Russia have been sent to South Ossetia, and Abkhazia will host equal number of Russia’s military.
• Reporters Without Borders – Reporters Without Borders is baffled and disappointed to learn that the presiding judge has reversed his decision to let the press and public attend the trial of Anna Politkovskaya’s accused murderers.
• Reuters – Caspian Sea energy nations showed this week they remain close to Moscow’s sphere of influence as some key producers declined to sign a declaration calling for a limit on Russian monopoly over export routes to the West.
• CRN – Today in the morning in Makhachkala, where an explosive has operated along the route of a VAZ-2110 service car and wounded Sultanvakil Sultanmagomedov, deputy mufti of the Spiritual Department of Moslems of Dagestan, his driver and bodyguard Gazimagomed Kurakhmaev. Both victims were immediately hospitalized. Mr Sultanmagomedov is known in the republic as one of the most irreconcilable opponents of the religious radicalism known as Wahhabism.

The sun sets behind a C-17 Globemaster III as U.S. Army soldiers wait in line to board the aircraft taking them back to the United States from Joint Base Balad, Iraq, Nov. 17 (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Erik Gudmundson)

Middle East

• RFERL – Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has denounced domestic critics of a new security pact that gives U.S. troops three years to leave the country, saying opponents of the deal want the Americans to stay just so they can agitate against them.
• Al Sumaria – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki announced that Iraq which has overcome the risk of sectarian war is now facing a major challenge; that is to recuperate its sovereignty, rebuking the former regime which has left a deprived people and an isolated nation.
• Al Arabiya – Iraqi security forces have arrested an alleged “senior” Iranian commando from the elite Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force at Baghdad International Airport, the U.S. military said Wednesday. The military said they suspected the man of “involvement in facilitating Iranian weapons shipments into Iraq” under the cover of working for an organization involved in the restoration of Iraqi religious sites. The man is alleged to have used the organization as a front in order to bring weapons into Iraq concealed in shipments of building materials, the military said in a statement released late Tuesday.
• Michael Totten – I’ve just arrived in Baghdad and am waiting in the Green Zone for a flight to my unit elsewhere in the city. Traveling to and around Iraq is a horrendous pain in the ass, but flying over Baghdad in a Blackhawk helicopter is always a treat. Below are some photos from my flight in today.
• Asharq Al Awsat – However, Lieutenant General Talal Anqawi, the Border Guards commander in Saudi Arabia, has denied to Asharq al-Awsat by telephone from Yemen that there are discussions to establish or form a “military force” from several countries to hunt down the pirates at sea.
• Hurriyet – One Turkish army officer was killed and five soldiers were injured in clashes with the PKK in a rural of the eastern province of Agri, the Governor Mehmet Cetin told the state-run Anatolian Agency.
• Xinhua – The Lebanese army has ordered a prompt handover of the new Fattah al-Islam leader Abdul Rahman Awad, and three of his aids who are reportedly hiding in Ain el-Helwee Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon, local Naharnet website reported Wednesday. Deputy Lebanese army intelligence chief Col. Abbas Ibrahim has informed leaders of various Palestinian factions the need to hand over Awad “as soon as possible.”
• Haaretz – Hamas’ military wing announced Tuesday it was “prepared for a confrontation with Israel” and for the end of the cease-fire with Israel. But political sources said the cease-fire was expected to go on.
• Jerusalem Post – Israel is increasingly concerned that Germany might sell Dolphin-class submarines to Egypt, top defense and political officials told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. Egypt is apparently interested in upgrading its aging submarine fleet, though officials regard it as strange that Cairo is looking to buy exactly the same submarine that Israel operates.
• News Yemen – Two Yemeni soldiers, a civilian and a bodyguard of a security official were killed on Wednesday in clashes between suspected militants and government forces in Abyan province, south of Yemen. Security sources said that government forces are still surrounding the militants suspected of belonging to al-Qaeda in al-Romaila district.

Iran

• Press TV – “Once a threat is perceived, naval forces of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) can instantaneously triple their presence (along the country’s southern shores),” Hojjatoleslam Hossein Taeb, the commander of the Basij Resistance Force, told IRNA on Wednesday.
• Times Online – A prominent Iranian blogger, nicknamed the Blogfather for spawning Iran’s spectacular blogging revolution, has been arrested in Tehran and accused of spying for Israel.
• Fars – Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki intends to visit Belarus this year. During the visit, the two sides will discuss the urgent issues of the Iranian-Belarusian cooperation, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Belarus Seyed Abdollah Hosseini told BelTA.
• IRNA – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in Zanjan on Wednesday that Iranian nation will cut off hands of the “ill- wishers” who intend to violate their rights.
• Payvand – Photos: Picking herbs in Khuzestan, Iran

South Asia

• Washington Post – A rise in Taliban attacks along the length of a vital NATO supply route that runs through this border town in the shadow of the Khyber Pass has U.S. officials seeking alternatives, including the prospect of beginning deliveries by a tortuous overland journey from Europe.
• AP – Pakistan’s army chief urged NATO commanders to focus on winning the population’s backing in areas bordering Afghanistan to prevent Taliban and al-Qaida militants from using them as safe havens, an alliance official said Wednesday. Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani met with a committee of NATO commanders in Brussels on Wednesday — the first time Pakistan’s military leader met with the group. He did not speak to journalists after the meeting. Di Paola said that Kayani had told the defense chiefs that “because of the nature of the border, because of the nature of geography, history and culture, there is no force that can physically block that border.”
• VOA – Officials say a pre-dawn missile strike by what is believed to have been a U.S. unmanned spy plane destroyed a militant hideout in the northwestern district of Bannu. Most of those killed in the attack are said to be foreign fighters, including a senior al-Qaida operative of Arab origin identified as Abdullah Azam al-Saudi.
• MEMRI – In Pakistan’s tribal district of South Waziristan, the Taliban have assured the tribal elders that they will not target Pakistani security men deployed in the region.
• Daily Times – At least 10 people were killed in clashes between the Taliban and pro-government tribal leaders in Bajaur Agency, officials said on Tuesday. The Taliban on Monday intercepted a convoy carrying 12 pro-government elders of the Mamoond tribe, local government official Israr Khan told AFP. The tribesmen opened fire and killed three Taliban, including their commander, he said.
• The News – Nine persons, including five militants, were killed and dozens of others sustained injuries in the ongoing military operation in restive Swat Valley on Wednesday. Sources said gunship helicopters shelled hideouts of the militants, killing five of them and injuring several others.
• Pakistan Daily Mail – Unknown armed assailants on Wednesday shot dead Former Chief Special Services Group (SSG) retired Major General Faisal Alvi along with his driver in PWD Colony near Bahria Town. According to Investigation Officer Muhammad Arshad, Former Head SSG retired Major General Faisal Alvi left his residence on Wednesday to go to his Office along with his driver, however when they reached near Bahria Town, unknown armed assailants stopped their vehicle.
• AKI - Indian troops have killed four alleged Islamic militants in restive Kashmir, near the border with Pakistan overnight on Monday. A gun battle broke out in the Uri district, close to the de facto border between Pakistan and India. The clashes took place following the first of seven-phased state assembly elections.
• Colombo Page – Sri Lankan Air Force fighter jets carried out a night time raid on LTTE stronghold at Pirappawedduwan in Mullaitivu district last night. Defence sources said when the air raid was conducted a large number of LTTE cadres were training inside the camp.

Far East & Pacific

• Asia Times – A border dispute between Myanmar and Bangladesh, heightened by the search for offshore energy resources, threatens to complicate China’s plans to pump fuel from the region to its landlocked Yunnan province.
• AFP – South Korea announced Monday it plans to send a warship to combat piracy in the lawless waters off Somalia, where five more Koreans were seized over the weekend. The defence ministry will ask parliament to approve the deployment before its current session ends on December 8, said ministry spokesman Won Tae-Jae. Once the mission is approved Seoul will send a 4,500-ton destroyer carrying missiles and other modern weaponry early next year, a senior official told Yonhap news agency last week.
• FT – Daewoo Logistics of South Korea has secured farmland in Madagascar to grow food crops for Seoul, in a deal that diplomats and consultants said was the largest of its kind. The company said it had leased 1.3m hectares of farmland – about half the size of Belgium – from Madagascar’s government for 99 years. It plans to ship the maize and palm oil harvests back to South Korea.
• news.com.au – In one of the biggest comebacks in defence project history, two of the Australian navy’s key frontline warships have been fully upgraded and one will be on duty in the Middle East by the middle of next year. The upgrade of four guided missile frigates might be four years late but, experts say, the navy now has the most lethal frigate fleet on earth.
• Bangkok Post – At least one Thai anti-government protester was killed and 24 were wounded in a pre-dawn bomb blast Thursday inside a demonstration site in Bangkok, emergency services said.
• Irrawaddy – Three political activists were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment on Wednesday by a court in Rangoon’s Sanchaung Township in a continuing crackdown by the regime on dissidents.
• PACOM – The heads of defense from 26 nations met in Bali, Indonesia, for the 11th annual Chiefs of Defense Conferences Nov. 11-14 to discuss key issues affecting the Asia-Pacific region.

Europe

• NY Times – Conservatives and liberals have denounced Islamic courts as poor substitutes for British jurisprudence.
• Today’s Zaman – Nabucco pipeline members are expected to meet before the end of the year to sign agreements to push forward the long-delayed project, Turkish state energy firm Bota said.
• SANA – Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Ottri discussed on Wednesday with Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivaylo Kalfin relations between Syria and Bulgaria, stressing the mutual commitment to developing them in various fields.
• IHT – Former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin will stand trial on criminal charges of complicity in an alleged smear campaign that targeted Nicolas Sarkozy before he was elected president, a judicial official confirmed Wednesday.
• Kommersant – At the Moscow talks, Cyprus’ President Dimitris Christofias will deliberate on potential development of military and technical cooperation of Moscow and Nicosia, Interfax reported. The source said Cyprus is eyeing Russia’s Tor-M2 short-range guided missile systems. (It is a missile-defense system.)
• Press TV – Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has discussed the missile defense system Ankara plans to install with his Turkish counterpart. Serdyukov submitted Russia’s proposal on the air defense systems to Turkish Defense Minister, Vecdi Gonul in Ankara on Tuesday.
• UK MoD – Thousands took to the streets of Colchester yesterday to welcome home from Afghanistan hundreds of soldiers from 16 Air Assault Brigade as they marched through the town.
• ISN – The Slovak ruling coalition’s strange brew of predominant alpha males with diverging agendas seemed destined for failure, but has proven surprisingly stable, Andrew Rhys Thompson writes for ISN Security Watch.

Africa

• India MoD – INS Tabar, which is currently in the Gulf of Aden for Anti-Piracy Surveillance and Patrol Operations, encountered a pirate vessel, 285 NM South West of Salalah (Oman) on the evening of 18 Nov 08, with two speed boats in tow. INS Tabar closed the vessel and asked her to stop for investigation. On being fired upon, INS Tabar retaliated in self defence and opened fire on the mother vessel. As a result of the firing by INS Tabar, fire broke out on the vessel and explosions were heard, possibly due to exploding ammunition that was stored on the vessel.
• Al Jazeera – Somali pirates have seized three ships off the coast of the Horn of Africa. A Greek tanker, a Thai fishing boat and a Hong Kong-registered vessel have been captured in the past 48 hours despite a large international naval presence in the waters off Somalia.
• Garowe – Somalia’s Islamist rebels attacked the presidential compound and a major base for Ethiopian troops in the capital Mogadishu, Radio Garowe reported Wednesday. At least four people were killed and 10 others wounded during the rebel attack on Villa Somalia, the heavily-guarded presidential palace in Mogadishu’s Wardhigley district.
• Xinhua – The Islamist rebels in control of the southern port city of Kismayu Wednesday pledged they will fight piracy off the coast of the southern Somali regions where a Chinese fishing vessel was hijacked this week. The Islamist Al-Shabaab group’s media chief, Sheik Hassan YakubAli, said that the group will secure the sea off the southern part of the country saying they will form a task force to protect shipsheading to the area.
• AFP – Congolese rebels withdrew Wednesday from two key battlefronts but threatened to return if government forces occupied the zones, as UN troops and a pro-army militia exchanged fire.
• IRC – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has just completed a distribution of basic necessities to nearly 20,000 people in villages between Bouzoum and Paoua and between Talley and Billacaré, in the Paoua sub-prefecture of north-western Central African Republic

The Sirius Star at anchor off the coast of Harardhere, Somalia, as seen by a U.S. Navy aircraft flying overhead. The ship was attacked Nov. 15 more than 450 miles off the East coast of Africa, and was forced to proceed to an anchorage in Somali territorial waters (U.S. Navy photo by Aviation Warfare Systems Operator 2nd Class William Stevens)

The Global War

• Daily Star -  British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Wednesday that Britain and Syria have established cooperation between their respective intelligence agencies. Speaking in Beirut after meeting with President Michel Sleiman and Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, Miliband said that the British government had been discussing intelligence cooperation with Damascus for the past 18 months.
• Atlantic Council – General David D. McKiernan, the Commanding  General of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Commander, spoke tonight at the Atlantic Council as part of the Commanders Series organized by the Council’s Program on International Security.  McKiernan said he was “cautiously optimistic” about growing tripartite coordination between coalition forces, Afghan national forces, and Pakistanti forces in counter-insurgency efforts. (video)
• Abe Greenwald – So much for soft power! In truth, we shouldn’t care what al Qaeda thinks about us or our leaders. We shouldn’t seek their approval and we shouldn’t question ourselves over their scorn. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s new insulting message to President-elect Obama goes to show that America is the enemy, regardless of whether its leader says bring em’ on or come together. From an intelligence standpoint, it’s interesting.
• IAEA – IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei circulated his latest reports on nuclear safeguards in Iran and Syria to the Agency´s Board of Governors, the 35-member policymaking body. The Iran report outlines developments since the Director General´s report of 16 September. Dr. ElBaradei last reported on safeguards in Syria in his statement to the Board in September 2008.
• Defense Tech – Another intriguing idea that emerged from this week’s Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments talk comes from Bob Martinage who discussed the Special Operations Community’s airlift shortfall.
• Faisal Devji, Chatham House – While scholars, journalists and policy-makers in Europe and America invariably describe Al Qaeda as a foreign, exotic threat that is difficult to understand, militants who identify with it routinely view their enemies in the most familiar of terms. Whether or not they really understand the west, these men’s professions of intimacy with it hint at a more complex relationship. How does the radical Muslim’s closeness to his enemy help us understand the character of globalised militancy today?
• Alvin Chew – The Dynamics of Global Oil Prices

Sights & Sounds

Hudson Institute – Iran, Hezballah, and Hamas: Tehran’s War against the West by Proxy? To address these and related questions, Hudson Institute’s Center for Middle East Policy, directed by Meyrav Wurmser, hosted a conference featuring a series of panel discussions

Panel 1 – Iranian Ideology and Strategic Ambitions

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Panel 2 – Hezballah and Iran: Destabilizing Lebanon and Israel

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Panel 3 – Iran, Hamas, and the Palestinians

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Panel 4 – The Iranian Threat in the Levant: An Israeli Perspective

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