Peace Like A River » Cables, dispatches and memoranda

Cables, dispatches and memoranda

May 13, 2008 (5:21 am) | Daily Roundup | By: Jeff Kouba

Cables, Dispatches and Memoranda
A brief world news roundup for 13 May 2008.

United States & the Americas

WSJ – The White House is in the final stages of the first executive rewrite of spy-agency powers in more than 25 years, aiming to solidify the authorities of the new director of national intelligence as the administration winds down. The revision has spawned bureaucratic showdowns with many of the 16 intelligence agencies.
Japan Times – A recent visit to Argentina brought home the fact that, just four months after her inauguration, President Cristina Kirchner’s government is unraveling. The resignation of Martin Lousteau as minister of economy — probably due to a mismanaged dispute with farmers over new export tariffs and a policy disagreement with former President Nestor Kirchner — is serious cause for concern.
Al Arabiya – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday almost told German Chancellor Angela Merkel to go to hell, but stopped short of insulting the woman leader on Mother’s Day. Instead he called her a political descendant of Adolf Hitler and German fascism.
BBC – President Hugo Chavez has signed a decree to nationalise Venezuela’s biggest steelmaker, Ternium-Sidor. Argentina’s Techint, which owns 60% of it, has been given until the end of June to hand it over.
Living in Peru – High-level government officials are signaling that Peru will select a proposal to place a natural gas pipeline through the Andes Mountains.
AP – A police officer and four other suspects with ties to a powerful drug cartel have been arrested in the assassination of Mexico’s acting federal police chief, authorities said Monday.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

Moscow Times – The separatist Georgian republic of Abkhazia said Monday that it had shot down two unmanned Georgian spy planes over its territory – the latest in a series of such claims denied by the Georgian government. Georgia acknowledges that one pilotless reconnaissance plane was shot down over Abkhazia last month. But it contends that the drone was taken out by a Russian warplane, not Abkhaz forces.
UPI – Russia’s new leadership is bullying Georgia because the Europeans and Americans are at odds; at risk is the only pipeline from the vast Caspian oil basin that is not under Russia’s control.
RussiaToday – Russian gas giant Gazprom has become the world’s third most valuable company after its former chairman, Dmitry Medvedev, was inaugurated as president last week. The company has overtaken General Electric and China Mobile, rising 3.4% in London on Friday. Its market capitalisation neared $US 360 billion.
Jamestown Foundation – In his inaugural remarks, the new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated that the country had sufficient resources to pursue its dynamic economic development. This optimistic statement came, however, against a background of continued debates about whether Russia could sustain its current production levels of crude oil, the country’s major cash source.
RIA Novosti – A police officer has been shot dead and another injured in a drive-by shooting on a police post in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Daghestan, a source in the republic’s foreign ministry said Monday.
CRN – Today, a little more that five months prior to the regular presidential election in Azerbaijan, the social and political situation in the country remains depressively stable. There are all the attributes of unconditional domination of the existing power and absence in the society of any worthy opposition, Azerbaijani political scientist Rasim Agaev asserts.
RFERL – Three years after Uzbek security troops opened fire on a public square packed with peaceful demonstrators, President Islam Karimov’s government maintains that the crackdown thwarted a plot to overthrow the government and establish Islamic rule. But as the anniversary approached, the West stood accused of forgiving the Uzbek government for a massacre of civilians at Andijon and warming to Tashkent for strictly geopolitical reasons.

Middle East

Independent – The anti-American Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is the great survivor of Iraqi politics. In a tactical retreat he yesterday authorised a ceasefire under which the Iraqi army, but not US troops, will enter the great Shia slum of Sadr City in Baghdad while Mr Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia will stop firing rockets and mortars into the fortified Green Zone.
AINA – Mosul looks like a city of the dead. American and Iraqi troops have launched an attack aimed at crushing the last bastion of al- Qa’ida in Iraq and in doing so have turned the country’s northern capital into a ghost town.
AFPS – Violence in Iraq’s Kirkuk province has dropped by 70 percent, and coalition and Iraqi forces have “virtually destroyed” al-Qaida in the region.
US News – The U.S. government has quietly withdrawn a $5 million reward it was offering for the killing or capture of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, named by Pentagon officials as the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Currently, the bounty for the Egyptian militant stands at $100,000, a more modest payout that is now covered by the separate—and decidedly lower profile—Department of Defense Rewards Program.
Al Arabiya – At least 36 people were killed in fierce clashes on Sunday between Hezbollah gunmen and supporters of pro-government Druze leader Walid Jumblatt in mountains east of Beirut, security sources said on Monday.
Daily Star – Lebanon’s army said on Monday it would use force if necessary to impose law and order in the country and prevent any armed presence of any of the warring factions. Lebanon’s ruling majority vowed it would not negotiate with Hizbullah under the gun, as Arab ministers prepared to send a team to try to end a feud which some fear could engulf other parts of the volatile region.
Debbie Schlussel – My exclusive Lebanese Intelligence sources tell me that a number of Hezbollah terrorist fighters have been caught, over the weekend, and they cannot speak Arabic, only Farsi. They are Iranian and have identified themselves or been identified by third parties as members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
TIME – Hizballah fighters swung into action, shocking the nation, and practically guaranteeing the collapse of this government. In doing so, Hizballah will have secured its existence as an armed state-within-a state, despite decades of American efforts to prevent Lebanon from being used as a staging ground for operations against Israel. But the U.S. appears unable to grasp that it no longer has any options or reliable partners left in Lebanon.
AKI – A Lebanese Sunni group called the ‘Islamic meeting point’ on Monday announced it had formed to protect itself from attacks by militant Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, local newspaper al-Safir reported. ‘The Islamic meeting point’ is led by former MP Khaled al-Dahir who claims Lebanon’s army is incapable of ensuring the country’s security and protecting the capital, Beirut, from Shia militias.
RUSI – Background articles on Lebanon.
Haaretz – Two Qassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants hit Ashkelon on Monday morning. One of the rockets struck an area that contains many schools and kindergartens at 7 A.M., only a few minutes before the area is usually filled with children.
NY Times – The separation between the sexes in Saudi Arabia is so extreme that it is difficult to overstate.
Reuters – Four Shi’ite rebels were sentenced to death on Monday after a Yemeni court convicted them of killing two soldiers, a court source said

Iran

Al Arabiya – Iran’s judiciary said on Monday it would file international lawsuits against the United States and Britain, accusing them of providing financial support to those behind a blast in a mosque that killed 14 people in April.
Payvand – The resurgence of violence in Lebanon has again raised the question of the motives and aims of Iran and Syria, which support Hizballah, one of the groups involved in the fighting. RFE/RL correspondent Andrew F. Tully put these issues before Anthony Cordesman.
NCRI – A top statistics official of the Iranian regime said that one out of four young Iranians aged between 15 and 24 were unemployed, the state-run Mehr news agency reported on Monday.
MEMRI – In a speech to clerics in Mashad last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the appearance of the Hidden Imam, the Shi’ite messiah, was imminent, and declared, “The time has come for us to carry out our global duty… With God’s help, Iran will become the center of [global] leadership… The Hidden Imam runs the affairs of Iran and of the rest of the countries of the world… and he is preventing the U.S. from taking over Iraq’s oil and looting it.”

Southeast Asia

Asharq Al Awsat – Afghans call them ‘night letters’ — notes scattered or pushed under doorways by Taliban militants in the dead of night, threatening villagers’ lives if they cooperate with foreign forces and the government. The threats have picked up in recent weeks in areas across southeastern Afghanistan, U.S. officers and Afghans say.
Ann Marlowe – A Counterinsurgency Grows in Khost; An unheralded U.S. success in Afghanistan.
RAND – As NATO’s role in Afghanistan was debated in Bucharest recently, the bad headlines continued rolling in. And yet, on the ground, there is equally compelling evidence that the efforts of the international community are making a difference, write Obaid Younossi and Peter Dahl Thruelsen.
BBC – Pro-Taleban fighters in Pakistan have brought back the bodies of at least nine comrades killed in Afghanistan, officials and witnesses say. Officials in South Waziristan tribal district quote militants as saying that a total of 12 tribal fighters were killed in an air attack.
The Australian – A six-month old baby and a teenage girl were killed during a firefight in Afghanistan between Australian troops and Taliban militants. The deaths were revealed yesterday as Lieutenant General Gillespie released a series of reports into the deaths of Worsley, Trooper David Pearce and Sergeant Matthew Locke, all of whom were killed in combat in Afghanistan last year.
Courier Journal – An Army private from Arizona became the fourth soldier from the 101st Airborne Division to be killed in Afghanistan in a week. Pfc. Ara T. Deysie, 18, of Parker, Ariz., was killed Friday in Paktia Province. The Department of Defense said Deysie’s patrol encountered rocket-propelled-grenade fire.
Asia Times – The peace deals between the Pakistani government and militants in the tribal areas have been exposed for what they were, a delaying tactic for the Taliban to send fresh fighters into Afghanistan. The new government in Islamabad, provided it staves off a political crisis, and its United States ally now have to make the hard decision whether to fight fire with fire or risk losing the battle against militancy.
ABC – Amid spiraling food prices, rising militant violence and a crime wave sweeping the country, Pakistanis watched with dismay as the ruling coalition collapsed today after less than seven weeks in power. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced his Pakistan Muslim League’s withdrawal from the federal Cabinet after party leaders failed to agree on a formula to restore Supreme Court justices.
Dawn – Tribal separatist rebels shot dead at least 10 railway workers in two weekend attacks in India’s northeast, police said Monday. Heavily armed rebels from the Dima Halam Daoga (DHD) group raided a railway construction site in Assam state Sunday. “Seven people were killed on the spot when the militants fired indiscriminately,” said S. Singh, a senior police official. In another attack, DHD rebels shot dead three railway construction workers on Saturday in the same district, south of Assam’s main city Guwahati. The rebels said the attacks were in retaliation for an Indian army operation in which 12 of their cadres were killed.
Dawn – Fifteen Tamil rebels and three government soldiers were killed in northern Sri Lanka in a series of battles. The latest fighting took place throughout Sunday in Vavuniya, Welioya and Jaffna regions, a defence ministry official said. Soldiers killed 10 Tamil Tiger rebels in Vavuniya in a battle that also killed one soldier, the official said. Other battles in Jaffna and Welioya killed five rebels and two soldiers, he said.
CSM – Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, said his party’s victory was a “mandate” for the government to continue its war against the Tigers and to defeat them in the north, reported Bloomberg. Since it successfully drove the rebels from the east last summer, the government has turned its guns on the Tigers’ northern lair, an area known as the “Wanni.” Observers, however, reported the widespread view that the election was neither free nor fair, reported AFP. The criticisms centred on the TMVP, which remained armed during the electioneering process.

Far East & Pacific

Taipei Times – A massive earthquake in central China killed at least 7,000 people in Sichuan Province, with the overall death toll expected to increase sharply.
China Digital Times – Wenchuan Earthquake in Pictures (Youtube videos.)
Anne Applebaum – A Drastic Remedy; The case for intervention in Burma.
PACOM – A U.S. military C-130 aircraft loaded with emergency relief supplies departed Utapao Thai Royal Navy Air Base, Thailand at 12:45 p.m. (local) for Rangoon International Airport, Burma in support of national disaster relief efforts following Tropical Cyclone Nagris that recently swept through Burma. The aircraft, loaded with 8,300 bottles of water, two pallets of mosquito nets, and a pallet of blankets is the first of three planned flights in support of the United States Agency for International Development’s Office of Foreign Disaster Relief, and approved by the Burmese government.
Radio Australia – New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark will begin a visit to Japan and South Korea Tuesday, hoping to build on momentum established by the free trade agreement signed last month with China.
The Economist – The Economist Intelligence Unit briefing: China and Japan.
Richard Halloran – Like U.S. forces in Okinawa, which operate as far away as the Indian Ocean, Iraq and East Africa, American troops in South Korea could be sent anywhere and might not be available for the defense of South Korea. That includes forces earmarked for Korea in reserve in the U.S.
Pacific Magazine – The U.S. military buildup on Guam, led by 8,000 U.S. Marines, will mean tax revenues on some $300,000 million in armed forces payroll for the Guam territorial government, the Pacific Daily News reports.
Manila Times editorial - The drumbeat for war grows louder in the Southern Philippines where the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is running out of patience over delays in the peace talks between them and the Philippine government.

Europe

BusinessWeek – The European Union is set to breathe a sign of relief as the pro-Western alliance led by President Boris Tadic won Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Serbia, but the country’s nationalists have warned that they too can hammer out a coalition government.
BalkanInsight – A person was killed in one of several incidents in Macedonia over the weekend, amid ongoing rivalries between the country’s two main ethnic Albanian parties. European Union and NATO officials have said that the snap polls set for June 1 must be fair, so Macedonia can continue to deepen its Euro-Atlantic integration.
IAN – Poland and the Czech Republic – both bypassed by Nord Stream, whose route follows the more expensive option of traveling under the Baltic Sea – warn that Russia is becoming increasingly aggressive and is retaking its cold war-era posture as Central Europe has strengthened its ties with the United States.
Czech Happenings – A total of 52 percent of Czechs oppose the joint European-U.S. project of missile defence. Yet 67 percent of Czechs would accept the planned U.S. radar base on Czech soil if it became integrated into the NATO defence system, according to the poll results, presented to reporters by STEM agency head Jan Hartl.
Daily Mail – Cherie Blair has revealed that her son Leo was conceived while she and her husband were staying with the Queen because she had left her contraception at home. She says she became pregnant with her fourth child in September 1999, during the annual Prime Ministerial visit to Balmoral.

Africa

IRIN – Chad’s government has denied allegations made by neighbouring Sudan that it backed rebels who raided the Sudanese capital Khartoum on 10 May.
BBC – Chad has closed its border with Sudan and suspended economic ties. The move comes a day after Sudan cut diplomatic relations with Chad following a rebel attack near the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
Sudan Tribune – Islamist opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi has been released today evening after twelve-hour arrest in Kober prison in Khartoum. He further said security officers who interrogated him late in the day asked him “why you didn’t condemn the rebel foiled attack on the capital?”
BBC – Mauritania’s Islamist opposition is in the government for the first time. The moderate Islamist National Rally for Reform and Development (RNRD) has joined the cabinet of new prime minister, Yahya Ould Ahmed Waghf.
African Path – In Burundi, thousands of civilians have been displaced in recent weeks by a new surge of fighting between government troops and the small central African nation’s last rebel group, the National Liberation Forces (FNL). Dozens have been killed in clashes that have centered mainly around the capital Bujumbura, shattering a 2006 ceasefire deal and further undermining efforts to complete the implementation of an ailing peace process.
AFP – Three armed Islamic extremists were killed in clashes with government forces in Algeria over the weekend, security sources said Monday.
Press TV – A landmine explosion has reportedly claimed the lives of some 30 Ethiopian soldiers, injuring 76 others in central Somalia’s Hiiran region.

The Global War

Haaretz – Several American victims of terrorist attacks in Israel are demanding more than $500 million in compensation from a Swiss bank. The plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit say that UBS AG provided cash to Iran that made it possible for the country to fund terrorism. The lawsuit says UBS knew the money would be used to carry out terrorist attacks.
Washington Post – General Dynamics, the U.S. Army’s largest supplier, has been chosen by the British military as the preferred bidder to provide armored utility vehicles.
Newsweek – “Eye of the Storm,” an exhibit of works by U.S. combat photographers in Iraq and Afghanistan, documents small but indelible moments.
Washington Times – Hezbollah’s dramatic gains in Lebanon last week are just part of a regional process that began last year in the Gaza Strip and will continue in Jordan and Egypt, a Hamas official in the West Bank told The Washington Times.

Sights & Sounds

COL David Paschal, Commander of the 1st Brigade, 10th Mountain Division speaks via satellite with reporters at the Pentagon, providing an update on ongoing security operations in Iraq