The U.S. Treasury Department’s claim of a “secret deal” between Iran and Al-Qaeda, which had become a key argument by right-wing activists who support war against Iran, has been discredited by former intelligence officials in the wake of publication of documents from Osama bin Laden’s files revealing a high level of antagonism between Al-Qaeda and Iran.

Three former intelligence officials with experience on Near East and South Asia told IPS they regard Treasury’s claim of a secret agreement between Iran and Al-Qaeda as false and misleading.

That claim was presented in a way that suggested it was supported by intelligence. It now appears, however, to have been merely a propaganda line designed to support the Barack Obama administration’s strategy of diplomatic coercion on Iran.

Under Secretary of Treasury David S. Cohen announced last July that the department was “exposing Iran’s secret deal with Al-Qaeda allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory.” The charge was introduced in connection with the designation of an Al-Qaeda official named Yasin al-Suri as a terrorist subject to financial sanctions.

The Treasury claim has been embraced by the right-wing Weekly Standard and others aligned with hardline Israeli views on Iran, as primary source evidence of an alliance between Iran and Al-Qaeda.

But Paul Pillar, former national intelligence officer for Near East and South Asia, told IPS the allegation of a “secret deal” between Iran and Al-Qaeda “has never been backed up by any evidence that would justify such a term” and that it is “a highly misleading characterisation of interaction between Iran and Al-Qaeda….”

Pillar said the recently released bin Laden documents “not only do not demonstrate any agreement in which Iran condoned or facilitated operations by Al-Qaeda, they contradict the notion that there was any such agreement.”

“I’ve never seen anything that suggests that happened,” said another former intelligence official, referring to an Iran-Al Qaeda agreement. “I’m very sceptical about that.”

A third former intelligence official said Treasury’s “secret deal” claim “doesn’t pass the BS test” and noted that it is perfectly aligned with the Obama administration’s policy of pressure on Iran.

The official said the Treasury Department’s push for its “secret deal” line is emblematic of a larger split in the intelligence community between those for whom intelligence is secondary to their role in “counterterrorism” policy and the rest of the community.

“The counterterrorism types are like used car salesmen,” the former official told IPS. “They are always overselling something. They have to show that they are doing important work.”

The actual text of the Jul. 28, 2011 “designation” of Yasin al-Suri suggests that the claim of such a “secret deal” is merely a political spin on the fact that Iran dealt with al-Suri on the release of prisoners.

It says that Yasin al Suri is an Al-Qaeda facilitator “living and operating in Iran under agreement between Al-Qaeda and the Iranian government”. Iranian authorities, it said, “maintain a relationship with (al-Suri) and have permitted him to operate within Iran’s borders since 2005”.

The designation offers no other evidence of an “agreement” except for the fact that Iran dealt with al-Suri in arranging the releases of Al-Qaeda prisoners from Iranian detention and their transfer to Pakistan.

The official notice of a 10-million-dollar reward for al-Suri on the website of the “Rewards for Justice” programme under the Diplomatic Security office of the State Department also indicates that the only “agreement” between Iran and Al-Qaeda has been to exchange prisoners.

“Working with the Iranian government,” it said, “al-Suri arranges the release of al Qaeda personnel from Iranian prisons. When al Qaeda operatives are released, the Iranian government transfers them to al- Suri, who then facilitates their travel to Pakistan.”

Neither the Treasury Department nor the State Department, which joined the February 2012 press briefing on the reward for finding al- Suri, referred to the fact that Iran had been forced to deal with al- Suri and to release Al-Qaeda detainees in order to obtain the release of the Iranian diplomat kidnapped by Pakistani allies of Al-Qaeda in Peshawar, Pakistan in November 2008.

In one of the documents taken from the Abbottabad compound and published by West Point’s Counter-Terrorism Center last week, a senior Al Qaeda official wrote, “We believe that our efforts, which included escalating a political and media campaign, the threats we made, the kidnapping of their friend the commercial counselor in the Iranian Consulate in Peshawar, and other reasons that scared them based on what they saw (we are capable of), to be among the reasons that led them to expedite (the release of these prisoners).”

In response to the IPS request for clarification of the “secret agreement” claim, John Sullivan, a spokesman for the Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, declined to answer any questions on the subject or to allow IPS to interview Eytan Fisch, the assistant director of the Terrorism and Financial Intelligence office.

In briefing journalists on al-Suri last February, Fisch had again invoked the alleged Iran-Al Qaeda “secret agreement” last February.

Sullivan defended the Treasury Department’s position on the issue, however, against criticism based on the publication of the bin Laden documents. “We based our action on Yasin al-Suri on a broad array of information that far exceeds what was recently made public,” Sullivan said in an e-mail to IPS.

Asked about the hint by the Treasury spokesman that department officials used still-classified material as the basis for the claim of a “secret agreement”, former national intelligence officer Pillar called it “disingenuous”.

The origins of the Treasury Department’s “secret deal” claim indicate that it was intended to generate press stories that would increase political and government support for pressure on Iran through economic sanctions and military threats.

The designation of Yasin al-Suri as a terrorist subject to financial sanctions Jul. 28, 2011 did not have any impact on Al-Qaeda funding. The objective was to allow Treasury to generate press coverage of its charge of a secret Iran-Al Qaeda agreement. The timing of the move coincided with a shift in Obama administration strategy from diplomatic engagement to maximising pressure on Iran.

During the period when neoconservatives were pushing for an explicit policy of support for regime change in Iran during the first George W. Bush administration, U.S. officials frequently talked as though any Al-Qaeda presence in Iran was evidence of Iran’s cooperation with the terrorist organisation.

But as ABC News reported on May 29, 2008, Bush administration officials were acknowledging privately that they were not complaining about Iranian policy toward Al-Qaeda operatives in Iran, because Iran had “kept these al Qaeda operatives under control since 2003, limiting their ability to travel and communicate”.

One official said Al-Qaeda officials under Iranian control, “some of whom are quite important,” were “essentially on ice”.

Israel has continued, however, to use its relations with friendly news media, especially in the UK, to generate disinformation about alleged joint Iranian-Al Qaeda planning for terrorist actions.

Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News carried a story Feb. 15, 2012 citing “intelligence sources” from an unnamed state as suggesting that Iran had been supplying Al-Qaeda with “training in the use of advanced explosives” as well as some funding and a safe haven “as part of a deal first worked out in 2009….”

The report quoted the intelligence sources as saying that Iran wanted to use the threat of Al-Qaeda retaliation against Western targets as “revenge for any military strike against Iran’s nuclear capabilities”.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, May 9 2012 (IPS)

U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday declared his support for same-sex marriage, becoming the first sitting president to do so and thrusting the issue into the centre of his campaign for re-election.

Analysts here described Obama’s new position as politically risky, a point that was underlined by Tuesday’s approval by 60 percent of voters in North Carolina of an amendment to the state constitution affirming that only marriage between a man and a woman is legally recognisable.

North Carolina, a critical swing state in Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential elections, joined 29 other states, including other key battleground states in November, such as Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Colorado, with constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriages.

At the same time, however, the move could help mobilise Obama’s Democratic base, and the polling during the period of his presidency has shown growing support for gay marriage. A Gallup poll released Tuesday found that 50 percent of respondents favoured legalising same-sex marriage and 48 percent opposed.

“Many political handicappers won’t be able to resist criticising Obama for picking a fight in the culture-war terrain that evangelical-strumming, Karl Rove-types have been trying to tease out for years,” wrote Steve Clemons on his widely read Atlantic blog.

“But President Obama is not prone to emotional leaps of faith and knee jerk shifts in policy. Their polls must show that the nation is ready to have this fight – that most independents and Democrats think same-sex marriage should be a civil right,” he added.

Asked about Obama’s stance, his all-but-certain Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, reaffirmed his opposition to the idea.

“My position is the same on gay marriage as it’s been …from the beginning, and that is that marriage is a relation between a man and a woman,” he told a radio interviewer in Denver. “That’s the posture that I had as governor and I have that today.”

But gay and human rights groups praised Obama for speaking out.

“Today, President Obama made history by boldly stating that gay and lesbian Americans should be fully and equally part of the fabric of American society and that our families deserve nothing less than the equal respect and recognition that comes through marriage,” said Joe Solomonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, the most prominent U.S. lobby group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans- gender (GLBT) issues.

“Following in the footsteps of predecessors who brought the nation forward on racial equality, this is a signature example of a president leading the people in a direction that is right and inevitable, even though some may not feel ready for it,” said Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of the U.S. chapter of Amnesty International (AIUSA).

Obama, who has long supported equal rights for gays and lesbians and who abolished the Bill Clinton-era “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy that required homosexual U.S. servicemen and women to hide their sexual preferences in order to remain in uniform, announced his position during an interview with ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ to be aired Thursday. He said that his views about same-sex marriage and LGBT rights in general have evolved over time.

“I’ve always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally,” Obama said in the video that was released Wednesday.

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbours, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” he said.

Obama was put on the spot on the issue on Sunday, when his vice president, Joe Biden, told the widely watched “Meet the Press” public affairs television programme that he was “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage, a position that was immediately endorsed by Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan.

Same-sex marriages are recognised in six states – including New York and, ironically, Romney’s Massachusetts, which became the first state to grant marriage licenses to LGBT couples in 2004 – and the District of Columbia. The legislatures of both Washington state and Maryland have also approved laws granting same-sex marriage licenses, but they may be challenged by proposed referendums in November.

California legalised same-sex marriages in 2008, but voters in a referendum in November that year overturned the law.

Historically, state governments have determined who may legally marry, although the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 declared state miscegenation laws – laws prohibiting inter-racial marriages – unconstitutional.

In 1996, conservatives in Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act which, for the first time, defined marriage under federal law as a union between a man and a woman.

The upshot of that law has been the denial by the federal government of a variety of benefits, such as Social Security, health insurance, and even hospital visitation rights, to LGBT couples who, if legally married, would be eligible to receive them. Same-sex “civil unions”, a status short of legal marriage, are recognised by a contract.

In 2010, a federal court in Massachusetts held that the denial of such rights and benefits to same-sex married couples in that state was unconstitutional, a ruling that is currently under appeal and may yet reach the Supreme Court.

In 2008, Obama expressed support for “civil unions” that have been passed by a number of states to provide individuals in longstanding same-sex relationships with the same state benefits and rights that are accorded legally married couples. But federal rights and benefits were still denied them.

In explaining his evolution, Obama stressed the religious roots of his thinking, noting that he had talked with his wife, Michelle, about this “over the years. …(I)n the end, the values that I care most deeply about and she cares most deeply about is how we treat other people, and, you know, we are both practicing Christians, and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others, but …when we think about faith, …what we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule – you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Excerpt:

Given the likely persistence of political pressure to reduce the yawning federal deficit, the United States – whether under President Barack Obama or his presumed Republican challenger, Mitt Romney – must be more selective in its foreign aid programme, according to a new report released here Tuesday by two influential think tanks.

The report, a joint production of the Center for Global Development (CGD) and the Center for American Progress (CAP), calls for re- allocating bilateral economic aid to increase support for 32 high- priority and generally well-governed countries, while curtailing assistance to 51 others.

It urges a similar weeding out process among the 134 current recipients of U.S. security assistance, of which only 45 should be considered high-priority and thus eligible for increased support.

“The United States must make hard choices about where to invest its resources,” according to CGD’s Connie Veillette, who co-authored the report with John Norris at CAP, a think tank from which the Obama administration recruited a significant number of its top foreign policy and aid officials.

“Foreign assistance works best in countries that embrace policy reforms and are committed to working with the United States as partners,” she added.

The nearly 300-page report, “Engagement Amid Austerity,” also calls for Washington to focus its aid efforts on three areas in which the U.S. has a “comparative advantage”: health, food security, and the delivery of humanitarian assistance, particularly given the Pentagon’s quick-reaction capabilities.

The report urges upper-middle-income recipients of Washington’s nearly eight-billion-dollar-a-year President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) programme, including several southern African and Caribbean countries, to assume more responsibility for its cost and operations.

And it calls for a major overhaul of Washington’s food aid programme to allow for more local and regional food purchases instead of insisting that almost all food aid be exported from the U.S. itself aboard U.S. ships.

The report also recommends the establishment of a bipartisan International Affairs Realignment Commission that would present a comprehensive package of reforms to be accepted or rejected in toto by the new administration and Congress. Such a mechanism was used successfully several years ago to decide on the politically hypersensitive issue of which military bases to close.

While the report, the product of consultations of a 15-member bipartisan working group over the past six months, does not recommend any reduction in the U.S. international affairs and aid budgets, it assumes that political and fiscal realities will force cuts, regardless of who wins the November presidential race.

“It is far easier to demonise foreign aid than to explain how relatively modest programmes to improve living standards in the developing world have consistently proven to be in the national interest over the long term,” according to Veillette.

The current Republican-backed budget plan in the House of Representatives, authored by Rep. Paul Ryan and endorsed by Romney, calls for cutting the foreign affairs budget by more than 30 billion dollars from 2012 levels over the next four years – or by some 10 percent a year – in contrast to the steady increases it mandates for the Pentagon.

In determining how to more effectively allocate U.S. diplomacy and aid in times of austerity, the task force considered multiple variables for each country recipient, including GDP per capita, net development assistance per capita, military expenditures, and country scores on half a dozen multinational indices designed to measure different aspects of governance, such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, and the Human Development Index.

In addition, it considered more subjective factors, such as short- and long-term strategic interests, political support, and the traditional strength of the bilateral relationship. It also considered the degree to the role of multilateral assistance programmes to which the U.S. contributes.

All recipient countries were then divided into three categories for both economic and security assistance.

The first two include those considered “priority investment countries”, for which continued or increased aid was warranted; and those considered to have “limited expectations”, for which aid would continue based largely on short-term imperatives, such as geo- political concerns.

The last category is those to which aid should be curtailed for any of three reasons – because they could be “graduated” from assistance within one to five years based on declining need and growing capacity; or because aid programmes there were too small or expensive to operate effectively; or because their performance, especially in the area of governance, was too poor to justify continued aid except for humanitarian reasons or to support local civil society.

Of the 103 countries currently receiving economic assistance, the report found 32 qualified as “priority investment countries”; among them, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Mozambique, Senegal, South Sudan, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, Tunisia, the Palestinian Territories, Bangladesh, Nepal, El Salvador, and Peru.

It also cited Mali but noted that the recent military coup d’etat probably disqualified it.

Limited expectation countries included, among others, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti, Cuba, and Mexico.

Among countries where aid could be curtailed, the report cited Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Nigeria in Africa; Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka in Asia; Brazil, Colombia and the islands states of the Eastern Caribbean in the Americas as those which could be graduated from U.S. aid programmes.

Laos, Timor-Leste, Morocco, Guyana, and Jamaica were among those which were considered either too small or too expensive to operate, but the report noted that aid could continue in these countries with a minimal U.S. presence.

Among the “poor performers” were Angola, Cameroon, Sudan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Several Central Asian states, Afghanistan, and Pakistan also fell into this category, but the report stressed that the U.S. could continue providing economic aid – albeit reduced from current levels – to the latter two through a proposed “strategic fund” that would be administered separately by the State Department.

Among the 45 “priority investments” for U.S. security assistance, the report cited most of the same countries deemed priorities for economic aid, including Nigeria, South Africa, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Russia, Turkey, Israel, and Colombia.

“Limited expectation” countries included Ethiopia, Mozambique, Vietnam, Alteria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Yemen, among others, while countries which can “graduate” from U.S. security aid include India, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Malaysia, Singapore, among others.

“Poor-performing” countries where aid should be curtailed for reasons of poor governance of human rights abuses include Angola, Bahrain, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, and Nicaragua, although the report stressed that security-related assistance may continue through the proposed “strategic fund”.

The report stresses the importance of increasing cooperation with other donors, particularly multilateral institutions, in enhancing aid effectiveness and reducing costs and also suggests that Washington develop trilateral cooperations with emerging aid donors, notably India, South Africa, and Brazil, all of whom receive U.S. aid but have also launched their own aid programmes.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Citing growing violence and polarisation along sectarian lines, human rights groups and independent experts here are urging Washington to exert more pressure on the government of Bahrain to free political prisoners and launch a serious dialogue with its opposition on major democratic reforms.

While the administration of President Barack Obama has repeatedly called on the al-Khalifa monarchy to follow through on recommendations made by an international commission last November, it has been reluctant to take stronger steps for fear of alienating Saudi Arabia, Bahrain’s much larger neighbour, according to analysts here.

The Pentagon also does not want to jeopardise its use of the island as the headquarters for its Fifth Fleet, particularly given its strategic location directly across the Gulf from Iran.

The administration “should be telling the Bahraini government that time is short, and, if they don’t act, there will be an escalation on the U.S. side,” said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), who was briefly detained by police at a demonstration during a visit to the Gulf kingdom last month.

In addition to maintaining a de facto suspension on arms sales to Bahrain, he called for Washington to consider supporting a resolution on the situation at the U.N. Human Rights Council and denying visas to senior officials deemed responsible for abuses committed during the past year’s crackdown against the predominantly Shi’a opposition.

Speaking at a forum sponsored by the Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) Thurday, Malinowski also urged Washington to signal its willingness to consider moving the Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain. “The military base is not sustainable as violence grows,” he said.

Malinowski’s advice fell short of that of some Gulf specialists here, notably a former top Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst for Near Eastern and South Asia. Writing in the Financial Times just after the controversial running of the Formula One race in Bahrain last month, Emile Nakhleh urged the administration to begin pulling the fleet out now.

“The huge U.S. naval presence in Bahrain has not improved western security in the Gulf; has not altered Iran’s behaviour; and, more important, has not silenced the anti-regime opposition in the Gulf and in other Arab countries,” wrote Nakhleh, who also headed the CIA’s Political Islam desk.

“Instead, its presence has arguably increased Iran’s belligerence and given Sunni regimes, including Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the false impression that Washington has given them a licence to kill their own people,” he added, noting that such a move would signal all regimes in the region that “Arab dictatorship will no longer be tolerated whether in Bahrain, Syria, Saudi Arabia, or elsewhere.”

The appeals for a stronger U.S. stance reflect growing concerns here that hardliners led by the world’s longest-serving prime minister, Khalifah ibn Sulman al-Khalifa, have solidified their hold on power and successfully marginalised reformist elements identified with the crown prince, Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.

The administration had hoped to bolster the crown prince’s position in the immediate aftermath of the last year’s Saudi-backed crackdown against the opposition by, among other things, arranging a high- profile White House meeting with Obama last June.

They had also hoped that he and King Hamad, considered a “moderate” by the administration, could force through implementation of the key recommendations made in November by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), which was tasked to investigate abuses committed during crackdown.

In addition to the use of excessive force by security forces, resulting in several dozen deaths, the BICI’s nearly 500-page report detailed other serious abuses, including the rounding up, detention, torture and mistreatment of hundreds of demonstrators, the wrongful dismissal of thousands of others from government posts and universities, and serious due-process violations, including the admission of forced confessions, committed against defendants brought before special security courts.

The BICI’s key recommendations included the release of all political prisoners, investigation and prosecution of senior officials suspected of giving orders to carry out abuses, and launching a serious dialogue with the opposition, which has been led by the al- Wefaq party, leading to democratic reforms that would give the Shi’a community, which is believed to comprise between 60 and 70 percent of Bahraini citizens, a much bigger voice in the government.

While some technical suggestions, such as the installation of cameras in jails to discourage torture (although Malinowski noted that police now commit abuses against detainees in the streets and back alleys) have been implemented, the government has done little or nothing on the more overarching recommendations designed to further reconciliation and prevent radicalisation.

“The crown prince has been marginalised,” according to Joost Hiltermann, a Gulf expert at the International Crisis Group (ICG).

He also noted that the government appears intent on increasing its dependence on Saudi Arabia – hundreds of whose troops remain in Bahrain after they were sent there to back up Bahraini forces during the crackdon – to the extent of favouring a “Saudi-Bahraini confederation” that, if consummated, would mean “political suicide by Saudi embrace”.

Like Malinowski, Hiltermann said the situation on the ground is deteriorating as more radical anti-monarchical elements in the Shi’a community, notably the February 14 Youth Movement, in support at Al- Wefaq’s expense.

The recent use of molotov cocktails by some opposition elements against the police, as well as the police’s increased use of tear gas and birdshot, represents a “disturbing trend” that underlines the urgent need for implementation of BICI’s recommendations, he said.

“The value out of the BICI is zero on the ground,” according to Khalil Al-Marzooq, an Al-Wefaq leader and former parliamentarian, who also participated in the POMED forum and appealed for a stronger response by the U.S. and the international community, which, he complained, has taken a “wait and see” attitude.

“The cycle of violence is growing; …the hope is still there, but we have to act fast because time is against us.”

In that respect, many analysts are focused on the fate of Abdul Hadi al-Khawaja, a dual Danish-Bahraini citizen and long-time human rights activist who was sentenced by a military court with 20 other activists last year to life imprisonment on charges that they plotted to overthrow the government.

Al-Khawaja, who has been on a hunger strike for 88 days and, according to some reports, is reportedly being forced-fed in an army hospital, and is co-defendants are considered “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International. Earlier this week, Bahrain’s Court of Cassation accepted an appeal of their case but declined to release them on bail.

“The most important step in turning down the temperature in Bahrain at this point is if Al-Khawaja were released, even as a preliminary move, with an indication that other political prisoners will be released,” according to Toby Jones, a Gulf expert at Rutgers University.

“Things are very, very bad and will only get worse unless there’s a breakthrough,” he told IPS. “Letting Al- Khawaja go would be seen as an important gesture, and it would save his life.”

The administration has also pushed hard both privately and publicly for precisely that, calling earlier this week for Manama “to urgently consider all available options to resolve his case humanely and expeditiously.”

“Many political activists remain in prison, some of them arrested for participation in non-violent demonstrations, and we encourage the speedy resolution of all of these cases, as recommended by the BICI report,” a State Department spokeperson told IPS. “We further urge the government of Bahrain to drop charges against all individuals who engaged in free speech and peaceable assembly.”

But whether the government is listening to Washington remains to be seen.

In another action this week, Bahraini authorities reversed a previous decision to grant visas to representatives of several U.S. and international mainstream organisations – including the Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom House, Index on Censorship, and Reporters Without Borders – to travel to the kingdom next week to assess press and free-speech conditions there.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

The optics surrounding the Barack Obama administration’s “Enduring Strategic Partnership” agreement with Afghanistan and the Memorandums of Understanding accompanying it emphasise transition to Afghan responsibility and an end to U.S. war.

President Barack Obama addresses the press from Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, May 1, 2012. Credit: White House photo by Pete Souza

But the only substantive agreement reached between the U.S. and Afghanistan – well hidden in the agreements – has been to allow powerful U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) to continue to carry out the unilateral night raids on private homes that are universally hated in the Pashtun zones of Afghanistan.

The presentation of the new agreement on a surprise trip by President Obama to Afghanistan, with a prime time presidential address and repeated briefings for the press, allows Obama to go into a tight presidential election campaign on a platform of ending an unpopular U.S. war in Afghanistan.

It also allows President Hamid Karzai to claim he has gotten control over the SOF night raids while getting a 10-year commitment of U.S. economic support.

But the actual text of the agreement and of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on night raids included in it by reference will not end the U.S. war in Afghanistan, nor will they give Karzai control over night raids.

The Obama administration’s success in obscuring those facts is the real story behind the ostensible story of the agreement.

Obama’s decisions on how many U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan in 2014 and beyond and what their mission will be will only be made in a “Bilateral Security Agreement” still to be negotiated. Although the senior officials did not provide any specific information about those negotiations in their briefings for news media, the Strategic Partnership text specifies that they are to begin the signing of the present agreement “with the goal of concluding within one year”.

That means Obama does not have to announce any decisions about stationing of U.S. forces in Afghanistan before the 2012 presidential election, allowing him to emphasise that he is getting out of Afghanistan and sidestep the question of a long-term commitment of troops in Afghanistan.

The Bilateral Security Agreement will supersede the 2003 “Status of Forces” agreement with Afghanistan, according to the text. That agreement gives U.S. troops in Afghanistan immunity from prosecution and imposes no limitations on U.S. forces in regard to military bases or operations.

Last month’s Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on night raids was forced on the United States by Karzai’s repeated threat to refuse to sign a partnership agreement unless the United States gave his government control over any raids on people’s homes. Karzai’s insistence on ending U.S. unilateral night raids and detention of Afghans had held up the agreement on Strategic Partnership for months.

But Karzai’s demand put him in direct conflict with the interests of one of the most influential elements of the U.S. military: the SOF. Under Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan came to depend heavily on the purported effectiveness of night raids carried out by SOF units in weakening the Taliban insurgency.

CENTCOM officials refused to go along with ending the night raids or giving the Afghan government control over them, as IPS reported last February.

The two sides tried for weeks to craft an agreement that Karzai could cite as meeting his demand but that would actually change very little.

In the end, however, it was Karzai who had to give in. What was done to disguise that fact represents a new level of ingenuity in misrepresenting the actual significance of an international agreement involving U.S. military operations.

The MOU was covered by cable news as a sea change in the conduct of military operations. CNN, for example, called it a “landmark deal” that “affords Afghan authorities an effective veto over controversial special operations raids.”

But a closer reading of the text of the MOU as well as comments on by U.S. military officials indicate that it represents little, if any, substantive change from the status quo.

The agreement was negotiated between the U.S. military command in Kabul and Afghan Ministry of Defence, and lawyers for the U.S. military introduced a key provision that fundamentally changed the significance of the rest of the text.

In the first paragraph under the definition of terms, the MOU says, “For the purpose of this Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), special operations are operations approved by the Afghan Operational Coordination Group (OCG) and conducted by Afghan Forces with support from U.S. Forces in accordance with Afghan laws.”

That carefully crafted sentence means that the only night raids covered by the MOU are those that the SOF commander responsible for U.S. night raids decides to bring to the Afghan government. Those raids carried out by U.S. units without consultation with the Afghan government fall outside the MOU.

Coverage of the MOU by major news media suggesting that the participation of U.S. SOF units would depend on the Afghan government simply ignored that provision in the text.

But Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters flatly Apr. 9 that Karzai would not have a veto over night raids. “It’s not about the U.S. ceding responsibility to the Afghans,” he said.

Kirby would not comment on whether those SOF units which operated independently of Afghan units would be affected by the MOU, thus confirming by implication that they would not.

Kirby explained that the agreement had merely “codified” what had already been done since December 2011, which was that Afghan Special Forces were in the lead on most night raids. That meant that they would undertake searches within the compound.

The U.S. forces have continued, however, to capture or kill Afghans in those raids.

The disparity between the reality of the agreement and the optics created by administration press briefings recalls Obama’s declarations in 2009 and 2010 on the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq and an end to the U.S. war there, and the reality that combat units remained in Iraq and continued to fight long after the Sep. 1, 2010 deadline Obama he had set for withdrawal had passed.

Fifty-eight U.S. servicemen were killed in Iraq after that deadline in 2010 and 2011.

But there is a fundamental difference between the two exercises in shaping media coverage and public perceptions: the Iraq withdrawal agreement of 2008 made it politically difficult, if not impossible, for the Iraqi government to keep U.S. troops in Iraq beyond 2011.

In the case of Afghanistan, however, the agreements just signed impose no such constraints on the U.S. military. And although Obama is touting a policy of ending U.S. war in Afghanistan, the U.S. military and the Pentagon have public said they expect to maintain thousands of SOF troops in Afghanistan for many years after 2014.

Obama had hoped to lure the Taliban leadership into peace talks that would make it easier to sell the idea that he is getting out of Afghanistan while continuing the war. But the Taliban didn’t cooperate.

Obama’s Kabul speech could not threaten that U.S. SOF units will continue to hunt them down in their homes until they agree to make peace with Karzai. That would have given away the secret still hidden in the U.S.-Afghan “Enduring Strategic Partnership” agreement.

But Obama must assume that the Taliban understand what the U.S. public does not: U.S. night raids will continue well beyond 2014, despite the fact that they ensure enduring hatred of U.S. and NATO troops.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

The threat of a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities this year appears to have substantially subsided over the past several weeks as a result of several developments, including the biting criticisms voiced recently by former top national security figures of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister, Ehud Barak.

That a war seems significantly more remote than during the winter months, when tensions reached an all-time high, was confirmed to some extent Monday when the U.S. “newspaper of record”, the New York Times, ran a front-page article entitled ‘Experts Believe Iran Conflict is Less Likely’ .

But, judging by actual bets placed on the on-line trading exchange, Intrade, the chances that the U.S. or Israel will indeed conduct air strikes against Iran before the end of the year have fallen by more than half since the high reached in mid-February – from just over 60 percent to about 28 percent as of Monday.

That’s still a substantial percentage – about twice what it was before the latest round of Israeli sabre-rattling was launched in November.

And it’s difficult to find any close observer of U.S.-Israeli-Iran relations who believes that war clouds could not suddenly reappear, particularly if the next meeting of the so-called P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, and France – plus Germany) with Iran scheduled for May 23 in Baghdad should break down or be delayed.

For its part, the administration of President Barack Obama shown little inclination to reduce pressure – and the threat of military action – on Tehran.

Not only has it moved more minesweepers and F-15 fighter jets into the Gulf region, but the Air Force announced Friday that it has deployed an undisclosed number of advanced F-22 stealth fighter- bombers to the area, specifically to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to the industry publication Aviation Week.

Despite those moves, fears of a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran this year have clearly receded, especially since all sides left the last P5+1 meeting in Istanbul Apr. 14 seemingly satisfied with the seriousness of the exchanges and guardedly optimistic that a diplomatic solution could yet be achieved.

The meeting’s success was made possible by signalling on both sides of their readiness to make concessions on key issues: on Tehran’s part, by stating explicitly that it could halt its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent, transfer its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium out of the country, and accept greater scrutiny by international weapons inspectors under the right circumstances; on Washington’s, by stating more clearly than ever that it could accept Iran’s continued uranium enrichment of up to five percent under the right circumstances.

Whether the “right circumstances” can be accommodated by all sides, of course, will determine the ultimate success or failure of the negotiations.

Meanwhile, however, those voices, both here and in Israel, that have been most disdainful of the diplomatic route and most insistent that only military action can dispose of the alleged threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme have found themselves increasingly on the defensive since tensions reached a peak in early March.

It was then that Obama declared to the annual convention of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that “the loose talk of war” by the main Republican presidential candidates was dangerous and counterproductive.

At the time, AIPAC was pressing Congress for quick passage of both a new round of unilateral sanctions against Iran and a Senate resolution that would define the U.S. “red line” for taking military action as Tehran’s development of a “nuclear-weapons capability” rather than the administration’s “red line” of developing an actual nuclear weapon.

“Once the president put the argument about the ‘loose talk of war’, the momentum shifted quite dramatically,” according to Jamal Abdi, policy director of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). He noted that Democrats who had previously bowed to AIPAC’s hawkish line have since become more deferential to the White House.

One token of the change was an anti-war ad run last week by former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, a cheerleader for the Iraq invasion 10 years ago and who is now running to reclaim his old seat. In it, he warned that a war against Iran would make “Iraq and Afghanistan look like a cakewalk”.

“It’s a much different debate now,” Abdi told IPS. “It’s now ‘diplomacy versus war’, not ‘war now or later’.” While sanctions legislation is still pending, he said, “There doesn’t seem to be much of a push to get it done, at least before the Baghdad meeting anyway. Congress is in a kind of ‘wait-and-see’ mode.”

Ironically, the hawks have also been set back by the intensifying appeals by neo-conservatives, in particular, for Washington to intervene militarily in Syria.

Not only has that debate diverted time and energy that many of the fiercest hawks would otherwise devote to Iran. It has also exposed divides, similar to those that surfaced last year over the intervention in Libya, between interventionists on one hand and realists and libertarians on the other within the Republican Party.

“Talking about war with Iran at the same time that you want us to get involved in a civil war in Syria is not a popular message this year,” according to one Congressional staffer who cited recent public opinion polls suggesting that Republicans have become almost as war- weary as Democrats. “Given Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, it’s a bit much.”

Similarly, the unprecedented public criticism by former senior Israeli national security officials of Netanyahu and Barak has given new ammunition to those who favour diplomacy.

In recent weeks, the former head of the Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Meir Dagan, reiterated his long-held views that an Israeli attack on Iran would be “stupid” on the most-watched U.S. public affairs television programme, “60 Minutes”.

His successor and current Mossad head, Tamir Pardo, subsequently publicly questioned whether an Iranian nuclear weapon would pose an “existential” threat to Israel, as repeatedly alleged by Netanyahu.

Last week, the head of the Israel Defense Forces, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, offered that Iranian leaders, contrary to Netanyahu’s views, were “very rational” and were likely to stop short of developing a nuclear weapon.

But perhaps the most damaging attack to date came on Friday when Yuval Diskin, the immediate past chief of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, denounced both Netanyahu and Barak as acting out of “messianic feelings” and predicted that an Israeli attack would likely accelerate Tehran’s nuclear programme.

“I saw them up close, they are not messiahs,” he said. “… My main problem on this issue is that I don’t have confidence in the current leadership of the State of Israel – that (they) could lead Israel into something of the order of magnitude of a war with Iran or a regional war.”

Diskin’s remarks, which were defended by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Gantz’s predecessor, Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi (ret.) at a rancorous conference in New York this weekend, will almost certainly give pause to Netanyahu who, despite his messianism, is also famously risk-averse as a politician, according to Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator.

“He knows that if anything goes wrong (in an attack on Iran), there are very well-respected non-political Israeli figures who will be there to ferociously attack him,” he said, adding that Netanyahu in the coming weeks will likely call an election for September or October.

“That makes the relative unlikelihood of a strike in 2012 even less likely,” he told IPS.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

In a major address here Monday, John Brennan, the U.S. official in charge of counterterrorism, formally admitted that the United States engages in attacks using armed unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as “drones”.

But, Brennan argued, the drones programme is “legal”, “ethical” and “wise”.

The speech, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, marks the first official public discussion of the U.S.’s highly secretive drones programme. Overseen by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the programme has been stepped up significantly under President Barack Obama.

Brennan’s presentation comes amidst a barrage of events marking the one-year anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, with President Obama making much of the event as the 2012 presidential campaign heats up. According to Brennan, “President Obama has instructed us to be more open with the American people about … using remotely piloted aircraft.”

However, that newfound openness has not included an explanation of how potential drone targets are vetted.

Brennan defended the programme in part because, he said, it targets only those individuals who are known to pose a “significant threat” to the United States and constitute a “legitimate … lawful target”.

But he refused to elaborate on how that process of scrutiny takes place. “How we identify an individual naturally involves intelligence sources and methods, which I will not discuss,” Brennan said in prepared remarks.

That type of secrecy, say observers, leaves in the dark one of the most central issues at stake in the U.S. drone programme.

“Unfortunately, John Brennan’s speech today did little to assure us that the U.S. is only targeting those individuals that are directly participating in hostilities against the United States, perform a continuous combat function with Al Qaeda or its affiliates that are targeting us, or pose an imminent threat of harm to the United States,” Daphne Eviatar, a lawyer and researcher with Human Rights First, told IPS.

“Those are the legal requirements for any targeted killing in this context. Brennan, like others in the administration before him, said that the United States is following international law without explaining how it decides whether the individuals or groups of people targeted meet the legal requirements.”

On Sunday, Brennan had already made waves by admitting publicly that civilian deaths are an inevitable part of counterterrorism operations. That issue strikes at the heart of much of the criticism that has built up against the U.S. use of armed unmanned aerial vehicles over the past half-decade.

“For a long time, the narrative was that drones were only killing militants,” Shazad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer, told an international conference on drone warfare that took place in Washington over the weekend.

In Waziristan, in western Pakistan, he reported, “more than 3,000 people have been killed in 300 drone strikes.” Given the lack of independent monitoring, it is unclear what percentage of those people were civilians.

Akbar’s mere presence at the conference was a surprise, and underscored the longstanding secrecy that has surrounded the U.S.’s use of drone technology. Since 2010, Akbar and the organisation he founded, the Foundation for Fundamental Rights, have been representing the families of non-militants allegedly killed by U.S. drone strikes.

For that work, Akbar said, he had been unable to get a U.S. visa for the past 14 months. Ahead of this weekend’s conference, the U.S. State Department is said to have relented only at the last minute.

“President Obama would like us to believe that there are no civilian victims to drone attacks,” Akbar said. “In that, I think he is lying to his own nation.”

Brennan’s talk lauded the “astonishing precision” of U.S. drone technology, but Akbar’s experience on the ground is different.

“There is no truth behind the suggestion that drone strikes are very precise,” he said, proceeding to show documentary proof of several cases of children who were killed while in buildings neighbouring targeted structures.

“Drone strikes are targeting daily life,” he noted. “Attacks take place around dinnertime, breakfast, at night – there doesn’t seem to be any thought given to how to minimise civilian casualties.”

These are just some of the human rights aspects surrounding this new form of warfare, but there are critical political issues unfolding as well.

Relations between the U.S. and Pakistan have been at a dangerously low ebb since two dozen Pakistani soldiers were killed in a drone attack last November. The freeze has included the Islamabad government’s cutting of critical NATO resupply routes through Pakistani territory.

High-level bilateral discussions restarted only late last week, when a U.S. delegation including Special Envoy Marc Grossman arrived in Islamabad. Already, however, relations have soured again.

Grossman’s visit came on the heels of the unanimous approval by the Pakistani Parliament of a set of recommendations, months in the making, on how to redefine the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.

These included a demand for a full apology from the U.S. for the November 2011 deaths, as well as an immediate halt to drone strikes within Pakistani territory.

But following initial meetings with Grossman last week, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar complained that the U.S. was not “listening … the language is clear: a clear cessation of drone strikes.”

By Saturday, the talks had broken down, reportedly over the U.S.’s refusal to offer a full apology for the November 2011 deaths.

By Sunday, a far stronger message was sent. After a break in attacks of nearly a month, a U.S. drone killed three to four suspected militants at an abandoned girls’ school in Miramshah, in North Waziristan.

On Monday, without making any direct reference to these recent events, John Brennan affirmed that the U.S. “respects national sovereignty and international law”.

Analysts speaking with IPS called the new attack an “embarrassment”, given the timing. Others suggest that the strikes have put an end to the possibility of reopening the NATO supply lines anytime soon.

Even as President Barack Obama touts his progress in extracting the U.S. from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his administration appears to be deepening its covert and military involvement in strife-torn Yemen.

Washington is worried about recent advances by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), particularly in the southern part of the country.

Since the failed “Christmas Day” bombing by an AQAP-trained Nigerian national of a U.S. airliner over Detroit in December 2009, the group has been regarded here as a greater threat to the U.S. homeland than its Pakistan-based parent.

Quoting senior officials, the Wall Street Journal and other major U.S. publications reported Thursday that the administration has relaxed constraints on both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon in conducting drone strikes against suspected AQAP- affiliated militants in the Arab world’s poorest nation.

Henceforth, the CIA and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which conduct parallel counterterrorist campaigns in Yemen, will be able to strike suspected militants whose precise identity may not be known but whose “behaviour” suggests that they are either “high-value” operatives or engaged in plots to strike U.S. interests.

Such assessments will be based on intelligence acquired from such sources as informants on the ground, aerial surveillance, and phone intercepts, as well as circumstantial evidence regarding their associations, according to the reports.

The new guidelines are apparently a compromise between those in the administration who favoured that the previous policy of authorising strikes only against positively identified militants who appeared “kill list” and others, including CIA director Gen. David Petraeus (ret.), who wanted a further easing of the rules of engagement.

They are raising concerns among some experts that Washington is slipping ever more deeply into a conflict – or a series of conflicts – it knows relatively little about.

“There is a dangerous drift here, and the policymakers in the U.S. don’t appear to realize they are heading into rough waters without a map,” wrote Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen specialist at Princeton University and editor of the Waq Al-Waq blog.

“In Yemen, drones and missile strikes appear to have replaced comprehensive policy,” he noted. “…Since late 2009, the number of U.S. strikes in Yemen have increased and, as the strikes have grown in frequency, AQAP has grown in recruits.”

“What does the U.S. do if AQAP continues to gain more recruits and grow stronger even as the number of missile strikes increase?” he asked. “Does the U.S. bomb more? Does the U.S. contemplate an invasion?”

Other critics have worried that escalating the drone war in Yemen, where the U.S.- and Saudi-engineered resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in February has so far done little to calm the country’s many regional, tribal, political and sectarian conflicts, could further poison public opinion against the U.S. much as it has in Pakistan. The CIA has carried out more than 250 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2009, according to the Long War Journal website.

Many of those were so-called “signature” strikes against targets whose observed behaviour, or “pattern of life”, suggested that they were active members of either the Afghan or Pakistani Taliban insurgencies. Under the prevailing rules of engagement, the CIA did not have to know either the precise identity or importance of the target before ordering a strike.

According to published accounts, Petraeus has repeatedly requested similar rules of engagement for the CIA, which works closely with JSOC, in Yemen.

He reportedly pressed his case with increasing urgency as militants and tribal militias allegedly associated with AQAP, which, according to U.S. officials, has adopted the name of Ansar al-Sharia, expanded their control over several southern provinces in the last months of Saleh’s reign and in the immediate aftermath of his replacement by Vice President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi.

His pleas were initially rebuffed, but Obama reportedly approved the new rules – which some officials have been quoted as calling “signature lite” – earlier this month. They give the two agencies authority to target unknown individuals and groups whose “pattern of life” suggests that they are “high-value” targets or are plotting against U.S. interests.

Officials argue that the new rules are justified in part by improved CIA and JSOC intelligence-gathering capabilities on the ground in recent months. Because Washington did not want to be seen as supporting an unpopular dictator as Saleh tried to hang on, it reduced its presence in the country – among other things pulling out most of its military personnel – thus making intelligence collection more difficult.

Better intelligence, according to these officials, should reduce the possibility that civilians will be hit by missile or drone strikes.

They also argue that looser rules of engagement are essential to help the Hadi government is to regain control over the southern provinces of Abyan, Shabwa and Bayda from AQAP and Ansar al Sharia.

Indeed, the tempo of such strikes has sharply increased in recent months. At least three suspected AQAP-affiliated individuals were reportedly killed in a drone strike in the southern city of Mudiyah Thursday. Two other strikes were carried out since last weekend, including one that killed a senior AQAP commander, Mohammed Said al- Umdah, in northern Yemen and another that killed at least three other suspected militants in Shabwa province, according to the Long War website.

The website reported at least 13 U.S. air and missile strikes in Yemen since Mar. 1 this year, compared to only 10 in all of 2011, the best known and controversial of which killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American imam whose on-line sermons on behalf of Al-Qaeda were considered particularly effective in gaining Anglophone recruits and who was alleged by the administration to have also played leadership role in operations directed against the U.S.

While Awlaki was on the CIA’s “kill list”, a second U.S. citizen slain in that strike, Samir Khan, was not.

Washington had hoped that Awlaki’s death would constitute a major blow to AQAP’s recruitment and direction. But many Yemen experts argued that his importance to the organisation had been greatly exaggerated, and Johnsen noted Thursday that the group’s threat to the U.S. “has grown stronger …even after the death of Anwar al- Awlaki, which apparently surprises some people.”

“…I believe drones and air strikes should be used extremely sparingly and only in situations where the U.S. knows beyond a shadow of a doubt who it is hitting,” he wrote. “Now, the U.S. will say that is what it is doing, but tens of strikes in four months and a number of mistakes in the past three years suggest that these strikes have neither been sparing or surgical.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

The White House on Thursday announced the formulation of the National Bioeconomy Blueprint, aimed at shoring up the U.S. commitment to bioscience-related research.

A recent study found that "zero percent" of federal funding of synthetic biology was going into risk assessment. Credit: Horia Varlan/CC By 2.0

But critics warn that the new programme focuses too much on economic concerns, placing too little emphasis on either social issues or on the environment itself.

“We’re disappointed to see what finally came out,” Eric Hoffman, a Washington-based campaigner with Friends of the Earth, an international NGO, told IPS. “This report largely seems to be an endorsement for the biotechnology industry to rush ahead without any real oversight.”

The biotechnology industry “says that it has been calling for this type of legislation for long time,” Hoffman notes. “That makes sense, given that the industry stands to gain the most from the types of policies laid out in the Blueprint.”

Hoffman says that the biotechnology industry includes many of the largest oil and petrochemical producers – ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Monsanto, Dow. The lack of plans for government regulation apparent in the Blueprint leaves him pessimistic that much “clean, green” technology will come out of the new effort.

He also points to a recent study by the Woodrow Wilson Center, based here, that found that “zero percent” of federal funding of synthetic biology was going into risk assessment. “That’s not how you have an honest policy debate,” he says.

The government itself defines the bioeconomy as “economic activity powered by research and innovation in the biosciences”. In the Blueprint, the issue of environmental concerns is dealt with only tangentially, although the general push is to phase out fossil fuels and industrial materials in favour of organically based compounds and “green” approaches.

Of the five strategic objectives laid out in the Blueprint, only one specifically mentions the environment. Even then, it arises only in a call to “Develop and reform regulations to reduce barriers, increase the speed and predictability of regulatory processes, and reduce costs while protecting human and environmental health.”

The bioeconomy has increasingly emerged as a priority for the Barack Obama administration. Thursday’s announcement followed on initial plans announced by the U.S. government in September 2011, building on legislation passed in 2000 called the Biomass Research and Development Act.

Other developed countries are also increasing their focus on aspects of their nascent bioeconomies, particularly in moving beyond fossil fuels. In February, the European Commission publicised a new strategy to ramp up related efforts. The “green economy” is also a central theme at the upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro.

While many such efforts are to be lauded individually, there is growing understanding of the dangers of state-backed moves towards relying on ecosystem-based products.

“While the idea of using renewable resources instead of fossil fuels is a good idea in theory, the way in which the bio-economy approach proposes to achieve this goal is at best deeply flawed and inequitable, and at worst downright dangerous,” states a new report released on Thursday by the Global Forest Coalition, an international umbrella group.

The report, “Bio-economy Versus Biodiversity”, notes the spiking demand for land across the world for both food production and human habitat. This has not only led to increased land-based conflict, the report suggests, but has also increased global hunger.

“Without reducing consumption and demand for energy and products, the sheer scale on which biomass would have to produced to meet the demands of a global bio-economy would severely exacerbate these problems,” the report states.

Those technologies currently being lauded in the attempt to move beyond fossil fuels – such as the use of algae in creating electricity – are risky or as yet untested on a wide scale, warns the report. As such, the technologies that would undoubtedly be used in the immediate future – and almost certainly beyond – would be relatively dirty and wasteful, such as burning biomass.

“The bio-economy approach offers politicians in industrialized countries an opportunity to be seen to be doing something about meeting ill-defined ‘renewable energy targets’, while maximizing opportunities for economic growth and securing a constant supply of energy,” the report warns. “There is precious little concern about the environment, or about impacts in other countries, apart from the usual platitudes about providing jobs.”

Concerns over this new push towards the bioeconomy coincide with high levels of international anxiety over food security.

“The current U.S. mandate prescribes a huge increase in the generation of energy from land,” Ujjayant Chakravorty, a professor at the Alberta School of Economics, told IPS. “Forty percent of U.S. corn is already used for energy rather than food, and that number will go up in the next 10 years.”

In the U.S. in particular, any major new push towards mass reliance on biofuels would almost certainly have a direct impact on wellbeing in other parts of the world.

For instance, Chakravorty says that rice, wheat and sugar constitute around two-thirds of daily calories for many people in India, as they do for much of the developing world. If more land in India were to be sown for non-edible biofuels, prices for these necessities would almost certainly rise.

“The U.S. has a quarter of the world’s vehicles,” Chakravorty says. “In India alone, the U.S. biofuel policy could directly result in 15 to 40 million people dropping below the poverty line.”

In a major speech commemmorating the Nazi Holocaust, U.S. President Barack Obama Monday announced several steps his administration will take to curb mass atrocities abroad, including in Syria where he is under continuing pressure to intervene with military force.

Among other measures, he announced that Washington will now impose sanctions against individuals, government agencies and private companies that use or provide advanced communications or computer technologies to track, disrupt or target opposition activists for violent repression.

In the first use of such sanctions, the U.S. Treasury said Monday it was applying the new measure against Iranian and Syrian intelligence agencies, Syria’s state-controlled mobile phone company, an Iranian internet provider, and several individuals for their involvement in repression in both countries.

“These technologies should be in place to empower citizens, not to repress them,” Obama declared at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “It’s one more step that we can take toward the day that we know will come – the end of the (Bashar al-) Assad rebime that has brutalised the Syrian people.”

In his speech, Obama also announced the formation of a much- anticipated Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), a high-level inter- agency body that will report directly to the White House on the potential outbreak of genocide, war crimes, or other mass atrocities and possible options to prevent or contain them.

The Board, which will meet at least monthly, will be chaired by the senior director for multilateral and humanitarian affairs, Samantha Power, a long-time close adviser to Obama who authored a book about the 1994 Rwanda genocide and reportedly played a key role last year in persuading him to intervene militarily as part of a NATO force in Libya.

In addition, Obama announced that the 17 agencies that comprise the U.S. intelligence community will for the first time prepare a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the risk of mass atrocities and genocide as part of an effort to, in his words, “institutionalise the focus on this issue”.

“In short, we need to be doing everything we can to prevent and respond to these kinds of atrocities – because national sovereignty is never a license to slaughter your people,” Obama said.

On his visit to the museum, Obama was accompanied by the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel who, in an interview with the Times of Israel last week, had rebuked Benjamin Netanyahu for repeatedly comparing the alleged threat posed by Iran to Israel with the Holocaust, as the Israeli prime minister did last Thursday at a memorial in Jerusalem in a particularly hawkish speech that drew widespread notice in elite foreign policy circles here.

But, in introducing the president Monday, Wiesel echoed some of Netanyahu’s themes. Reciting the West’s failure to challenge the Nazis as they perpetrated “the greatest tragedy in history”, he suggested that the West was playing a similar role today with respect to Assad and Iran.

“How is that Assad is still in power? How is that the Holocaust’s No. 1 denier, (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad is still president?” he asked. “He who threatens to use nuclear weapons destroys the Jewish state.”

“Mr. President, we are here in this place of memory. Israel cannot not remember. And because it remembers, it must be strong, just to defend its own survival and its own destiny,” he said.

In his remarks, Obama noted that his administration had repeatedly rejected attempts to condemn Israel at the U.N. and other international forums.

“When faced with a regime that threatens global security and denies the Holocaust and threatens to destroy Israel,” he said, “the United States will do everything in our power to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” he stressed.

But most of his remarks were directed both at his administration’s efforts to prevent mass atrocities around the world – in Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, and in Central Africa with the ongoing hunt for Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) – and his promise last August to make “preventing mass atrocities and genocide …a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.”

It was in that context that he also cited the steady build-up of U.S. sanctions against Damascus – including its documentation of atrocities allegedly committed by the Assad regime and its backing for the multinational “Friends of Syria” that supports the opposition – and announced the latest measure to punish those who use or supply “technologies to monitor and track and target citizens for violence”.

The U.N. estimates that more than 9,000 Syrians have died in the violence of the past 13 months.

The use of information technology by repressive governments constituted a “new and growing human rights threat”, according to a White House fact sheet distributed to reporters.

The new sanction, it stressed, is aimed not only against governments, but also “the companies that enable them with technology they use for oppression and the ‘digital guns for hire’ who create or operate systems used to monitor, track, and target citizens for killing, torture or other abuses.”

While this sanction is directed exclusively at Syrian and Iranian companies for now, it could potentially apply to others that sell technology to repressive governments, if there is reasonable ground to believe that the technology will be used to track and target dissidents, according to independent analysts.

“The Obama administration has made a significant decision today to attack the accomplices of mass atrocities by employing targeted sanctions against high-tech industries abroad and enforce such controls here when such trade empowers regimes that kill their own people,” said George Lopez, of the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

“These U.S. actions have real potential to disrupt, if not end, (commerce in) such goods and services.”

At the same time, the fact sheet stressed the administration’s recognition of the “importance of preserving the global telecommunications supply chains for essential products and services.”

Human rights and conflict-prevention groups, meanwhile, hailed the formation of the APB, which held its first meeting Monday afternoon, as a major bureaucratic breakthrough. First introduced by a bipartisan commission headed by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former Pentagon chief William Cohen in 2008, the idea of the APB has won approval from both sides of the aisle in Congress.

“It will be coordinating all the information both in and outside the government and meeting on a regular basis,” Mark Schneider, vice president of the International Crisis Group (ICG), told IPS. “And the aim is not simply to bring together the information, but to force a response. That’s new. The U.S. government has never had a focal point on this issue in that way.”

“This new ‘all-of-government approach’ reflects hard-learned lessons from tardy responses to past humanitarian crises,” said Frank Jannuzi, a former top Congressional staffer who heads advocacy for the U.S. chapter of Amnesty International.

Albright and Cohen also praised the initiative but cautioned that it “should not be viewed as a new doctrine for humanitarian intervention or global adventurism, as some might suggest.

“Rather, it is a clear-eyed and pragmatic attempt to expand our government’s toolbox to meet the challenges posed by tyrants who pose an extraordinary threat to their civilian populations. This toolbox is about more than sending in the Marines,” they added.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

The Barack Obama administration’s new interest in the 2004 religious verdict, or “fatwa”, by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banning the possession of nuclear weapons, long dismissed by national security officials, has prompted the New York Times to review the significance of the fatwa for the first time in several years.

Senior Obama administration officials have decided to cite the fatwa as an Iranian claim to be tested in negotiations, posing a new challenge to the news media to report accurately on the background to the issue. But the Apr. 13 New York Times article by James Risen rehashed old arguments by Iran’s adversaries and even added some new ones.

Former Obama White House Iran policy coordinator Dennis B. Ross, known for his close ties with Israel and hardline views on Iran, was quoted as suggesting that Khamenei may not be committed to nuclear weapons after all. But Ross implies that the reason is U.S. sanctions and perhaps the threat of war rather than that the 2004 fatwa was a genuine expression of policy.

The Times report repeated a familiar allegation, attributed to unnamed “analysts”, that the fatwa is merely a conscious deception justified by the traditional Shi’a legal principle called “Taqiyyah”. But a quick fact check would have shown that “Taqiyyah” is specifically limited to hiding one’s Shi’a faith to avoid being killed or otherwise seriously harmed if it were acknowledged.

Risen also cited unnamed “analysts” who argued that Khamenei’s recent statements that Iran had not and would not develop nuclear weapons were contradicted by remarks he had made last year “that it was a mistake for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya to give up his nuclear weapons program”.

But the quote from Khamenei complained that “this gentleman wrapped up all his nuclear facilities, packed them on a ship and delivered them to the West and said, ‘Take them!’ ” Khamenei then added,”Look where we are, and in what position they are now.”

Khamenei’s references to “all his nuclear facilities” – not to his nuclear weapons programme, as claimed by Risen – and to the contrast between the ultimate fate of the Gaddafi regime and the Islamic Republic’s survival appear to have been suggesting that merely having a nuclear programme without nuclear weapons can be a deterrent to attack.

That same point has been made by other Iranian officials who cite the Japanese model as one for Iran to emulate.

In another effort to discredit the fatwa, Risen wrote that Khamenei’s predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini, reversed his initial opposition to the Shah’s nuclear programme as inconsistent with Islam in 1984, and “secretly decided to restart the nuclear weapons program”.

Risen cited no source for that statement, but it is apparently based on an article by David Albright in the Tehran Bureau’s “Iran Primer”. Albright wrote, “A 2009 internal IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) working document reports that in April 1984, then President Ali Khamenei announced to top Iranian officials that Khomeini had decided to reactivate the nuclear program as the only way to secure the Islamic Revolution from the schemes of its enemies, especially the United States and Israel.”

Even if that report, coming from an unidentified IAEA member country, was accurate, Risen misreported it, again substituting “nuclear weapons program” for “nuclear program”.

But the claim cited in the IAEA working document is also demonstrably false, because it is well documented that the Islamic Republic had decided to continue Iran’s nuclear programme in 1981 and even made a formal request in 1983 for the IAEA to help it convert yellowcake into reactor fuel.

Missing from the Times article was any reference to Iran’s refusal to retaliate with chemical weapons for Iraq’s repeated chemical weapons attacks on Iranian cities, based on U.S. intelligence on Iranian troop concentrations, killing 7,000 immediately and severely injuring at least 100,000.

Although U.S. military officers disseminated reports during the war alleging Iranian use of chemical weapons against Iraq, the most authoritative study of the issue, Joost Hilterman’s 2007 book “A Poisonous Affair”, shows those reports represented U.S. disinformation. Hilterman concludes that no reliable evidence ever surfaced that Iran used such weapons during the war.

In a dispatch from Qom Oct. 31, 2003, Robert Collier of the San Francisco Chronicle quoted Grand Ayatollah Yusef Saanei, one of the highest ranking clerics in Iran, as saying in an interview that Iran never retaliated against Iraqi chemical attacks with its own chemical weapons because of the strong opposition of Iranian clerical authorities to the development of WMD.

“You cannot deliberately kill innocent people,” Saanei said.

The only reference in the Times report to Khamenei’s role in the 2003 nuclear policy turning point was the statement that Khamenei “ordered a suspension of Iran’s nuclear weapons program….”

In fact, however, Khamenei did far more than “suspend” nuclear weapons work. He invoked the illicit nature of such weapons in Islam in order to enforce a policy decision to ban nuclear weapons work.

There is evidence that there was a long-simmering debate within the Islamic Republic behind the scenes over whether Iran should leave the door open to a nuclear weapons programme or not. Both Khamenei and Rafsanjani had publicly opposed the idea of possessing nuclear weapons in the mid-1990s, but pressure for reconsideration of the issue had risen, especially after the aggressive posture of the George W. Bush administration toward Iran.

In 2003, the debate came to a head, because Iran was reaching the stage where it would either have to cooperate fully with the IAEA or be accused of violating its commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, provoking serious international consequences.

The Atomic Energy Organization, which had gotten much more freedom from bureaucratic control in 1999-2000, was dragging its feet on cooperation with the IAEA, and some scientists, engineers and military men did not want to give up the option to develop a nuclear weapons programme.

Under those circumstances, in a Mar. 21, 2003 speech in Mashad, Khamenei began speaking out again on Islam’s opposition to weapons of mass destruction. “We are not interested in an atomic bomb. We are opposed to chemical weapons,” he said, adding, “These things are against our principles.”

In July, he repeated his renunciation of all weapons of mass destruction.

When the IAEA passed a resolution demanding that Iran suspend enrichment and adopt an intrusive monitoring system in September, the Atomic Energy Organization and its bureaucratic and political allies were arguing that there was no danger of being taken to the U.N. Security Council because Russia and China would protect Iran’s interests.

And hardliners were arguing publicly that Iran should withdraw from the NPT rather than make any effort to convince the West that Iran did not intend to make nuclear weapons.

Sometime in September and October, Khamenei ordered the designation of the Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rohani, who reported directly to him, as the single individual responsible for coordinating all aspects of nuclear policy.

A key task for Rohani was to enforce Khamenei’s ban on nuclear weapons. Later, Rohani recalled telling then President Mohammed Khatemi that he wasn’t sure all agencies “were willing to cooperate 100 percent” and predicted “both disharmony and sabotage”.

It was Rohani himself who announced on Oct. 25, 2003, that Khamenei believed that nuclear weapons were illegal under Islam.

A few days later, one of Khamenei’s advisers, Hussein Shariatmadari, president of Kayhan newspapers, told Collier, “Those in Iran who clandestinely believed they could develop nuclear weapons have now been forced to admit that it is forbidden under Islam.”

Ever since then, Iranian officials have often referred to Khamenei’s fatwa against nuclear weapons.

Sceptics have questioned whether such a fatwa exists, arguing that no published text of the fatwa can be found. But even Mehdi Khalaji of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy acknowledged in an essay published last September that Khamenei’s oral statements are considered fatwas and are binding on believers.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

Sunday’s well-orchestrated – if unsuccessful – attacks by Taliban forces on Kabul and three provincial capitals in eastern Afghanistan could further shake ebbing public confidence in the U.S. and its allies that their strategy for securing Afghanistan is working.

Billed as the opening of the Taliban’s spring offensive, the attacks also raise new questions about the timing and pace of the planned U.S. withdrawal from the country, as well as the fate of a longer- term strategic agreement that is currently being negotiated between Kabul and Washington.

Just a week before the attacks, an ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that public support for the war in Afghanistan had plunged to an all-time low, with only 30 percent of respondents saying that they believed the conflict was worth fighting. It was the first poll in which a majority of self-identified Republicans agreed with that proposition.

Moreover, 62 percent of respondents said they believed that most Afghans oppose what the U.S. is trying to do there.

Tuesday’s announcement by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard that Australia will accelerate its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan strikes yet another blow at Washington’s hopes of retaining help from its Western allies through the end of 2014, the deadline that NATO agreed last year for the final departure of all NATO combat troops.

Citing improvements – despite Sunday’s attacks – in the security situation in Afghanistan, Gillard pledged to have sent most of her country’s 1,550 troops in Afghanistan home by the end of 2013.

That timetable was similar to the one adopted in January by President Nicolas Sarkozy for the withdrawal of almost 4,000 French troops after four French soldiers were shot and killed by an Afghan recruit in one of the worst of a growing number of incidents of what has become known as “Green on Blue” attacks. Until then, Paris, along with the rest of NATO, had pledged to stay through the end of 2014.

Whether others will also speed up their own withdrawal plans is likely to be the subject of much corridor talk later this week when NATO defence ministers meet in Brussels and again at next month’s NATO summit in Chicago where Obama is expected to press his fellow- leaders to commit as many troops as possible until the end of 2014 and as many advisers and as much money as possible beyond that date.

Obama himself has pledged to withdraw some 22,000 of the remaining 90,000 U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan by the end of September. But how quickly to withdraw the remaining 68,000 troops between then and the end of 2014 remains a source of heated debate both within the administration and between Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

Backed by most Democratic lawmakers, Vice President Joe Biden and Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, reportedly favour a relatively quick pace that would reduce U.S. troop levels to about 40,000 by mid-2013. But military commanders, supported by most Republicans in spite of the new poll findings, have pressed for a halt to further withdrawals after this fall through the “fighting season” in 2013.

The U.S. “will need significant combat power through the end of 2013,” said Gen. John Allen, the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, recently.

Sunday’s attacks are certain to feed this debate, as have other recent debacles, including the accidental burning by U.S. soldiers of copies of the Quran outside Bagram Air Base and the murderous nighttime rampage of one disturbed U.S. soldier who killed 16 civilians, including nine children, near Kandahar.

The attacks, which most analysts have said bore the hallmarks of the Taliban’s Pakistan-based Haqqani faction, included three discrete assaults in Kabul, and two in Jalalabad, one in Gardez, and another in Pul-e-Alam in the eastern part of the country where the U.S. has tried to build up its forces over the last several months.

Altogether, only 39 Taliban fighters – almost all of whom were eventually killed – took part in the attacks, but, as noted by officials here, each assault must have required help from dozens of others who provided intelligence, weapons and ammunition, logistics, and other forms of support in order for such a complex operation to be carried out.

In Kabul, considered the safest city in the country, the attacks brought normal life and commerce to a halt for as much as 18 hours. While the Afghan army and police bore the brunt of the fighting – 11 servicemen were killed – the battle in Kabul was brought to an end only after several U.S. helicopter gunships repeatedly strafed construction sites occupied by the insurgents.

It was the most fighting that has taken place in the capital since the U.S.-led offensive chased the Taliban out of power in the fall of 2001. The U.S. embassy and a NATO base there came under attack last September, but the fighting then was much less protracted and intense.

While there is little question that the size and scope of Sunday’s attacks caught Afghan government, U.S., and NATO officials by complete surprise, demonstrating what Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office called “an intelligence failure for us and especially for NATO”, officials and analysts were divided about their implications for the debate in the U.S.

Allen and those who oppose a rapid withdrawal expressed satisfaction with the response and performance of the Afghan government forces.

“No one is under-estimating the seriousness of today’s attacks,” Gen. John Allen, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, said in a statement. “Each attack was meant to send a message: that legitimate governance and Afghan sovereignty are in peril. The (Afghan security forces) response itself is proof enough of that folly.”

Max Boot, a prominent neo-conservative military analyst, argued in ‘Commentary’s’ Contentions blog that the attack was actually a sign of weakness on the part of the Taliban, noting that “the insurgents had to stage their attacks from abandoned buildings, which suggests they do not have too much support in the capital.”

But others said the attacks marked a show of strength on the part of the insurgency and pointed to the reliance by the Afghan security forces on U.S. and Western advisers who accompanied them in the course of the day, as well as the apparent necessity of engaging U.S. gunships in the battle, at least toward the end of the fighting.

“While this wasn’t the (1968) Tet offensive (by the Viet Cong in Vietnam), if they can pull off something like this in what is supposed to be the safest part of Afghanistan – and attack three other cities at the same time – it’s not very encouraging,” one administration official told IPS. “And it isn’t going to help boost public support for the war.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

In early February, Iran launched its third successful commercial satellite in three years. The Barack Obama administration, the United Nations, and the news media barely acknowledged the accomplishment. North Korea, on the other hand, has created a furor each of the three times its satellites failed to reach orbit.

Its latest effort, on Apr. 13, broke up within two minutes of launch. Pyongyang acknowledged the failure and went on with its celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung.

The Obama administration immediately condemned the North Korean launch. It followed through on its threat to suspend its participation in the Feb. 29 agreement that would have sent 240,000 metric tonnes of food assistance to North Korea.

“We want to make clear to them…that each step that they take in terms of provocations will only lead to a deeper isolation, increase consequences,” stated Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor for strategic communications. “And frankly, that’s not just a message they’re hearing from us, they’re hearing it from the Chinese and the Russians as well.”

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) released a “presidential statement” on Apr. 16 accusing North Korea of violating a 2009 sanctions resolution that barred the country from missile tests, including satellite launches. The UNSC’s sanctions committee will look into freezing the assets of additional North Korean entities and preventing additional “proliferation-sensitive technology” from entering or exiting the country.

Iran and North Korea are both already subject to considerable sanctions, and the United States routinely expresses concerns over the missile programmes of both countries. That hasn’t prevented either country from moving forward with its space programme.

Iran and North Korea view satellites as a sign of technological achievement and, given that satellites are a multi-billion-dollar industry, potential economic gain. North Korea is additionally motivated to get a satellite in orbit because of the two-time failure of South Korea to launch one of its own.

So attractive is the prospect of having a satellite in orbit – and the requisite rocket capability – that North Korea gave up the promised U.S. food aid just on the eve of its “barley hump”, when the winter stores are depleted and the new barley crop has not yet come in.

Part of the reason why Iran’s satellite launches don’t attract nearly the same attention as North Korea’s lies in the origins of North Korea’s space programme, which began with an unannounced 1998 launch that particularly shocked Japan.

“North Korea’s apparent readiness to launch multi-stage rockets back then with little warning came as a surprise, one that it seems we’ve never quite gotten over,” an arms control expert told IPS on a non- attribution basis. “Now add to that their Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) withdrawal and nuclear tests, and these launches look very threatening, indeed.

“Iran, by contrast, seems to avoid overflying other countries when conducting space launches. Even though the UNSC says they shouldn’t be doing that sort of thing, either, it never gets the same sort of reaction. They’re still in the NPT, of course.”

Other factors include the lack of allied support for North Korea. Iran, with its considerable energy exports, continues to trade with China, Russia, India and Turkey, and can count on those countries for a measure of diplomatic support. North Korea, by contrast, has little to offer, and even its putative allies Russia and China have joined in the condemnation of its satellite launch.

In the aftermath of the failed launch, Pyongyang has indicated that it will pursue the construction of a larger rocket. The South Korean government, meanwhile, anticipates a third nuclear test from North Korea.

But the international community has few levers with which to influence North Korean behaviour. The country is already heavily sanctioned, and the U.N. will be hard pressed to find ways to tighten the screws.

“The United States is best advised to let the launch’s failure be its own ‘punishment,'” argues John Delury, an assistant professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. “Sanctions have long passed the point of utility. Likewise ‘tough’ language from the UNSC only plays into the hands of hardliners in Pyongyang.

“More constructively, the diplomatic focal point – and Beijing might want to take the lead here – should be continuing with the plan to allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in to monitor the freeze at Yongbyon. Were that to proceed, President Obama would have justification for going through with the U.S. side of the Leap Day deal after all. The alternative is probably an intensified version of the worst of 2009-10.”

In an Apr. 13 New York Times op-ed, Sung-Yoon Lee, a scholar of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, takes the opposite tack. “Spectacular failure though it was, North Korea’s latest rocket launching calls for punitive measures from America and its allies,” he writes. “Bad engineering is no reason for complacency; the benchmark for American policy must be North Korea’s intent.”

For the better part of its term, the Obama administration maintained a policy of “strategic patience” toward North Korea. During an election year, with many other issues competing for the administration’s attention, neither a proactive nor a severely punitive approach is likely.

“I see relative continuity among the United States, Japan, and South Korea, with the exception being that there is little likelihood of serious or high-level dialogue through the end of the year,” observes Scott Snyder, the director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“North Korea’s advantage currently comes from our respective preoccupations with domestic politics. Otherwise, I wonder whether there might have been the prospect of a more robust response.”

The Summit of the Americas, normally a subdued tri-annual gathering of regional leaders, could be more interesting than usual this year, as right-wing governments are set to clash with their U.S. allies over the war on drugs.

An increasingly large chorus of nations – ravaged by trafficking and violence – say it’s now time to re-think international drug policy. As the corrupting power of cartels grows across Mexico and Central America, and as the body count rises, legalisation needs to be seriously discussed as an alternative to militarisation, regional leaders say.

It isn’t a message U.S. President Barack Obama wants to hear when he arrives in Cartagena, Colombia, to meet 33 heads of state on Apr. 14.

“When the word legalisation is uttered, it raises a red flag for the (U.S.) administration,” Peter Reuter, a drug policy expert at the University of Maryland, told Al Jazeera.

Legalisation, or decriminalisation, is often associated with liberal activists in North America – the pot smoking, hippy, free-love kind of crowd. Current calls, however, are coming from some of the region’s hardliners.

Conservatives want change

Guatemala’s President Otto Perez Molina, a former general during the country’s “dirty war”, came to power promising an “iron fist” against delinquency. He recently called the war on drugs a failure and argued that “consumption and production should be legalised” within certain limits.

Juan Manuel Santos, president of Colombia, and arguably Washington’s closest regional ally, has called for “a new approach” that would “take away the violent profit that comes with drug trafficking”.

“If that means legalising and the world thinks that’s the solution, I will welcome it,” said Santos, a former defence minister responsible for battling leftist rebels and drug traffickers in a war with massive human rights abuses.

Cynthia McClintock, director of George Washington University’s Latin American Studies programme, said recent statements are “the beginning of a paradigm shift”.

“I think it’s really significant that countries aligned with the U.S. are taking these positions,” she told Al Jazeera. “From Guatemala in particular, it was totally unexpected.”

Supporters of a new approach aren’t just conservatives. Military officers, many coming directly from the field “who have personally experienced the futility of fighting a war against a global commodities market”, are leading calls for reform, said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a U.S. group pushing for alternatives to the war on drugs.

“Social conservatism of militaries in the region had barred a broader conversation on reform,” Nadelmann told Al Jazeera. “But the opportunities for men (from security forces or militaries) to be corrupted (by drug money) and the futility of employing the military in this area” has led to a change of heart from hardened leaders including Molina and Santos, he said.

Leftists seem to support status quo

The presidents of Mexico, El Salvador and Costa Rica have also voiced support for an overhaul of the drug war, or even some form of legalisation. Others including Cuba, Panama and Nicaragua are against legalisation or a policy overhaul.

“It is leftist governments, (particularly in) Cuba and Nicaragua, who are in many respects the U.S.’ closest drug war allies,” Nadelmann said. “(Venezuelan President Hugo) Chavez tries to take every opporunity to poke the U.S., but on this issue he has been quiet. You wonder if (due to his cancer treatment) the guy is going to need medical marijuana soon,” Nadelmann joked.

On a visit to Central America and Mexico last month, U.S. Vice- President Joe Biden said: “There’s no possibility the Obama-Biden administration will change its policy on legalisation.”

He did, however, say that it was a topic “worth discussing”.

Some analysts see that caveat as a softening of the U.S. line. “That comment was widely reported throughout Latin America,” Nadelmann said. “He may not have intended to open the debate as he did, but this (legalisation) is now a legitimate topic for discussion.”

‘This is a crisis’

Drug trafficking and violence are nothing new in Latin America. But since the end of 2006, when Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon declared a frontal assault on cartels, violence has escalated to new heights.

Compounding public discontent, corruption within security forces fuelled by narco-dollars is undermining confidence in basic state institutions. In Mexico, for example, trust in local police forces has dropped from 50 percent in 2007, at the beginning of the war, to 35 percent in 2011, according to a Gallup poll.

“I don’t use the word crisis much, but this is a crisis,” Reuter said.

About 50,000 people have died in Mexico alone since 2006 and the situation in Guatemala and Honduras is far worse. Some regions have casualty rates comparable to war zones such as Afghanistan or Iraq.

This situation, where beheaded bodies are dumped in the streets, massacres are common and cartels openly flaunt the authority of state officials, could be driving the new push for legalisation or decriminalisation.

In 2010 alone, the U.S. federal government spent more then 15 billion dollars on the drug war, or about 500 dollars every second, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Changing attitudes

It was now-disgraced President Richard Nixon who coined the term “war on drugs” in 1971. Since then, the drug war has cost more than one trillion dollars, the Associated Press reported in 2010. Hundreds of thousands of lives have also been lost.

Observers are split on whether the goal of the programme was actually battling drug cultivation, or if the real aim was the projection of U.S. military power in the region.

Regardless, attitudes towards drugs are changing in the U.S. itself. In 1969, when Gallup first asked about legalising marijuana, only 12 percent favoured such a move, while 84 percent were opposed. Support for legalisation remained around 25 percent from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. In 2011, for the first time, support for legalisation among U.S. respondents passed the crucial threshold of 50 percent, according to Gallup’s annual crime survey.

“There have been some pretty dramatic shifts in the American electorate, at least towards the decriminalisation of marijuana,” McClintock said, adding that Washington DC, where she lives, has decriminalised the drug, at least when used for its medicinal benefits.

She isn’t sure why Obama refuses to move the national discussion on drugs towards legalisation or decriminalisation, especially considering the disproportionate numbers of African American men who are currently in U.S. jails for minor drug offences as “one would think this would be an issue close to Obama’s heart”.

Three out of four in the U.S. believe that the United States’ 40-year “war against drugs” has failed, according to a 2008 poll from Zogby International and the Inter-American dialogue.

A long road

These latest calls from Guatemala and Colombia are not the first time influential leaders have challenged conventional wisdom on the drug war. They are, however, the strongest calls yet from sitting politicians.

In 2009, the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, composed of the former presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, called for marijuana decriminalisation.

“Everyone might agree that the war on drugs has failed, but that doesn’t mean there is support for something else,” Reuter said.

Currently, there is not a concrete proposal on the table for decriminalising or legalising drugs to end the war. Some observers expect a new commission to investigate the problem will be inaugurated after the Summit of the Americas.

Some analysts believe history is starting to move full circle, as 2012 marks a century since the first international anti-drug convention was signed in The Hague.

Change – if it ever happens – won’t come quickly, analysts say, but there is optimism about long-term progress. If nothing else, the taboo of discussing legalisation has been broken, they say.

“This will be the first meeting of heads of state where this (legalisation and decriminalisation) will be on the agenda,” Nadelmann said. “It’s a game changer, the pendulum is swinging in a new direction for the first time in 100 years.”

Follow Chris Arsenault On Twitter: @AJEchris

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

The Barack Obama administration has adopted a demand in the negotiations with Iran beginning Saturday that its Fordow enrichment facility must be shut down and eventually dismantled based on an understanding with Israel that risks the collapse of the negotiations.

It is unclear, however, whether the administration intends to press that demand regardless of Iran’s rejection or will withdraw it later in the talks. Washington is believed to be interested in obtaining at least an agreement that would keep the talks going through the electoral campaign and beyond.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, has been extremely anxious about the possibility of an agreement that would allow the Iranian enrichment programme to continue. So it hopes the demand for closure and dismantling of Fordow will be a “poison pill” whose introduction could cause the breakdown of the talks with Iran.

In an interview with IPS, Reza Marashi, who worked in the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs from 2006 to 2010, said, “If the demand for Fordow’s closure is non-negotiable, the talks will likely fail.”

Iran has already rejected the demand. Responding to the reported demands for halting of 20 percent enrichment and the closure of the Fordow facility, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said, “We see no justification for such a request from the P5+1.”

The Obama administration apparently accepted Israel’s demand for inclusion of the closure of Fordow in the U.S.-European position in return for Israel going along with a focus in the first stage of the talks only on Iran’s 20 percent enrichment.

It is widely believed that a limited agreement could be reached to end Iran’s 20 percent enrichment and to replace existing Iranian stocks of 20 percent enriched uranium with foreign-fabricated fuel rods for the Tehran Research Reactor if Iran believed it would get some additional substantive benefit from the deal.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak revealed Apr. 4 that he had held talks with U.S. and European officials in late March with the aim of getting them to accept Israeli demands for the closure of Fordow, transfer of all 20 percent enrichment out of Iran, and transfer of most of the low enrichment uranium out of country as well.

Barak did not reveal the results of those talks, but three days later, the New York Times reported U.S. and European officials as saying they would demand the “immediate closure and ultimate dismantling” of the Fordow facility as an “urgent priority”, along with the shipment out of the country of its stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 percent.

Reuters reported Apr. 8 that a “senior U.S. official” said the suspension of 20 percent enrichment and closing the Fordow facility were “near term priorities” for the U.S. and its allies.

Reuters also reported that same day that Israel had agreed in March to a “staged approach” in the nuclear talks that would focus in the first stage on halting Iran’s uranium enrichment to 20 percent.

Nothing has been said by either Israel or Western states about shipping low enrichment uranium out of the country, suggesting that the issue remains unresolved.

The high-level talks and obvious linkage between the positions leaked to the media by U.S., European and Israeli officials leaves little doubt that such an understanding had been reached.

Responding to an IPS query, an administration official said she was not aware of any explicit U.S. agreement with the Israelis on the U.S. position in the nuclear talks. But she added, “We have very close consultations with them on Iran policy. We don’t have to have an explicit agreement.”

Israel’s main leverage over U.S. and European policy was the continuing threat of an attack on Iran. Only the day before Barak revealed his consultation with U.S. and European officials on negotiating strategy, the Jerusalem Post reported that “senior defense officials” had said the possible attack on Iran “may be postponed until 2013”, because the “defense establishment” was waiting for the outcome of the nuclear talks.

Barak has long pointed to Iran’s ability to move centrifuges into Fordow, which was constructed in a tunnel facility deep in the side of a mountain, as denying Israel’s ability to destroy most of the country’s enrichment capabilities in an airstrike. That has been the sole justification offered in recent months for threatening an Israeli military strike.

In a blog post in The National Interest, Paul Pillar, former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, wrote that the “Western message to Tehran” seems to be, “(W)e might be willing to tolerate some sort of Iranian nuclear program, but only one consisting of facilities that would suffer significant damage if we or the Israelis later decide to bomb it.”

Greg Thielmann, senior fellow at the Arms Control Association,” said in an interview with IPS, “There are Americans who believe it is important to keep all Iranian facilities at risk in case Tehran decided to build a nuclear weapon.”

But Thielmann, former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, said the reported demand for the closure and dismantling of the Fordow site “is more an interest of the Israelis than of the United States”.

Reza Marashi, the former State Department specialist on Iran and now research director at the National Iranian-American Council, said U.S. officials have been concerned about Fordow, but that it is the Israelis who have “turned their inability to destroy Fordow into a major issue”.

Thielmann said he hopes the administration is “doing this for the Israelis and that it wouldn’t push it once it is rejected.”

While the demand on Fordow clearly responds to a U.S. need to accommodate Israel, it is also in line with Obama administration efforts to intimidate Iran by emphasising that it has only a limited time “window” in which to solve the issue diplomatically. The administration has implied in recent weeks that Israel would strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in the absence of progress toward an agreement guaranteeing Iran would not go nuclear.

That emphasis on threat corresponds to the approach championed by hardliners since the beginning of the Obama administration. Former Obama adviser Dennis Ross, who is still believed to maintain personal contact with Obama, was quoted in the New York Times Mar. 29 as saying, “For diplomacy to work there has to be a coercive side. If the Iranians think this is a bluff, you can’t be as effective.”

In a recent article, Ross makes clear that what he calls “coercive diplomacy” would not involve the promise of lifting sanctions, because the U.S. would continue to demand change in Iran’s “behavior toward terrorism, its neighbors and its own citizens”.

If such a “coercive diplomacy” underlies the administration’s negotiating strategy, it would explain the absence of any leaks to the press about what it plans to offer the Iranians in return for the concessions being demanded. Reza Marashi noted that administration officials have been “holding their cards very close to their chest” in regard to what they intend to offer Iran.

The absence of any groundwork for significant incentives leads Marashi to believe the administration plans to rely on threats rather than incentives to get Iran to agree to its demands.

The Obama administration appears to be counting heavily on the one incentive it is prepared to offer in the talks: the recognition of Iran’s right to enrich uranium on Iranian soil. The U.S. and Europeans will certainly demand strict limits on the number of centrifuges and the level of enriched uranium Iran could maintain.

Iranian agreement to such limits would require major changes in U.S. policy toward Iran, including dismantling sanctions and accepting a major Iranian political-diplomatic role in the region as legitimate.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 11 2012 (IPS)

The White House Wednesday said it was “deeply concerned” about growing polarisation between the ruling monarchy and the majority Shi’a community in Bahrain and the welfare of a jailed human rights activist who has been on a hunger strike since early February.

“We continue to underscore, both to the government and citizens of Bahrain, the importance of working together to address the underlying causes of mistrust and to promote reconciliation,” said President Barack Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, in a written statement.

“In this respect, we note our continued concern for the well-being of jailed activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and call on the Government of Bahrain to consider urgently all available options to resolve his case,” the statement said.

It added that the government should “redouble its ongoing efforts” to implement democratic reforms recommended by an independent international commission last November.

While the immediate cause of the statement appeared to be a response to growing pressure from a large number of human rights and labour groups for Obama to intervene in the case of Khawaja, it also reflected increasing concern over the increase in violent clashes between the kingdom’s security forces and youths in predominantly Shi’a communities in and around Manama, the capital, in the absence of movement toward serious dialogue between the government and the main opposition party, al-Wefaq.

Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet and occupies a strategic location in the Gulf opposite southwestern Iran.

The violence has reportedly increased over the past few weeks with the approach of next week’s Formula One race on the island -against which protestors have called for a boycott – as well as growing concerns over Khawaja’s deteriorating condition, which has become a rallying point for both the opposition.

Seven police officers were wounded Monday when a bomb exploded as demonstrators just outside Manama gathered to protest the authorities’ rejection of an appeal by the Danish government to release Khawaja to its custody for medical treatment.

“The United States continues to be deeply concerned about the situation in Bahrain, and we urge all parties to reject violence in all its forms,” the White House statement said.

“We condemn the violence directed against police and government institutions, including recent incidents that have resulted in serious injuries to police officers,” it went on. “We also call on the police to exercise maximum restraint, and condemn the use of excessive force and indiscriminate use of tear gas against protestors, which has resulted in civilian casualties.”

The latest events come 14 months after the arrival of the “Arab Spring” in Bahrain and the outbreak of pro-democracy protests against the long-reigning al-Khalifa family.

In mid-March last year, the Sunni Muslim monarchy, supported by troops and police from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, cracked down hard against the predominantly Shi’a opposition in what has become an increasingly sectarian conflict.

The Obama administration had spoken out publicly in favour of democratic reform until the Saudi-led intervention which bolstered hard-line forces within the government led by the country’s prime minister, Khalifah ibn Sulman al-Khalifa.

Since then, Washington has resorted more to “quiet diplomacy” reportedly designed to strengthen the position of the more reform- minded crown prince, Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, who met with Obama in the White House last June.

Washington, which has been particularly concerned that a lack of democratic reforms would lead the Shi’a community, estimated at between 60 percent and 70 percent of Bahraini citizens, to radicalise and possibly seek support from Shi’a-led Iran.

That radicalisation may indeed be taking place. In recent months, the so-called Coalition of February 14th Youth, which calls for the overthrow of the monarchy, has led most of the protests, undercutting al-Wefaq, which so far has been committed to a more reformist approach.

The administration also spoke out strongly in favour of the conclusions and recommendations of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) headed by a prominent international jurist, Cherif Bassiouni, which was tasked to investigate allegations of human rights and other abuses committed during the crackdown.

In addition to the use of excessive force by security forces which resulted in several dozen deaths, the nearly 500-page BICI report released in November detailed other serious abuses, including the rounding up, detention, torture and mistreatment of hundreds of demonstrators, the wrongful dismissal of thousands of others from government posts and universities, and serious due process violations, including the admission of forced confessions, committed against defendants brought before special security courts.

Khawaja, a long-time human rights activist who had been exiled to Denmark in the 1980s but returned to Bahrain in 2001, was himself arrested last April on charges of trying to overthrow the monarchy and subsequently sentenced by one of the courts criticised by the BICI to life imprisonment two months later.

He, along with 13 other prominent opposition activists, has been named as “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International which has called repeatedly for his unconditional release.

While in prison awaiting trial, Khawaja was beaten so severely that his jaw and skull were cracked and he has undergone several surgeries since.

To protest his continued detention, he began a hunger strike on Feb. 8, and is now on his 64th day without eating solid food. In an open letter to King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, he said he would continue fasting until “freedom or death”.

Reports of his deteriorating health spurred 15 civil society groups here, including Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, the Open Society Foundations, and the AFL-CIO labour confederation, to send an open letter to Obama Monday in which they urged him “to publicly call on the Government of Bahrain to immediately and unconditionally release (him) from prison”.

Amnesty reiterated that call Tuesday in light of a decision by Bahrain’s Court of Cassation, which is reviewing the verdicts of Khawaja and his 13 co-defendants, to adjourn its deliberations until Apr. 23 without setting bail. Despite concerns voiced by Danish consular officials who have been able to visit Khawaja, the Bahraini government has insisted that his life is not at imminent risk.

“This delay will have potentially disastrous consequences for his health, which continues to deteriorate as a result of his hunger strike,” Amnesty said. “The authorities’ single-minded determination to persecute Abdulhadi al-Khawaja seems to override any consideration for justice or humanity.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Relations between the United States and Latin America have “grown more distant” in importance part due to the latter’s persistent disagreement with U.S. policies on immigration, drugs, and Cuba, according to a new report released here Wednesday on the eve of this year’s Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia.

“The United States must regain credibility in the region by dealing seriously with an unfinished agenda of problems, including immigration, drugs, and Cuba – that stands in the way of a real partnership,” according to Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue (IAD).

The 20-page report, entitled “Remaking the Relationship”, described current inter-American relations as “generally cordial but lack(ing) in vigor and purpose”. It suggested that Washington, in particular, has failed to fully come to terms with Latin America’s strong economic and political progress over the past two decades.

It also concluded that the two sides “need to do more to exploit the enormous untapped opportunities of their relationship in economics, trade, and energy”, as well as to work more closely together on global and regional problems.

“They need to breathe new life and vigor into hemispheric relations,” it stressed.

“If the United States and Latin America do not make the effort now, the chance may slip away,” the report warned. “The most likely scenario then would be marked by a continued drift in their relationship, further deterioration of hemispheric-wide institutions, a reduced ability and willingness to deal with a range of common problems, and a spate of missed opportunities for more robust growth and greater social equity.”

Coming on the eve of the Cartagena Summit, where many of these same issues are expected to claim centre-stage, the report represents as much of a consensus of elite opinion in both Americas as can be found.

Washington’s 40-year-old drug war and its impacts on the region will be major agenda item as a result of an unprecedented push by Latin American leaders to use the forum to discuss alternative strategies that could reduce the level of violence associated with drug trafficking.

Most of IAD’s members endorsed the report; there was only one partial dissent – by a former Latin America aide in the George H.W. Bush administration who objected to the report’s suggestion that legalisation of some drugs or decriminalisation could offer viable alternative solutions to dealing with illicit drug trafficking and the violence associated with it in many Latin American countries.

Founded 30 years ago, IAD’s membership includes 100 prominent figures divided roughly evenly between U.S. nationals, including one former president (Jimmy Carter) and numerous former cabinet officials and lawmakers from both Democratic and Republican administrations, on the one hand, and leading personalities from Canada, the Caribbean, and Latin Americans, including Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Ricardo Lagos, and Ernesto Zedillo, and nine other former Latin American presidents, on the other.

IAD is co-chaired by former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills.

In addition to leading politicians, members also include important business figures, heads of civil society organisations (CSOs), academics, and former top managers of multilateral or hemispheric organisations, including the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations, the Organisation of American States (OAS), and the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), among others.

Latin America’s recent advances in reducing poverty and inequality, consolidating democratic practices, and establishing promising new ties with countries like China and India contrasts favourably, according to the report, with Washington’s travails resulting from its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2008 financial crisis, growing inequality and political gridlock.

As a result, “(m)ost countries of the (Latin American) region view the United States as less and less relevant to their needs – and with declining capacity to propose and carry out strategies to deal with the issues that most concern them,” it said.

Moreover, Washington’s failure to deal effectively with three longstanding irritants to inter-American relations – immigration, drug policy, and Cuba – has hardly helped, the report noted.

The report noted that Washington’s failure to achieve meaningful immigration reform – the result, to a great extent, of its increasingly divisive politics – “is breeding resentment across the region, nowhere more so than in …Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.”

Recent signs that immigration from Mexico, in particular, has levelled off should, according to the report, offer an opportunity for U.S. policy makers to revise their views.

On drugs, the report called it “critical” that Washington respond to growing calls by Latin American leaders, most recently by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, and Guatemala’s new president, Otto Perez, to consider alternative strategies, such as regulated legalisation of marijuana and decriminalisation of mere possession of certain drugs.

The report endorsed similar conclusions reached by the 2009 Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, which was chaired by Cardoso, Zedillo, and former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria.

It said these alternatives, as well as staunching “the flow of dangerous arms southward from the United States” by drug cartels and enhanced U.S. support for national efforts at rehabilitating and re- integrating criminals and other migrants repatriated by Washington to their home countries, should serve as a “starting point for an honest U.S.-Latin American dialogue on the drug question”.

On Cuba, the only country whose head of state, at Washington’s insistence, has not been invited to Cartegena, the report asserted that Washington’s 50-year-old embargo “has not worked and, in fact, may have been counter-productive, prolonging Cuba’s repressive rule rather than ending it.”

Washington, it said, “needs to do far more to dismantle its severe, outdated constraints on normalized relations with Cuba,” while its “authoritarian regime” should be urged by its Latin and Caribbean neighbours to institute democratic reform.

On the more positive side, the report said “expanded trade, investment and energy cooperation offer the greatest promise for robust U.S.-Latin American relations” and that “intensive economic engagement by the United States may be the best foundation for wider partnerships across many issues as well as the best way to energize currently listless U.S. relations with the region.”

While the U.S. share of the Latin American market has diminished in recent years, its exports – now greater in value than its exports to Europe – have been growing “at an impressive pace”.

The report noted that the ratification of long-pending free trade accords with Colombia and Panama offer a good start, but that Washington should also seek a “broader framework for U.S. economic relations with Latin America,” despite the failure of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) to gain any traction.

The growing global influence of Latin America, particularly Brazil and Mexico, also calls for greater cooperation and consultation with the region’s leaders on global issues, including nuclear non- proliferation and climate change, according to the report.

It also commended Washington for its accommodation of new regional institutions, such as UNASUR, that currently exclude the U.S., but also suggested the two sides also focus in reforming the hemisphere’s oldest regional grouping, the Organisation of American States, particularly given its importance in establishing democratic norms.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Obama's trip to Brazil in March 2011 reversed a tradition of new Brazilian leaders making a ritual pilgrimage to Washington to gain its blessing. Credit: White House photo

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 9 2012 (IPS)

Kicking off what some here have called President Barack Obama’s “Latin America Week”, the president and his Brazilian counterpart, Dilma Rousseff, touted a deepening of bilateral ties in her first visit to the White House as president of South America’s superpower.

Adding to a growing basket of “presidential dialogues” that were sealed during Obama’s visit to Brazil in March 2011, the two leaders announced the creation of a “Defence Co-operation Dialogue” that will convene in the Latin American giant in two weeks.

According to the seven-page communiqué released during the two presidents’ lunch, the new dialogue will identify “opportunities for collaboration on defence issues around the globe”.

The two leaders also announced the signing of a new civil-aviation accord and the opening by Washington of two new U.S. consulates in Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre to facilitate travel by Brazilian businesspeople and tourists to the U.S.

Indeed, most of Monday’s summit meeting, which precedes by just a few days the multinational Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia Apr. 14-15, dealt with issues on which the Americas’ two most populous nations have been moving steadily to intensify their bilateral relations – business, energy, and education.

“We seek to be a partner, an equal partner, to promote sustainable, diversified, innovation-driven growth that translates into inclusive, long-lasting progress,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared during a morning address to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which hosted an all-day forum on U.S.- Brazilian economic ties at which Rousseff herself was to speak later in the day.

“We want, together, Brazil and the United States, to work toward creating economic opportunity, a system in which everyone has a fair chance to compete,” she added.

While the emphasis on both sides Monday was on the positive, the summit could not escape a mutual sense of disappointment in how relations have developed during Obama’s presidency.

Washington had clearly hoped that, under Rousseff, Brazil would move much closer to the U.S. on a wide array of global and regional issues than had been the case under her charismatic predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Indeed, his trip to Brazil last year so soon after Rousseff’s inaugation was widely seen as a deft move to gain her favour in that it reversed a tradition of new Brazilian leaders making a ritual pilgrimage to Washington to gain its blessing.

Lula, who complained just before leaving office that “nothing has changed” under Obama in Washington’s relations with Latin America, had clashed openly with the U.S. president over the 2009 d’etat in Honduras, Brazilian-Turkish efforts in 2010 to mediate a settlement over Iran’s nuclear programme, and his failure to more aggressively lift the 50-year-old trade embargo with Cuba

And, while Rousseff, whose focus has been mostly on domestic issues, has shown less interest than Lula in confronting the U.S. on geo- strategic questions – for example, by abstaining on Western-backed U.N. resolutions on the Middle East rather than voting against Washington – the changes have not been as great as the administration had hoped.

“The Brazilians believe these has been less of a divergence (between them and the U.S.),” said Peter Hakim, president emeritus of the Inter-American Dialogue, a hemispheric think tank here. “But the (Brazilian) policy is largely one of continuity.”

For their part, the Brazilians have expressed disappointment in a number of areas, particularly Washington’s failure to date to support Brazil’s bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, as Obama did for India in November 2010.

Indeed, the fact that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was accorded the honours of a state visit on that occasion – in contrast to the White House luncheon that Rousseff was given Monday – only adds to the sense that Brazil, despite its regional superpower status and its full membership in the BRICS group that includes Russia and China, as well as India, is not yet taken seriously here as a global player.

“The fact that Brazil is not a nuclear power and that South America is not a relevant strategic hotspot should count in favour of Brazil’s aspirations (for a permanent seat), not against,” wrote Augusto de Castro Neves, a Latin America analyst at the Eurasia Group here, in a foreignpolicy.com article last week.

In Monday’s communiqué, Obama merely “reaffirmed his appreciation for Brazil’s aspiration to become a permanent member of the Security Council and acknowledged its assumption of global responsibilities.”

“The U.S. should treat Brazil much more like it does India and China,” Castro Neves said, adding that Washington’s failure to recognise Brazil’s growing global influence “keeps the two countries’ agenda much less ambitious than it should be.”

While neither Rousseff nor her foreign minister, Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, complained directly about Washington’s attitude, Patriota stressed in his presentation to the Chamber Brazil’s “unique comparative advantage in (the) emerging world order” as a “country devoid of mass destruction, a peace-loving country, a country that believes in diplomacy, in dialogue, in tolerance.”

In a brief public appearance with Obama after lunch, Rousseff also complained about U.S. and European low-interest monetary policies designed to make their exports more competitive and thus “impairing growth outlooks in emerging countries”, including Brazil. She has previously warned that such policies will cause a “monetary tsunami” for countries like Brazil whose higher interest rates attract currency speculators.

Indeed, Brazil’s balance of trade with the U.S. has moved sharply negative – from a 6.4 billion dollar surplus in 2007 before the financial crisis the following year to a deficit of 8.2 billion dollars in 2011.

Nonetheless, both leaders touted the fact that the growth in bilateral trade – an average of almost 10 percent per year over the past decade to a record 74 billion dollars last year – even as China displaced the U.S. as Brazil’s number one trade partner.

Washington has taken some steps to please Brazil on the trade front over the past year, including ending certain kinds of subsidies on ethanol production here and lowering tariffs on Brazilian ethanol, although, since the discovery of huge oil and gas deposits off Brazil’s Atlantic coast, the ethanol issue does not loom as large in bilateral relations as it has in the past.

In their remarks, both leaders alluded to their common interest in co-operating on extraction of those resources.

Washington also hopes Brazil will buy a fleet of Boeing F-18 warplanes in a deal worth close to four billion dollars, but that is unlikely to proceed unless the U.S. Air Force follows through on a recently suspended agreement to purchase Embraer training aircraft for the embryonic Afghan air force. Monday’s announcement that Boeing and Embraer have worked out a cooperation agreement may facilitate both transactions, according to business analysts.

Rousseff’s visit here did not come off without some protest. About 100 activists associated with Amazon Watch turned out at the Brazilian embassy here early Monday to highlight recent complaints by Brazilian civil society groups over the killings of indigenous people and small farmers in land disputes in and around the Amazon rainforest and Rousseff’s alleged failure to implement land reform and promote sustainable agriculture.

They also protested pending legislation that allegedly would weaken protections of the forest and the continued construction of the controversial Belo Monte dam along the Xingu River.

Meanwhile, the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank close to the White House, called Rousseff’s decision to participate in a U.S. Chamber of Commerce forum “more than a little confusing”, particularly given Obama’s “snub(bing)” of Brazil’s main opposition party.

“It is tempting to speculate who is advising President Rousseff to visit Washington in an election year and seemingly align herself with an organization that is such a fierce opponent of President Obama and opposed to so much of her own and her party’s political philosophy,” according to an essay by senior CAP aides published on its website.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

As foreign troops trickle out of Afghanistan, local police or private security contractors have filled the gaps in Kabul. Credit: Giuliana Sgrena/IPS

By Giuliana Sgrena
KABUL, Apr 7 2012 (IPS)

Though the United States’ announcement to pull its troops from Afghanistan by 2014 was celebrated by most Afghans as the imminent end of a protracted and controversial foreign occupation, there are lingering questions about the outcome of such a withdrawal.

Specifically, experts and lay people alike are asking whether it will make the country safer for democracy or more vulnerable than ever to violence and extremism. Others are sceptical that the country will ever be free of U.S. presence in a geographically strategic country, close to Iran, Pakistan and Central Asia.

More than ten years since the arrival of foreign troops to ‘fight terrorism’, Afghan people are openly questioning the U.S’ ‘real goal’ when it entered the country.

“The goal of the (U.S) was not to fight terrorism, even though they killed (former Al-Qaeda chief) Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda is still here and spreading throughout the region (into Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, etc), which is useful for the U.S. because they will be asked for help and can use it as an excuse to remain in the region,” Naseer Fayaz, a renowned journalist, told IPS.

Though U.S. President Barack Obama announced the withdrawal of a portion of the stationed troops by the end of 2014, few are hopeful that this will lead to any lasting change on the ground.

“They (the U.S.) will never leave Afghanistan because it is very important from geographic and strategic points of view. The U.S. strategy is a long term one, they are here to control the area from Iran to Central Asia,” Fayaz stressed.

“They use Al-Qaeda to stay here, while negotiating with some jihadists to reach their goals,” he added.

Wadeer Safi, a law professor in the Kabul University, believes that foreign troops will remain on Afghan soil for another reason, one that is actually relevant to the country’s civil society.

“The U.S. will not leave Afghanistan before realising their goal of putting a government based on transparency and social justice into place. This is not the case up to now; criminals are still in power. They should be put on trial,” Safi told IPS.

If “foreign troops leave the country in the hand of fundamentalists, Afghanistan will become a narco state linked to Pakistan,” the professor said, a speculation supported by the fact that the majority of global opium poppy – 123,000 of 195,000 hectares in 2010 – was cultivated in Afghanistan. The country also relies on the drug trade for a third of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Furthermore, Afghanistan is the second most corrupt nation in the world after Somalia, making many people pessimistic about the country’s political future.

Regardless of this concern, the majority of the country is in favour of a withdrawal of all troops. After the massacre in Kandahar and outrage over the Quran burnings at the U.S.-run Bagram military base, tensions swept through the country, penetrating even Kabul, where foreign troops have been replaced by the Afghan army and police.

But “few people trust the Afghan police, who are divided based on ethnic groups,” said Fayaz, adding that diplomats and businessmen have turned to private, often foreign, security contractors for protection.

Embassies are completely surrounded by cement walls and entry is forbidden to Afghans who do not have a special permit.

The presence of warlords and their militias is a danger that could be exacerbated by the exit of foreign troops; though for now, hostilities have been suspended due to power sharing.

Some experts believe that a full withdrawal will lead to the outbreak of civil war; others doggedly hold onto the view that according U.S. troops the label of ‘saviour’ is mere propaganda.

“The U.S. wants to sell more weapons to the Afghans. But the origin of the Afghan problems is the occupation and the warlords in power. Only corrupt people want the troops to stay. Foreign occupations never bring democracy. The people (of a country) must struggle for freedom,” Malalai Joya, a member of the previous Loya Jirga (the Afghan parliament), told IPS.

“But it is not easy to struggle against occupation,” said Baseer, chief of the shura (tribal council) of Khewa in Dar-e-Noor (the village of light), close to the city of Jalalabad.

“Even if 99 percent of the people are against occupation, it is difficult to show your opposition because you will be labelled by the government as Taliban,” with all the consequences such a denouncement entails, Baseer told IPS.

“We need time, we have struggled against the soviet occupation, against jihadis, the Taliban and now we are facing (another) new occupation. We are with the people and we try to solve their problems, that is why we are still here,” he stressed.

He added that if a civil war breaks out, it will be the result of billions of dollars arriving in Afghanistan from outside the country “for a few rich people to build their villas”, not because of the departure of U.S. troops from Afghan soil.

Kabul bears all the signs of this new ‘blood money’, where massive villas have sprung up alongside traditional mud house surrounded by open sewers, highlighting the increasing gap between a handful of wealthy people and the vast majority of the country’s poor.

Hafiz Rashid, leader of the secular Solidarity Party of Afghanistan, told IPS, “People want peace, they don’t want more fighting and for that reason they will accept any puppet government the U.S. will impose on Afghanistan.”

In any case, he added, the U.S. will not retreat completely, but simply reduce the number of their troops remaining in the military bases.

During a meeting with a group of war victims held in the old city of Shari-kua and attended mostly by war widows who are asking for justice, it became clear these groups are willing to accept the presence of foreign troops “if that means peace,” said Fatma, a widow whose husband was killed by a rocket during the post 1992 civil war that shook the country.

“I am worried about the last events (at the Bagram Air Base) where the U.S. soldiers burned the Quran. But if they respect our religion and they can help us, we are not against them,” she said.

Days before the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, anti- poverty advocates staged their own egg hunt in Lafayette Park to urge President Obama to “find political will to end global hunger” during the upcoming G8 Summit at Camp David.

Hunger advocates call on President Obama to pledge a commitment to global hunger at the G8 summit. Credit: ActionAid USA

Sponsored by ActionAid USA, the activists held banners that read “Obama: Find the Will to be a Hunger Hero at the G8,” next to a cutout of the president in a superhero suit.

“This year, Americans are expected to spend over two billion dollars on Easter candy, according to CNN. We estimate that if the U.S contributed less than half that amount to a G8 food security initiative, we could empower 50 million smallholder farmers to boost themselves out of poverty through sustainable agriculture,” Katie Campbell, senior policy analyst at ActionAid USA, said in a press release.

“President Obama must do everything possible to find the political will and financial resources to combat hunger when international leaders meet at Camp David in May.”

The number of hungry people worldwide increased to historic levels due to the global food price and economic crises of 2007-2008. In 2010, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated 925 million hungry people in the world, with a vast majority of the undernourished living in developing countries, mostly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2009, soon after new poverty figures showed one-sixth of the world was now hungry, the G8 declared the “L’Aquila hunger pledge” in Italy prioritising food security issues and committing 22 billion dollars over three years in support of country-led plans for agriculture.

The L’Aquila financial commitments are set to expire this May. In its place, anti-poverty advocates are calling out for a new financial pledge for a new food security initiative upholding the five “Rome Principles” set during the 2009 World Summit on Food Security.

“The Rome principles basically hold countries accountable for investing in country-led plans in a comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable way. We would like to see the Rome principles, not just as principles countries should abide by, but as the fundamental framework for a new food security initiative,” Campbell told IPS.

It’s also important to evaluate impact targets, Campbell added. Instead of just allocating a certain amount of money, the pledge should calculate how many people are reached when country investment plans are fulfilled.

The new suggestions are improvements over the shortcomings of the current pledge. A 2011 report by ActionAid found that two years after L’Aquila, almost two-thirds of the way through, only 22 percent of the aid had actually been spent. Despite the U.S. leading the way and promising transparency of progress, delivery of aid has been significantly slow, mostly attributed to delays in the Congressional budget process.

Some G8 members had even “deliberately inflated aid to agriculture figures” by including previous aid commitments and money used in non- agricultural sectors in their calculations.

Campbell thinks solutions to such problems, other than holding governments accountable, is to ensure long-term investments rather than year-to-year ones. “If we make six- or seven-year investments, countries don’t have to necessarily rely on congressional appropriation.”

Campbell says the pledge has been relatively successful in its Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP). She just returned from Rwanda, where she witnessed GAFSP transforming the lives of farmers by building terraces on hilly land, increasing productivity tenfold.

Agriculture is the most effective way to drive economic growth in the world’s poorest communities, and women’s inclusion is considered paramount for any growth.

“We actually believe strongly that to pull people out of poverty and to improve food security is to invest in women smallholder farmers because women, especially in Africa, make up the majority of farmers and the majority of farm labour,” Campbell said.

Despite comprising 43 percent of the agricultural labour force, women in developing countries often lack access to resources male farmers have. By giving women access to credit, labour saving tools and so on, their impact in agricultural development can be multiplied.

“The second thing is climate resilience of agricultural practices. We are already seeing the impact of climate change in poor nations. So we feel it’s really important that any new investments in agricultural development need to be resilient to climate change and be sustainable,” Campbell said.

A new report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) Friday contends that the dearth of meaningful reform in the protection of human rights and the rule of law in Yemen threatens political stability as the fledgling transitional government copes with a deteriorating economy and continued violence.

“While Yemen’s new government has taken several promising steps, the repressive security apparatus of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh remains largely intact,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East and North Africa director, after observers met for two weeks in Sanaa.

“Civilian leaders reiterated that they cannot move forward on accountability and reform of the security services so long as Saleh continues to play a hand in directing various security forces there,” Whitson added.

Since last December, when Saleh and his political supporters were granted legal immunity in exchange for a new government under President Abu Rabu Mansur Hadi, the progress made thus far is insufficient, according to the report.

Some of the reforms in Yemen, the poorest member country in the Arab League, include a draft law that would open investigations into last year’s government abuses and the authorisation for a new office of the United Nations Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the country.

But after a number of interviews with senior government officials, civil society leaders and other witnesses, HRW found that large gaps remain in government accountability, arbitrary detentions, children forced into the military, and judicial and legal reforms.

No government or security officials have been charged with crimes that left hundreds of Yemeni citizens dead during last year’s anti- government protests.

“Events in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya show that removing an authoritarian leader is only the first of many difficult steps…The best way for Hadi to gain the support of all Yemenis is to ensure their grievances are addressed,” Whitson went on to say.

Regional experts have suggested that Saleh has retained a strong influence in Yemeni politics, which has only exacerbated the violent rivalries between different factions vying for power.

“So far, all signs point to Saleh’s unwillingness to give up his influence, especially as long as his political rivals remain active and in a position to dominate Yemen… Their continued presence represents a threat to the emergence of a stable political order in the country,” Princeton Professor Bernard Haykel wrote for majalla.com last week.

With extremely high levels of unemployment, food shortages, dwindling foreign exchange reserves, and an economy almost entirely dependent on neighbouring Saudi Arabia for food and oil subsidies, Yemen’s stagnant economy is just as worrying for some analysts as the growing political instability.

On Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved 93.75 million dollars in assistance to Yemen to “address its urgent balance of payments needs”. Other governments and international organisations such as the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations are in the process of securing additional funds in economic and humanitarian assistance to Yemen.

“The Fund-supported program will help the authorities tackle pressing economic challenges while giving them time to formulate their medium- term strategy to address structural issues,” Nemat Shafik, chair of the IMF’s executive board, said on Wednesday.

“The role of donors is crucial. Financing needs are likely to remain large as the political crisis has worsened poverty and unemployment conditions and severely impacted tax revenues,” Shafik added.

Some experts argue, however, that without an end to Yemen’s political instability, the economic situation is unlikely to improve.

In a report published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Tuesday, regional specialist Dr. Charles Schmitz emphasised that structural economic reforms such as a revised tax system, more investment in human capital programmes, an enhanced partnership between the government and private business, and proper management of Yemen’s non-hydrocarbon natural resources will all work to promote economic growth.

“Yemen’s economic problems are real, but they are not caused by an absolute, irreparable shortage of resources. Rather it is Yemen’s contentious politics and its lack of institutional development that constitutes the main obstacle to surmounting economic difficulties,” the Schmitz wrote.

“Ultimately, long-term success depends on the Yemeni state, not on outside help from the U.S. or the Gulf countries – though they can play a critical role in helping to stabilise the Yemeni economy in the short term,” the report goes on to say.

While the U.S. commended the negotiated political transition brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) last year, U.S. policy remains focused on its support for counterterrorism operations in the country and, in what U.S. officials have begun to emphasise more frequently, countering Iran’s alleged influence in Yemen.

Speaking at a GCC forum in Saudi Arabia last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted that Iran has been undermining “regional security” with “interference” in both Yemen and Syria.

One substantial component of the U.S.’s campaign against organisations affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Yemen is an increasing number of drone attacks.

According to a study published last week by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the number of U.S. drone strikes, cruise missile attacks and naval bombardments in Yemen now rivals the intensity of a similar covert campaign against militants in Pakistan, with up to 35 attacks since May 2011 that have resulted in the deaths of an estimated 55-105 Yemeni civilians.

After suspending 150 million dollars in military aid to Yemen during the uprisings last year, U.S. officials have stated that they plan to seek authorisation for nearly 75 million in military aid to resume this year. Yemen has received nearly 316 million dollars in civilian aid since 2007.

“The U.S. government has no business resuming aid, overt or covert, to security forces that are implicated in murdering Yemen’s citizens and refuse to accept accountability for these abuses…Direct military aid to these forces could undermine the government’s ability to ensure accountability and bring peace and security to the country,” HRW’s Whitson said.

“The U.S remains focused on supporting a peaceful political transition in Yemen, and will continue to address the needs of the Yemeni people by delivering humanitarian and economic aid and providing security assistance as requested by the National Consensus Government,” the State Department said in a press release on Monday, after a senior level delegation, which included U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Ambassador Jeffery Feltman, returned from Yemen last week.

“We want to help the people of Yemen. They are in great need of development assistance and other forms of help so that they can begin to realise the benefits of a new government that wishes to try to help them,” Clinton said last week during her trip to Riyadh.

Many of the latest reforms came in the wake of Clinton's visit late last year to Myanmar, during which she met Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Credit: State Department photo/ Public Domain

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 4 2012 (IPS)

Two days after hailing Sunday’s parliamentary by-elections in Myanmar, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Washington would begin a process of “targeted easing” of longstanding economic sanctions against the Southeast Asian nation.

“The United States is committed to taking steps alongside the Burmese government and people as they move down the road of reform and development,” she said, adding that the administration will very soon name an ambassador to Yangon, establish an in-country U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) mission, and support a “normal country programme” for Myanmar by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP).

In addition, it will permit U.S.-based non-governmental organisations to undertake a variety of programmes, ranging from democracy promotion to health and education, in Myanmar, and facilitate visits by selected government officials and parliamentarians to the U.S., she said.

Perhaps most significantly, she said Washington will begin “the process of a targeted easing of our ban on the export of U.S. financial services and investment as part of a broader effort to help accelerate economic modernisation and political reform.”

“Sanctions and prohibitions will stay in place on individuals and institutions that remain on the wrong side of these historic reform efforts,” she added, stressing that Washington will “stand with reformers and democrats, both inside the government and in the larger civil society” going forward.

Her announcement comes in the wake of the landslide victory of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in Sunday’s by-elections.

In addition to winning in her rural constituency, the NLD reportedly swept 43 of the 45 seats that were contested in the elections, the latest in a series of steps taken by the government of President Thein Sein over the past several months that have encouraged the administration here that its “engagement” policy is working.

In addition to freeing hundreds of political prisoners and legalising the NLD, the government has also enacted labour reforms, relaxed media censorship, and engaged Suu Kyi herself in an intensive dialogue that some analysts believe may result in her being asked to accept a cabinet-level position.

The government has also consulted with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a process that has resulted, among other things, in ongoing reforms in the country’s extremely restrictive foreign investment regime and in Monday’s float of the national currency, the kyat, in what is widely regarded as the most far-reaching step yet in integrating Myanmar into the global economy.

Many of these reforms came in the wake of Clinton’s visit late last year to Myanmar, the first trip by a secretary of state to the country in nearly 60 years. Myanmar had been ruled by the military from 1962 until Thein Sein, himself a former general, was inaugurated as president last March.

Clinton’s trip, during which she met separately with both Suu Kyi and Thein Sein, marked the culmination of the administration’s “engagement” policy led by its special envoy, Derek Mitchell, who is expected to be nominated as Washington’s first ambassador to Myanmar in 20 years, and is currently in Europe consulting with his counterparts.

Reaction here to Clinton’s announcement was mixed, with some groups praising the action and others criticising it as premature.

“Today will be the best day for the Burmese regime, which is still killing innocent civilians in ethnic areas in Burma,” said Aung Din, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma and a former political prisoner, who noted that, despite its sweeping victory Sunday, the NLD will hold only a small fraction of the 664-seat parliament.

“What they have achieved from the United States for giving seven percent of seats in the Parliament to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is enormous,” he complained.

“We also suddenly learned today from the secretary’s statement that the United States has already changed its policy on Burma, from the dual track policy of sanctions and engagement to the policy of engagement, which is the perfect match for the Burmese regime’s policy of ‘give little and get more’,” he noted, adding that the administration will draw out its “targeted easing” policy to ensure that the reform process has become irreversible.

After Sunday’s elections, the Campaign urged Washington to wait to see to what extent the government would co-operate with Suu Kyi and the NLD before easing or lifting sanctions.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), a harsh critic of Myanmar’s human rights record, was more positive. “I think it’s good,” said Tom Malinowski, the director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. “It’s essentially what we recommended they do.”

“It’s a calibration, rather than a lifting of sanctions,” he told IPS. “The idea is to try to give a boost to civilians and reformers while continuing to sanction the military and military-owned businesses.”

According to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the announcement, “The principle I think we’re going to be using to underline anything we do in terms of easing is what has the most benefit for the average Burmese. And so what sectors can provide the greatest bang in terms of employment and development for those who have been hurt by the system for so long?

“And certain sectors I think jump out at you. I mean, agriculture is one. I think many have looked at tourism as another. Some have looked at potentially telecommunications as another.”

The official noted that, “Burma is one of the few countries in the world where you cannot use a credit card, and it makes it extraordinarily difficult for some of the most basic kinds of economic exchanges. And we think some small steps will allow businesses to flourish, certain opportunities to take hold.”

The administration expects the European Union (EU), which has generally followed Washington in imposing sanctions against the regime, to take similar measures when its foreign ministers meet in Brussels Apr. 23 to coordinate their reaction to the latest events in Myanmar.

Both the EU and the U.S. were urged to immediately lift all sanctions on Myanmar by the leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) when they met in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Wednesday. Myanmar, which was admitted to the group over Western objections in 1997, is scheduled to chair it in 2014.

“We called for the lifting of all sanctions on Myanmar immediately in order to contribute positively to the democratic process and economic development in that country,” they said in a communiqué read by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

But in her statement, Clinton was clear that Washington is not yet prepared to do so. “This reforms process has a long way to go,” she said. “The future is neither clear nor certain. …We will continue to seek improvements in human rights, including the unconditional release of all remaining political prisoners and the lifting of conditions on all those who have been released.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

In a memorandum released Tuesday, President Barack Obama ordered the State Department to allocate additional humanitarian assistance funds for Sudan as famine looms for thousands of civilians caught between intensified levels of armed conflict along the borders of Sudan and South Sudan.

Thousands fleeing fighting last year in Kadugli, the capital of Southern Kordofan State, seek refuge in area secured by UNMIS. Credit: UN Photo/Paul Banks

In light of the most violent escalation in tensions between Sudan and South Sudan since the two countries split last year, the Obama administration on Monday voiced concern over the implications of continued fighting for a settlement on a variety of divisive issues by urging South Sudanese President Salva Kiir to end hostilities.

While emphasising the need to end fighting over disputed border regions, particularly in South Kordofan, President Obama noted that an agreement over oil transportation fees – a hotly contested issue between the two governments – will be “important”.

“(I)t’s important not only to encourage the governments to reach an agreement on oil, but to reach an agreement on the issues that are dividing them so sharply and creating so much conflict,” Ambassador Princeton Lyman, U.S. special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, said in a teleconference on Monday, “We all need to engage in a broad diplomatic effort, not just on one issue.”

President Kiir and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir were set to meet this week until the recent spate of violence, which has included clashes between ground forces and aerial attacks in a number of contested border states including South Kordofan and Blue Nile, diminished the chances for a peace summit.

Last week’s clashes took place in the South Sudanese border state of Unity, where substantial oil fields and production facilities are located.

While U.S. policymakers and the U.N. Security Council continue to press for maximal “restraint” on both sides, some analysts have argued that holding both the Khartoum and Juba governments equally accountable for the most recent surge in violence actually works to discredit the international community’s ostensible role as impartial mediators, and helps to perpetuate the conflict.

“It must be stressed that there is no publicly available evidence that the South is providing significant assistance to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North or indeed the means to do so. International failure to acknowledge this dramatic asymmetry only encourages Khartoum to continue arming militias operating in the South,” Dr. Eric Reeves, a regional specialist, wrote on his blog sudanreeves.org last week.

Several regional observers have suggested that hard-line factions within the Sudanese government have everything to gain from continuing the armed conflict, both because of lost territory, oil production capacity, and warrants for their arrest issued by the International Criminal Court.

Nevertheless, others see an impartial posture for the U.S. and international community as essential to diplomatic mediations.

“Would-be mediators should resist the temptation to look for the ‘good guys’ in Sudan and take sides,” Alan Goulty and Nuredin Satti, two regional specialists, wrote in a report last month published by the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Affairs.

“The parties to Sudanese conflicts need help to make peace, not war. It follows that the secondary temptation of bringing pressure or leverage to bear on only one of the parties should also be resisted. It will lead the antagonists to eschew negotiation in favor of waiting for outside pressure to weaken their opponents,” the report goes on to say.

In addition to last week’s armed clashes and the ongoing oil dispute, the governments in the north and south have yet to form a consensus on other significant issues such granting humanitarian relief agencies access to distressed populations, some that are on the verge of starvation, border demarcation, and the citizenship status of displaced persons.

“The highest priority of the U.S. government is to get a humanitarian relief corridor open and that means you have to get an agreement between both the north and the south. And that effectively means a cessation of hostilities,” David Shinn, former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, told IPS.

“The problems are coming form both sides. This is not just all the north that is creating the problems,” Ambassador Lyman added.

Last month, U.S. lawmakers introduced new legislation that would require a “comprehensive” U.S. strategy for Sudan to encourage the use of a number of policy tools, including additional sanctions, to help pressure both sides into finding a peaceful solution.

Of particular concern for politicians here, however, are increasing oil prices in the middle of a crucial election year.

Global oil markets have received extra attention in recent weeks as Republican presidential candidates lay the groundwork for the upcoming general election with arguments blaming President Obama’s policies for exorbitant prices at the pump.

“Global oil prices are set by a variety of factors, many of which are outside of the control of U.S. policy,” a senior administration official said in a conference call on Monday.

“(A)s the president has talked about on several occasions, factors that are influencing oil prices right now include growth in countries around the world as well as disruptions in supply in countries across the globe from Sudan to Yemen to Nigeria,” the official added.

With continued disagreement over the price for transporting South Sudanese oil through the north, which owns the vital pipelines and infrastructure necessary for export to the Red Sea, Juba now faces large shortfalls in government revenues. Before shutting down exports, South Sudan’s estimated 345,000 barrel per day oil capacity accounted for 98 percent of government revenues.

“(W)e’re obviously interested in reducing tensions there, and certainly in trying to mitigate the factors that are having an impact on high oil prices,” Jay Carney, White House press secretary, said in a briefing last week.

China, which imported roughly 67 percent of Sudanese oil before supplies were disrupted, and other major Asian importers are now seen as crucial to an all-inclusive diplomatic push toward resolving the multiplicity of conflicts.

“(B)oth China and India have significant investments in the oil sector. And as a result, they both have an interest in a stable and peaceful relationship between the two countries because, as you know, much of the oil is in the south, the infrastructure to export it in the north,” Ambassador Lyman said Monday.

“So we have been in touch on many occasions with the Chinese…and I’ve been in touch with the new Chinese envoy,” Lyman added.

Despite his repeated differences with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a strong majority of U.S. Jews are likely to vote to re-elect President Barack Obama in November, according to major new survey of Jewish opinion released here Tuesday.

More than six out of 10 (62 percent) of U.S. Jewish voters intend to vote for Obama, according to the survey of more than 1,000 self- identified Jews conducted between late February and early March by the Public Religion Research Institute (PPRI), while 29 percent said they were inclined to vote for Obama’s Republican challenger.

If those figures are borne out, that would represent a fairly substantial erosion of Obama’s Jewish support compared to the 2008 election when 78 percent of Jewish voters cast their ballots for him.

But the current figures are remarkably consistent with those found by a Gallup poll of Jewish opinion at a comparable moment in the 2008 election campaign. In April of that year, 61 percent of Jews said they intended to vote for Obama, while 32 percent said they would probably vote for Republican Sen. John McCain.

“There has been some speculation about possible movements towards the (Republicans) among Jewish voters, but the current state of the race suggests that this year’s Jewish vote will resemble past elections,” said Daniel Cox, PPRI’s research director.

While the likely Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, was the most popular by far of the party’s four remaining presidential candidates – 56 percent of those who said they wanted a Republican to win identified Romney as their first choice – he was preferred by only 17 percent of all Jewish respondents.

The survey, “Chosen For What? Jewish Values in 2012”, shows that Jewish voters, who make up only about two percent of the national population but comprise more than that in several key “swing states”, such as Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois, remain largely liberal and Democratic in their political orientation. It also suggests that U.S. Jews are more concerned about issues such as social justice than foreign policy.

Seven of 10 respondents said they either identified with (50 percent) or lean toward (20 percent) the Democratic Party, compared to less than three in 10 who said they either identified with (13 percent) or lean toward (16 percent) the Republicans.

Asked what issue was most important to them in the upcoming election, 51 percent cited the economy; 15 percent, the growing gap between rich and poor; nine percent, health care; seven percent, the federal deficit; and four percent each for both “national security” and Israel. Only two percent of respondents cited “Iran”.

The relative lesser importance accorded by respondents to both Israel and Iran is remarkable in light of strenuous efforts over most of the past year by all but one of the Republican presidential candidates, as well as Republican lawmakers in Congress, to drive a wedge between Obama and his Jewish supporters over precisely those two issues.

Romney has repeatedly accused Obama of having “thrown Israel under the bus” on a number of counts, including the president’s initial demands that Netanyahu freeze all settlement expansion on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem; his call for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine based on the 1967 “Green Line” with territorial swaps; and increasingly blunt warnings by administration and Pentagon officials against an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Two of Romney’s rivals – Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, whose floundering campaign has been almost single-handedly financed by one of Netanyahu’s own political patrons, billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson – have also repeatedly denounced Obama for allegedly creating tensions with the Jewish state.

Among other things, they have both indicated opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state and called for Washington to attack Iran militarily to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.

While these efforts may be succeeding in attracting wealthy right- wing Jewish donors with right-wing politics like Adelson – and in mobilising the Republicans’ Christian evangelical base – they don’t seem to be working with the vast majority of Jewish voters who do not see Israel or Iran as the most critical issues in the November elections.

It’s not that they necessarily disagree with the Republicans on these issues. Indeed, nearly six of 10 respondents (59 percent) said the U.S. should take military action to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon if diplomatic and economic sanctions don’t work, although a slight majority (53 percent) said they support the establishment of a Palestinian state.

But only for a relatively few Jewish voters will these issues decide how they will cast their ballot.

While a majority (54 percent) of respondents say U.S.-Israeli relations have remained about the same as in the past, a significant minority (37 percent) said they had worsened in recent years. Self- identified Republicans were more critical than Democrats or Independents.

On the Arab-Israeli conflict, 35 percent of respondents said they agreed with Obama’s policies, 28 percent said they disagreed, while 36 percent said they weren’t sure. Of those who said they agreed with the president’s policies, however, nearly half said they didn’t like the way he was executing them.

That dissatisfaction could help explain some of the attrition that showed up in the poll. Of those who said they voted for Obama in 2008, 86 percent said they would support him in November. But seven percent of that group said they intended to vote Republican.

Overall, 61 percent of U.S. Jews said they approved of Obama’s performance, according to the PRPI survey. That was significantly more than the 45 percent of Jewish respondents who said they approved of Obama’s performance in a poll taken by the American Jewish Committee last September, and well above the roughly 50-percent approval rating given to Obama by the general public in recent polls.

Asked what is most important to their identity as Jews, 46 percent of respondents cited a “commitment to social equality”, while 20 percent said “support for Israel”. Another 17 percent cited “religious observance”, and six percent said “cultural heritage or tradition”.

Asked what specific Jewish values they considered “very important” in informing their political beliefs and actions, 52 percent cited pursuing justice; 35 percent, “tikkum olam” – a Hebrew expression for “healing the world”; 34 percent, caring for the widow and the orphan; 26 percent for welcoming the stranger; and 25 percent for seeing each person as made in the image of God.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 3 2012 (IPS)

When the 194-member General Conference of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) was on the verge of admitting Palestine as a full-fledged member of the Paris-based U.N. agency last year, the United States warned against it – and threateningly.

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka Credit: Courtesy of UNESCO

The cutoff was triggered by a 1990 law that bars funding “for the United Nations and any specialized agency thereof, which accords the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) the same standing as a (U.N.) member state.”

In an interview with IPS, Dr Dayan Jayatilleka, Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to France and permanent delegate to UNESCO, said “the U.S. Congress had voted the funds, which were in the U.S. State Department budgetary allocation, I believe, but now frozen them.”

“So, yes, in effect the U.S. has enforced the cuts. There is an audible impact more than a visible one, in that the fiscal situation of UNESCO is always on the minds of decision-makers and administrators, and there has been downsizing of staff etc,” he added.

Currently the United States pays about 22 percent of UNESCO’s regular budget of just over 300 million dollars annually.

These “assessed contributions” by member states are mandatory and based on each country’s capacity to pay.

Additionally, UNESCO also has an annual 200-million-dollar budget funded by voluntary contributions from member states, including the United States, which provides less than one million dollars.

Speaking immediately after Palestine’s membership, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said she was concerned by the potential challenges that may arise to the universality and financial stability of the organisation.

“I am worried we may confront a situation that could erode UNESCO as a universal platform for dialogue. I am worried about the stability of its budget,” she added.

“I believe it is the responsibility of all of us to make sure that UNESCO does not suffer unduly as a result,” she said, appealing to all member states.

Days before the vote, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asked UNESCO to rethink its decision.

“Unfortunately, there are those who, in their enthusiasm to recognise the aspirations of the Palestinian people, are skipping over the most important step, which is determining what the (Palestinian) state will look like, what its borders are, how it will deal with the myriad issues that States must address.”

And now six months after Palestine’s admission, the 66-year-old UNESCO continues to survive, but may be forced to cut down on some of its programmes relating to education, the sciences, culture and communication.

The countries that voted against Palestine included the United States, Israel, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.

Last week, Israel walked out of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva because of an anti-Israeli resolution over the monitoring of illegal settlements in Palestinian territory.

Asked if Israel has given any indication it may follow suit and also withdraw from UNESCO, Jayatilleka told IPS: “No, in fact what is interesting is that while the U.S. has frozen its funds to UNESCO, Israel has not.” Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Do you think the cut in funds would eventually undermine the stability of the Organisation?

A: UNESCO’s director general is maintaining the dignity and activism of the organisation, despite the strain and stress of the cutbacks. I wouldn’t say there is instability, but there is some dimming of the lights, as it were.

Q: Has there been any attempts by other member states to bolster UNESCO by making up for the cuts imposed by the United States?

A: Some member states have attempted to help by contributing their funds earlier rather than at the usual time, and others like Indonesia have made generous contributions to programmes, post- Palestine vote and U.S. cutbacks.

But if you mean has any other state or states come forward to pick up the slack left by the U.S., the answer is no.

I cannot speak for others but my guess is that for such a thing to be possible, there will have to be more re-thinking and re-orientation on the part of UNESCO.

Q: How does the voting in the Human Rights Council compare with the voting in UNESCO?

A: It would seem from last month’s vote at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Palestine, which passed by a massive 46-1, the vote at UNESCO (107 to 14) was something of a pathbreaker, certainly within the U.N. system.

Excerpt:

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama Monday hailed Sunday’s parliamentary by-election in Myanmar, also known as Burma, which the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won in a landslide.

In a written statement, White House spokesman Jay Carney described the election as “an important step in Burma’s democratic transformation. (W)e hope it is an indication that the Government of Burma intends to continue along the path of greater openness, transparency, and reform.”

But he failed to say what steps Washington may take to further its rapprochement with Myanmar that gained considerable momentum late last year when Hillary Clinton met separately with President Thein Sein and Suu Kyi during the first trip by a secretary of state to Myanmar in nearly 60 years.

Her visit was followed by the government’s release in January of hundreds of political prisoners, one in a series of steps, including Sunday’s by-elections, that the administration said could lead to full normalisation of relations between the two countries.

While State Department officials hinted that some reciprocal gestures – including the anticipated nomination of an ambassador to Yangon – could be expected, Clinton herself suggested Washington would proceed cautiously.

“Going forward, it will be critical for authorities to continue working toward an electoral system that meets international standards, that includes transparency, and expeditiously addresses concerns about intimidation and irregularities,” Clinton said at a press conference in Istanbul Monday in response to some reports of problems at polling places.

“It is too early to know what the progress of recent months means and whether it will be sustained,” Clinton had said late Sunday when the poll results were first announced. “There are no guarantees about what lies ahead for the people of Burma…”

If the administration reacted cautiously, three major U.S. business associations interested in Myanmar’s abundant natural resources, including oil and gas, urged deeper engagement in a joint statement.

Calling the election an “important milestone” in Myanmar’s reform process, the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council called for the “continuation and expansion” of “the enhanced U.S. diplomatic engagement with Myanmar” – the name given the country by the ruling military junta that ignored the NLD’s landslide victory in the 1990 elections and subsequently imprisoned most of its leadership.

The three groups, which collectively represent the most important U.S. companies with interests in Southeast Asia and which have long opposed economic sanctions against Myanmar, called explicitly for the administration to name a U.S. ambassador “as soon as possible”.

“We believe that such engagement has been, and will be, crucial in encouraging and supporting further reform,” they said.

Of the 44 seats that were up for grabs in Sunday’s elections, the NLD reportedly won at least 40 and possibly as many as 43, including the rural seat contested by Suu Kyi herself, according to the latest reports. While some minor opposition parties participated in 2010 elections, this was the first contested by the NLD since the 1990 poll.

Whether the NLD’s victory will translate into real political power, however, remains to be seen. Even if it wins 43 seats, the NLD will hold just over six percent of the 664-seat Union Parliament, which remains dominated by the military that has effectively controlled Myanmar’s government since 1962. Without support from the government, the party will be unable to pass laws on its own, let alone amend the military-designed constitution.

Nonetheless, veteran Myanmar observers here have been pleasantly surprised by the reforms initiated by the government since Thein Sein, himself a former general, was inaugurated as president last March.

In addition to freeing hundreds of political prisoners and legalising the NLD, the government has also enacted labour reforms, relaxed media censorship, and engaged Suu Kyi herself in an intensive dialogue that some analysts believe may result in her being asked to accept a cabinet-level position.

The government has also consulted with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a process that has resulted, among other things, in ongoing reforms in the country’s extremely restrictive foreign investment regime and in Monday’s float of the national currency, the kyat, in what is widely regarded as the most far-reaching step yet in integrating Myanmar into the global economy.

Pending changes in the rules governing foreign trade and investment could radically transform the local economy, which has been among the world’s most highly protected for decades.

In addition to providing foreign investors with tax holidays and easing regulations requiring them to partner with local businesses, draft legislation would permit foreign companies the right to lease land and import their skilled workers.

U.S. companies are eager to take advantage of these reforms as soon as possible. In order to do so, however, Washington will have to lift a raft economic sanctions – including a ban on new investment – that have been in effect for some 15 years.

The European Union (EU) has imposed similar – albeit not quite as far-reaching – sanctions. The EU, however, has recently resumed providing aid to Myanmar, and its top trade official Monday indicated the group was ready to lift some economic sanctions.

According to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Obama has the authority to waive many of the sanctions without Congressional approval, and one of the major questions in the wake of the election and enactment of the pending economic reforms will be whether he will do so.

He could also ask Congress to amend existing legislation, but initial reaction from lawmakers who have been particularly outspoken against the military in Myanmar was not encouraging.

“Now is not the time for the international community to rush toward lifting pressure on Burma,” said Rep. Joe Crowley, a New York Democrat who congratulated Suu Kyi on her electoral success but noted that “far too many political prisoners are still locked behind bars,” while conflict between the military and the country’s ethnic minorities persists.

Similarly, Aung Din, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma and a former political prisoner himself, said Washington should be patient.

“The United States and EU should not reward the regime simply because the NLD has some seats in the Parliament,” he said. “They should wait until we see clearly how these newly elected MPs are treated by the (ruling party) and the military in the Parliament.”

He added that the West should “send a clear message to the regime that their failure to co-operate with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in the Parliament will not be acceptable.”

Joshua Kurlantzick, a Southeast Asia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, also advised caution in an essay posted at cfr.org Monday.

“In the wake of the election, the United States and other leading democracies should continue to move slowly in engaging with Myanmar,” he wrote, urging increases in aid, particularly to ethnic minority regions.

But “Washington and other actors should not lift sanctions on trade and investment with Myanmar now,” he added, suggesting that they wait until the end of this year or next “to see how the NLD and Suu Kyi are treated in parliament, what kind of freedom they have to criticize and push legislation, and whether the planned 2015 national elections are likely to go forward.”

But pressure from the business lobby, which has been frustrated as Chinese, Indian and Southeast Asian companies have taken full advantage of western sanctions by increasing their stake in Myanmar, is likely to be intense.

In addition, growing geo-strategic competition between Beijing and Washington in Southeast Asia over the past two years has intensified the Pentagon’s interest in Myanmar.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Egypt's military has prolonged the transition to civilian rule. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By David Elkins
WASHINGTON, Mar 23 2012 (IPS)

The U.S. State Department announced on Friday that military aid to Egypt will resume, citing a national security waiver that was included in the most resent appropriations legislation on foreign assistance.

“These decisions reflect America’s over-arching goal: to maintain our strategic partnership with an Egypt made stronger and more stable by a successful transition to democracy,” Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the State Department said in a statement.

“The secretary’s decision to waive is also designed to demonstrate our strong support for Egypt’s enduring role as a security partner and leader in promoting regional stability and peace,” Nuland added.

The announcement comes after U.S. lawmakers conditioned aid on Egypt’s progress in transitioning to a verifiably democratic system of governance – an unprecedented move since the U.S. began supplying Egypt with roughly 1.3 billion dollars in aid after it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

Relations between the U.S. and Egypt hit an all-time low late last year when Egyptian security officials raided the offices of several U.S. government-funded democracy-promotion organisations and charged several of the employees with crimes against the state, which elicited a temporary hold on Egyptian aid.

In February, Egypt permitted the remaining U.S. citizens who were charged in the incident to leave the country after initially placing travel restrictions, pending the trials. According to Freedom House, a U.S.-based human rights advocacy organisation, nearly 400 Egyptian NGOs are still under investigation or facing similar charges.

The announcement, in the works for several weeks, has drawn harsh criticism from human rights groups and regional experts who have characterised U.S. policy since the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 as being callously attuned to U.S. regional interests rather than genuinely supportive of the popular calls for meaningful reforms.

“Amnesty International opposes the funding, sale, or transfer of arms internationally where there is a substantial risk that the specific arms in question will be used to commit or facilitate serious human rights violations,” Sanjeev Bery, Amnesty International’s advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said on Friday.

Earlier this month, Amnesty International sent an open letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stating that “waiving the certification requirement would forfeit a key form of pressure for the advancement of human rights.”

According to a Gallup poll released on Friday that canvassed Egyptian public opinion between January and February 2012, 56 percent of respondents thought that closer relations with the U.S. was a “bad thing”.

“A resumption of military aid at this point also sends the wrong message to the Egyptian people – that we care only about American NGO workers, not about the aspirations of the Egyptian people to build democracy,” David J. Kramer, president of Freedom House, said in a release on Thursday.

“The U.S. government risks repeating the mistakes of the past, indulging the Egyptian military in the name of regional stability while ignoring what the Egyptian people want…Stability in Egypt is best achieved by supporting a full transition to a democratic government, which will uphold human rights and a free society,” Kramer said.

Some observers have emphasised that, given the U.S. citizens’ return, attention has shifted to the outstanding weapons contracts between the Egyptian government and U.S. arms manufacturers, such as Lockheed Martin, which would have gone unpaid if the hold on U.S. military financing were to have continued.

Senator Patrick Leahy, who authored the amendment requiring a national security waiver if military aid were to be resumed, and a strong supporter of the Barack Obama administration, voiced concern over the announcement on Friday.

“Waiving the new conditions on democracy and human rights is regrettable, and handing over the entire 1.3 billion dollars at once to the Egyptian military compounds the mistake by dissipating our future leverage,” Leahy said.

“Using this waiver authority, at this time, sends a contradictory message. The Egyptian military should be defending fundamental freedoms and the rule of law, not harassing and arresting those who are working for democracy.”

According to a foreignpolicy.com blog post by Josh Rogin on Thursday, there was some confusion in Congressional offices, before the announcement came today, about whether the State Department would be issuing a partial waiver and withhold some of the monies appropriated in the foreign military financing and economic stability accounts.

Nuland stated in a press conference Friday, however, that the national security waiver would entail resuming all foreign assistance to Egypt, including economic.

“The congressional legislation required that certification before the economic aid could go forward. So this decision, essentially, releases that economic aid,” Nuland said.

As Egyptians prepare for presidential elections in May, the decision to resume U.S. aid may have the unintentional consequence of a more deeply entrenched Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the group of military officials that have retained power since Mubarak’s ouster and work as a disincentive for additional reform in civil rights laws, an independent judiciary, and civilian control of the government.

“(I)t is from that disadvantaged position that the United States will have to start the difficult process of building a new bilateral relationship with a changing Egypt, once the military (on which the United States continues to double down) leaves power and a new president and cabinet step in,” Michele Dunne, director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, wrote a blog on Friday.

“Will showing that Americans sacrifice our principles at the first sign of inconvenience stand U.S. in good stead with a new civilian Egyptian leadership, especially one with a heavy Islamist presence? Not likely.”

Excerpt:

Kofi Annan (left) meets with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus. Credit: UN Photo/Reuters/SANA

By David Elkins
WASHINGTON, Mar 16 2012 (IPS)

As Western governments reexamine their options for ending the ongoing violence in Syria, Kofi Annan, U.N.-Arab League special envoy to Syria, briefed diplomats Friday at the U.N. Security Council, who remain divided over whether a negotiated ceasefire or direct intervention will be necessary, or even feasible.

Annan’s assessment comes amid renewed pro-government protests in Damascus and escalated fighting in Idlib, a city in northwest Syria, where 45 people were reportedly killed on Thursday as the Syrian military continues its latest offensive to quell opposition groups.

The U.N. estimates that over 7,500 people have been killed since uprisings began last year, while the World Food Programme announced recently that 1.4 million Syrians are now “food insecure”. On Thursday, U.S. State Department officials said that Syria will receive 12 million dollars in humanitarian aid from the U.S.

Russia and China, permanent members of the Security Council, remain adamantly opposed to any form of intervention – as their recent vetoes over resolutions condemning violence in Syria can attest – as multilateral and bilateral diplomatic negotiations attempt to forge a consensus.

Authors of a policy memo published by the Brookings Institute on Thursday, a research organisation based out of Washington, argue that Russia is unlikely to cooperate in a final diplomatic settlement.

“The Russian track record of support for (Syrian President Bashar) Assad should lead Washington to assume that any effective action will have to take place despite, not because of, Russian policy. Washington would also have to judge whether more provocative measures like a maritime blockade would lead to a direct Russian challenge,” the authors wrote.

“Bypassing Russia, however, is not without its dangers. It risks embroiling the United States and its allies in a costly and dangerous Cold War-style competition along the strategically important Syria fault-line, or worse. Russia could continue to arm and fund the regime, enabling Assad to defy international pressure indefinitely,” the memo went on to say.

An International Crisis Group report released last week stressed the need for sustained diplomacy.

“If the proposed transitional plan addresses those concerns and gives Russia an important role in guaranteeing its implementation, it conceivably could be brought on board,” the report stated.

“Russia and other countries must understand that, short of rapidly reviving a credible political track, only an intensifying military one will remain, with dire consequences for all,” the report went on to say.

According to some analysts, however, U.S. officials have used Russian intransigence over Syria as political cover in order to avoid intervening – a policy for which Republican members of Congress and presidential candidates in the U.S. have been highly critical.

“The level of Russian-American recrimination over Syria has certainly increased dramatically,” Professor Mark N. Katz, a Russian foreign policy specialist at George Mason University, wrote on his blog last week.

“The Kremlin, however, may have several reasons to believe that the Obama Administration does not actually want to see the downfall of the Assad regime – and that Washington thus finds Russia’s opposition to Security Council resolutions against Syria, which the U.S. supports publicly, to be quite useful,” he wrote.

U.S. public opinion that is opposed to U.S.-led wars in the region, the historical failure of economic sanctions to coerce authoritarian regimes, and Israel’s fear of a highly destabilised political situation in Syria all point to the Barack Obama administration’s unwillingness to support a forceful removal of President Assad, according to Katz.

“For if the U.S. was serious about toppling the Assad regime, Russian observers have noted, it would assemble a ‘coalition of the willing’ to intervene in Syria without waiting for UN Security Council approval – just as it did in Kosovo during the Clinton Administration and Iraq during the Bush Administration,” Katz wrote.

After abstaining from a Security Council vote on Libya last year, Russian officials voiced strong displeasure over how Western nations implemented the NATO-led military campaign that eventually helped to depose Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi.

With its naval base on Syria’s Mediterranean coast and weapons contracts with the Syrian military worth billions of dollars, Russia is a staunch ally of the Syrian government. Russian officials recently announced that they will continue to allow Syrian purchases of weapons.

A number of U.S. allies, most notably France and some of the Arab Gulf states, continue to call for Assad’s departure.

On Thursday, the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, announced they would be closing their embassies in Syria.

Policymakers here have articulated a cautious approach that does not include plans for an intervention.

“Right now, we’re focused on getting humanitarian aid to those in need. We agreed to keep increasing the pressure on the regime – mobilising the international community, tightening sanctions, cutting the regime’s revenues, isolating it politically, diplomatically, and economically,” President Obama said in a press conference at the White House on Thursday with British Prime Minister David Cameron.

“(W)hen we see what’s happening on television, our natural instinct is to act. One of the things that I think both of us have learned in every one of these crises – including in Libya – is that it’s very important for us to make sure that we have thought through all of our actions before we take those steps,” Obama added.

According to a poll released by the Pew Research Center on Thursday, 64 percent of U.S. respondents are against a U.S. military intervention and 63 percent oppose sending weapons to anti-government groups fighting in Syria.

“In a way, if we were not in this phase of the election season…we might be moving very quickly toward military action in Syria,” Robert Kagan, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institute, said in a conference on Thursday.

“I think the president does not think that the American people want another military intervention now, and he’s not going to do it before the election…(U.S.) capacity to create a safe zone if we wanted to and carve it out using airpower in Syria is something we could do, but I don’t think the president is in the frame to do it,” Kagan added.

“(U)ltimately, the way the international community mobilises itself, the signals we send, the degree to which we can facilitate a more peaceful transition or a soft landing, rather than a hard landing that results in civil war and, potentially, even more deaths – the people who are going to ultimately be most affected by those decisions are the people in Syria itself,” President Obama said at the end of his press conference on Thursday.

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Mar 13 2012 (IPS)

Amidst persistent speculation over a possible Israeli military attack against Iranian nuclear facilities in the wake of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit here, a detailed new public opinion survey released Tuesday suggests that such a move would enjoy little support in the United States.

According to the survey by the University of Maryland’s Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), only one in four U.S. respondents favours an Israeli strike, while nearly seven in 10 (69 percent), including a strong majority of Republicans (59 percent), said they prefer continuing negotiations with Tehran.

Only one in seven (14 percent) of the survey’s 727 respondents said they thought Washington should encourage an Israeli attack, while 80 percent said the U.S. should either discourage Israel from taking such a step (34 percent) or maintain a neutral position (46 percent).

And, consistent with their preference for diplomacy over military action, nearly three out of four respondents, including 69 percent of Republicans, said the U.S. should act primarily through the U.N. Security Council, rather than unilaterally, in dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme.

Meanwhile, a second public opinion poll released Tuesday by the New York Times and CBS News found a slight majority (51 percent) of 1,009 respondents who said they would support the U.S. taking military action in order to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

That poll, which did not offer an option for continued diplomacy or negotiations, found that 36 percent of respondents would oppose such a strike. The remaining 13 percent said they were unsure.

Asked what the U.S. should do if Israel conducted its own unilateral strike, a 47 percent plurality said Washington should support the Jewish state, 42 percent said it should “not get involved”, and only one percent said the U.S. should oppose it.

The two surveys were released just days after last week’s annual policy conference of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose 13,000 activist-attendees were addressed by Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, among other luminaries, before fanning out across Capitol Hill to lobby their elected representatives for a more-confrontational U.S. stance toward Iran and its nuclear programme.

Top Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu during his visit here, have been suggesting for several months they were prepared to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities some time this year unless Tehran agreed to abandon its nuclear programme.

The Obama administration, on the other hand, has made clear, especially over the past three months, that unprecedented economic sanctions, combined with renewed negotiations with Iran by the so- called P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany) should be given more time to reach a diplomatic settlement. Britain and France have also come out publicly during the past week against an Israeli strike.

It is not yet clear what was the impact, if any, of the AIPAC conference on popular attitudes.

On the one hand, the results in the Times/CBS poll – which was conducted over four days (Mar. 7-11) immediately after the conference – about U.S. military action against Iran were essentially no different from those of polls conducted over the past three years that also asked respondents whether they would support or oppose a U.S. strike against Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

On the question of how the U.S. should react to an Israeli attack on Iran, on the other hand, the latest poll suggested an increase in support for Israel when compared to a Pew Research Center poll just one month ago in which 51 percent of respondents said Washington should “stay neutral” under such circumstances.

At the same time, 42 percent of respondents supported Obama’s “handling of the situation in Iran”, while 39 percent opposed. But the PIPA poll, which was conducted during the conference (Mar. 3- 7), probed far more deeply into attitudes about an Israeli strike against Iran and related issues, noted Peter Ferenbach, an expert on foreign policy attitudes and co-founder of ReThink Media, an organisation works with non-profit groups.

“It’s a welcome exploration of what Americans really think about Iran’s nuclear programme, and, not surprisingly, people’s responses are more nuanced when the issue is explored in depth,” he told IPS, adding that the “policy debate has been ill-served by a long string of poorly designed polls on this critical issue.”

“The phrasing of the Times/CBS poll – ‘Do you favour using military action against Iran to prevent the country from acquiring nuclear weapons?’,” he went on, “has a built-in efficacy bias that presumes a military strike would end Iran’s nuclear programme – a view held by virtually no one at the Pentagon.”

Indeed, the PIPA poll found that most respondents were pessimistic about the effects of a military strike on Iran’s nuclear programme. Only one in five (18 percent) said they believed that an Israeli military strike will delay Iran’s alleged ambition to acquire nuclear weapons by more than five years.

A 51-percent majority said they thought a strike would either delay Iran’s ability to produce a weapon by only one to two years (20 percent), or would have no effect (nine percent), or would actually result in Iran accelerating its nuclear programme (22 percent).

Interestingly, those percentages were similar to the findings of a survey of Israeli public opinion on the same question conducted late last month by Shibley Telhami, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Sadat Chair at the University of Maryland which co-sponsored the PIPA poll.

In a widely noted interview on CBS’ popular ’60 Minutes’ public- affairs programme Sunday, former Israeli Mossad chief Meir Dagan also noted that an Israeli strike could at best delay Iran’s programme.

A 51-percent majority in the PIPA poll also said an Israeli attack would either strengthen the regime (30 percent) or would have no effect on its hold on power (21 percent), while 42 percent said the regime would be weakened.

Moreover, only one in five respondents said they believed armed conflict between Iran and Israel would last either days or weeks. Three of four respondents said they believed such a conflict would last months (26 percent) or years (48 percent).

“One of the reasons Americans are so cool toward the idea of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear programme is that most believe that it is not likely to produce much benefit,” said Steven Kull, PIPA’s director.

Nearly six in 10 respondents (58 percent) said they thought Iran has decided to build nuclear weapons and is actively working toward that aim, an assertion that is at odds with the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community which most recently concluded that, while Tehran “is developing some of the technical ability necessary to produce nuclear weapons, (it) has not decided whether to produce them.”

Thirty percent of respondents agreed with the latter position, while only six percent accepted Iran’s repeated assertions that it is producing enriched uranium for civilian purposes only.

Asked to assume that Iran actually developed nuclear weapons, 62 percent of respondents said they believed the regime would likely use them to attack Israel, as opposed to only 32 percent who thought it would be deterred from doing so for fear of being destroyed in a nuclear retaliatory strike.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Mar 12 2012 (IPS)

While U.S. officials insisted their counterinsurgency strategy is still working, Sunday’s pre-dawn massacre by a U.S. staff sergeant of 16 people, including nine children, in their homes in Kandahar province has dealt yet another body blow to Washington’s hopes to sustain a significant military presence in Afghanistan after 2014.

The massacre was perpetrated by one individual acting entirely on his own, the Pentagon said Monday. But it was the latest in a series of recent incidents, including the dissemination on the Internet of a video showing four U.S. soldiers urinating on the corpses of dead Afghans and the apparently inadvertent burning of copies of the Quran outside a U.S. military base, that have stoked popular outrage against U.S. and other foreign troops.

It also took place amid indications that the U.S. electorate and Congress are increasingly disillusioned with what last year had already become the longest war in U.S. history.

A new Washington Post/ABC public opinion poll released Sunday found that 60 percent of respondents now believe the Afghan war was not worth fighting, close to an all-time high in the decade-long war.

Moreover, only 30 percent of respondents said they believed most Afghans support U.S. and NATO efforts in their country; 55 percent said they believed that most Afghans oppose the foreign presence.

The massacre also took place just after Washington and the government of President Hamid Karzai had finally agreed on one of two key points of contention that have stood in the way of the signing of a strategic partnership agreement that would permit Washington to retain a substantial military advisory force and possibly access to several key bases after 2014, the deadline by which foreign combat troops are to have left Afghanistan.

The two sides reached an agreement last week on transferring some 3,200 suspected Taliban insurgents detained by U.S. forces at the Parwan prison at the U.S.-controlled Bagram air base to Afghan custody over the next six months.

Under the accord, the U.S. will retain a veto over whether specific detainees could be released by Afghan authorities so long as U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan. In addition, the two sides agreed that Washington will retain custody of non-Afghan prisoners believed to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

Yet to be resolved, however, is Karzai’s demand that night raids be ended against alleged Taliban targets by U.S. Special Forces. The raids, which U.S. military officials say have resulted in the capture or killing of thousands of Taliban fighters in recent years, have also been cited by many Afghans and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as perhaps the most important cause of local discontent with the U.S. military presence.

Sunday’s massacre, which did not involve Special Forces, took place in three villages in Kandahar’s Panjwai district, a Taliban stronghold until U.S. “surged” troops into the region as part the counterinsurgency strategy adopted by President Barack Obama in late 2009.

According to various reports, a 38-year-old army staff sergeant who had served several tours of duty in Iraq and was deployed to Afghanistan in December left his base in the early morning hours, walked to a nearby village, and broke into three houses in a 500- metre radius, shooting and stabbing its residents, including young children. He then returned to his base where he surrendered and is now under detention.

According to the Pentagon account, the base authorities sent troops aboard helicopters to treat and evacuate the wounded, thus fuelling rumours that more than one rogue soldier was involved in the attacks.

“This latest assault was reportedly the work of a single soldier, but many Afghans won’t believe or care that it was not another routine U.S. raid. The effects are the same,” according to Ann Jones, author of the 2006 book “Kabul in Winter” and a prominent critic of U.S. counter-insurgency tactics in Afghanistan.

“U.S. officials miss the point entirely, insisting this massacre was a one-off tragedy, when Afghans know something like it will happen again any day.”

Top U.S. officials, including Obama, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, and top military commanders issued a number of statements of regret since the incident, promising to fully investigate what took place and hold anyone responsible accountable.

Speaking at the U.N. Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also noted that Washington has “had a difficult and complex few weeks in Afghanistan” but stressed that “our steadfast dedication to protecting the Afghan people” remained unchanged.

But, while some officials expressed relief that the massacre had not yet sparked the kinds of violent demonstrations – or apparent revenge killings by Afghan troops against U.S. soldiers – that followed the Quran burning, independent analysts said it was bound to add to the mutual distrust that has become increasingly evident in recent months.

“Coming right after the unintentional desecration of Qurans and the deaths of several NATO soldiers from rogue Afghan soldiers, this latest tragedy will further inflame anti-foreign sentiment in Afghanistan and strain ties between President Karzai(‘s) government and his NATO allies,” wrote Bruce Reidel, a former top CIA South Asia analyst and an architect of Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the Daily Beast Monday.

The killings “will increase pressure to find a political solution to the Afghan war,” he noted, adding that the fact that the Taliban have not renounced peace talks and have agreed to open an office in Qatar to facilitate negotiations in spite of these incidents were favourable signs.

But Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistan expert on Afghanistan who enjoys some influence in policy-making circles here and also favours peace talks with the Taliban, wrote in the Financial Times Monday that the Western forces in Afghanistan are facing a “crisis of confidence” and that Karzai’s “desire to seek a strategic partnership agreement with the U.S. is becoming more and more unacceptable to the Afghan people.”

The latest incident will also add to the war fatigue here.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, a foreign policy hawk who has called, among other things, for bombing Iran, admitted Sunday after news of the massacre reached Washington that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is “not doable” and that Washington’s intervention there was “probably counter-productive”.

Unlike Democrats and independents, who have been consistently more sceptical about the war, Republicans in the latest poll were evenly split on whether the war was worth fighting, and some Republican lawmakers were balking at the proposed budget for Afghanistan next year before the latest incident.

The soldier, whose name will not be released pending completion of an ongoing investigation, was reportedly taking part in a “village stabilisation” operation, a key part of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy that seeks to win over village elders and organise local police forces.

His home base, where his wife and two children reportedly live, is at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington. That is the same home base of the so-called “kill team”, a unit led by another staff sergeant that killed at least three Afghan civilians in separate incidents and then cut off their body parts as trophies in 2009.

Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs was convicted of murder and other crimes and sentenced to a life term by a military tribunal at the base last November, but he could be freed in as little as 10 years.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Excerpt:

McCain's comments touched off a vigorous new debate on Syria that radiated from the Capitol to the Pentagon and the White House. Credit: Derek Bridges/CC By 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Mar 8 2012 (IPS)

This week was supposed to be all about Iran – at least, that’s how Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), had planned it – and why the U.S. should prepare to bomb it very, very soon if its leadership doesn’t cave into Western demands to abandon its nuclear programme.

By week’s end, however, the most urgent foreign policy issue with which U.S. policy-makers – and their media camp followers – were grappling was whether to bomb Syria first instead.

Remarkably, the sudden deviation was triggered by Tuesday’s dramatic call on the floor of the Senate by Republican Sen. John McCain for the U.S. to provide decisive support to rebels battling to oust the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

“The only realistic way to do so is with foreign air power,” declared McCain, whose strategy was swiftly endorsed by his two hawkish fellow-travellers, Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham and independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

“The United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centres in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad’s forces,” he declared, touching off a vigorous new debate that radiated from the Capitol to the Pentagon and the White House about how deeply and how violently to become involved in yet another predominantly Muslim Middle Eastern country.

While Defence Secretary Leon Panetta rejected McCain’s proposal, the administration appears to be moving closer to providing some forms of “non-lethal” equipment to the opposition by week’s end.

What was most remarkable about the move by the “Three Amigos”, as they are sometimes called in part, was its timing.

It came just as some 13,000 activists, energised by three days of juicy anti-Iran red meat dished out by everyone from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the top three Republican presidential candidates, as well as the Republican and Democratic leadership of both houses of Congress, were being bussed from AIPAC’s annual extravaganza at the Washington Convention Centre to Capitol Hill.

The mission was to persuade their elected representatives that the spinning by the mullahs of even one centrifuge to enrich uranium on Iranian soil posed an “existential” threat to Israel, if not quite yet to the U.S. itself, and was hence “unacceptable”.

Indeed, every conference delegate received a folder filled with detailed talking points topped by a slick, four-page coloured pamphlet with grim photos of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Leader Ali Khamenei, and a missile, complete with launch pad, entitled “Iranian Nuclear Weapons Capability: UNACCEPTABLE.”

No talking points on Syria at all were included. In fact, out of the literally scores of breakout briefing sessions that ran continuously between plenary sessions during the AIPAC conference, only one dealt directly with Syria.

That’s why the abrupt change of subject by the Three Amigos, all staunch advocates of Israel and great admirers of Netanyahu (with whom McCain and Graham had just met the week before in Jerusalem after which they publicly they publicly deplored President Barack Obama’s failure to align U.S. policy toward Tehran with their host’s), was so perplexing.

“It was incredibly poor timing by McCain to call for bombing Syria,” observed Heather Hurlburt, the executive director of the National Security Network (NSN), a foreign policy think tank close to the Obama administration. “I don’t know what it looks like to call for bombing Syria the same week (that) you’re calling for bombing Iran.”

Of course, there is a connection, and neo-conservatives (whose views are most reliably represented in the Senate by the Three Amigos) have worked increasingly assiduously at establishing it in the public mind as Syria has slowly slid toward civil war over the past year.

The Assad regime, they never cease to point out, has been Tehran’s closest and sometimes only ally in the Arab world, and its ouster would constitute a serious setback not only to its regional reach and influence, but also to another of Israel’s most dangerous foes, Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

“The end of the Assad regime would sever Hezbollah’s lifeline to Iran, eliminate a longstanding threat to Israel, bolster Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence, and inflict a strategic defeat on the Iranian regime,” McCain argued. “It would be a geopolitical success of the first order.”

In that respect, he and the neo-conservatives have argued, U.S. military intervention in Syria would be “very different” from last year’s intervention in Libya, which the Three Amigos also strongly supported.

In addition to the moral and humanitarian concerns on which Washington, NATO, and allied powers justified their intervention against Gaddafi, military action against Assad would also serve U.S. “strategic and geopolitical interests”, McCain asserted.

McCain’s argument partly echoed a much-noted New York Times op-ed by a former director of Israel’s Mossad, Efrain Halevy, who, significantly, has been one of the main figures in that country’s national security establishment who has publicly questioned the wisdom of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Entitled ‘Iran’s Achilles Heel‘, the article argued that Iran’s eviction from Syria would “…visibly dent its domestic and international prestige, possibly forcing a haemorrhaging regime in Tehran to suspend its nuclear policies. This would be a safer and more rewarding option than the military one.”

Unlike McCain, however, Halevy did not recommend direct military intervention in Syria, suggesting instead that Assad would go the minute that Russia, Assad’s main arms supplier and diplomatic protector, was persuaded to drop its support, a strategy that the Obama administration appears to be pursuing.

Although individual members have occasionally spoken hopefully about Assad’s demise, Netanyahu’s government has mostly kept a discreet silence on Syria. This reflects, among other things, concerns that chaos and civil war in such a heavily armed state, the possible ascendance by the Muslim Brotherhood or more radical Islamist forces, or both could prove more threatening than continued rule by the Assad dynasty, which, despite its support for Hezbollah, has kept its common border with Israel quiet for almost 40 years.

It has been far more comfortable focusing international attention on Iran’s nuclear programme and the necessity for the U.S. to take military action to stop it or to at least give Israel the wherewithal to do the deed. That was supposed to be the message coming out of the AIPAC conference and amplified by friendly Republican presidential candidates this week.

But for U.S. neo-conservatives, who generally feel they know better than Israel’s government what is in its interests, the Assads have long been seen as Public Enemy Number One, and their present weakness represents the best opportunity in decades.

Indeed, the ultimate goal in the strategy laid out in the infamous 1996 “Clean Break” paper prepared by prominent neo-conservatives for Netanyahu on the eve of his first term as prime minister was Syria’s destabilisation. The overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein – for which the paper was best known – was simply one step toward that aim.

During the 2006 war with Hezbollah, neo-conservatives encouraged Israel to expand its military campaign into Syria, and, more than any other identifiable political faction, they have called consistently for Washington to provide material and military assistance – as former Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz did in a long column in the Wall Street Journal did this week – to the opposition for many months.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Excerpt:

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Mar 8 2012 (IPS)

As the Syrian army has stepped up its attacks against opposition strongholds in Homs and elsewhere, the U.S. and its allies have achieved little consensus in choosing a course of action to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

Though Washington has severely criticised the Assad regime in Syria for the scale of violence being used against the Syrian opposition – Human Rights Watch estimates the death toll in Homs from this past month alone at over 700 – policymakers have yet to agree on a path forward beyond the existing sanctions policies and the coordination of humanitarian aid.

Many figures have explicitly called for foreign military intervention by U.S. forces, or at a minimum, the provision of U.S. arms to the fledgling Free Syrian Army, a loose assortment of anti-regime fighters that have changed the nature of the anti-Assad opposition from non-violent demonstrations to armed counter-attacks and firefights.

On Monday, John McCain became the first U.S. senator to openly call for U.S.-led airstrikes on President Bashar al-Assad’s military forces.

“The ultimate goal of airstrikes should be to establish and defend safe havens in Syria, especially in the north, in which opposition forces can organise and plan their political and military activities against Assad,” he is reported as saying in remarks on the Senate floor.

A congressional briefing last Friday featured a presentation by Dr. James Smith, founding director of the controversial military contracting firm Blackwater, who laid out a plan for the establishment of a “Benghazi-like” zone in northeastern Syria to use as a staging ground against the Syrian government.

Smith proposed that U.S. military and intelligence agencies coordinate with the existing Syrian opposition and the restive Kurdish population to establish a safe zone from which international military forces and humanitarian agencies would operate.

Smith, along with a significant portion of the neoconservative establishment, has called for intervention in Syria as a means to “confront Iran and Hezbollah by proxy”, by eliminating Syria’s role in the so-called “axis of resistance”.

Others who supported military action in Libya but have until recently expressed reservations about intervening in Syria have also been reconsidering their positions.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department who is close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called last week for “foreign military intervention” as “the best hope for curtailing a long, bloody destabilizing civil war”. She advocated the establishment of “no-kill zones” and “humanitarian corridors”, which she said could be enforced by internationally-armed local forces and unmanned aerial drones.

Such plans, however, are unlikely to gain significant traction until Washington is assured that its involvement would not further exacerbate the many problems facing the Syrian uprising and the rise of radical Islamist groups within it.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Thursday, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman made the case for the Syrian National Council’s “clear, credible opposition plan”, supported by “Arab leadership on the issue”, but also admitted that the opposition remains marred by “competing divisions, including an Islamist element”.

These fears have led many in Washington into the uncomfortable position of supporting opposition organisations such as the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army, while simultaneously expressing concern over their viability in a post-Assad era.

Many analysts have been quick to respond to calls for Western intervention by raising the spectre of Libya, where readily-available weapons and leadership divisions appear to have contributed to a rise in post-civil war violence and the new government’s inability to exert control over the scores of militias that participated in the war.

At a panel sponsored by the Century Foundation in New York last week, Michael Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation, warned that “Dumping arms into this conflict in an unorganised fashion is clearly going to make this conflict bloodier, and clearly going to prolong it.”

Those advocating a more direct international role in the Syrian uprising have been working to increase coordination and leadership within the disparate elements of the opposition, which remains divided not only between the various organisations but within them as well.

Hanna described the Free Syrian army as a “moniker for a local insurgency” that still lacks effective command and control.

The Syrian National Council has also faced growing divisions after a number of prominent members announced they were resigning from the group, citing a lack of progress and insufficient coordination with protestors on the ground.

The “Friends of Syria” meeting convened in Tunis last week exemplified many of these organisational contradictions. While representatives from some 70 countries and international organisations met to discuss ways to coordinate efforts to oust the Assad regime, they were unable to gain meaningful consensus on specific steps beyond the continuing application of diplomatic and economic sanctions.

Though there appeared to be widespread agreement over the need to coordinate humanitarian aid to Syria’s growing refugee population and the countless Syrians living with daily food and heating shortages, the scope of additional involvement proved to be a highly divisive issue.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal is reported to have stormed out of the meeting, angered by the unwillingness of the members to take stronger measures – he has explicitly endorsed arming the opposition.

Russia and China declined to participate in the Friends of Syria meeting, but many policymakers have reluctantly acknowledged that Russia is likely to a play a significant role in the outcome of the conflict despite its apparent intransigence.

“The only way to resolve this is through the Russians,” said former U.S. ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz, speaking at the Century Foundation. He argued that perhaps Vladimir Putin will be more amenable to compromise after Sunday’s Russian election in which the Russian prime minister regained the presidency.

A new report issued by the International Crisis Group warned that Russian cooperation would be essential to a properly managed transition.

The report suggests that “If Moscow can be convinced that its current course maximises the risk of producing the outcome it professes to fear most: chaos” then it could create a situation in which “the (Syrian) regime would be confronted with the choice of either agreeing to negotiate in good faith or facing near-total isolation through loss of a key ally.”

Feltman, who recently returned from a trip to Moscow to discuss a way forward on the Syria issue, reported that “contact with Russia on all levels is continuing.”

Given the degree to which the Kremlin has invested in defending Assad over the past year, however, finding common ground with Russia will be a daunting task.

Excerpt:

Obama urged a diplomatic resolution of the tensions with Iran, which, he contends, there is still time to achieve. Credit: White House photo

By Mitchell Plitnick
WASHINGTON, Mar 7 2012 (IPS)

U.S. President Barack Obama Sunday made a clear statement against a rush to war – either by the U.S. or Israel – with Iran, while also emphasising that he would pursue that option if alternatives were unsuccessful in ensuring that Iran would not develop a nuclear weapon.

Speaking at the annual policy convention of the powerful American- Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama decried the “loose talk of war”, and contended that sanctions and international pressure are working.

“Now is not the time for bluster; now is the time to let our increased pressure sink in, and to sustain the broad international coalition that we have built,” he said, noting that the recent drumbeat for war “has only benefited the Iranian government, by driving up the price of oil…”

He was no doubt referring to recent reports that Israel was preparing to strike Iranian nuclear targets this year, as well as exhortations by its supporters here, including three of the four major Republican presidential candidates, to take a more aggressive and threatening stance against Iran or to support Israel if it undertakes an attack against Tehran’s nuclear facilities on its own.

Obama began pushing back on that pressure last week in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine in which he stated that “…our assessment, which is shared by the Israelis, is that Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon and is not yet in a position to obtain a nuclear weapon without us having a pretty long lead time in which we will know that they are making that attempt.”

Obama went on to urge a diplomatic resolution, which, he contends, there is still time to achieve. He reiterated that point at the AIPAC conference Sunday.

“Given their history, there are of course no guarantees that the Iranian regime will make the right choice. But both Israel and the United States have an interest in seeing this challenge resolved diplomatically. After all, the only way to truly solve this problem is for the Iranian government to make a decision to forsake nuclear weapons. That’s what history tells us.”

AIPAC has been backing a resolution in the U.S. Senate which would draw a “red line” at Iran’s acquisition of the “capability” of building a nuclear weapon, a lower, if substantially more vague threshold than actually possessing one.

The group, whose positions generally reflect those of the Israeli government, will be sending thousands of its members gathered here for the conference to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to lobby lawmakers to support that resolution. The conference will hear directly from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday night after what many regard as a critical meeting between the two leaders earlier in the day.

Many analysts, including the U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies, believe that Iran is already technically capable of producing a nuclear weapon but has not yet made the decision to actually build one. So the Senate’s approval of the resolution, especially if it carries an overwhelming majority of the upper chamber, not only risks escalating tensions with Tehran, but would also challenge the administration’s policy, as enunciated Sunday by Obama himself.

Obama drew this distinction in his speech Sunday at the AIPAC conference by repeatedly warning about Iran “obtaining” a nuclear weapon, while not mentioning “capability”.

“I have said that when it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table,” the president stated. “And I mean what I say.

“Iran’s leaders should know that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” he told the 13,000 AIPAC delegates. “And as I’ve made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.”

In the last several weeks, it has become increasingly clear that the U.S. and Israel disagree not only on their definition of “red lines” that would provoke military action, but also on what an acceptable negotiated outcome with Iran might be.

Israel has long held to the same position as former President George W. Bush: that Iran should not be permitted to enrich uranium on its own territory, a result that is also favoured by the sponsors of the pending resolution. The Obama administration, on the other hand, has indicated it is willing to accept a settlement permitting enrichment in Iran, provided it is subject to enhanced international oversight.

On the eve of his visit here, Netanyahu said he saw no use in further negotiations, but most analysts believe a new round of talks between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) will take place as early as the end of this month.

Obama’s presentation at AIPAC came in the context of a larger controversy over his role in U.S.-Israel relations.

Speaking Immediately before Obama, Israeli President Shimon Peres, who is believed to oppose a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, praised him for his support of Israel and his efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

“He has made it clear that the United States of America will never permit Iran to become nuclear. He made it clear that containment is not a viable policy,” Peres said. “And as the president stated, all options are on the table…Mr. President, I know your commitment to Israel is deep and profound. Under your leadership, security cooperation between the United States and Israel has reached its highest level. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a friend in the White House.”

Yet the applause for Peres when he was introduced was noticeably much greater than that for Obama.

And just before the two presidents spoke, Liz Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney and an ascendant neo-conservative in her own right, drew considerable applause herself when she charged during a discussion with several other prominent analysts that Obama had undermined Israel more than any president before him.

Although that applause was exceeded when fellow panelist and former Congresswoman Jane Harman, now head of the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, chastised those who would break the bipartisan consensus on support for Israel and turn the issue into a “political football”, it remained a strong indication of the sizeable contingent in the cavernous Washington Convention Centre hall used by AIPAC for its annual convention that was very hostile to Obama.

Aware of this, Obama preceded his statements on Iran by defending his record of support for Israel and echoing Harman’s criticism of those who would politicise the issue.

“If during this political season you hear some question my administration’s support for Israel, remember that it’s not backed up by the facts,” Obama said.

He pointed to the widely acknowledged fact that U.S.-Israel security cooperation is greater than ever, as well as his repeated – and often lonely – defences of Israel at the U.N. and other international forums, many of which have drawn criticism from some of Washington’s closest allies.

Obama thereby set the stage for his defence of his Iran policy, and where the role of military force fits into it.

“As president and commander-in-chief, I have a deeply-held preference for peace over war,” Obama said. “I have sent men and women into harm’s way. I have seen the consequences of those decisions in the eyes of those I meet who have come back gravely wounded, and the absence of those who don’t make it home. …I only use force when the time and circumstances demand it.”

Although most of his speech was devoted to Iran, Obama also spent several minutes warning against “cynicism” and “despair” regarding the Palestinian issue, which has virtually disappeared from the headlines over the past year, displaced by the so-called “Arab Spring” and the escalation in tensions over Iran. But he announced no new initiatives in that regard.

*Jim Lobe contributed to this story.

Excerpt:

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
ATLANTA, Feb 29 2012 (IPS)

A new book shows there are now more U.S. voters who identify as independent than as Democrats or Republicans, despite the fact that the two major parties maintain their virtual stranglehold on U.S. politics and, so far, on the 2012 presidential election process.

In his book the “Apartisan American”, Russell Dalton, a professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, reviews survey trends like the American National Election Studies (ANES), which show the share of U.S. citizens who consider themselves independent has nearly doubled, from 23 percent in 1952 to 40 percent in 2008.

Most of the shift appears to be among people who considered themselves Democrats to those who now consider themselves independent.

“In the past, Independents used to (attract) people at the margins of politics, less educated, less interested, who wouldn’t vote, people at the periphery,” Dalton told IPS.

“What’s changed from 20 percent to 40 percent is the growth among young, educated, politically engaged people who are turned off by political parties. They are interested in politics, and actually vote. They won’t vote out of loyalty, but out of issues. That’s what injected volatility into the [presidential] campaign,” he said.

“The unpredictability of elections, and the willingness of people to shift parties has increased; that’s the first whammy. The second whammy creates difficulties for candidates. They have their base that wants red meat party rhetoric to get them to vote. If they get their base to vote, they’re still 15 percent short of a majority,” Dalton added.

This trend is not limited to the U.S., but extends to all major Western democracies where long-term polling data is available, even in countries where it is easier for minor political parties to gain representation in the legislative branch.

While it is technically a political party, Dalton points to the rise of the Pirate Party in Germany and Sweden as evidence younger generations of citizens are eschewing uncritical party deference.

There are in fact a multitude of political parties in the U.S. other than the Democratic and Republican parties, although they differ in the level to which they have obtained ballot access in order to run candidates for various offices on the ballots in those states.

The Green Party, for example, is currently in the process of selecting its presidential nominee. Candidates include Roseanne Barr, Kent Mesplay, and Jill Stein.

Barr is a famous populist actress with significant name recognition for her television programme, “Roseanne”, which featured a realistic, as opposed to a picture-perfect, portrayal of a working class family in the 1990s. Yet she entered the race late, does not have an organised campaign, and has not gained ballot access as widely as Mesplay or Stein.

Stein, on the other hand, appears to be the frontrunner for the Green nomination. Her campaign says it has won primary contests in Illinois, Maine, Minnesota and Ohio.

Because the Green Party has not obtained ballot access in every U.S. state, some of its primaries are conducted by other means.

“Illinois had an online Primary. Ohio had a statewide meeting. Maine is having

caucuses around the state,” Scott McLarty, national spokesman for the Green Party, told IPS.

The Green Party was actually founded by Petra Kelly in Germany in the 1980s and first became popular in Europe, especially as an outgrowth of the anti-nuclear movement in Scandinavian countries.

The Green Party currently has gained ballot access in about 20 states and recently gained such access in Arkansas and Tennessee, McLarty said.

“Our goal is to get our nominees on at least 46 (out of 50) of the state ballots,” he said.

With the Democratic Party in the U.S. having moved farther and farther toward the centre – even what in many countries would be considered centre-right – the distinctions between the Green and Democratic parties continue to grow.

“The most dramatic thing is the Democratic Party is addicted to corporate money, the donations from corporate PACs (political action committees),” McLarty said.

“The Green Party is against war in general, and we were very much against the invasion of Iraq and the Afghanistan war, and we often criticised the Democrats for helping [former president George W.] Bush get the U.S. into those wars,” he said.

“Democrats have nuclear power… the (Barack) Obama administration has embraced the idea of clean coal and coal mining and is in favour of offshore drilling. The Green Party opposes those things. We are in favour of Medicare (guaranteed health care) for all,” McLarty said.

While progress is quite slow, the Green Party has seen some gains in recent years. Richmond, California recently elected a Green mayor, Gayle McLaughlin; three

percent of Maine voters are registered as Green; and in the District of Columbia, the nation’s capital, the Green Party is the second-largest party.

Meanwhile, the idea of independent and minor party candidates has become increasingly prominent in the national discourse surrounding the Nov. 6 presidential election.

For example, media pundits continue to speculate that Republican candidate Ron Paul may decide to run as an independent. While technically a Republican, Paul is basically a Libertarian; he opposes most U.S. military activities overseas and opposes the so-called “war on drugs,” but also wants to end most welfare programmes and even many federal agencies.

Paul has denied any interest in running as an independent – and it is too late to get on ballots in many states as such – but has left the door open.

Yet there is another possibility for him or another candidate this year: a mysterious, well-funded group called Americans Elect is working to gain ballot access in all 50 states and is spending about 10 million dollars to do it.

“It’s a bunch of liberal Republicans who won’t abide with the Republican party,” Richard Winger, publisher of Ballot Access News and one of the nation’s leading experts on ballot access, told IPS.

“I think people are afraid the Republican Party is going to nominate someone who is inadequate. They want someone high-quality, thoughtful, and intelligent in the race, other the president (Obama),” Winger said.

Possible Americans Elect candidates might include Jon Huntsman, former governor of Utah; Buddy Roemer, former governor of Louisiana; and Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey, all three of whom once considered themselves moderate Republicans. The group plans to hold an online nominating contest.

The Libertarian Party of the U.S. is likely to gain ballot access in all 50 states and to nominate Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, Winger said.

The Constitution Party of the U.S. is likely to gain ballot access in about 40 states, and former congressman Virgil Goode is seeking the nomination, Winger said.

There are also numerous national minor parties with little or no chance of gaining sufficient ballot access to run a presidential candidate, including five different socialist parties and the dwindling Prohibition Party, Winger said.

In addition, there are some state and local minor parties, such as the Independent Party, the Labor Party, the Peace and Freedom party, and the Working Families Party, which largely cross-endorses Democrats.

Winger says the quality of candidates seeking minor party nominations is increasing, and that the biggest obstacles to their success are the corporate media which will not let them participate in debates.

Excerpt:

After weeks of rapidly escalating tensions, particularly between Israel and Iran, signs emerged this week both here and in Tehran that serious negotiations over Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme may soon get underway.

The most concrete step was a long-awaited positive RSVP from Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalali, to an invitation extended last October by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to meet with the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany) for a new round of talks.

“We voice our readiness for dialogue on a spectrum of various issues, which can provide grounds for constructive and forward-looking co- operation,” Jalali wrote in his letter.

In response, both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Ashton herself emerged from a meeting here Friday expressing cautious optimism about prospects for a resumption of negotiations, which have been effectively suspended for more than a year.

“…(W)e think this is an important step and we welcome the letter,” Clinton told reporters, adding that Jalili’s letter “appeared to acknowledge and accept” a Western condition that Iran has previously resisted: that any talks “begin with a discussion of (Iran’s) nuclear programme”.

A formal response by the P5+1, whose members are still consulting with each other, may not, however, be forthcoming until after the scheduled visit next week by a high-level delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the second in the past month. If Tehran accedes to certain requests that it denied the delegation in its last visit, confidence will be enhanced, U.S. officials said.

The latest developments come after several months of escalating tensions, the most recent spiral of which began in late December with the adoption of “crippling” sanctions by Washington and the EU and threats by some Iranian officials to close the Strait of Hormuz.

Since then, officials in the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its allies here repeatedly urged Washington to build up its forces in and around the Gulf to make the threat of military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities more credible. They have also warned that Israel may attack Iran unilaterally as early as this spring without necessarily consulting the U.S. in advance.

Israel also accused Tehran of attempting to carry out a series of bombings this week against Israeli diplomatic personnel in India, Georgia and Thailand, presumably in retaliation for the assassination of five Iranian nuclear scientists over the past several years, the most recent one on Jan. 11.

Most experts believe Israel’s Mossad, possibly with the help of an Iraq-based terrorist group, the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, was behind the scientists’ killings. For its part, Tehran strongly denied responsibility for this week’s bombings.

These developments come amid signs of major differences between Israel and the administration of President Barack Obama with respect both to possible military action against Iran and what each considers an acceptable negotiated solution to its nuclear programme.

The Israelis have argued that Iran, once it decided to build a nuclear bomb, could throw out IAEA inspectors from its new underground Fordow facility near of Qom and begin producing weapons- grade uranium at any time. The facility is buried so deep that it would be impervious to Israel’s biggest conventional bombs. In its view, Tehran could thus enter a “zone of immunity” within months.

The administration, however, has argued that the situation is not nearly as urgent, not only because Washington has munitions that could penetrate Fordow, but also because Iran faces many more challenges in building a missile-deliverable weapon, challenges that could be made more difficult to overcome by concerted international action, including ever-tighter sanctions.

The latest estimates suggest that a deliverable bomb would take at least two to three years to build from the time that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, authorised such an effort, a decision that both U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies agree he has not yet taken.

In Washington’s view, there remains much more time to take military action against Iran’s nuclear programme as a last resort. Moreover, absent clear evidence that Iran is indeed building a weapon, any attack would be seen as by the international community as aggression and increase Tehran’s determination to build one as a deterrent against future attacks.

The two allies also appear to disagree over the terms of an acceptable negotiated settlement and what constitute “red lines” over which Iran should not be permitted to cross. While administration officials most often insist that it is “unacceptable” for Iran to obtain a nuclear “weapon” or “bomb”, the Israelis insist that a nuclear weapons “capability” – a much lower and vaguer threshold – is unacceptable.

Israel opposes any uranium enrichment by Iran, a position that was shared by the administration of President George W. Bush and, at least until very recently, by France, which has consistently demanded that Tehran comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that it suspend its enrichment activities.

Although the Obama administration has not said so in so many words – no doubt to preserve its negotiating position – it has been signalling since Congressional testimony by Clinton last March that it would be prepared to accept Iran’s enrichment of uranium to a limit of 3.5 percent, provided that Tehran accept a much more intrusive IAEA inspection regime and clear up all outstanding questions posed by the IAEA regarding evidence of weaponisation activities.

These were the conditions set out explicitly by Obama’s former top Iran adviser, Amb. Dennis Ross, in a New York Times op-ed this week. It also suggested that Washington was open to a step-by-step Russian proposal that called for international sanctions against Iran to be eased in response to confidence-building steps by Tehran, such as halting its 20-percent enrichment programme and shipping its accumulated stock out the country.

He noted that Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said recently P5+1 talks could be based on the Russian proposal.

Ross’s op-ed was regarded as especially significant for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that he continues to dispense advice to the White House from his perch at the Washington Institute for Near Policy (WINEP), a think tank founded by the most powerful organisation in what is known as the Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

For its part, however, AIPAC is lobbying heavily for Israel’s position. Half a dozen of its most loyal Senate allies this week introduced a resolution that asserts that the prevention of Iran’s acquisition of a “nuclear weapons capability” is “a vital national interest of the United States”.

The resolution, which was co-sponsored by some 30 Republicans and Democrats, also insists on a “full and sustained suspension” of all Iran’s uranium enrichment activities and “a verified end to (Iran’s) ballistic missile program” – demands that appear calculated to sabotage any possible prospects for a successful negotiation.

In a letter to Obama Thursday, the main sponsors, who include Republicans John McCain and Lindsay Graham, independent Democrat Joe Lieberman and New York’s two Democratic senators, said they will oppose “any proposal… in which Iran is permitted to continue enrichment on its territory in any form”.

AIPAC is expected to push for a Senate vote on the resolution, as well as a companion measure in the House of Representatives, before or during its annual Washington convention, to be attended by Netanyahu, most members of Congress, and thousands of staunchly pro- Israel activists, in early March, when the P5+1 talks may also get underway.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.