International Relations // Current

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Iranians clash with police on hostage crisis anniversary

"Protesters clashed with police at a central Tehran square on Wednesday while government supporters nearby marked the 30th... more

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Abdullah drops Afghan Presidential bid

KABUL, Afghanistan — Abdullah Abdullah, the chief rival to President Hamid Karzai, announced on Sunday that he would... more

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Iran Hints at Cooperation on U.N. Nuclear Deal

BEIRUT, Lebanon — After days of uncertain signals, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, hinted Thursday that Iran would accept a United Nations-sponsored plan to send the country’s uranium abroad for processing, saying “we welcome cooperation on nuclear fuel, power plants, and technology, and we are ready to cooperate.”

But it remained unclear whether Iran would insist on shipping the material in installments, which would undercut the intent of the plan: to leave Iran without enough nuclear material to build a weapon for at least a year, time in which the West would work toward an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments, broadcast on state television, came as Iran prepared to deliver a formal response to the plan, which was designed to bridge the gap between Iran’s insistence that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes and the West’s suspicion that it is building a bomb.

Iran’s state-run Al Alam Arabic-language television station reported Thursday that Tehran had delivered its formal response to the proposal to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. But officials there said they could not immediately confirm the report. Earlier this week, Iran said it would respond to the plan by Friday.

Speaking in the northeastern city of Mashad, Mr. Ahmadinejad did not address the possibility that Iran might seek changes to the agreement, which was crafted by Iranian and Western negotiators last week during talks in Vienna. His remarks seemed to extend Iran’s two-track public position on the nuclear dispute, offering a degree of compliance with one hand while insisting on the other that there were limits to its readiness for cooperation.

“Fortunately, the conditions for international nuclear cooperation have been met,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said. "We are currently moving in the right direction and we have no fear of legal cooperation, under which all of Iran’s national rights will be preserved, and we will continue our work."

He also insisted, as he often has, that Iran would not retreat from its rights to nuclear power. “As long as this government is in power, it will not retreat one iota on the undeniable rights of the Iranian nation.”

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Source: NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/world/middleeast/30nuke.htmlBEIRUT, Lebanon — After days of uncertain signals, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, hinted Thursday that Iran... more

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18 days ago

Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large swath of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” said Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan.

Ahmed Wali Karzai said in an interview that he cooperates with American civilian and military officials, but does not engage in the drug trade and does not receive payments from the C.I.A.KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s... more

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18 days ago

Iran and Venezuela: A Warning Letter

This is a Comment by Jose Cardenas

Kudos to the House Foreign Affairs Committee for scheduling a joint subcommittee hearing Tuesday on Iran's activities in the Western Hemisphere. While the foreign-policy establishment has understandably been focused on myriad global crises elsewhere, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime has been steadily expanding its reach in what it undoubtedly sees as America's "soft underbelly." The House hearing follows a blockbuster (but, unfortunately, little noticed) speech last month at the Brookings Institution by legendary New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau detailing the growing ties between Iran and Hugo Chávez's Venezuela.

Morgenthau, whose base in New York makes him one of the country's premier experts on international financial transactions (especially those of the unsavory kind), charged that Iran and Venezuela are establishing "a cozy financial, political, and military partnership" that is "rooted in a shared anti-American rhetoric and policy." "The Iranians," he said, "calculating and clever in their diplomatic relations, have found the perfect ally in Venezuela. Venezuela has an established financial system that, with Chávez's help, can be exploited to avoid economic sanctions. As well, its geographic location is ideal for building and storing weapons of mass destruction far away from Middle Eastern states threatened by Iran's ambition and from the eyes of the international community." He said, "Now is the time for policies and actions in order to ensure that the partnership produces no poisonous fruit."

As if on cue, two days after Morgenthau's speech, the tiny principality of Andorra announced the freezing of bank accounts of several individuals said to have close ties to Chávez as part of an international investigation into terrorism financing. The move came amid a U.S. Treasury Department investigation of accounts and financial activity linked to Chávez family members and Venezuelan government officials, according to an Andorran newspaper. The paper said the bank accounts, in Miami, Panama, China and Andorra, could be used to transfer funds to terrorist groups including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Hezbollah, Hamas, and ETA.

Another recent worrying development is Chávez's admission that Iran is helping Venezuela explore for uranium. According to a new paper from my colleague Ambassador Roger Noriega, a Canadian uranium exploration company, U308 Corp, recorded a substantial source of uranium in the border region between Guyana and Venezuela. It just so happens that Iranian companies and others with Middle Eastern backgrounds now operate mines, a "tractor factory," and a cement plant in the same area; at least two of these facilities have direct access to the navigable Orinoco River, which provides a ready route to the Atlantic Ocean.

Chávez's assurances that he would only use nuclear energy for peaceful means ring somewhat hollow when you consider yet another incident earlier this year where Turkish authorities seized cargo headed from Iran to Venezuela that contained lab equipment capable of producing explosives. The shipment was labeled "tractor parts" for the aforementioned "tractor factory."

Complicating matters further for U.S. interests in the region is the fact that Chávez has used his friendly relations with other like-minded radicals to gain further entrée for the Iranians in the Americas. Iran has signed trade, investment, and assistance deals -- and, in some cases, weapons deals -- with Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. Even the Big Boy of Latin America, Brazil, has gotten into the act, defending Iran's nuclear program and preparing to host Ahmadinejad on a state visit in late November 2009.

Fortunately, these issues and no doubt many more will be examined by House subcommittee members. It is long past time to bring greater scrutiny to Iranian activities in the Western Hemisphere and develop appropriate responses.This is a Comment by Jose Cardenas Kudos to the House Foreign Affairs Committee for scheduling a joint subcommittee hearing... more

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24 days ago

Kerry becomes de facto diplomat for Obama

WASHINGTON - He's not president, a Cabinet member or ambassador, but Sen. John Kerry has ascended to the unofficial role of President Barack Obama's global adviser on key issues that could reshape the nation's image around the world.

Mediating Afghanistan's presidential election vaulted Kerry from the already prominent chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee into the most exclusive circle around a new president who is juggling but not resolved a variety of domestic and foreign policy matters. Beyond policy, Kerry knows how Washington works.

Kerry and Obama also share a political pedigree. Both were mentored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who died in August.

"Obviously, Sen. Kerry is somebody who has a broad range of experience and an in-depth knowledge of issues, ranging form energy and climate change to health care to foreign policy," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. "I think it's that experience and insight that (Obama) certainly greatly values."

That last bit cannot be overstated. Obama made his debut on the national stage at the 2004 presidential convention at which Democrats nominated Kerry to challenge George W. Bush's bid for a second term. Obama's speech electrified the party and the convention. It was the first time many Americans had heard of the young Illinois state senator.

"I'm here because of you," Obama wrote Kerry on the January day he was sworn in as the nation's first black president. The note is framed and hangs on Kerry's Senate office wall.

And now, Obama is leaning on Kerry to help shape his foreign policy. The two men met at the White House Wednesday just hours after Kerry returned from Afghanistan, where he played a crucial role in persuading President Hamid Karzai to accept a run-off vote after a fraud-plagued election.

The Massachusetts Democrat said he told Obama it wouldn't make "common sense" to decide whether more U.S. troops should go to Afghanistan without knowing the election results.

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Source: MSNBCWASHINGTON - He's not president, a Cabinet member or ambassador, but Sen. John Kerry has ascended to the unofficial role of... more

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24 days ago

Iran, world powers reach draft nuke deal

VIENNA - Iranian negotiators on Wednesday expressed support for a deal that — if accepted by their leaders — would delay Tehran's ability to make nuclear weapons by sending most of its existing enriched uranium to Russia for processing, diplomats said.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said that representatives of Iran and its three interlocutors — the U.S., Russia and France — had accepted the draft for forwarding to their capitals. ElBaradei said he hoped for approval from all four countries by Friday.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's chief delegate, praised the draft, saying it was "on the right track," while emphasizing that senior Iranian officials in Tehran still had to sign off on it.

"We have to thoroughly study this text and also (need) further elaboration in capitals," Soltanieh told reporters.

The apparent breakthrough came on the third day of talks in Vienna which aimed to overcome differences over Iran's nuclear intentions. While the United States and other nations fear Iran may be interested in developing nuclear weapons, Tehran insists its activities are peaceful and meant only to generate energy for its growing population.

ElBaradei said he had "circulated a draft agreement that in my judgment reflects a balanced approach to how to move forward."

"Everybody who participated at the meeting was trying to look at the future not at the past, trying to heal the wounds," the IAEA chief added. "I very much hope that people see the big picture, see that this agreement could open the way for a complete normalization of relations between Iran and the international community."

Neither Soltanieh nor Elbaradei gave details of what was in the package. But diplomats told The Associated Press that it was essentially the original proposal drawn up by the IAEA that would commit Tehran to shipping 75 percent of its enriched uranium stockpile to Russia for further enrichment.

Sending such a large amount of Iran's enriched uranium outside the country would temporarily get rid of most of the material it needs to make a bomb.

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Source: MSNBCVIENNA - Iranian negotiators on Wednesday expressed support for a deal that — if accepted by their leaders — would... more

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25 days ago

Karzai Agrees to Run-Off Election in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Under heavy international pressure, President Hamid Karzai conceded Tuesday that he fell short of a first-round victory in the nation’s disputed presidential election, and agreed to hold a runoff election with his top challenger on Nov. 7.

Flanked at a news conference in Kabul by Senator John Kerry, the head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Kai Eide, the top United Nations official in Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai said he would accept the findings of an international audit that stripped him of nearly one third of his votes in the first round, leaving him below the 50 percent threshold that would have allowed him to avoid a runoff and declare victory over his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah.

“I call upon this country to take this as an opportunity to move this country forward and participate in this new round of elections,” he said according to the English translation of his remarks, adding that he was grateful to the international community for its help.

Mr. Karzai called for continued international assistance in securing the country for the next round of voting. He did not express regret about the widespread fraud that a joint Afghan-international audit committee ruled Monday had occurred among the ballots marked in his name.

Instead, Mr. Karzai said that he felt the voters in the south of Afghanistan, his stronghold and apparent source of the bulk of his fraudulent votes, had been “disrespected,” but did not explain further, and added this was not an issue for the present time.

“A moment of great uncertainty has been transformed into a moment of great opportunity,” Mr. Kerry said, praising Mr. Karzai’s decision to cooperate with the ruling of the audit committee, as mandated under Afghani election laws.

Mr. Karzai’s capitulation came after an all-out push by Obama administration officials and their European allies. But even though Mr. Karzai ended his strong resistance to a runoff, that will not completely resolve the country’s political crisis, officials say. It will be difficult to hold the new election as the Afghan winter approaches and under the perilous security challenges posed by the Taliban insurgency.

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Source: the New York timesKABUL, Afghanistan — Under heavy international pressure, President Hamid Karzai conceded Tuesday that he fell short of a... more

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1 month ago

Letter From Tehran: Iran's New Hard-Liners

The headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are in a European-style palace, replete with Greek columns and a grand staircase, in the eastern suburbs of Tehran. From here, the IRGC orchestrated the crackdown that followed Iran's disputed presidential vote in June, beating protestors on the street and torturing those behind bars. More ominously, the IGRC and other extreme hard-liners have sidelined fellow conservatives in the Iranian government, carving out their own power base in a regime that is becoming increasingly insular, reactionary, and violent.

So far, much of the analysis of the emerging Iranian power struggle has focused on the clash between the country's conservatives and reformers, pitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his patron, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, against Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, two thwarted presidential candidates, and Mohammad Khatami, a former president. (Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and seasoned kingmaker has eased toward the reformists in the election's aftermath.)

The real struggle, however, is the conflict among the hard-liners themselves, many of whom operate behind the headlines in unseen corners of the state machinery. Although Iran's opposition movement has witnessed an unprecedented surge in public support, the election and its aftermath mark a radicalization of the system not seen since the early days of the Islamic revolution.

In the reformist era of Khatami, and to some extent during Ahmadinejad's first term, the country's conservative theocrats and technocrats -- such as Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, and Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ejei, the ousted intelligence minister who criticized the state's use of forced confessions -- held much of the power over the executive and legislative branches. Although they were entrenched status quo forces, these pragmatists believed in the dual nature of the Islamic Republic's statehood -- a country with religious and political legitimacy.

But now such figures are losing their influence to a new breed of second-generation revolutionaries from Iran's security apparatus known as "the New Right." They are joined in the emerging power structure by ultraconservative clerics and organizations such as the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran. These neo-fundamentalists call for the "re-Islamization" of the theocracy, but their true agenda is to block further reform to the political system in terms of reconciling with both domestic opponents and the West.

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But ideology remains secondary in the struggle to maintain and consolidate control within the fractured regime. It is becoming increasingly clear that Ahmadinejad and his associated faction of neo-fundamentalists no longer aim to take on the mantle of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolutionary ideals. As Khamenei's representative to the IRGC put it, "Some people are sticking to Imam Khomeini's ideas ... [but] the situation has changed." Accordingly, religion and revolutionary ideology have become convenient means to an end, but not the end themselves. Purges of un-Islamic faculty and students are meant to target the organizers of mass protests; the arrests and subsequent trials of political opponents, meanwhile, act to shield the financial interests of the IRGC and its hard-line partners.

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For now, the neo-fundamentalists seem to have settled on the tactic of intimidate and escalate. Last month, the regime put French and British diplomatic staff on trial in Tehran, in addition to bringing charges against a Canadian-Iranian Newsweek journalist and an Iranian-American academic. Ahmadinejad has defiantly declared, "We welcome sanctions" -- a signal to reconciliatory elements within the conservative camp that he and the hard-liners will not back down in the face of opposition. In any case, the neo-fundamentalists do not seem eager to jeopardize their near monopoly of the black mkt by reconciling w/ West.The headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are in a European-style palace, replete with Greek columns and a... more

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1 month ago

Russia and China Reaffirm Plans for Gas Deal

BEIJING — The main Russian gas exporter signed a general trade agreement with China’s largest state-run energy company here on Tuesday, but failed to work out pricing details and other mechanisms that would actually put the agreement into effect.

The agreement was signed in the presence of the Russian prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, and the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, and was called a “framework” by Alexei Miller, the head of Gazprom, the Russian state-run gas exporter, which made the deal with the China National Petroleum Corp., China’s largest oil and gas producer.

The deal calls for the supply of nearly 2.5 trillion cubic feet of gas per year via two potential routes originating from Siberia. China has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and has been searching far and wide for new sources of energy. It has focused on Central Asian nations and Russia as potential suppliers of large amounts of natural gas.

Russian and Chinese officials did not give any estimates of the worth of the gas deal, if it were put into effect.

Gazprom said in 2006 that Russia would supply natural gas to China via two pipelines, but no contract has been signed because the state-run enterprises in the two countries have failed to agree on pricing. The agreement reached Tuesday appeared to be an affirmation of the deal from 2006, but did not contain the crucial mechanisms needed to for the actual trade to start.

Mr. Miller said that a price formula in the potential gas contract would be based on Gazprom’s experience in gas exports and principles of international trade, according to The Associated Press.

Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, gave few details on the gas trade agreement or other economic deals reached between the nations. Its report on the meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Wen contained only broad statements stressing the cooperation between Russia and China. “The bilateral economic cooperation has withstood the test of the global financial crisis,” the Xinhua report said, citing Mr. Putin.

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Source: The New York TimesBEIJING — The main Russian gas exporter signed a general trade agreement with China’s largest state-run energy company... more

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1 month ago

WTF happened in Pakistan this weekend?

FROM THE NEWS BLOG: Riding high on their victory over the Taliban in the Swat Valley this May, the Pakistani Army has been... more

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1 month ago

Clinton Speaks in Northern Ireland, Urging Peace

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Fourteen years ago, Hillary Rodham Clinton stood next to her husband at the Victorian city hall... more

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1 month ago

Iraqis Shocked as Atheism Creeps in

"Although their number remains insignificant and most of them hid their identity, the fact that some people are leaving Islam... more

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1 month ago

Turkey, Armenia to sign historic accord

ZURICH – The foreign ministers of the United States, Russia, France and the European Union gathered Saturday in Switzerland... more

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1 month ago

China's Growing Pains

FOR a country that prides itself on its “peaceful rise”, it was an odd way to celebrate a birthday. The People’s Republic of China marked its diamond jubilee on October 1st with a staggering display of military muscle-flexing. Goose-stepping soldiers, tanks and intercontinental ballistic missiles filed through Tiananmen Square, past the eponymous Gate of Heavenly Peace, where, 60 years ago, as every Chinese schoolchild is taught (wrongly, it now seems), Mao Zedong declared that the Chinese people had “stood up”.

For many Chinese, daily life remains a grim struggle, and their government rapacious, arbitrary and corrupt. But on the world stage, they have never stood taller than today. China’s growing military, political and economic clout has given the country an influence of which Mao could only have dreamed. Yet Chinese officials still habitually complain that the world has not accepted China’s emergence, and wants to thwart its ambitions and “contain” it. America and others are trapped, lament these ascendant peaceniks, in a “cold-war mentality”. Sometimes, they have a point. But a bigger problem is that China’s own world view has failed to keep pace with its growing weight. It is a big power with a medium-power mindset, and a small-power chip on its shoulder.

Take that spectacular parade. What message was it meant to convey to an awestruck world? China is a huge, newly emerging force on the world scene. And it is unapologetically authoritarian, as were Japan and Prussia, whose rises in the late 19th century were hardly trouble-free. Nor is China a status quo power. There is the unfinished business of Taiwan, eventual “reunification” with which remains an article of faith for China, and towards which it has pointed some 1,000 missiles. There is the big, lolling tongue of its maritime claim in the South China Sea, which unnerves its South-East Asian neighbours. And China keeps giving reminders of its unresolved wrangle with India over what is now the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it briefly overran in 1962. Nor has it reached agreement with Japan over disputed islands.

China’s intentions may be entirely peaceful, but its plans to build aircraft-carriers are shrouded in secrecy and it is modernising its nuclear arsenal. A modicum of anxiety about its ambitions is more than just cold-war paranoia. And those prey to it will have been reassured neither by the October 1st parade nor by the massive military build-up and the increasingly sophisticated home-grown weapons technology it flaunted...

But the image that it would like to cultivate, as a responsible, unthreatening, emergent superpower, is constantly being undercut by two of its leaders’ habits.

One is the knee-jerk resort to hysterical propaganda and reprisals when a foreign country displeases it by criticising its appalling treatment of political dissidents, or accepts a visit from the Dalai Lama or other objects of the Communist Party’s venom. The other is its readiness to put its perceived economic self-interest ahead of strategic common sense. That is the message from its reluctance to contemplate sanctions against Iran. Much as it would abhor a nuclear-armed Iran, China does not want to jeopardise important supplies of oil and gas. And this is merely one among many countries, especially in Africa, where China may be suppressing its global political influence for the mirage of energy security.

China’s leaders rightly point out that theirs is still a poor country which will naturally give priority to lifting its economic development. And this in one sense answers the question about the message conveyed by the National Day parade: its main audience was not the outside world, but China’s own people... The display of strength...hints at its own lack of confidence. For those worried about where China’s rise might lead that the government is so insecure is not a comforting thought.FOR a country that prides itself on its “peaceful rise”, it was an odd way to celebrate a birthday. The People’s... more

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1 month ago

Government Forces Murder and Rape Protesters...Now What?

After the killing of dozens of pro-democracy demonstrators by security forces in Guinea last week, West African leaders have sent a presidential mediator in a bid to calm the tensions. France, the former colonial power, has called for international intervention.

Just over one week ago, 50,000 opposition civilians gathered at the main stadium in Guinea's shabby seaside capital, Conakry, to protest against rumored plans by the military leader, Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, to run for president. When he swept to power after a coup in December, Camara pledged to hold elections but said he would not be a candidate.

Without apparent provocation, presidential guard troops opened fire on the peaceful crowd in the stadium.

Guinean human rights groups say 157 people were killed, more than 1,200 were wounded and many women were raped. The government says 57 people were killed. Still wearing a bandage on his head, Sidya Toure, a former Guinean prime minister and prominent opposition leader, said the violence had shaken the nation.

"The main part of the population is afraid by what they saw on 28 September in the stadium," Toure said. "They saw soldiers killing people. They really tried to kill us, you know. It was something very violent."

An older woman — who did not want her identity revealed — was among a number who were publicly raped during the violence.

"All I know is that I was raped," she said, "but I can't explain why. I can't explain why."

Thierno Maadjou Sow of the Guinean Organization of Human Rights described the situation as heinous. He said what is most shocking is that the rapes by armed men happened in public, in broad daylight.

In Paris, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called for international intervention in Guinea, which was a French colony until 1958.

Kouchner described the violence as savage and said Paris could no longer work with Camara. Some Guinean opposition politicians have suggested a peace force to protect the people. Camara dismissed Kouchner's comments, saying they are an affront to African dignity and that Guinea is a sovereign nation and not a part of France or any other foreign country.

Camara seized power in December, hours after the death of longtime military ruler Gen. Lansana Conte. Under Conte, both development and democracy were stunted as the diamonds, gold and huge reserves of bauxite, used to make aluminum, were looted by a ruling elite. Some hoped this impoverished nation of 10 million was entering a new era of prosperity and good governance.

On Friday, distressed family members were among the thousands who gathered at the main mosque in Conakry for prayers, desperate to identify their loved ones among rows of dead bodies. Pandemonium erupted, and security forces fired teargas.

The president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore, himself a former army captain, arrived in Guinea on Monday with the tough task of trying to mediate a resolution to the crisis. Appointed by the Economic Community of West African states, Compaore said he hoped to restore peace and stability to GuineaAfter the killing of dozens of pro-democracy demonstrators by security forces in Guinea last week, West African leaders have sent... more