http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2006-dai.../main/main8.htm

Protests against cartoons escalate

CAIRO: Thousands of Egyptians protested in cities across the country after the Friday prayers, denouncing blasphemous cartoons, and Iranians smashed windows and started a brief fire in the French embassy in Tehran.

Several thousand also marched peacefully through a commercial district of the Jordanian capital, Amman, under heavy watch of security forces. In Nairobi, police shot and wounded one person as they sought to keep around 200 demonstrators protesting the cartoons from marching to the residence of Denmark’s ambassador. However, one man died there, when he was hit by an ambulance rushing away the wounded person.

In Tehran, up to 60 young men and women hurled stones, firecrackers and Molotov cocktails at the French embassy, smashing almost every window on its street facade. One cocktail exploded inside the embassy and started a small fire that was quickly extinguished. An Iranian photographer was hit in the eye by a firecracker and taken to hospital.

Egypt saw its most widespread protests yet, with thousands protesting in 21 of its 26 provinces, including in Cairo and the second largest city, Alexandria. Many were organised by the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, which has called for marches to continue — but peacefully.

About 1,000 people protested, some chanting, "Osama bin Laden, explode Copenhagen," outside Cairo’s al-Azhar Mosque. As police prevented them from leaving the mosque, some hit security forces with shoes, who responded by using their sticks. The protesters also burnt the Danish flag outside the mosque.

At another historic mosque in Cairo, Amr ibn al-As, about 1,500 people also protested, while several thousands attended protests in the Kafr el-Sheik, Luxor and Sohag. Thousands also demonstrated in Malaysia, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, while smaller rallies were held in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Muslims' Fury Rages Unabated Over Cartoons
Demonstrators in 13 Countries Ignore Leaders' Appeals, Newspaper's Apology

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 11, 2006; A12



COPENHAGEN, Feb. 10 -- Tens of thousands of Muslims took to the streets across Asia, Africa and the Middle East after weekly prayers on Friday, burning Danish flags and shouting anti-Danish and anti-American slogans in a continuing convulsion of anger over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

Demonstrators marched in at least 13 countries -- Kenya, Iran, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Egypt, Israel and Jordan -- as the global wave of protests, spurred by a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons depicting Islam's holiest figure and the reprinting of those cartoons in newspapers in other countries, headed toward a second consecutive weekend.

The protesters defied calls for calm from several prominent Muslim leaders and organizations as well as a statement of regret from Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and an apology by editors of the newspaper that originally published the cartoons. "The government has done what can be done," Rasmussen said in an interview Thursday. "Neither the government nor the Danish people can be held responsible for what is published in an independent newspaper. And neither the government nor the Danish people have any intention whatsoever to insult Muslims or any other religious community."

In Kenya, police shot and wounded at least one protester Friday as they tried to protect the Danish ambassador's residence. Thousands of demonstrators shouting "Kill Danes! Down with Denmark!" marched from Nairobi's largest mosque following Friday prayers. Riot police fired on a group of at least 200 people who had tried to reach the home of the Danish envoy, Bo Jensen.

"We've certainly heard their message and hope they will go home," Jensen told the Reuters news agency.

In Pakistan, more than 5,000 people demonstrated peacefully in Islamabad in the largest rally in the country since the controversy began. Another 2,000 protesters fought with police in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, several thousand protesters marched from a mosque to the Danish Embassy, shouting, "Destroy Denmark! Destroy Israel! Destroy George Bush! Destroy America!" Others carried placards supporting an economic boycott that has almost halted Danish exports to the Middle East and North Africa.

Addressing a large crowd, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi described a "huge chasm that has emerged between the West and Islam," not simply because of the cartoons, he said, but because of Western policies regarding oil, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In India, thousands of angry Muslims kicked, spat on and tore Danish flags and burned effigies in the capital, New Delhi, and in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, the Associated Press reported. In Bangladesh, more than 5,000 Muslims marched on Denmark's embassy in the capital, Dhaka, shouting, "Death to those who degrade our beloved prophet!"

In the Middle East, about 2,000 women, young boys and older men marched around the Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem chanting "Bin Laden, strike again!" Large crowds of protesters in Gaza fired gunshots into the air and burned Danish flags. Thousands clashed with police in Egypt.

About 2,000 Muslims marched in Jordan. Demonstrators in Tehran threw gasoline bombs at the French Embassy and shouted, "Death to France!" and, "Death to America!" Several French newspapers have reprinted some of the Danish cartoons.

The violence came despite calls for calm from Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a senior cleric.

"I am calling on all religious men not to attack the embassies of the foreigners," Khatami told worshipers in Tehran in comments broadcast live on state radio. "Chanting slogans, staging protests and condemning such measures are holy . . . but I feel that they want their embassies to be set on fire so they can say that they are innocent. Take this excuse away from them."

In Sweden, the government shut down the Web site of a far-right political party's newspaper after it briefly posted a cartoon of Muhammad. It was the first time a Western government has intervened to block a publication in the controversy over the cartoons, the BBC reported.

Richard Jomshof, editor of the newspaper, SD-Kuriren, which is published by the anti-immigration Swedish Democrats, said the action was illegal. Jomshof's paper had posted a cartoon showing Muhammad from the rear, looking into a mirror with his eyes blacked out. He said the cartoon was about self-censorship, but Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds called it "a provocation" by "a small group of extremists."

In Copenhagen, Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which originally published the cartoons on Sept. 30, was told to take a two-week vacation. "There is no disagreement whatsoever between me and the company," Rose said in an interview. "I'm tired, I have been under huge pressure, and I am grateful to the paper for this time off."

Rose said this week that he intended to print cartoons of Jesus Christ and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He said the idea was to show that his newspaper would direct satire against all religions. Rose also said he was considering printing cartoons about the Holocaust that an Iranian newspaper intended to publish.

The newspaper's editor in chief, Carsten Juste, later publicly contradicted those statements, and Rose agreed that they represented "an error in judgment."

In Norway on Friday, the editor of Magazinet, a Christian newspaper, apologized to Muslims for reprinting the cartoons, which had made Norway a target of Muslim attacks, including the burning of its embassy in Damascus, Syria. Vebjoern Selbekk, who had initially defended the Jan. 10 publication as an expression of press freedom, said at a news conference: "I address myself personally to the Muslim community to say that I am sorry that your religious feelings have been hurt. It was never our intent to hurt anyone." Selbekk, who said he had received more than 20 e-mailed death threats, then shook hands with Mohammed Hamdan, leader of the Islamic Council in Norway, who urged forgiveness and Selbekk's safety.

"Anyone who touches him touches us," Hamdan said. "Our prophet, Muhammad, has said that everyone can make mistakes, but the best is the one who expresses regret and asks for forgiveness."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...11/ixworld.html

Football and pizza point to US staying for long haul
By Oliver Poole at al-Asad airbase
(Filed: 11/02/2006)

The airbase at al-Asad is the biggest marine camp in western Anbar province. It is in the midst of the most rebellious region in Iraq, where thousands of insurgents have been killed in a series of operations over the past year.

But get "inside the wire" and this stretch of desert increasingly resembles a slice of US suburbia rather than the front line in a war zone.


Marines based in Iraq find time to watch the Super Bowl
Its restaurants include a Subway and a fast food pizza shop. There is a coffee shop, football pitch and even a swimming pool.

A cinema shows the latest films while the camp's main recreational centre offers special dance nights - hip hop on Friday, salsa on Saturday and country and western on Sunday.

There is even a Hertz car rental providing saloons with bullet-proof windows for those wanting to cross the base in something more comfortable than a military Humvee.

For as the news from Washington focuses on troop withdrawals, the US military is beginning to implement at immense cost the next stage in its policy for Iraq. And it is one likely to disappoint those hoping for a quick exit of all foreign troops.

Last summer reports began to emerge that plans had been drawn up to create four "super-bases", giant camps that would house tens of thousands of US soldiers similar to other sprawling military facilities around the world.

The intention was for the newly trained and equipped Iraqi army to gradually take over the majority of combat operations, allowing a proportion of the 138,000 US troops to depart. Those remaining would provide back-up from their new centres of operation when requested.

That hand-over has already begun with a dozen smaller bases evacuated in recent weeks. In total 100 are scheduled to be transferred to the Iraqi government this year.

Although no official confirmation will be given of where super-bases will be located, at al-Asad there is every impression that one is in the process of being created.

The guidelines under which reporters are allowed to visit military facilities prohibit any mention of their location, size or number of troops.

But it breaks no rules to say this is a place so extensive it has two bus routes inside and the sight of workers constructing new billets for more troops is common.

Last month, red "Stop" signs - the ubiquitous feature of American street furniture - went up at all road junctions.

Senior members of the governing Shia parties have complained that they show American plans for a long-term presence in their country.

Sunni members of the Iraqi Islamic Party regard them as evidence of an open-ended "occupation", a charge denied by US officials who insist the bases are another step in an eventual withdrawal.

But even the marines based at al-Asad are sceptical about how quickly that step will be completed.

The Iraqi army is considered "at least" a year from being able to take the fight to the insurgents.

Senior officers point out that when the main army base near Tikrit was handed over to Iraqi forces, a transfer widely touted by Washington as evidence of Iraq's growing ability to stand alone, it was looted bare within weeks by the very Iraqi units who were meant to protect it.

Above all there is the knowledge gained through grim experience that predictions of what Iraq will be like in the immediate future are almost always wrong.

Col H R McMaster, the commander of troops in Tal Afar and the US senior officer whose counter-insurgency tactics have been singled out for praise in Washington and London, was asked recently what he thought the next 12 months would hold for Iraqis.

He declined to speculate. "Anyone who claims to understand what is happening in Iraq does not understand it," he answered.

Servicemen, meanwhile, confidently predict that they will be rotating through the base for at least a decade.

One sergeant pointed out that at least they will be able to buy a proper cup of coffee.

iraq@telegraph.co.uk

For Danish Firms, Boycott in Mideast a 'Nightmare'
Millions of Dollars in Sales Are Lost as Markets That Were Built Over Decades Disappear in Days

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 11, 2006; A12



COPENHAGEN, Feb. 10 -- The Arla Foods plant in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which produces cheese and flavored yogurt drinks, sits idle and the company's 800 employees in the country have been sent home because of a Middle East boycott of Danish goods, following a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

"It took us 40 years to build up our business in the Middle East, and five days to bring it to a total stop," said Astrid Nielsen, spokeswoman for the Danish company here. She said suspending operations at the Riyadh plant, the company's regional base, and a near-total boycott of the company's products have cost Arla about $1.7 million a day since Jan. 28.

The boycott of Danish goods, propelled by Muslim leaders and imams preaching in mosques, has brought exports of Danish products to the Middle East and North Africa to a virtual standstill. It has scuttled a flow of goods to the region that was worth about $1 billion in the first 10 months of 2005, according to government statistics.

The boycott has been less visible than the angry mobs around the world burning Danish flags, torching embassies and carrying placards calling for "Danish blood." But it has been just as unnerving for Danish business leaders, who have spent decades expanding their sales of food, pharmaceuticals, industrial equipment and other products into the Middle Eastern market.

"As Danes, we are still sort of in a situation where we are thinking this is just a nightmare," Nielsen said, "and we are going to wake up in a little while and find that this didn't happen. We can never hope to regain what we had, but we hope we can reestablish some of it. We have a huge task ahead of us."

Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in an interview Thursday, said the boycott was not a major threat to Denmark's economy.

"According to the latest figures, 3 percent of Danish exports go to the Muslim world," Rasmussen said. "So seen from an overall perspective, it is of minor importance on the Danish trade balance."

Rasmussen, a former economic affairs minister, said it was "too early to make a final assessment" about the long-term impact of the boycott and whether Middle Eastern consumers would eventually start buying Danish products again.

"From experience we know that trade may be resumed in a longer-term perspective," he said. "Danish industries are famous for their ability to adapt to new situations. And our competitiveness is very strong. Danish companies are in very good shape for the time being."

Still, Rasmussen noted that companies such as Arla that do extensive business in the Middle East and North Africa "may be affected very significantly."

"And I strongly regret that, of course, because Arla is not responsible for what is published in a Danish newspaper," said Rasmussen, who has repeatedly expressed regrets that Muslims have been offended by the cartoons of Muhammad, while saying he cannot apologize for what was printed in a private newspaper.

"You can't hold a whole nation responsible for what is published in a free and independent newspaper," Rasmussen said. "I do know that it is very difficult to understand for many people in the Arab streets, because they can hardly understand how free and independent media work. But that's our system. It is unfair to take Danish companies and employees hostage in this case, in an economic sense."

Those arguments carry little weight in places such as the al-Qiswani Supermarket in the West Bank town of Beit Hanina, where prominently displayed posters urge shoppers, "If you love the Prophet, join us in boycotting Danish products." The posters are surrounded by photos of Danish cheeses, powdered milk, chocolates and other products to be avoided.

The store's owner, Abed Qiswani, 42, said his revenue has dropped 5 percent because of the boycott, which he said has been uniformly followed. He used to sell a carton of Danish cheese a week, but now those products are being left untouched, along with products from some other European countries, including French cheeses and Scandinavian cereals.

Qiswani said that when he tried to return his back stock of Danish products, his supplier told him he had lost nearly $200,000 in canceled orders as a result of the boycott in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

"What has struck me most, though, is that little children come to the store and ask if this is a Danish product," Qiswani said. "Boycotting is a very good thing. Politics is always connected to the economy. The problem these European countries have now is with the Islamic giant, and they should think about who they mess with."

Tariq Maslanani, 11, said he no longer buys French-made Laughing Cow cheese, his favorite, because a French newspaper also ran the cartoons.

"We cannot bear anybody cursing our prophet," said the sixth-grader.

Svend Roed Nielsen, head of trade policy at the Danish Foreign Ministry, said that in addition to daily consumer goods such as cheese and butter, there has been a noticeable drop in exports of pharmaceuticals and medicines to Muslim countries. He said that he was unsure of the exact loss but that those goods accounted for about $104 million in the first 10 months of last year. He said officials had heard that the expected signings of several contracts for Danish machinery and electronic goods had been postponed.

"Things are looking quite bad at the moment," said Keld Winther Rasmussen of the Danish Dairy Board. "We have products in the country we can't sell, in ships that we can't deliver, and products in dairy plants that we will have to find other markets for."

Rasmussen said dairy industry officials had hoped that Prime Minister Rasmussen's televised comments offering regrets for the offense caused to Muslims would improve the situation. "But so far that has had no impact," he said, adding that he hoped that Danish dairy exports to the Middle East would eventually restart. "We hope this is not the end. But we can see that it is going to take a very long time to regain our hold in the market. It could take years."

Bjarne Kristiansen, manager of a dairy in Aalborg, said exports to the Middle East account for 70 percent of his company's sales -- and that market has completely dried up since the boycott took hold. He said his company is losing sales of about 100 tons of feta cheese a week.

"If this continues, after two or three weeks we might have to stop production of feta cheese, which is our main production," he said. "Hopefully we won't have to close completely, but I don't know. It is a terrible situation."

Keld Pedersen, managing director of Nordex Food, said his company has lost 20 percent of its total sales, which normally go to the Middle East. He said the company has had to cut 15 jobs out of its workforce of 200.

"Maybe the government acted too late -- we all did," Pedersen said. "We were all very surprised about how quickly this situation developed. I can't fault the government's efforts now. But Denmark cannot do this alone, and it will not only be Denmark that suffers."

Pedersen said the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which first published the Muhammad cartoons, "should have been more careful."

"Everyone has the right to freedom of speech, but you can't cry 'Fire! Fire!' in a cinema," he said. "But it's always easier to see these things after they have happened."

Pedersen said he is pessimistic that his company's Middle Eastern market, which it has been building for 25 years, will fully recover.

"I don't think it will ever be the same again," he said. "The consumers won't forget."


Special correspondents Alexandra Topping in London and Sufian Taha in Beit Hanina contributed to this report.


© 2006 The Washington Post Company

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Thousands protest against Denmark
Web posted at: 2/11/2006 3:29:57
Source ::: AFP
Muslims take part in silent march in Bhopal yesterday against the cartoons published in European newspapers depicting caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH).
NEW DELHI: Tens of thousands of Muslims across India marched in protest against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) yesterday, some showing their displeasure in silence, while others chanted “Denmark Die, Die!”

In the capital New Delhi, thousands of demonstrators spilled out of the country’s largest mosque after weekly prayers and spat on Danish flags as police tightened security in the city’s diplomatic district.

Organisers said 15,000 joined the rally of black flag-carrying protesters who also blamed France, Norway and Germany for reprinting the Danish newspaper cartoons. Police estimated there were 3,000 protesters.

Ahmed Bukhari, chief cleric of the 17th century Jama Masjid mosque called on the Indian government to demand an apology from Copenhagen over the cartoons which sparked global Muslim anger.

“For 1,400 years, Islam has fought its evil enemies and now it will not bow before the satanic designs of France, Germany, Norway and Denmark,” Bukhari had told his Friday congregation.

“Islam and Muslims have been challenged and we will not rest unless nations that humiliated us are punished,” he said as protesters set fire to a human-shaped effigy labelled ‘Denmark’.

Police armed with rifles and teargas stood by.

The protesters spat on giant Danish flags spread on the ground before the 20,000-capacity mosque in the congested old quarter.

Several children urinated on the red flag before the cameras.

Bukhari called on Indian Muslims to launch a nationwide campaign against Denmark.

In the central city of Bhopal, thousands of men crammed the narrow streets around the old Muslim quarter’s mosques in silent protest, blocking roads for several hours.

The city’s top Islamic leader, Qazi Abdul Lateef, said the turnout showed that “attempts by anti-Islam forces to defame Muslims... would not be tolerated.”

Protests also took place in several other cities around the country, including in Muslim-majority Indian Kashmir, where Islamic separatists are fighting New Delhi’s rule. A shutdown strike took place in Kashmir Monday against the cartoons.

The protestors branded the publication of the cartoons “an act of terrorism” and said they were part of a plot by European countries to defame Islam.

One separatist group in Kashmir called on Wednesday for a boycott of Danish and other European goods.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, nearly 20,000 people protested against the cartoons Friday.

India counts 130 million among its 1.1 billion inhabitants.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?ed...rticle_id=22133
Copyright © 2006 The Daily Star

Saturday, February 11, 2006
Cartoon protests resume as editor 'repents'
Thousands of Egyptians protested in cities across the country after Muslim prayers Friday, denouncing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, and Iranians smashed windows and started a brief fire in the French Embassy in Tehran. Thousands of kilometers away, an editor that first published the caricatures and the imam who helped make them known shook hands and called for an end to the furor.

Magazinet editor Vebjoern Selbekk said he regretted publishing the cartoons on January 10 because he had not foreseen the pain and anger they would cause among Muslims.

"I reach out personally to the Muslim community to say I am sorry their religious feelings were violated by what we did," Selbekk said at a news conference.

The Evangelical Christian newspaper was among the first newspapers to reprint the drawings that were first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September, saying it was defending free speech.

In a joint statement Friday, 15 key Norwegian imams representing 46 congregations declared the conflict over in Norway.

"We ask Muslims to accept the apology," the statement said. "We consider the case closed."

Selbekk, who had been under police protection after receiving scores of death threats, made his apology at a hastily called joint news conference with the leader of the Islamic Council in Norway, Mohammad Hamdan, and Labor Minister Bjarne Haakon Hanssen.

Hamdan stressed Islam values forgiveness and added that he considered Selbekk to be under his protection. "Our Prophet Mohammad said everyone can make a mistake, but the best people are those who repent," said Hamdan.

Meanwhile, thousands marched peacefully through a commercial district of the Jordanian capital, Amman, under heavy watch of security forces.

In Tehran, up to 60 young men and women hurled stones, firecrackers and Molotov cocktails at the French Embassy, smashing almost every window on its street facade. One cocktail exploded inside the embassy and started a small fire that was quickly extinguished by firefighters already on the scene.

About 2,000 demonstrators staged a protest in Istanbul, chanting "Down with Israel" and urging the government to sever ties with Denmark.

The new wave of marches came after several days of relative calm. Governments and Islamic leaders called on protesters to refrain from violence in expressing their outrage over the prophet drawings.

"We do not want to imitate the rioters in other countries ... Those people harmed Islam and the Prophet instead," the preacher Abdel-Rahman Ibdah told worshippers at Amman's King Abdullah Mosque before they began their march.

Protests in at least five Egyptian cities did not tar-get embassies, but some deteriorated into violence amid police attempts to prevent the demonstrations.

Several thousand heeded the call of the Muslim Brotherhood movement to protest outside the Al-Taha Mosque in the northern Delta city of Mahalla al-Kubra.

When they didn't immediately obey police demands that they disperse, security forces fired tear gas and water canons, Mamdouh al-Mounir, a member of the group, told the Associated Press by telephone.

Police confirmed that tear gas was fired and at least 20 people arrested.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood movement, which organized several of the protests Friday, urged demonstrators to remain peaceful.

"We appeal to Muslims not to let their furor drag them to attack properties, to expand the scope of protest, or to turn into a clash between civilizations," said the group's deputy leader, Khairat al-Shater.

The cartoons, one of which showed the Prophet Mohammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a burning fuse, have incensed Muslims across the world and led to

often violent protests in which at least 11 people have been killed.

"I am calling on all religious men not to attack the embassies of the foreigners," senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told Friday prayer worshippers in Tehran in comments broadcast live on state radio.

"Chanting slogans, staging protests and condemning such measures are holy ... but I feel that they want their embassies to be set on fire so they can say that they are innocent," he said. "Take this excuse away from them."

He called for peaceful protests to continue.

The Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons, Jyllands-Posten, has sent its culture editor, who commissioned the drawings, on holiday.

The culture editor, Flemming Rose, was urged to take some leave after suggesting

he would be happy to print Iranian cartoons satirizing the Holocaust.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana will visit several Middle Eastern countries next week in an attempt to calm the anger over the cartoons.

Solana will be received by King Abdullah and Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal in Saudi Arabia Monday. He will also have talks with Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, chairman of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Solana will then continue on to Egypt, where he is expected to meet President Hosni Mubarak and Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu al-Gheit, before going to Jordan and the Palestinian territories. He will wind up his visit in Israel, where he will meet Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot also scheduled trips to Qatar and Saudi Arabia next week in an attempt to relieve tensions over the cartoons.



Copyright © 2006 The Daily Star

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...11/ixworld.html
Iran plant 'has restarted its nuclear bomb-making equipment'
By Con Coughlin, Defence and Security Editor, in Washington
(Filed: 11/02/2006)

Iran's controversial Natanz uranium processing plant has successfully restarted the sophisticated equipment that could enable it to produce material for nuclear warheads, according to reports received by Western intelligence.


An aerial view of the Natanz plant
In the past few days Iranian nuclear scientists have reportedly restarted four of the centrifuges required to produce weapons-grade uranium, and have begun feeding them with uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas, a key component in the production of nuclear bombs.

This crucial development follows Iran's decision to withdraw its co-operation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna after the body decided last week to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council.

Iranian officials have moved quickly to obstruct the work of the UN nuclear inspectors still working in the country's nuclear facilities.

Intelligence officials say restrictions have been imposed on the inspectors' movements between the various facilities at Natanz.

They have been specifically excluded from those areas where the Iranians have announced they would resume uranium enrichment, and have ordered the UN inspectors to report to officials running the plant on a daily basis. Security cameras installed by IAEA officials to monitor key facilities have been disabled.

Having effectively excluded the UN inspection teams from the most sensitive sites, Iranian nuclear scientists have removed the seals from the P-2 centrifuges that Iran acquired from Pakistan through the secret nuclear network operated by Dr A Q Khan, the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb.

They have also begun installing tanks in underground bunkers that are designed for industrial enrichment.

In previous submissions to the UN inspectors, the Iranians insisted they had acquired the P-2 centrifuges merely for research purposes, They have continued to insist that their nuclear programme is solely aimed at developing alternative energy sources.

However, a senior Western intelligence official said: "Iran's recent activity is a clear escalation of its attempts to enrich uranium to weapons grade. With the UN inspectors out of the way they are basically free to do as they please."

7 February 2006: Iran tells watchdog to end snap inspections
5 February 2006: Iran raises the nuclear stakes after being reported to UN
5 February 2006: US turns screw as Iran atom row goes to UN

February 12, 2006
Bird Flu Detected in Greece, Italy and Bulgaria
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
The lethal A(H5N1) bird flu virus has been detected in wild birds in Italy and Greece, European officials announced yesterday, the first time its presence has been detected in the European Union. It was also detected in Bulgaria.

"The bird flu virus has arrived in Italy," said Francesco Storace, the Italian health minister, at a news conference, announcing that 17 swans had been found dead in three southern regions, Calabria, Sicily, and Puglia.

Testing at the National Avian Influenza Lab in Padua determined the cause to be the A(H5N1) virus, he said, although it was not clear if all 17 swans had been tested.

The arrival of bird flu in Western Europe had been predicted for some months, since the virus has marched steadily from China, to Russia, to the Balkans and, in the last week, to West Africa. It is being carried by migrating birds, so all countries on their flight paths are vulnerable.

"In some ways we would have expected it earlier in Italy," said Dr. Juan Lubroth, a senior veterinarian at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.

The Italian outbreak seems to have been a model of early detection, underlining how bird flu can be controlled in countries that have the money and the scientific resources to do it.

Recent outbreaks in poor countries like Nigeria, Turkey and Iraq have percolated for months before they were discovered, allowing the virus to spread widely to commercial chicken flocks and even to humans.

While the A(H5N1) virus currently does not readily spread from human to human, scientists worry that it will mutate into a form that can, setting off a devastating worldwide human pandemic.

Only about 160 people have become infected with the disease, mostly through close contact with sick birds, and about half of them have died. In Italy, police officers near Messina, in Sicily, found two dead swans on Thursday and performed rapid screening tests on them in the wild, which suggested that the swans had a flu virus, according to ANSA, the official Italian news agency. Such simple tests are not specific enough to indicate a particular virus or strain, like A(H5N1).

The carcasses were immediately sent to a veterinary institute in Palermo, the Sicilian capital, which sent samples to the lab in Padua, where the positive test results were returned yesterday.

In the wake of the tests, Mr. Storace prohibited all movement of live animals in the affected regions. There are no signs of infection in commercial poultry yet, he said.

"There is no immediate danger for our country because our system of surveillance is efficient and has not contaminated bird farms," Mauro Delogu, an Italian virologist at the University of Bolgona, told ANSA.

In Greece, health officials announced that three swans in the northern part of the country tested positive for the virus, and hours later, European Union officials said some swans in Bulgaria, near the Danube Delta, did as well.

Dead swans have become an important flu sentinel because they are very susceptible to the virus and are so large that people notice when they die, Mr. Lubroth said.

Swans in southern Italy do not normally migrate, he said, but their wetlands are along many bird migration routes.

Last autumn, several European nations, including Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands, mandated that all commercial poultry be kept indoors, to prevent any contact with migrating birds. Greece now requires that poultry be kept indoors and bans the sale of live birds at street markets.

Trying to calm public fears, the European Union's health commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, said: "We should not be unduly surprised or alarmed if such cases are found in the European Union. What is important is that we have the framework in place to take the appropriate measures as soon as possible to contain it and prevent its spread to poultry, and that is what we are doing."

Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she was not surprised that infected birds had been found in southern Europe.

"I view that as an expression of how birds fly," she said. "It's just like West Nile marching across the U.S. — you follow the flight patterns."

The variant strain of the A(H5N1) flu found in Turkey and confirmed in Africa last week is identical to one found last year in dead migratory birds in a nature reserve in northern China, and later in Siberia. It is different from strains circulating among poultry in Southeast Asia and Indonesia.

Two species of ducks, the northern pintail and the garganey, migrate in a southwesterly direction each fall from Siberia to Turkey and the Black Sea coast, and in some cases to central Africa, according to a recent article in New Scientist. Other species that share the same African wetlands migrate north in the spring, which raises the threat that the disease will be spread more widely around Western Europe later this year.

But movements are unpredictable. Dr. William B. Karesh, director of the field veterinary program for the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs New York City's zoos, noted that northern pintails from Siberia were also found from East Africa to Britain, which suggests that some picked it up from domestic flocks during the fall migration.

"The simple presence of the same species of wild birds in two geographic areas does not indicate a transmission route," he said.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. and Lawrence K. Altman contributed reporting for this article.





Copyright 2006The New York Times

February 12, 2006
Bracing for Penalties, Iran Threatens to Withdraw From Nuclear Treaty
By NAZILA FATHI
TEHRAN, Feb. 11 — Iran's president warned on Saturday that Iran could withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if international pressure increased over its nuclear program.

His threat was a significant escalation of the government's previous position that it would only stop complying with spot inspections of military installations and sites it has not declared to be part of its nuclear program. The warning also raised the specter that Iran was considering following a strategy set by North Korea three years ago.

In a speech to tens of thousand of demonstrators who had gathered to mark the 27th anniversary of the Islamic revolution, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also staked out a broader path of resistance if penalties are imposed against Iran.

Evoking the possibility of penalties and international ostracism, he insisted that the country would continue its nuclear activities and urged Iranians to brace for tough times.

"The Islamic Republic has continued its program within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the nonproliferation treaty," he said in the speech, which was broadcast live on state television. "But if we see that you want to use the NPT regulations to deprive us of our rights, know that the people will revise their policy in this regard."

"I ask our dear people to prepare themselves for a great struggle," he added, evoking the possibility of international penalties. "Fasten your seat belts and pull up your sleeves."

In interviews in recent days, American and European officials have said they have been looking for signs that Mr. Ahmadinejad's government might abandon the nonproliferation treaty.

American officials and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, have said that the treaty provision allowing countries to renounce it, with just 90 days' notice, constitutes a major flaw in the effort to keep nations from becoming nuclear powers.

That provision essentially allows nations to build up a civilian nuclear infrastructure under the protection of the treaty, and then convert it to military use as soon as the country abandons the treaty.

"It's the obvious hole in the treaty, and the Iranians may choose to exploit it," one senior American official said this week, before Mr. Ahmadinejad's speech. "From their perspective, the North Koreans didn't pay much of a price."

The Central Intelligence Agency has estimated that the North Koreans have produced fuel enough for six or more weapons since they left the treaty three years ago. But those are rough estimates, based more on the country's ability than knowledge of what they have produced, and it is unclear whether that fuel has been converted to weapons. Iran is further away from that ability.

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, Robert Joseph, the State Department official in charge of fighting nuclear proliferation, said that "a nuclear-armed Iran with this leadership does represent an existential threat to the state of Israel."

"We ought to make very clear not only that we find that repugnant," Mr. Joseph said, "but that that has policy significance, that that hardens our view, that we and the entire international community must band together and prevent this regime from acquiring nuclear weapons."

But he said he had no clear idea of when Iran might obtain a weapon.

The governing board of the atomic energy agency passed a resolution this month to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council for possible penalties over its nuclear program. But the resolution gave Iran until March to halt its atomic research and development work.

On Thursday, Secretary General Kofi Annan also called on Iran to freeze those activities and pursue a proposal by Moscow to enrich Iranian uranium in Russia.

But in his speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad again discounted proposals by Europe and Russia that countries could sell enriched nuclear fuel to Iran rather than have the country produce it itself.

"According to international regulations, every country that sells aircraft to other countries is required to sell its spare parts as well," he said. "For 27 years you have refused to give us aircraft spare parts. How can we be sure that you will give us nuclear fuel?"

Iran immediately reduced its cooperation with the United Nations nuclear agency after the referral resolution, saying that it would end compliance with the nuclear treaty's Additional Protocol, which allows intrusive inspections of nuclear sites. The government also announced that it was preparing to resume the enriching of uranium, which it had suspended for more than two years.

But at the time, some Iranian officials said they would not leave the treaty, in part because they feared that would bolster the West's argument that Tehran was racing toward production of a weapon.

All of Iran's senior officials have emphasized the country's right to have a peaceful nuclear energy program. But on Saturday, statements by two senior Iranian figures continued to show that differences were emerging over how to handle international pressure.

At the same rally where the president called for complete resistance regardless of the cost, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is head of the powerful Expediency Council, said that "instead of relying on strength, we must try to fix the situation wisely," the news agency ISNA reported.

A former speaker of Parliament, Mehdi Karroubi, told demonstrators that officials must refrain from "imprudent" policies and must try to adopt dialogue and act wisely.

In his speech at the rally, Mr. Ahmadinejad repeated his much-publicized claims that the Holocaust was a myth, and he made reference to the wave of demonstrations in the Arab world over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in some Western newspapers.

"In some European countries and in America insulting Prophet Muhammad is acceptable," he said. "But questioning the Holocaust and formation of the Zionist regime is a crime. This is a myth with which the Zionists have blackmailed other countries and carried out their crimes for 60 years in the occupied territories."

He continued: "The real Holocaust is happening in Palestine where the Zionists are killing Palestinians. If you are looking for the crimes of Holocaust, find them in Iraq."

Angry protesters attacked the Norwegian, Austrian and Danish Embassies in Tehran in recent days over the cartoons. They also attacked the British and the French Embassies on Thursday with homemade bombs and stones.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times

http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jse...xportaltop.html

US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites
By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 12/02/2006)

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

They are reporting to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as America updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear bomb ambitions. Teheran claims that it is developing only a civilian energy programme.

"This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment," said a senior Pentagon adviser. "This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months."

The prospect of military action could put Washington at odds with Britain which fears that an attack would spark violence across the Middle East, reprisals in the West and may not cripple Teheran's nuclear programme. But the steady flow of disclosures about Iran's secret nuclear operations and the virulent anti-Israeli threats of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has prompted the fresh assessment of military options by Washington. The most likely strategy would involve aerial bombardment by long-distance B2 bombers, each armed with up to 40,000lb of precision weapons, including the latest bunker-busting devices. They would fly from bases in Missouri with mid-air refuelling.

The Bush administration has recently announced plans to add conventional ballistic missiles to the armoury of its nuclear Trident submarines within the next two years. If ready in time, they would also form part of the plan of attack.

Teheran has dispersed its nuclear plants, burying some deep underground, and has recently increased its air defences, but Pentagon planners believe that the raids could seriously set back Iran's nuclear programme.



Iran was last weekend reported to the United Nations Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency for its banned nuclear activities. Teheran reacted by announcing that it would resume full-scale uranium enrichment - producing material that could arm nuclear devices.

The White House says that it wants a diplomatic solution to the stand-off, but President George W Bush has refused to rule out military action and reaffirmed last weekend that Iran's nuclear ambitions "will not be tolerated".

Sen John McCain, the Republican front-runner to succeed Mr Bush in 2008, has advocated military strikes as a last resort. He said recently: "There is only only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, has made the same case and Mr Bush is expected to be faced by the decision within two years.

By then, Iran will be close to acquiring the knowledge to make an atomic bomb, although the construction will take longer. The President will not want to be seen as leaving the White House having allowed Iran's ayatollahs to go atomic.

In Teheran yesterday, crowds celebrating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution chanted "Nuclear technology is our inalienable right" and cheered Mr Ahmadinejad when he said that Iran may reconsider membership of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

He was defiant over possible economic sanctions.

11 February 2006: Iran plant 'has restarted its nuclear bomb-making equipment'

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2036145,00.html

The Sunday Times February 12, 2006


Bush urged to stir rebellion within Iran
Sarah Baxter, Washington



NEOCONSERVATIVES in Washington are urging President George W Bush to drop diplomacy with Iran in favour of boosting internal dissent and opposition forces within the Islamic regime.
In an open breach with White House policy, they argue the multilateral diplomacy pursued by Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, is encouraging the Iranians to snub the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and develop a nuclear bomb under cover of a peaceful energy programme.

Michael Rubin, a Middle East expert at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said: “The United States doesn’t have a policy on Iran. We should be looking for a way to address the people of the country.”

Rubin accused Rice of being tepid in her support for democratic reform and internal regime change. “I don’t believe Rice has ever put her neck out for freedom when the Soviet Union was dissolving or now,” he said.

Foreign policy hawks believe America should be assisting democratic forces inside Iran, much as President Ronald Reagan did with the trade union organisation Solidarity in Poland in the early 1980s.

Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative who helped to make the case for the invasion of Iraq, accused the Bush government of doing little “to exploit the evident weaknesses in the regime”.

The Wall Street Journal argued last week that “neorealists” such as Rice, who support diplomacy as the best way to project American power and interests, were consolidating their grip.

Rice helped to broker the agreement in London by recommending that Iran be reported by the IAEA to the United Nations security council for breaching the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, although it is unlikely to lead in the first instance to tough economic sanctions.

In response Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has told the IAEA to remove the seals and surveillance cameras at its nuclear development sites. Yesterday, in what could mark a further escalation in the crisis, he warned Iran might withdraw from the treaty.

Few foreign policy hawks believe the Iranian regime should be overthrown by force but they argue it could collapse from within.

There are signs of labour unrest in Iran. Mansoor Oslanloo, leader of a bus workers’ union, has been in prison since December last year and hundreds of union members have been arrested, prompting a wave of protests in Tehran.

The US state department spends roughly $4m (£2.3m) a year on the promotion of democracy and women’s rights in Iran — too little to make a difference, according to critics. A campaign for human rights and democracy in Iran is to be launched in the US Congress on March 2.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/681464.html

An Iranian girl has her face painted like the Iranian flag during a demonstration to mark the 27th anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution in Tehran on Saturday. (Reuters)

Iran pres.: The 'real Holocaust' is now, against Palestinians, Iraqis

By The Associated Press

In a speech of tens of thousands of Iranians massed in Azadi Square in the Iranian capital to mark the 27th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution which brought a Muslim theocracy to power, hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said that the true Holocaust was happening now in the Palestinian territories and Iraq.

He has declared the Nazi slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War II was a "myth" and that Israel should be "wiped off the map," prompting worldwide outrage

But the focus of his speech was the building crisis surrounding the country's disputed nuclear program.

Inspectors of the UN nuclear watchdog agency have stripped most
surveillance cameras and agency seals from Iranian nuclear sites and equipment as demanded by Tehran in response to referral to the U.N. Security Council, diplomats said Saturday.

The diplomats, who demanded anonymity in exchange for revealing the confidential developments, said the move left the International Atomic Energy Agency with only the most basic means to monitor Iran's nuclear activities

The Iranian president on Saturday rejected Western pressure to freeze the country's nuclear program and issued a veiled threat to walk away from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.


State-run television called the nationwide demonstrations "a nuclear referendum" and showed footage of rallies in Iran's major cities.

In Tehran's Azadi Square, some young men wore white shrouds symbolizing their readiness to die for the country's nuclear ambitions. A group of school students wore jackets emblazoned with the words: "Peaceful nuclear energy is our right."

"The nuclear policy of the Islamic Republic so far has been peaceful. Until now, we have worked inside the agency (International Atomic Energy Agency) and the NPT (Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty) regulations.

"If we see you want to violate the right of the Iranian people by using those regulations (against us), you should know that the Iranian people will revise it's policies. You should do nothing that will lead to such a revision in our policy," said Ahmadinejad.

He did not specify what changes Tehran envisioned, but it was believed to be a threat to withdraw from the NPT and the IAEA.

"The West is hiding its ugly face behind international bodies, but these bodies have no reputation among nations. You have destroyed the reputation of the NPT," the Iranian president said.

Ahmadinjad has not relented in attacking Israel and recently a Tehran newspaper announced it was holding a contest for caricatures of the Holocaust.

"If you want to find the real Holocaust, you will find it in Palestine where Zionists kill Palestinians everyday. You will find it in Iraq," he said.

He also charged that what he termed "Zionists" were behind the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed which has prompted a series of global demonstrations by angry Muslims and attacks on Western embassies, primarily those of Scandinavian countries.

"I ask everybody in the world not to let a group of Zionists who failed in Palestine (referring to the recent Hamas victory in Palestinian elections) insult the prophet.

"Now in the West insulting the prophet is allowed, but questioning the Holocaust is considered a crime," he said. "We ask, why do you insult the prophet? The response is that it is a matter of freedom, while in fact they (who insult the founder of Islam) are hostages of the Zionists. And the people of the U.S. and Europe should pay a heavy price for becoming hostages to Zionists," he declared.

Ahmadinejad appeared in part to be responding to a call on Thursday by UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan for Iran to restore a freeze on its nuclear
activities and pursue talks to shift its uranium enrichment program to Russia.

While Iran's nuclear program has been formally reported to the UN Security Council, Annan said what's important is that the Iranians and the Europeans who have been trying to resolve the nuclear dispute have said "negotiations are not dead ... and they are prepared to talk."

"And I would urge them to continue," Annan said.

"And I hope Iran will continue to freeze its activities, the way they are now, to allow talks to go forward, to allow them to pursue the Russian offer, and to allow negotiations with the European three and the Russians to come back to the table," Annan said.

Britain, Germany and France have led months of futile talks on behalf of the 25-nation European Union amid suspicions that Iran's civilian nuclear program is aimed at producing nuclear weapons - not electricity as Tehran insists.

Tensions started escalating last month after Iran removed UN seals and began nuclear research, including small-scale uranium enrichment.

On February 11, the International Atomic Energy Agency's board voted to send Iran's nuclear file to the Security Council, saying it lacked confidence in Tehran's nuclear intentions and accusing Iran of violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Iran responded by ending voluntary cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog agency and announcing it would start uranium enrichment and bar surprise inspections of its facilities.

But the Islamic republic left the door open for further negotiations over its nuclear program, saying it was willing to discuss Moscow's proposal to shift large-scale enrichment operations to Russian territory in an effort to allay suspicions.

High-level talks on the proposal are scheduled to begin in Moscow on February 16, but Russia says it still awaits word from Tehran. The proposal is backed by the United States and the European Union as a way to provide additional oversight of Iran's use of atomic fuel.

After years of opposition, Russia and China backed sending the Iran nuclear file to the Security Council. But in return, Moscow and Beijing demanded that the United States, France and Britain agree to let the Iran issue rest until March when the IAEA board meets to review the agency's investigation of Iran's nuclear program and compliance with board demands that it renounce uranium enrichment.

Annan said the IAEA report was expected at the end of the month.

Russia and France reach out to Hamas Christian Science Monitor
Hamas appeared to break out of its international isolation over the weekend as both Russia and France backed talks with the Islamic militants to discuss continued foreign aid to the cash strapped Palestinian Authority (PA). Hamas's plans to attend talks in Moscow drew initial Israeli accusations of a "slippery slope" toward legitimizing an organization branded as terrorists in the US and Europe. But the diplomatic opening might provide a way to steer the new Palestinian government away from the influence of more radical regimes such as Iran, some say. "The mentality of engagement is still the rule," says Shmuel Bar, a Middle East expert at the Herzlyia Interdisciplinary Institute just outside Tel Aviv. "If we engage them, we can influence them." Hamas, for its part, recently suggested that it would accept an open-ended truce with Israel. Leaders have also indicated that they may appoint cabinet ministers from outside the movement. Both moves are seen as an attempt to save face with the international community and allow a dialogue to go forward even with those who say they will not negotiate with the group. It also buys time for Hamas to adjust to its new responsibilities of running the government.
Rice questions democracy in Russia San Jose Mercury News
Putin's Gamble With Hamas The Moscow Times
European Jewish Press - Hindustan Times - IsraCast - Ha'aretz (subscription) - all 1,079 related »

Iran raises the stakes in nuclear dispute IranMania News
Iran's hardline regime has again raised the stakes in a standoff over its disputed atomic drive by warning it could follow the path of North Korea and quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, AFP reported. The Islamic republic's outspoken President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also unleashed a fresh verbal assault against Israel, repeating his view that the Holocaust is a "myth" and predicting that "Zionists" would soon be destroyed. "Iran has continued its nuclear drive within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the NPT, but if we see that you want to deprive us of our right using these regulations, know that the people will revise their policy in this regard," Ahmadinejad said in a thinly-veiled warning on Saturday. The NPT is the cornerstone of the global battle against the spread of nuclear weapons, prohibiting the development of the bomb and subjecting its signatories to IAEA inspections. Iran is under intense pressure to agree to a moratorium on nuclear fuel work that can be extended to make weapons, but insists it only wants to generate electricity and argues that its nuclear ambitions are therefore entirely legal. Although foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Sunday that Iran was "still committed" to the treaty, he nevertheless repeated the warning that this position could soon change. "We will decide depending on the position they have towards the Islamic republic," Asefi said when asked if Iran would abandon the NPT if fully referred to the UN Security Council on March 6, when the IAEA board next meets.
Iran Reaffirms Commitment to Nuclear Pact Forbes
Iran Says It Is Still Committed to Nuclear Treaty New York Times
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World sees shocking images of British soldiers' brutality Times Online
A SHOCKING breakdown of military discipline is caught on video as eight burly British soldiers rain 42 kicks and blows on four puny young male Iraqi civilians, one of them a child. The victims' helpless cries for mercy and howls of pain and terror are ignored by groups of troops casually passing by. One man is heard to say: "In the f***ing head." The most senior soldier, thought to be a sergeant, does nothing to stop the brutality but instead delivers a vicious kick to one victim's genitals. The video's soundtrack features a disturbing commentary from the cameraman, an excited sentry who laughs, sneers, encourages and mocks as the outrage unfolds before him.
Army's image in Iraq under the spotlight Guardian Unlimited
Blair Vows Probe of Alleged Abuse in Iraq Forbes
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- Brazil To Buy Saudi F-5 Jets And Make Missiles With SAfrica
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Brazil_To_...th_SAfrica.html

Brasilia, Brazil (AFP) Feb 12, 2006 - Brazil will build an air-to-air missile with South Africa and buy nine used F-5 jet fighters from Saudi Arabia, a leading newspaper reported Sunday, citing military sources.

Korea in Crisis: Is N.Korea becoming a Chinese colony?
By SEKAI NIPPO
Published February 11, 2006


TOKYO -- This is the sixteenth in an extended series of articles by a team of Sekai Nippo reporters on the crises that face North and South Korea and the prospects for a unified Korea. Today's is the final installment on South Korea. A link to an index of articles previously published in this series is at the bottom of this page. (Editor's note)

"China is turning North Korea into its colony."


This was the surprising message of a symposium sponsored by the Japan Foundation in December 2005. It was an occasion to hear an interim report on a project by the Tokyo Foundation to investigate economic activity involving the northeastern part of China and the eastern part of North Korea.

"Something extraordinary is happening between Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture [in China's Jilin Province] and North Korea," Yukio Hanabusa, a researcher with the Economic Research Institute for North East Asia who headed the project, said as he began his presentation to the symposium.

China has obtained long term rights to significant amounts of North Korea's underground natural resources and access to its ports in exchange for a large volume of goods now flowing from China into North Korea, Hanabusa claimed.

Recent growth in trade and investment between China and North Korea is extraordinary. According to material from South Korea's Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) and other agencies, the total value of China's investment in North Korea in 2004 was $50 million, or 50 times what it was in 2000.

The volume of trade between China and North Korea for 2004 was $1.385 billion, or about double the trade between North and South Korea for the same year. North Korea's trade with China is 42 percent of its total trade with all countries. More than 20 Chinese companies now have invested in North Korea.

When Chinese President Hu Jintao visited North Korea last October, he agreed to provide the impoverished country $2 billion in economic assistance.

South Korean experts point out that China's investment in North Korea accelerated following its investment of $24 million in 2003 to build the Dae An Friendship Glass Factory. Currently, China's capital investment in North Korea's mining sector includes the iron ore mine at Musan, the Hyesan Youth Copper Mine, Manpo zinc mine, Hoi Ryoung gold mine and Ryong Deung coal mine.

The Musan iron ore mine, located near the China-North Korean border, is particularly noteworthy, because it is known as the largest mine in Northeast Asia, with estimated coal reserves of 3 billion tons. In its peak, its annual production of iron ore reached 7 million tons. By 2005, however, production had plummeted to 1.5 million tons.

Current plans are to increase the production to 10 million tons in 2006.

The development of the Musan iron mine is being carried out in conjunction with a "modernization of railroads in North Korea's North Hamgyong Province, improvement of the rail line and primary roads into Musan and a modernization of the port of Cheong Jin and a steel mill at Keumchek," Hanabusa said.

Hanabusa also reported that China has secured 50-year rights to develop and using roads and ports in the Rajin-Sonbong Special Economic Zone in northeastern North Korea. The project includes plans to development main roads in the zone, modernize Rajin's port, and construct an industrial park and warehouses.

In particular, China's access to Rajin Port appears linked to Beijing's "Northeast Region Development Policy." The port is expected to serve as a way station to ship agricultural products from China's Jilin and Heilongjiang Provinces to China's central and southern regions, including Tianjin and Shanghai, Hanabusa said.

Once the development of the special economic zone is completed, "this area is going to be an area managed jointly by China and North Korea," Hanabusa said.

"In other words, it will become territory leased to China by North Korea," Hanabusa said.

China would finally regain the exit to the Japan Sea that it lost at the end of the 19th century.

"North Korean economy has been incorporated in China's 'North East Asia economic sphere'," Hanabusa said.
"China and North Korea are becoming one integrated entity."

The analysis of South Korean experts is that China wants to prevent North Korea from falling under the economic influence of the United States and Japan. Instead, it wants to expand its own influence in North Korea in the economic area in anticipation of possible future developments, including the eventual resolution of North Korea's nuclear development and the establishment of peace on the Korean peninsula.

China's influence in North Korea is not limited to economic area. Cell phones are becoming indispensable to North Koreans engaged in the trade with China. They use telephones connected to the networks of Chinese telecommunications companies that transmit their radio waves across the border and into North Korea's border areas along the Tumen and Yalu Rivers.

The speed and scale of China's advancement into North Korea are without parallel, and North Korea's colonization by China is steadily progressing.

---

See an index with links to all installments in this series published to date: blog.wpherald.com/wphblog/?p=123

This article was translated from Japanese and edited by World Peace Herald. For the original text, please visit www.worldtimes.co.jp

Analysis: Bush, Annan mend fences
By Roland Flamini
UPI Chief International Correspondent
Published February 11, 2006


WASHINGTON -- Kofi Annan's meeting with President George Bush on Monday represents the U.N. Secretary-General's return to Washington's good graces after the squabbles of the Iraq war, which Annan once declared illegal. His last White House visit was exactly two years ago. Since then, however, the Bush administration has mellowed towards the Secretary-General and enlisted U.N. help in re-shaping post-war Iraq, up to and including the December parliamentary elections.

Iraq will be high on Annan's talks agenda, notably the planned National Accord Conference, which the Arab League and the United Nations are "helping" the Iraqis to plan and convene. The purpose of the conference, which a senior U.S. official said could be held as early as March and will strive to include all Iraqi political parties and major institutions, is aimed at finalizing the emergence of the democratization of Iraq. A recent statement by the Arab League said the conference will confirm, "the unity, independence, and sovereignty of Iraq."


The same Arab League statement said the conference is also expected to call for the withdrawal of coalition forces, once Iraq's armed forces and police are able to handle the country's security situation. The senior American official said the call for a pullout was acceptable to Washington as long as no deadline was specified because, "The United States is against setting a time-table."

The Bush administration hopes the conference will help with its exit strategy; but with the United States not officially a participant in the discussions, the White House will once again turn to the U.N. to help to push the proceedings in the desired direction.

The violence across the Islamic world over the cartoons lampooning Mohammed is another item that has thrust itself into the bi-lateral agenda. Annan wants to launch a reconciliation campaign through the newly formed U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, run jointly by Spain and Turkey and designed to find solutions to just such cultural conflicts between the West and Islam.

Iran's insistence on enriching its own uranium in defiance of international opposition will also come up, if for no other reason than that it is a rare occasion when the United States, the European Union and the United Nations are walking in step. The ball will shortly be in Annan's court when the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, reports Iran to the U.N. Security Council for action.

Africa is another talking point for Annan, according to a U.N. source, particularly the Secretary-General's effort to persuade NATO, including the United States, to join a planned U.N. peacekeeping force that may take over from the African Union's troops in western Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region.

The issue of reforming the world organization has dominated the U.N. for the past year, with the United States in the person of its pugnacious representative John Bolton taking the lead in pushing for change in several key areas, and many suspicious Third World countries resisting it as a form of growing American influence (the Bush administration says, why not? the United States foots a third of the U.N. bill). For example, a Human Rights Council is expected to replace the Geneva-based Human Rights Commission, but many member countries are resisting Washington's insistence that only countries with a good human rights record should be eligible for membership of the new body.

In a sense, the meeting brings together two lame ducks, both working against a countdown to leave their mark. Annan's second (and last) term as Secretary-General ends in Jan 2007, and Bush has barely 33 months left in office, but more important can't be re-elected. Annan is rendered lamer by the fallout from the multi-million dollar Oil for Food scandal, in which his son Kojo was implicated by an independent inquiry. At the very least the Secretary-General himself is criticized for not keeping a tighter rein on the program, which involved selling Iraqi oil and using the money to buy food and medicine for the Iraqis while the country was under U.N. sanctions.

The Oil for Food program is not likely to come up directly, but it will be "in the room" when the president and Annan discuss U.S. proposals for management and oversight of the world body.

The issue of Annan's successor is not expected to come up either, according to the U.N. source. But a recent remark by Bolton that the United States does not regard as carved in stone the system of choosing the Secretary-General on the basis of a regional rotation has thrown an additional element of doubt into already complex and opaque selection process. Under the time-honored regional system, the new head of the U.N. should be from Asia. The Bush administration is said to favor an Eastern European candidate as a tribute to "New Europe's" support in the Iraq war. The White House favorite is former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski.

G-8 nations focus on energy security
By Michael Mainville
The Washington Times
Published February 12, 2006


MOSCOW -- Finance ministers from the world's wealthiest nations yesterday singled out soaring energy costs as the greatest threat to global economic growth this year.

"Overall global growth remains solid, and this is expected to continue in 2006," ministers from the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized countries said after closed-door talks in a hotel near Red Square.


"Risks remain, including high and volatile energy prices," the group said in its final communique.

Oil prices have risen 30 percent in the past year to more than $60 a barrel, stoking inflation, increasing business costs and cutting into consumers' pocketbooks.

The ministers said more work needs to be done to "improve the smooth functioning and stability of [energy] markets," promote investment in production, diversify consumption and develop alternative sources of energy.

Highlighting solid economic growth in the United States -- and a drop in the unemployment rate to 4.7 percent -- Treasury Secretary John W. Snow also raised worries over the effects of growing energy costs.

"We are all concerned about the risks of rising energy prices and what they do to global growth," Mr. Snow said after the talks.

The meeting in frigid Moscow marked Russia's first as president of the G-8, which also includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.

President Bush and other leaders of G-8 countries are to meet for a summit in St. Petersburg in July.

While oil and energy security dominated the meeting, the ministers also touched on a range of other topics.

They called for aid to developing nations fighting the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, outbreaks of which were reported in Africa for the first time last week and in the Western European nations of Italy and Greece yesterday. "We call on the donor community to provide financial support to poor countries fighting the epidemic," the ministers said.

The ministers also urged more action in the World Trade Organization (WTO) to open global markets in agriculture, industrial products, financial services and intellectual-property rights.

The meeting was a diplomatic success for Russia, which joined the G-8 in 1998 and took over as president for the first time this year.

The boom in energy prices has delivered a windfall to Russia, the world's second-biggest oil exporter, and has given it greater economic clout than in the past.

But the Russian presidency has been dogged by questions about Russia's reliability as an energy supplier after it temporarily cut off gas supplies to Ukraine in January, leading to disruptions in exports to Europe.

Western officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have also raised concerns over Russia presiding over the G-8 at the same time as critics accuse President Vladimir Putin of backtracking on democracy by increasing Kremlin controls over parliament, the press and private charitable organizations.

G-8 ministers did not raise these concerns publicly after yesterday's meeting and instead praised Russia's "improved fiscal position." Mr. Snow said the dispute with Ukraine was discussed at the meeting, but declined to comment on the details of the disagreement that sparked Russia's gas cutoff.

Mr. Snow also said that the United States and Russia are "in the homestretch" in discussions over Russia's bid to join the WTO.

The United States is one of the few countries that has not yet reached an agreement with Russia on WTO membership, and talks have stuck on the issue of opening financial markets, in particular Moscow's insistence that foreign banks not be allowed to operate branches in Russia.

"I think we are narrowing the differences and should be very close to a resolution," Mr. Snow said.

Transitioning from revolution to powerful elite
By David R. Sands
The Washington Times
Published February 11, 2006


WASHINGTON -- Just over a year ago, Yuri Lutsenko was manning the barricades and firing up the crowds in Kiev as a key tactician of Ukraine's "Orange Revolution."

This week, he was in Washington, meeting top U.S. officials and think tank scholars as the new government's minister of internal affairs, the most powerful law-enforcement post in the country.


"I was always sure that our democratic revolution would someday succeed, but I have to say never in my dreams did I consider that I would be one day sitting in this chair," Mr. Lutsenko said, speaking through an interpreter in an interview at the Ukrainian Embassy in Georgetown.

"I also think that a lot of the police officers who dealt with me when I was in the opposition never expected this either," the 42-year-old former electrical engineer added with a smile.

Mr. Lutsenko, a longtime activist against former President Leonid Kuchma, emerged as one of the most charismatic figures of the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution, which overturned a fraudulent presidential vote and vaulted pro-Western reformer Viktor Yushchenko to power.

With a street-rebel reputation and little administrative experience, Mr. Lutsenko was not the obvious choice to head one of the country's most powerful ministries, charged with everything from fighting corruption, terrorism and illegal immigration to overseeing Ukraine's widely resented traffic police.

"Frankly, it was absolutely unexpected for me when the president asked to take this post," he said.

He said the ministry has made good progress since he took over last February. Among his first acts were to dismiss the ministry's second in command, who heads the internal security forces, and the administrator of the traffic police.

About 2,500 police officers have been dismissed for failing to meet ministry standards and more than 600 criminal cases against officers have been referred to prosecutors, Mr. Lutsenko said. The ministry is also aggressively targeting official corruption.

Last month, three former Ukrainian police officers went on trial in the 2000 slaying of investigative journalist Georgy Gongadze. The long-stalled case proved critical in tarnishing Mr. Kuchma's rule both at home and abroad.

Mr. Lutsenko's Washington trip, which included meetings with top State Department, FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials, focused on joint cooperation on issues such as terrorism, immigration and narcotics trafficking. Kiev is also pressing for a bilateral extradition treaty, which the U.S. side has been reluctant to sign.

His trip came at a difficult moment for Mr. Yushchenko. In a nasty public break, his Orange Revolution ally, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, resigned as prime minister in August and is leading an independent bloc in hotly contested parliamentary elections next month.

Mr. Lutsenko acknowledged the uncertain political climate, but said he had no fears that the democratic, pro-Western ideals of the Orange Revolution were in danger.

"Politicians of every stripe in Ukraine now say they support those ideals," he said. "We have crossed the Rubicon and there is no going back."

Saddam: 'Down With Bush' CBS News
Saddam Hussein was forced to attend the latest session of his trial Monday, looking haggard and wearing a robe rather than his usual crisp suit as he shouted, "Down with Bush." His top co-defendant struggled with guards bringing him into the court. Saddam and his seven co-defendants had vowed not to attend the trial until the return of their lawyers. The defense team have said they are boycotting the proceedings until chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman is removed, alleging he is biased against their clients. Saddam entered the courtroom on his own at the start of Monday's session, but he looked weary and argued immediately with the judge, shouting slogans against U.S. President George W. Bush. "They have forcibly brought me here," he told Abdel-Rahman. "Exercise your right to try me in absentia." Saddam shouted, "Down with the agents. Down with Bush. Long live the nation," referring to the American president, as he entered the room, CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports. He wore a blue galabeya, a traditional Arab robe and a black jacket, a stark contrast to the tailored black suits he has worn to past sessions. After his entrance, co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim was brought in by guards holding him by the arms. Ibrahim, Saddam's half-brother and former intelligence chief, struggled with the guards while shouting angrily. He tried to address the judge, but Abdel-Rahman ordered guards to seat him in his chair. Ibrahim refused and sat on the floor with his back to the judge. Ibrahim was bare-headed, in contrast to past sessions when he wore an Arab head scarf, which he had insisted to the court that he be allowed to put on to preserve his dignity.
Saddam Trial to Resume Monday Voice of America
Boycott plagues Hussein trial CNN International
Scotsman - Independent Online - BBC News - Middle East Times - all 357 related »

Iran shelves Russia nuclear talks BBC News
Iran has postponed planned talks with Russia on plans to enrich uranium on Russian soil as a way to bypass a crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Thursday's talks have now been pushed back indefinitely, Iranian presidential spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said. They will recommence at a time of "mutual agreement," Mr Elham added. Iran recently said it was resuming nuclear research, sparking criticism and a referral to the UN Security Council by the UN nuclear agency. For its part, Russia said talks could still take place this week. "Our offer for the 16th still stands," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak said in Moscow.

Sanctions threat
Western powers are concerned that Iran's decision to resume research into uranium enrichment - a process which creates fuel for nuclear reactors and, potentially, for a nuclear bomb - is part of a plan to acquire nuclear weaponry. Iran says its programme is solely aimed at energy production.
Iran reduced to Russian roulette Asia Times Online
Iran Holds Out Its Hand to Moscow Kommersant
AKI - RIA Novosti - Canada.com - People's Daily Online - all 147 related »

Preval supporters march in Haiti BBC News
Thousands of people have taken to the streets in Haiti to demand that ex-President Rene Preval be declared the winner of last week's election. With three quarters of the votes counted, Mr Preval is just short of the 50% percent required to win outright. But his supporters say he should be declared president without having to face a run-off next month. Mr Preval used to be an ally of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was forced out of power two years ago. The front-runner, who has inherited Mr Aristide's strong support among the poor, is leading more than 30 presidential candidates. But his share of the vote has dropped to 49.1%. He held 61% of the vote after the first results were released late last week. Another ex-leader, Leslie Manigat's has 11.7% of the vote, while industrialist Charles Henri Baker has 8%, electoral officials say. Correspondents say there is uncertainty over when the final outcome of Tuesday's vote will be known - the announcement had initially been scheduled for Sunday evening.
Haitians Protest Over Slow Vote Count Voice of America
Preval may face Haiti runoff CNN International
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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/HB14Cb02.html
Exports, hybrids in changing China auto industry

BEIJING - In two indications of the continuing rapid evolution of China's booming auto industry, it was announced that in 2005, for the first time, China exported more autos than it imported. Also, the country's hybrid car industry has made great progress, with four Chinese auto makers expected to put hybrids on sale by the end of this year.

Exports exceeded imports in 2005
In 2005 China exported 172,639 autos, 11,031 more than it imported, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of



Commerce. This is the first time the country has exported more cars than it imported in a year. The value of these exported autos was US$1.58 billion, jumping 158.4% year on year. In terms of number of units, the increase was 120.5%.

Of the total, China exported 31,125 sedans worth $271 million, jumps of 233.4% and 222.2% year on year respectively, and 1,844 off-road vehicles, 10,442 microbuses, 6,433 large and medium-sized buses, 96,549 trucks and some special-use vehicles.

Meanwhile, China imported 161,608 autos worth $5.2 billion, down 8% and 4.5% year on year. Of the total, China imported 76,542 sedans worth $2.6 billion, down 34.1% and 20.7%, 65,966 off-road vehicles worth $1.8 billion, up 86.8% and 66.3%, and 12,487 microbuses worth $266 million, up 17% and 14.9%. China's import of large and medium-sized buses, trucks and special-use vehicles dropped in 2005.

Since the average unit price of autos exported by China is much lower than that of autos imported by China, the total dollar value of auto exports was less than one-third of the import value, despite the fact that exports exceeded imports in terms of numbers.

Hybrids to hit market
Environmentally friendly hybrid cars are expected to be released on to the Chinese market at the end of this year after four years of development. The cars, which run on a mixture of electricity and fuel, are made by several Chinese auto firms, including the Dongfeng Motor Corp (DFM), Chang'an Motor Corp, Chery Auto Co and the China FAW Group Corp.

Wan Gang, head of a national team of experts on the hybrid-automobile program, says scaled production of the vehicles has been listed as a key task in China's 11th Five-Year Program that begins this year, so that more Chinese families can own the low-emission cars by 2010.

The development of hybrid vehicles was listed as a key project in China's "863 program" - a national high-tech plan initiated in March 1986 to enhance the country's overall power - and as part of the 10th Five-Year Plan adopted in 2001.

In recent years, Chinese experts have made great progress on the design and development of a series of hybrid buses, including the fuel-cell bus, the hybrid-electric bus and a bus run purely on electricity. Twenty hybrid-electric buses, designed and made by DFM, are in service in Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei province. Another flagship hybrid bus also drove off the China FAW Group Corp production line recently.

Wan noted that the two types of hybrid buses have both passed official tests, signifying the start of the mass production of environment-friendly buses in China. Statistics released by the FAW said hybrid buses can save 30% over conventional buses with respect to oil use, and reduce harmful exhaust by 30%. Wan says an increasing number of Chinese automobile manufacturers have selected hybrid vehicles as targets for future development. "These firms have formed China's first hybrid-automobile production base," Wan acknowledged.

A senior official with the Ministry of Science and Technology said China has made remarkable progress in the development of hybrid vehicles, and that in-house production would undoubtedly increase its competitiveness in the global market. Despite the progress in the industry, experts maintain that its level of technology is still far behind more advanced international standards. Experts urged the Chinese government to issue more favorable measures in support of the production of hybrid cars in China.

(Asia Pulse/XIC)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/HB14Cb01.html
China flap turns up heat on US tech giants
By Kent Ewing

HONG KONG - Internet giants Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Cisco Systems are bracing for a severe tongue-lashing when a US House of Representatives subcommittee on global human rights convenes on Wednesday.

The stakes are high: the companies involved are the crown jewels of the US high-technology industry, and the outcome of the



brewing controversy over their alleged acquiescence to Chinese government human-rights violations could substantially affect the future of their businesses in that country - universally acknowledged to be a crucial market.

Politicians and human-rights activists promise to pull no punches over what they characterize as the dubious ethics of agreements the US-based companies have struck with the Chinese government. In a nutshell, the companies have vowed to adhere to what Westerners generally regard as repressive Chinese laws on censorship as well as - at least in Yahoo's case - aiding Chinese authorities in what would clearly be considered unacceptable violations of the right to privacy in the United States. All this comes, however, in exchange for entry into the fastest-growing Internet market on the planet.

There have been some signs in recent days that the protests against the tech companies' activities may be gaining traction. On Sunday, US Congressman Chris Smith was reportedly drafting a bill that would force US Internet firms to locate computer servers outside of China and other nations deemed repressive to human rights. If this should become law, it would have a major impact on search-engine businesses such as Google and Yahoo, because it could make their search engines unusably slow inside China. Google has already reported that its main search engine is down about 10% of the time in China and slow even when it is working - problems the company attributes to its servers being located outside China.

With access to 110 million Internet users - second only to the US - at stake in China, kowtowing to the country's leaders makes perfect business sense. But it has also raised some free-speech and human-rights questions that company executives will no doubt be forced to field at Wednesday's hearings on Capitol Hill. How far are tech firms willing to go to please Chinese authorities? And, of course, how far do those authorities plan to take them?

Up to this point, the tech firms have defended themselves by stating that they, like any foreign enterprise in any field, are obliged to follow Chinese laws while operating in China. It is, however, exactly this adherence to the law that has generated such controversy in the West.

At Wednesday's hearings, for example, Yahoo representatives might be asked about the case of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist who has been jailed for 10 years after the company helped police trace e-mails he had sent to human-rights organizations overseas, deemed seditious by the Chinese government.

And Microsoft executives may be obliged to explain why several weeks ago, at Beijing's request, the company closed down the popular online journal of blogger Zhao Jing, who also works as a research assistant in the Beijing bureau of the New York Times. Committee members may also want to know why, last year, Microsoft launched an MSN portal that blocks the use of the words "freedom" and "democracy" in the names of blogs. On Google's China search engine, www.google.cn, the word "democracy" is also a no-no, as are any mention of Taiwanese or Tibetan independence, the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown or the banned Falungong spiritual movement, regarded as a cult by Beijing.

Is the recurrent reply to all these developments - "But it's the law" - an adequate one? Increasingly, it seems, the tech firms themselves realize the answer is no. On Wednesday, we should expect a more robust defense. Indeed, that defense has already begun to take shape and, despite the rage of activists and certain members of the US Congress, it has considerable substance, especially here in Asia.

Bill Gates himself weighed in recently at a Microsoft-sponsored conference in Lisbon on the use of Internet technology in the public sector, arguing that it is better for Microsoft to be present rather than absent in such markets as China, even if restricted. And, the Microsoft chief added, government censorship of the Internet is an illusory goal at best. "You may be able to take a very visible website and say that something shouldn't be there," he said, "but if there's a desire by the population to know something, it's going to get out."

Following up on its chairman's remarks in Portugal, Microsoft announced new company guidelines on how it will deal with demands for government censorship in China or anywhere else. Under the new policy, the company will only block content on its MSN Spaces if served formal notice by a government that the content is in violation of the law, or if it transgresses MSN's terms of use. And, from now on, Microsoft will notify users whose blogs have been shut down; in the past, the unlucky bloggers were surprised by a unexplained dead link. In addition, the company is working on technology that will allow content blocked by censorship laws in one country to be seen by the rest of the world.

As for Google - the company with the "do no evil" motto - the firm can piggyback on Gates' argument and claim that the complete absence of its service in China would represent a greater evil than its fettered presence. For now, the China Google search engine sends an explanatory message to any user whose quest for information has been filtered. In the future, the company hopes, domestic and international demand will lead to fewer and fewer such messages. In the meantime, uncertainty over the future of the company's China venture has arguably contributed to a recent decline in its stock price: Google has tumbled 25% compared with a month ago, and some analysts are predicting a further 50% decline.

On Wednesday, the US Big Four - Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Cisco, which supplied the Chinese government with switching equipment that is a great help to its Web monitoring and filtering system - plan to present a united front. Microsoft and Yahoo, in an attempt to transfer the ball to Washington's court, have already teamed up to issue a joint statement calling on the US government to take steps to persuade Beijing to stop censoring the Internet.

"We urge the United States government to take a leadership role in this regard," the statement said, "and have initiated a dialogue with relevant US officials to encourage such government-to-government engagement."

So Wednesday's hearings may not turn out to be the one-sided slamming session that has been anticipated. For many people in Asia, however, the political point and counterpoint that are about to take place in Washington seem little more than a rhetorical luxury. If members of the human-rights committee were to ask Chinese Internet users if they are more informed now, even with a censored Internet, than they have ever been before, the answer would be an unqualified yes. And surely the way to fight back against censorship in China is not for the US companies to pull out, thus leaving Chinese cyberspace completely in the hands of the Public Security Bureau.

The situation is complex, but some things seem reasonably clear: in the new, economically rising China, censorship probably will not end because of anything Google and/or other foreign companies decide to do or not to do. And neither will congressional ranting in the US make much difference. When blocking the free flow of information across its borders dulls China's competitive edge and impedes its economic growth sufficiently to put Communist Party rule at risk, it will stop. For now, indeed, presence (not to mention huge profits) is better than absence.

Kent Ewing is a teacher and writer at Hong Kong International School. He can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HB11Df04.html
Taliban deal lights a slow-burning fuse
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Dozens of influential delegates, including religious scholars, tribal chiefs and important citizens from several provinces, are gathered in the courtyard of the newly renovated Qasr-i-Shahi (Royal Palace) built by late Afghan King Ghazi Amanullah, who liberated Afghanistan from British rule.

The dignitaries are assembled to greet the governor of Nangarhar province, Gul Aga Sherzai, who recently returned from a visit to the United States. The ceremony is in line with the Afghan tradition of greeting anybody powerful who returns home. In this ceremony, the governor distributes gifts to the guests, also a part of Afghan tradition. Equally important, the governor and the delegates exchange views in a series of speeches.

Gul Aga Sherzai makes his address, outlining his initiatives in the
social and economic sectors. Before he invites the delegates to speak, he urges this correspondent to put down his camera, which until then had recorded the ceremonies.

A noble Pashtun with a greying beard stands up and responds to Gul Aga Sherzai's speech.

"You might have rebuilt Qasr-i-Shahi, but you should also have come up with a solution to the foreign intervention in Afghan affairs. Now is the time that we should ask the kharjis [foreigners] to leave Afghanistan and let us decide matters on our own," the man says, speaking in Pashtu. His long speech continues in this manner.

Gul Aga Sherzai quietly finishes his tea and stands up. "There is no question that the kharjis should leave Afghanistan, but before that we should make ourselves strong enough. We should be self-reliant and self-sufficient."

It is debate such as this that the governor does not want recorded; in eastern Afghanistan, on the record everything is fine, but in fact it is not.

Traveling in the eastern region to Jalalabad one can see the complete writ of the government. Construction work is going on everywhere along the main highways. Life in Jalalabad appears normal. And unlike the constantly restive areas to the south, there are no bomb blasts or suicide attacks. The Taliban do not challenge the government, nor do they carry out attacks on government buildings, as in other areas.

This reminds one that Jalalabad was surrendered to allied forces without a fight when the Taliban retreated in the face of the US-led invasion of 2001. The Taliban simply melted into their tribes.

Shershah Hamdard, the editor of the local Nangarhar Daily, comments, "Whether people are Taliban or members of the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan [HIA], they are Afghans first, and if they live as peaceful citizens nobody objects to them. Now many people who were Taliban serve in the local administration, and many important positions are held by people who were members of the Hizb."

This is the on-the-record view. Everything appears calm and normal. Under the surface, though, a time bomb is ticking, and even the Director of Information and Culture, Mohammed Hashim Ghamsharik, admits that "unscrupulous elements" are a threat to peace and stability in the province.

The real Nangarhar
Jalalabad is the second-largest city of Afghanistan and the capital of the eastern province of Nangarhar. Ever since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the late 1970s, Jalalabad has remained a political stronghold of Afghan communists, as well as secular nationalists.

However, across the province the dynamics are somewhat different. The suburbs of Jalalabad are full of people loyal to the HIA led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or another faction led by Moulvi Younus Khalis.

The Taliban never had direct support among the people of Nangarhar province. The Taliban mobilized forces from Kandahar, Paktia, Paktika and Khost to defeat local warlords in the province. This resulted in an exodus of commanders loyal to Hekmatyar to Pakistan, or else they stayed on as ordinary citizens.

The commanders loyal to Moulvi Khalis also either migrated to Pakistan (like the slain brothers Abdul Haq and Haji Abdul Qadeer) or they joined the Taliban.

After the fall of the Taliban, Jalalabad came under the control of nationalist tribals loyal to former King Zahir Shah, while in the surrounding areas the "converted" Taliban and HIA loyalists lay low.

The current calm, therefore, precedes a storm.

The various tribes have struck an unwritten deal with the provincial government that it will not undertake search operations in and around Jalalabad.

Such an arrangement was also said to have been made with the previous governor, Haji Deen Mohammed (now the governor of Kabul province); that he struck a deal with the Taliban to prevent the province from falling into chaos. As a result, Haji Deen was transferred to Kabul.

When Gul Aga Sherzai became governor in Nangarhar he was urged by allied forces to hunt down Taliban forces. As a result, joint patrols of allied forces and Afghan police went on raids, but they immediately met with resistance.

So a few months ago a messenger of the Taliban personally met Gul Aga Sherzai and other government officials and told them that should any more raids occur, their reward would be death squads. Thus a lull prevails in Nangarhar.

Building up the resistance
The focus of the resistance at present is in south Afghanistan, from Kandahar (the previous Taliban stronghold) up to Kunar. The strategy is to first establish an unbreakable foothold in the south, and then spread to other areas, such as Jalalabad, where silent supporters will rise up and establish new fronts. Kabul, as it was when the Taliban finally seized power in 1996, would be the final prize.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

Jerusalem Newswirewww.jnewswire.com
Iran to West: Remove Israel, or we will
By Ryan Jones

February 12th, 2006

If the West fails to peacefully remove the “Zionist entity” from the Middle East, the “Palestinians” and their Islamic allies will do so through violent fury, warned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a mass demonstration in Tehran Saturday.

Addressing the hundreds of thousands who turned out to mark the 27th anniversary of Iran's “Islamic Revolution,” the virulent leader, as reported by WorldNetDaily, said regarding Israel:

“We ask the West to remove what they created sixty years ago and if they do not listen to our recommendations, then the Palestinian nation and other nations will eventually do this for them. Remove Israel before it is too late and save yourself from the fury of regional nations.”
Islam dictates that formerly-Muslim dominated lands cannot revert to permanent non-Muslim control. It is this cornerstone of their faith that drives the murderous anti-Israel policies of Hamas and most of the Jewish state's Middle East neighbors.

But the threat is not only to Israel and other non-Muslim nations that have regained their sovereignty. Reconquering them is only the first step.

According to the Muslim faith, jihad must be waged until the entire world is under the thumb of Islam. Ahmadinejad declared that now is the time for the West to bow to this reality and submit to Allah:

“On the anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the Iranian nation, numbering in the millions, calls upon those governments to worship Allah.”
Similar sentiment was expressed by Iran's Hamas allies in the Palestinian Authority last week.

Speaking at a Damascus mosque on February 3, overall Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal declared:

“We say to this West... By Allah, you will be defeated... Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination, but a fact.”Copyright 2002-2004 Jerusalem Newswire Print Close

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Monday, 13 February 2006 close window

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Posted to the web on: 13 February 2006
US hones military strategy as last resort against Iran
Stefan Smith

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Sapa-AFP

LONDON — US military strategists are drawing up plans for an attack on Iran as a last resort to stop the Islamic republic from developing nuclear weapons, the Sunday Telegraph in London, reported yesterday.



In a front-page dispatch from Washington, it said US central and strategic command planners were “identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation”.


The planners are reporting to the office of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with a view to having a military option if diplomatic efforts fail to put the brakes on Iran’s suspected bid to make a nuclear bomb.


“This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment,” the newspaper quoted a senior Pentagon adviser as saying. “This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months.”


Iran’s outspoken President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also unleashed a fresh verbal assault against Israel — repeating his view that the Holocaust was a “myth” and predicting “Zionists” would soon be destroyed.

“Iran has continued its nuclear drive within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but if we see that you want to deprive us of our right using these regulations, know that the people will revise their policy,” Ahmadinejad said on Saturday.




Earlier this month, the IAEA referred Iran to the United Nations Security Council after the oil-rich nation resumed its uranium enrichment programme.

SA abstained in the vote.


The treaty is the cornerstone of the global battle against the spread of nuclear weapons, prohibiting the development of the bomb and subjecting its signatories to IAEA inspections.

Iran is under intense pressure to agree to a moratorium on nuclear fuel work that can be extended to make weapons, but insists it only wants to generate electricity and argues that its nuclear ambitions are therefore entirely legal.

Although foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said yesterday that Iran was “still committed” to the treaty, he nevertheless repeated the warning that this position could soon change.


The IAEA left a one-month window for diplomacy, for Iran to return to a full suspension of enrichment-related work and cooperate more with IAEA inspectors.

So far Iran has done the opposite, setting the scene for a major showdown.

Iran’s parliament speaker Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel said nuclear research would be resumed yesterday or today, adding that an IAEA team was in Iran to supervise this process.










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British think tank says attack on Iranian nuclear sites would kill thousands, spark war
By Associated Press February 13, 2006


An Iranian couple at a demonstration to mark the 27th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, in Tehran, Saturday Feb. 11, 2006. (AP)

A U.S. air assault on Iranian nuclear and military facilities would likely kill thousands of people, spark a long-lasting war and push Iran to accelerate its atomic program, a British think tank predicted in a report published Monday.

The Oxford Research Group, which specializes in arms control and nonproliferation issues, said military action against Iran, "either by the United States or Israel, is not an option that should be considered under any circumstances."

The Bush administration has refused to rule out the use of force if Iran does not comply with international diplomatic efforts to curb its contentious nuclear program. Iran says it is seeking only to generate electricity, but the United States alleges that the Islamic republic aims to build nuclear weapons.

The report by University of Bradford professor Paul Rogers said a U.S. attack would likely consist of simultaneous air strikes on more than 20 key nuclear and military facilities, designed to disable Iran's nuclear and air-defense capabilities. Such strikes would probably kill several thousand people, including troops, nuclear program staff and "many hundreds" of civilians.

The report said a military attack would spur Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, accelerate its nuclear programs and step up support to insurgents in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and would fuel anti-American sentiment around the world.

Escalating military confrontation would draw in other states in the region, it warned, making "a protracted and highly unstable conflict virtually certain."

"A state of war stretching over years would be in prospect," the group warned.

Nuclear-armed Israel views Iran as its biggest threat and has joined Washington in charging that Tehran is trying to build nuclear weapons. Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said last month that Israel was preparing for military action if diplomacy failed.

The Oxford Research Group report said an attack by Israeli forces, while on a smaller scale than a U.S. strike, also would have negative consequences.

"Alternative ways must be found of defusing current tensions and avoiding an exceptionally dangerous confrontation, however difficult it might be," said the group's director, John Sloboda.

Azerbaijan an ally in Iran nuke crisis


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yaakov katz , THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 11, 2006

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In the latest development in the crisis over Iran's nuclear enrichment program, diplomats said that IAEA inspectors have stripped most surveillance cameras and agency seals from Iranian nuclear sites and equipment as demanded by Tehran in response to its referral to the UN Security Council.

With most surveillance equipment and seals from Iran's nascent uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz now removed - and Iran recently ending the agency's rights to in-depth nuclear probes at short notice - the IAEA has few means to monitor the progress of Tehran's enrichment efforts, which can create either nuclear fuel or the fissile core of warheads.

Meanwhile, foreign diplomats stationed in Azerbaijan said over the weekend that Azerbaijan was a strategic partner to the US and Israel and could play a major role in the current showdown with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

US officials stationed in Baku said that Azerbaijan, wedged in between Russia in the north and Iran in the south, could possibly use the 20 million Azeris who lived in northern Iran to convince the radical regime and its extremist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to back down from developing nuclear arms.

"The Azeris in Iran could possibly lead a coup and assist in overthrowing the current regime there," one official told The Jerusalem Post. "They see that Azerbaijan life is improving and becoming more westernized while in Iran they are continuously suffering."

US officials said they had an "extraordinary relationship" with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev who granted them permission to use the country to flyover and stop in throughout the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. In total, 142 US planes, officials said, flew over Azeri skies in 2005.

"Azerbaijan regards militant political Islam as a threat to itself," a senior US diplomat stationed here said. A Muslim and predominately Shi'ite but secular country, Azerbaijan, the official said, has been serving as a strategic partner to the US in the global war on terrorism since 9/11 and has troops stationed in Afghanistan.

The US military reportedly has listening stations along Azerbaijan's border with Iran. According to other media reports, the US and Israel have considered using Azerbaijan as a launching pad for an attack on Iran's nuclear reactors.

In public however, Azeri officials have ruled out the possibility that their land would be used in an aggressive attack on Iran. Last Monday, Aliyev told Iran's envoy to Baku that he would not allow the US to launch an attack from his country's territory.

US officials here said that if they wanted to attack Iran they could always use Iraq or Afghanistan where the army is already heavily stationed.

"We will probably not let the US use Azerbaijan to launch a strike on Iran," Azeri Minister of Emergency Situations Kamaladdin Heydarov told the Post Saturday night adding that an attack on Iran would destabilize the region. "We need to restrain Iran," the minister continued. "But if the US attacks [Iran] it will bring bad results to the entire region."

Local Jews said they were afraid of the Iranian situation and that its shock waves would reach Baku, which, until now, is a safe and anti-Semitic-free place for Jews. If Iran were attacked, especially by troops based in Azerbaijan, the Jews said, they might feel repercussions.

"All we want is for things to stay quiet and the way they have been for years," said Reuven Ismailov, a local Baku Jew. "We are afraid of anything that might unbalance the region."

Israel having an embassy in Baku, said it viewed relations with Baku to be of extreme importance.

Israel's Ambassador to Baku, Arthur Lenk, told a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations visiting here that Azerbaijan might use the Ashkelon-Eilat oil pipeline to transfer oil it plans to begin retrieving from the Caspian Sea to countries in the West.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference, said he was optimistic Azerbaijan would remain loyal to its relationship with Israel throughout the Iranian crisis. "The message from here has been very clear," Hoenlein said. "Azerbaijan takes its relationship with Israel very seriously and they could play a key role in the Iranian showdown."

Hoenlein was leading a 100-person delegation to Azerbaijan this weekend for talks with local Jewish leaders and government officials. "We looked forward to this very timely gathering in view of our heightened concern regarding the Jewish communities in Europe, Russia and Asia as the war on terrorism moves ahead," Hoenlein said of the trip.

On Monday, the group is scheduled to meet with President Aliyev and Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...icle%2FShowFull

[Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../ixnewstop.html

UN inquiry demands immediate closure of Guantanamo
By Con Coughlin, Defence and Security Editor in New York
(Filed: 13/02/2006)

A United Nations inquiry has called for the immediate closure of America's Guantanamo Bay detention centre and the prosecution of officers and politicians "up to the highest level" who are accused of torturing detainees.

The UN Human Rights Commission report, due to be published this week, concludes that Washington should put the 520 detainees on trial or release them.


The Red Cross monitors the centre at Guantanamo monthly
It calls for the United States to halt all "practices amounting to torture", including the force-feeding of inmates who go on hunger strike.

The report wants the Bush administration to ensure that all allegations of torture are investigated by US criminal courts, and that "all perpetrators up to the highest level of military and political command are brought to justice".

It does not specify who it means by "political command" but logically this would include President George W Bush.

The demands are contained in the final report of the commission's working group on arbitrary detention, which will be presented at its Geneva headquarters in the next few days. A copy of the report has been obtained exclusively by The Daily Telegraph.

The report is bound to intensify the already strained relations between the US and the UN over the Iraq war.

Washington officials yesterday denounced it as "a hatchet job" when informed of the contents by this newspaper.

"This shows precisely what is wrong with the United Nations today," said a senior official. "These people are supposed to be undertaking a serious investigation of the facts relating to Guantanamo.

"Instead, they deliver a report with a bunch of old allegations from lawyers representing released detainees that are so generalised that you cannot even tell what they are talking about.

"When the UN produces an unprofessional hatchet job like this it discredits the whole organisation."

The Bush administration has repeatedly called for the UN's wholesale reform, and the report is likely to lead to demands from Congress for a freeze on Washington's annual donations.

The authors question the right of America to classify the detainees as "enemy combatants" and argue that the "war on terror" is no justification for holding them indefinitely without charge.

The report is also deeply critical of the US over recent disclosures that some of the detainees have been subjected to force-feeding when they have gone on hunger strike.

The authors argue that force-feeding is akin to torture, and demands that "the authorities in Guantanamo Bay do not force-feed any detainee who is capable of forming a rational judgment and is aware of the consequences of refusing food."

But US officials refuted the suggestion that force-feeding is torture, arguing that they had a duty under international law to protect the lives of the detainees.

"We have a duty to prevent people killing themselves," said an official, "and we are proud of the fact that none of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay has died since it opened."

The Guantanamo Bay detention centre was adapted to hold hundreds of al-Qa'eda fighters captured during the 2001 war in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban.

More than 750 detainees have been processed by the facility during the past four years.

After interrogation by US intelligence officers, some have been released and others returned to their country of origin.

Because the al-Qa'eda fighters do not wear uniforms and have no allegiance to any government they are not covered by the Geneva Conventions.

And while there is insufficient evidence to charge most of the 520 detainees with war crimes, the US insists on the right to detain them to prevent them returning to the battlefield to carry out further attacks against the coalition.

There have already been at least 12 instances where released Guantanamo detainees have resumed attacks against the coalition.

US officials are also prepared to return detainees to their home countries, assuming those countries are prepared to receive them and that they will not be subjected to torture on their return.

While American officials are prepared to concede that there are conflicting interpretations over how the laws governing international conflict should be applied, they are furious at the way the investigation was conducted, especially the evidence that the four "special rapporteurs" who compiled the report have used to reach their conclusions.

Although Washington invited the group to visit Guantanamo at the end of last year to inspect the facility, the rapporteurs rejected the invitation after American officials made it clear that they would not be allowed to meet the detainees.

"They [the rapporteurs] were offered the same access as congressmen responsible for overseeing the facility, but they declined to take up the offer," said a government official. "And then they complain that they had no access to doctors or guards - all of which they were offered."

The Bush administration also challenges whether it is the responsibility of a body such as the UN Human Rights Commission to investigate Guantanamo.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the internationally recognised body responsible for monitoring detention facilities, visits Guantanamo on a monthly basis.

DEBKAfile Exclusive: Hamas expects an invitation to Baghdad from Iraqi prime minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari

February 13, 2006, 6:45 PM (GMT+02:00)

Our sources in Baghdad report Hamas leaders are making a point of being received and recognized by an Arab government backed to the hilt and sustained by the US government and army.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are urging Jaafari to invite Hamas leaders as a show of independence.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources note: An invitation from the democratically-elected government in Baghdad to a democratically-elected Palestinian (terrorist) party would place the Washington in a cleft stick, after having initiated both elections. Cooperation between the only two elected Arab regimes would be hard to challenge. On the other hand, since Hamas is listed as a terrorist group in the US and Europe, such cooperation would show the Bush administration as having placed democratic reform in the Middle East ahead of the global war on terror and at its expense. Israel’s efforts to internationally isolate a Hamas government would not have much chance if Baghdad invited the terror group’s leaders in the wake of a lengthening list of capitals started by Moscow, Ankara, Cairo, Riyadh, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.

Copyright 2000-2006 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/health/...reece__Roundup_

Health News


EU confirms H5N1 bird flu in Slovenia, Bulgaria, Greece (Roundup)
Feb 13, 2006, 16:47 GMT

A member of the Greek Health Organization collects a dead swan for examination in Kavala, northern Greece, 650 km north of Athens, Monday 13 February 2006. Greece and Italy reported on Saturday that swans with the H5N1 bird flu virus were found the first known cases in the European Union of wild birds with the deadly strain of the disease. EPA/HARIS IORDANIDIS
Brussels/Rome - The European Commission on Monday confirmed the presence of the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu in Slovenia, Bulgaria and Greece as the Italian government moved to reassure consumers there after last week's discovery of the virus in dead swans.

The European Commission confirmed that samples sent to the EU reference laboratory in England after a first analysis by local research institutes confirmed the H5N1 strain of bird flu in Slovenia, Bulgaria and Greece.

A Commission spokesman said that in keeping with EU rules, national authorities in EU members Greece, Slovenia and Italy had established a three-kilometre protection zone and a 10 kilometre surveillance zone around the area where the infected swans had been found.

Poultry within the protection zone must be kept indoors and any movement of birds is banned except where they are being brought directly to the slaughterhouse.

The Commission said that imports of poultry and poultry products from non-EU member Bulgaria were already banned and that the restrictions would be further extended to cover live poultry and birds as well as eggs and unprocessed feathers from the affected areas.

The EU's top veterinary experts are set to meet in Brussels on February 16 to analyse the situation.

Meanwhile, in Italy, Coldiretti, a farmers' group, said the sale of chicken meat had dropped by about 50 per cent since bird flu was first detected on home soil on Saturday.

Chicken consumption has already fallen in Italy since the outbreak of bird flu in Asia, and Coldiretti said Monday it was concerned that the spread could cause serious damage to a business worth 3.5 million euros (4.16 million dollars) and which employs 180,000 people.

Italian Health Minister Francesco Storace, meanwhile, visited the four provinces where bird flu has so far been detected and assured poultry farmers they would be compensated for their losses.

Storace confirmed that six swans had so far tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus. The animals were among 22 found dead in the southern regions of Calabria, Apulia and Sicily.

Despite the Italian public's sudden distaste for chicken, poultry remained on the menu in the Athletes' Villages at the Turin Olympics, where organisers said the consumption of chicken and other poultry posed no health risk.

Meanwhile, Greece said Monday that two people had been quarantined as a precautionary measure pending results of tests for bird flu, just two days after bird flu was confirmed in three dead swans in the country.

The first case involved a 15-year-old boy who showed symptoms usually associated with bird flu after coming in contact with a swan 10 days ago. The second case involved a 29-year-old hunter who killed three wild ducks a week ago.

Panayiotis Efstathiou, head of the government coordinating committee on bird flu, told Greek radio that in both cases initial tests came back negative but that a second round of tests would be conducted within days.

The two patients were reportedly in separate hospitals in the northern Greek port city of Thessaloniki, near the place where the three swans were discovered.

In Germany, the government said Monday it was set to order poultry be kept indoors over fears of spreading bird flu to its borders.

Germany had planned to impose a ban on keeping poultry outdoors from March 1, but a spokeswoman for Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer said the ban would likely be brought forward given the spread of the disease within the EU.

Elsewhere, authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina on Monday announced a ban on the import of live poultry, poultry meat and poultry products from Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and Slovenia.

Avian flu has killed birds in 20 countries and infected at least 166 people, killing 88 of them.

Experts fear that H5N1 could evolve into a strain that could be passed from human to human, not just from birds to human as is currently the case, sparking a human flu pandemic.


© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

http://www.aljazeerah.info/13%20nb/Iranian...0Expression.htm

Iranian Newspaper, Hamshahri, Calls for Holocaust Cartoons to Test Purported Western Freedom of Expression

By NASSER KARIMI Associated Press Writer

Feb 13, 2006, 12:39 PM EST

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- A prominent Iranian newspaper opened a competition Monday seeking cartoons about the Holocaust in what it called a test of whether the West would be as supportive of freedom of expression over Nazi genocide as it was with caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Hamshahri, one of Iran's top five newspapers, published the international call for cartoons in English and Farsi under the title: "What is the Limit of Western Freedom of Expression?" on its Web site. The announcement also appeared on page 31 of the print version of the paper.

"We don't intend retaliation over the drawings of the prophet. We just want to show that freedom is restricted in the West," said Davood Kazemi, who has been cartoon editor at the paper since 1992 and is executive manager of the contest.

The contest comes in the wake of widespread Muslim fury over the drawings of the Prophet Muhammad and a few months after hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked outrage in Europe for saying Israel should be "wiped off the map" and that the Holocaust was a "myth."

The drawings of Islam's most revered figure - including one that depicts the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb - first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September. They were recently reprinted in several publications in Europe, the United States and elsewhere in what publishers said was a show of solidarity for freedom of expression.

Islam widely holds that representations of the prophet are banned for fear they could lead to idolatry.

"We expect those papers who published the cartoons (of Muhammad) to reproduce the cartoons which will be selected during our competition," Kazemi said. "Even Israeli cartoonists could send their works to the contest."

Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the Danish newspaper in which the prophet drawings first appeared in September, said earlier this month that his paper would run satirical cartoons about the Holocaust.

But Jyllands-Posten's editor in chief, Carsten Juste, later dismissed Rose's comment, saying "in no circumstances will publish Holocaust cartoons." Rose went on indefinite leave last week.

Kazemi noted that the Iranian paper would not accept any "insulting" cartoons. He did not elaborate.

The call for drawings said that in the West, it was "an unforgiven crime" to debate and review issues such as "looting and crimes perpetrated by the U.S. and Israel, as well as alleged historical events like the Holocaust."

It said the paper was soliciting contributions on the theme of the Holocaust and the limit of Western freedom of expression.

"In the wake of the publication of the profane cartoons in several European newspapers, Hamshahri is going to measure the sanctity of freedom of expression among the Westerners," the announcement said.

May 5 is the deadline for entries and each contestant can enter up to three submissions.

"Some weeks after the deadline we will announce the results of the completion," Kazemi said. "Select cartoons will be reproduced in a catalog and the works will go on public display."

Kazemi stressed that the government had nothing to do with the contest.

"Government authorities did not affect decision-making process for holding the contest. The idea was independently initiated by the paper," Kazemi said.

The contest was co-sponsored by the Caricature House, a Tehran exhibition center for cartoons.

Both the newspaper and the exhibition center are owned by the Tehran Municipality, which is dominated by allies of Ahmadinejad, who is well-known for his opposition to Israel.

Iran also plans a conference to examine what it terms the scientific evidence for the Holocaust.

Ahmadinejad has called the Muhammad drawings a Zionist conspiracy. A series of angry demonstrations at embassies of European countries in Tehran caused Denmark to temporarily withdraw its ambassador on Saturday.

Most protests across the Muslim world were peaceful, but some - including Iran, Syria and Lebanon - have turned into violent attacks against Western diplomatic missions. In Afghanistan, nearly a dozen people were killed in protests.

---

On the Net:

http://www.hamshahri.org/

http://www.hamshahri.org/images/InternationalCartoonE.jpg

February 14, 2006
Egypt Pushes 2-Year Delay in Local Vote
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
CAIRO, Feb. 13 — President Hosni Mubarak has moved to postpone for two years local elections that were scheduled for April, turning away from a promise made during his recent presidential race to promote democratic practices, Egyptian analysts and political leaders said Monday. Thousands of local council positions were to be on the ballot.

The move, which raised some concerns in the American administration, was widely seen as an effort to preserve the governing National Democratic Party's monopoly on power at a time when its grip has begun to falter.

It was also seen as an effort to block the banned Muslim Brotherhood, which made unprecedented gains in recent parliamentary elections, from promoting an independent candidate for president in 2011.

Mr. Mubarak's allies in the upper house of Parliament and in his party said the planned postponement was, in fact, a step toward greater democracy because it would allow time to put in place a new law for greater decentralization.

"According to the current constitution, the local governments have no power and depend fully on the central government," said Muhammad Kamal, a leading member of the governing party's secretariat and a member of the upper house. "The concept is to move local councils more toward becoming local governments, rather than local administration. We want to empower decentralization."

Nasser Amin, director of the Arab Center for Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession, a pro-democracy group based in Cairo, said, "The government is not ready now for the election, and they are not ready because they are afraid to be defeated or lose badly, like they did in the parliamentary election."

The president's decision, quietly approved Sunday by the upper house and expected to sail through the lower house, presents the United States with a difficult choice: criticize Mr. Mubarak and chance strengthening the Islamist opposition, or stay silent and fuel charges that the United States only supports democracy that promotes its own agenda.

While President Bush has identified spreading democracy as a cornerstone of his Middle East agenda, Egypt has demonstrated a reluctance to open up its political process.

But the United States has seen recent elections aid the rise of Islamists, including the recent victory by the militant group Hamas in Palestinian voting.

In addition, local political analysts said, the United States may be more inclined to hold its fire after the recent conflict over cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. The strong reactions to the cartoons may have further helped the region's Islamist parties.

In Washington, officials said they were troubled by Mr. Mubarak's action and called on Egypt to heed the wish of its citizens for democracy.

"We were concerned by the reports and are in touch with the Egyptian government to ascertain the facts," said Adam Ereli, deputy State Department spokesman.

Many people in Egypt, however, were quick to criticize the government's decision, insisting it was a betrayal of Mr. Mubarak's campaign promises and an attempt to hold down the Muslim Brotherhood.

"The obvious big picture is that many of the promises made by Mubarak throughout his campaign and his program for political reform have not come through," said Salama Ahmed Salama, a political analyst and columnist for Egypt's most widely circulated daily newspaper, Al Ahram. "They are being delayed and there is no clear mechanism for carrying them out. All they are doing is postponing."

The Muslim Brotherhood, whose strength is in grass-roots support generated by the social services it provides, sharply criticized the plan, saying it was an attempt to ensure that the president's son, Gamal, does not face a strong challenger should he run in 2011. The younger Mr. Mubarak, 41, has not said if he will run, but was recently promoted to a leading role in the governing party.

"This is a step toward hereditary succession of the president's position," said Muhammad Habib, the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Parliamentary elections last year demonstrated that the secular political parties were weak, and that the governing party was losing support, leaving the banned Brotherhood as the only organized opposition able to generate votes.

The Muslim Brotherhood cannot field a candidate for president in the party's name, even though it controls 88 of 454 seats in Parliament, enough to do so under the law. It is disallowed because it has been banned as a result of violent activities decades ago, and because it is a religious organization.

Under the new law, however, it could support an independent candidate under a complex formula that would be aided if the Brotherhood controlled local councils as well as its seats in Parliament. The councils handle matters like building schools and providing water.

Mr. Kamal, of the governing party, said the delay would not undermine the Brotherhood's political prospects, though others pointed out it would give the governing party time to regroup after the parliamentary elections last year.

The president's spokesman, Souleiman Awad, said, "This is part of the attempt to decentralize the government," and added that it is "part of the reform President Mubarak promised."

But even within the governing party, the argument that postponing a vote by two years was about democratic reform ran into skepticism.

"Of course it's because of the Muslim Brotherhood," said Osama el-Ghazali Harb, a party member and political analyst at the government-financed Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "The last parliamentary elections proved that the N.D.P is much weaker than anyone predicted; all the other parties are disappointing beyond imagination. The only alternative that is capable of filling the vacuum and of challenging the N.D.P. is the Muslim Brotherhood."

Local elections have not traditionally been hotly contested. But a change in the Constitution last year, which opened the way for multi-candidate elections for president, gave local councils some power over the ability of independent candidates to run for president of the nation.

Even if the brotherhood did not manage to field a candidate for president, controlling local councils would be a way to spread its influence and build its support.

"These all are attempts to protect the weak party against other political powers," said George Ishaq, a spokesman and a founding member of Kifaya, a secular pro-democracy movement. "They are afraid of the Brothers and they are afraid of all potential political power. They are so weak that they put all other political powers under siege."

Mona el Naggar and Abeer Allam contributed reporting from Cairo for this article, and Steven R. Weisman from Washington.



Copyright 2006The New York Times

'10,000 would die' in A-plant attack on Iran

By Thomas Harding

More than 100 American bombers, many based on carriers in the Gulf, would take part in a huge simultaneous surprise air attack on 20 key nuclear and military facilities, the report says.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11890.htm

UN inquiry demands immediate closure of Guantanamo

By Con Coughlin
Defence and Security Editor in New York

A United Nations inquiry has called for the immediate closure of America's Guantanamo Bay detention centre and the prosecution of officers and politicians "up to the highest level" who are accused of torturing detainees.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11891.htm

Iran resumes enrichment work: Diplomats :

"Iran has continued its nuclear drive within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the NPT, but if we see that you want to deprive us of our right using these regulations, know that the people will revise their policy in this regard," Ahmadinejad said.
http://www.centralchronicle.com/20060214/1402191.htm


Israel pushes urgency of UN Iran review:

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni urged German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier Monday to support discussing the Iranian nuclear issue at the United Nations Security Council immediately
http://tinyurl.com/9l58c


Iran Consequences Of War: :

This briefing paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the likely nature of US or Israeli military action that would be intended to disable Iran’s nuclear capabilities. It outlines both the immediate consequences in terms of loss of human life, facilities and infrastructure, and also the likely Iranian responses, which would be extensive
http://www.iranbodycount.org/

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/13865171.htm

Posted on Tue, Feb. 14, 2006
Saudi ambassador comments on bombings
NICK WADHAMSAssociated PressNEW YORK - Saudi Arabia is in talks with Iran over its disputed nuclear program, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States said on Monday.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, was asked to comment on the controversy surrounding Iran and whether sanctions would be appropriate at any point. He refused, saying only that talks were under way.
"This is the only topic that I'm not going to talk about and that is because we're in the process of discussing things with Iran," al-Faisal said. "And the instructions that I have received from my superiors is that as these discussions are continuing that I would decline talking about it in detail."
Al-Faisal, pressed to elaborate, would not do so, making it impossible to tell how serious the talks are and whether they could help resolve the standoff over Iran's intentions.
Iran says its nuclear program is designed solely to generate electricity, but the United States and some U.S. allies claim the program is a cover for producing nuclear weapons.
Earlier this month, the U.N. nuclear agency decided to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council because of uncertainty over its nuclear intentions. The Council has the authority to impose sanctions on Iran.
On Monday, diplomats in Europe said Iran had started small-scale enrichment of uranium, a process that can produce fuel for an atomic bomb.
In other remarks, al-Faisal said that for all the shock in the Western world about the suicide attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and in Iraq, most Muslims were even more surprised.
The attacks were the result of a cultlike attitude fomented by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden that ran counter to the central tenets of Islam, which holds that "killing one soul is like killing all of mankind," Prince Turki al-Faisal said.
"Inasmuch as the West was surprised, if you like, by this culture of death, I can assure you that the majority of Muslims were even more surprised because this culture of death runs counter to everything that Muslims hold dear to themselves," al-Faisal said.
The ambassador said bin Laden had created a cultlike attitude in which recruits "devote themselves and sacrifice their lives without question."
"Nothing justifies any terrorist act whether through suicide bombing or through any other activity," al-Faisal said.
Still, he distinguished the suicide attacks carried out by Palestinian groups against Israel, saying the attacks were justified by groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad as "legitimate means of war under occupation."
Al-Faisal said Saudi officials had spoken with "all parties" in Iraq so that they would come together for a national reconciliation effort, and said that education and jobs were now completely open to women in his country. Women, he said, were graduating more - and with greater distinction than - men from college.
On the issue of freedom of religion, al-Faisal acknowledged that officials needed to do better in a country where Christians and Jews are often forced to practice their religion in secret.
But he also said Muslims felt a sense of injustice. Muslims, he said, believe in the prophets and holy texts of other religions. He asked why followers of those faiths do not do the same.
"Why don't you accept our Quran as your book as we accept your Bible in its entirety whether Old Testament or New Testament?" he asked.

Annan warns against Iran nuclear 'escalation' Mon Feb 13, 6:27 PM ET



UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged Iran to help set the stage for a new round of talks on its nuclear program by March and warned against an escalation of Tehran's tense dispute with the West.

Annan's appeal came after he met here with US President George W. Bush for talks that also broached peacekeeping in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, UN reform, and pressure on Hamas to renounce violence against Israel.

But even as they met, diplomats told AFP that Iran had restarted uranium enrichment work by putting its feedstock gas into centrifuges, defying the West with a program that could make nuclear reactor fuel or atom bomb material.

While Bush was silent about the dispute with Iran, Annan volunteered: "We need to be able to work to resolve it, and I hope there will be no steps taken to escalate the situation."

Annan said he hoped Tehran would take steps to show that diplomacy is "not dead" before the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meets in Vienna next month to decide whether to recommend UN Security Council action.

Washington accuses Tehran of using a civilian nuclear program as cover for trying to develop atomic weapons. Iran denies the charge.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted his country was not worried about possible sanctions and Tehran said talks in Moscow aimed at finding an end to the standoff would not go ahead as planned later this week.

Uranium enrichment is seen as a red line by the United States and the European Union in the dispute over Iran's nuclear program, as it is crucial to making atomic weapons.

Putting uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas into centrifuges, which distill out enriched uranium, is a major escalation by Iran, and comes amid threats by the Islamic republic to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Bush and Annan also discussed options for UN peacekeeping in Darfur, though neither leader mentioned a US military contribution to such an effort amid warnings from Washington that such talk is "premature."

"Of course this is an issue where all governments have to play their role," said Annan, who vowed last week to press Bush on helping to build such a force to replace a beleaguered African Union deployment.

"I'm very happy that we have agreed to work together on the Darfur issue, working with other governments from Europe, from Asia, and other regions, to ensure that we do have an effective security presence on the ground," he added.

Bush mentioned his meeting last week with Rebecca Garang, the widow of Sudanese rebel leader John Garang, and efforts to implement a January peace deal that ended more than two decades of north-south civil war, which left some two million people dead and displaced twice as many from their homes.

"I appreciate the secretary's leadership on that issue," the president said.

Annan also urged the militant Palestinian group Hamas to abandon violence against Israel and recognize that state's right to exist in the wake of the Islamists' landslide victory in Palestinian legislative elections.

"I think there is an opportunity here for Hamas to transform itself into a political party and work with the international community and the Israeli government," Annan said.

The UN chief pointed to calls by the international "quartet" comprising the United Nations, United States, Russia and Europe for Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist and to disarm.

On UN reform, Bush vowed to keep pushing for overhauling the UN human rights commission, which Washington says is too-often packed with countries that violate human rights, and Annan said such reform needed to be carried out "as soon as possible."



Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

--------------------
On Cartoons, They Walk the Line
--------------------

Some Muslims are trying to bridge the gap between anger in the East and what they say is insensitivity in the West over Muhammad satire.

By Borzou Daragahi
Times Staff Writer

February 13 2006

BAGHDAD; Zied Mhrisi went to Beirut to get a master's in public health. But now the 28-year-old Tunisian has found himself drafted as a diplomat in the culture war that has erupted over the publication of cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...l=la-home-world

Brazil Poised to Join World's Nuclear Elite
(Jack Chang, Knight Ridder)

Sunday, February 12
While the world community scrutinizes Iran's nuclear plans, Latin America's biggest country is weeks away from taking a controversial step and firing up the region's first major uranium enrichment plant.
That move will make Brazil the ninth country to produce large amounts of enriched uranium, which can be used to generate nuclear energy and, when highly enriched, to make nuclear weapons.

Brazilians, who have long nurtured hopes of becoming a world superpower, are reacting with pride to the new facility in Resende, about 70 miles from Rio de Janeiro.

Other countries enriching uranium on an industrial scale are the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, China and Japan.

Tokyo Firm in Nuclear Trade
(Peter Alford, The Australian)

Tuesday, February 14
A Japanese company has been accused of illegally exporting precision machines suspected of having been diverted into the nuclear weapons black market.

More than 200 police officers yesterday raided Mitutoyo Corp's head office and about 10 other sites investigating security breaches that resulted in at least one Mitutoyo three-dimension measuring machine being used in Libya's rogue nuclear weapons program. A newspaper report said Japanese authorities were concerned that equipment from Mitutoyo, based in Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo, might have reached North Korea.

Mitutoyo sold a machine discovered at the Libyan nuclear facility to a Malaysian firm, Scomi Precision Engineering (SCOPE), which has been implicated in the proliferation racket. SCOPE was also connected to an intercepted Libya-bound shipment of metal tubes and other equipment that authorities believe was intended to construct the "cascade" of centrifuges that are essential for making weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU).
The Mitutoyo machines are generally employed to scan for surface deformations on other precision machinery but they can be used to precisely position the thousands of centrifuges used in the HEU process.

- South Korea Eyes Top U.N. Job
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/South_Kore...Top_UN_Job.html

Seoul, SKorea (UPI) Feb 14, 2006 - South Korea has kicked off a campaign to make a native son one of the most influential figures in the international community.

- Brazil Creates Protected Amazon Zone Twice The Size Of Belgium
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Brazil_C...Of_Belgium.html

- Tandem Sat Data Add Depth To Canadian Wilderness Maps
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Tandem_S...rness_Maps.html

- World Shark Attacks Dipped In 2005, Part Of Long-Term Trend
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/World_Sh...Term_Trend.html

- France Under Pressure To Bring Home Asbestos Warship
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/France_U...os_Warship.html

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/14/news/afghan.php
Taliban said to get aid in Pakistan
By Carlotta Gall The New York Times

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan Several suspects held in connection with three months of suicide bombings in southern Afghanistan have said the attacks were organized in Pakistan by members of the former Taliban regime who relied on Pakistani bombers, according to Afghan authorities.

These officials also said the network had encountered little resistance from Pakistani authorities.

Two Afghans and three Pakistanis who had been among 21 people arrested described their roles in interviews that were videotaped by an Afghan interrogator. The tape was shown to a New York Times reporter by an Afghan official, who insisted that he not be identified because of the diplomatic implications of the contents.

The suspects described a chain of operations that began with the recruitment of young bombers in the sprawling port city of Karachi. The bombers were moved to safe houses in the border towns of Quetta and Chaman, and then into Afghanistan, where they were provided with cars and explosives and sent into the streets to find a target.

The attacks have killed at least 70 people, mostly civilians but also international peacekeepers, a Canadian diplomat and a dozen Afghan police officers and soldiers. There have been 15 attacks in Kandahar, a tense city that had been the base for the Taliban.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, dismissed the claims.

"This is a propaganda campaign of the government," he said, speaking by satellite telephone from an unknown location. "Our mujahedeen don't send one group to one area so they can be found and arrested. Our mujahedeen send different people to different areas at different times."

He added that there was no need to recruit Pakistanis for the attacks.

"They are all Afghans," he said of the suicide bombers.

But Afghan officials said breaking into the network gave them the proof to demand action from Pakistan.

"I think there is a factory for these bombers," said an Afghan government official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity and saying he had not been authorized to discuss the matter.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is planning a trip to Pakistan to raise the issue with President Pervez Musharraf.

In a televised speech last week, Karzai asked the bombers rhetorically: "If you are the ones blowing yourselves up, why are you making the explosion in front of the police headquarters, where people like you are standing in front getting passports?"

He has spoken of the need to tackle the problem at the source.

Sentiment against Pakistan has been rising in Afghanistan and a popular refrain is that the Taliban could not function without Pakistan's help.

"Most of the attackers are non-Afghans," the governor of Kandahar Province, Asadullah Khaled, said Saturday at a memorial service for 14 victims of the latest bombing. "We have proof, we have prisoners." He added: "We have addresses, we have cassettes."

But Karzai, in his speech last week, also suggested that the recruitment of bombers did not end in Pakistan. He cited the arrest of a man from Mali who is a suspect in a planned attack on a northern provincial governor.

"Who is sending him?" Karzai said. "I don't think African countries are."

Last week, an Iraqi and three Pakistanis from Kashmir were apprehended in Nimruz, a province in the southwest that borders Iran, according to local Afghan officials. Pakistan is not the only country in the region, an American military official in Afghanistan said pointedly.

In the videotaped interviews, the three men who said they were Pakistanis, spoke in Urdu and said they were recruited as bombers. Two, who simply described themselves as Akhtar Ali and Sajjad, said they were recruited by a man named Jamal, who was working for the Taliban, and who they said owned a bookstore in Karachi.

Sajjad, who seemed to be the youngest of the three, said he was from northwestern Pakistan, but had been staying with his brother in Karachi. According to the interviews, Jamal had shown them video cassettes in which Muslim clerics urged listeners to fight a holy war to earn a sure way to paradise.

"I was doing nothing, walking around, playing cricket and football," Sajjad said. "The maulavi sahib," meaning the senior cleric, "talked to me and showed me a cassette, so I got involved. They were talking on the cassettes and telling us to do this and that, telling me to kill Americans."

Ali, who is from Karachi and who looked to be in his mid-20s, sighed as he described how he had received training in fighting five years ago, when the Taliban were in power, by one of the militant Pakistani parties, Harakat ul-Mujahedeen. He did not go to Afghanistan at the time, and the militant parties have greatly restricted their activities now because the Pakistani government has cracked down on them, he said.

It was the Muslim clerics speaking on the cassettes who persuaded him to go, he said.

"I came to Afghanistan to fight jihad,

to be a suicide attacker because I heard from the clerics there that if you fight jihad you would go to paradise," he said. "There are cassettes there and they say: 'There, there is jihad against non-Muslims.'"

The third man, who gave his name as Abdullah, said he came from Peshawar, Pakistan, but was working in Karachi and was recruited by a co-worker named Iqbal.

"Iqbal was talking of fighting against Americans, he was talking of going to fight jihad there," Abdullah said in his interview. "I said I cannot do it. Iqbal persuaded me."

Separately, the three were sent to Quetta, they said in the tapes, and put in touch with an Afghan member of the Taliban, identified as Abdul Hadi.

Sajjad, who made two attempts at a suicide attack, said he stayed in Quetta each time with a man called Farrouqi.

His first attempt was supposed to be in Kabul but was aborted when the man preparing the car with explosives accidentally blew himself up. Before his second trip, he said, a mullah at Farrouqi's house made a video of him saying he was going on a suicide mission.

Sajjad and Akhtar Ali were said to have been arrested in Kandahar, with their Afghan facilitator, Nur ul Baqi, before they reached their safe house.

Abdullah, who seemed a hard man with a direct gaze, said he traveled into Afghanistan and was given shelter for two days and provided with a car filled with explosives and two gas cylinders.

"My other friend told me which button to press," he said.

He was caught by police in a car laden with explosives and tried to detonate the vehicle as police stopped him, the interrogator said on the tape. Abdullah denied trying to detonate the explosives and said he had changed his mind about carrying out the suicide mission after failing to catch up with an American convoy on a bumpy road.

Wearing glasses, a white prayer cap and thin beard, Hafiz Bismillah was the last man to speak on the tape. He said nervously that he was from outside Kandahar, and had brought the bomber, Imran, to his house.

"We knew he was going to do a suicide mission," Bismillah said. "We gave him a place to stay."

The police found 80 mines inside large blue plastic barrels at his house, he said.

Baqi, the Afghan arrested with two of the Pakistani would-be bombers, said on the tapes that he brought four would-be bombers into the country.

"Most of the attackers are Pakistanis - I can tell you 99 percent are Pakistani," he said. He said he had not seen any Arabs coming through.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan Several suspects held in connection with three months of suicide bombings in southern Afghanistan have said the attacks were organized in Pakistan by members of the former Taliban regime who relied on Pakistani bombers, according to Afghan authorities.

These officials also said the network had encountered little resistance from Pakistani authorities.

Two Afghans and three Pakistanis who had been among 21 people arrested described their roles in interviews that were videotaped by an Afghan interrogator. The tape was shown to a New York Times reporter by an Afghan official, who insisted that he not be identified because of the diplomatic implications of the contents.

The suspects described a chain of operations that began with the recruitment of young bombers in the sprawling port city of Karachi. The bombers were moved to safe houses in the border towns of Quetta and Chaman, and then into Afghanistan, where they were provided with cars and explosives and sent into the streets to find a target.

The attacks have killed at least 70 people, mostly civilians but also international peacekeepers, a Canadian diplomat and a dozen Afghan police officers and soldiers. There have been 15 attacks in Kandahar, a tense city that had been the base for the Taliban.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, dismissed the claims.

"This is a propaganda campaign of the government," he said, speaking by satellite telephone from an unknown location. "Our mujahedeen don't send one group to one area so they can be found and arrested. Our mujahedeen send different people to different areas at different times."

He added that there was no need to recruit Pakistanis for the attacks.

"They are all Afghans," he said of the suicide bombers.

But Afghan officials said breaking into the network gave them the proof to demand action from Pakistan.

"I think there is a factory for these bombers," said an Afghan government official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity and saying he had not been authorized to discuss the matter.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is planning a trip to Pakistan to raise the issue with President Pervez Musharraf.

In a televised speech last week, Karzai asked the bombers rhetorically: "If you are the ones blowing yourselves up, why are you making the explosion in front of the police headquarters, where people like you are standing in front getting passports?"

He has spoken of the need to tackle the problem at the source.

Sentiment against Pakistan has been rising in Afghanistan and a popular refrain is that the Taliban could not function without Pakistan's help.

"Most of the attackers are non-Afghans," the governor of Kandahar Province, Asadullah Khaled, said Saturday at a memorial service for 14 victims of the latest bombing. "We have proof, we have prisoners." He added: "We have addresses, we have cassettes."

But Karzai, in his speech last week, also suggested that the recruitment of bombers did not end in Pakistan. He cited the arrest of a man from Mali who is a suspect in a planned attack on a northern provincial governor.

"Who is sending him?" Karzai said. "I don't think African countries are."

Last week, an Iraqi and three Pakistanis from Kashmir were apprehended in Nimruz, a province in the southwest that borders Iran, according to local Afghan officials. Pakistan is not the only country in the region, an American military official in Afghanistan said pointedly.

In the videotaped interviews, the three men who said they were Pakistanis, spoke in Urdu and said they were recruited as bombers. Two, who simply described themselves as Akhtar Ali and Sajjad, said they were recruited by a man named Jamal, who was working for the Taliban, and who they said owned a bookstore in Karachi.

Sajjad, who seemed to be the youngest of the three, said he was from northwestern Pakistan, but had been staying with his brother in Karachi. According to the interviews, Jamal had shown them video cassettes in which Muslim clerics urged listeners to fight a holy war to earn a sure way to paradise.

"I was doing nothing, walking around, playing cricket and football," Sajjad said. "The maulavi sahib," meaning the senior cleric, "talked to me and showed me a cassette, so I got involved. They were talking on the cassettes and telling us to do this and that, telling me to kill Americans."

Ali, who is from Karachi and who looked to be in his mid-20s, sighed as he described how he had received training in fighting five years ago, when the Taliban were in power, by one of the militant Pakistani parties, Harakat ul-Mujahedeen. He did not go to Afghanistan at the time, and the militant parties have greatly restricted their activities now because the Pakistani government has cracked down on them, he said.

It was the Muslim clerics speaking on the cassettes who persuaded him to go, he said.

"I came to Afghanistan to fight jihad,

to be a suicide attacker because I heard from the clerics there that if you fight jihad you would go to paradise," he said. "There are cassettes there and they say: 'There, there is jihad against non-Muslims.'"

The third man, who gave his name as Abdullah, said he came from Peshawar, Pakistan, but was working in Karachi and was recruited by a co-worker named Iqbal.

"Iqbal was talking of fighting against Americans, he was talking of going to fight jihad there," Abdullah said in his interview. "I said I cannot do it. Iqbal persuaded me."

Separately, the three were sent to Quetta, they said in the tapes, and put in touch with an Afghan member of the Taliban, identified as Abdul Hadi.

Sajjad, who made two attempts at a suicide attack, said he stayed in Quetta each time with a man called Farrouqi.

His first attempt was supposed to be in Kabul but was aborted when the man preparing the car with explosives accidentally blew himself up. Before his second trip, he said, a mullah at Farrouqi's house made a video of him saying he was going on a suicide mission.

Sajjad and Akhtar Ali were said to have been arrested in Kandahar, with their Afghan facilitator, Nur ul Baqi, before they reached their safe house.

Abdullah, who seemed a hard man with a direct gaze, said he traveled into Afghanistan and was given shelter for two days and provided with a car filled with explosives and two gas cylinders.

"My other friend told me which button to press," he said.

He was caught by police in a car laden with explosives and tried to detonate the vehicle as police stopped him, the interrogator said on the tape. Abdullah denied trying to detonate the explosives and said he had changed his mind about carrying out the suicide mission after failing to catch up with an American convoy on a bumpy road.

Wearing glasses, a white prayer cap and thin beard, Hafiz Bismillah was the last man to speak on the tape. He said nervously that he was from outside Kandahar, and had brought the bomber, Imran, to his house.

"We knew he was going to do a suicide mission," Bismillah said. "We gave him a place to stay."

The police found 80 mines inside large blue plastic barrels at his house, he said.

Baqi, the Afghan arrested with two of the Pakistani would-be bombers, said on the tapes that he brought four would-be bombers into the country.

"Most of the attackers are Pakistanis - I can tell you 99 percent are Pakistani," he said. He said he had not seen any Arabs coming through.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan Several suspects held in connection with three months of suicide bombings in southern Afghanistan have said the attacks were organized in Pakistan by members of the former Taliban regime who relied on Pakistani bombers, according to Afghan authorities.

These officials also said the network had encountered little resistance from Pakistani authorities.

Two Afghans and three Pakistanis who had been among 21 people arrested described their roles in interviews that were videotaped by an Afghan interrogator. The tape was shown to a New York Times reporter by an Afghan official, who insisted that he not be identified because of the diplomatic implications of the contents.

The suspects described a chain of operations that began with the recruitment of young bombers in the sprawling port city of Karachi. The bombers were moved to safe houses in the border towns of Quetta and Chaman, and then into Afghanistan, where they were provided with cars and explosives and sent into the streets to find a target.

The attacks have killed at least 70 people, mostly civilians but also international peacekeepers, a Canadian diplomat and a dozen Afghan police officers and soldiers. There have been 15 attacks in Kandahar, a tense city that had been the base for the Taliban.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, dismissed the claims.

"This is a propaganda campaign of the government," he said, speaking by satellite telephone from an unknown location. "Our mujahedeen don't send one group to one area so they can be found and arrested. Our mujahedeen send different people to different areas at different times."

He added that there was no need to recruit Pakistanis for the attacks.

"They are all Afghans," he said of the suicide bombers.

But Afghan officials said breaking into the network gave them the proof to demand action from Pakistan.

"I think there is a factory for these bombers," said an Afghan government official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity and saying he had not been authorized to discuss the matter.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is planning a trip to Pakistan to raise the issue with President Pervez Musharraf.

In a televised speech last week, Karzai asked the bombers rhetorically: "If you are the ones blowing yourselves up, why are you making the explosion in front of the police headquarters, where people like you are standing in front getting passports?"

He has spoken of the need to tackle the problem at the source.

Sentiment against Pakistan has been rising in Afghanistan and a popular refrain is that the Taliban could not function without Pakistan's help.

"Most of the attackers are non-Afghans," the governor of Kandahar Province, Asadullah Khaled, said Saturday at a memorial service for 14 victims of the latest bombing. "We have proof, we have prisoners." He added: "We have addresses, we have cassettes."

But Karzai, in his speech last week, also suggested that the recruitment of bombers did not end in Pakistan. He cited the arrest of a man from Mali who is a suspect in a planned attack on a northern provincial governor.

"Who is sending him?" Karzai said. "I don't think African countries are."

Last week, an Iraqi and three Pakistanis from Kashmir were apprehended in Nimruz, a province in the southwest that borders Iran, according to local Afghan officials. Pakistan is not the only country in the region, an American military official in Afghanistan said pointedly.

In the videotaped interviews, the three men who said they were Pakistanis, spoke in Urdu and said they were recruited as bombers. Two, who simply described themselves as Akhtar Ali and Sajjad, said they were recruited by a man named Jamal, who was working for the Taliban, and who they said owned a bookstore in Karachi.

Sajjad, who seemed to be the youngest of the three, said he was from northwestern Pakistan, but had been staying with his brother in Karachi. According to the interviews, Jamal had shown them video cassettes in which Muslim clerics urged listeners to fight a holy war to earn a sure way to paradise.

"I was doing nothing, walking around, playing cricket and football," Sajjad said. "The maulavi sahib," meaning the senior cleric, "talked to me and showed me a cassette, so I got involved. They were talking on the cassettes and telling us to do this and that, telling me to kill Americans."

Ali, who is from Karachi and who looked to be in his mid-20s, sighed as he described how he had received training in fighting five years ago, when the Taliban were in power, by one of the militant Pakistani parties, Harakat ul-Mujahedeen. He did not go to Afghanistan at the time, and the militant parties have greatly restricted their activities now because the Pakistani government has cracked down on them, he said.

It was the Muslim clerics speaking on the cassettes who persuaded him to go, he said.

"I came to Afghanistan to fight jihad,

to be a suicide attacker because I heard from the clerics there that if you fight jihad you would go to paradise," he said. "There are cassettes there and they say: 'There, there is jihad against non-Muslims.'"

The third man, who gave his name as Abdullah, said he came from Peshawar, Pakistan, but was working in Karachi and was recruited by a co-worker named Iqbal.

"Iqbal was talking of fighting against Americans, he was talking of going to fight jihad there," Abdullah said in his interview. "I said I cannot do it. Iqbal persuaded me."

Separately, the three were sent to Quetta, they said in the tapes, and put in touch with an Afghan member of the Taliban, identified as Abdul Hadi.

Sajjad, who made two attempts at a suicide attack, said he stayed in Quetta each time with a man called Farrouqi.

His first attempt was supposed to be in Kabul but was aborted when the man preparing the car with explosives accidentally blew himself up. Before his second trip, he said, a mullah at Farrouqi's house made a video of him saying he was going on a suicide mission.

Sajjad and Akhtar Ali were said to have been arrested in Kandahar, with their Afghan facilitator, Nur ul Baqi, before they reached their safe house.

Abdullah, who seemed a hard man with a direct gaze, said he traveled into Afghanistan and was given shelter for two days and provided with a car filled with explosives and two gas cylinders.

"My other friend told me which button to press," he said.

He was caught by police in a car laden with explosives and tried to detonate the vehicle as police stopped him, the interrogator said on the tape. Abdullah denied trying to detonate the explosives and said he had changed his mind about carrying out the suicide mission after failing to catch up with an American convoy on a bumpy road.

Wearing glasses, a white prayer cap and thin beard, Hafiz Bismillah was the last man to speak on the tape. He said nervously that he was from outside Kandahar, and had brought the bomber, Imran, to his house.

"We knew he was going to do a suicide mission," Bismillah said. "We gave him a place to stay."

The police found 80 mines inside large blue plastic barrels at his house, he said.

Baqi, the Afghan arrested with two of the Pakistani would-be bombers, said on the tapes that he brought four would-be bombers into the country.

"Most of the attackers are Pakistanis - I can tell you 99 percent are Pakistani," he said. He said he had not seen any Arabs coming through.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan Several suspects held in connection with three months of suicide bombings in southern Afghanistan have said the attacks were organized in Pakistan by members of the former Taliban regime who relied on Pakistani bombers, according to Afghan authorities.

These officials also said the network had encountered little resistance from Pakistani authorities.

Two Afghans and three Pakistanis who had been among 21 people arrested described their roles in interviews that were videotaped by an Afghan interrogator. The tape was shown to a New York Times reporter by an Afghan official, who insisted that he not be identified because of the diplomatic implications of the contents.

The suspects described a chain of operations that began with the recruitment of young bombers in the sprawling port city of Karachi. The bombers were moved to safe houses in the border towns of Quetta and Chaman, and then into Afghanistan, where they were provided with cars and explosives and sent into the streets to find a target.

The attacks have killed at least 70 people, mostly civilians but also international peacekeepers, a Canadian diplomat and a dozen Afghan police officers and soldiers. There have been 15 attacks in Kandahar, a tense city that had been the base for the Taliban.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, dismissed the claims.

"This is a propaganda campaign of the government," he said, speaking by satellite telephone from an unknown location. "Our mujahedeen don't send one group to one area so they can be found and arrested. Our mujahedeen send different people to different areas at different times."

He added that there was no need to recruit Pakistanis for the attacks.

"They are all Afghans," he said of the suicide bombers.

But Afghan officials said breaking into the network gave them the proof to demand action from Pakistan.

"I think there is a factory for these bombers," said an Afghan government official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity and saying he had not been authorized to discuss the matter.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is planning a trip to Pakistan to raise the issue with President Pervez Musharraf.

In a televised speech last week, Karzai asked the bombers rhetorically: "If you are the ones blowing yourselves up, why are you making the explosion in front of the police headquarters, where people like you are standing in front getting passports?"

He has spoken of the need to tackle the problem at the source.

Sentiment against Pakistan has been rising in Afghanistan and a popular refrain is that the Taliban could not function without Pakistan's help.

"Most of the attackers are non-Afghans," the governor of Kandahar Province, Asadullah Khaled, said Saturday at a memorial service for 14 victims of the latest bombing. "We have proof, we have prisoners." He added: "We have addresses, we have cassettes."

But Karzai, in his speech last week, also suggested that the recruitment of bombers did not end in Pakistan. He cited the arrest of a man from Mali who is a suspect in a planned attack on a northern provincial governor.

"Who is sending him?" Karzai said. "I don't think African countries are."

Last week, an Iraqi and three Pakistanis from Kashmir were apprehended in Nimruz, a province in the southwest that borders Iran, according to local Afghan officials. Pakistan is not the only country in the region, an American military official in Afghanistan said pointedly.

In the videotaped interviews, the three men who said they were Pakistanis, spoke in Urdu and said they were recruited as bombers. Two, who simply described themselves as Akhtar Ali and Sajjad, said they were recruited by a man named Jamal, who was working for the Taliban, and who they said owned a bookstore in Karachi.

Sajjad, who seemed to be the youngest of the three, said he was from northwestern Pakistan, but had been staying with his brother in Karachi. According to the interviews, Jamal had shown them video cassettes in which Muslim clerics urged listeners to fight a holy war to earn a sure way to paradise.

"I was doing nothing, walking around, playing cricket and football," Sajjad said. "The maulavi sahib," meaning the senior cleric, "talked to me and showed me a cassette, so I got involved. They were talking on the cassettes and telling us to do this and that, telling me to kill Americans."

Ali, who is from Karachi and who looked to be in his mid-20s, sighed as he described how he had received training in fighting five years ago, when the Taliban were in power, by one of the militant Pakistani parties, Harakat ul-Mujahedeen. He did not go to Afghanistan at the time, and the militant parties have greatly restricted their activities now because the Pakistani government has cracked down on them, he said.

It was the Muslim clerics speaking on the cassettes who persuaded him to go, he said.

"I came to Afghanistan to fight jihad,

to be a suicide attacker because I heard from the clerics there that if you fight jihad you would go to paradise," he said. "There are cassettes there and they say: 'There, there is jihad against non-Muslims.'"

The third man, who gave his name as Abdullah, said he came from Peshawar, Pakistan, but was working in Karachi and was recruited by a co-worker named Iqbal.

"Iqbal was talking of fighting against Americans, he was talking of going to fight jihad there," Abdullah said in his interview. "I said I cannot do it. Iqbal persuaded me."

Separately, the three were sent to Quetta, they said in the tapes, and put in touch with an Afghan member of the Taliban, identified as Abdul Hadi.

Sajjad, who made two attempts at a suicide attack, said he stayed in Quetta each time with a man called Farrouqi.

His first attempt was supposed to be in Kabul but was aborted when the man preparing the car with explosives accidentally blew himself up. Before his second trip, he said, a mullah at Farrouqi's house made a video of him saying he was going on a suicide mission.

Sajjad and Akhtar Ali were said to have been arrested in Kandahar, with their Afghan facilitator, Nur ul Baqi, before they reached their safe house.

Abdullah, who seemed a hard man with a direct gaze, said he traveled into Afghanistan and was given shelter for two days and provided with a car filled with explosives and two gas cylinders.

"My other friend told me which button to press," he said.

He was caught by police in a car laden with explosives and tried to detonate the vehicle as police stopped him, the interrogator said on the tape. Abdullah denied trying to detonate the explosives and said he had changed his mind about carrying out the suicide mission after failing to catch up with an American convoy on a bumpy road.

Wearing glasses, a white prayer cap and thin beard, Hafiz Bismillah was the last man to speak on the tape. He said nervously that he was from outside Kandahar, and had brought the bomber, Imran, to his house.

"We knew he was going to do a suicide mission," Bismillah said. "We gave him a place to stay."

The police found 80 mines inside large blue plastic barrels at his house, he said.

Baqi, the Afghan arrested with two of the Pakistani would-be bombers, said on the tapes that he brought four would-be bombers into the country.

"Most of the attackers are Pakistanis - I can tell you 99 percent are Pakistani," he said. He said he had not seen any Arabs coming through.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/b43b6ff2-9d61-11d...00779e2340.html

Russia-Iran nuclear talks back on
By Gareth Smyth in Tehran
Published: February 14 2006 13:57 | Last updated: February 14 2006 14:40

Iran confirmed on Tuesday it had resumed uranium enrichment but agreed to the resumption of talks with Russia aimed at defusing the international stand-off over its nuclear programme.


Javad Vaeedi, deputy secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said the talks would take place on February 20. They aim to discuss proposals to enrich his country’s uranium in Russia to allay international concerns it might divert the material into weapons use.

In a joint statement release by the Kremlin during a visit by Dominique de Villepin, French prime minister, Russia and France called on Iran to stop work linked with nuclear fuel, urging Tehran to “fulfil the February resolution and the demands of the governing council of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including the full cessation of all activities connected with enrichment and processing. ”

Separately, the European Union on Tuesday applauded Moscow’s initiative on the eve of talks with Russia in Vienna. Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EU external relations commissioner, said Russia was “playing a constructive role in the search for a diplomatic solution”.

Though Tehran confirmed it had resumed uranium enrichment at its Natanz plant, it denied production was on an industrial scale.


Origins of the dispute
Click here

The enrichment, which is apparently being done in the plant’s research facilities, is not enough to make fuel for reactors or produce weapons, but it signals Iran’s determination to press ahead with its nuclear programme despite the February 4 decision of the IAEA to refer it to the UN security council.

Mr Vaeedi said Iran needed time “to have 60,000 centrifuges” – referring to the devices used to spin uranium hexafluoride gas into enriched uranium. But he added it had begun “the preliminary stage”.

The announcement by Mr Vaeedi on the Moscow talks seemed to contradict a government spokesman’s statement on Monday that they had been postponed indefinitely because of the “new situation”, a reference to Russia voting at the IAEA for Iran’s referral to the security council.


Iran’s nuclear programme
- Click here

Iranian officials have blown hot and cold on the Russian idea, which is incompatible with Tehran’s insistence that it enrich at home. Mr Vaeedi said Iran wanted a “formula to prove we will not divert uranium enriched on Iranian soil”.

Mohammed ElBaredei, the IAEA director general, is due to produce another report on Iran’s programme in early March.

While the US and the EU strongly back referral to the security council, which could impose sanctions, Russia and China are less keen.

Liu Jianchao, Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesman, on Tuesday reiterated China’s preference for “diplomatic efforts under the IAEA framework ..[and] … a solution through dialogue”.

Massive Protests Continue in Pakistan Over Prophet Cartoons
By Benjamin Sand
Islamabad
15 February 2006

Tens of thousand protesters held massive demonstrations in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, attacking Western businesses and other buildings. Police squared off against violent crowds across the country as anger at controversial European cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad continues to rise. Three people are reported to have died in the latest protests.


Pakistani paramilitary troops arrive to control situation as protestors chant anti Denmark slogans during protest rally
Bullets, smoke and tear gas filled the air over Peshawar Wednesday.

Witnesses say at least one young boy was shot and killed as thousands of protesters clashed with police.

Protesters at enormous rallies chanted anti-western slogans and burned Danish flags to protest the drawings first published in Denmark more than five months ago.

Roving mobs in Peshawar, capital of the conservative Northwest Frontier Province, set fire to several movie theaters and businesses based in Western countries, including a KFC fried chicken restaurant.


A security guard and police officer walk past burning vehicles which were set on fire by angry mobs Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2006 in Peshawar, Pakistan
Wednesday's protests are by far the biggest yet in Pakistan over the drawings.

Local authorities in Pakistan are downplaying the violence, blaming the extreme reaction on a small minority of the population.

Akram Durrani, the Northwest Frontier Province chief minister, says he has no intention of calling in the military to help control the situation.

Schools and universities in the city have been closed as local police struggle to impose order.

Similar protests erupted in eastern Pakistan.

In Lahore, witnesses say at least one man was killed when more than 1,000 people battled police outside Punjab University.

A massive demonstration in Lahore Tuesday left two people dead.

For weeks, Muslims around the world have been protesting to express anger at the cartoons, which were printed in a Danish newspaper last year. Most Muslims find any depiction of the Prophet Muhammad to be offensive.

Pakistani authorities are bracing for more rallies in the coming days.

All of the country's political parties are planning demonstrations, including a joint nationwide protest on March 3.

China Defends Trade Record After Release of US-China Trade Relations Report
By Claudia Blume
Hong Kong
15 February 2006
Voice of America
Blume report - Download 337k
Listen to Blume report



Rob Portman
The U.S. government's top trade negotiator is promising a tougher stance on trade with China. The Chinese government has repeatedly defended its trade record.

The report, presented by U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman on Tuesday, says the United States has entered a new phase in its economic relationship with China. It promises Washington will put more pressure on Beijing to comply with global free trade rules.

The release of the report came four days after the U.S. reported a record $200 billion trade deficit with China in 2005, the highest ever recorded with a single country.

The report describes the U.S.-China trade relationship as unbalanced. It expresses concerns about China's enforcement of intellectual property rights and the country's failure thus far to honor all the market-opening commitments it made when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Portman announced the establishment of a special China enforcement task office in Washington. He said he also wants to have a U.S. trade negotiator based in Beijing and to improve coordination of trade policy with other countries.

The Chinese government did not directly comment on the report. But officials have recently defended their country's trade record by saying its cheap goods had saved American consumers hundreds of billions of dollars.

David O'Rear, chief economist of Hong Kong's General Chamber of Commerce, shares this view.

"There are 30 times as many people in America consuming products as there are manufacturing them. So, the overwhelming benefit is to the American consumer and any effort to restrict imports from China goes directly into the American consumer's pocket book and it takes a piece of their savings or money available for spending away," he said.

Thousands of Hong Kong companies are involved in producing consumer goods in China and exporting them to the rest of the world. In addition, many U.S. companies have offices here that handle business deals throughout China, so the issue of trade is vital to the city's interests.

O'Rear also says that 60 percent of China's exports come from companies with foreign ownership - many of them from the United States.

He says that while China usually does not react well to foreign pressure, it will be in its own interest to gradually move forward on issues such as intellectual property rights.

He predicts that with the Beijing Olympics coming up in 2008, China will pay more attention to the problem. That is because counterfeiting of items with the Olympics logo will cut into sales of legitimate Olympic goods, which Beijing needs to finance the games.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0215/dailyUpdate.html?s=mesdu
World > Terrorism & Security
posted February 15, 2006 at 11:00 a.m.

Senior Chinese officials slam Communist Party censorship

Meanwhile, Congress set to begin hearing on US Internet firms' cooperation with Chinese censors.

By Arthur Bright | csmonitor.com

The heat over China's media censorship was turned up Tuesday after a baker's dozen of senior Chinese officials warned that preventing freedom of expression would "sow the seeds of disaster for political and social transition."
Reuters reports that 13 scholars and ex-officials released a letter to the Chinese government, condemning its decision to shut down "Freezing Point," an investigative section of the China Youth Daily. They called the closure a "historic incident" in the struggle between Communist Party controls and media freedoms, and expressed concern over what such censorship would mean for China.





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"History demonstrates that only a totalitarian system needs news censorship, out of the delusion that it can keep the public locked in ignorance," they said in a public letter signed February 2 but issued on Tuesday....

They said China's elaborate restrictions on information could have dire consequences for China's political evolution.

"Depriving the public of freedom of expression so nobody dares speak out will sow the seeds of disaster for political and [social] transition."

The BBC notes that the letter "is all the more surprising because of who it comes from." Among the letter's signatories are Li Rui, a former secretary and biographer of Chairman Mao; Hu Jiwei, a former editor in chief of the People's Daily; Zhu Houze, a former propaganda boss; and Li Pu, a former deputy chief of the official Xinhua News Agency.

The government's decision to shut down Freezing Point came in response to an article written by professor Yuan Weishi, Al Jazeera reports. In the piece, Mr. Yuan questioned the official Chinese line on the 19th-century Opium Wars and the 1900 Boxer Rebellion.

Yuan told Aljazeera.net: "Since 1949 Chinese historians have said that the Boxer Rebellion has been an important event in the forming of modern China."

Referring to a Marxist based historiography that has portrayed the rebellion as a struggle against colonialism, Yuan says that from his research, "the Boxers were simply an army bent on destruction".

Yuan suggested Chinese textbooks were factually incorrect and fostered prejudice and resentment among young Chinese.

In a statement, officials said the article had "seriously contradicted news propaganda discipline; seriously damaged the national feelings of the Chinese people ... and it created a bad social influence".

The Times of London writes that Li Datong, the editor of Freezing Point, is encouraged by the letter condemning the publication's closure.

[Datong] told The Times: "This is very significant. It is a an expression of public opinion." He said the Communist Youth League, which is responsible for his newspaper, had refused to file a complaint to the party’s central disciplinary inspection commission. He now plans to approach the party centre, directly challenging the authority of Hu Jintao, the Communist Party chief and state President, who is believed to have approved the suspension personally.

The Chinese government responded to the letter's criticism, as well as to other recent criticism of its Internet censorship policies, in a China Daily article, reports the BBC. Liu Zhengrong, deputy chief of the Internet Affairs Bureau of the State Council Information Office, said that China's Internet controls are similar to that of the US and Europe.

"After studying internet legislation in the West, I've found we basically have identical legislative objectives and principles," Mr Liu was quoted as telling the state-run China Daily newspaper on Tuesday.

"It is unfair and smacks of double standards when (foreigners) criticise China for deleting illegal and harmful messages, while it is legal for US websites to do so," he said.

He also said that only a "very few" foreign websites were blocked, and that was mostly because they contained pornography or terrorist information.

The BBC News website continues to be blocked in China.

Mr. Liu added that "no one in China has been arrested simply because he or she said something on the internet." The BBC noted, however, that Li Zhi, who was sentenced to eight years in jail for "subversion," and four others jailed in 2003 "were posting opinions on the Internet and calling for political change" according to human rights groups.

The shuttering of Freezing Point and subsequent criticism from senior Chinese officials are only part of the latest wave of concern over China's media censorship. The Los Angeles Times reports that the a US House of Representatives panel is scheduled to meet today to examine US Internet firms' cooperation with Chinese censorship efforts.

The U.S. Congress' Subcommittee on Global Human Rights, Africa and International Operations is holding a hearing today on "The Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression?" Executives from Google, Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. are scheduled to testify, along with representatives from Reporters Without Borders.

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all censor Internet searches in China in accordance with China's propaganda guidelines. In addition, Microsoft has removed blogs that published material upsetting to China, and Yahoo was accused by watchdog group Reporters Without Borders of aiding Chinese officials in capturing Li Zhi in 2003.

The Boston Globe reports that an American diplomat will "express growing US concern about Internet censorship in China" in a visit to China this week.

The Christian Science Monitor notes that while US lawmakers want to end American firms' compliance with Chinese censors, Yahoo may be able to continue thanks to financial manuevering.

A deal in October may insulate the Internet giant. Because it gave up a majority stake of its China service to a Chinese company, Yahoo argues that decisions about cooperating with Chinese officials lie with that company, which has obligations to obey Beijing, not Washington.

However, The Guardian reports that for all China's efforts to censor the Internet, it may be unable to maintain its controls due to the sheer numbers of Web users within its borders.

The number of internet users in China has surged from 620,000 in 1997 to 110 million. It is estimated that there are between 5m and 10m blogs. Censors say they have had to change tactics.

"It is becoming more difficult to block and monitor web traffic so we need to switch to guidance," said an official responsible for internet surveillance. "Strict management didn't work. It is like trying to control a flood. Guiding is more effective than blocking."

Even with an estimated 30,000 internet police, he said it was difficult to monitor bulletin boards. "The technology hasn't reached a level that will allow us to control them. And we must also consider the trend of democratisation, which cannot be stopped," he said.

The offical adds, "China is very big. If you want to control such a large country, mere politics is not enough. You must control minds. You need to win the battle for ideas."