Intelligence: October 2005 Archives

October 31, 2005

Loyalist paramilitaries told to 'stand down'

ePolitix.com - Loyalist paramilitaries told to 'stand down'

The Loyalist Volunteer Force has ordered its 'military units' to stand down.

The LVF said it was responding to the IRA's arms decommissioning arms.

However, some observers believe it has more to do with the conclusion of a feud between the group and the Ulster Volunteer Force, from which it split from originally.

In an earlier statement, Reverend Mervyn Gibson said the loyalist feud, which claimed four lives in Belfast in July and August, had "permanently ended".

He said the group of church and community figures had been holding mediation talks "for some time".

A special report by the ceasefire watchdog said the LVF carried out two murder bids, but their violence was mainly a response to UVF attacks.

The report on the loyalist paramilitary feud led Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain to declare the UVF ceasefire had broken down.

DUP MP Nigel Dodds said he "warmly welcomed" the end of the feud.

"Communities have been set on edge and put into turmoil. I pay tribute to those who have worked so hard to bring this resolution about," he added.

Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey said the move was another positive development in the political process.

"Yesterday's announcement that the feud is over, last week the UDA sent a delegation to see the decommissioning body and Gerry Adams, for the first time allowed the words 'the war is over' to pass his lips," he said.

"Now when we take all those things together I think we have had a fairly positive week and something that I think we need to build on."

October 31, 2005 at 01:15 PM in Ireland | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

October 29, 2005

Focus: The week Bush got whacked

Focus: The week Bush got whacked - Sunday Times - Times Online

His second term was already floundering when, on Friday, a top aide was charged with perjury. Sarah Baxter, in Washington, reports on a bad few days for the president
Nerves were jangling at the White House last week. President George W Bush, never the easiest character to work for, was growing tetchy and was lashing out at junior staff. When he was re-elected last November he said that he had political capital and was going to spend it. A year later the coffers of goodwill and trust were near-empty and he was angry.

"This is not some manager at McDonald’s chewing out the staff," said one source. "This is the president of the United States and it is not a pretty sight."

Bush’s mood had already soured during Hurricane Katrina, when he was accused of being indifferent to the misery of New Orleans. It darkened further when Harriet Miers, his White House legal adviser and nominee for the Supreme Court, was scorned by his own conservative supporters as a hapless crony, forcing her to withdraw her candidature last week.

"Why wouldn’t he be irritable?" said Bill Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard. Everything for Bush had gone from bad to worse and, as fate would have it, the number of American deaths in Iraq passed 2,000 on Tuesday, promoting yet another media blitz on his performance in that country.

"He is like the lion in winter," said an ally. "He’s frustrated. He remains quite confident in the decisions he has made, but this is a guy who wanted to do big things in his second term. Given his nature, there is no way he would be happy about the way things have gone."

Things were about to get worse. Having promised to restore "dignity" to the White House after the bimbo eruptions of the Clinton era, on Friday Bush became the first American president in more than 30 years to see one of his most senior aides indicted on criminal charges.

Lewis "Scooter" Libby, right-hand man to Dick Cheney — the most powerful vice-president in American history — was charged on five counts of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice.

Patrick Fitzgerald, an apparently fearless and politically independent prosecutor who had earned his spurs taking down Chicago mobsters, had brought the indictment which concerned the unmasking of Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative.

Her outing by an as yet unnamed White House official came only months after her husband, a former US ambassador, had embarrassed Bush, Cheney and Libby by accusing them of misrepresenting the intelligence case of the war on Iraq.

After Fitzgerald had served his indictment on Friday, Libby immediately resigned and now has to report to the FBI for arrest and fingerprinting. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in jail and a fine of up to $1.25m. So much, then, for dignity.

At first glance the Libby affair is a confusing — almost academic — tale of internecine Washington politics with little obvious explosive potential. Yet it is one that has struck at the core of one of Bush’s proudest and most controversial achievements: the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Worse, perhaps, so far as middle America is concerned, it raises a question mark over the one thing that the Bush administration has always been strongest on — its apparently unwavering sense of patriotism.

THE story dates back to the early years of Bush’s presidency and the aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cheney and Libby were at the vanguard of the hardcore group of "neocon" advisers who believed that Saddam’s regime in Iraq should be toppled in the wake of the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The two men, who were called the "commissars" behind their backs, became obsessed with rooting out evidence that Saddam was still seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In regular meetings with the CIA they would press officials to turn over every scrap of evidence that came their way relating to Iraq.

In February 2002, Cheney was given a CIA briefing which mentioned the curious case of Saddam’s attempted purchase of uranium yellowcake from Niger — a crucial ingredient in any nuclear programme. What more could the agency tell him, Cheney demanded.

When vice-presidents bark, officials jump to it and in this case the CIA quickly dispatched Joseph Wilson, a one-time Californian surf dude and diplomat in Baghdad at the time of the first Gulf war, to Niger to find out more. But far from confirming a plot to buy uranium, Wilson reported after an eight-day trip that the allegations were bogus.

The CIA, it seems, did not report this bad news directly back to the vice-president. Cheney claims that he was never told about Wilson’s departure, nor his findings.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the vice-president might well have dismissed Wilson’s report in any event as he had long regarded the CIA with suspicion. He had first clashed with the agency when he was defence secretary under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Then he had accused its risk-averse bureaucrats of failing to foresee the break-up of the Soviet Union.

He also felt that it had not prepared adequately for the possible use of biological weapons by Saddam in the first Gulf war, when Scud missiles were launched at Israel. After the September 11 attacks, the CIA was once again in the doghouse for missing the signs that Al-Qaeda was preparing to crash planes into New York and Washington.

As the build-up to the war in Iraq grew nearer, Cheney and Libby effectively cut the CIA out of the loop, forming their own "Iraq monitoring group" with Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz (Libby’s original mentor) and Douglas Feith, another hawkish defence official. Together they built the case for the invasion and overthrow of Saddam.

For nearly a year Wilson kept quiet about his mission but then — in January 2003 — came the president’s state of the union address and the 16 words that drove the proud, some say vain, man to distraction.

"The British government has learnt that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," the president told the nation and the world.

Not surprisingly perhaps, Wilson felt ignored and started talking quietly to the press about his mission of a year earlier. His frustration turned to outright anger several months later when Condoleezza Rice asserted on television that no senior person in the administration had been told that the documents relating to Saddam’s alleged uranium purchase were forged. "Maybe somebody in the bowels of the agency knew something about this," she said airily, "but nobody in my circles."

Wilson went ballistic and public. In an article in The New York Times in July 2003, he publicly accused the Bush government of "misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war".

As for Rice, "She was saying, ‘F*** you Washington, we don’t care’. Or rather, ‘F*** you, America’," Wilson later added.

Precisely what happened next within the administration is still the subject of conjecture and criminal investigation. What is in no doubt, however, is that the occupation of Plame, Wilson’s wife, was leaked to the press and her identity as an undercover operative in the counter-proliferation division of the CIA was blown.

The story was broken by Robert Novak, the right-wing columnist, and was widely seen as an attempt to discredit Wilson and rubbish his story. By linking him so closely with the CIA, critics said, the Bush administration was letting people know that he was just another tool of a discredited agency that had long been at loggerheads with Cheney and his neocon advisers.

In Wilson’s eyes it was a straightforward case of revenge by the government. It is a criminal offence in America for an official knowingly to leak the identity of an undercover operative. Wilson — with the backing of his wife and the CIA — demanded that a full criminal investigation be launched to establish who in the administration had leaked Plame’s occupation.

It was Fitzgerald, the 44- year-old prosecutor at the heart of the leak inquiry, who was brought in to sift through the evidence of wrongdoing. It should have been immediately obvious to Cheney and friends that the White House could not simply bluff its way out of trouble.

The clean-cut, bright-eyed prosecutor has the incorruptible air of Kevin Costner in the film The Untouchables, based on lawman Eliot Ness’s account of how he brought down Al Capone, Chicago’s most notorious gangster in the 1930s.

Fittingly, Fitzgerald also lives in Chicago where he runs the justice department. He, too, has had run-ins with the mob and secured the convictions of members of the Gambino crime family as well as terrorists such as Omar Abdul Rahman.

Fitzgerald launched his inquiry by demanding the names of all the reporters whom Libby and other senior White House officials had talked to. It was Novak who broke the story but last summer Fitzgerald was ruthless enough to send Judith Miller, a controversial Pulitzer prizewinning reporter for The New York Times, to prison for 85 days until she agreed to reveal the source of her information on the matter.

The fact that Miller never wrote the story — which turned out to have been supplied to her by Libby — did not spare her from incarceration. "If you’re not zealous, you shouldn’t have the job," Fitzgerald once said of his own role in the investigation.

The White House has tried to fight back. Wilson and his wife, insiders like to point out, are no clear-cut heroes. In Washington circles, they say, Wilson was known to introduce Plame proudly at parties as "my CIA wife" and thus could be said to have broken her cover himself.

Unfortunately for the White House, there is no rule against whistleblowers being vain and self-important. Unlike the right, which has eagerly dissected Wilson’s character and motives, Fitzgerald has shown no interest in his alleged defects.

Early on in the inquiry, one White House ally also took a swipe at Fitzgerald himself: "He’s a vile, detestable, moralistic person with no heart and no conscience who believes he has been tapped by God to do very important things."

That line of attack, too, was dropped — and not only because Bush’s opponents say much the same thing about the president. Fitzgerald, the workaholic, Harvard-educated son of an Irish immigrant New York doorman, is transparently honest and for many Americans represents what is best about their upwardly mobile nation.

YET when Fitzgerald finally served his indictment last week there was no charge levelled for the actual crime of blowing Plame’s identity. Instead Libby was charged with lying. In short he was charged not with the crime but with the cover-up.

Fitzgerald made it plain that he believed that the charges were serious. "When citizens testify before grand juries they are required to tell the truth," he said. "In an investigation concerning the compromise of a CIA officer’s testimony, it is especially important."

For a moment it was as if the prosecutor rather than the president was standing up for the integrity of the nation and behaving as a patriot.

Moreover, Fitzgerald made it clear that his inquiry was not yet over. His indictment reveals that it was not Libby — but a mysterious "Official A" — who gave Plame’s name to Novak. Libby, it transpired, had passed it to three other journalists, including Miller who had failed to make use of the information in print.

Official A is widely believed to be Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser and a man widely known as "Bush’s brain". Experts now believe that Fitzgerald, having charged Libby, could push him to expose Rove’s role in exchange for a more lenient sentence. That, say some, could open the door to Cheney being charged.

If Libby comes to trial, Cheney is bound to have to take the stand as a witness. At the very least he will have to answer embarrassing questions about why he let Libby claim throughout the 22- month inquiry that he learnt of Plame’s identity only through reporters when Cheney himself had told Libby that Plame worked for the CIA.

Whatever the deal, Libby now finds himself, at 55, facing serious jail time.

The Democrats, meanwhile, can hardly believe their luck. "This is going to consume the rest of the Bush presidency," said Paul Begala, a former adviser to Bill Clinton.

Wilson has certainly got his own back for the perceived smears against him and his wife. "When an indictment is delivered to the front door of the White House, the office of the president is defiled," Wilson said on Friday.

For defenders of the president, the fact that it is only Libby and not Rove who was charged is important. In Kristol’s view, the charges are "a personal blow for Libby and embarrassing for the White House" but they are focused on only one person: "It’s not so bad for Bush. There was no conspiracy, which limits the damage."

Indeed, Washington conservatives were far less despondent this weekend than might have been expected. Buoyed up by their success in getting Miers to withdraw her nomination for the Supreme Court, many talk as if Bush now has a unprecedented opportunity to move forward.

"We have reached the bottom of the Bush bear market," said Kristol emphatically. Others note that there are still three years to go before the next election.

There are signs that the economy is improving and Ben Bernanke, Bush’s nominee for the chairman of the Federal Reserve last week, has been widely praised.

"What they’ve decided to do is have the world’s worst Thursday and Friday, see if they can get through the weekend and start all over again on Monday," said Byron York, a conservative commentator.

It could work if the public has a short-term memory

Cast list of the CIA scandal

DICK CHENEY

The combative Cheney saw Iraq as a serious threat after 9/11. Learning of documents purporting to show that Iraq was trying to buy uranium “yellow cake” —- a potential ingredient for nuclear weapons — from Niger, he ordered further investigations. He pressed CIA analysts sceptical about Iraq having WMD.

JOSEPH WILSON

Former US ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to authenticate the claims. He found no evidence and was dismayed when President Bush referred to the claims in a 2003 speech. To the fury of Cheney’s office, Wilson told journalists that the White House had “twisted” evidence on Iraq’s WMD.

VALERIE PLAME

Wilson’s wife, she was a covert CIA operative and WMD expert. According to allegations this week, her identity became known among senior White House figures after Wilson criticised the administration. Her CIA links were revealed by a right-wing newspaper columnist with White House connections. Whoever first “outed” her committed a serious offence.

PATRICK FITZGERALD

A tough prosecutor, Fitzgerald launched an investigation into the Plame leak. He examined the roles of senior White House staff, including Karl Rove, the political adviser known as “Bush’s brain”. Last week Fitzgerald left open the possibility of further investigations into Rove, but did not indict him.

LEWIS ‘SCOOTER’ LIBBY

Arch neoconservative Libby has resigned as Cheney’s chief of staff. Last week he was indicted by Fitzgerald. Although not directly accused of leaking Plame’s name, he was charged with obstruction of justice, lying to the FBI and committing perjury before a grand jury. Libby denies the charges.

The second term curse has hit every two-term president since the second world war. Recent victims include:

Bill Clinton On January 26, 1998, he denied on national television having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Found to have lied, he was impeached although the Senate did not convict him.

Ronald Reagan Cursed by the Iran-Contra affair, in which missiles were sold to Iran and Tehran’s money illegally funded Contras fighting Nicaragua’s socialist government.

Richard Nixon Brought down by Watergate scandal and on August 8, 1974, announced his resignation.

Lyndon Johnson Despite earnest pledges, in the first year of his second term American troop numbers in Vietnam rose from 15,000 to 200,000.

Dwight Eisenhower In 1960 he denied Gary Powers’s spy plane had been shot down in Soviet air space. After Powers was jailed in Russia, Eisenhower then denied he had authorised the mission.

October 29, 2005 at 11:01 PM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The army v private military companies

Economist.com | Articles by Subject | The army v private military companies

Oct 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Britain's best soldiers stand resolute against Mammon

IF SOLDIERING was for the money, the Special Air Service (SAS) and the Special Boat Service (SBS) would have disintegrated in recent years. Such has been the explosion in private military companies (PMCs) that they employ an estimated 30,000 in Iraq alone—and no government can match their fat salaries. A young SAS trooper earns about £2,000 ($3,500) a month; on the “circuit”, as soldiers call the private world, he could get £15,000. Why would he not?

For reasons both warm-hearted and cool-headed. First, for love of regiment and comrades, bonds that tend to be tightest in the most select units. Second, for the operational support, notably field medicine, and the security, including life assurance and pension, that come with the queen's paltry shilling.

Although there has been no haemorrhaging of special force (SF) fighters to the private sector, there has been enough of a trickle to cause official unease. A memo recently circulated in the Ministry of Defence detailed the loss of 24 SF senior non-commissioned officers to private companies in the past year. All had completed 22 years of service, and so were eligible for a full pension, and near the end of their careers. Yet there is now a shortage of hard-bitten veterans to fill training and other jobs earmarked for them, under a system for retaining them known as “continuance.”

America has responded to the problem by throwing cash at it, offering incentives of up to $150,000 to sign new contracts. The Ministry of Defence has found a cheaper ploy. It has spread the story of two British PMC employees, recently killed in Iraq, whose bodies were left rotting in the sun.

October 29, 2005 at 10:25 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Iran 'sponsors assassination' of Sunni pilots who bombed Teheran

Telegraph | News | Iran 'sponsors assassination' of Sunni pilots who bombed Teheran

By Toby Harnden in Suleimaniya, Aqeel Hussein in Baghdad and Colin Freeman
(Filed: 29/10/2005)

Iran is backing a Shia insurgent campaign of systematically assassinating former elite Iraqi air force pilots as part of a covert sectarian war against Sunnis, according to senior politicians in Baghdad.

The spate of murders of pilots has prompted an intervention from Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president, who has offered them safe haven in his native Kurdistan even though some of them were involved in dropping chemical weapons there.

Alleged Iranian involvement in the killings has heightened sectarian tensions in Iraq and could increase diplomatic pressure on Tehran, already accused by Tony Blair of involvement in killing British soldiers and facing isolation over its nuclear ambitions.

Former senior military officers, overwhelmingly from Saddam Hussein's favoured Sunni sect, are among the most alienated groups in Iraq and form a key element of the Arab nationalist section of the insurgency.

In an effort to woo these officers away from their alliance of convenience with Islamist foreign fighters, Mr Talabani, a Kurd, held a meeting with more than 1,000 in Baghdad.

Afterwards, according to coalition sources, several Kurdish officials entered the room and set briefcases down on tables. The briefcases were opened to reveal wads of new $100 bills. Each officer was then given $1,000 as compensation for the loss of his pension.

Mr Talabani told The Sunday Telegraph: "I openly called in a meeting I had with 1,000 Arab Sunni former high-ranking officers for them to come to Kurdistan and live in peace."

He said he was unsure who was behind the murders of the pilots but suggested they were reprisals for war crimes. "I don't know whether it is revenge for bombing civilians, for bombing Iran, for bombing Kurdistan."

An estimated 300,000 Kurds died in the Anfal campaign of 1988 in which chemical weapons were dropped on Kurdistan and mass executions carried out.

Among the atrocities was the massacre at Halabja, on the Iranian border, in which Iraqi pilots killed around 5,000 Kurds with poison gas bombs. But in an extraordinary expression of mercy, Mr Talabani has forgiven the perpetrators, though not those who planned the genocide.

"They [the pilots] were ordered by military commanders," he said. "During the time of Saddam, anyone who refused orders was killed. And not everyone was ready to take his aircraft and fly to London or some other place and ask to be a refugee because Saddam would have killed their family."

One of the pilots assassinated was Ismael Saeed Fares, 48, known as "the Hawk of Baghdad" because of his legendary exploits. A series of daring raids at the end of the eight-year war with Iran earned him a string of medals and the admiration of millions.

They also earned him 24 bullets in his chest, fired at point-blank range by a gunman who struck as he sat with a neighbour in the garden of his home in north Baghdad earlier this year. Scores of others are believed to have been murdered, although precise figures are not available. There is no suggestion that Mr Fares was involved in the anti-Kurdish atrocities of the Anfal campaign.

The organised manner in which the murders have been carried out, each with multiple shots fired from an AK47, has fuelled suspicions that elements within Iraq's Iranian-linked government are behind them.

"Many of my father's friends have already left Iraq for Jordan because they received written death threats warning them to leave," said Mr Fares' son, Wisam, 21.

Victim's families suspect their names and addresses have been taken from old records at Iraq's ministry of defence. They claim that the killings are the work of the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the two main Shi-ite parties that dominate Iraq's new government. Although the brigade has officially disarmed, it has recently been blamed for the killing of scores of Sunni clerics in revenge for massacres of Shias carried out by Sunni-backed insurgents.

In another sinister development in Iran, tens of thousands of ethnic Ahwazi Arabs, who populate the area bordering southern Iraq, are expected to be displaced to make way for an expanded military-industrial complex in an area known as the Arvand Free Zone. The zone will cover 60 square miles, including land around the border cities of Abadan and Khorramshahr.

The British Ahwazi Friendship Society, a British-Iranian human rights group, claims it will help Iran's Revolutionary Guard militias to influence Shia areas of Iraq.

A BAFS spokesman said: "Apart from being a serious human rights issue, any development that involves people being displaced by force obviously has a security element to it as they clearly do not want people being too near.

"The fact that they are deciding to put this huge complex right up against the border is significant. We think this is to enable them to train and send militias over the border."

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.

October 29, 2005 at 09:52 PM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Japan charter reform proposed

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Japan charter reform proposed

Japan's ruling party has proposed revising the country's constitution to formalise the role of its military.

The Liberal Democratic Party proposal, published on Friday, seeks to update the post-World War II constitution to reflect present realities.

If endorsed, it would formally legalise the activities of Japan's Self-Defence Force (SDF), at home and abroad.

The plan is likely to concern China and the Koreas, watchful of any signs of rising militarism in Japan.

Significantly, the proposed new constitution retains a pledge that Japan will never wage war as a means of settling international disputes.

What is different about the proposal is that it states that "military forces for self-defence shall be maintained".

Whilst Japan has had a 240,000-man Self-Defence Force (SDF) for nearly 50 years, the constitution still states that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained".

"We will never wage war again," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters on Friday, after the proposal was released.

"But we should make it clear that maintaining a force for self-defence is not against the constitution."

The proposal not only paves the way to formally acknowledging the SDF's legality, but also seeks to validate peacekeeping missions conducted overseas - Japan currently has several thousand non-combat troops in Iraq.

"The military forces for self-defence may engage in activities conducted in international co-operation to secure peace and security of the international community," according to the proposal.

Analysts say this clause may be interpreted as allowing the SDF to engage in collective self-defence - firing to protect its international allies - on these missions. It is currently forbidden by Japanese law from doing so.

The preamble to the proposed new constitution is also controversial. It adds that Japanese people should share a "love for the country" - a phrase that could potentially be interpreted as having nationalistic overtones.

Former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, who helped write the proposed constitution, told Reuters news agency he did not believe it presented a big change:

"I think it basically puts into print the present situation," he said.

Long process

For the proposal to come into law it needs to be passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament before winning a majority vote in a public referendum.

Recent opinion polls have suggested that while a majority of the Japanese public favour revising the constitution, two-thirds of them oppose any change to the part that refers to the use of force - Article 9.

Mr Miyazawa predicted that it would take 10 more years to revise the constitution.

October 29, 2005 at 04:05 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

October 28, 2005

Libby Faces 5 Charges, but Not for Disclosing Classified Data

Libby Faces 5 Charges, but Not for Disclosing Classified Data - New York Times

By DAVID STOUT
Published: October 28, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and one of the most powerful figures in the Bush administration, was formally accused today of lying and obstruction of justice in an inquiry into the unmasking of a covert C.I.A. officer.

A federal grand jury indicted Mr. Libby on one count of obstruction, two counts of perjury and two of making false statements in the course of an investigation that raised questions about the administration's rationale for going to war against Iraq, how it treats critics and political opponents and whether high White House officials shaded the truth. The charges are felonies. He was not charged directly with revealing the identity of a C.I.A. undercover operative.

In a statement issued by his lawyer, Joseph A. Tate, Mr. Libby said: "I am confident that at the end of this process I will be completely and totally exonerated," according to the Reuters news agency.

Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, was not charged today, but will remain under investigation, Mr. Rove's lawyer and people briefed officially about the case said. In a news conference this afternoon, the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, declined to talk about Mr. Rove but said that his investigation showed that Mr. Libby had told reporters about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, and that "he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly."

Mr. Libby resigned just before the indictment was handed up. The charges lodged today could spell professional ruin for the 55-year-old lawyer, unless he is acquitted or the charges are dismissed. If the case goes to trial, it would present the unusual prospect of reporters and high officials in the administration taking the witness stand in a criminal case.

Vice President Cheney said in a statement that he had accepted the resignation with "deep regret."

"In our system of government an accused person is presumed innocent until a contrary finding is made by a jury after an opportunity to answer the charges and a full airing of the facts," the statement said. "Mr. Libby is entitled to that opportunity."

Obstruction of justice carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, while the charges of perjury and making false statements have maximum terms of 5 years. Each of the five counts can also be punished with a $250,000 fine. Perjury is lying under oath, to a jury or other investigative body, while making false statements consists of lying to investigators while not under oath.

The indictment accuses Mr. Libby of lying to F.B.I. agents who interviewed him on Oct. 14 and Nov. 26, 2003; perjuring himself before the grand jury on March 5 and March 24, 2004, and engaging in obstruction of justice by impeding the grand jury's investigation into the leaking of Ms. Wilson's affiliation with the C.I.A. in the spring of 2003.

"When citizens testify before grand juries, they are required to tell the truth," Mr. Fitzgerald said in a statement. "Without the truth, our criminal justice system cannot serve our nations or its citizens. The requirement to tell the truth applies equally to all citizens, including persons who hold high positions in government."

The indictment constitutes a body blow to the White House, which has faced political problems on several fronts of late and where Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have been powerful presences - Mr. Rove as the president's alter ego and top political adviser, and Mr. Libby as an important adviser to one of the most powerful vice presidents in American history.

The development also capped a politically bruising week for Mr. Bush. Earlier in the week the 2,000th American death in Iraq was recorded, and on Thursday the president's nominee to the Supreme Court, Harriet E. Miers, withdrew her candidacy after being attacked by conservatives and having her legal credentials questioned by lawmakers of both parties.

"Special Counsel Fitzgerald's investigation and ongoing legal proceedings are serious," Mr. Bush said this afternoon. "And now the process moves into a new phase. In our system each individual is presumed innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial.

"While we're all saddened by today's news, we remain wholly focused on the many issues and opportunities facing this country. I got a job to do and so do the people that work in the White House. We've got a job to protect the American people and that's what we'll continue working hard to do. I look forward to working with Congress on policies to keep this economy moving. And pretty soon I'll be naming somebody to the Supreme Court."

Though Mr. Rove was spared indictment today, he remains under a cloud and may possibly be a political liability as Mr. Bush tries to push ahead with his second-term agenda. Mr. Rove will remain under the scrutiny of Mr. Fitzgerald, who said the "substantial work" of the grand jury was concluded, but added "it's not over." He said, "We could use any other grand jury or avail another grand jury. We couldn't use the grand jury that expired today."

Asked about the Mr. Cheney's role in case, Mr. Fitzgerald said "We make no allegations that the vice president conducted any criminal act." Months ago, President Bush said anyone in his administration who committed a crime in connection with the disclosure of the name of Ms. Wilson - also known as Valerie Plame - would not be a part of his administration.

More recently, the White House has retreated somewhat from that position, with Mr. Bush's chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, saying it would not be appropriate to comment in the course of the investigation.

Mr. McClellan said repeatedly at White House news briefings that both Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove had assured him they were not involved in unmasking Ms. Plame. So the charges lodged against Mr. Libby and the ongoing investigation of Mr. Rove offer abundant grist, at least for now, to critics who question the administration's commitment to truth and candor.

Democratic response was instantaneous. "These are very serious charges," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate minority leader. "They suggest that a senior White House aide put politics ahead of our national security and the rule of law. This case is bigger than the leak of highly classified information. It is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president."

Mr. Fitzgerald said people should not look to the indictment for resolution or vindication of their feelings about the war: "This indictment is not about the war," he said, "this indictment is not about the propriety of the war."

Questions about the extent of Mr. Libby's involvement in the affair intensified this week, when lawyers involved in the case said that Mr. Libby first learned about Ms. Wilson from Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, rather than from journalists several weeks after that date. Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, is a former diplomat who was highly critical of the Bush administration's case for going to war.

As recently as the last few days, F.B.I. agents questioned neighbors of the Wilsons in northwest Washington, seeking to determine whether it was commonly known that she was a C.I.A. officer, a person involved in the case said. Ms. Wilson sometimes has been known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame.

Mr. Wilson learned of the indictment while at his home today. "If a crime was committed, it was a crime committed against the country," he said. "It's not about whether I'm vindicated or whether Valerie is vindicated, because this crime was not committed against us."

The indictment of Mr. Libby is the latest chapter in an episode that came to light in the summer of 2003. At first, the matter seemed like a tempest in a political teapot, driven by spite and revolving around the issue of whether anyone had violated an obscure federal statute that makes it illegal, under some circumstances, to unmask an undercover agent.

But well before the charges were announced, the affair had mushroomed into something far more serious. It resulted in the jailing of a New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, who had resisted Mr. Fitzgerald's pressure to testify, and it provided regular grist for administration critics to assert that the Bush White House routinely bullied its political opponents.

On July 6, 2003, Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times recounting a trip to Niger at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency that left him highly skeptical of Bush administration assertions about Iraq's quest for nuclear material to make weapons.

Eight days after Mr. Wilson's article appeared, the columnist Robert D. Novak disclosed that Mr. Wilson's wife was a C.I.A. operative working on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, and that she had recommended her husband for the trip to Africa in 2002 to look into intelligence reports that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger that could be converted to weapons use. Mr. Novak wrote that he had learned of Ms. Wilson's identity from two senior administration officials. The columnist has refused to say whether he testified before the grand jury.

The indictment paints a portrait of Mr. Libby actively gathering information on Mr. Wilson and his wife in late May and June of 2003. It cites several meetings and conversations, including the following:

¶On May 29, Mr. Libby had a conversation with an undersecretary of state at which he asked for information on Mr. Wilson's trip to Niger.

¶On June 9, the C.I.A. faxed classified documents to Mr. Libby concerning the Niger trip, though they did not mention Mr. Wilson by name. Mr. Libby and one or more others in the vice president's office handwrote the names "Wilson" and "Joe Wilson" on the documents.

¶On June 11 or 12, the undersecretary of state told Mr. Libby that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. On June 11, Mr. Libby was informed by a senior C.I.A. officer that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the agency and was believed to be responsible for sending her husband on the trip.

¶On June 12, Mr. Cheney told Mr. Libby that Mr. Wilson's wife worked in the C.I.A.'s Counterproliferation Division. Mr. Libby understood that Mr. Cheney had found this out from the C.I.A.

¶On June 23, Mr. Libby met with Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, criticizing "selective leaking" by the C.I.A. In discussing Mr. Wilson's trip with Ms. Miller, Mr. Libby informed her that Mr. Wilson's wife might work at a C.I.A. bureau.

Mr. Fitzgerald said at his news conference that Mr. Libby learned of Mr. Wilson's wife and her role in her husband's trip to Niger from at least four people in the government in June of 2003.

October 28, 2005 at 05:43 PM in CIA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

October 27, 2005

Islamic Jihad steps out from Hamas shadow

Islamic Jihad steps out from Hamas shadow | csmonitor.com

Wednesday's attack in Israel underscores militia's commitment to radical path.
By Joshua Mitnick | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
TEL AVIV – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised Thursday a "broad and nonstop" retaliation a day after an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber set off an explosion killing at least five people and wounding dozens in the northern Israeli city of Hadera.

The attack highlighted how the small, hardened militia of Islamic fundamentalists has stepped to the forefront as the leading spoiler of a nine-month-old calm in violence between Israel and the Palestinians.

Of the four suicide attacks to strike inside Israeli cities this year, Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for the deadliest pair - Wednesday's explosion in an open-air market and the February bombing of a Tel Aviv nightclub that killed five.

The Damascus-headquartered radicals have stepped out of the shadow of the Islamic militant group Hamas, which has eased up a five-year bombing campaign for fear of sparking an escalation with Israel that would scuttle their campaign for Palestinian parliament.

That vote has sown at least a temporary division among gunmen who seek to gain influence at the ballot box and those who have chosen to remain outside of politics. The Associated Press reported that leading Islamic Jihad members have said privately their group continues to carry out attacks because it wants to be seen as less willing to compromise than Hamas.

"The calm has isolated not only Islamic Jihad, but all the philosophies of radicalism and violence," says Mohammed Dejani, a political science professor at Jerusalem's Al-Quds University. "They are hoping that Israel will respond so we'll return to square one."

Blaming the Palestinian Authority (PA) for not helping prevent the bombing, Mr. Sharon said Israel would act on its own to prevent terrorist attacks. An Israeli military spokesperson said the retaliation could include the first incursion into the Gaza Strip after Israel withdrew last month.

"The Palestinian Authority hasn't taken any serious step in the struggle against terrorism," Sharon said. "We aren't willing in any way for a continuation of terrorist acts, so our actions will be broad and nonstop until we bring about a cessation of terrorism."

A marginal player in Palestinian political and social life, Islamic Jihad's inspiration and orders mainly come from beyond the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli experts and officials say. The group's commanders are based in Syria while its ideology is inspired by Iran's fundamentalist regime.

While Hamas built up a social welfare organization alongside its armed wing to offer itself as political alternative to the ruling Fatah party, Islamic Jihad has remained focused on its military operations and isn't expected to run in the legislative election scheduled for January.

"Hamas has a much wider world view. Their goal is to have Islam ruling all echelons of life,'' says Mordechai Kedar, a former military intelligence officer and a research associate at Bar-Ilan University's Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. "The Islamic Jihad doesn't bother with all those issues of social work, welfare, clinics, and food. They only care about the jihad, and everything else will be dealt with afterward."

Founded in Egypt in the 1970s, Palestinian Islamic Jihad was started as a radical splinter from the Muslim Brotherhood, the forerunner of Hamas. During the first Palestinian uprising a decade later, their leadership was exiled to Lebanon.

The group has a reputation for being small and highly secretive, making it less prone to infiltration by Israeli intelligence. It is believed to have been responsible for more than 40 attacks that have killed more than 100 Israelis, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Earlier this year the group joined a PA-brokered pact among militants to observe a tahadiyeh, Arabic for a state of calm, bowing to public sentiment that favored President Mahmoud Abbas's effort to restart peace talks with Israel.

But the group has made exceptions in order to retaliate against Israel's military offensives. The Israeli army's killing earlier this week of Islamic Jihad chief Louay Saadi in Tulkarem offered the militia a convenient trigger to fire rockets from Gaza into Israel and to launch the Hadera bombing, which wounded dozens.

The online edition of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, Ynet, quoted an anonymous Islamic Jihad spokesperson from the northern West Bank who called the bombing a "natural" response to the killing of Mr. Saadi.

The Wednesday bombing was an affront to Mr. Abbas, who told the Palestinian legislature just hours earlier that armed groups who invite Israeli retaliation by ordering attacks were injuring the Palestinian people and the prospects for statehood.

Israeli spokespeople are using the bombing to spotlight the link between Palestinian militant groups and Iran. In a surprisingly serendipitous remark, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday praised Palestinian militants and expressed hope that their activities would help "wipe Israel from the map."

Shmuel Bar, a Middle East expert at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Institute, says Islamic Jihad is used by Syria and the Iranians as a proxy. "From the point of view of the Iranians and the Syrians, to drag Israel into a military conflict in Gaza would take the heat off the Syrian issue," he said. Islamic Jihad "doesn't have very much to lose domestically."

October 27, 2005 at 05:00 PM in Middle East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Iran's Nuclear Program: Lessons from the South African Model

Iran's Nuclear Program

Amir Frayman
ICT Researcher

The Iranian Threat
Over the past several years the international community has been faced with the issue of Iran's development of nuclear capabilities. Many see Iranian nuclear weapons as a threat to the world's peace and security, and as an undermining factor to the fragile strategic balance in the Middle East.

Despite Iran’s stated purpose for its nuclear program – civilian power generation – its persistent attempts to acquire nuclear weapons and to develop the capability to launch long range ballistic missiles continually belie its official stand. Moreover, coupled with its extreme religious ideology and use of violence, its leaders’ public declarations about conducting a holy war (a Jihad) against the United States – the big Satan, and Israel – the small Satan, and its continuing support of terrorist organizations in the Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian theatres, its nuclear overtures are increasingly the main factors in the tension between Iran and the international community.

Iran's nuclear program began in 1970 when it ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Since that time its nuclear facilities have supposedly been under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). There is evidence, however (some from IAEA’s own reports), that despite the IAEA’s alleged scrutiny Iran has repeatedly tried to develop capabilities to enrich uranium and to separate plutonium, essential for building nuclear devices. Additional reports recently published by the IAEA revealed that Iran is not willing to fulfill the NPT’s demands, and that it has tried to obtain centrifuges that carry out the enrichment process, allegations that United States and Israeli intelligence agencies have been making for several years. In the past ten years Iran has done everything within its power to deceive the international community and to conceal its build up of nuclear weapons to gain more time to achieve operational capabilities. Nevertheless, it is known that Iran's nuclear infrastructure is comprised of scores of secret sites spread throughout a vast territory, which are not under any international supervision, and some of which were built within military installations deep underground to protect them from the possibility of aerial attack.

Thus Iran’s attempts to build nuclear bombs are tangible, and without international intervention, it seems that nothing will stop it from realizing its ambition. Furthermore, Iran's support of terrorist organizations operating in different areas of the Middle East, Africa and Asia increases the fear that once Iran acquires nuclear weapons, they could be transferred to these organizations. Therefore, it is in the international community's best interest to do whatever it can to prevent a country with radical ideology and aspirations from putting its hands on the most destructive weapon ever built by man. At the moment there is consensus among the main actors in the international system – the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – regarding the level of threat posed by Iran, were it to acquire nuclear weapons. It seems that the international community is reluctant, however, to join forces and to act firmly against Iran’s nuclear program.

During the last meeting held in Texas between US President George W. Bush and the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon in April 2005, the latter asked President Bush to consider turning to the UN Security Council to increase the international pressure on Iran, through the imposition of comprehensive sanctions against it. At the meeting, Prime Minister Sharon presented Israeli intelligence reports indicating that Iran is only a few months away from the “point of no return” in its development of military nuclear capabilities, and argued that based on this information it was crucial to act quickly and decisively to thwart the Iranian nuclear weapons program. President Bush rejected the Israeli assessments and said that according to United States intelligence evaluations, Iran is still years away from obtaining nuclear capability and that the United States has no intention to attack Iran as long as diplomatic efforts are still ongoing. Russian President, Vladimir Putin has similarly acknowledged the scope of the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, noting that it could touch on Russia’s security interests. Nonetheless, in a statement he made during his visit to Israel at the end of April 2005, President Putin confirmed that the nuclear cooperation between Iran and Russia would continue.

It is apparent therefore, that the actions being taken against Iran will not deviate from diplomatic boundaries and international sanctions. This kind of policy, combining international isolation, Security Council resolutions and economic and military sanctions can, at best, slow down Iran’s nuclear program, but at worst, it can also achieve the exact opposite. It can push Iran further to enhance its efforts to develop a nuclear arsenal.
The South African Model
A policy comprised of boycotts and international expulsion together with comprehensive sanctions, had already been attempted in the past, in a different context – against the Republic of South Africa and its apartheid regime – and one of its severe consequences was to encourage South Africa to develop nuclear bombs.

The international campaign against the apartheid regime began when the world's opposition to the racist policy against the black majority reached its peak at the beginning of the 1970’s. The international concerns intensified after the riots in Soweto district in June 1976, when thousands of black students staged a demonstration against the racist policy of the apartheid regime, which resulted in the death of 23 blacks by the police forces. The campaign against South Africa consisted of several elements. In a series of UN Security Council resolutions, diplomatic isolation was imposed on South Africa. In addition, the Organization of African Unity and other international organizations decided to suspend South Africa’s membership.

For the diplomatic isolation to be effective, the UN also imposed economic and cultural sanctions on South Africa, prohibiting any type of commercial, cultural, sports and academic relations. Furthermore, an embargo on the supply of oil and petroleum products and a mandatory embargo on the provision of arms, technological knowledge and spare parts were also imposed.

The final step, which ultimately completed the international expulsion of South Africa and marked its denunciation from the international community, was nuclear isolation. Until the mid 1970’s, South Africa’s nuclear program, which was facilitated by American technology and fuel to run the nuclear reactors, was designated for civilian purposes only. When the United States recognized apartheid as a threat to the region’s stability, it decided to terminate its nuclear cooperation with South Africa. South Africa's refusal to sign the NPT, which it viewed as a form of political blackmail, led to international consensus that South Africa's nuclear program needed to be curbed at any cost, as stipulated by the NPT, and its membership in the IAEA was suspended.

These international actions, although not aimed directly against South Africa’s nuclear program, but rather, derived from the desire to put an end to the racist regime, led South African leaders to perceive that “the noose was tightening around their necks.” This perception by South Africa's leaders, namely, of a total onslaught by the international community, albeit through non-violent means, brought on a sense of fear for South Africa’s national security. It was that perception, and, paradoxically, the international expulsion, boycotts, mandatory UN sanctions and regional and intra-state security deterioration, which consequently accelerated South Africa’s nuclear program and led to its development of nuclear devices.

In light of South Africa's ostracization and its international and regional status, its leaders increasingly grew to espouse a policy of self-determination, based on a perception that the nation could only trust itself and that South Africa's national security and sovereignty must not be dependent on other countries. Hence, the apartheid regime viewed the nuclear program as the basis for guaranteeing South Africa's security and safeguarding the apartheid regime. Therefore, the South African government ordered the development of six nuclear bombs as part of a nuclear deterrence policy. The main goal of this policy was to prevent intervention of outside factors (states or international organizations) in South Africa's internal affairs. The government’s position was that nuclear weapons would be used only in cases of clear and present danger to South Africa's national security or its regime, and only when no other option existed.

From this moment on, substantial percentage of South Africa's resources was invested in accelerating its development of nuclear weapons. A crucial component in its nuclear program was the ability to form a web of surreptitious ties with other countries that were willing and able to supply South Africa with essential products and help augment its nuclear program and military power. Secret nuclear cooperation was established with countries willing to risk breaching the mandatory international sanctions. With the help of disobedient states, such as Israel, South Africa began nuclear testing by the beginning of the 1980's and in 1982 it completed its first nuclear bomb. This moment was of utmost importance for South Africa – it perceived its deployment of a nuclear device as guaranteeing its sovereignty and the survival of the apartheid regime, and it instilled the notion that henceforth, the probability of an outside threat to the regime’s survival was extremely low.

Ten years later, the Republic of South Africa made history in the nuclear era when its government voluntarily decided to stop the production of nuclear bombs and dismantle the country's nuclear arsenal. It is essential to understand, however, that the reason for the dismantling of the nuclear bombs was fundamentally internal, and not directly due to its international isolation. Specifically, the decision to dismantle came in anticipation of the expected changes in government and the transfer of power to Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress; the concern that black leaders would possess nuclear bombs; the impending democratic reforms, and the desire to regain South Africa's place in the international community. South Africa's president at the time, F. W. De Klerk recognized that his country’s nuclear capability and attendant deterrence policy appeared needless and possibly posed an obstacle to the country's return to the international arena. Nuclear disarmament symbolized South Africa's shift from a nuclear power to a state committed to international conventions, and one that undertakes decisive efforts to curb the development and distribution of weapons of mass destruction, thus gaining a place of honor among the nations of the world.
Iran's Nuclear Program vs. South Africa's Nuclear Program
When comparing Iran's and South Africa's nuclear programs, it is possible to identify a number of common denominators that could assist in understanding why Iran is capable of developing nuclear weapons and what might motivate it to do so. First, it is clear that both countries feared international intervention in their internal affairs. Furthermore, diplomatic isolation and economic and military sanctions could undoubtedly be considered boosting factors for the relevance of their nuclear programs. In addition, in both countries the human resources involved in the different aspects of developing nuclear weapons were extremely skilled and highly trained. A large portion of the scientists, engineers and technicians working in both countries’ nuclear programs gained their professional education in western countries or in countries with advanced nuclear capabilities – in South Africa’s case it was the United States, United Kingdom and Israel, and in Iran’s case it was Russia, China, Pakistan, North Korea, to a degree some of the EU countries and to a lesser degree even the United States. Both South Africa and Iran maintained a modern military industry employing sophisticated technologies in the developing and manufacturing stages. Despite their skilled manpower and advanced technologies, both countries abstained from setting ambitious goals for their nuclear industry and limited themselves to reachable objectives. This is the reason for the simple design and specifications of South Africa's and Iran's nuclear devices and for the relatively low development costs. Finally, despite the enormous efforts made by the international community to supervise South Africa's and Iran's nuclear facilities, both countries successfully deceived western intelligence agencies and established a clandestine network that provided the necessary equipment and knowledge to develop nuclear capability.

When investigating Iran's recent nuclear program, it is impossible not to notice its resemblance to the South African model. It is incumbent, therefore, on the international community to learn the lessons derived from the South African model, and to do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran's development of nuclear weapons. Clinging to the prevailing international policy, led by the United States and the EU, it is foreseeable that the world will eventually find itself dealing with Iran in an entirely different field with a completely different set of rules, including, most significantly, Iran’s possession of nuclear capability.

Although there is considerable resemblance between Iran's and South Africa's nuclear programs, one should bear in mind a crucial distinction. It is important to mention that South Africa's nuclear program was conducted during, and to some extent because of, the Cold War and the fear of Soviet expansion into sub-equatorial Africa. This fear became even more germane after communist movements backed by the Soviet Union took control of Angola and Mozambique and over sixty five thousand Cuban and East German troops entered Angola. Because of the regional volatility, the two super-powers chose not to be directly involved in the region, but to use proxies to represent their interests instead, fearing that direct intervention might escalate the conflict into a global one. South Africa took advantage of the Super-powers' and the rest of the world's passiveness, and continued to develop its nuclear weapons. Nowadays, when the only Super-power left in the international system has declared a War on Terror and designated Iran as part of the Axis of Evil, there is a higher probability that the international community would be willing to take a less passive approach against Iran and would not tolerate its dilatory and concealment tactics.

Another aspect that should be considered by an international community intent on thwarting Iran’s nuclear program is the enormous power and public support held by the radical and conservative groups headed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei, as was recently demonstrated when his protégé, the hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected as the new President of Iran. Every attempt made by the former President Ali Mohammad Khatami to resuscitate Iran’s failing economy, to instigate liberal reforms and to improve Iran’s relations with the Arab and western worlds, has encountered massive resistance, popular street demonstrations and use of force by the Iranian "Hard-Liners.". Iran's nuclear program is perceived by many, both in the leadership and in the public, as the ultimate safeguard to the regime’s sovereignty. Therefore, to maintain the government’s tenuous stability, former President Khatami has been extremely cautious with regard to Iran’s nuclear program, avoiding confrontations when possible with the radicals who are pressuring for the acquisition of nuclear capability. One of the most vocal and enthusiastic advocates of Iran's nuclear program is Dr. Hassan Rowhani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, who has a strong relationship with Khamenei. Dr. Rowhani, who also served as the chief nuclear negotiator, has repeatedly stated that Iran's nuclear program is fundamental to the national interest, and that any military attack aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities would motivate it to accelerate its nuclear program. It seems very unlikely that internal factors would convince Iranian leaders to relinquish their nuclear aspirations, as was the case in the South African model. Iran has gone too far and invested too much in its nuclear program to cave in now. The world should understand this and adopt a more aggressive approach.
What is the international community doing to stop Iran’s Nuclear Program?

Several countries are trying to impose international pressure on Iran, in the hope of prompting a discussion of Iran’s nuclear program at the UN Security Council. There is a danger, however, that this strategy may backfire. First, this pressure could prove inefficient when bringing this issue to the Security Council, as it might result in Russia or China using their right to veto any resolution against Iran. At the same time, the pressure could drive Iran to accelerate further its nuclear program because it would perceive such pressure as tightening the noose around its neck. One of the lessons that should be learned from the international sanctions imposed on South Africa is that in that situation countries were willing to violate the sanctions and to ignore the Security Council's resolutions, to preserve their commercial and military relations with South Africa. Consequently, it took almost ten years for the sanctions imposed on South Africa to have the desired impact of forcing a change in that government’s racist policy. Even the international sanctions inflicted upon Iraq by the Security Council in 1990 proved toothless, since only few countries actually abided by them. The time factor is critical for the international community’s struggle against Iran, since Iran’s rapid development of its nuclear capabilities does not accord the international community the privilege to wait ten years – nor five years – for the effect of the sanctions, if imposed, to achieve the desired outcome.

Already today, Iran faces some limitations cast on it by the UN, the IAEA and others. The split within the international community, however, regarding the policy that should be adopted to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons enables Iran to continue its nuclear aspirations and even to garner the support of Russia, North Korea, Pakistan, China, Germany and other countries. The declared policy of the "EU Three" – Germany, France and the UK – known also as the "Critical Dialogue", aims to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear program by deepening further the ties of cooperation with western countries and by offering incentives to Iran in various fields, in the hope that strengthened diplomatic and economic ties will convince Iran to give up its nuclear program. The United States' policy led by President Bush, on the other hand, is sterner and tends to favour UN sanctions as a first but necessary step, although the US constantly states that it will not attack Iran, but rather that it will allow the "EU Three" to utilize existing diplomatic channels to their fullest.

The United States' military campaigns against two of Iran’s neighboring countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the declaration made by President Bush that Iran is considered one of the Axis of Evil countries, have undoubtedly resulted in Iran’s decision not to yield to the international pressure and in the strengthening of the deterrence factions within its leadership. For example, the recent arms deal signed between United States and Israel to supply one hundred GBU-28 “Bunker Blaster” bombs to Israel received massive media coverage in Iran and increased speculation regarding a military attack by Israel. Moreover, it is likely that Iran, having observed the United States' and the international community's lack of readiness and unwillingness to act aggressively against North Korea, which recently publicized its nuclear weapon capabilities, feels emboldened to continue with its weapons drive. On the other hand, United States leaders were more than ready to invade Iraq and to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, knowing that Iraq did not have ready-to-use nuclear weapons. Therefore, in the eyes of the Iranian leaders, nuclear capability is an imperative element necessary to deter the international community, led by the United States, from taking military actions against Iran.

What Should be Done?
If the world does not want to find itself dealing with an Iran possessing nuclear weapons, as was the case with South Africa, lessons from the South African model must be learned, particularly in light of the risk that current international efforts aimed to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear capability may prove counterproductive.

Boycotts, isolation and sanctions are important steps but would not suffice to stop Iran’s nuclear program. On one hand, the international community in general, and the EU in particular, must understand that only forceful policy combined with aggressive action could prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear capability. The Iranian regime on the other hand, ought to understand that the days when countries were willing to turn a blind eye towards Iran's continuing support of terrorist organizations, its involvement in Lebanon's internal affairs, its funding of Hizballah, and its public threats against the United States and Israel, are over. The world must convey an austere and decisive message aimed to prevent Iran from obtaining the capability to attack severely another country, as it has repeatedly threatened to do on previous occasions.

Every action that would be concluded in the diplomatic channels and the economic and military sanctions might be ineffective and even dangerous. Until the sanctions and the deliberations would be finalized, Iran would probably have at least one nuclear bomb ready for deployment, making it far more dangerous for the international community to act with force against Iran. The international community must be willing to take a risk and to use aerial forces launching cruise missile and "smart bombs" against strategic targets in Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Iran’s leaders must be convinced that the threat they face now is different from any other threat that they have ever previously confronted. They must be made fully aware of the consequences of their nuclear ambitions and forced to bear in mind that the international community would do whatever is in its power to foil Iran's nuclear program.

The international community should present Iran with a plan composed of series of incremental steps and a fixed timetable, premised on the understanding that Iran must give up its nuclear program, or face an aggressive international reaction. These incremental steps would allow the international community to gain the necessary international legitimacy essential for any military action against Iran, should it not comply with the world's demands. The first step should be taken by the IAEA's Board of Governors in their next meeting in September 2005. If Iran would not agree to give free access to IAEA's inspectors, to show more transparency and to reveal all its nuclear facilities, and if the negotiations between the "EU Three" and Iran would fail, the Board of Governors must agree to take this matter immediately to the UN Security Council. The second step should include a Security Council resolution imposing limited sanctions on Iran and a defined time schedule to "correct" the situation in a face-saving manner. A fixed timetable is crucial at this point, because Iran had showed in the past its ability to deceive the international community by moving some of its nuclear installations to secret places. The nature of these sanctions would focus on technological, military and commercial cooperation as well as on diplomatic relations, and in ninety days the Security Council would reconvene to review the situation. If Iran would continue to develop nuclear weapons and would not obey the Security Council's resolution, total isolation should be forced on Iran and it would be defined as a pariah state. The United States and EU would supervise the implementation of this isolation, and if there would be evidence that Iran's nuclear program didn't come to a full stop, the international community, led by the United States, would have the permission to use any means necessary to terminate the dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions, including massive missile strike and aerial bombardment.

Nowadays, the general opinion among the radical and conservative circles in Iran is that nuclear weapons are the sole element that can guarantee Iran's survival and the continuation of its Islamic regime. The international steps outlined above should convey a clear message to the Iranian government that it would be wise to understand that the likely consequence that it faces if it continues with its nuclear ambitions is the risk of an attack against those nuclear installations and probably the collapse of the Islamic regime. To that end, the international community must present to Iran’s leaders clearly and unequivocally the economic and diplomatic benefits that Iran would gain from relinquishing its nuclear program, including international assistance, re-establishment of commercial relations with the West and the opening of Iran's markets to foreign investments. Taking a page from the South African model, only if the light at the end of the tunnel is shown to Iran, can rationality overcome radicalism and the Iranian government may begin to accord greater value to the other option, namely, economic vitality at the cost of renouncing its nuclear program. Once Iran’s leaders would be certain that the international community is determined to act and to deploy all the necessary means against it, they would also realize that the development of nuclear weapons would also risk the end of the Islamic regime.

Amir Frayman is a Researcher and Assistant to Executive Director at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. He holds a B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) in Government, Diplomacy and Strategy from the Lauder School of Government at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, and he is currently pursuing his Master’s degree in International Relations at the London School of Economics & Political Science. He served as a Research Assistant to late Prof. Ehud Sprinzak, Prof. Galia Golan and Dr. Boaz Ganor.

October 27, 2005 at 03:13 PM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Analysis: Behind the Palestinian attack

United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - Analysis: Behind the Palestinian attack

By JOSHUA BRILLIANT
UPI Israel Correspondent

JERUSALEM, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- Just a few hours passed from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' emphatic public demand for an end to attacks on Israel and the moment 21-year-old Hassan Muhammad Abu Zeid detonated his powerful charge at a falafel stand in Hadera, halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The blast killed four Jews who were between the ages of 53 and 68, a 48-year-old Israeli Arab and the bomber, and wounded more than 30 others.

"I am not here to defend the Israelis," Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, told the Legislative Council members. "It is so easy for someone to say the occupation is the cause of problem but we should not give them the excuse to attack us," he stressed.

Those who take the law into their owns hands "should be confronted with an iron first," he warned in an addressed broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV.

The Islamic Jihad assumed responsibility for the Hadera attack. Khaled Al-Batsh, one of its leaders, told the Palestinian Ramatan news agency the bombing was "a natural retaliation to the Israeli ongoing violations of truce, including the assassination of Loai al-Sa'di and Mohammed Sheikh Khalil."

The two were killed in a gun battle in Tul Karem earlier this week.

The Islamic Jihad's explanations need not be taken at face value. The group was behind this year's suicide bombings in Tel Aviv and Netania, the killing of a settler in the West Bank, and the planning of more attacks. Eleven Israelis were killed in the earlier attacks.

It accepted the intra-Palestinian agreement to maintain quiet this year, but Israeli specialists maintained its acceptance was limited and it looked for excuses to strike.

Unlike Hamas that has a social agenda, that wants to enter politics and that does not insist Israel be liquidated now -- something that opens the door for understandings -- the Islamic Jihad's raison d'etre is the fight against Israel and the aim to eradicate it. Not just push it out of the occupied West Bank, but kick it out of the entire land.

In its view, "there can be no foreign sovereignty in an area that Islam had ruled," noted Yohanan Tzoreff, a senior research fellow at the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism.

Islamic Jihad gained some popularity during the intifada, but Palestinian and Israeli experts maintain it remained small. According to Israeli military and foreign assessments, its armed wing, the al-Quds Brigades, has a "few hundred" members.

It is not yet clear how the bomber reached Hadera since Israel has an effective security barrier there. He might have crossed in the Jerusalem area, where the barrier is not complete, or gone with an Israeli who smuggled him through one of the many crossings that Israeli soldiers maintain. Security checks in those crossings are usually cursory.

The attack underlines also the Palestinian Authority's weakness.

Abu Mazen genuinely opposes terror. He criticized the armed struggle even when it was not popular to say so. However, the Palestinian government has failed to enforce law and order. His hopes for "one gun" in the Palestinian Authority are, so far, just dreams.

According to a recent public opinion poll by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 77 percent of the public support continuation of the cease-fire. The vast majority also wants an end to anarchy. Still, the Palestinian security services have failed to sustain that.

Prime Minister Ahmad Qureia readily admitted the shortcomings in Wednesday's address to the Legislative Council. "I tell you in all honesty that no one side alone can control the security situation," he said.

The security services' shortcomings are not an excuse the Israelis would accept and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government has authorized a series of military measures from airstrikes to artillery shelling of areas from which Qassam rockets have been launched. Tanks were positioned near the Gaza Strip, only Palestinians with special humanitarian needs would be allowed into Israel, and more targeted killings are to be expected.

"The Palestinian Authority takes no steps ... to fight terror so we decided that we shall conduct the struggle against terror," Sharon declared Thursday.

"Our activity will be broad, without letup until we bring terror to an end," he added.

Unless the Palestinian Authority takes real, serious action against terror, "there will be no political progress ... I shall not meet Abu Mazen and the Palestinians will lose all their national dreams," he stated.

The danger of deterioration is clearly there. Israeli attacks would probably prompt Palestinian "retaliations." Targeted killings have generated a Palestinian sense of solidarity and a desire for revenge, noted Tzoreff. Very often innocent people have been hurt in those attacks. Closing the Gaza Strip and West Bank towns worsens people's economic conditions that are already awful with wide spread unemployment.

Palestinian parliamentary elections are scheduled for Jan. 25 and all this could hurt the Fatah Party. As it is 84 percent of the Palestinians believe Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was a victory for the resistance to the occupation. Most of them credit Hamas. Clearly it was not a result of Abu Mazen's negotiating skills. The Israeli withdrawal was unilateral, and Palestinians despairing of any deal with Israel might turn to Hamas.

On the other hand, if conducted wisely, if Israel convinces the people it is only after the militants trying to poison any deal, its strikes might produce the desired results.

Since the Islamic Jihad is adamant on liquidating Israel, there is no room for a compromise with it. Fighting will continue until Israel, or the Palestinians, put an end to that movement.

The Islamic Jihad does not have a widespread popular following. If it is crushed, if its leaders are killed or jailed and quiet is restored, even temporarily, Abu Mazen might have a chance to exercise his strategy and prove to his people there is more to gain more by following him.

October 27, 2005 at 02:04 PM in Middle East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Iran lets senior al Qaeda suspects roam free: report

Yard officer admits 'shoot to kill' error

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

By Jenny Booth and agencies

Scotland Yard’s so-called "shoot to kill to protect" tactic to deal with suicide bombers should have been disclosed to the public much earlier, a senior officer said today.

Assistant Commissioner Stephen House was outlining changes to the force's anti-terror strategy at a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), which oversees the work of the Met.

The tactic involves police marksmen shooting a suspected suicide bomber in the head with no warning to stop them from detonating their device. It was developed as part of Operation Kratos, the Yard’s strategy to counter suicide terrorists.

The public became fully aware of the tactic's existence only after it was controversially put into practice on July 22 at Stockwell tube station, when armed police officers shot Jean Charles de Menezes seven times in the head. The 27-year-old Brazilian electrician was afterwards found to have no connection with terrorism.

The tactic has been heavily criticised by the de Menezes family, and as a result was being debated at today's MPA meeting. Mr House told the authority that the British public should have been told much earlier, as Kratos was being developed.

"I take on board the criticism that this should have been public knowledge beforehand," said Mr House, who has been overseeing an inquiry to learn the lessons from the disastrous Stockwell operation.

"There is no criticism of anyone involved in the development of Operation Kratos. But now that it has been called into action as a result of the developments, the public must be aware of what's going on."

Earlier, Sir Ian Blair, the Met Commissioner, reminded the meeting that Kratos was developed in response to a new and unprecedented threat, from "circumstances that had never before occurred in the western world, with failed suicide bombers on the loose".

Mr House said that as a result of the shooting of Mr de Menezes, a number of changes had been made.

"We have now moved the responsibility for Operation Kratos from the specialist operations under Andy Hayman, to central operations under myself," he told the authority.

"The sole reason is to allow it to be more openly available. Specialist and anti-terror operations are necessarily surrounded by a certain secrecy."

Three new tactics had been developed for use in combating suicide terror threats, code-named Andromeda, Beach and Clydesdale, he said. "These tactics were not in use in July, they have been developed as a result of that."

The vocabulary used by officers commanding different sections of the anti-terror response had been standardised, so that everyone knew what the others were talking about, he said. Staff had been trained in the new tactics and vocabulary.

The Met says that its tactic does not amount to a "shoot to kill" policy, and that it is consistent with laws governing the use of "reasonable force". Sir Ian has previously described it as the "least worst option" for dealing with suicide bombers.

Today's report says: "It is essential that the Metropolitan Police have tactics available for the defence and protection of officers and the public in proximity to the threat.

"This is not a ‘shoot to kill’ policy. The tactics are wholly consistent with Section 3 Criminal Law Act, which says ‘A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, or in the effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or of persons unlawfully at large’.

"This is well articulated in the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) Manual of Guidance on Police Use of Firearms.

"It should be noted that there is no legal requirement for an officer to give a verbal challenge before firing and the Acpo Police Use of Firearms manual acknowledges that there are occasions when it is not appropriate or practical to do so."

The death of Mr de Menezes is the subject of an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).

Despite the tragedy, opinion polls have shown that most people are in favour of the use of deadly force against suicide bombers.

This week Mr House said the "shoot to the head" tactic could be used in other "extreme" scenarios where someone was on the brink of being murdered.

He said it could potentially be used in a kidnapping or stalking case where the victim had a gun pointed at their heads and the suspect was threatening to kill.

The July 7 bombings in London, which killed 52 innocent people, were the first ever suicide attacks on British soil.

Since the second wave of attempted bomb attacks which failed on July 21, the Yard estimates it has had more than 1,000 reports from the public of suspected suicide bombers. Armed response officers were sent out six times and the Kratos operations team alerted 11 times. All the incidents were resolved safely.

October 27, 2005 at 12:53 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Iran leader's comments condemned

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran leader's comments condemned

There has been widespread condemnation of a call by the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for Israel to be "wiped off the map".

The UK, France, Spain and Canada are summoning Iranian diplomats to demand an explanation for the remark.

The US said the comment highlighted concerns about Iran's nuclear programme, which Washington suspects is being used to develop weapons.

Iran says its programme is for peaceful purposes only.

Mr Ahmadinejad made his comments at a conference in Tehran entitled The World without Zionism, the official Irna news agency reported.

Western governments are bound to see it as further proof that Iran's hardline president is disinclined to curb his country's controversial nuclear programme, the BBC's diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall says.

They may hope that a co-ordinated diplomatic protest will help step up the pressure, she says.

An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report last month said questions about Iran's nuclear programme remained unanswered, despite an intensive investigation.

The UK, France, Germany and the US are pressing Iran to provide more access to its nuclear plans.

'Sickening'

"If these comments are true, they are unacceptable. I condemn them with the greatest firmness," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said.

A British Foreign Office described the comments as "deeply disturbing and sickening".

"We have seen in Israel today the horrible reality of the violence he (Mr Ahmadinejad) is praising," a FO spokesman said, referring to a Palestinian suicide attack on Wednesday in the Israeli town of Hadera that killed five people and injured up to 30 others.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Mr Ahmadinejad's opinion "just reconfirms what we have been saying about the regime in Iran. It underscores the concerns we have about Iran's nuclear operations."

Spain, Canada and Germany also condemned Mr Ahmadihejad's comments.

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom his country regarded Iran as "a clear and present danger".

Mr Shalom said it was clear that Iran was trying to develop a programme to make nuclear weapons.

'World oppressor'

Mr Ahmadinejad told some 3,000 students in Tehran that Israel's establishment was "a move by the world oppressor (the West) against the Islamic world".

Referring to Iran's late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mr Ahmadinejad said: "As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

Correspondents say this was the first time in years that such a high-ranking Iranian official had called for Israel's eradication, although such slogans are still regularly used at regime rallies.

Mr Ahmadinejad warned leaders of Muslim nations who recognised the state of Israel that they "face the wrath of their own people".

He added: "Anyone who signs a treaty which recognises the entity of Israel means he has signed the surrender of the Muslim world."

Mr Ahmadinejad came to power earlier this year, replacing Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who attempted to improve Iran's relations with the West.

October 27, 2005 at 01:45 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Q&A: the CIA leak

America, United States, Times Online, The Times, Sunday Times

What has the US Grand Jury been investigating?

A grand jury, overseen by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating whether any United States government officials deliberately leaked to the press the name of a CIA agent in 2003 to discredit a critic of the Bush administration.

Who is the CIA agent whose name was leaked?

The agent is Valerie Plame. She is married to Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat. He was sent by the CIA to the west African state of Niger in 2002 to investigate pre-Iraq war reports that Iraq had tried to buy uranium there.

In July 2003 he wrote an article in The New York Times in which he accused the Bush administration of "twisting" pre-war intelligence to build the case for war, including its Niger/Iraq claims. Mr Wilson also implied that he went to Niger at the behest of the office of Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President.

How was Ms Plame's name made public?

A week after her husband's New York Times article, Robert Novak, a conservative columnist, reported that two senior administration officials told him that Mr Wilson had been sent to Niger by his wife - whom he referred to by her maiden name, Valerie Plame - "a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction".

Why was her name leaked and why did it lead to a criminal investigation?

After Mr Novak's column, Mr Wilson claimed his wife was a covert CIA agent and accused the White House of deliberately unmasking her to destroy her career and as retribution for his Iraq war criticism.

Republicans have always said that nobody in the White House knew Ms Plame was a CIA agent. They say that reporters, including Mr Novak, were simply briefed about her role in sending Mr Wilson to Niger to rebut his claims that it had been Mr Cheney's office that sent him to Niger.

But Mr Bush, amid a growing controversy, appointed Mr Fitzgerald in December 2003 to investigate. Mr Fitzgerald was originally tasked to investigate if any officials broke the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert agent. In February 2004 he sought and received written confirmation from the US Justice Department that his writ extended to bringing obstruction of justice and perjury charges.

Mr Bush said that he would fire anybody in his administration found to have "committed a crime" in relation to the affair.

Who was responsible for the leaking of Ms Plame's name?

The investigation soon focused on Karl Rove, Mr Bush's chief adviser, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Mr Cheney's Chief of Staff. Initially, the White House said that neither man was involved in Ms Plame's name being published.

But in June this year, two reporters who worked indirectly on the story were ordered to reveal the identity of their sources within the administration.

Time magazine's Matthew Cooper told the grand jury that Mr Rove and Mr Libby had told him about Ms Plame, but not by name.

Judith Miller, of The New York Times, refused to reveal her source and was jailed for 85 days. After her release she revealed that she had spoken to Mr Libby three times about Ms Plame, but again not by name.

Mr Novak has never commented publicly, but was never threatened with jail, and is assumed to have testified without complaint. Mr Rove is known to have talked to Mr Novak.

Testimony from Mr Rove and Mr Libby is known to have contradicted reporters' accounts. This week it emerged that Mr Libby first learnt about Ms Plame from Mr Cheney, and not from journalists, as he told the grand jury.

What indictments, if any, may be handed down?

Speculation centres on the possibility of obstruction of justice and/or perjury charges for Mr Rove and Mr Libby. Legal analysts believe Mr Fitzgerald may also be looking at a breach of the 1917 Espionage Act. There is also the possibility that he will take no action.

How bad witll it be for President Bush if charges are brought?

It will be very damaging. If charges are brought, they come at a time of mounting sleaze allegations against Republicans, and as Mr Bush's approval ratings slump, amid concerns over Iraq, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and his choice of Harriet Miers, his former personal lawyer, to the Supreme Court.

If Mr Rove is indicted, Mr Bush will lose one of the most brilliant strategists in American history. Many analysts believe Mr Rove, the architect of Mr Bush's political rise from Texas governor to the White House, is indispensable.

October 27, 2005 at 01:42 AM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

MI5 'let bomber slip through net'

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

By Michael Evans
The leader of the four London suicide bombers who killed 52 people on July 7 had been under surveillance by MI5 last year, the BBC has claimed.

Mohammad Siddique Khan, the teaching assistant from Leeds, was secretly filmed speaking to a UK-based terrorist suspect, according to a File on 4/Newsnight investigation.

The BBC said that new evidence showed the intelligence services had let the future ringleader slip through the net. MI5 acknowledged after the attacks that his name had cropped up in an another inquiry but security sources denied that he had ever been classed as a terrorist suspect, or that he had been under further surveillance.

The BBC claimed that Siddique Khan had been in contact with al-Qaeda for five years, and that in 2003 he visited a “fixer” in Pakistan.

The security sources said that investigations were continuing into his travels in the years leading up to July 7.

October 27, 2005 at 01:41 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

October 26, 2005

BBC slashes the World Service to fund Arabic TV channel

Telegraph | Expat | BBC slashes the World Service to fund Arabic TV channel

By Tom Leonard
(Filed: 26/10/2005)

The BBC World Service is closing 10 foreign language radio services - most of them in the former eastern bloc - to pay for a new £19 million Arabic television news channel, it was announced yesterday.

Services in Hungarian, Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Slovak, Slovene, Kazakh and Thai will cease transmission by March, with the loss of more than 230 jobs.

Many of them were set up during the Cold War and provided listeners with their only non-state controlled news.

Journalist and broadcasting unions attacked the cuts, saying that they undermined the World Service's claim to be a truly global operation and ignored evidence that some of the affected countries were far from thriving democracies.

Unveiling the biggest reorganisation of the World Service since the end of the Second World War, its director, Nigel Chapman, said the BBC had to respond to changing geopolitical circumstances.

"Many of the European services being closed had their roots in the Second World War and have served their audiences well right through the Cold War years," he said.

"But Europe has changed, fundamentally, since the early Nineties. Now the countries to which these languages are broadcast are members of the EU, or are likely to join soon."

Mr Chapman acknowledged that the World Service's presence in such countries brought prestige to Britain and had "contributed to the building of freedoms now enjoyed by their citizens". However, he said there were now rival news services in these countries which "subscribe to similar values as the BBC" and were eating into the corporation's audiences.

The 10 countries will continue to be served by World Service radio in English. The move will cut the BBC's portfolio of language services from 43 to 33.

Although the World Service is paid for directly by the Foreign Office and the changes had to be approved by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, Mr Chapman said there had been no interference from the Government. He said it had been the BBC's idea to start the Arabic channel.

The new channel, the BBC's first publicly-funded international television service, will be competing against al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based news service which has been accused of being anti-western.

Hosam El Sokkari, the new station's head, said it would be "impartial in the whole process" in the Middle East.

Despite claims that the channel would be met with suspicion by many Arabs, the BBC said its research had found strong demand for it in the Middle East.

Around 200 new jobs have been, or will be, created by the new investment programme, with 148 new posts at the Arabic channel.

Jeremy Dear, the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said the cuts could cause "massive damage to Britain's influence in a significant part of new Europe".

tleonard@telegraph.co.uk

October 26, 2005 at 08:11 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

October 25, 2005

Welcome to this New Age of Deference

The Times Online guest contributors Opinion

Frank Furedi
The collapse of respect for authority hasn’t freed us — it’s just made us slaves to a new set of masters
THESE DAYS we don’t take authority very seriously. Everyone, from the Pope to members of the Royal Family, needs to earn his keep and demonstrate his contribution. People no longer unquestioningly do as they are told and those who claim authority without having earned it are rightly treated with derision and contempt.

There is much to welcome in this — but at the same time no society can work unless some forms of authority are respected. Look, for example, at the demise of the authority of teachers. Report after report show how they regularly face threats and abuse in the classroom.

Low-grade disruption of lessons — challenging instructions, answering back, swearing — has become the norm. Is it any surprise, then, that individuals who are routinely abused in this way become less than effective teachers?

And it isn’t just unruly children who are responsible for the erosion of teachers’ authority. Throughout society parents and other adults have few inhibitions about calling teachers’ judgments into question — and in front of their children. Such casual cynicism towards teachers extends to other professions. Even adult authority has been called into question. It is frequently suggested that grown-ups possess no special wisdom and that “children’s rights ” should be celebrated. Notice how in almost every new film the special insight and sensitivity of children are favourably contrasted with the inflexibility of their dimwitted elders. An attempt to guide and inspire the young without the exercise of adult authority is a challenge that no society would welcome.

The erosion of authority is often celebrated by cultural commentators as a symptom of a trend towards an end to deference. Some of them even interpret the declining influence of government, of Parliament and the parliamentary parties as proof that people have become less deferential and become more critical. They welcome the loss of prestige of mainstream politics as an encouragement to the growth of more informal social movements and campaigns of the marginalised, such as the Make Poverty History campaign. Young people who can’t be bothered to vote are frequently rebranded as rebels rejecting deference.

In fact, the affirmation of anti-politics expresses a profoundly pessimistic view of the future and itself represents a new form of deference. Where once people deferred to hierarchical authority, now they are encouraged to defer to fate. But to disengage from public life is to allow others to determine your fate. Anti-politics is not a rejection of particular parties and politicians, but an expression of a deeper conviction that politics is futile.

The very idea that anybody could achieve any positive results through political action is often dismissed as naive or arrogant. But those who perceive some sort of radical imperative behind the rejection of politics ignore that the flip side of anti-politics is the acceptance of the world as it is. In other words, an acquiescence to fate.

Deference to traditional authorities is being replaced by reverence for new ones. While we doubt the word of our doctors, we turn happily to the herbalist, the New Age healer, the osteopath and a multitude of complementary therapists. Increasingly, victims are endowed with a claim to moral authority. Victims of crime are encouraged to make pronouncements on the issue of law and order. Parents of casualties in the Iraq war are treated as if they are experts in military affairs. Victims of an illness are transformed into expert cancer sufferers. And patient groups insist that their representation of their malady is the final word on the subject and that decent people have a duty not to offend them by refusing to affirm their claims.

There is, too, a growing tendency to institutionalise deference to the expert. This month the Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, indicated that he might press for the right to use expert witnesses to help to boost the low conviction rate in trials of alleged rape. Apparently ordinary jurors are too thick to grasp how rapists and their victims behave, and need an expert psychologist to put them right.

Once pronouncements about who was evil or who had sinned were the prerogative of the priest. Now, with the end of deference to the Church, such mystical powers are bestowed on the professional expert witness. The call for ordinary jurors to ignore their intuition and subjugate themselves to the superior insight of the expert is seldom seen for what it really is — a new form of deference.

Daily we are encouraged to defer to a bewildering variety of “relationship experts”. Parenting coaches, life coaches, makeover gurus, supernannys — all of them apparently possess the authority to tell us how to live our lives. Even the Blairs deferred to a lifestyle guru. When the Prime Minister and his family employed someone to tell them how to dress, exercise, relax and eat we were witnessing the emergence of a new form of authority.

But it does not end there. When Carole Caplin went home, the political class shifted its deference to the authority of the celebrity. Like most of us, our leaders are happy to listen to Bob Geldof moralising about how to save Africans or Jamie Oliver instructing us how to rescue our children from obesity. The end of deference? You got to be kidding.

Frank Furedi is author of Politics of Fear; Beyond Left and Right

Frank Furedi will be speaking at the Battle of Ideas this weekend www.battleofideas.co.uk

October 25, 2005 at 08:52 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

October 24, 2005

FBI Papers Indicate Intelligence Violations

Secret Surveillance Lacked Oversight

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 24, 2005; Page A01

The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.

Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations, which have been stepped up dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but are largely hidden from public view.

In one case, FBI agents kept an unidentified target under surveillance for at least five years -- including more than 15 months without notifying Justice Department lawyers after the subject had moved from New York to Detroit. An FBI investigation concluded that the delay was a violation of Justice guidelines and prevented the department "from exercising its responsibility for oversight and approval of an ongoing foreign counterintelligence investigation of a U.S. person."

In other cases, agents obtained e-mails after a warrant expired, seized bank records without proper authority and conducted an improper "unconsented physical search," according to the documents.

Although heavily censored, the documents provide a rare glimpse into the world of domestic spying, which is governed by a secret court and overseen by a presidential board that does not publicize its deliberations. The records are also emerging as the House and Senate battle over whether to put new restrictions on the controversial USA Patriot Act, which made it easier for the government to conduct secret searches and surveillance but has come under attack from civil liberties groups.

The records were provided to The Washington Post by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group that has sued the Justice Department for records relating to the Patriot Act.

David Sobel, EPIC's general counsel, said the new documents raise questions about the extent of possible misconduct in counterintelligence investigations and underscore the need for greater congressional oversight of clandestine surveillance within the United States.

"We're seeing what might be the tip of the iceberg at the FBI and across the intelligence community," Sobel said. "It indicates that the existing mechanisms do not appear adequate to prevent abuses or to ensure the public that abuses that are identified are treated seriously and remedied."

FBI officials disagreed, saying that none of the cases have involved major violations and most amount to administrative errors. The officials also said that any information obtained from improper searches or eavesdropping is quarantined and eventually destroyed.

"Every investigator wants to make sure that their investigation is handled appropriately, because they're not going to be allowed to keep information that they didn't have the proper authority to obtain," said one senior FBI official, who declined to be identified by name because of the ongoing litigation. "But that is a relatively uncommon occurrence. The vast majority of the potential [violations] reported have to do with administrative timelines and time frames for renewing orders."

The documents provided to EPIC focus on 13 cases from 2002 to 2004 that were referred to the Intelligence Oversight Board, an arm of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board that is charged with examining violations of the laws and directives governing clandestine surveillance. Case numbers on the documents indicate that a minimum of 287 potential violations were identified by the FBI during those three years, but the actual number is certainly higher because the records are incomplete.

FBI officials declined to say how many alleged violations they have identified or how many were found to be serious enough to refer to the oversight board.

Catherine Lotrionte, the presidential board's counsel, said most of its work is classified and covered by executive privilege. The board's investigations range from "technical violations to more substantive violations of statutes or executive orders," Lotrionte said.

Most such cases involve powers granted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs the use of secret warrants, wiretaps and other methods as part of investigations of agents of foreign powers or terrorist groups. The threshold for such surveillance is lower than for traditional criminal warrants. More than 1,700 new cases were opened by the court last year, according to an administration report to Congress.

In several of the cases outlined in the documents released to EPIC, FBI agents failed to file annual updates on ongoing surveillance, which are required by Justice Department guidelines and presidential directives, and which allow Justice lawyers to monitor the progress of a case. Others included a violation of bank privacy statutes and an improper physical search, though the details of the transgressions are edited out. At least two others involve e-mails that were improperly collected after the authority to do so had expired.

Some of the case details provide a rare peek into the world of FBI counterintelligence. In 2002, for example, the Pittsburgh field office opened a preliminary inquiry on a person to "determine his/her suitability as an asset for foreign counterintelligence matters" -- in other words, to become an informant. The violation occurred when the agent failed to extend the inquiry while maintaining contact with the potential asset, the documents show.

The FBI general counsel's office oversees investigations of alleged misconduct in counterintelligence probes, deciding whether the violation is serious enough to be reported to the oversight board and to personnel departments within Justice and the FBI. The senior FBI official said those cases not referred to the oversight board generally involve missed deadlines of 30 days or fewer with no potential infringement of the civil rights of U.S. persons, who are defined as either citizens or legal U.S. resident aliens.

"The FBI and the people who work in the FBI are very cognizant of the fact that people are watching us to make sure we're doing the right thing," the senior FBI official said. "We also want to do the right thing. We have set up procedures to do the right thing."

But in a letter to be sent today to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sobel and other EPIC officials argue that the documents show how little Congress and the public know about the use of clandestine surveillance by the FBI and other agencies. The group advocates legislation requiring the attorney general to report violations to the Senate.

The documents, EPIC writes, "suggest that there may be at least thirteen instances of unlawful intelligence investigations that were never disclosed to Congress."

October 24, 2005 at 11:41 PM in FBI | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

A damning finger points at Syria's regime

A damning finger points at Syria's regime | Economist.com

Oct 21st 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda
The UN’s investigation into the assassination in February of Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon, has pointed a finger at the regime of Syria's President Bashar Assad. But America and other powers will have to think carefully about how tough they should get with the embattled Mr Assad

A FABLE is often told to explain the Middle East to outsiders. A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog replies that the scorpion might sting and kill him. The scorpion reassures: “But if I do, we both die.” The frog agrees, and the scorpion stings him midstream. Why, asks the drowning frog of the drowning scorpion? “Because this is the Middle East.”

When Rafik Hariri was assassinated in February in Beirut, some argued that the Syrian regime was such an obvious culprit that it could not possibly have done it. Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon, had become a vocal opponent of the decades-long Syrian occupation. What regime could be so obviously heavy-handed as to murder a prominent opponent with a truck bomb in broad daylight? Nevertheless, the suspicions of its involvement grew, inside and outside Lebanon, eventually forcing Syria to withdraw its troops and end its domination of its neighbour.

Syria protested, and still protests, its innocence but the bleak view of Middle East politics encapsulated in that fable seemed to be confirmed by a report on Hariri's death that was delivered to the United Nations Security Council on Thursday October 20th, pointing the finger directly at the highest levels of the Syrian government. Most importantly, it has fingered Asef Shawkat, who is Syria’s military-intelligence chief and brother-in-law to Syria’s president, Bashar Assad.

Since Syria is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Assad family, suspicion is sure to mount about how much Mr Assad himself knew. Providing further meat for conspiracy theorists, it emerged on Friday that the name of the Syrian president's brother, Maher Assad, had been edited out of the report shortly before it had been presented to the Security Council. The report originally quoted an unnamed Syrian witness as saying the president's two relatives were among a group of Syrian and Lebanese officials who decided to assassinate Hariri at a meeting in Damascus in late 2004. The edited version gives the witness's account of the meeting but omits the two top Syrians' names.

In addition, the report hints that Emile Lahoud, the pro-Syrian president of Lebanon, might also have been in on the plot. But intriguingly, it did not even mention Ghazi Kanaan, the former head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, who Syrian officials said committed suicide on October 12th. His death, coming so soon before the UN report's submission, had seemed suspiciously convenient, as if perhaps he had been chosen as fall guy over the killing of Hariri.

The findings could destablise both countries, with ripple effects on the broader Middle East. Syria entered Lebanon in the late 1970s, when it was riven by a multi-sided civil war between its rival Christian, Shia Muslim and Sunni Muslim communities, with Lebanon-based Palestinian militants and an Israeli invasion further complicating the picture. The Syrian presence helped end the war in 1990 and stabilise the country thereafter, with the occupation accepted by war-weary Lebanese as a price worth paying.

Lebanon began to recover, and even to flourish, not least thanks to Hariri. He had made a fortune in construction and other businesses in Saudi Arabia, and brought his money and influence to bear on restoring Lebanon to its former glory as a relaxed and enjoyable centre of commerce and culture in the Arab world. He was twice prime minister but fell out with Mr Lahoud and left office in 2004 to campaign for an end to Syria’s military and intelligence presence in Lebanon. His murder brought about huge demonstrations in his home country and widespread international condemnation. France and America joined forces at the UN to pass a Security Council resolution calling for Syria’s exit from Lebanon, and the disarmament of Lebanon’s many militias.

But while Syria has pulled its troops out, it is suspected of maintaining many spies in Lebanon. In addition, Lebanon’s armed factions remain armed, most notably Hizbullah, a Shia militia backed by Iran and Syria that has carried on a long-running battle with Israel. After the Hariri killing, there were several small bombings of Christian targets, as Christians had led the calls for Syria to leave. There was worry about a potential relapse of sectarian violence. That turned out to be too pessimistic. But the UN report may revive such fears.

Mr Assad and Mr Lahoud deny any involvement, of course. But the UN report claims that Mr Lahoud received a phone call from one of the conspirators minutes before the bombing. It also claims there is evidence that Mr Assad's brother-in-law and top aide Mr Shawkat forced a Palestinian militant to claim responsibility in a video recorded weeks before the assassination. The report also says the plot would not have been possible without help from Lebanon’s own spies and soldiers. Four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals have already been arrested, one having allegedly told a witness, shortly before the killing: “We are going to send him on a trip—bye bye, Hariri.”
Handle with care

In worried anticipation of the report’s consequences, the streets of Beirut have been unusually empty. But the political fallout has begun. Two Lebanese parliamentarians have called on Mr Lahoud to resign. The American ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said the report “refers to lack of cooperation by Syria with the investigation, which is diplo-speak for obstruction of justice.” America and its European allies are discussing what to do next at the UN.

Sanctions against Syria are a possibility. But America has also tried recently to handle the country delicately, since it has cooperated with America in rounding up terrorists. Now, however, Syria is feeling isolated and jumpy. America accuses it both of undermining the Israeli-Palestinian peace process—by harbouring and abetting terror groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad—and destabilising Iraq by letting militants cross the long Iraqi-Syrian border. (The link with Iraq is also illustrated by the fact that the Hariri bomber may have been an Iraqi tricked into thinking he was killing Iraq’s former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, according to the report.)

Bringing yet more pressure to bear on Syria over the Hariri affair could make its regime even more unpredictable and unco-operative. But the process will continue. Detlev Mehlis, the report’s lead investigator, will brief the Security Council on Tuesday, October 25th. He has also asked for two more months to finalise his conclusions. Prosecutions of the perpet