Intelligence

April 30, 2007

Links between the 7 July bombers and the fertiliser plotters - MI5 statement

Introduction

The fertiliser plotters:

* Omar Khyam
* Jawad Akbar
* Salahuddin Amin
* Anthony Garcia
* Waheed Mahmood

This account sets out what the Security Service and Police knew of the links between those involved in the 2004 'fertiliser plot' - the trial of which ended on 30 April 2007 - and two members of the group responsible for the 7 July 2005 terrorist attacks in London. It has not been possible to make this information public until the end of the trial for legal reasons.

The Security Service and Police are publishing this account to provide an answer to the question: "If the Security Service and Police had already come across two of the bombers before 2005, why did they not prevent the attacks in London on 7 July?"

It also explains what the Security Service has done and is continuing to do to prevent further attacks. There is a brief summary at the end of this account to provide an update on our current work.

Source: Links between the 7 July bombers and the fertiliser plotters

Why did the Service and the Police not prevent 7 July?

The Security Service and Police were appalled by the attacks of 7 July, and it is deeply frustrating that we were not able to prevent them. It is true that the Security Service and Police did come across two of the 7 July bombers - Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer - during the earlier investigation into the fertiliser plot. However, even with the benefit of hindsight, it would have been impossible from the available intelligence to conclude that either Khan or Tanweer posed a terrorist threat to the British public.

Khan and Tanweer were never identified during the fertiliser plot investigation because they were not involved in the planned attacks. Rather, they appeared as petty fraudsters in loose contact with members of the plot. There was no indication that they were involved in planning any kind of terrorist attack in the UK.

The intelligence leads generated by the investigation into the 7 July bombings enabled the Security Service and Police to go back over the fertiliser plot records and put names to voices and faces. The details below need to be read with these facts in mind.

The fertiliser plot

Omar Khyam with fertiliser intended for use in terrorism
(Click here for a larger version)

Throughout 2003-4, the Security Service and Police undertook Operation Crevice, a large-scale investigation into a terrorist conspiracy known as the 'fertiliser plot' - so-called because a group of individuals planned to detonate a fertiliser-based explosive device in the UK. Despite the improvised nature of the device, success of the plot would have resulted in a huge loss of life as the possible targets included a nightclub and a shopping centre.

At the time, this was both the Security Service's and the Police's largest ever counter terrorist operation. The scale of intelligence gathering meant switching resources from other less urgent investigations. It also meant making judgements on a daily basis about where to concentrate resources based on who presented the greatest threat to the UK public.

It was in the investigation of this conspiracy that Khan and Tanweer first came to the Security Service's attention as unidentified individuals on the periphery of the plot. To give an idea of scale, the links between the fertiliser plot bombers and Khan and Tanweer represent less than 0.1% of all the links on record in relation to the fertiliser plot investigation.

Khan and Tanweer links to the fertiliser plot

1. Two men discuss fraud scams at fund raising meetings

During February and March 2004, an unknown man subsequently identified as Khan met with members of the fertiliser plot on five occasions. He was accompanied by another unknown man, subsequently identified as Tanweer, on three of these occasions. The meetings took place in Crawley, the home of several of the fertiliser plot conspirators.

There was no indication as a result of the intelligence available at the time on these meetings that either Khan or Tanweer were involved in terrorist plotting. These meetings appeared to centre on the raising of money. Conversations record Khan and Tanweer discussing how to raise cash through a variety of fraud scams, such as purchasing building equipment on credit, defaulting on payment and selling the goods on for cash. There is no record of Khan and Tanweer discussing terrorist activity or bomb building.

The Security Service did record another conversation involving an individual identified after 7 July as Khan. From the context of the recorded conversation it is possible that Khan was talking about going to fight with militia groups in the Pakistani border areas.

2. A man called 'Ibrahim'

"We conclude that, in light of the other priority investigations being conducted and the limitations on Security Service resources, the decisions not to give greater investigative priority to these two individuals were understandable."
- Intelligence and Security Committee Report into the London Terrorist Attacks on 7 July 2005.

It has become clear since 7 July that Khan was known to detainees held outside the UK in early 2004. Some detainees had mentioned men from the UK, known only by pseudonyms, who had travelled to Pakistan in 2003 and sought meetings with Al Qaida figures. In the aftermath of the 7 July attacks, Khan was identified by a detainee (who had seen a press photograph) as one of the UK men, known to him only as 'Ibrahim'.

Follow-up investigations in 2004 into the unidentified men on the periphery of the fertiliser plot included the circulation of photographs to foreign intelligence services in an attempt to identify these individuals. Photographs of Khan were shown to two detainees who had provided the earlier information, but without a positive result.

If Khan had been recognised, the Security Service might have allocated more resources to investigating him. However, given the operational priorities at the time, there is no guarantee that Khan would have been seen as a high priority target even then. In the event, the investigation was put on hold due to the need to focus on far more urgent cases posing potential large-scale threats to life.

3. Investigation of Khan and Tanweer post 7/7

Following the atrocities of 7/7, the Security Service and Police undertook a large-scale investigation into the perpetrators of the attacks. It was only at this point that the identities of Khan and Tanweer became clear.

Painstaking analysis of surveillance records following the attacks, in order to determine what - if anything - of the bombers was known to the Security Service and Police prior to 7/7, revealed their presence on the periphery of the fertiliser plot. Examination of Khan's telephone records showed his contact with Omar Khyam. This, along with a subsequent review of surveillance photographs taken during the fertiliser plot investigations, confirmed his presence in meetings with Khyam and others during February / March 2004.

What is the Service doing to prevent further attacks?

"My Service is dedicated to tackling the deadly manifestations of terrorism. Tackling its roots is the work of us all."
- Security Service Director General Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, speech at Queen Mary, London, 9 November 2006

The fertiliser plot, the 7 July attacks, and the other plots the Security Service has either disrupted or investigated all show that the threat from extremists has been growing since 9/11. As the then Director General Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller said in a speech to students of Queen Mary, University of London, last November: "Because of the sheer scale of what we face the task is daunting." When the fertiliser plot took place it was one of 50 networks of which the Service was aware. By the time of Dame Eliza's speech three years later the Security Service had intelligence on 200 networks involving some 1600 individuals.

Expansion of the Security Service to counter this threat to the UK has been under way since the attacks in the US in 2001. This has not only meant recruiting more staff and establishing an developing the Security Service's network of UK offices, but also increasing the capability of the organisation to gather and assess intelligence.

This is bringing successes, some public, some not. Most recently, there was extensive coverage of the disruption of an alleged plot to blow up passenger jets over the Atlantic. The increase in the conviction of people for terrorism offences since 7 July is evidence that the Security Service is not, as some have suggested, exaggerating the threat.

The creation of the Centre for the Protection of the National Infrastructure (CPNI) in February this year will improve the advice we provide to public and private sector industries on how to guard against terrorist attack.

It is only by working with others in this way, as Dame Eliza pointed out in her speech, that the Security Service can succeed against the scale of threat we face. This means working with the Police, other UK agencies, government and the private sector, security and intelligence services internationally - and, more broadly, with the help and support of the UK public.

April 30, 2007 at 10:03 PM in | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

April 22, 2007

SAS soldier killed in Iraq helicopter was ‘exemplary leader’

Michael Evans, Defence Editor

The SAS soldier killed in the twin helicopter crash in Iraq was named yesterday as Colour Sergeant Mark Powell.

The death of the 37-year-old soldier was a blow both to the elite regiment in which he served and for operations in Iraq, where his combat-proven experience was viewed as irreplaceable.

Colour Sergeant Powell joined the Parachute Regiment in December 1990 and is understood to have served in the SAS for many years.

The rank of colour sergeant is a prestigious position in any regiment, but a mark of especial status in the SAS.

In a brief but telling eulogy, the Ministry of Defence said that he was “an exemplary combat leader, soldier, father, husband, friend and Briton, dedicated to his family, his men, his mission and his country”.

The MoD said: “In the finest traditions of the Army and his regiment, he was utterly selfless, never shirking danger, effort or hard service in the pursuit of his mission.” His loss was “tragic and keenly felt by all”, but “his example to others will be sure to endure and inspire us all for years to come”.

He died when two RAF Pumas collided in mid-air north of Baghdad.

The RAF loadmaster also killed in the same helicopter has not yet been named because some relatives have not been traced.

Details of Colour Sergeant Powell’s career were in short supply, but defence sources said that he had a wealth of experience and had been deployed on covert missions in many theatres all over the world.

He joined the SAS in his early twenties after serving in the Parachute Regiment before passing the tough selection course for the Hereford-based SAS.

April 22, 2007 at 03:58 PM in SAS | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The lost 20 years of CIA spies caught in China trap

Lured by a double agent and jailed secretly, the tale of Jack Downey and Richard Fecteau is one of the most extraordinary in espionage

Ben Macintyre

 

On a crisp spring morning in 1973 a pale and emaciated man made his way slowly across the Lo Wu bridge from China into Hong Kong. A British soldier at the frontier post saluted him as he approached. This was, the man later reflected, “the first act of dignity shown to him in 20 years”.

His name was Jack Downey. He was a CIA agent, and since 1952 he and a colleague, Richard Fecteau, had languished in a Chinese prison, often in solitary confinement, secret hostages in the Cold War between the US and China.

The capture, imprisonment and eventual release of these two CIA agents is one of the most extraordinary and poignant tales in the history of espionage. Some of the material relating to their captivity remains classified but 34 years after Downey stumbled to freedom the CIA has finally allowed an official agency historian access to its most secret files.

The Downey-Fecteau case, revealed last week in the CIA’s Journal of the American Intelligence Professional, is a story of suffering, endurance and ordinary individuals trapped and manipulated by geopolitics. With the recent Iranian hostage drama, the story has remarkable contemporary resonance, but with one signal difference. The British soldiers were held in Iran for 13 days, and some made a small fortune by selling their stories after their release. Downey and Fecteau — both of whom are still living —never told their story to the media, and never made a penny out of it.

In 1952, Downey and Fecteau had both recently graduated from university, Downey from Yale, and Fecteau from Boston. Downey, 22, had joined the CIA in 1951.

Fecteau, recently married for the second time, was 24, and had been a CIA agent for only a few months. Both were about to embark on their first operational mission, which would also be their last.

In June of that year, the US had parachuted five ethnic Chinese agents into Manchuria on a mission to destabilise the Communist regime by linking up with local anti-government forces and carrying out guerrilla operations.

The team, which Downey had helped to train, made radio contact in November, reporting that they had obtained important documents and wanted one of the team to be picked up by “air snatch”. This risky procedure for aerial pick-up involved flying an aircraft at low altitude and hooking a line stretched between two aluminium poles. “The line was connected to a harness in which the agent was strapped,” writes the CIA historian Nicholas Dujmovic. “Once airborne the man was to be winched into the aircraft.”

On November 29 a C47 US transport plane set off from the Korean peninsular: at the controls were pilots Norman Schwartz and Robert Snoddy; manning the winch were Downey and Fecteau. With the Korean War at its height, both men knew the perils of Operation Tropic. They did not know they were flying into a trap.

Unknown to their handlers, the Chinese agents had been captured soon after landing, “doubled” in spy parlance, and were being used to lure the CIA into an ambush. At around midnight, having received the correct torch signal from the ground, the pilots swooped low over the rendezvous point in the Manchurian foothills, where two poles had been erected and a man in harness appeared to be waiting for the pick-up.

At exactly the moment when the plane should have hooked its agent, two anti-aircraft guns, camouflaged in the snow by white sheets, opened fire at the cockpit. The pilots were killed, the engines cut out, and the plane crash-landed among some trees, breaking apart on impact. Downey and Fecteau, secured by harnesses, survived unhurt, and staggered out of the wreckage to find themselves surrounded by whooping Chinese troops.

With impressive understatement, Downey remarked to his partner that they were now in “a hell of a mess”.

The two captured Americans were tied up, bundled into a truck, and driven to Mukden, the largest city in Manchuria, where they were shackled and locked in separate cells.

When the transport plane failed to return, the CIA invented a story that Downey and Fecteau were civilian employees of the Army Department who had been aboard a commercial flight lost in the sea west of Japan. The men were presumed dead, and letters of condolence were sent to their families.

The two Americans, meanwhile, were undergoing brutal interrogation: they were never physically tortured, but prevented from sleeping or bathing, made to wear leg irons continually, and interrogated for up to 24 hours at a time. Eventually, inevitably, both confessed to being CIA agents.

The men were moved to Beijing, and finally, two years after their capture, they were put on trial before a secret military tribunal.

Seeing his companion for the first time in two years, dressed in prison garb, Fecteau whispered: “Who’s your tailor?” As the senior officer, Downey received a life sentence; Fecteau was given 20 years.

The first that the CIA knew of the real fate of the agents was a broadcast by the Chinese state news agency, announcing that two American spies had been convicted. Officially, the US Government continued to insist that the men were civilians, while allegations of espionage were dismissed by the State Department as “utterly false”.

So began the long, crushing years of incarceration. The men lived in draughty cells, on a diet of maggoty rice and vegetables. Sometimes they were allowed books and magazines. Then, with refined psychological cruelty, these would be arbitrarily removed.

The Americans developed survival strategies: daily exercise, writing, learning Chinese, and training their minds to explore the world they had once known.

Fecteau became an “expert daydreamer”, Dujmovic reports, and made an imaginary world by recalling every child in his school classes, and the sights in the Massachusetts town where he grew up.

Though they were required to study Marx and Mao, the men were never brainwashed. “They could scare you into saying just about anything . . . but actually believing it is a much more difficult proposition,” said Downey.

The Chinese jailers told them they had been abandoned by their own Government. This was untrue, for though the US refused to bargain with or recognise the Chinese Communist Government, Washington exerted whatever pressure it could for the release of the men. At one stage, the CIA even contemplated a commando raid to try to free them, but abandoned the plan because their whereabouts were too uncertain.

Small snippets of news reached the captives, tailored to show the West in the worst light: the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the riots at Kent State University. Not until their release would they learn, with astonishment, that a man had walked on the Moon.

Downey and Fecteau were held separately, but did their best to maintain contact, using a system of distinctive coughs to indicate where they were inside the prison complex, and drawing baseball scores in the dust of the exercise yard.

In the outside world, diplomatic relations between China and the US were slowly thawing. In 1971, Henry Kissinger made his secret visit to Beijing and on December 9 of that year, Fecteau was suddenly released.

Downey would remain in prison for another 15 months, before he too was set free, the year after Richard Nixon’s visit to China. The trigger for the releases was Nixon’s admission of what the US Government had denied for so long: that the two men were indeed CIA agents, captured on a spying mission inside China.

They emerged into a world utterly transformed. Fecteau’s wife had died, tragically, in a house fire soon after his capture. The baby twin daughters he had left behind were now in their twenties. Both agents had been promoted during their incarceration, and their unspent pay had steadily accumulated.

Given the continuing sensitivity of relations with China, they were deliberately released without fanfare. Both refused offers to sell their stories. Downey laconically observed that the entire experience had been a “crashing bore”. Fecteau joked that his good health was due to having spent “19 years without booze, broads or butts”.

Over the years, some parts of the story leaked out, but it was not until this year that the CIA decided to reveal the full truth. After long negotiations, in 2004 the Chinese Government allowed US scientists to retrieve human remains from the crash site, which DNA testing identified as those of Robert Snoddy. The body of the other pilot, Norman Schwartz, has never been found.

Even today, the two former captives are reticent. Contacted in his Massachusetts home, Fecteau, 80 this year, is polite but firm: “I am an old man now. I would rather not talk about that time.” Downey and Fecteau both retired from the CIA within a few years of their release. Fecteau became sports director at Boston University, his alma mater. Downey’s second life was, in some ways, as extraordinary as his first: he attended Harvard Law School, married a Chinese woman born in Manchuria near where he had been shot down, and finally became a distinguished judge in Connecticut, specialising in juvenile cases.

Downey once remarked that he thought his years in prison had given him a special sensitivity towards sentencing others. The John T. Downey Juvenile Courthouse and Detention Centre in New Haven is named in his honour: a man who lost his youth in a Chinese jail has a youth prison with his name on it.

Having denied its own agents for 20 years, the CIA has now elevated the two men to the status of icons, while their prison experience has become a case study in surviving captivity. Awarding Downey and Fecteau belated medals in 1998, George Tenet, then CIA director, observed: “Your story, simply put, is one of the most remarkable in the history of the CIA.”

April 22, 2007 at 03:48 PM in CIA, US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Al-Qaeda‘planning big British attack’

Dipesh Gadher

AL-QAEDA leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.

Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West.

Another plot could be timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by Al-Qaeda planners as a “change in the head of the company”.

The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq.

There is no evidence of a formal relationship between Al-Qaeda, a Sunni group, and the Shi’ite regime of President Mah-moud Ahmadinejad, but experts suggest that Iran’s leaders may be turning a blind eye to the terrorist organisation’s activities.

The intelligence report also makes it clear that senior Al-Qaeda figures in the region have been in recent contact with operatives in Britain.

It follows revelations last year that up to 150 Britons had travelled to Iraq to fight as part of Al-Qaeda’s “foreign legion”. A number are thought to have returned to the UK, after receiving terrorist training, to form sleeper cells.

The report was compiled by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) - based at MI5’s London headquarters - and provides a quarterly review of the international terror threat to Britain. It draws a distinction between Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s core leadership, who are thought to be hiding on the Afghan-Pakistan border, and affiliated organisations elsewhere.

The document states: “While networks linked to AQ [Al-Qaeda] Core pose the greatest threat to the UK, the intelligence during this quarter has highlighted the potential threat from other areas, particularly AQI [Al-Qaeda in Iraq].”

The report continues: “Recent reporting has described AQI’s Kurdish network in Iran planning what we believe may be a large-scale attack against a western target.

“A member of this network is reportedly involved in an operation which he believes requires AQ Core authorisation. He claims the operation will be on ‘a par with Hiroshima and Naga-saki’ and will ‘shake the Roman throne’. We assess that this operation is most likely to be a large-scale, mass casualty attack against the West.”

The report says there is “no indication” this attack would specifically target Britain, “although we are aware that AQI . . . networks are active in the UK”.

Analysts believe the reference to Hiroshima and Naga-saki, where more than 200,000 people died in nuclear attacks on Japan at the end of the second world war, is unlikely to be a literal boast.

“It could be just a reference to a huge explosion,” said a counter-terrorist source. “They [Al-Qaeda] have got to do something soon that is radical otherwise they start losing credibility.”

Despite aspiring to a nuclear capability, Al-Qaeda is not thought to have acquired weapons grade material. However, several plots involving “dirty bombs” - conventional explosive devices surrounded by radioactive material - have been foiled.

Last year Al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq called on nuclear scientists to apply their knowledge of biological and radiological weapons to “the field of jihad”.

Details of a separate plot to attack Britain, “ideally” before Blair steps down this summer, were contained in a letter written by Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi Kurd and senior Al-Qaeda commander.

According to the JTAC document, Hadi “stressed the need to take care to ensure that the attack was successful and on a large scale”. The plan was to be relayed to an Iran-based Al-Qaeda facilitator.

The Home Office declined to comment.

April 22, 2007 at 03:44 PM in Al Qaeda, Iraq, UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

April 14, 2007

Eye on Iran, Rivals Pursuing Nuclear Power - New York Times

By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER Two years ago, the leaders of Saudi Arabia told international atomic regulators that they could foresee no need for the kingdom to develop nuclear power. Today, they are scrambling to hire atomic contractors, buy nuclear hardware and build support for a regional system of reactors.

Source: Eye on Iran, Rivals Pursuing Nuclear Power - New York Times

So, too, Turkey is preparing for its first atomic plant. And Egypt has announced plans to build one on its Mediterranean coast. In all, roughly a dozen states in the region have recently turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for help in starting their own nuclear programs. While interest in nuclear energy is rising globally, it is unusually strong in the Middle East.

“The rules have changed,” King Abdullah II of Jordan recently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Everybody’s going for nuclear programs.”

The Middle East states say they only want atomic power. Some probably do. But United States government and private analysts say they believe that the rush of activity is also intended to counter the threat of a nuclear Iran.

By nature, the underlying technologies of nuclear power can make electricity or, with more effort, warheads, as nations have demonstrated over the decades by turning ostensibly civilian programs into sources of bomb fuel. Iran’s uneasy neighbors, analysts say, may be positioning themselves to do the same.

“One danger of Iran going nuclear has always been that it might provoke others,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, an arms analysis group in London. “So when you see the development of nuclear power elsewhere in the region, it’s a cause for some concern.”

Some analysts ask why Arab states in the Persian Gulf, which hold nearly half the world’s oil reserves, would want to shoulder the high costs and obligations of a temperamental form of energy. They reply that they must invest in the future, for the day when the flow of oil dries up.

But with Shiite Iran increasingly ascendant in the region, Sunni countries have alluded to other motives. Officials from 21 governments in and around the Middle East warned at an Arab summit meeting in March that Iran’s drive for atomic technology could result in the beginning of “a grave and destructive nuclear arms race in the region.”

In Washington, officials are seizing on such developments to build their case for stepping up pressure on Iran. President Bush has talked privately to experts on the Middle East about his fears of a “Sunni bomb,” and his concerns that countries in the Middle East may turn to the only nuclear-armed Sunni state, Pakistan, for help.

“It’s a constant source of discussion,” a senior administration official said recently. “But it’s not something the president thinks he can discuss publicly” after the imbroglio over faulty weapons intelligence on Iraq.

The Middle East has seen hints of a regional nuclear-arms race before. After Israel obtained its first weapon four decades ago, several countries took steps down the nuclear road. But many analysts say it is Iran’s atomic intransigence that has now prodded the Sunni powers into getting serious about hedging their bets and, like Iran, financing them with $65-a-barrel oil.

“Now’s the time to worry,” said Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East expert at the Nixon Center, a Washington policy institute. “The Iranians have to worry, too. The idea that they’ll emerge as the regional hegemon is silly. There will be a very serious counterreaction, certainly in conventional military buildups but also in examining the nuclear option.”

No Arab country now has a power reactor, whose spent fuel can be mined for plutonium, one of the two favored materials — along with uranium — for making the cores of atom bombs. Some Arab states do, however, engage in civilian atomic research.

Analysts caution that a chain reaction of nuclear emulation is not foreordained. States in the Middle East appear to be waiting to see which way Tehran’s nuclear standoff with the United Nations Security Council goes before committing themselves wholeheartedly to costly programs of atomic development.

Even if Middle Eastern nations do obtain nuclear power, political alliances and arms-control agreements could still make individual states hesitate before crossing the line to obtain warheads. Many may eventually decide that the costs and risks outweigh the benefits — as South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa and Libya did after investing heavily in arms programs.

But many diplomats and analysts say that the Sunni Arab governments are so anxious about Iran’s nuclear progress that they would even, grudgingly, support a United States military strike against Iran.

“If push comes to shove, if the choice is between an Iranian nuclear bomb and a U.S. military strike, then the Arab gulf states have no choice but to quietly support the U.S.,” said Christian Koch, director of international studies at the Gulf Research Center, a private group in Dubai.

Decades ago, it was Israel’s drive for nuclear arms that brought about the region’s first atomic jitters. Even some Israeli leaders found themselves “preaching caution because of the reaction,” said Avner Cohen, a senior fellow at the University of Maryland and the author of “Israel and the Bomb.”

Egypt responded first. In 1960, after the disclosure of Israel’s work on a nuclear reactor, Cairo threatened to acquire atomic arms and sought its own reactor. Years of technical and political hurdles ultimately ended that plan.

Iraq came next. But in June 1981, Israeli fighter jets bombed its reactor just days before engineers planned to install the radioactive core. The bombing ignited a global debate over how close Iraq had come to nuclear arms. It also prompted Iran, then fighting a war with Iraq, to embark on a covert response.

Alireza Assar, a nuclear adviser to Iran’s Ministry of Defense who later defected, said he attended a secret meeting in 1987 at which the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Iran had to do whatever was necessary to achieve victory. “We need to have all the technical requirements in our possession,” Dr. Assar recalled the commander as saying, even the means to “build a nuclear bomb.”

In all, Iran toiled in secret for 18 years before its nuclear efforts were disclosed in 2003. Intelligence agencies and nuclear experts now estimate that the Iranians are 2 to 10 years away from having the means to make a uranium-based bomb. It says its uranium enrichment work is entirely peaceful and meant only to fuel reactors.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s concerns peaked when inspectors found evidence of still-unexplained ties between Iran’s ostensibly peaceful program and its military, including work on high explosives, missiles and warheads. That combination, the inspectors said in early 2006, suggested a “military nuclear dimension.”

Before such disclosures, few if any states in the Middle East attended the atomic agency’s meetings on nuclear power development. Now, roughly a dozen are doing so and drawing up atomic plans.

The newly interested states include Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen and the seven sheikdoms of the United Arab Emirates — Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Al Fujayrah, Ras al Khaymah, Sharjah, and Umm al Qaywayn.

“They generally ask what they need to do for the introduction of power,” said R. Ian Facer, a nuclear power engineer who works for the I.A.E.A. at its headquarters in Vienna. The agency teaches the basics of nuclear energy. In exchange, states must undergo periodic inspections to make sure their civilian programs have no military spinoffs.

Saudi Arabia, since reversing itself on reactors, has become a whirlwind of atomic interest. It recently invited President Vladimir V. Putin to become the first Russian head of state to visit the desert kingdom. He did so in February, offering a range of nuclear aid.

Diplomats and analysts say Saudi Arabia leads the drive for nuclear power within the Gulf Cooperation Council, based in Riyadh. In addition to the Saudis, the council includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — Washington’s closest Arab allies. Its member states hug the western shores of the Persian Gulf and control about 45 percent of the world’s oil reserves.

Late last year, the council announced that it would embark on a nuclear energy program. Its officials have said they want to get it under way by 2009.

“We will develop it openly,” Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said of the council’s effort. “We want no bombs. All we want is a whole Middle East that is free from weapons of mass destruction,” an Arab reference to both Israel’s and Iran’s nuclear programs.

In February, the council and the I.A.E.A. struck a deal to work together on a nuclear power plan for the Arab gulf states. Abdul Rahman ibn Hamad al-Attiya, the council’s secretary general, told reporters in March that the agency would provide technical expertise and that the council would hire a consulting firm to speed its nuclear deliberations.

Already, Saudi officials are traveling regularly to Vienna, and I.A.E.A. officials to Riyadh, the Saudi capital. “It’s a natural right,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the atomic agency’s director general, said recently of the council’s energy plan, estimating that carrying it out might take up to 15 years.

In all, 85 percent of the gulf states — all but Iraq — have declared their interest in nuclear power. By comparison, 15 percent of South American nations and 20 percent of African ones have done so.

One factor in that exceptional level of interest is that the Persian Gulf states have the means. Typically, a large commercial reactor costs up to $4 billion. The six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council are estimated to be investing in nonnuclear projects valued at more than $1 trillion.

Another factor is Iran. Its shores at some points are visible across the waters of the gulf — the Arabian Gulf to Arabs, the Persian Gulf to Iranians.

The council wants “its own regional initiative to counter the possible threat from an aggressive neighbor armed with nuclear weapons,” said Nicole Stracke, an analyst at the Gulf Research Center. Its members, she added, “felt they could no longer lag behind Iran.”

A similar technology push is under way in Turkey, where long-simmering plans for nuclear power have caught fire. Last year, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for three plants. “We want to benefit from nuclear energy as soon as possible,” he said. Turkey plans to put its first reactor near the Black Sea port of Sinop, and to start construction this year.

Egypt, too, is moving forward. Last year, it announced plans for a reactor at El-Dabaa, about 60 miles west of Alexandria. “We do not start from a vacuum,” President Hosni Mubarak told the governing National Democracy Party’s annual conference. His remark was understated given Cairo’s decades of atomic research.

Robert Joseph, a former under secretary of state for arms control and international security who is now Mr. Bush’s envoy on nuclear nonproliferation, visited Egypt earlier this year. According to officials briefed on the conversations, officials from the Ministry of Electricity indicated that if Egypt was confident that it could have a reliable supply of reactor fuel, it would have little desire to invest in the costly process of manufacturing its own nuclear fuel — the enterprise that experts fear could let Iran build a bomb.

Other officials, especially those responsible for Egypt’s security, focused more on the possibility of further proliferation in the region if Iran succeeded in its effort to achieve a nuclear weapons capability.

“I don’t know how much of it is real,” Mr. Joseph said of a potential arms race. “But it is becoming urgent for us to shape the future expansion of nuclear energy in a way that reduces the risks of proliferation, while meeting our energy and environmental goals.”

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April 14, 2007 at 04:10 PM in Iran, Iraq, Israel, Middle East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

April 13, 2007

I am plotting a new Russian revolution' | Russia | Guardian Unlimited

London exile Berezovsky says force necessary to bring down President Putin Audio: Berezovsky on change in Russia (25 secs) Audio: Berezovsky on his personal safety (34 secs) Ian Cobain, Matthew Taylor and Luke Harding in Moscow Friday April 13, 2007 The Guardian

Source: I am plotting a new Russian revolution' | Russia | Guardian Unlimited

The Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has told the Guardian he is plotting the violent overthrow of President Putin from his base in Britain after forging close contacts with members of Russia's ruling elite.

In comments which appear calculated to enrage the Kremlin, and which will further inflame relations between London and Moscow, the multimillionaire claimed he was already bankrolling people close to the president who are conspiring to mount a palace coup.

"We need to use force to change this regime," he said. "It isn't possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure." Asked if he was effectively fomenting a revolution, he said: "You are absolutely correct."

Although Mr Berezovsky, with an estimated fortune of £850m, may have the means to finance such a plot, and although he enjoyed enormous political influence in Russia before being forced into exile, he said he could not provide details to back up his claims because the information was too sensitive.

Last night the Kremlin denounced Mr Berezovsky's comments as a criminal offence which it believed should undermine his refugee status in the UK.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin's chief spokesman, said: "In accordance with our legislation [his remarks are] being treated as a crime. It will cause some questions from the British authorities to Mr Berezovsky. We want to believe that official London will never grant asylum to someone who wants to use force to change the regime in Russia."

It will not be the first time the British government has faced accusations from the Kremlin that it is providing a safe haven for Mr Berezovsky. When he told a Moscow radio station last year that he wanted to see Mr Putin overthrown by force, Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, told the Commons that "advocating the violent overthrow of a sovereign state is unacceptable" and warned the tycoon he could be stripped of his refugee status.

Russian authorities subsequently sent an extradition request to London. That failed, however, when a district judge ruled Mr Berezovsky could not be extradited as long as he has asylum status.

In an interview with the Guardian, however, Mr Berezovsky goes much further than before, claiming to be in close contact with members of Russia's political elite who, he says, share his view that Mr Putin is damaging Russia by rolling back democratic reforms, smothering opposition, centralising power and flouting the country's constitution.

"There is no chance of regime change through democratic elections," he says. "If one part of the political elite disagrees with another part of the political elite - that is the only way in Russia to change the regime. I try to move that."

While declining to describe these contacts - and alleging that they would be murdered if they were identified - he maintained that he was offering his "experience and ideology" to members of the country's political elite, as well as "my understanding of how it could be done". He added: "There are also practical steps which I am doing now, and mostly it is financial."

Mr Berezovsky said he was unconcerned by any threat to strip him of his refugee status. "Straw wasn't in a position to take that decision. A judge in court said it wasn't in the jurisdiction of Straw."

He added that there was even less chance of such a decision being taken following the polonium-210 poisoning last November of his former employee, Alexander Litvinenko. "Today the reality is different because of the Litvinenko case."

Mr Berezovsky, 61, a former mathematician, turned to business during the Yeltsin years and made his fortune by capturing state assets at knockdown prices during Russia's rush towards privatisation.

Although he played a key role in ensuring Mr Putin's victory in the 2000 presidential elections, the two men fell out as the newly elected leader successfully wrested control of Russia back from the so-called oligarchy, the small group of tycoons who had come to dominate the country's economy.

A few months after the election Mr Berezovsky fled Russia, and applied successfully for asylum in the UK after Mr Litvinenko, an officer with the KGB's successor, the FSB, came forward to say he had been ordered to murder the tycoon.

Mr Berezovsky changed his name to Platon Elenin, Platon being the name of a character in a Russian film based loosely upon his life. He was subsequently given a British passport in this name.

As well as claiming to be financing and encouraging coup plotters in Moscow, Mr Berezovsky said he had dedicated much of the last six years to "trying to destroy the positive image of Putin" that many in the west held, portraying him whenever possible as a dangerously anti-democratic figure. He said he had also opposed the Russian president through Kommersant, the influential Russian newspaper which he controlled until last year.

Last month Mr Berezovsky was questioned by two detectives from the Russian prosecutor general's office who were in London to investigate the death of Mr Litvinenko. He has denied claims that he refused to answer many of their questions.

Last night the Kremlin said Russian authorities might want to question him again in the light of his interview with the Guardian. "I now believe our prosecutor general's office has got lots of questions for Mr Berezovsky," said Mr Peskov. He added: "His words are very interesting. This is a very sensitive issue."

The Foreign Office said it had nothing to add to Mr Straw's comments of last year.

· Audio: Berezovsky on change in Russia (25 secs)
· Audio: Berezovsky on his personal safety (34 secs)

April 13, 2007 at 05:11 PM in Russia | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

April 12, 2007

Detente Is the Talk of Town In Damascus - Forward.com

Syria Claims Mediation Role in West's Standoffs With Hamas and Iran Marc Perelman | Fri. Apr 13, 2007 Damascus - While Republicans and Democrats in Washington trade blows over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Syria last week, officials and pundits in this ancient capital describe the political feuding as a distraction from a more important truth. From their viewpoint, Pelosi's visit was not a freelance bid for American-Syrian thaw but rather the latest step in a larger Syrian-Western rapprochement that has been under way for months.

Source: Detente Is the Talk of Town In Damascus - Forward.com

Sources here acknowledge that the substance of Pelosi’s talks with President Bashar al-Assad hardly deviated from American policy: demands that Syria stop supporting Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist groups, help secure the release of Israeli soldiers, refrain from meddling in Lebanon’s politics, and prevent arms and militants from crossing into neighboring Iraq.

For the Syrians, all this was less important than Pelosi’s mere presence. The visit by the highest American official in two years was taken by the regime as evidence, the clearest to date, that a Western policy of isolating Syria — prompted by accusations that Damascus was behind the February 2005 slaying of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri — was on its last legs. Coming on the heels of a slew of visits since last summer by Western European officials and by legislators of the United States, the Pelosi junket was interpreted here as evidence that the growing chorus of calls in Washington and Jerusalem to engage Syria was making inroads despite the reluctance of the Bush administration.

“What mattered to the Syrians was that she was in Damascus,” said political scientist Sami Moubayed of al-Kalamoun University. “Whether she came with a peace offer from Israel or a truce from Washington, they welcomed her as a guest of honor, with red carpets in the Syrian capital.”

Syrians point to two hardly known recent diplomatic events as evidence of their eagerness to join the pro-Western fold. Damascus played a key role in pushing Hamas and Fatah to reach an agreement earlier this year on a Palestinian national unity government, which Syrians view as a Hamas concession toward Israel. Even though the deal was signed in Mecca under the auspices of Saudi King Abdullah, a Western diplomat confirmed Syrian claims that most of the heavy lifting was done by Damascus, where Hamas leader Khaled Meshal resides.

In addition, Syrian foreign minister Walid Mouallem told Arab media that Damascus had helped, at Britain’s request, to mediate the release of the 15 British sailors captured last month by Iran for allegedly entering its territorial waters.

The guarded optimism here is better understood when compared with the jittery mood that prevailed in 2005, when a United Nations probe into the Hariri murder pointed fingers at the Assad regime. Syrian troops were then forced to withdraw from Lebanon under American and French pressure, and talk of forcing a regime change in Damascus was in full swing.

But pressure on Syria has eased since then. Iraq has descended into sectarian chaos, and the American administration’s democratization agenda is in shambles. Israel’s military onslaught in Lebanon last summer bolstered pro-Syrian forces. In addition, the escalating tensions over Iran’s nuclear program have taken some pressure off Damascus, even prompting calls to woo the regime back into the Arab mainstream, so as to isolate Tehran.

In Washington, meanwhile, talk of engagement with Syria gained credibility with the release last fall of the bipartisan report issued by the Iraq Study Group. Since then, the pace of congressional trips to Damascus has stepped up; in addition to the Pelosi delegation, three Republican legislators met Assad a couple of days earlier, and another did so the following day.

As a result, Syrian officials are hoping that Washington and Jerusalem will heed their message: Syria is ready not only to make peace with Israel but also to distance itself from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran — but it sees these as results of negotiations and not as preconditions. In exchange, Damascus wants to obtain the full return of the Golan Heights, a less hostile government in Lebanon and, most crucially, renewal of strong relations with the United States.

“The Syrians are really ready and serious about making peace with Israel,” said Ibrahim Hamidi, longtime Damascus bureau chief of the Saudi newspaper Al-Hayat. “Syria is also ready to discuss Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran as part of the endgame with Washington.”

A Western diplomat in Damascus seconded the view that the regime is not pursuing any ideological goal but is motivated exclusively by Syria’s national interest and its self-preservation. As a result, the diplomat said, Syria appears ready to discuss even such sensitive issues as Lebanon.

Syria signaled its openness in secret peace talks between a Syrian intermediary and a former senior Israeli diplomat, according to published accounts that have been confirmed publicly by the Israeli negotiator, former Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Liel. Both Syria and Israel have denied involvement in those discussions, but the participants claim that both governments were updated regularly. Well-informed sources add that this is especially true with regard to key Syrian officials, and that Damascus eventually pulled out when Israel refused to allow officials to participate in the talks.

A related development has been the warming of relations between Syria and Saudi Arabia after years of deterioration. Ties hit a low point during last summer’s war in Lebanon, when Assad blasted Arab countries that initially criticized Hezbollah — most notably Saudi Arabia — as “half-men.” Both sides made efforts to iron out their differences before the recent summit of the Arab League held in the Saudi capital, where Syria endorsed the renewed Saudi initiative calling for normalization with Israel.

Still, another Western diplomat said that Western countries remained uncertain about Syria’s willingness to distance itself from Hezbollah or from Iran.

Early this week, France began circulating a draft statement at the U.N. Security Council expressing concern about continuing Syrian weapons shipments to Hezbollah.

While the Bush administration maintains that the regime’s negative role in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories does not warrant a full-fledged engagement, it nonetheless sent a State Department official to Damascus last month to discuss the fate of Iraqi refugees. American officials also participated in a conference in Baghdad that was attended by officials from both Syria and Iran.

Moreover, the administration has quietly used European diplomats and Saudi officials to assess whether Syria is ready to change course.

Last August, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos became the first Western official to visit Damascus since the Hariri murder. He was followed by several European diplomats, including Britain’s top foreign policy adviser and, most symbolically, E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana. The British diplomat, Nigel Sheinwald, arrived in Damascus last November with a set of requests after a trip to Washington and meetings with State Department officials. He called on Syria to support the Western-backed governments in Iraq and in Lebanon, to pressure Hamas to enter a Palestinian unity government with Fatah, to fight Islamic terrorism and to downgrade relations with Iran.

Syria moved on the Iraq front by re-establishing diplomatic and intelligence ties with Baghdad, welcoming senior Iraqi government officials, intensifying a security crackdown on jihadist networks and coaxing Sunni leaders to participate in national reconciliation efforts. Syria helped broker the Palestinian government accord. It signaled that its growing ties with Iran were the result of its isolation rather than an ideological stance — and, as such, could be easily reversed. But Lebanon, which was the main focus of the Solana visit and of recent discussions with Saudi Arabia, remains the sticking point.

The Western- and Saudi-backed Lebanese government has locked horns with pro-Syrian factions over the creation of an international tribunal to judge the culprits of the killings of Hariri and other anti-Syrian politicians. For months, pro-Syrian forces have blocked a parliamentary vote to create the court, citing Damascus’s claims that the U.N. probe is a political ploy by Western powers rather than a fair judicial process.

Some observers believe that both sides have now realized that a compromise was needed to avoid a civil war in Lebanon. The Solana visit, in particular, fueled speculation that a proposal was in the offing to spare the most senior Syrian officials in exchange for Damascus’s acceptance of the tribunal.

Compared with Lebanon, Israel is a fairly straightforward problem. Both sides nearly clinched an agreement in 2000 but ultimately failed to reach a compromise on the tracing of the border. After insisting for years that future talks would need to start where they left off, Syria formally dropped that condition, beginning with a 2003 Assad interview in The New York Times. Syrian officials claim that a deal would be within reach if only they had partners in Jerusalem and in Washington. After Pelosi announced that she had conveyed a peace message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the administration blasted her for encouraging a rogue regime and Olmert’s office quickly denied that Israel had made any overture.

But while the regime officially laments the lack of Israeli and American response to its repeated peace overtures, it also serves a purpose. “They understand Olmert is very weak and that there will be no resumption of full-fledged negotiations under a Bush administration,” one local commentator said. “So their repeated calls for peace are a way of embarrassing Israel and the U.S., because they know there will be no answer.”

April 12, 2007 at 09:53 PM in Middle East, Syria | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The face: Sir Nigel Sheinwald-News-Politics-TimesOnline

Penny Wark The release of 15 British sailors and Marines from Iran is both the Prime Minister's triumph and further evidence that Margaret Beckett lacks credibility as Foreign Secretary. On this occasion Tony Blair is indebted to his foreign policy adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, who held secret talks with Ali Larijani, the Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. The telephone call between the two men is regarded as the breakthrough encounter.

Source: The face: Sir Nigel Sheinwald-News-Politics-TimesOnline

A diplomatic success for a seasoned career diplomat, then. But the curious thing about Sir Nigel is that for all his cool-headed skill and the experience accrued during a 31-year career, he is not noted for having a delicate touch.

Rather, those who have worked with him describe him as outspoken, abrasive and ambitious. Yet if this is all that he is, he would not have pulled off a succession of sensitive, clandestine missions involving visits to such cities as Damascus, Tripoli, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Khartoum. Most notably he was involved in the secret negotiations that resulted in Libya’s abandonment of its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.

He is certainly brusque, says one who knows him, and he is regarded with awe. Another says he is all right if you stand up to him; he is fun too, he can be indiscreet, and as the father of three sons he is a dedicated family man. A nanny once called him a pussycat, which might surprise those who have seen only the rottweiler, but which indicates that there is more to Sir Nigel than a fierce front — and we all know that being forceful and scary is a way of keeping people at a distance.

He sees himself as someone who asks the tough questions and has no time for prevarication. A Middle East analyst recalls that his first comment to him was: “Are you in fa-vour of suicide bombers?”

After an education at Harrow County School for Boys and Balliol, Oxford, he joined the Diplomatic Service in 1976. A Moscow posting ended suddenly after an accident in which a Russian was killed by the car he was driving. He has since worked in Washington, done two stints in Brussels, and a range of policy jobs in London, where he headed the Foreign Office news department from 1995 until 1998.

He served as spokesman for Douglas Hurd and Malcolm Rifkind, but the turning point of his career was the arrival of new Labour in 1997. He quickly established a good relationship with Robin Cook, then Foreign Secretary, though his job was not to represent his Foreign Office colleagues but to implement the Prime Minister’s views. At 53 his appointment as the next Ambassador to the US makes it clear that he is very much Blair’s man. Will he be Brown’s too? Certainly it is easy to imagine that they will understand each other.

April 12, 2007 at 09:51 PM in Iran, Middle East, Syria | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

April 08, 2007

Guardian | Americans offered 'aggressive patrols' in Iranian airspace

 

Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Michael Howard and John Hooper Saturday April 7, 2007 Guardian The US offered to take military action on behalf of the 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran, including buzzing Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions with warplanes, the Guardian has learned.

Source: Guardian | Americans offered 'aggressive patrols' in Iranian airspace

In the first few days after the captives were seized and British diplomats were getting no news from Tehran on their whereabouts, Pentagon officials asked their British counterparts: what do you want us to do? They offered a series of military options, a list which remains top secret given the mounting risk of war between the US and Iran. But one of the options was for US combat aircraft to mount aggressive patrols over Iranian Revolutionary Guard bases in Iran, to underline the seriousness of the situation.

The British declined the offer and said the US could calm the situation by staying out of it. London also asked the US to tone down military exercises that were already under way in the Gulf. Three days before the capture of the 15 Britons , a second carrier group arrived having been ordered there by president George Bush in January. The aim was to add to pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme and alleged operations inside Iraq against coalition forces.

At the request of the British, the two US carrier groups, totalling 40 ships plus aircraft, modified their exercises to make them less confrontational.

The British government also asked the US administration from Mr Bush down to be cautious in its use of rhetoric, which was relatively restrained throughout.

The incident was a reminder of how inflammatory the situation in the Gulf is. According to some US and British officers, there is already a proxy war under way between their forces and elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Meanwhile, the Iranians are convinced that separatist guerrilla attacks in Khuzestan and Baluchistan provinces are the work of British and US intelligence respectively. Earlier this week, ABC television news reported that a Baluchi group, Jundullah, based in Pakistan and carrying out raids inside Iran, had been receiving advice and encouragement from American officials since 2005.

A senior Iranian source with close ties to the Revolutionary Guard, told the Guardian: "If this had been between Iranian and American soldiers it could have been the beginning of an accidental war."

With the crisis now over, a remarkable degree of consensus is emerging among British, Iranian and Iraqi officials about what happened over 13 nervous days - namely that the decision to seize the Britons was taken locally, and was not part of a grander scheme cooked up in Tehran.

"My best guess is that this was a local incident which became an international incident," said one British source closely involved in the crisis.

Both sides had been watching each other closely for years across the disputed line separating the Iranian and Iraqi sides of the Shatt al-Arab waterway and the northern Gulf beyond and British officials say that Iranian boats regularly infringe on foreign waters.

The senior Iranian source meanwhile, claimed there had been three British incursions into Iranian waters in the three months leading up to the capture and that the decision to detain the British naval crew on March 23 was taken by a regional Revolutionary Guard commander, responsible for the waterway.

Once the 15 captives were brought back to Iran, their stay was guaranteed to be unpleasant. The Pasdaran (as the Revolutionary Guards are universally known in Farsi) are a law unto themselves, feared within Iran for their thuggish methods.

There is also general agreement in London and Tehran that once the crisis had been triggered it took nearly two weeks to untangle, because their release had to be agreed by all the key players in the perpetual poker game that passes for government in Tehran. But those players could not be reached because they were scattered around the country for the No Rouz (new year) holiday.

"Nobody who counted was answering the phone," said one senior British official. "By the time the Iranian leaders got back from the holiday [on Tuesday] the phone was ringing off the hook, including from people they didn't expect, calling on them to release the captives quickly."

Among those unexpected callers were their closest allies, the Syrians, as well as leaders from far-flung states with no direct stake in the Gulf. Even the Colombian government issued a protest.

Another surprise intervention came from the Vatican. Hours before Wednesday's release, a letter from Pope Benedict was handed to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It said the Pope was confident that men of goodwill could find a solution. He asked the supreme leader to do what he could to ensure that the British sailors and marines were reunited with their families in time for Easter. It would, he said, be a significant religious gesture of goodwill from the Iranian people.

What impact the Pope's message had is impossible to assess. But some of its language was reflected at the press conference at which the release of the 15 Britons was announced. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the decision to "forgive" the sailors and marines had been taken "on the occasion of the birthday of the great prophet [Muhammad] ... and for the occasion of the passing of Christ".

The Iraqi government also played a critical role, pushing for consular access to five Iranians who had been arrested by US forces in Irbil and had been in custody since January, and helping organise the mysterious release of an Iranian diplomat who had been in captivity since February.

In the first days of the crisis, Iraqi officials also helped the British to identify the exact boundaries of Iraqi waters, the Guardian has learned, suggesting the British were not as certain of their case as they had publicly claimed.

But it was the unexpected release of Jalal Sharifa, the second secretary at the Iranian embassy, that raised most eyebrows, fuelling speculation that some kind of bargaining was going on. The diplomat had been missing since he was plucked from the streets of Baghdad on February 4. Iran blamed US forces in Iraq for ordering the diplomat's abduction, but US military officials denied the claims. Baghdad's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, however, has insisted that negotiations over Mr Sharafi had been under way long before March 23.

Some credit for the abrupt release of the British naval crew has also been given to Tony Blair's top foreign policy adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, who got through to his Iranian counterpart, Ari Larijani for the first time the night before Mr Ahmadinejad made his surprise announcement. The opening of a Sheinwald-Larijani channel of communication is being hailed as one of the few pluses to emerge from the affair.

The crucial decision for release was taken on Tuesday by the supreme national security council. It includes representatives of the presidency, the armed forces and the Revolutionary Guard, and Tuesday was the first day they could all be brought together following the No Rouz holiday.

"I think they realised pretty quickly the game was not worth the candle," a senior British government source said.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

April 8, 2007 at 07:20 PM in Middle East, Special Relationship | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

April 06, 2007

How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War - washingtonpost.com

 

Intelligence Failures Surrounded Inquiry on Iraq-Niger Uranium Claim By Peter Eisner Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, April 3, 2007; A01

Source: How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War - washingtonpost.com

It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous -- later retracted -- 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?

Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong.

Nonetheless, the uranium claim would become a crucial justification for the invasion of Iraq that began less than two months later. When occupying troops found no nuclear program, the 16 words and how they came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war.

Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable.

In February 2002, the CIA received the verbatim text of one of the documents, filled with errors easily identifiable through a simple Internet search, the interviews show. Many low- and mid-level intelligence officials were already skeptical that Iraq was in pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The interviews also showed that France, berated by the Bush administration for opposing the Iraq war, honored a U.S. intelligence request to investigate the uranium claim. It determined that its former colony had not sold uranium to Iraq.

Burba, who had no special expertise in Africa or nuclear technology, was able to quickly unravel the fraud. Yet the claims clung to life within the Bush administration for months, eventually finding their way into the State of the Union address.

As a result of the CIA's failure to firmly discredit the document text it received in February 2002, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was called in to investigate the claim. That decision eventually led to the special counsel's investigation that exposed inner workings of the White House and ended with the criminal conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was forced to resign as chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.

"You know I feel bad about it," Burba said later, discussing her frustrations about her role in giving the dossier to the Americans. "You know the fact is that my documents, with the documents I brought to them, they justified the war."

The Tip

In early October of 2002, a man mysteriously contacted Elisabetta Burba at her Milan office.

"Do you remember me?" the deep voice said, without identifying himself outright. It was Rocco Martino, an old source who had proved reliable in the past. He was once again trying to sell her information.

Martino said he had some very interesting documents to show her, and asked whether she could fly down to Rome right away.

They met at a restaurant in Rome on Oct. 7, where Martino showed Burba a folder filled with documents, most of them in French. One of the documents was purportedly sent by the president of Niger to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, confirming a deal to sell 500 tons of uranium to Iraq annually. This was the smoking gun in the package, claiming to show the formal approval of Niger's president to supply Iraq with a commodity that would in all likelihood only be used for a nuclear weapons program: Iraq had no nuclear power plants.

Though the document was in French it would later come to be known as "The Italian Letter." It was written in all capital letters, in the form of an old telex, and bore the letterhead of the Republic of Niger. The letter was dated July 27, 2000, and included an odd shield on the top, a shining sun surrounded by a horned animal head, a star and a bird. The letter was stamped Confidential and Urgent.

The letter said that "500 tons of pure uranium per year will be delivered in two phases." A seal at the bottom of the page read "The Office of the President of the Republic of Niger." Superimposed over the seal was a barely legible signature bearing the name of the president of Niger, Mamadou Tandja.

Burba listened without saying much as she took a first look at the documents. She recognized right away that the material was hot, if authentic. But confirming the origin would be difficult, she recalled thinking at the time. She didn't want to fall into a trap.

Burba and Martino made an agreement; she would take the documents, and if they checked out as authentic, then they could talk about money.

'Let's Go to the Americans'

Back in her magazine's Milan newsroom, Burba told her editors she thought it would make sense to fly to Niger and check around for confirmation. The editor of the magazine, Carlo Rossella, agreed. He then suggested they simultaneously pursue another tack.

"Let's go to the Americans," Rossella said, "because they are focused on looking for weapons of mass destruction more than anyone else. Let's see if they can authenticate the documents." Rossella called the U.S. Embassy in Rome and alerted officials to expect a visit from Burba.

On Wednesday morning, Oct. 9, Burba returned to Rome and took a cab to the U.S. Embassy, which is housed at the old Palazzo Margherita.

Burba came to a security gate and walked through a magnetometer, where an Italian employee of the embassy press department came down to meet her.

After a few formalities, an Italian aide introduced her to Ian Kelly, the embassy press spokesman. Kelly and Burba walked across the embassy's walled grounds and sat down for a cup of coffee in the cafeteria.

Burba told Kelly that she had some documents about Iraq and uranium shipments and needed help in confirming their authenticity and accuracy.

Kelly interrupted her, realizing he needed help. He made a phone call summoning someone else from his staff as well as a political officer. Burba recalled a third person being invited, possibly a U.S. military attache. She didn't get their names.

"Let's go to my office," Kelly said. They walked past antiquities, a tranquil fountain, steps and pieces of marble, all set in a tree-lined patio garden.

The Italian journalist's chat with Kelly and his colleagues was brief. She handed over the papers; Kelly told her the embassy would look into the matter. But Kelly had not been briefed on what others in the embassy knew.

CIA Role

One person who refused to meet with Burba was the CIA chief of station. A few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, Sismi, the Italian intelligence agency, had sent along information about the alleged sale of uranium to Iraq. The station chief asked for more information and would later consider it far-fetched.

On Oct. 15, 2001, the CIA reports officer at the embassy wrote a brief summary based on the Sismi intelligence, signed and dated it, and routed it to CIA's Operations Directorate in Langley, with copies going to the clandestine service's European and Near East divisions. The reports officer had limited its distribution because the intelligence was uncorroborated; she was aware of Sismi's questionable track record and did not believe the report merited wider dissemination.

The Operations Directorate then passed the raw intelligence to the CIA's Intelligence Directorate and to sister agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency. A more polished document, called a Senior Executive Intelligence Brief, was written at Langley three days later in which the CIA mentioned the new intelligence but added important caveats. The classified document, whose distribution was limited to senior policymakers and the congressional intelligence committees, said there was no corroboration and noted that Iraq had "no known facilities for processing or enriching the material."

Pushing the Africa Claim

Almost four months later, on Feb. 5, 2002, the CIA received more information from Sismi, including the verbatim text of one of the documents. The CIA failed to recognize that it was riddled with errors, including misspellings and the wrong names for key officials. But it was a separate DIA report about the claims that would lead Cheney to demand further investigation. In response, the CIA dispatched Wilson to Niger.

Martino's approach to Burba eight months later with the Italian letter coincided with accelerating U.S. preparations for war. On Oct. 7, 2002, the same day Martino gave Burba the dossier, President Bush launched a new hard-line PR campaign on Iraq. In a speech in Cincinnati, he declared that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a "grave threat" to U.S. national security.

"It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons," the president warned.

CIA Director George J. Tenet had vetted the text of Bush's speech and was able to persuade the White House to drop one questionable claim: that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa. The information was too fishy, Tenet explained to the National Security Council and Bush's speechwriters.

Bush dropped the shopping-for-uranium claim, but ratcheted up the bomb threat. He said in Cincinnati that if Hussein obtained bomb-grade uranium the size of a softball, he would have a nuclear bomb within a year. This particular doomsday scenario had first been unveiled several weeks earlier, on Aug. 26, by Cheney. In a speech in Nashville to the 103rd national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he declared with no equivocation that Hussein had "resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons."

On Oct. 16, Burba sat on a plane on her way to Niger, while in Washington, copies of the Italian letter and the accompanying dossier were placed on the table at an interagency nuclear proliferation meeting hosted by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

At this point, State Department analysts had determined the documents were phony, and had produced by far the most accurate assessment of Iraq's weapons program of the 16 agencies that make up the intelligence community. But the department's small intelligence unit operated in a bubble. Few administration officials -- not even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell -- paid much attention to its analytical product, much of which clashed with the White House's assumptions.

The State Department bureau, nevertheless, shared the bogus documents with those intelligence officials attending the meeting, including representatives of the Energy Department, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency. Four CIA officials attended, but only one, a clandestine service officer, bothered to take a copy of the Italian letter.

He returned to his office, filed the material in a safe and forgot about it.

The Niger uranium matter was not uppermost in the minds of the CIA analysts. Some of them had to deal with the issue in any case, largely because Cheney, his aide Libby and some aides at the National Security Council had repeatedly demanded more information and more analysis.

A Fraud Unravels

Burba arrived in Niamey, Niger's capital, on Oct. 17 and began tracking down leads on the Italian letter. Burba's investigation followed a series of similar inquiries by Wilson, the former ambassador, who investigated on behalf of the CIA eight months earlier. It became clear that Niger was not capable of secretly shipping yellowcake uranium to Iraq or anywhere else.

Burba found that a French company controlled the uranium trade, and any shipment of uranium would have been noticed. If a uranium sale had taken place, the logistics would have been daunting. "They would have needed hundreds of trucks," she said -- a large percentage of all the trucks in Niger. It would have been impossible to conceal.

Burba returned to Milan and reported her findings to her bosses in detail. She didn't believe the evidence provided by Martino; it was impossible. Her editors agreed. There was no story.

Five months later, on March 7, 2003, as preparations for the Iraq invasion were in their final stages, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, told the U.N. Security Council that the report that Iraq had been shopping for uranium in Niger was based on forged documents. The agency had received the document from the United States a few weeks earlier.

Not long after the invasion, other news media in Italy, elsewhere in Europe and then in the United States reported that the source of the information about a Niger yellowcake uranium deal had been a batch of bogus letters and other documents passed along several months earlier to an unnamed Italian reporter, who in turn handed the information over to the United States.

Although Burba knew that the Bush administration had also received information about the forged documents from Italian intelligence, she wished she could have acted earlier to reveal the fraud.

It remains unclear who fabricated the documents. Intelligence officials say most likely it was rogue elements in Sismi who wanted to make money selling them.

April 6, 2007 at 04:14 PM in Iraq, US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Our finest hour

 

 

by MATTHEW HICKLEY - More by this author » Last updated at 23:49pm on 5th April 2007

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There was growing concern last night over the conduct of the prisoners and the extent to which they cooperated with and even praised their captors.

Unlike past generations, today's servicemen and women are trained to co-operate and present a human face if they are taken prisoner.

But former senior commanders are asking if the shift has gone too far, and saying the hostages should have been more dignified. One called their behaviour "a bloody shambles".

Tehran TV showed the sailors and Marines laughing and joking after "confessing" to invading Iranian waters, and later shaking President Ahmadinejad by the hand and thanking him enthusiastically for his "forgiveness".

Their behaviour let the Iranians milk every ounce of political capital out of humiliating Britain and still end up appearing magnanimous.

Colonel Bob Stewart, who commanded British troops in Bosnia, said he was "very uncomfortable" with the way the hostages behaved.

He said: "Although we are not at war and the system has obviously changed, I could still not understand our people stating categorically that they were in Iranian waters and apologising.

"I felt what they were saying was damaging. I will not condemn them for their behaviour but I found it very strange and it worried me. The men who apologised should not have done so.

"Some say no harm has been done by their actions. I disagree."

Lieutenant General Sir Michael Gray, Commander of the 1st Battalion the Parachute Regiment in the early 1970s, said: "In my days you would have got name, rank and serial number and that would be your lot.

"This situation looked like a bloody shambles and while there was sympathy for Leading Seaman Turney, if she had been my soldier I would not have been impressed to see her smoking in front of the cameras. She knew she was being filmed. It did not look good."

Britain's top military officer, Chief of the Defence Staff Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup, gave the detainees his unreserved backing, however.

He said: "They did exactly as they should have done from start to finish and we are proud of them."

But one Army insider said: "The way we train our people may need looking at. Playing along with your captors is basically the right approach, but it's possible to play along with the enemy's propaganda a bit too enthusiastically."

The Defence Ministry maintained throughout the crisis that its two boats never strayed into Iranian waters. But the stream of televised 'confessions' soon began to muddy the waters, making it harder for UK diplomats to gather strong support at the United Nations.

As part of their debriefing the 15 will have blood tests to try to establish if they were drugged.

There are dozens of drugs which could have been put in food or drink, without the detainees knowing, to instil mild euphoria and reduce inhibitions.

Under the Geneva Convention, captured servicemen and women need give only their name, rank and serial number. But this approach has been changed by British forces to reflect the likelihood that today they are more likely to be captured by terrorists or insurgents or an unpredictable faction of a rogue state.

April 6, 2007 at 12:31 PM in | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home