A brief world news roundup for 5 March 2009.

United States & the Americas

• El Universal – Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on Tuesday ordered expropriation of a rice plant owned by US food giant Cargill because it was not producing rice that is subject to government price controls. Venezuelan authorities inspected Cristal plant in Portuguesa state, western Venezuela, and found that it was violating laws requiring production of price-controlled foods, Chávez said in comments broadcast by state television.
• NRO editorial – Charles Freeman is a career diplomat, a Saudi apologist, and a savage critic of Israel. He also argues that Beijing did not strike down the Tiananmen Square protesters with sufficient swiftness. Barack Obama proposes to make him head of the National Intelligence Council. It’s an abominable appointment.
• Japan Today – Japanese and U.S. envoys for Afghan policy will meet in Washington early next week for the first full-scale bilateral talks on ways to assist the war-ravaged country, a source close to Japan-U.S. relations said Tuesday. Motohide Yoshikawa, the Japanese ambassador to Spain who was named Sunday to double as the new special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, along with Japan International Cooperation Agency President Sadako Ogata, will meet U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke either next Monday or Tuesday, the source said.
• Mickey McCarter, HS Today - US Coast Guard (USCG) Commandant Adm. Thad Allen commented on some budget and acquisition concerns at his agency over the next year during his annual State of the Coast Guard address in Washington, DC, Tuesday, noting the economic stimulus package would help relieve some budgetary stresses.
• MercoPress – A Chilean and an Argentine company signed a partnership this week for the construction of a low altitude tunnel crossing the Andes to connect the neighboring countries, the crucial link for a bi-oceanic project dating back to 1994.
• Columbia Reports – The extradition of former paramilitary boss Ever ‘HH’ Veloza, expected within 24 hours, leaves crimes against thousands and the disappearance of dozens unanswered. ‘HH’ will be taken to the United States where he faces charges for drug trafficking and is the fifteenth leader of the demobilized AUC to be extradited and face U.S. justice within a year.
• SouthCom – As Chile works toward building a joint force, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday shared insights from U.S. history and emphasized the importance of the joint process. “The U.S. military is the best in the world” partly because leaders and servicemembers have embraced joint warfighting, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen told students at the Chilean War College here.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Russia Today – President Dmitry Medvedev has demonstrated that he is prepared to lead Russia on a different executive course as he draws a new breed of reservists into his elite circle. Is the St. Petersburg monopoly over?
• Kremlin – Dmitry Medvedev met with President of Abkhazia Sergei Bagapsh. The meeting discussed building the republic’s statehood and organising the work of diplomatic missions in Moscow and Sukhumi. Mr Medvedev congratulated Mr Bagapsh on his birthday and wished him good health and energy.
• Swiss Foreign Ministry – The interest sections of the Swiss representations in Moscow and Tbilisi will start work tomorrow Thursday 5 March 2009. As of that date, Switzerland will represent Georgia’s interests in Russia and those of Russia in Georgia.
• RIA Novosti – Kazakhstan has signed a contract with Russia on the purchase of S-300 air defense missile systems, the Kazakh defense minister said on Wednesday.
• RFERL – A video clip has been posted on the Internet in which a young Chechen man describes how he was tasked by Chechnya’s pro-Moscow president, Ramzan Kadyrov, to assassinate a leader of the Chechen exile community in Norway.
• Kyiv Post – Masked and armed with automatic weapons, 20 guards from Ukraine’s State Security Service on March 4 searched the headquarters of state natural gas company Naftogaz. The raid was part of a vicious political struggle over ownership of some 11 billion cubic meters of gas worth more than $2 billion.
• Itar-Tass – Kiev’s Shevchenkovsky Court on Wednesday suspended the Ukrainian Security Service’s investigation into the alleged seizure of natural gas by Naftogaz Ukrainy. The court also suspended criminal proceedings against energy customs officer Taras Shepitko, MP Andrei Portnov of the Yulia Timoshenko Bloc told Itar-Tass.

Middle East

• Staff Maj. Gen. Qaa’id K. M. Al-Huzaa’i, Iraqi Air Force, Air and Space Power Journal – The Use of Airpower in Combating Terrorism in Iraq: Analysis and Recommendations for the Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States
• Al Sumaria – Kirkuk police Major Adel Zain Al Abedeen reported that unknown gunmen shot dead tribal sheikh Werya Fattah Khalil al-Kaki. Assailants stormed his house in Al Wasiti District. “He resisted and they shot and killed him instantly,” Abedeen said, adding that the attackers had fled the home
• NCRI – Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said in a statement released on Monday that Rafsanjani was “not welcome” in Iraq and hit out at the Iranian regime’s  interference.
• Jerusalem Post – Senior Islamic Jihad commander Khaled Shalan was killed on Wednesday night in an IAF missile strike on his car in Gaza. Another member of the terror group was critically hurt in the attack on the vehicle that was traveling from Jabalya to Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza. According to the IDF, Shalan was responsible for the recent rocket fire on Ashkelon.
• Asia Times – Ending years of dismal relations under the George W Bush presidency, Washington has taken further concrete steps as part of its promise to improve ties with Damascus. This includes ending the four-year diplomatic embargo and a visit from two high-level officials. But such carrots won’t come without a price: Syria may have to break ties with old friend Iran.
• Kavkaz Center – According to Turkish sources, the Turkish authorities had arrested an agent of Russian FSB, a certain Roman K., who possible involved in the murder of Special representative of the Caucasus Emirate, Musa Atayev. The news reported by Haber Turk newspaper dated March 1, 2009 as follows: “Russian Spy arrested when he forget to pay hotel debt First week of September 2008. A Russian man entered Turkey through Ataturk Airport with his passport that was created by Roman K. then he settled a luxury hotel in Talimhane, Taksim.
• Vladimir Socor – During the recent Nabucco summit in Budapest on January 26 and 27 , EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs underscored the importance of signing the intergovernmental agreement on the Nabucco project by the time of the European Union’s summit, to be hosted by the EU’s Czech presidency in Prague on May 7. For now, however, Turkey’s AKP government is continuing to stall on this project for transporting Caspian gas to Europe, a top priority of the EU.

Iran

• IRIB – The President said years of displacement of over 5 millions of Palestinians, thousands of dead and injured on their part, several deadly wars, occupation, assassinations, and the Gaza tragedy were only part of the mission of the fake Zionist regime. “Today it has turned that the imposition of the Zionist occupying regime was not aimed at supporting the Jews rather it was a design of the powers which emerged from the two world wars,” the President said. He said the mission of the founders and supporters of the Zionist regime was to maintain threat and impede the progress of nations, sow discord and set up markets for the sales of western made arms after pillaging he resources of innocent nations.
• Fars – Iran will compile a list of Israeli officials and military commanders who have committed war crimes in the recent 22-day onslaught on Gaza to prepare a case for legal action against the Zionist regime, Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie said. “The intelligence ministry will adopt the (required) measures to identify the Zionist criminals and present their names to the judiciary,” Ejeie told reporters on Wednesday on the sidelines of an international conference on support for Palestine and Gaza dubbed as ‘Palestine the Model of Resistance, Gaza the Victim of Crime’.
• Mehr – Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani on Monday said although Iran and Denmark disagree on certain issues they have a similar approach against terrorism and drug trafficking. He made the remarks in a meeting with the visiting head of Danish Parliament Foreign Policy Committee. Larijani said Iran and Denmark should further cooperate in their campaigns against terrorism and drug trafficking, adding current regional developments necessitate new strategy in this regard.
• Press TV – The top Islamic Revolution Guards Corps commander says all Israeli nuclear bunkers are within the hitting range of Iranian missiles. Responding to speculations running hot and cold about an Israeli military strike on Iran, IRGC Commander Major General Mohammad-Ali Jafari said on Wednesday that such threats are only “talks without any military backing.”
• MEMRI – Iran yesterday began construction of a plant in the northern province of Mazandaran to produce Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Hamed Saeedi, managing director of Farnas Aerospace Company that is in charge of the project, said during a ceremony.
• Payvand – Controversy surrounds the removal of billboards of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from the streets of the Iranian capital of Tehran. The country’s oil ministry had during the past month installed billboards across Tehran to celebrate ten years of Iranian achievements in the oil sector. The billboards that had images of the Iranian president, however, were taken down after two days with the related officials blaming each other for the removal.
• Rooz – In an interview with Rooz, Reza Saberi, the father of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, ?who has been detained since the beginning of February, called on Iranian officials to release his ?daughter. He said that his daughter loves Iran and has been shocked by her arrest. Mr. Saberi ?added that the charge of “purchasing alcohol,” which led to Roxana’s arrest, is fabricated.
• ISNA – Photos: Tehran’s international conference on Palestine

U.S. Army Sgt. Brandon Barnett (right) from Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, United States Army Europe leads his team up a ridge line during a dismounted patrol near Forward Operation Base Lane, Zabul Province, Afghanistan, on Feb. 26, 2009. (photo by Staff Sgt. Adam Mancini)

South Asia

• Washington Post – Afghanistan’s election commission on Wednesday strongly rejected President Hamid Karzai’s choice of dates for upcoming presidential elections, injecting new uncertainty and tension into a crucial transition for this struggling, Western-backed democracy.
• AFPS – Three contractors suffered minor injuries in a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attack this afternoon near Bagram Airfield, Combined Joint Task Force 101 officials said today. The attack occurred outside the perimeter of the base when a vehicle exploded near an entry control point.
• Daily Times – Police widened the hunt for clues in Tuesday’s brazen attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, arresting 250 suspects in province-wide raids – four of which sources in the police said were prime suspects.
• Geo – As many as three CD shops were fractionally damaged by blasts in Takht-e-Bhai area in Peshawar, police sources said on Wednesday. Police sources told Geo News unknown militants planted explosive material outside CD shops which went off at night damaging three CD shops partially
• Geo – The banned militant outfit, Tehrik-e-Taliban, has agreed to abolish its check-posts from District Swat while Tehrik Shariat Nifaze-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) chief Maulana Sufi Muhammad will take control of Imam Dheri area tomorrow (Thursday). While security forces have vacated the Imam Dheri Center and girls? school. According to sources, Tehrik-e-Taliban has agreed to evacuate several check-posts set up in the district and assured that the trucks carrying foods for security forces would not be attacked
• Pak Tribune – Pakistan on Wednesday formally asked India to release its 12-lack acre feet water in Chenab river immediately. The water was blocked by India due to filling of Baglihar Hydro Electric Plant. Federal Power and Water Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in his report before the Parliament said Pakistan had to face shortage of water in rivers during last three years due to construction of dams by India.
• Hindustan Times – India test-fired the land-attack version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile at the Pokharan range in Rajasthan on Wednesday, six weeks after a failed test. However, it was not immediately clear if the latest test was successful. While the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) that has co-developed the missile said the test was successful, the Indian Army said it was still analysing the data from the test.
• Daily Star – As the Operation Rebel Hunt enters the fourth day, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) started interrogating five BDR mutiny suspects including suspected ringleader Deputy Assistant Director (DAD) Syed Towhidul Alam after a Dhaka court had placed them on a seven-day remand yesterday. BDR personnel who did not report back to their stations within the stipulated time announced by the government, will be considered fugitives and will not be allowed to enter the BDR headquarters until they are proven innocent.
• Sri Lanka MoD – Troops of 58 Division and Task Force 8 after liberating Puthukkudiyiruppu have commenced an eastward thrust towards the coast, defence sources reveal. The LTTE terrorists lost the last town under their clutches as Puthukkudiyiruppu fell to the Sri Lankan soldiers yesterday (Mar 3).

Far East & Pacific

• Chosun Ilbo – B-2 stealth bombers and F-22 stealth fighters of the U.S. could be deployed in a joint exercise with South Korean troops amid signs that North Korea is preparing to launch a long-range missile. The Key Resolve/Foal Eagle exercise will be staged from March 9 to 20.
• Khaleej Times – Two explosions shook parks near busy thoroughfares in military-ruled Myanmar’s largest city. The government usually blames bombings on its political opponents or ethnic rebel groups seeking autonomy. The groups deny carrying out such activities.
• Phnom Penh Post – Three ships from the Japan Self-Defence Force including the JDS Shimakaze (not pictured), all based in Okinawa, made a five-day port call in an effort to develop relations between the JSDF and the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces
• Straits Times – Suspected separatist militants have shot dead four people including a soldier in attacks across insurgency-hit southern Thailand, police said on Thursday.

Europe

• Novinite – Peter Zikulov, a Bulgarian national, and Floricel Achim, a Romanian military officer, have been arrested in Bucharest Monday on charges of espionage and treason respectively, the Bulgarian information agency BTA reported, cited by Darik radio. The Bulgarian National radio (BNR) reported that Zikulov, who had a consulting company in the Romanian capital, has been accused of leaking military secrets to a third country that was not an EU and NATO member. According to Romania’s Cotidianul daily, the two were supplying top secret documents to a Russian representative for which they were paid significant amounts of money. Some Romanian media list the name of the alleged Bulgarian spy as Marinov Zikolov.
• SE Times – Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic refused to plead to charges of war crimes and genocide during a hearing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Tuesday (March 3rd), just as he did about six months ago.
• Radio Srbije – Minister of Interior Ivica Dacic stated that at the Ministerial Border Security Conference to commence in Belgrade tomorrow, it will be proved that Serbia made significant progress in realizing the road map, which is a step further towards liberalization of the visa regime and acquiring of an EU member candidate status. Dacic announced that at the Conference, which is to last until March 7, a ministerial declaration will be signed on cooperation in the field of protection and security of borders, as well as a series of bilateral agreements between interior ministries of several countries.
• John O’Sullivan – Sarkozy threatened to tie government aid to French car manufacturers to a guarantee that they would not divert production to Eastern Europe, especially to the Czech Republic. There was a brief furore. Then, yesterday, the French industry minister quietly withdrew this condition in a letter to the European Commission in Brussels. Sarkozy’s problem is that the Czechs are currently the holders of Europe’s rotating presidency — and he wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral. French protectionism turned out to be just a tantrum. Also, though the headlines all shrieked that the EU’s weekend summit had refused to bail out Eastern Europe with a huge loan demanded by Hungary’s post-communist premier, the small print again tells a different story. What actually happened was that Angela Merkel, on behalf of Germany’s long-suffering taxpayers, blocked a loan to Eastern Europe as a whole.

Africa

• International Criminal Court – Today, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for the arrest of Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, President of Sudan, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is suspected of being criminally responsible, as an indirect (co-)perpetrator, for intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians, and pillaging their property. This is the first warrant of arrest ever issued for a sitting Head of State by the ICC.
• Sudan Tribune – Sudan has expelled then 10 humanitarian groups Darfur today after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for the President Omer Hassan Al-Bashir. The ten foreign NGOs concerned by the expulsion are: Oxfam, CARE, MSF-Holland, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, the Norweigan Refugee Council, the International Rescue Committee, Action Contre la Faim, Solidarites, and CHF International. The Sudanese government Wednesday ordered the10 humanitarian group to leave Sudan saying they were involved in collaboration with the ICC investigation in Darfur crimes.
• Shabelle – Somalia’s new interior minister Sheik Abduqadir Ali Omar has been handed officially to the documents of the interior ministry Wednesday by former TFG home minister Muse Nur Amin at a ceremony in the capital, Mogadishu. The new minister Sheik Abdulqadir Ali Omar who has been the leader of the Islamic Courts Union for the past two years said he would start the job of the ministry immediately.

U.S. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, walks past a formation of Chilean troops in Santiago, Chile, March 3, 2009. The chairman visited the country to meet with senior Chilean officials and speak at the Chilean Army War College. (photo by U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Adam M. Stump)

The Global War

• The Quatto Zone – If you’re new to the strategic communication or public diplomacy debate, no worries. Christopher Paul’s recent RAND study, Whither Strategic Communication? A Survey of Current Proposals and Recommendations, makes it painfully clear that you have not missed much. Reviewing 36 separate studies and reports completed over the past six years, which really just scratches the surface of the academic and governmental windbagging on this issue, Paul identifies the common recommendations that have received next to no action or attention from anyone who matters.
• NATO – Allied Foreign Ministers will gather for informal talks at NATO’s Headquarters in Brussels on 5 March to discuss a broad range of issues in the run-up to the Strasbourg/Kehl Summit early April. Topics on the agenda include the situation in Afghanistan, NATO-Russia relations and the Declaration on Alliance Security.

Sights & Sounds

Read more »

A brief world news roundup for 12 December 2008.

United States & the Americas

• Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson, While mounting an individual terrorist attack may cost relatively little, money remains of critical importance to terrorist organizations. The United States has dramatically increased its focus on combating terrorist financing, designating and freezing the assets of numerous terrorist financiers and support networks, prosecuting individuals and entities for providing material support, as well as increasing its focus on “following the money” as a means of collecting financial intelligence.
• Rachel Ehrenfeld and Samuel Abady – Not a word from Washington. Instead, the Treasury Department, hungry for petrodollars, is holding seminars to promote Islamic banking and U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill. This practice must stop. Islamic banking corrupts our financial system, enables the illegal Arab economic boycott of Israel and entangles government with Islam in violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
• Washington Post – A bipartisan panel of senators has concluded that former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials bear direct responsibility for the harsh treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and that their decisions led to more serious abuses in Iraq and elsewhere.
• Toronto Star – Canada will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in 2011 even though U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates has hinted he would like to see the deadline extended, the federal government says.
• RIA Novosti – Gazprom Neft, the oil producing arm of energy giant Gazprom, is interested in joining a consortium of Russian companies for oil projects in Venezuela, the company’s CEO said on Thursday. The oil and gas consortium of Russian companies to work in Venezuela includes Gazprom, Rosneft, TNK-BP, Surgutneftegaz and LUKoil.
• America.gov – Lack of cooperation on counternarcotics efforts prompted the United States to suspend the duty-free status of most Bolivian goods, a State Department official says. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemispheric Affairs Christopher McMullen talks with America.gov about U.S.-Bolivian relations
• Miami Herald -  Venezuelan prosecutors formally charged a leading opposition figure with corruption on Thursday, as President Hugo Chavez pushed forward with plans for a referendum to end term limits. Manuel Rosales was charged with presumed illicit enrichment during his two terms as governor of oil-rich Zulia state.
• LAHT – Ten people were murdered in Rosario, a town in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, in an incident apparently linked to organized crime, officials told Efe. Sinaloa is the birthplace of some of the most notorious drug traffickers in Mexico and the base of Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman’s cartel, which has been fighting a bloody war across Mexico against the rival Gulf cartel.
• IPS – Lawyers representing the families of the victims of two high-profile massacres committed in the early 1990s in Peru, and who are taking part in the trial against former president Alberto Fujimori, have questioned the independence of the future heads of the Supreme Court and Lima High Court.
• Uruguay Defense Ministry – An official of the National Army died in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as a result of a generalized infection.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• ITAR-TASS – Russia is ready to coordinate its oil price policy with OPEC, President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday as he addressed a conference on social and economic development of the Urals Federal District.
• Dmitry Medvedev – I think that the Russian side’s position today is to work in every possible way in Latin America, to cooperate with nations with whom we have friendly, partnership relations. We are not working against anyone, but we would like to promote cooperation on all fronts: economic and military cooperation, as well as cooperation in the field of the environment, agriculture and foreign policy coordination.
• Russa FM Lavrov – We regard the EU as a natural strategic partner of Russia, with whom we are bound by mutual economic complementarity, by our common civilizational attitudes and values and by our common history and our common future. We stand ready to further develop ties comprehensively toward the formation of the Russia-EU strategic partnership. This political formula, in our understanding, imposes many obligations on both sides, particularly to constantly prove in practice its conformity to the real state of affairs. By virtue of this principle, our cooperation should not become hostage to any particular issues or ambitions of politicians building their careers on the creation of problems in relations with Russia or dreaming of revenge.
• Stephen Blank – Russia Challenges the Obama Administration; Moscow cannot conceive of its security in terms other than those of an adversarial relationship with the United States and NATO. That relationship is based on both global and regional deterrence and what Moscow calls strategic stability.
• RIA Novosti – Russia’s Admiral Chabanenko missile destroyer and two support ships will pay a visit to Nicaragua from Friday through Monday, a Navy spokesman said on Thursday.
• RFERL – A court in Nazran has refused to classify the recent shooting death of an Ingush opposition leader as murder. Magomed Yevloyev, an Ingush politician and owner of the opposition website ingushetia.ru, was shot dead in a police vehicle on August 31 after being detained at the airport. Officials say the shooting was accidental.
• Moscow Times – Turkmens go to the polls Sunday in a parliamentary election the West sees as a test of the Central Asian nation’s commitment to bring about change after decades of isolation. Critics say the poll is a sham and designed to put a gloss of democracy on a government that tolerates no dissent.

Ukrainian soldiers roll their national flag prior to casing it during an end of mission ceremony at Camp Echo Dec. 9. (photo by Sgt. Rodney Foliente)

Middle East

• MNF Iraq – An End of Mission ceremony was held here for the Ukrainian Army, Dec. 9. More than 5,000 Ukrainian servicemembers served in Iraq during Ukraine’s five years of service in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
• MNF Iraq – Six suspected terrorists were detained by Coalition forces Thursday and Friday, further weakening al-Qaeda in Iraq networks in and around Baghdad and Mosul.
• Voices of Iraq – Casualties from the explosion that ripped through northern Kirkuk city earlier today have increased further, reaching 47 dead and 100 wounded persons, according to a local police source. “A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a restaurant in northern Kirkuk, killing 47 persons and wounding 100 others,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq.
• Neil Richard Leslie – The withdrawal will mark the end of a six-year campaign, and the conclusion of an unpopular war both at home and abroad. Yet British troops can leave with their heads held high, for despite political misgivings about the legality of the war, they have performed with admirable professionalism and certainly won’t leave in ’shame’ as one Guardian columnist suggests.
• Hurriyet – A total of 1,049 members of the terrorist PKK organization, including 670 killed, 214 captured and 165 surrenders, have been neutralized within the context of the struggle against terrorism since the beginning of the 2007, until Dec. 10, according to the figures released on the Turkish General Staff’s website.
• Sabah – Islam Dzhanibekov, a former Chechen commander, was assassinated in front of his house in the Umraniye district of Istanbul. In September, another Chechen commander was also killed in Istanbul. According to police investigations the weapons used were especially made for the KGB. Known as ’small special guns’ and used in assassinations, both the SP3 and SM4 models only let off minimal noise when shot. Police are stating that the previous Chechen commander that was murdered, Gazhi Edilsultanov was also killed by a 7.62 gun and the same weapon might have been used in both murders.
• Xinhua -  A senior U.S. official said that al-Qaida might have moved recently some of its activities from Iraq to Lebanon and Afghanistan though the number of al-Qaida members in Lebanon is “limited,” local As-Safier daily reported here Thursday. U.S. Department of State’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism Dell Dailey made the remarks in a recent interview with As-Safier, according to the daily.
• NOW Lebanon – UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Michael Williams said that he would visit Syria in January 2009 to continue talks on the implementation of UNSCR 1701. Williams said there was no official indication that proved that Syria was implicated in the flow of weapons into Lebanon. Williams said that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem assured him that Shebaa Farms was Lebanese, and that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had sent a letter to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad asking him for the documents to prove it. However, he said, he was disappointed that Syria had yet to respond.
• Matthew Brodsky – The outreach being attempted by Carter falls conspicuously short of even this minimalist goal, since Hamas not only fails to meet the standard applied to the PLO in the 1980s,  but is committed to Israel’s destruction and responsible in part for torpedoing the peace efforts of the 1990s. In doing so, the former president is sending a clear signal to the region’s rogues: you do not need to change your behavior in order to have a seat at the diplomatic table with the United States. It’s a sad legacy for the man who made history by brokering peace between Israel and Egypt nearly thirty years ago.
• Daily Star – US policy toward Lebanon has failed in its fundamental objectives of bolstering March 14 Forces politicians and weakening Hizbullah, and should be changed as soon as possible, according to a report to be published by an influential think-tank. The report, commissioned by the US-based Century Foundation, says that it is time for America to replace its “anemic and oftentimes counter-productive policies” of the past three years with a more pragmatic approach.

Iran

• Press TV – Iran’s permanent representative at the United Nations condemns the double standard approach to terrorism pursued by Western countries. Mohammad Khazaei addressed a United Nations session on Wednesday, suggesting that the Western countries have used the ‘war on terror’ as a guise to achieve their own political aims while pursuing a double standard policy on the issue.
• IHT – The Iranian foreign ministry summoned the French ambassador to Tehran over remarks this week by French President Nicolas Sarkozy about his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian media and France’s foreign ministry said Thursday.
• Haaretz – U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s administration will offer Israel a “nuclear umbrella” against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran.
• Rooz – Following the announcement by Passdaran Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) supreme commander that Ali Ashtari had been executed and three other individuals arrested on charges of spying for Israel, several unofficial sources in Iran reported that a number of other nuclear scientists and nuclear research staff have now been detained.
• Fars – Iran’s Red Crescent announced on Wednesday that it is sending a relief ship to the Gaza Strip, in the face of an Israeli blockade of the territory.
• IRNA – Iran’s ambassador to Russia underlined the efforts to end Gaza siege and help Palestinians. Sajjadi referred to regional developments and said, “We believe that tyranny against a nation will not last and Palestinians will restore their rights.” Appreciating Russia’s stance in supporting Palestinians, he called on the Russian side to help end Gaza blockade through international circles.
• NCRI – More than 3,000 workers walked out in protest to their unpaid salaries in the past seven months in the northwestern city of Meshkinshahr.

South Asia

• Australia DoD – Of the 524 days that we have been deployed the SAS element have spent 216 days outside the wire and the commando element 256 days outside the wire. In almost every patrol outside the wire both elements, whether commando or SAS, have been involved in some form of contact or firefight… One measure of effectiveness of these missions over the last 18 months has been the death of four key Taliban insurgent leaders and the capture of another seven.. The SOTG regularly operate deep within known Taliban safe havens in order to disrupt the Taliban attempts to coordinate attacks from the perceived security of these locations. During one such operation, the commandos operated for over forty days in a known Taliban safe haven, successfully killing or capturing five Taliban leaders and killing or capturing dozens of Taliban fighters.
• CentCom – Afghan National Police and Coalition forces detained five suspected militants during a combined operation to disrupt the Haqqani terrorist network in Khost province, Wednesday. The combined operation in Khost District, approximately 150 km southeast of Kabul, targeted a Haqqani commander, known to facilitate roadside bomb attacks which indiscriminately kill and injure innocent civilians and Coalition forces.
• Secretary Gates, in Kandahar – Q: On the whole, do you believe the insurgency here is strengthening, weakening or staying about the same? SEC. GATES: Well, I would, I would take my cue from the Dutch commander here in RC South. His view is that the situation is not getting worse in RC South. It’s just different. And they are facing different tactics and they are responding to these tactics. I think that if I could put words in his mouth, I would say he believes that the Afghan security forces and their international partners are holding their own in RC South. But I think everybody would agree that holding your own isn’t good enough.
• Greg Bruno – Saudi Arabia and the Future of Afghanistan
•  AP – A suspected U.S. strike killed six people Thursday on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, a lawless region believed to be a stronghold of al-Qaida, two intelligence officials said. Citing agents and informants in the field, the officials said six people were killed in the strike late Thursday in a village near Azam Warsak in South Waziristan.
• Geo – The US Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte arrived here on Thursday, Geo News reported. Negroponte would hold discussions with President Asif Ali Zardari and other top Pakistani officials. The relations between Pakistan and India and Pakistan’s action against banned outfits would be discussed during his stay in Pakistan.
• The News – Five militants were killed and seven others sustained injuries in an exchange of fire with the security forces in Targhakhi area of Pandyalai Tehsil in the restive Mohmand Agency on Thursday.
• Times Online – The pass lies just inside Khyber Agency, one of Pakistan’s seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas which have been quasi-autonomous since Pakistan’s independence in 1947. The area has traditionally been controlled by the Afridis, a tribe of about 600,000 people. The Government rewards them for allowing traffic to pass freely by hiring their tribesmen as khasadars, or tribal police. This year, however, the system has been disrupted by disputes between sub-tribes and other groups vying for control of the three main sections of the road – Bara, Landikotal and Jamrud.
• CSM – Pakistan’s top general reins in own Army; Army Chief Ashfaq Kayani has been curtailing the political influence of a military accustomed to running the country.
• Times of India – Hafiz Saeed, the top LeT terrorist, who now heads Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the group’s political front, personally brainwashed the Mumbai attackers with Jihadi literature every weekend during their combat training, the lone captured terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab has told his interrogators.
• Jakarta Post – India’s top law enforcement official has announced a massive overhaul of the country’s security and intelligence agencies in the wake of last month’s Mumbai attacks. Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram made the announcement Thursday in a speech to India’s Parliament.
• Yoram Schweitzer, INSS – The murder spree in the streets of Mumbai prompted the question whether we are witnessing a new kind of terror that exceeds the level of murderousness of previous terrorist actions, or was this a matter of terror strategists adhering to basic operational principles in order to achieve a known spectrum of objectives.
• Newspost – Pakistan’s Interior Ministry on Thursday said that it has yet to receive any evidence from India implicating its nationals in the Mumbai attacks. With New Delhi once again pointing a finger at Pakistan, the ministry said Pakistan would continue to arrest suspected militants in an operation launched in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, but denied acting under pressure from New Delhi.
• Pak Tribune – Interior Ministry has ordered to seal all offices of Jamaat- ud-Dawa (JD) in all provinces including Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) while law enforcement agencies has been issued ordered in this respect. The decision in to this effect was taken during the meeting presided over by President Asif Ali Zardari in which he was briefed by officials of foreign ministry about the sanction imposed by United Nations Security Council on JD.
• ICG – Bangladesh’s 29 December election will not return the country to civilian rule unless those with a stake in the vote – including the international community – ensure all registered parties contest credible, peaceful polls. The parties must not take the international community’s support for elections as an endorsement of their behaviour but rather see it as belated recognition of the dangers of military rule.
• India Defence – A joint air exercise between the air forces of India and Singapore is in progress at the Kalaikunda air base in West Bengal and will conclude on December 15, IAF sources said today. The bilateral air exercise codenamed SINDEX began on November 24.
• TamilNet – The Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) officials told TamilNet correspondent in Vanni Thursday that the two-pronged SLA offensive on Ki’inochchi was pushed back Wednesday after heavy fighting in Puthumu’rippu in the west of Ki’linochchi and A’riviyal Nakar in the south. The final death toll of the SLA in both the fronts, according to the LTTE claim, was 120 killed in action and more than 280 wounded. Photographs given by the LTTE officials also indicate that there were some young recruits of the SLA among the dead.
• Sri Lanka Defence Ministry – Troops of 57 Division on multi-pronged offensive towards LTTE’s main administrative base, Kilinochchi built-up, have reached to a significant milestone gaining control over the strategically vital Terumurikandy junction last evening, 10 December.

Far East & Pacific

• LA Times – Four days of talks ended Thursday without bridging a dispute with Pyongyang over how to have North Korea verify its past atomic activities, a U.S. envoy said. Christopher Hill said just before flying out of Beijing that North Korea would not agree to proposals made by the other countries involved in the talks.
• Reuters – Thailand’s parliament is set to vote for a new prime minister on Monday, with the opposition Democrat Party favorite to emerge at the head of a weak coalition government as the economy flirts with recession.
• news.com.au – The Land and Environment Court (LEC) has given conditional approval for an Islamic school to be built in Sydney’s southwest, despite the controversial plan having been rejected twice by Bankstown Council.
• US Army – At the request of the commander, U.S. Forces Korea, the Department of Defense has approved command sponsorship of families at two new locations in Korea and an increase in tour lengths for accompanied service members permanently assigned there. “Accompanied tours at five locations (Pyeongtaek, Osan, Daegu, Chinhae, and Seoul) will increase from 24 months to 36 months while two additional locations (Dongducheon and Uijongbu) will allow 24-month accompanied tours,” Sharp said. “Unaccompanied tours will remain at 12 months for all seven locations and 24 months for key personnel.”
• Independent – For more than 150 years they have been fighting what seems like an irreversible decline. The Onge tribe of the Andaman Islands, which numbered 670 at the end of the 19th century, has gradually dwindled to about 100 members. Or at least that was the estimate before a group of the Sboriginal men apparently found what they thought was a bottle of alcohol washed ashore. It was a fatal mistake; at least eight of the men have died after drinking what transpired to be poison.

Europe

• European Voice – Belgian police today arrested 14 members of a suspected terrorist cell in Brussels, thwarting what it described as an “imminent” attack. The target remains unclear. “It could have been an operation in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but it can’t be ruled out that Belgium or Europe could have been the target”, a federal prosecutor, Johan Demulle, has said.
• Reuters – Protesters hurled fire bombs at riot police, who answered with teargas, as 4,000 Greek students marched on Thursday in a sixth straight day of anti-government violence. Riots across Greece, triggered by the police shooting of a teenager but fueled by deep popular anger over corruption and economic hardship, have shaken the conservative government.
• ISN – The protest wave in Greece following the police shooting of a student should be seen in the light of the country’s post-1973 history, writes Kostas Gemenis for openDemocracy
• Transmission – Serbs used to be proud of Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor now being charged with trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat. He was the epitome of the immigrant success story: the son of a Serbian steelworker, who climbed the political ladder after shining shoes and delivering pizzas. And Illinois has a special place in the heart of the Serbs, as the state with the biggest Serbian diaspora. The disappointment in Serbia is rather palpable now.
• Nosint – The consortium of British companies building the two new Royal Navy aircraft carriers has been instructed to work slower as the government reassesses its defence budget. The UK Ministry of Defence announced that the Government was delaying the delivery date of the two carriers being built in Britain by up to two years in a bid to help it meet rising bills.
• euobserver – Almost two years after adopting ambitious green goals, a year after signing the new Lisbon Treaty and some sixteen months after the first signs of the financial crisis, EU leaders are meeting in Brussels on Thursday (11 December) to write a new chapter in the three long-running dossiers. The top-level gathering will kick off at 3 p.m., which is earlier than usual, with some diplomats predicting what will certainly be quarrelsome talks could drag on until late Friday or even early Saturday.
• Guardian – A  row between Britain and Germany over the global recession intensified last night when Angela Merkel’s CDU party blamed Gordon Brown for mishandling the British economy. As Brown and Merkel discussed a Europe-wide €200bn (£176bn) fiscal stimulus plan at a summit in Brussels, the CDU’s budget spokesman intervened in the most sensitive area of British politics to accuse the prime minister of presiding over a “complete failure” of policy.
• BBC – The British pound has continued its sharp decline against the euro, reaching a new daily record low of 1.1236 euros on Thursday. It is at the lowest level since the euro was launched in 1999.
• NY Times – As part of the wholesale effort to modernize its military, the Polish government has officially brought a close to conscription, making last week’s class of drafted recruits the final one after 90 years of compulsory military service on this soil, which felt the tremors of some of the worst the last century’s wars could offer. The decision has come at a difficult time. Russia’s incursion into Georgian territory in August awakened real fears, catching policy makers and citizens off guard. Poland’s attempt to transform its military into a smaller, modern integrated force this fall is occurring in a season of turmoil, as its soldiers have left Iraq and are expanding their presence in Afghanistan.
• Javno – Croatia will be unable to achieve its goal of completing European Union accession talks next year unless tensions over an old border row with EU member Slovenia ease in the next week, a political analyst said on Thursday.
• Poland Foreign Ministry – On 10th December, the inaugural Meeting of the Executives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Poland and Ukraine took place. Heading the delegations were the Ministers of Foreign Affairs: Minister Radoslaw Sikorski for the Polish delegation, and Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko for the Ukrainian delegation. The meeting was an expression of Polish-Ukrainian partnership relations and the aspiration of the state authorities in Kiev to shape and consolidate the pro-European direction of foreign policy based on a strategic relationship with Poland.
• New Europe – A memorandum of understanding signed in Brussels on December 2 between the European Commission and Egypt will help enhance energy cooperation with a country that could be an important energy supplier for Europe, including the Nabucco gas pipeline, the spokesman for EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs told New Europe on Dec 3.

Africa

• Shabelle – At least six people have been killed and more than seventeen others injured after heavy fighting between Somali government soldiers and Islamic Courts Union fighters erupted around the Somali presidential palace early on Thursday, officials and witnesses said.
• Garowe – A group of Islamic clerics in Somalia who have been undertaking efforts to mediate among Islamic Courts Union (ICU) factions in recent months have declared that it is “illegal” for ICU factions to capture new territory. Sheikh Bashir Ahmed Salad, chairman of the Islamic committee, told a Wednesday press conference in the capital Mogadishu that all factions should stay away from any act that could lead to “hostilities among brothers.”
• Press TV – Somali pirates have hijacked two Yemeni fishing ships in the Gulf of Aden, taking hostage some 17 fishermen aboard, Yemeni officials say.
• VOA – Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has declared “mission accomplished” in Somalia, and told parliament Ethiopian troops will be home from their controversial two-year military mission within weeks. The Ethiopian leader admitted it has been impossible to crush the Islamist extremist al-Shabab forces and establish a stable government in the two years since he dispatched troops to neighboring Somalia. But he said that was not Ethiopia’s objective.
• Magharebia – Algerian security forces dismantled a terrorist network in the Kabylie region on Tuesday, Tout sur l’Algerie reported on Thursday. Three alleged terrorists arrested in Fréha, near Tizi-Ouzou, are accused of providing logistical support to al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb. Further arrests are expected to follow, as the network reportedly consists of some ten members.
• Claude Salhani, Middle East Times – A Marshall Plan for Africa
• UN – Unidentified gunmen have shot dead the traditional leader of a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region, the latest in a series of attacks on the 2.7 million people uprooted by over five years of fighting between the Government and rebels, the United Nations reported.
• Michael Keating – It would be simple to lay the blame for last week’s riots in Jos, Nigeria, at the doorstep of ethno-religious rivalries. This line of analysis always makes sense to outside observers and conforms to the meta-narrative of the “clash of civilizations.” But in Nigeria, nothing is ever that simple.
• Xinhua – The Kenyan government welcomed on Thursday China’s intention to finance major infrastructural projects to promote investment and spur the country into a middle level economy.
• Enough Project – The beleaguered people of North Kivu province in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo are justifiably angry. Despite the international community’s $500 million investment in 2006 elections and the world’s largest United Nations peacekeeping mission (costing more than $1 billion per year), the current round of fighting is the most destructive since 2005 and the latest chapter in more than 12 years of near continuous warfare.
• NY Times – In little more than 24 hours, at least 150 people would be dead, most of them young men, summarily executed by the rebels last month as they tightened their grip over parts of eastern Congo, according to witnesses and human-rights investigators. And yet, as the killings took place, a contingent of about 100 United Nations peacekeepers was less than a mile away, struggling to understand what was happening outside the gates of its base.
• Ghanaian Chronicle – In its quest to retain power in the December run-off, the presidential candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo has reshuffled his campaign team. Credible information reaching The Chronicle indicates that Nana Addo himself has taken over the leadership of the campaign for the second round of the elections. The Chronicle can report on authority that Hon. Yaw Osaafo-Maafo, the former Minister of Finance and Economic Planning taking charge of the Eastern Region. A source within the NPP confirmed to this paper that the reshuffle was not necessitated by the recent performance in the elections alone, but it was done to ensure that Hon. Osafo Maafo, who is a veteran politician and hails from the Eastern region, captures the region for the party.
• Al Jazeera – Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president, has said his government has stopped a cholera outbreak in his country – despite South African officials saying the disease has spread across the border. Mugabe’s comments on Thursday came after the UN said that nearly 800 people in Zimbabwe had died from cholera.
• Wolf Kinzel – The African Standby Force of the African Union; Ambitious Plans, Wide Regional Disparities: An Intermediate Appraisal

Old boats and rafts sit on display at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay’s Lighthouse museum. The worn and dilapidated boats and rafts were once used by Cuban and Haitian refugees seeking economic and political asylum (photo by Spc. Erica Isaacson)

The Global War

• Chuck Spinney – In January, it is my understanding that the Pentagon will request a budget of about $581 billion for its core budget, i.e., not including the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department of the Navy’s share of this budget should be something on the order of $150-160 billion a year, yet Admiral Gortney is telling us that securing the Horn of Africa from a gang of rag tag Somali pirates will take every cruiser and destroyer in the Navy plus 3 or its Frigates. This means the Navy would not enough surface warships left over to configure the normal defense screen for even one carrier battle group.
• Spain Foreign Ministry – To report the outcome of the internal investigation conducted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in relation to documents published in the Spanish press the day on November 30 and December 1 of 2008 on flights to U.S. bound for Guantanamo
• Marina Ottaway and Amr Hamzawy, Islamist movements participating in politics in the Middle East have reached an important crossroad. Despite some electoral success, they have failed to influence policy and are criticized by their base for abandoning their religious commitments. Islamist movements must convince their supporters that political participation is the best way to affect government in the long term, despite seemingly poor short term gains.
• F. Wallace Hays, CEPA – The Nabucco Pipeline: A Sober Assessment
• Xinhua – Chinese and Indian armies started a comprehensive anti-terrorism military drill in south India’s Belgaum district Thursday evening. It’s the third and also the last stage of the joint anti-terrorism military training between the two sides from Dec. 6 to 12.
• P. R. Kumaraswamy – As the U.S.-Iranian dispute escalates, both Washington and Tehran seek friends and allies. New Delhi is caught in the middle. While the U.S.-Indian partnership has grown closer in recent years, New Delhi’s approach toward Iran’s suspected nuclear program causes concern in Washington. Overshadowing the debate is India’s own nuclear program. With the July 2005 U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear deal yet to win U.S. Senate ratification, is India seeking to strengthen its energy security through Iran? Or is New Delhi pursuing the civilian nuclear deal without being sensitive to Washington’s concerns vis-à-vis Iran?
• USASOC – The USASOC Family lost 34 members this past year, at home and abroad. A Memorial Tree stands proudly in the lobby of the Major General Robert McClure building during this season of caring. For each of these 34 fallen comrades, a white ribbon has been placed along with multiple gold stars representing their loved ones.
• Hungary Defense Ministry – He was a chemical defence expert, then he ‘changed professions’ and worked in the field of peace operations and disaster management. He founded our country’s first military liaison office at the US Central Command, later he completed two missions in Afghanistan. Currently, he is one of the directors of the MoD Defence Bureau. We have been talking with Lieutenant József Tokovicz.

Sights & Sounds

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A brief world news roundup for 16 October 2008.

United States & the Americas

• LA Times – Further tightening rules meant to prevent the abuse of detainees, the Pentagon has issued a new policy directive requiring that interrogations of prisoners be monitored, even if questioning is being carried out by another government agency.
• RIA Novosti – Russia and Venezuela may finalize within a month a deal for a large number of BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles, a senior executive at Russia’s arms export monopoly said Wednesday. “In addition to the small arms, light weapons and ammunition delivered earlier, a large shipment of BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles is to be delivered,” said Igor Sevastyanov, deputy general director of Rosoboronexport.
• NY Times – Thousands of relatives of inmates staged sit-in protests on Tuesday in prisons across the country to protest poor conditions and the abuse of inmates. Hundreds of inmates die each year in prison violence. This has fueled complaints that President Hugo Chávez has done too little to stem crime and improve the judicial system.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Kommersant – Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov announced the beginning of the most radical military reform ever in post-Soviet Russia. Not only will redundant generals be retired (unsuccessful efforts to do that have been made before) and the military staff will be halved, the armies, divisions and regiments inherited from the Soviet Union will be reformed.
• RIA Novosti – A police officer was killed and another was injured during a special operation in the Russian North Caucasus republic of Chechnya, a local law enforcement source said on Wednesday. Police discovered a militant holed up in the village of Samashki at 2 a.m. on Wednesday. “The gunman offered armed resistance and was killed in return fire.”
• Jamestown – Armenia and Georgia have pledged to strengthen their commercial and other links in hopes of overcoming the negative economic consequences facing both South Caucasus states after the recent Russian-Georgian war. Tbilisi has also officially expressed its overall satisfaction with Yerevan’s neutrality in the conflict.
• IWPR – A proposal by Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov for international coordination to protect oil and gas exports is unlikely to be translated into action because of competing superpower interests, NBCentralAsia observers say. Berdymuhammedov’s proposal was put forward at a United Nations General Assembly meeting in late September by his foreign minister, Rashid Meredov.

Middle East

• DoD – Coalition forces killed the second-ranking commander of al-Qaida in Iraq in a raid earlier this month, senior U.S. officials confirmed today. Abu Qaswarah was killed in an Oct. 5 raid in the northern Iraq city of Mosul, Navy Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, said in a Baghdad news conference. Four other insurgents also were killed in the attack on a building serving as an al-Qaida command and control center, Driscoll said. Qaswarah’ death “will significantly degrade” the terrorist group’s operations in Mosul and northern Iraq, the admiral said.
• IRNA – After a 30-year halt, the first Iranian flight landed at Baghdad airport on Tuesday with 192 passengers. The Airbus plane of Iran’s Mahan Airways landed in Baghdad airport. A ceremony was held on the occasion with the participation of a number of Iranian diplomats in Iraq as well as officials from Iraqi Airways.
• Xinhua – The Council of Arab Economic Unity has finalized a blueprint to set up a customs union that will lead to the establishment of an Arab common market, the Egyptian MENA news agency reported Wednesday.
• NOW Lebanon – Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem said that his party opposed “any foreign guardianship of Lebanon.” After meeting with Brazil’s Greek Orthodox Bishop Demeskinos Mansour on Wednesday, Qassem said that “Hezbollah supports adhering to the Taif Agreement as a framework for building a strong, capable and fair state.” Qassem said that Hezbollah also supported “the resistance that proved its efficiency in liberating the land and defending the nation.”
• NATO – Seven ships from six NATO navies transit the Suez Canal today, on their way to conduct both anti-piracy duties and visit NATO partner nations in the Gulf region.

Iran

• Payvand – Iran says its experts are busy to ensure a timely start-up of the Bushehr nuclear plant. A senior Iranian nuclear official says the nuclear power plant in Bushehr will become operational in 2009, as previously planned.
• Press TV – Iran’s Air Force is set to test the country’s state-of-the-art military equipment and flight tactics in a large-scale aerial maneuver. Iran’s show of armed muscle is aimed at demonstrating the country’s military offensive capabilities in the wake of escalating war threats against the Islamic Republic. The upcoming military exercise is scheduled to be launched in Iran’s northwestern city of Tabriz on Thursday and will resume in different Iranian cities including Tehran, Isfahan, Hamedan, and Dezfoul.
• Iran Air Show – After the successful organizing of the first and the second  and third international Iran Kish Air Shows , the Kish Trade Promotion Center fully supported by Kish Free Zone Organization intends to hold the fourth edition of the said exhibition with cooperation of the Civil Aviation Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran (CAO-IRI) from 28 to 31 October 2008 in Kish Island.

Macedonian army soldiers with the International Security Assistance Force patrol around Kabul, Oct. 1 (photo by Cpl. John Rafoss)

South Asia

• Dawn – Taliban fighters launched a second attack in days on a southern Afghan town overnight but were repelled after losing 18 men, an official said on Wednesday. British military based in the town of Lashkar Gah, capital of the southern province of Helmand, confirmed there had been activity but said it was not clear what had happened. They could not confirm a statement by provincial government spokesman Daud Ahmadi that police had thwarted an attack on the town and killed 18 Taliban.
• Geo – At least 12 militants were killed during ongoing military operation in Tehsil Khar of Bajaur Agency on Wednesday. Security forces destroyed several houses of people, alleged to have links with militants.
• Al Jazeera – Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president, has met his Chinese counterpart in Beijing while on a visit aimed at securing further Chinese investments for his country. Zardari met Hu Jintao on Wednesday at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, as part of a four-day visit.
• Morningstar – Heavy fighting broke out across Sri Lanka’s northern area of Kilinochchi, leaving 37 Tamil Tiger rebels and six soldiers dead, the defense ministry said Wednesday. It said 34 rebels and 25 soldiers were also wounded in the fierce fighting that took place on several fronts Tuesday.
• ICG – Sri Lanka’s government must address the security needs and land-related grievances of all ethnic communities in its Eastern Province or risk losing a unique opportunity for development and peace. It must devolve real power to the new Eastern Provincial Council, end impunity for ongoing rights violations and work to develop a lasting political consensus on issues of land, security and power sharing with independent representatives of all communities. The Eastern Province, Sri Lanka’s most ethnically complex region, needs development, and it also urgently needs political and administrative reforms

Far East & Pacific

• Australia Foreign Minister – The Australian Government is deeply concerned at Iran’s refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing-related activities as required by multiple United Nations Security Council Resolutions. In response to on-going Iranian defiance of the Security Council and given the Government’s strong commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, the Government has now decided to impose new financial and travel sanctions effective from today. The sanctions are targeted against 20 Iranian individuals and 18 organisations which contribute to Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, or otherwise assist Iran to violate its Security Council obligations.
• Australia Foreign Minister – The Australian Government has strongly condemned the statements by Iranian President Ahmadinejad calling for the destruction of Israel and questioning the Holocaust. These anti-Semitic comments were appalling by any standard. The Government has given exhaustive consideration to international legal action against Iran for these statements. Having now considered legal and other advice, the Government has decided not to pursue international legal action against Iran.
• Bangkok Post – Foreign Minister Sompong Amornvivat urged Thai nationals in Cambodia to leave for home immediately after a Wednesday afternoon military battle along the disputed border left two Cambodian soldiers dead and five Thai soldiers wounded.
• Jakarta Post – Indonesian Military (TNI) Chief Gen. Djoko Santoso ceremonially sent off Wednesday a Garuda contingent of peacekeepers to take part in the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC).

Europe

• RFERL – The announcement this week that Turkmen gas riches may exceed the West’s wildest dreams is likely to focus attention back on pipeline projects that bypass Russia in pumping Caspian energy supplies to European markets.
• Stefan Theil – Europe’s Bank Bailout: Is It Enough?
• Janet Albrechtsen – Then the Greeks moved to shore up their bank deposits. Then the Danes did it. And the Italians and the Dutch. By last Wednesday, five EU countries – Britain, Italy, France, Austria and Spain – had drawn up individual plans to prop up their banking systems with taxpayer money. Eschewing co-ordination, European countries opted for what The New York Times described as an “ugly disarray” of “self-interested policies to protect their citizens and banks first”.

Africa

• Press TV – In the town of Baidoa, 250 kilometers southeast the capital Mogadishu, heavily armed insurgents fired mortars at two military bases in the region, killing at least 20 Ethiopian soldiers and seriously injuring 35 others, Press TV correspondent in Somalia reported on Wednesday. The Ethiopians reacted by shelling residential areas, which left at least 11 civilians dead. Meanwhile, early in the morning, an ambush attack on another military base in the same town left at least 10 Somali government soldiers dead and a dozen others injured.
• Reuters – Congolese army tanks pounded rebel-held hilltops and repelled an attack on a military base in the east on Tuesday in the latest round of fighting that has displaced 150,000 people in six weeks, the United Nations said. The army fired at least 500 tank rounds at rebel positions during a two-day battle at Tongo in North Kivu province that killed and wounded civilians in a nearby camp for internal refugees, the U.N. peacekeeping mission, MONUC, said.
• Monitor – Bodies of at least 100 civilians killed in intensified fighting between the Congolese army and the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels are said to be rotting in a river in north-eastern DR Congo
• IRIN – Despite recently reinforced border security agreements between Mali and Algeria and between Libya and Niger, Nigerien ethnic Tuareg smugglers told IRIN their desert convoys through the Air Mountains are as profitable as ever.

Sailors man the rails as the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrives in its homeport of Everett Wash. Lincoln is returning from a seven-month deployment to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. (photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Brett Morton)

The Global War

• Human Rights First – Thirty countries are at risk of violating the United Nations arms embargo on Darfur by either directly or indirectly exporting arms to Sudan, according to a new report released by a leading human rights advocacy group. The report divides the countries into two categories: direct providers and producers. Twelve countries, including China, India, Kenya, Iran and Russia, by their own admission, ship arms directly to Sudan.
• MEMRI – The Iranian website Tabnak, which is identified with Expediency Council Secretary and former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezai, has warned that the Israeli Mossad has recently established bases along Iran’s borders with its neighbors Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and that it was training local forces of lower-class Kurds, Afghans, and Pakistanis for espionage and terror operations within Iran and paying them a monthly wage of $800-$1,000.
• Defense Tech – Calling the Army’s new “universal” digital camouflage scheme for its field uniforms controversial is an understatement. People tend to fall into two camps: some grudgingly tolerate it, particularly in an urban, desert or urban/desert environment and others (most) just flat out hate it and can’t understand why the Army went the way of loden greens and grays.
• USASOC – The Army’s two newest branches, Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations, will take time Oct. 16 to celebrate their full partnership in the Army’s organizational history. This year marks the second birthday for each as basic branches of the Army.

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A brief world news roundup for 19 August 2008.

United States & the Americas

• PostGlobal – The Kremlin’s next step in its confrontation with the United States could be the establishment of some sort of military alliance with Cuba and Venezuela. One possibility is the reopening of an electronic surveillance base designed to spy on U.S. communications, similar to “Lourdes,” the huge espionage center that operated near Havana until a few years ago, when Putin himself decided to close it.
• TIME – People across the country are coming to the same depressing conclusion. There have been 2,000 drug-related murders in Mexico this year, including scores of ghastly beheadings, putting 2008 well on pace to break last year’s record of 2,500 killings. Hundreds of victims are police, including the chief of the federal police, who was killed in May.
• BBC – Venezuela has said it will seize local plants and offices belonging to Mexican cement giant Cemex, as it proceeds with nationalising its cement industry. Cemex’s Swiss and French rivals Lafarge and Holcim have agreed to hand control of their local subsidiaries to Caracas.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Guardian – Russia continued to occupy large swaths of Georgia in defiance of an EU-brokered ceasefire deal, with no sign of significant troop withdrawals. Despite claims by Moscow that a pullout had begun, Russian forces could be seen across most of the country, and Georgian officials claimed that armoured columns had tried to push further into the mountainous heartland, towards Borjomi in the south and Sachkhere in the west.
• abc.net.au – The New York Times, citing unnamed US officials, said the Russian military had moved launchers for short-range ballistic missiles into South Ossetia, putting much of Georgia and its capital Tbilisi within striking distance. Russia placed several SS-21 missile launchers and supply vehicles in the area on Friday (local time), the newspaper reported.
• Edward Chow – The current fighting in Georgia brings out many ghosts of the past. Gori, an obscure town on the major east-west highway across Georgia that came under Russian attack this week, was previously known mostly as the birthplace of one Joseph Stalin. And it is Stalin’s deliberately complex borders for the republics of the Soviet Union that is the putative cause of this conflict.
• RIA Novosti – Border guards in south Tajikistan killed an Afghan smuggler in an overnight operation during which 12 kg (26 lbs) of heroin were seized, the State National Security Committee said Monday.
• ISCIP – The Turkmen government’s natural gas supply commitments continue to multiply, as President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow tries to broker ever more contracts with regional rivals for his country’s energy resources.

Middle East

• AKI – A Shia cleric was killed by unidentified gunmen in Baghdad on Monday, while several others were injured in a wave of bomb attacks that swept the Iraqi capital.
• MNF Iraq – Iraqi National Police seized a munitions cache in the Al Samari mosque in the Karadah district in eastern Baghdad Aug. 18. The cache consisted of four Iranian 107 mm rockets, five 107 mm rockets of unknown origin, three 107 mm warheads, two empty rocket motors and two fuses.
• Lt. Gen Austin – For 10 of the last 11 weeks, we’ve sustained less than 200 attacks per week nationwide…. We must, however, keep sight of the fact that al Qaeda retains the capability to perform high-profile attacks on the population. Suicide vests, which are a trademark of al Qaeda, account for less than 3 percent of the total number all of all attacks, but they account for 65 percent of all casualties.
• NY Times – Of all the political problems facing Iraq today, perhaps none is so intractable as the fate of Kirkuk, a city of 900,000 that Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens all claim as their own. The explosive quarrel over the city is one major barrier to creating stable political structures in the rest of Iraq.
• Al Jazeera – Hezbollah has signed a memorandum of understanding with a local Sunni faction in Lebanon, a move that could help defuse sectarian tensions that have cost the lives of more than 100 people. But the deal, signed on Monday between Hezbollah and the Salafist Belief and Justice Movement (BJM), came under fire from other Salafist groups.

Iran

• Asharq Al Awsat – Regarding these assassination squads, Brig Gen Al-Haj Reza told Asharq Al-Awsat that “there are personalities in Iraq who the Iranian Intelligence Service and the Qods Force view as permanent enemies and that their elimination is at the top of the Qods Force’s list of priorities in Iraq.” He went on to say that “there are enemies who can be bought or forced to change their stands toward the Islamic Republic of Iran by terrorizing or threatening their family members who reside in Iran.”
• AKI – The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog chief, Olli Heinonen arrived in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Monday for fresh talks with senior government officials regarding the country’s nuclear programme.
• MEMRI – Iranian Ambassador to Russia Gholam-Reza Ansari said August 17 that Tehran and Moscow had reached a “good” agreement in connection with the Bushehr nuclear power plant, saying that by “sending fuel to the Bushehr nuclear power plant, Russia showed its firm decision to complete and commission the project.”
• CNN – The Pentagon does not believe an Iranian rocket test over the weekend was successful, despite reports in the official Iranian media saying the Islamic Republic had launched its first vehicle capable of placing a satellite in orbit.

Southeast Asia

• AKI – A suicide car bomb exploded at a United States military base in Afghanistan on Monday, killing at least nine civilians and injuring 13 others amid independence day celebrations. The blast occurred at a base in the province of Khost in eastern Afghanistan.
• CSM – Afghan and NATO officials are seeing a rise in numbers of foreign fighters in Afghanistan at the same time US officials say attacks by Al Qaeda in Iraq have sharply dropped.
• Pentagon – The following Marines died Aug. 14 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan: Cpl. Anthony G. Mihalo, 23, of Naperville, Ill and Lance Cpl. Juan Lopez-Castaneda, 19, of Mesa, Ariz.
• Independent – Britain’s special forces are to play a key role in a newly-planned “surge” against Taliban forces in Afghanistan, The Independent has learnt. SAS and SBS troops are to be used to dramatically expand the Army’s “decapitation” strategy working alongside US Marines against the Taliban leadership.
• Independent – In Lashkar Gah, the majority of female prisoners are serving 20-year sentences for being forced to have sex. Terri Judd visited them and heard their extraordinary stories.
• Musharraf – I have decided to resign from the office of President and my resignation will be handed over to the Speaker of the National Assembly. I want the people to be the judges and let them decide my fate. I am a human being and may have committed follies.
• Pak Tribune – National Assembly session passed a resolution accepting Pervez Musharraf’s resignation as President.
• The News – Security forces continued military offensive against the Taliban fighters in the restive Bajaur Agency, killing five more suspected militants and destroying house of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) deputy leader Maulana Faqir Mohammad in Chopatra village on Monday.
• The News – Three more persons were killed and several injured in continuing violence in the restive Swat Valley while the security forces kept targeting suspected positions of militants in different localities. In one incident, alleged Taliban militants fired at an anti-Taliban man on Mamdheri Road and killed him on the spot. He was shot dead in front of his young son.
• Kashmir Observer – In what can only be described as a massive political convulsion, Kashmiris gathered in their hundreds of thousands in central Srinagar on Monday demanding a plebiscite to decide the future of the Himalayan region claimed by India and Pakistan. The historic turnout, one of the largest since militancy broke out two decades ago, was in response to a call by the co-ordination committee of the two factions of the Hurriyat Conference and traders and employees bodies to march to the UN observers’ headquarters here to present a memorandum.
• IHT – In Sri Lanka, a series of new battles Sunday killed 23 rebel fighters and four soldiers, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said Monday. Repeated attempts in recent days to reach rebel spokesmen by e-mail, telephone and satellite phones have been unsuccessful.
• Javno – Heavy monsoon rains have triggered floods across South Asia in which 147 people have been killed in the past week as the downpours swamped villages and caused landslides, officials said on Monday. Most of the deaths were due to house collapses triggered by incessant rains in India and Bangladesh. Thousands more have been evacuated across the region after their homes were flooded.

Far East & Pacific

• Robert Kaplan – Moreover, Burma’s hill tribes form part of a new and larger geopolitical canvas. Burma fronts on the Indian Ocean, by way of the Bay of Bengal. Its neighbors India and China (not to mention Thailand) covet its abundant oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, zinc, copper, precious stones, timber, and hydropower. China especially needs a cooperative, if not supine, Burma for the construction of deepwater ports, highways, and energy pipelines that can open China’s landlocked south and west to the sea, enabling its ever-burgeoning middle class to receive speedier deliveries of oil from the Persian Gulf. These routes must pass north from the Indian Ocean through the very territories wracked by Burma’s ethnic insurrections.
• Manila Times – Dozens of mostly civilians were killed and wounded on Monday as hundreds of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels attacked several towns in southern Philippines. The MILF insurgents were reported to have gone on a shooting rampage and pillaging of villages in the towns of Bacolod, Kauswagan, Kolambugan, Maigo and Tubod as they advanced to other areas in Lanao del Norte province.
• NDTV – Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda, the former guerrilla leader who led a successful war on Nepal’s omnipotent royal dynasty, has finally taken charge as the Prime Minister of the Himalayan republic on Monday, ending a four-month political vacuum.
• Gulf News – South Korean and US forces began annual military drills on Monday as a North Korean military spokesman denounced the exercises as a prelude to war and said they spoiled the prospects for nuclear disarmament talks.

Europe

• Reporters Without Borders – Reporters Without Borders calls on Armenia to lift bans on two Polish journalists who have been denied entry in the past six days. The most recent case was that of Wojciech Jagielski, a well-known foreign correspondent working for the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, on 14 August. An immigration official said he was on a list of journalists banned throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States. He blames the ban on Russia, which did not like the Polish media’s coverage of the war in Georgia. Russia’s ambassador to Warsaw, Vladimir Grinin, accused the Polish media of bias on 16 August.
• Balkan Insight – Serbia’s government upholds all the provisions of an energy deal signed with Russia earlier this year, Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic insists. The Serbian Premier told reporters that negotiations on the deal including the sale of a 51 percent stake in Serbia’s oil monopoly NIS, and the development of Serbia’s wing of the South Stream pipeline that will carry natural gas from Russia via Serbia to European markets, would continue.
• BBC – Spain is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Climate experts warn that the country is suffering badly from the impact of climate change and that the Sahara is slowly creeping north – into the Spanish mainland.  Yet in Spain itself there is little consensus about what is to be done.
• Spiegel – German Chancellor Angela Merkel is now facing her most serious foreign policy crisis to date. The war in the Caucasus has shattered relations with Russia and sparked disagreements within the EU, and with the United States.
• Times Online – Semtex explosive formerly belonging to the Provisional IRA was used in a terrorist attack on police officers in Northern Ireland at the weekend, marking a dangerous escalation in the capabilities of so-called ‘dissident’ republican groups intent on reigniting the province’s long and bloody conflict.
• Al Arabiya – Italian police have arrested a Muslim cleric for extradition to his native Morocco to face terrorism charges linked to suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003. Police said in a statement that Abdelmajid Zergout, imam of a mosque in Varese, was arrested on Saturday at his home in the northern city.

Africa

• World Food Programme – The Executive Director of WFP expressed shock and sadness today at the killing of one of the agency’s staff members in southern Somalia. All indications are that Mr. Mohammed was abducted by unidentified armed men and killed after trying to escape.
• Garowe – Heavily armed militias have kidnapped the governor of Nugal region, in Somalia’s northeastern State of Puntland.
• Public Agenda – A combination of scarce cash and higher prices of goods are deterring consumers from buying more items than they did two months ago, a cross-section of traders in Madina, Ghana, complained. According to a rice dealer, Peace, a 25kg bag of rice, which sold at GH¢35 in May was now GH¢42 despite government announcing late in May 2008 some interventions aimed at bringing down prices of food, fuel, transportation and others.
• The Nation – Kenyan pastoralists are feared dead following a confrontation Sunday with Ugandan soldiers at the border. Labour Minister John Munyes said reports indicated that the Ugandan army had ambushed thousands of Turkana herders who had crossed into the neighbouring country in search of water and pasture for their livestock, and killed a number of them.
• The Nation – Wanted suspected terrorist Harun Fazul escaped the anti-terror dragnet for the second time in two weeks. The police had planned a normal search at a house near Sabasaba without knowing that the terror suspect was holed up in the building, sources said on Monday. They said they learnt later that Fazul had escaped through the kitchen in the four-storey building that is still under construction as the police were trying to break open the ground floor door.
• BBC – Tuareg rebels fighting the government in Niger say they are laying down their arms, as part of peace talks brokered by Libya.

The Global War

• NY Sun – On her way to an emergency NATO foreign ministers meeting on the crisis, Secretary of State Rice said the alliance would punish Russia for its invasion of Georgia and deny its ambitions by rebuilding and fully backing Georgia and other Eastern European democracies.
• NPR, Talk of the Nation – Global Turmoil: Pakistan, Russia, Georgia, and Iran; How can their interconnection affect the United States? Senior News Analyst Ted Koppel and Brookings Institution president Strobe Talbott explain.
• Scientific American – Here’s a scenario that might be going through the minds of NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff and his two fellow Russian crew members on the International Space Station (ISS). Lawmakers warned this week that escalating tensions with Russia may leave the U.S. without ready transport to the ISS after NASA retires the space shuttle fleet in 2010.

Sights & Sounds

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In light of McCain’s win in Florida tonight, thought I’d pass along a few thoughts from someone who is overseas…

I don’t know what kind of briefs or info the major candidates get but I bet if it’s anyone else than McCain who gets elected, they will be shocked at the level of violence perpetrated by the islamic fascisit jihadis. Then, the thought of a lightweight like Obama being in charge of the launch codes truly boggles my mind.

I see stuff everyday, I am continually amazed and how barbaric and savage and so primitively uncivilized war can be, so much more so by those who aren’t adhering to any standards of conduct. The self censorship of American media angers me greatly since if Americans would see on their screens just what we are up against then they might slightly understand what is at stake here.

Americans have all kinds of gratuitous violence in their movies and tv, but it’s hypocritical and naive not to be aware of reality. If we were the romans or ghengis this would have ended in summer of 2003.

Guy I was chatting with theorized most voters gravitate to a single issue and most of them are simply following the latest media or spin generated fads. Well if that’s the case, then national security tops it for me. Foreign policy and sign/veto bills is what a president is for. If McCain has other less than desirable conservative traits, well then that’s what Congress is for, to keep a lid on any shenanigans.

The Daily Times has a report of large-scale fighting in Swat, though there are conflicting details.

Up to 70 militants have been killed in the Khawzakhela area of Matta tehsil in Swat district after up to 600 pro-Taliban militants attacked security personnel near Dheri Bagh at around 4:00 am on Thursday, NWFP Home Secretary Badshah Gul Wazir told reporters.

Clashes between security forces backed by helicopter gunships and militants near Khawzakhela continued on Thursday, with 11 civilians reported to have been injured in the crossfire. Online reported that the militants had taken control of the Khawzakhela Bazaar, while a BBC report claimed areas west of Mingora were under militant control.

Addressing a joint press conference at the NWFP Information Department, Wazir said security forces had suffered no casualties in the clash.

Militant claims: However, Sirajuddin, a spokesman for rebel cleric Fazlullah, said only one or two militants had died. He claimed that 40 security personnel had surrendered in fighting in Khawzakhela.

There was another suicide attack, this one in eastern Punjab:

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle rammed a Pakistan Air Force (PAF) bus, killing at least eight people on Thursday.

The assailant struck around 7am near an air base in Sargodha, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Islamabad, air force spokesman Sarfraz Ahmed said. All the dead were air force employees, said Sahid Malik, an official at the hospital treating the victims.

At the Asia Times, Syed Saleem Shahzad argues that Pakistan is at a moment of decision:

With Admiral William J Fallon, US commander of CENTCOM, due in Pakistan on Thursday to finalize collaboration on pressing issues concerning the “war on terror” in Pakistan and Afghanistan, besides addressing the tension over Iran, top decision-makers in Islamabad are in a quandary. The issue is whether Pakistan can afford to take bold steps in the “war on terror” without taking extraordinary steps to solidify the regime of President General Pervez Musharraf.
…
A local television station has shown footage of people collecting money for what they call the “mujahideen”. The station reported that at one place in the Swat Valley, people collected Rs1.5 million (about US$24,500) in just three hours. Such popular support for the militancy forces Islamabad to question whether it should continue this losing battle, or launch a full-scale war against terror.
…
The massive engagement of the Pakistani armed forces in the Swat Valley has disrupted controls along the Durand Line that separates Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the result that in a matter of weeks, hundreds of fresh fighters have reached southeastern Afghanistan to bolster the Taliban-led insurgency from Jalalabad to Khost.

In this respect, Fallon’s visit to Pakistan is significant as Washington wants Pakistan to stop this flow of precious Taliban assets from the Swat Valley before the US entertains the idea of a new theater in Iran. (King Abdullah of Jordan is also expected in Pakistan soon, as is US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.)