[usa] putin’s message should at least be privately mulled over

Putin continued that while he valued his ties with the US and President George W Bush, and wanted to enhance those ties, the relationship was bogged down with "many peripheral problems". Specifically, Putin charged the State Department with discouraging US legislators from meeting with Russian officials.

In short, while Putin is clearly eager to work with the United States, he is prepared to do so only on terms that do not damage what he views as Russian interests. Putin also has his eye on Russia's other options - China - and even the capacity to play a central role in alternative institutions outside the West. Putin may well be miscalculating the utility of those "other options" and Russia's ability to play this role - but any attempt to do so could nevertheless be a significant threat to US interests.

Putin's longest comment about US-Russian relations came when he was asked why the Russian media often appear anti-American. He said, "The press reflects the sentiments of society and the reality of life - otherwise it is not interesting." He added that he was disappointed that some Americans did not see the difference between official Russian policy and what appeared in the media. The clear implication was that the US should appreciate the fact that his government was defying public opinion in seeking to work with Washington and that whatever Americans may think, the relationship could be worse.

Putin then complained that the Bush administration was often unwilling to look for compromises and, rather, insists on what US leaders think is best. As a result, he said, the two countries only succeed sometimes in working together. On the US side, Putin said the "presumption of guilt" that the United States applied to the Soviet Union has been "mechanically transferred" to Russia and impeded an improvement of relations.

Putin's comments on China reveal just as much about his calculus regarding Washington as they do his vision for Beijing. Today the relationship is at its "best ever", he said, adding that while he tried not to "use such words", Russia's relations with Beijing had reached a "historic level".

In fact, he referred twice to the unprecedented development of bilateral ties between Moscow and Beijing. He attributed this in part to a border agreement signed two years ago that ended 40 years of negotiations and established the first settled Russian-Chinese border in history. He added that "political forces and trends in the world will dictate the best relations with China".

Importantly, Putin said he saw "economic activity shifting from the Atlantic to the Pacific" and said that Russia had an advantage in this environment because of its location between the two.

Specifically, the Kremlin leader cited plans to increase the share of Russia's energy exports directed to Asia from 3% today to 30% in 10-15 years, and noted that Russia had already constructed the first 250 kilometers of an oil pipeline from Skovorodino, Siberia, into China. (Another senior Russian official, speaking on background the previous day, said China was financing the entire cost of this effort.)

Putin also said that Rosneft and Surgutneftegaz were conducting more exploration to establish when the second phase of construction - to the Pacific - should begin. Until that point, as Putin and other Russian officials have said before, oil exports destined for a Pacific coast terminal will be sent by rail.

Putin went further in this direction in assessing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a body that many in the West have dismissed and of which the US is not a member. He said (again, twice) that he himself had been surprised at the development of the group, which he said originated as an effort to resolve "trivial matters" - technical cross-border issues among Russia, newly independent Central Asian countries and China.

However, he continued, the SCO was so successful with these issues that it started to grow. Though Putin insisted that the group had no ulterior motives and would not become a political-military bloc - some in Washington see it as directed against US involvement in Central Asia - he (somewhat contradictorily) added that there was "a demand for the organization" after the end of the Cold War because of "a need for new centers of power".

On Iran, Putin signaled a stiffening of the Kremlin's position vis-a-vis Tehran. When asked whether Russia supported Iran's proposal to continue nuclear enrichment on a limited scale - and whether Moscow could support mild sanctions - the president laid out three positions.

First, Putin said that Russia had called on Iran to "abandon enrichment", and in the context of the question this clearly implied all enrichment. Second, he said that while Iran did have a right to develop nuclear energy, like other signatories of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including Brazil, none of the other countries' constitutions referred to "eliminating other states", and he added that this was "not good" - clear disapproval of Iran's position on Israel.

Putin also said that because Iran was in a dangerous neighborhood, it should limit its own activities. Finally, Putin explained that Russia should spend time talking and thinking with the informal group of six countries working on the issue - Russia, the European Three (Britain, France and Germany), China and the US - and consult again with Iran, and only thereafter consider whether to proceed with sanctions.

One final note: no small share of the group - which included American, British, German, French, Italian, Japanese and (for the first time at this annual event) Chinese experts, academics and journalists - seemed star-struck, with commentators who are often quite critical of Putin in their own countries mobbed around him after the session, seeking autographs on printed menus.

Some went even further, using an opportunity for comments beforehand to make transparently obsequious statements, including one American who compared Putin favorably to Bush in his ability to answer substantive questions during long events.

Only one questioner directly challenged the Kremlin, asking why it was not a conflict of interest for senior officials to serve simultaneously in the presidential administration and as the heads of major state-controlled companies.

Putin may be surprised to note the contrast between what some foreign commentators expressed during the lunch and what they regularly write at home - not to mention what they might publish on their return.

Paul J Saunders is the publisher of National Interest Online and executive director of the Nixon Center.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HI29Ag02.html

[afghanistan] counter-productive strategy nobbling any gains

As the article below reveals, the strategy employed in Afghanistan has been at best half-baked and at worst, deliberately destructive. For a start, the Lindy English Abu Ghraib mentality towards the local populace has been allowed to proliferate from above, unchecked, and by definition, this means with approval. It’s rubbish to suggest that anything went on without at least tolerance at higher echelons. The military doesn’t operate that way.

Any military man can tell you that there is always the danger of the negativity towards the narrowly defined enemy extending in troops’ minds firstly towards the harbourers of the enemy and thence towards the local population. There is substantial evidence on record that the US and UK troops view the local muslim populations as something less than human and that they feel they are there to ‘sort out a few of these creampuffs’.

What is happening is classic Nietzsche, classic Nazi and in military terms, criminally counter-productive. ‘Criminally’, because any action unnecessarily impinging on or detracting from territorial and psychological gains is by definition pro-enemy and therefore treasonable. To go into an area, conquer it by superior force of arms and then not to follow it up is pure craziness and results in far greater danger to the troops than before.

So the only conclusion one can come to in this situation is that either the politicos controlling the campaign are dangerously and criminally inept in military matters or else they’re ignoring their military commanders or else it’s a deliberately strategy born of pure hatred for a section of the human race and lacking in any care and consideration for the under-equipped troops sent in to enforce half-baked policy aims. This is unforgivable from a military point of view and for any modern commander, the avoidable human wastage carries no percentage.

The following article is sobering, even if written by a journalist rather than a military man:

There have been critics enough of the US-led military actions under way in Afghanistan, but now military commanders, too, have begun to question just what they are doing in Afghanistan.

Most prominently, an officer who was an aide to the British forces in Helmand, the southern district of Afghanistan that has witnessed the strongest fighting between the Taliban and international forces, has come out with strong criticism of the British army in Afghanistan - and quit the army.

Captain Leo Docherty said the British campaign in Helmand province was "a textbook case of how to screw up a counterinsurgency". His statements came in an open letter that was reported in the British media - but not followed up in much public debate.

The officer raised the fundamental question of the development of Afghanistan arising from the campaign to capture Sangin town in Helmand, a military campaign in which he participated. Docherty says British troops managed to capture the Taliban stronghold, but then had nothing to offer by way of development.

"The military is just one side of the triangle," he said. "Where were the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office?" As forces sat back with little to offer, the Taliban hit back and British troops there were bunkered up and under daily attack, he wrote. "Now the ground has been lost and all we're doing in places like Sangin is surviving," said Docherty. "It's completely barking mad."

And such action is only provoking greater support for the Taliban, he warned. "All those people whose homes have been destroyed and sons killed are going to turn against the British. It's a pretty clear equation - if people are losing homes and poppy fields, they will go and fight. I certainly would." He added that British troops had been "grotesquely clumsy" in their operations, and that the military policy was "pretty shocking and not something I want to be part of".

Development and rights groups have for long been critical of an exclusively military intervention. They have warned also that military action of this kind appears to local Afghans as part of a larger Western assault on the Muslim world.

"There were windows of opportunity for collaboration five years ago between the West and Muslim countries, but the window of opportunity is closed now, that is for sure," said Emmanuel Reinert, head of the Senlis Council, an independent group studying the effects of drug policies in Afghanistan.

"We can still reopen it, but we need to show that we are going to change our ways," he said. "There has to be a clear change in our approach, a change of management."

There is little promise that will happen. The United States has been struggling to get more soldiers into Afghanistan to bolster the international force. The emphasis on strengthening the military rather than raising resources for development is only getting enhanced.

Human development by way of improved rights for women is in fact becoming a casualty of the military operations - after declarations that human development was one of the goals of the Afghanistan intervention, besides countering terrorism.

The Senlis Council has reported starvation conditions in several parts of southern Afghanistan. And this is only increasing support for the Taliban, and potentially for terrorism, too.

The increased military presence is not always helping the military, either. Another British army officer said in a leaked e-mail that the air force was "utterly, utterly useless" in protecting troops on the ground in Afghanistan. The air force has been called in as ground troops face increased attacks from the Taliban.

Such military voices from the front in Afghanistan are in alarming tune with warnings from groups such as the Senlis Council. Some soldiers are talking the language of development now more than governments are.

The new voices from Washington suggest increased pressure on Pakistan to cease military support for the Taliban, under pressure from visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Much of the future of Afghanistan could depend on decisions - or the lack of them - on increasing development support for the country.

By Sanjay Suri, Inter Press Service


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HI30Df02.html

[hewlett packard] le successeur est mark hurd

Alors qu’elle devait témoigner, comme d’autres dirigeants du groupe, devant une commission du Congrès américain, elle a décidé d’invoquer son droit à ne pas témoigner, selon ses avocats.

Les auditions des pontes de HP doivent commencer jeudi à l6 heure (heure française) devant la Commission de l'Energie et du Commerce de la Chambre des représentants, chargée de déterminer la légalité des pratiques utilisée par le groupe. Au premier rang, Patricia Dunn, qui a remplacé Carly Fiorina à la tête du groupe et démissionné vendredi.

Le texte de son témoignage a été publié. Elle estime que c’est Bob Wayman, le directeur financier du groupe, qui a « donné son autorisation à toutes les tâches entreprises » dans cette affaire, puisqu’il avait toute autorité en ce domaine et s’était montré particulièrement insistant sur la nécessité de surveiller les « fuites ».

Patricia Dunn a engagé l'an dernier une société de détectives pour identifier l'origine de fuites dans la presse sur l’éviction de l'ancienne PDG Carly Fiorina. Les enquêteurs privés ont alors eu recours à de fausses identités (procédé connu aux Etats-Unis sous le nom de «pretexting»), notamment pour se procurer des relevés téléphoniques personnels de membres du conseil, mais aussi de journalistes et de cadres. Elle assure avoir demandé au détective Ron DeLia, de la société Security Outsourcing Solutions, si ses méthodes étaient légales et conformes aux pratiques de HP.

«S'il y avait eu une administration officielle vers laquelle HP avait pu se tourner pour mener une enquête légale sur la base de menaces prouvées contre l'intégrité du groupe, les évènements en question ne se seraient pas produits», a-t-elle ajouté, en invitant le Congrès à légiférer sur ce sujet.

Mark Hurd, ancien directeur général et nouveau PDG du groupe, a de son côté proposé de lui-même de témoigner devant la Commission. Il a d’ores et déjà précisé qu'au total, neuf journalistes et leurs familles, deux employés actuels et sept membres actuels ou passés du Conseil d'administration avaient été espionnés. Il a aussi reconnu avoir approuvé l'envoi de faux e-mails pour remonter à l'origine des fuites à la presse.

Anciennement «Ce qui a commencé comme une enquête normale et sérieuse sur les fuites émanant du Conseil d'administration du groupe vers la presse concernant des informations sensibles pour le groupe, s'est transformé en une enquête clandestine qui a violé les principes et les valeurs de HP», affirme-t-il dans son témoignage.

Mercredi, le conseil d’administration de HP a assuré Hurd de son soutien. Vendredi, le procureur général de Californie a annoncé n’avoir « aucune preuve qui ferait du directeur général l'un des auteurs des délits ».

Outre les démissions d’Ann Baskins et Patricia Dunn, deux autres personnes ont quitté la société : Anthony Gentilucci, responsable des enquêtes, et Kevin Hunsakern, en charge de « l'éthique ».

lefigaro.fr

[clinton vintage] performance noted by gop

Interview continued ...

CLINTON: You didn't ask that, did you? Tell the truth, Chris.

WALLACE: On the USS Cole?

CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris.

WALLACE: With Iraq and Afghanistan, there's plenty of stuff to ask, sir.

CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris.

WALLACE: With Iraq and Afghanistan, there's plenty of stuff to ask, sir.

CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris. Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you're going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch's supporting my work on climate change. And you came here on false pretenses and said that you'd spend half the time talking about --

WALLACE: I --

CLINTON: About -- you said you'd spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7 billion plus, in three days, from 215 different commitments, and you don't care.

WALLACE: I -- President Clinton, if you look at the questions --

CLINTON: I thought you'd (have an audience here ?).

WALLACE: You'll see half the questions about it. I didn't think this was going to set you off on such a tear.

CLINTON: You launched into it. It set off on a tear because you didn't formulate it in an honest way, and because you people ask me questions you don't ask the other side.

WALLACE: Sir, that's not so.

CLINTON: And Richard Clarke --

WALLACE: That is not true.

CLINTON: Richard Clarke made it clear in his testimony --

WALLACE: Would you like to talk about the Clinton Global Initiative?

CLINTON: No, I want to finish this thing.

WALLACE: All right.

And finish the thing, Clinton did.

[from al jazeera] the arab state has always carried deficiency and impotence as part of its genetic make-up

Continued … Of these, the worst and most striking has been its impotence to confront external dangers, be it in Syria, Iraq or Lebanon. Official failure to provide adequate defence systems and maintain homeland security has generated a vacuum, which is being gradually filled by non-governmental socio-political movements with armed wings. Lebanon and Palestine are two cases in point.

Increasingly, the Arab public feels that the political system is unfit to respond to the question of destiny and provide the basics for preserving sovereignty. There is a striking dichotomy at the heart of the Arab state. While enormously powerful at home, it is pitifully weak in responding to foreign challenges. A number of inter-related factors have converged to produce this odd state of affairs, geopolitical and structural.

These are largely to do with perpetual interference in the affairs of the Middle East from the Western powers that continue to hold the reins of its fate, with the superiority of Israeli military capabilities propped up and backed by the US and its allies, as well as with the circumstances surrounding the birth of the Arab state itself. Official failure to provide adequate defence systems and maintain homeland security has generated a vacuum, which is being gradually filled by non-governmental socio-political movements with armed wings.

Child of the colonial legacy, of Sykes/ Picot and the European powers' scramble for the Ottoman inheritance, the Arab state has always carried deficiency and impotence as part of its genetic make-up. That the Arab region should have been divided into 22 entities is a measure of its significance for the relations of dominance that emerged towards the end of the eighteenth century with Napoleon's expedition to Egypt (1798), the first major European incursion into a central country of the Muslim world.

For Britain and France - just as it is for the United States today - control of the Middle East was important not only because of their interest in the region itself, but because it corroborated their position in the world. Not only was the region rich in raw materials, with cotton from Egypt, oil from Iran and Iraq, minerals from the Arab Maghrib (North Africa), it was a vast field of investment, and a route to other continents.

For Britain, the sea route to India and the Far East ran through the Suez Canal. For France, routes by land, sea and air to French possessions in West and Central Africa passed through the Maghrib. Presence in the region strengthened the two countries' position as Mediterranean powers and world powers. These vital interests were protected by a series of military bases like the port of Alexandria, military bases in Egypt and Palestine, and airfields in those countries and in Iraq and the Gulf.



The Arab state replaced the complex network of local elites, tribal chieftains and religious groupings through which the imperial authorities had maintained their grip over the territories they dominated. Its mission was the regulation of the indigenous population's movement, a gigantic disciplinary, punitive and coercive apparatus designed for the purpose of imposing control over the local populations.

The Arab state replaced the complex network of local elites, tribal chieftains and religious groupings through which the imperial authorities had maintained their grip over the territories they dominated.

In an article published in the Guardian on September 2, Shimon Peres, Israel's deputy prime minister, said: "Israel should ... support the legitimisation of one single authority in the whole of Lebanon - indeed in all countries of the region ... The Lebanese government and the Palestinian Authority have lost control of their territories and armed forces ... Israel must support the governments of Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in their struggles for exclusive territorial and military control over their lands."

It might be reasonable to think it is illogical that a country frequently painted as a beleaguered entity in a hostile environment should be advocating a policy of strengthening its neighbours' authority over their territories. Not so, for the system of indirect control over the region, which assumed its present shape in the aftermath of World War I, specifically requires a "state" that is capable of keeping the local populations under check and maintaining "stability" at home, but too weak to disrupt foreign influence or disturb the balance of powers in the region.

Disillusionment with the official political order and growing cynicism about its ability to preserve a semblance of sovereignty, liberate occupied land, or safeguard national interests has brought new actors onto the stage of Arab politics. These non-state players, which include Hizbollah in Lebanon and several armed groups in Palestine, are increasingly occupying the centre of the public sphere in the Middle East, profiting from the declining legitimacy of the political elite tied to the stakes of foreign dominance in the region and lacking popular support to speak of.

While already fulfilling many of the state's conventional functions such as the provision of social services like health and education, in countries subjected to military occupation (such as Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine) they are increasingly taking on the state's defence responsibilities. Child of the colonial legacy, of Sykes/ Picot and the European powers' scramble for the Ottoman inheritance, the Arab state has always carried deficiency and impotence as part of its genetic make-up.

This has earned these movements the admiration of the Arab public, which frequently contrasts their political and military performances in the face of the gigantic Israeli military machine with the redundancy of Arab armies permanently frozen in military stations and barracks. In light of the turbulent situation in the region and receding allegiance to the political establishment, it is possible to predict that the coming years could see an extension of this popular model to neighbouring countries acutely sensitive to threats to their security.

Since the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has been evangelising about the "New Middle East". This rhetoric, which had retreated under the stench of burnt cities and piles of dead Iraqi bodies, has lately resurfaced once more. Though certain to leave long-lasting marks on the region's map, the current frenzy of interventions is unlikely to engender the Middle East Washington and London desire.

The likelihood is that this new Middle East born in the womb of pre-emptive strikes and proxy wars will neither be American nor Israeli but will gravitate between "deconstructive chaos", and the rise of popular resistance movements. The lesson we would do well to learn from Iraq's unfolding tragedy is that the Middle East is far too complex, far too unruly for the grand fantasies of conquest and subjugation.

Soumaya Ghannoushi is a researcher in the history of ideas at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London. Ghannoushi is currently writing a book on Western Representations of Islam Past and Present.

[kinky friedman] this issue just won't die

Friedman last week said he would provide $100 million to Houston, or any other city facing similar crime problems, so Houston could hire 1,200 new police officers to deal with crime and weed out the "crackheads and thugs" among the thousands of Katrina evacuees from New Orleans who relocated to Houston.Roundly criticized as a thinly veiled attack on blacks from Louisiana, Friedman said Wednesday his proposal "was not in any way racist.""How can you possibly regret that, telling the truth?" he asked. "I am not a racist, I am a realist. ... I never said what color their skin was. .... I'm smarter than that."

Yet on September 9, 2006, Guillermo X. Garcia with the San Antonio Express-News Staff reported on a question-and-answer session with Kinky and directly quoted him:

In answer to a question, Friedman said the comments do not indicate that he holds racist views. Rather, he said they demonstrate his ability to take on a subject the other candidates won't touch."Racism was here before I came around," he said. "I am just trying to bring up these issues within the (expletive) society."Later, he said: "As it happens, the crackheads and thugs who remain in Houston after Katrina happen to be black; that's fact."

This latest lie follows Kinky's previous lies about his past claims that he vote for Ann Richards and Al Gore and against the Constitutional Amendment rejecting equal marriage rights. Here is one such false claim:

Susannah McNeely: ... after your bid for Justice of the Peace in ’86, you said you were leaving “that worthless tar baby that is politics” to the young people. What happened that changed your mind and prompted you to run for governor of Texas?Kinky Friedman: Nothing changed my mind, that’s still correct. This is not a political campaign. It’s a spiritual one—a spiritual calling....SM: So does this idea of the honorable cowboy have anything to do with why you threw your support behind President Bush in this last election? You did, didn’t you?KF: Yes. I did in this last election, but I didn’t vote for him the first time.SM: Who did you vote for in 2000?KF: I voted for Gore then. I was conflicted. . .but I was not for Bush that time. Since then, though, we’ve become friends. And that’s what’s changed things.SM: So it’s your friendship with him that’s changed your mind about having him as president more than his specific political positions?KF: Well, actually, I agree with most of his political positions overseas, his foreign policy. On domestic issues, I’m more in line with the Democrats. I basically think he played a poor hand well after September 11. What he’s been doing in the Near East and in the Middle East, he’s handling that well, I think.

Kinky statements about his past votes have proven false based on Kinky's public Kerr County voting records:

"Quite often, I did not like my choices," Friedman was quoted as saying in Friday's Dallas Morning News...."The voting record doesn't look strong, but my voting record is better than Dick Cheney's," he said....According to Kerr County voting records, Friedman voted in the 2004 presidential general election but not in any other contest since 1994.

Vote Strayhorn or Bell, not Perry or Kinky.

[l'italie] un vaste scandale

« Attentat à la démocratie » : c’est ainsi que le quotidien La Repubblica a qualifié cette affaire « d'espionnage illégal », qui aurait concerné des « dizaines de milliers de personnes ». Des députés de l'opposition et de la majorité ont sommé jeudi Romano Prodi de s’expliquer sur ce scandale, mis à jour par l’arrestation mercredi de 21 personnes, dont un ancien dirigeant de Telecom Italia, Giuliano Tavaroli, et onze policiers et carabiniers.

Les 21 personnes sont toutes soupçonnées d'avoir participé à une « association de malfaiteurs » impliquée dans un réseau d'écoutes illégales pour recueillir des informations confidentielles sur plusieurs milliers de personnes. Giuliano Tavaroli, responsable à l'époque des faits des systèmes de sécurité chez Telecom Italia, et Emanuele Cipriani, responsable d'une officine de détectives privés à Florence, sont accusés d'avoir été à la tête de ce système installé « à partir de 1997 ».

A l’origine, ce système a été mis en place pour contrôler les employés de Telecom Italia et de Pirelli, deux des plus grands groupes italiens, puis il se serait développé pour toucher des politiques, des hommes d'affaires, des entrepreneurs, des joueurs de football ou des personnalités du spectacle.

Selon les motivations des mandats d'arrêt dont les journaux italiens ont diffusé de larges extraits, les « données » recueillies et conservées constituaient « un instrument évident de pression, de conditionnement, de menace et également d'extorsion concentrée dans les mains d'un groupe restreint de personnes ».

Les révélations sur ce système d'écoutes interviennent quelques jours après la démission du patron de Telecom Italia, Marco Tronchetti Provera, en délicatesse avec le gouvernement de Romano Prodi à la suite de l'annonce d'un projet visant à restructurer le groupe, privatisé en 1997.

Marco Tronchetti Provera, qui est toujours patron de Pirelli (pneus, immobilier, technologies), n'a pas été placé sous enquête par le parquet de Milan mais les journaux rappellent que Giuliano Tavaroli était l'un de ses principaux collaborateurs.

lefigaro.fr

[sudan] slow motion genocide and what can we do

After the Holocaust, the world said “never again.” Never again will we stand by and watch while millions are slaughtered. After the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s, the world said “never again.” After the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the world said “never again.”

After the mass killings in Srebenica (in Bosnia) in 1995, the world said “never again.” Probably in 2008 the world will say “never again” after the slow-motion genocide in Sudan is finally brought to its terrible completion.

Of this genocide, no one will be able to say they didn’t know. Each day the newspapers report on the ominous developments that threaten the lives of those who live in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. The people of this region, already victimized, murdered by the hundreds of thousands, and displaced by the millions, now face the “final solution” of the political and ethnic problems that have already taken so many of their lives.

The situation is complicated but essentially goes like this: The Sudanese government and its Arab allies, notably the vicious janjaweed militias, attacked the non-Arab peoples of Darfur beginning in 2003 in response to rebel activity based in that westernmost region of Sudan. These attacks were particularly vicious and indiscriminate. The U.S. government declared them to be comprehensive enough to qualify as genocide.

Under international pressure, the Sudanese government entered peace talks with the main rebel group, the Sudanese Liberation Army. However, this rebel group split along tribal lines. One faction (associated with the Zaghawa people) signed a peace accord with the government. The other (associated with the Fur people) did not. The agreement was also rejected by another rebel group. Now these various groups are fighting each other, while some continue to fight the government as well.

A weak African Union peacekeeping force has attempted, with limited success, to protect the innocents of Darfur. However, the mandate of this force expires at the end of September and it appears they will leave. The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the insertion of 22,000 peacekeeping troops to replace the African Union forces. But the government of Sudan has refused to allow these troops to deploy, instead saying they would be treated as a hostile force. The Muslim-led Sudanese government says that, instead, it will provide its own security for the Darfur region.

Scant comfort indeed, because it was this same brand of security that led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians by janjaweed and allied Sudanese Army forces before it was stopped. Now everyone watching this situation seems to agree that once the peacekeepers are removed from the scene, it is quite likely that these same killers will descend on the region to finish the job they started. The unfortunate souls waiting in refugee camps and elsewhere in the region are convinced that their days are numbered.

One community leader told the New York Times, “If these [African Union] soldiers leave, we will all be slaughtered.” He went on to say: “We beg the international community, somebody, come and save us. We have no means to protect ourselves…. We will all die.”

At least in the early stages of the Holocaust, neither the Jews nor anyone else outside of Nazi circles knew what was coming. But in this case the targets know. The United Nations knows. The New York Times knows. The United States knows. NATO knows. The killers know. Everyone knows.

Will anyone act? The UN agreed to act, but Sudan says it won’t welcome the troops. Is the UN prepared to shoot its way in? What about NATO or its member countries? Is anyone willing to step forward and fight their way into Sudan to save hundreds of thousands of lives? Well, NATO is tied down in Lebanon, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia. Does that rule them out?

What about the United States? We have already declared the situation to be a genocide. We have a powerful Holocaust museum in Washington that has institutionalized the “never again” message. It is just around the corner from the Capitol. Can the witness of that place be heard a few blocks away? Are we also too tied down—in Afghanistan and Iraq—to do anything? Or are we perhaps too weakened politically, or too hated in the Muslim world, to dare intervene?

There are always reasons why genocide happens and no one does anything. But those reasons never look real good when the bodies begin to pile up and we prepare to say “never again” once again. It is time for the United States to lead the world in addressing the Darfur crisis before it is too late.

David P. Gushee, University Fellow & Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy, Union University, www.davidgushee.com http://www.abpnews.com/1372.article

[sudan] how much do you know or care

The intensity of the combat in Darfur, the western Sudanese region the size of Texas, has forced a new flood of civilians to flee their burned and bombed-out villages for sprawling camps on the outskirts of this and other cities. The estimated 2 million people already in such camps are settling in for the long haul, losing hope that they will ever return home.

Hundreds of thousands of people have already died in three years of war, which began when rebels attacked government installations in Darfur. The government responded by sending in army troops and arming a militia, called the Janjaweed, that has attacked rebels and civilians.


"We don't want the United Nations back to Sudan no matter the conditions," said the president Saturday in Havana, where he was attending an international summit of developing countries. A cease-fire agreement for Darfur was reached in May but has collapsed in the four months since it was signed in the Nigerian capital of Abuja. The government has repeatedly violated terms prohibiting military flights over Darfur and new troop deployments.

The government also has failed to restrain the Janjaweed, which continues to rape, kill and pillage. Increasingly, the militiamen are doing so while wearing crisp green uniforms, distributed by the government.

Civilians here say militiamen gallop their horses and camels into the camps for displaced people, sometimes within site of African Union troop positions. Rarely have the troops responded with force. In some cases, Darfur civilians, still smarting from deaths of friends and family members, have demonstrated angrily in front of African Union encampments.

"This African Union, if there is fighting, they are running away," said Halima Idriss, 55, gesturing furiously as her orange head scarf flapped in the hot wind of a camp outside of El Fasher.

The African Union's Peace and Security Council plans to review its decision to depart at a meeting in New York on Monday. But with its current mandate and resources, African Union officers express despair about their ability to keep peace when both the government and rebel forces are determined to return to war. Field commanders from the only rebel group that signed May's peace deal say they, too, are likely to resume fighting soon unless the United Nations sends its peacekeepers to Darfur.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the African Union officers muttered angrily about their failure to enforce calm while expressing greater fears. They used the words "genocide" and "Rwanda" to describe what they expect will follow their departure.

Outside analysts also say that the African Union, while ineffective at peacekeeping, is serving as vital eyes and ears for the outside world at a time when the Sudanese government is making it more difficult for aid groups and journalists to operate here. With the African Union gone, they say, the last buffer will be lost against a bloodier assault in Darfur.

"All predictions are that without witnesses, the slaughter will begin," said Eric Reeves, a Smith College professor who has closely monitored the Darfur conflict, speaking from Northampton, Mass. "As long as the A.U. stays in, they are powerless but they are witnesses."

The African Union pullout would come shortly before the end of the rainy season, when flooded dirt roads typically dry out, allowing full-scale military maneuvering to resume after many weeks of limited mobility for both sides.

Idriss, the Darfur woman who said she had lost faith in the African Union, expressed tentative hope that U.N. peacekeepers might do better. If they don't come, she said, she knows what will happen. "We will lose all the people of Darfur," Idriss said. "The killing is always going on."

By Craig Timberg Washington Post Foreign Service
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/17/AR2006091700624.html

[far-east] south korea and us may soon part company

Asia Times

With an inter-Korean summit pageantry of his own in mind, Roh has been offering North Korean leader Kim Jong-il unconditional gifts throughout his presidency: massive shipments of rice, fertilizer, and other blandishments. Now it looks as if Roh is preparing to give the Northern dictator the ultimate gift of evicting US troops from Korean territory.

President Roh believes he has little to lose by insisting on the transfer of wartime operational control, which he pointedly defined recently as the "essence of sovereignty for any nation". A refusal would mean to Roh's supporters and an emotional South Korean public - for whom the Northern threat has become a mere abstraction - reaffirmation of US imperialism and bellicosity, perhaps even "proof" of long-held suspicions that the United States secretly wishes to draw South Korea into a costly war with the North.

A US consent would chalk up a milestone in Roh's oft-proclaimed "self-reliant" foreign and defense policies, with the added bonus of pleasing the North Korean regime by achieving on its behalf one of its oldest and most important policy objectives. Roh could peddle each scenario at home for political gains in the time leading up to the South Korean presidential election in December 2007.

Strains in the alliance are not unprecedented. The United States has long viewed South Korean leaders with skepticism when it came to such matters as political liberalism in the country or overzealousness on the part of Seoul's anti-North Korea policy. Fear of being entrapped by South Korea into fighting a second Korean War remained very much on the minds of US leaders throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and even into the 1970s.

On the other hand, despite misgivings, successive US presidents in the end put up with Syngman Rhee's illiberal policies and belligerence toward the North in the 1950s, Park Chung-hee's coup d'etat in 1961 and iron-fisted rule for the next 18 years, and, in more recent years, even Kim Dae-jung's hopelessly pious courtship of the North Korean dictatorship. These South Korean leaders were not perceived to be willfully challenging the vital national interests of the United States.

President Roh has proved to be different from his predecessors. During his three and a half years in office, Roh has followed through on his words with actions. True to his rhetoric, "So what if I am anti-US?" or "Yes, my anti-US stance has been good to me," Roh has unflinchingly and systematically aided the enemy of the United States - and incontrovertibly the main enemy of the US Forces in Korea (USFK) - the totalitarian North Korean state that is bent on increasing its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Roh's offering to the North Korean regime of food, cash and material is financing its buildup of WMD, with which the North in turn threatens the the USFK, whose very purpose is to protect Roh's South Korea from the North. Such a convoluted reality is comprehensible only in the theater of the absurd. In the real world of international politics - especially in light of America's overarching post-September 11, 2001, policy of fighting a "war on terror" and preventing the proliferation of WMD - it is simply an unacceptable situation.

At no other time in the history of the bilateral relationship has a South Korean president with such audacity, and with such success, manipulated for political gains anti-American sentiments at home. It has been proved over the past few years that a direct correlation exists between President Roh's anti-US remarks and a spike in his approval ratings. While resistance or hostility toward the United States was certainly not confined to South Korea under President Roh, that the head of a key ally is directly challenging vital US national interest is certainly a highly unusual development.

At the unceremonious meeting with Roh yesterday, during which both leaders wore a weary look, President Bush gritted his teeth and did his best to keep up the pretense that all was well. To his credit, Bush avoided an open row, concealed the open fissure in the alliance, and avoided an explicit endorsement or rejection of any South Korean-proposed roadmap for the dismantlement of the US-ROK Combined Forces Command.

Keeping in mind that the issue is a potential trap for instigating anti-US demonstrations leading up to South Korea's presidential election in December next year, Bush simply intoned that the matter should not become "a political issue". Bush even deftly took a page out of the communist playbook of a "hardliner/softliner" smokescreen, and simply told his guest that South Korea should take up the matter with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

South Korean political spinners and optimists on both sides of the Pacific will accentuate the common grounds that the two nations share, such as the intention to jump-start the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program, concluding a free-trade agreement, and South Korea's support in Iraq. They may have only the best intentions in mind, but to ignore the ringing of the death knell is to echo Dr Pangloss's pontification to Candide on the futility of saving Jacques as he is washed overboard in the Bay of Lisbon: "The Bay of Lisbon had been formed expressly for Jacques to drown in."

To turn a blind eye to the state of the US-ROK alliance in its present last breath is tantamount to musing, "The North Korean nuclear crisis had been formed expressly to test the US-ROK alliance. We should just ignore it and sail on." In other words, it bears no real-life relevance to the crux of the problem, which is that the alliance is predicated on the common threat of North Korea.

President Roh has come to Washington and gone, and the dismantling of the alliance structure will proceed as planned in the near term.

Short on conviviality, solidarity or a meaningfully shared vision for the future, the meeting's sole significance will lie in its marking of the end of an era. Unless the South Korean people are able to persuade Roh to change course abruptly or vote into office in December 2007 a new leader with a far greater appreciation for the alliance and the integrity not to scuttle it for short-term political gain, the meeting on Thursday between Bush and Roh will be remembered as the definitive punctuation mark to a long and once special bilateral relationship.


Dr Sung-Yoon Lee is associate in research at the Korea Institute, Harvard University, and a former professor at the Fletcher School, Tufts University.

[markets] stocks higher, commodities fall inc. oil

With prices for commodities dropping, particularly crude oil, investors sold stock in companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and aluminum maker Alcoa Inc., theorizing that other companies will now be paying less for raw materials, a trend that will help preserve corporate profits. Moreover, a decline in commodities could portend a drop in inflation.

Also lifting stocks was a speech from St. Louis Federal Reserve President William Poole, who said he believes inflation is 'pretty well controlled.' His comments soothed some of the market's concerns about interest rates ahead of the Federal Reserve's meeting on Sept. 20.

'The drop in oil prices is becoming a catalyst, as is other commodities, and giving people confidence to put money into areas that have somewhat been lagging such as technology,' said Scott Fullman, director of investment strategy for Hapoalim Securities. 'Investors have been in commodity-based stocks, and you're seeing a reallocation of capital within the market.'

He believes this will 'continue unless its given a reason to reverse that trend, like if energy prices begin to rise again.'

Oil fell as OPEC said it would continue pumping crude at high rates to extend global supplies. The price of light sweet crude fell 35 cents to $65.90 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, marking the sixth-straight day of declines.

Exxon Mobil fell $1.46, or 2.2 percent, to $65.35, while Alcoa fell $1.29, or 4.5 percent, to $27.39.

There continue to be questions that the Fed went too far with 17 straight rate increases over two years, and that a soft landing of the economy might be harder to achieve. Investors have been gauging a series of economic reports during the past few weeks, and speeches by Fed officials, to determine what the central bank might do later this month.

Joe del Bruno The Associated Press

[taliban] more elusive than ever, not unlike hezbollah

When the Taliban's spring offensive began in June, the US-led coalition's intelligence identified the people in the Taliban's command council and their usual modus operandi and location in the guerrilla war.

All coalition tactics were based on this information, such as search operations, troop postings, logistics and arms allocations. The primary aim was to net Taliban leader Mullah Omar and close aides, such as Maualana Jalaluddin Haqqani, Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Gul Mohammed Jangvi.

Months later, these men have not even come close to being captured. That leaves the questions unanswered: How (and from where) do they manage to relay their instructions into the battlefield? Asia Times Online has learned that this year alone, international intelligence operations in Afghanistan have spent millions of dollars trying to find out, even as fighting in the past month has been the heaviest ever.

Significantly, the Taliban are now drawing increasing support from the Afghan population. These additional numbers have allowed them for the first time to conduct their own large-scale search operations against NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) troops in the south.

As a result, NATO this week requested additional troops, with no success. The alliance, which took command of military operations in southern Afghanistan on July 31, had wanted 2,000 extra soldiers to reinforce the 19,000-strong International Security Assistance Force.

Throwing more troops into a conventional battle (artillery and air strikes especially) might not be the best way to go as long as there remains a basic lack of understanding of where the enemy's command center is and how the mujahideen receive orders. What is known is that among the rank and file of the mujahideen there is a strong system of communication, with instructions flowing freely and quickly.

And despite claims by coalition forces to the contrary, the Taliban are not obsessed with taking control of provinces or districts. They abandoned that tactic at the end of July, and a lull in fighting followed. Since then, the new policy has been that the local population join in the fight against NATO, especially hunting down its convoys.

What is worth noting is that what is happening in Afghanistan has happened before, against the British many years ago and against the Soviets more recently. This latest battle against a foreign invader is being fought as a classic Afghan war, although the sequence of events is somewhat different.

In the past, resistance leaders migrated to neighboring states early in the campaign. This time it is happening much later. Previously, command councils were formed at the end, and the mass mutiny started earlier. This time it is the other way around.

Of one thing the Taliban are convinced, blindly some might say: Afghan tradition dictates that foreign forces will be resisted to the last. Further, the Taliban believe that by the end of the spring offensive, Mullah Omar will again declare himself head of the Islamic Emirate of Taliban for a final battle against the foreigners.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.

[reportage] beat-ups and inaccuracies

There are certainly elements of truth to the story and anti-foreign feeling does exist, as it does in France, Germany and Britain [BNP] and yes, there are incidents like the one mentioned. The situation is that immigrants from the southern republics are flooding in and it doesn’t take a professor to work out how the locals are going to feel, particularly if they are closer to the lower socio-economic echelons [which is the majority].

Of course criminal gangs and disgruntled locals will get together from time to time. They did this in the Cronulla riots where hooligans were being bussed in and coming via train. And what? And as usual, one side of the story is told. Gangs run migrants out of town. And how many ethnic groups were NOT run out of town?

And what of me? I’m a foreigner; I neither look nor sound like a Russian. Today when I hitched a lift, the driver couldn’t stop chattering about this and that and it’s always this way. Now my car is back in operation, sadly, such conversations must cease.

It’s like the Paris riots. A friend of mine who’d been in Paris came back and said that the locals were annoyed how the issue was beaten up – it was never quite as portrayed. And yet the major dailies ran the photo I’ve now run. Is it just to sell papers or is there some other ulterior motive behind the inaccuracies?

Way back in the dark ages, I saw a university sit-in. All right, the students got it into their heads to occupy the administration building and to sit on the floor. The police were called and they couldn’t get the students out. After two hours, the Marxist leader [later a stockbroker in his Daddy’s firm] was almost ready to accede and most of the students were getting a bit, er, peckish by this time. Enough’s enough, after all.

They decided to call it a day around 17:30.

Suddenly, onto the campus drove a star reporter and I’ll name him – Dan Webb – with a large number of people who weren’t students but were part of the entourage. Next thing, scuffles broke out, then one or two more serious incidents and the cameras rolled and Webb became the on-the-spot reporter capturing it all, just in time for the evening news.

The first Bruce Willis Die Hard portrays the type of thing. Nothing but a beat up.

[hezbollah] how they stayed out of range

Hezbollah's ability to repel the Israel Defense Forces during the recent conflict was largely due to its use of intelligence techniques gleaned from allies Iran and Syria that allowed it to monitor encoded Israeli communications relating to battlefield actions, according to Israeli officials, whose claims have been independently corroborated by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

"Israeli EW [electronic warfare] systems were unable to jam the systems at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, they proved unable to jam Hezbollah's command and control links from Lebanon to Iranian facilities in Syria, they blocked the Barak ship anti-missile systems, and they hacked into Israeli operations communications in the field," said Richard Sale, the longtime intelligence editor for United Press International, who was alerted to this intelligence failure by current and former CIA officials.

The ability to hack into Israel's military communications gave Hezbollah a decisive battlefield advantage, aside from allowing it to dominate the media war by repeatedly intercepting reports of the casualties it had inflicted and announcing them through its television station, Al-Manar. Al-Manar's general director, Abdallah Kassir, would not comment on the information-gathering methods that had allowed it to pre-empt Israel's casualty announcements, but he admitted he was in constant contact with Hezbollah's military wing.

When Israeli troops invaded southern Lebanon, they found themselves bogged down in stronger-than-expected Hezbollah resistance. The story of the handful of Hezbollah militants who single-handedly defended the border village of Aita Shaab has already become legend. Ultimately, Israel decided that the only way to neutralize them was to carpet-bomb the village, reducing it to rubble in the process.

Part of the reason for Hezbollah's decisive battlefield performance was that it was gleaning valuable information by monitoring telephone conversations in Hebrew between Israeli reservists and their families on their personal mobile phones. "If an enemy sets up a small group of EW people familiar with the terrain and reasonably aware of the current tactical situation, a stream of in-the-clear calls could have been a gold mine of information mentioned inadvertently," said Sale, quoting a CIA official.

A London Sunday Times article titled "Humbling of the super-troops shatters Israeli army morale" reported the story last week. It stated that Hezbollah was "able to crack the codes and follow the fast-changing frequencies of Israeli radio communications, intercepting reports of the casualties they had inflicted again and again".

The development marks a potential turning point in the region's strategic balance. Hezbollah's ability to repel Israel's elite troops marked the first time that an Arab force had frustrated a concerted invasion scenario by Israel. This has led to a concerted rethink on the part of the Israeli leadership, in which it is being assisted by American experts, according to Israeli intelligence website DEBKAfile.

It adds that the American experts are particularly focused on how Iranian EW installed in Lebanese army coastal radar stations blocked the Barak anti-missile missiles aboard Israeli warships, allowing Hezbollah to hit at least one Israeli corvette, the Hanith.

"Assuming that these capabilities came from Syria and Iran, most probably by way of Russia and China, one would have to believe that both the US and Israel have learned from the experience, and that leaning process will be applied in future conflicts," said Robert Freedman, Peggy Meyerhoff Pearlstone professor of political science at the Baltimore Hebrew University.

The Debka article also claims that Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah was hosted throughout the war in an underground war-room beneath the Iranian Embassy in Beirut. Iranian involvement was suspected throughout the conflict, and a captured Hezbollah guerrilla confessed on Israeli television to have visited Iran for training. The most able and committed Hezbollah guerrillas usually visit Iran for religious indoctrination and training in the firing of non-Katyusha rocketry.

"It [the technological breakthrough] may mean that the US and Israel no longer have the ability to operate at lower levels of violence on a supreme basis," said a Middle East analyst. "The playing field is more leveled. This may mean more diplomacy or it may mean more, and more concentrated, violence."

Iran and Syria advanced their SIGINT (SIGnals INTelligence - intelligence-gathering by interception of signals) cooperation last November, as part of a joint strategic defense cooperation accord aimed at consolidating the strategic aspect of their long-term alliance. Aside from being an invaluable help to Hezbollah, the ability to read Israeli and US codes could aid Iran in monitoring US movements in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It goes to the heart of one of the factors ... routinely regarded as one of the clear advantages for all First World versus Third World nations or forces - electronic warfare and secure communications," said Gary Sick, who was national security adviser under US president Jimmy Carter. "We are supposed to be able to read and interfere with their communications, not vice versa. A lot of calculations are based on that premise."

Iason Athanasiadis, Asian Times

[hewlett packard] patricia dunn fighting for her corporate life

From Taipei Times:

JOB ON THE LINE: Patricia Dunn faces the board of the computer giant today to explain why she shouldn't be fired over the scandal involving alleged illegal snooping

Patricia Dunn, Hewlett-Packard Co's chairwoman, was known as a remarkable saleswoman as she rose to the top of the financial industry. But today, she will have to sell her board on the idea that she should not be dumped as the scapegoat for the scandal rocking the company.

While the agenda item is how the company handled an investigation of its own directors -- and the possibly illegal techniques used to obtain their private phone records -- the underlying theme is whether she should remain.

Dunn declined repeated requests for interviews until Friday. In a telephone interview, she moved to address some of the questions raised in the furor, defending her efforts to stop news leaks from the company's boardroom while conceding that the methods had been "sloppy."

Emphasizing that her actions had been taken with the board's knowledge and approval, she said: "The chairman is not a unilateral power position. I am a servant to the board."

While acknowledging calls from outside the company for her resignation, she said the criticism was unfair. "I fully intend to remain in these positions unless asked to vacate them by the board," she said. "If they do ask me, I will step down." But she is not lobbying or polling members. "This is not a job I asked for or a job that I particularly wanted," she said.

Dunn, the former head of Barclays Global Investors, joined the Hewlett-Packard board in 1998 and took over as chairwoman after the ouster of Carly Fiorina as chairwoman and chief executive early last year. Fiorina's removal, after a contentious proxy fight over HP's merger with Compaq Computer, supposedly marked the end of a fitful period for the board.

But while the business rebounded, boardroom tensions persisted, fueled by news leaks from within. The company ultimately hired private investigators to identify directors disclosing information to the media and those investigators posed as board members -- a practice known as pretexting -- to gain access to their personal phone records.

The revelations emerged this week, set in motion by a former board member and pre-eminent Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Thomas Perkins, who resigned in anger over the investigation in May and then pressed the company to acknowledge his reasons for leaving.

Dunn said on Friday that she felt that a personal dispute was at the center of the storm. "Tom is a powerful man with friends in powerful places," she said. "This brouhaha is the result of his anger toward me. He is winning the PR war."

"He was the most hawkish member of the board for finding the leaker," she added. "He wanted us to bring in lie detectors," she said. She said that Perkins was initially upset with her because she revealed the name of the leaker to the full board rather than handle it quietly in private. "He wanted me to handle this behind closed doors, without even revealing the name of the leaker," she said. "I could never agree to that."

Perkins could not be reached for comment on Friday, but his lawyer, Viet Dinh, a Georgetown University law professor, said, "When red flags go up, that's when boards should ask questions."

Dunn said the company investigated 10 leaks and that evidence in seven of them pointed to George Keyworth II, who was asked to resign at a board meeting in May. He refused, but the company said this week that it would not nominate him for re-election. Dunn said they never determined the source of the three other leaks.

"Our board is happy to know that the leaker is caught," she said. She said the leaks had been "long-term, persistent and intractable" with potential for ruining trust among board members. She termed the attempt to stop the leaks a "noble cause."

She said that no one on the board "endorsed, understood or approved" of pretexting and that the company was putting new guidelines in place to prevent such practices in future investigations. "It wasn't implemented well," she said. "But I had no choice but to follow this violation. It fell to me to do it."

[far-east] china wants e. u. to allow arms sales

AP latest syndicated:

“No country can say they can resolve all the issues related to human rights perfectly,” Mr. Wen added after a summit meeting with EU officials.

The European arms ban has been a sticking point in the EU's relations with Beijing and stems from China's questionable human rights record. Mr. Wen objected to the EU's practice of linking “economic and trade issues with the so-called human rights issues.

“China attaches great importance to the issue of human rights and we identified human rights as the basic rights of the Chinese people,” he said. Mr. Wen also urged the international community not to threaten Iran with economic and other sanctions over Tehran's nuclear enrichment program.

“It is our hope that the international community ... will exercise caution on this matter and continue to work for a peaceful solution,” he said. The permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia — plus Germany have offered Iran economic incentives to persuade Tehran from enriching uranium.

Iran has ignored an Aug. 31 U.N. Security Council deadline to suspend enrichment. The EU and China, meanwhile, agreed to step up co-operation in nonproliferation and disarmament issues and “expressed their grave concern over (North Korea's) recent multiple launch of missiles,” said a final summit statement.

The two sides called for an early resumption of six-nation talks designed to resolve North Korea's standoff with its neighbours over its nuclear arms ambitions. In those talks, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States have tried to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear program. North Korea has refused to negotiate since November to protest a U.S. crackdown on Pyongyang's assets abroad for alleged money-laundering and counterfeiting.

[syria and iran] strange bedfellows

A good place to start is with the Finance, the ones bankrolling the unrest. One of their organs, the CFR, has a good analysis of Syria and the salient points are:

- Syria was a proud Arab country, ruled with brutal consistency for thirty years by Hafez al-Assad, comfortably assured of its decades-old grip on Lebanon, and admired in the Arab world for standing up to Israel and representing the principles of pan-Arab unity. Then, in June 2000, Hafez al-Assad died.

- today, five years into the reign of his son and successor Bashar al-Assad, Syria is an international pariah whose actions have driven even Arab allies to reconsider their support of Damascus.

- in fall 2004, Bashar forced an extra-constitutional extension of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud’s term through the Lebanese legislature

- then-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri quit and joined the political opposition

- on February 14, 2005, Hariri and twenty-one others were killed in a massive car bombing in downtown Beirut

- UN special investigator Detlev Mehlis’s report accused members of Assad's most inner circle and the Syrian intelligence apparatus

- also funneling weapons to Hezbollah and aiding insurgents who cross the Syrian border

- a separate report by UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen on progress toward implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which mandates the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Lebanon and dismantling Hezbollah and other militias was supported by Hairiri

- Bashar al-Assad seems to be presiding over the potential demise of the Alawite regime

- Lebanese authorities arrested four pro-Syrian generals who worked closely with Ghazi Kenaan, who ran Syria’s intelligence apparatus in Lebanon from 1982-2002 and charged them with murder in the Hariri case

- Kenaan was questioned extensively and weeks later was found dead of a gunshot wound days before the Mehlis report was due. Syrian authorities called it suicide

- Hariri had very close ties to both Saudi Arabia and King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz plus France, funding part of Chirac’s presidential campaign

- Past Syrian assassinations were usually effective at causing the Lebanese political establishment to fall into line - Hariri was a huge mistake

- Bashar’s tone-deaf to international opinion and too weak to master the fractious tribal and regional demands of leading a country like Syria

- “He hasn’t grown into his own man,” says Richard Murphy, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia who served in Damascus during Hafez al-Assad’s reign

- Hafez spread out power and played ambitious courtiers against one another; Bashar has concentrated influence within a small circle of close advisers and generally does not seek to build consensus

- Bashar has been offered a deal similar to that accepted by Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi in 2003: If Syria stops its support for regional terror groups, its aid to the insurgency in Iraq, and its interference in Lebanon, Damascus can head off sanctions and further international isolation

- If Bashar caves, “he’ll be seen as selling out the goal of pan-Arab unity to save his own skin,” Gambill says. That would be unacceptable to Syrians, and thus makes such a compromise unlikely, he says

- Bashar has dashed early hopes he would reform Syria and open it up to the world. That hasn’t happened. Instead, Syrians have seen missteps, foreign policy mistakes, and the loss of Syrian power, territory, and friends (former allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt are siding with France and the United States against Syria on the Hariri issue)

- The country as a whole is weaker, and many people blame Bashar

- Bashar has no clear successor, and most of the Syrian establishment still views him as the leader. There’s no obvious alternative at the moment and too many people in Syria owe their lifestyles and everything they have to the continuation of this regime

- Syrians think Washington and Paris have been very demanding of Bashar, that as soon as he meets a condition they impose several more. There’s an idea that there’s nothing he can do to please them

From Israel News Agency:

- Bashar al-Assad was educated in the UK. His expelling of Saddam Hussein's relatives will not save him from the same fate for which Saddam finds himself in today - facing criminal charges in an open, democratic court

- As the UN Security Council met to discuss what to do next, the United States and its allies appeared to be laying the ground for economic sanctions against Damascus, which was forced to end its 29-year military presence in Lebanon amid intense international pressure.

- President George Bush has asked Syria a few times: "are you with us or against us?" This one is puzzling to me.

http://countrystudies.us/syria/67.htm says:

- Over the years, United States-Syrian bilateral relations ranged between grudging mutual accommodation and outright mutual hostility

- The United States endorses United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, the implementation of which would entail the return of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights to Syrian control. This may be getting closer to the explanation.

- Syria has recognized that Resolution 242 contains provisions in its favor. Syria has been willing to negotiate with the United States over the Arab-Israeli conflict and other regional issues, as long as the diplomacy is conducted quietly and behind the scenes. Syria has also adhered scrupulously to the commitments and promises it has made to American negotiators.

- April 17, 1986, after attempting to smuggle a bomb aboard an Israeli El Al Airlines plane in London, Nizar Hindawi confessed that Syrian intelligence officers had masterminded the abortive attack and that Syria had provided him with the training, logistical support, and explosives to carry out the plot

- Assad sought to convince the United States that Syria, however intransigent its negotiating stance, should not be ignored in any comprehensive Middle East peace treaty because it could resume war with Israel and therefore exert veto power over an Arab-Israeli settlement.

- At the same time, however, Assad was convinced that the United States was indispensable in any Middle East peace because only the United States could force Israel to make concessions to the Arabs

CNN reported:
- "We are ready to help Syria on all grounds to confront threats," Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref said after meeting Syrian PM Naji al-Otari

- Russian Defence Ministry confirmed it was discussing the possibility of selling missiles to Syria, known as Strelets

From various sources:

- As in Iran, the Kurds in Syria continue to suffer as a pariah minority with little hope for immediate improvement. Friction between Syria's minority Kurdish

- But I think what really went wrong - what turned Syrian into a pariah state - was his poor handling of foreign policy

- Syria has missed a golden opportunity to break out of its isolation during ... of a “new Middle East” risked reinforcing Syria’s pariah status in the West

The Financial Times added:

- Hariri reportedly commented after a fateful 2004 meeting with Mr Assad: "We are dealing with a group of lunatics who could do anything."

This may be the closest we can get to the real situation with Syria. Interesting that Iran, a Shi'ite nation, should ally itself with Syria, a Sunni, Ba'athist, minority Alawite elite given to degenerate fast and loose living. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Interesting that both should be pariah nations. Interesting that both should be led by lunatics. Makes one feel more ... secure somehow.

[afghanistan] yet another trouble spot flares up

Have you paused to ask why Afghanistan happens to have flared up again now, straight after Lebanon? All over the world conflicts are breaking out and heroic NATO forces immediately move in to quell the insurgents.

In every theatre – Tamil, Taliban, Basque, Hezbollah, soon Kosovo again, it seems to be the season for insurgency. And western forces are currently deployed to lend a helping hand in rooting them out. Quite lucky, isn’t it, that they happen to be right on hand when they’re needed?

The Globe and Mail reports today: The fourth platoon of Canada’s Bravo Company, known as the Nomads, were fighting alongside U.S. troops and killed an estimated 20 Taliban. Operation Medusa was largely a conventional attack but the opposition is anything but conventional.

The night before, the soldiers had laid tripwire in the grape fields around their positions and rigged flares to give away the presence of intruders -- but now the flares were gone. It seemed that insurgents had snuck to within a few dozen metres of the Canadians, snipped the tripwires, and stolen the flares.

"I'm surprised they could even find them, out there," said Col. Lavoie, the Canadian battle-group commander. "The only explanation for that," replied his captain, "is that they watched us put them in."

NATO bombardments of the area continued into the night, but the Canadians stayed alert; radio chatter suggested that the Taliban had a concealed bunker nearby, and were planning a more serious assault.

That’s the official report from the Toronto Globe and Mail but I ask the question, ‘What the hell are the Canadians doing in Afghanistan in the first place?’ Do they think they’re going to eliminate this foe? Perhaps they should have a chat with the Russian army, which had some interesting experiences in this hell hole before they woke up that this really is a Medusa they’re up against.

Am I completely out of order in suggesting that this thing is starting to look like a series of co-ordinated global military exercises? And read the Globe and Mail report again and note the Falklands like patriotic tone. Reminiscent?

[parallels] the implosion of labour

I’m going to be short on facts and high on impressions. Who wants to know about the intricacies of Australian politics anyway?

Australia was becoming tired of John Howard’s grey politics, of his conservative, no-fun policies and the country’s steady-as-she-goes seeming slow descent into mediocrity on the world stage. Many remember the skyrocket Gough Whitlam from the early 70s, when he stood tall in the world and the world took notice.

In Australia, there were grumblings, which became shrill as Howard had an unfortunate meeting with George Bush on the White House lawn where Bush clearly showed that Howard and his country were a low priority, despite the rhetoric. This p-ed off many Australians, including the conservatives.

Enter Mark Latham. Brash, ebullient, full of vigour and confidence – here was the great white hope at last for Labour. New policies on everything from education to the environment, a new broom. One of his first acts was to appoint Peter Garrett, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation and former lead singer with the rock band Midnight Oil, as a Labor candidate in Kingsford Smith, a safe Sydney electorate vacated by the retiring former minister Laurie Brereton.

It hit the fan. The local party had already earmarked the seat for a tireless party hack and the young upstart was not going to break in like this. Just as Blair silenced the critics when it became apparent he was actually going to win, so it was with Latham. This was a new, young Labour, with experts in all key positions.

It never happened. It imploded and John Howard must have been smiling wrily as he stood back and watched. He hadn’t had to do a thing. It really came down to Mark Latham’s illness – a heart condition and though he came through it and was declared ‘sound’, Australia wondered. Then came various erratic statements from Latham’s mouth, unlike Gordon Brown and Peter Costello where they mainly came from their supporters.

Australia’s approval of Latham began to slip and the Labour sharks began to circle. John Howard became a little jauntier and the atmosphere shifted. It’s a matter of record now that Howard won significantly, Latham immediately withdrew completely from politics and soon after, the Latham Diaries were published.

Was there ever such a collection of vitriolic spite – about Beazley, about everyone on the Labour side. It wasn’t so much the hotly disputed ‘revelations’ but the appalling tone. It was Nixonian street-hood-head-kicking stuff and Australia now saw what they had just escaped from by the skin of their teeth. The man had gone completely to pieces.

Australia breathed a collective sigh of relief, except for the left infested press and Howard enjoyed a new lease of life. Labour is back in the wilderness where it so loves to dwell.

[да или нет] путина на третьем президентском сроке

Александр Вешняков поставил крест на мечтах желающих увидеть Владимира Путина на третьем президентском сроке. Руководитель ЦИК объявил, что инициаторы проведения референдума не успеют соблюсти все формальности. Инициаторы обещают ускориться.

Председатель Центризбиркома Александр Вешняков считает, что инициаторы проведения референдума по изменению Конституции, после чего у Владимира Путина появится возможность баллотироваться на третий президентский срок, не успеют организовать плебисцит до декабря. После этого начнется период, в который, согласно законодательству, референдумы по внесению изменений в конституцию будут запрещены.

«В последний год полномочий депутатов Госдумы и президента референдумы такого рода проводиться не могут. Такой период начнется в декабре 2006 года, – напомнил Вешняков на пресс-конференции в Москве. – Если сложить подготовительный этап, в том числе назначение указом президента даты референдума, организаторы никак не уложатся в тот период, который остается до декабря».
«Не нарушая действующий федеральный закон, провести референдум по изменению Конституции в эти сроки практически невозможно», – резюмировал глава ЦИК. Тем самым высший российский чиновник, отвечающий за проведение выборов и референдумов, как будто поставил точку в активизировавшейся в последнее время дискуссии о третьем сроке Путина.

Вешняков пояснил также, что пока в ЦИК никакие документы о проведении референдума не поступали и сам он знаком с этой инициативой исключительно по сообщениям СМИ. «Конечно, если придут документы, мы их будем рассматривать. По закону, мы должны дать заключение, насколько вопросы, которые выносятся на референдум, соответствуют федеральному конституционному закону», - пообещал он журналистам.

Инициаторы референдума, которые есть уже во многих регионах России, слов Вешнякова не испугались. Первая инициативная группа по проведению референдума, созданная, как писала «Газета.Ru» только в четверг в Северной Осетии, продолжит свою работу.

Как сообщил «Газете.Ru» руководитель группы Валерий Гизоев, в пятницу же группа подает в республиканский избирком Северной Осетии документы на свою регистрацию, а после этого будет «проявлять максимум энтузиазма». «Будем стараться уложиться в установленные законом сроки. Мы должны успеть», – оптимистично заверил Гизоев «Газету.Ru».

Кроме того, инициативная группа намерена обратиться к своим единомышленникам из других регионов, с которыми ранее уже состоялись переговоры на эту тему, чтобы они «проявили большую оперативность». «Если они успеют оперативно провести такие же собрания, которое мы провели в четверг, то мы можем успеть в эти сроки уложиться», – считает Гизоев.

По его словам, у инициативной группы есть предварительная договоренность с представителями 57-58 регионов о создании подгрупп по проведению референдума. 27 сентября во Владикавказе состоится собрание региональных подгрупп. Правда, признал Гизоев, «нет полной уверенности, что все они смогут это сделать, потому что есть горячие сторонники этой идеи (третьего срока. – «Газета.Ru»), но в силу ограниченности своих финансовых возможностей они даже не смогут прислать своих уполномоченных. Нам было странно услышать, как из одного региона позвонили и сказали, что у них денег нет даже на оплату телефона. Что взять с такой организации?»
По мнению Гизоева, инициативная группа сама отчасти виновата в этой ситуации: «Мы могли бы спокойно обратиться в «Единую Россию».

«Эта мощная организация могла бы в два счета решить все проблемы. Но мы сознательно на это не идем, чтобы никто не сказал, что эта инициатива не наша, а спущена сверху», – говорит Гизоев.

Эксперты согласны с Вешняковым в том, что успеть в срок для организаторов референдума маловероятно. «Если посчитать по срокам, чтобы запустить референдум, нужно минимум семь месяцев: создать группы, подтвердить формулировку», – утверждает бывший председатель Центризбиркома, руководитель Независимого института выборов Александр Иванченко. Он напомнил, что раньше законодательство о референдуме было более либеральным – нужно было меньше подписей и не нужны были инициативные группы в половине субъектов федерации. «Два года назад в пику коммунистам, чтобы они не могли проводить свои референдумы, были приняты поправки. В пылу запретительства были введены такие жесткие ограничения по проведению и финансированию референдумов, что граждане потеряли возможность сами инициировать референдум без санкций госорганов. Даже когда сама бюрократия, может быть, и хотела бы», – иронизирует Иванченко.

По его мнению, инициаторы референдума на самом деле и не имели задачи его действительно провести. «Это инициатива больше пиаровского плана, чтобы местная элита подтвердила, что она с уважением относится к Владимиру Путину. Это художественная самодеятельность, федеральный уровень смог бы это сделать гораздо профессиональнее и без всякого участия местных элит. Такие инициативы только раздражают федеральные власти», – считает эксперт.

Дмитрий Виноградов 08 Сентября

[hewlett packard] is the street now turning on patricia

The cards may now be turning against the woman who forced out Carly Fiorinina, of whom Robert Cihra, analyst with Fulcrum Global said, "The Street had lost all faith in her and the market's hope is that anyone will be better." Enter Patricia Dunn and soon exit Patricia Dunn.

Patricia Dunn:

If I could change something about my job it would be: "Managing a global company is a 24X7 responsibility. If I could make the sun go down at the same time all over the world, my job would be close to perfect."

Her early thoughts about working for a bank were well captured in a quote that she gave to “Fortune” magazine saying, “I thought I’d rather take chloroform and die.” As she was temping, she kept in mind her dream of being a foreign correspondent, but eventually took a permanent position with BGI.

Dunn worked her way up and through the corporate ladder, wearing many hats along the way. She points out that it helps to be in the right place at the right time, but she has paid her dues with a staggering 25 years behind her at BGI. She also never underestimates the presence of luck. “I worked very hard. And I have been very lucky.”

Life Goal: "To be a successful person, not simply a successful business person, says Dunn. "For me, this means having a successful family life, which I value hugely."

Most super-ambitious people have two major failings - they can't delegate and they look over their shoulder. There are always all sorts of grumblings about successful people but with a personality like Patricia Dunn's, especially complicated by the fact that it is mainly males against her, leaving Fiorinina aside, it's a major mistake to overreact and leave oneself exposed, as she has done. For those who might have admired her chutzpah, her verve before, now start question her judgement.

There's one other truism in business - that it's still easier to wind up a seasoned businesswoman than it is a seasoned businessman. Femininity is always going to be vulnerable in the long run.

It’s good that she can now go back to her family and nurture it as she would wish to do.

[canada and china] the humiliation worsens

Brian Laghy reports, in Thursday's Globe and Mail:

The Dalai Lama arrived on Canadian soil yesterday to the protests of Chinese diplomats upset that the religious leader will meet with a Conservative MP while they continue to wait for a formal one-on-one meeting with Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister. Officials with the Chinese embassy confirmed yesterday that Chinese ambassador to Canada Lu Shumin has yet to formally meet with Peter MacKay, a get-together that would typically happen almost as a matter of course, according to diplomatic experts.

The lack of a meeting, along with Jason Kenney's scheduled discussion with the Dalai Lama in Vancouver tomorrow, led experts, politicians and business people to express concern about what they believe is a changing government view of the new economic colossus. "An accumulation of slights is going to be damaging to the long-term relationship," said Fen Hampson, head of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. Prof. Hampson said not meeting with the ambassador may be perceived by the Chinese as a snub.

Many members of the government caucus, including Mr. Kenney, have also been critical of China's human rights policy. It has led to some experts expressing concern of trade retaliation on the part of the Chinese. Mr. Hampson said it's not in Canada's interest to ignore China or to take the Taiwanese side. "China and India are the two most dynamic and important economies in the developing world and it is in Canada's interest to be an investment player in China.

Meanwhile in Vancouver yesterday the Dalai Lama laughed off complaints from Chinese diplomats in Canada over his plans to meet elected officials here. "It seems whenever I travel somewhere, it always creates some inconvenience," he told a news conference. So, I am very sorry. But hopefully, it is not my mistake."

I say to hell with the Chinese. Canada is just as much a sovereign nation as China and it was treated shamefully earlier in Beijing, as some sort of errant schoolboy. Canada must not cravenly kowtow to Beijing in the manner in which the west is cravenly kowtowing to the Arabs.

[iceland] long cold winter for foreigners

Students are back at school and many wage earners are considering changing jobs. The greatest shortage of workers seems to be in the various care sectors and the number of manual labour positions has dropped. The Confederation of Icelandic Employees forecasts a sharp decline on the labour market this winter, although unemployment may not necessarily be the result.

A great number of foreign workers are currently employed by contractors or sub-contractors in Iceland and there is considerable uncertainty as to what their situation will be when or if a decline in the economy takes place this winter.

One thing they can be sure of is that they’re going to be the first jettisoned if things take a downturn, which they won’t in this remote outpost, which in turn makes the speculation merely idle chit-chat.

[oil and gas] russia tells exxon where to get off

Mosnews reports:

Exxon Mobil has been developing the Sakhalin-1 project under a production sharing agreement (PSA) since the 1990s.

The Natural Resources Ministry’s move follows weeks of unprecedented pressure by Moscow on the rival Sakhalin-2 PSA, led by Royal Dutch/Shell, culminating on Tuesday when Russia’s environment watchdog said it had asked a court to recognize that the scheme did not comply with ecological rules. The latest move reinforced a view among Western analysts that the Kremlin is becoming increasingly unhappy with major projects controlled by foreigners.

The statement said Exxon’s belief that it should be automatically granted the rights to develop newly discovered reserves was wrong, even though the U.S. company said that they represented the same geological structure as existing deposits.

The $12.8 billion project has reserves of 307 million tons (2.3 billion barrels) of oil and 485 billion cubic meters of gas and is due to pump about 250,000 barrels per day by the middle of next year.

The consortium includes Exxon with 30 percent, Russian state oil firm Rosneft with 20 percent, Japan’s SODECO —- a government-backed consortium of oil companies and trading firms —- with 30 percent, and India’s ONGC with 20 percent.

Rosneft has said the project’s fields and the nearby structures may contain some extra 100 million tons of oil.

The Sakhalin projects, Russia’s biggest offshore developments, are located on and off the Pacific island.

Despite support from the influential Rosneft, Sakhalin-1 has already run into trouble with its plans to export gas to China. Russian state gas monopoly Gazprom said it would oppose the plan as it has a bigger rival project.

Despite the analysts’ concerns that Moscow might cancel the PSAs altogether, Russian Deputy Economy Minister Kirill Androsov said on Wednesday that the agreements would stay in place. He did speculate, however, that to avoid the troubles with authorities, the international oil giants should begin operating under a regular tax regime. The two projects are currently operating under a special tax regime that was set up for them back in 1990s.

Exxon knows the game well enough and it must stick in their craw that Russia’s going all out for the cash, despite what they, Exxon, see as genuine commitment upstream as well as R&D and there should be just a little, a little payback. Not with Russia. When will the west ever realize with whom they’re dealing?

[middle-east] passing of ayotollah means crazies can now rule

Sami Moubayed reports, from Damascus [this is abridged]:

The saddest news coming from Iraq is the decision of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to cease all political activity and restrict himself to his religious duties in Shi'ite Islam. He said this weekend: "I will not be a political leader anymore. I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters."

If Sistani lives up to his word, this means silencing the loudest - and only - remaining voice of reason and moderation in Iraqi politics. This is the same man who used his paramount influence to silence the guns of two Shi'ite insurgencies in 2004. He then wisely ordered his supporters to vote in last years national elections, claiming that it was a "religious duty" to join the political process and jump-start democratic life in Iraq.

This same wise man, who is a democrat at heart, insisted that women, too, must have their say in politics and that they should vote in elections. If their husbands, brothers or fathers forbade them from voting, then it was their right (as authorized by Sistani) to say no and to head to the ballots without approval (something frowned on among conservative Muslims).

Never supportive of the US occupation of Iraq, he nevertheless decided to cooperate honorably with the Americans (in anticipation of their eventual withdrawal), knowing that violence would not defeat them or make them go away.

Honorable cooperation, to a Gandhian leader like Sistani, was certainly more rewarding - and less costly - than a military insurgency. His political endorsement was all that was needed for any politician to win the parliamentary elections of 2005 and 2006, and he is considered the guiding force behind the broad coalition of religious Shi'ites known as the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) that has been in power for the past two years.

Recently, however, Sistani has been both angry and disappointed at the UIA for failing to bring law, order and security to Iraq. He is appalled by the rising power of Shi'ite militias in the streets of Baghdad.

In July alone, more than 3,000 Iraqis were killed by rival militias from the Sunni and Shi'ite communities. A report released by the Pentagon on Friday showed that the real problem in Iraq is no longer an armed al-Qaeda- and Ba'athist-led insurgency fighting the Americans and the Iraqi government. It is now Iraqi Sunnis fighting against Iraqi Shi'ites - meaning, Iraq is now in civil war.

The Pentagon report noted that the attacks had risen to 792 per week and casualties were almost 150 Iraqis killed per day. Such startling facts are troubling for someone like Sistani, who hates violence and has repeatedly called for it to stop.

But his calls are falling on deaf ears. The biggest example was when fighting broke out on August 28 between Iraqi soldiers and the supporters of Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr in Diwaniyya, 160 kilometers south of Baghdad. Sistani called for calm. Nobody listened to him, and as a result 73 people were killed.

The other reason Sistani has decided to retreat from political life is that he is being greatly overshadowed by the younger, more populist Muqtada, who is 42 years his junior. Hailing from a strong dynastic family that once worked in opposition to Saddam Hussein, Muqtada rose to fame after the US invasion of 2003 as a loud anti-American leader.

He created a militia of his own, the Mehdi Army, and waged war on the Americans and the pro-US cabinet of prime minister Iyad Allawi in 2004. Under Sistani's mediation, the conflict came to an end and Muqtada was allowed to live in peace, while a warrant for his arrest was dropped.

Muqtada has since entered the political process with astounding success and holds 30 seats in parliament, as well as four portfolios held by his supporters in the cabinet of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Muqtada meets his supporters every day and distributes favors to all those around him. He operates a strong charity network, cares for the families of those who are wounded or killed in combat, and has build a name for himself as an uncorrupted leader who lives a monastic life.

He uses - with great skill - the "patron-client" system of Arab politics, offering the masses his protection in exchange for their allegiance. As a man of religion who should appeal to all Shi'ites, and not only his supporters, Sistani cannot do that.

When Iraqis come to Sistani telling them that a Sunni militant murdered one of their family, the grand cleric tells them to go to the police. Muqtada, however, promises revenge. He then sends out his own militiamen to avenge the killing, further endearing him to the masses.

Sistani is well connected to the older generation of upper-middle-class Iraqis in the Shi'ite community. He also has friends and followers among the rich urban elite. He is well connected to Iran.

Muqtada, however, is popular in the slums of Baghdad and among the unemployed youth who see salvation in Muqtada and the Mehdi Army. The reason is simple: when lawlessness prevails, the masses search for people who can protect them.

In a country like Iraq, Sistani means guidance, while Muqtada means protection. Life to the Iraqis is more important than wisdom.

The Independent quoted one of his aids when asked whether Sistani could prevent civil war in Iraq: "Honestly, I think not. He is very angry, very disappointed." He was further quoted saying: "He [Sistani] asked the politicians to ask the Americans to make a timetable for leaving [Iraq] but they disappointed him." He added: "After the war, the politicians were visiting him every month. If they wanted to do something, they visited him. But no one has visited him for two or three months. He is very angry that this is happening now. He sees this as very bad."

Saddam dreaded Sistani because the cleric had backed a Shi'ite rebellion against him in 1991. Inasmuch as he would have loved to assassinate Sistani, Saddam could not do that because this would have created certain civil war in Ba'athist Iraq. This was something Saddam could not afford, coming out of eight years of the Iran-Iraq War and the fiasco of invading Kuwait and then being defeated by the Americans in 1991.

Nor could Saddam make Sistani disappear in the way Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi did to Imam Musa al-Sadr, another Shi'ite cleric, in 1978. Instead, Saddam put Sistani under house arrest, shut down his mosque and forbade him from preaching.

The Shi'ite leader remained in seclusion until Saddam was toppled in March 2003. He has since reinforced his authority over Shi'ites throughout the region, sending emissaries to Iran to meet with the clergy, and relying on state-of-the-art technology to market his leadership through the Internet.

This is mainly done through a multi-language website called Sistani.org, which attracts more than 3 million people from Iran alone every month. Sistani receives hundreds of visitors at his home in Najaf every day, but does not go out, rarely gives interviews and rarely poses for the cameras. His office is Internet-wired and his aides are often on Google, surfing the 'Net to brief him on the latest updates taking place around the world.

Still, however, the difference between Muqtada and Sistani is great. Although Sistani's "honorable cooperation" is no longer popular among grassroot Shi'ites, he is still looked up to as an ultimate authority on religious affairs, even by Muqtada.

Muqtada does not match him in religious legitimacy, although some of his supporters have recently started to call him "Sayyed Muqtada" to give him an honorary religious title. He remains, however, a nobody in religious affairs, while Sistani is the supreme master, not only in Iraq but throughout the Muslim World.

Sistani is one of the brains of Shi'ite Islam, matched only by the Iranian Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, the other grand ayatollah of Iranian politics who had been the chosen successor to the Islamic Republic's founder Ruhollah Khomeini.

Sistani, who is an Iranian living in Iraq, was seen by Iraqis as a foreigner because he speaks Arabic with a Persian accent, and does not even hold an Iraqi passport. When people say, however, that Sistani is a follower of Iran, this is not very correct. The truth is that Iran follows Sistani, because of his paramount standing as a religious authority on Shi'ite Islam.

Sistani and Muqtada stand on different ground when it comes to Iran and the status of the Shi'ite community in Iraq.

Muqtada is greatly opposed to creating an autonomous Shi'ite district in southern Iraq, something that has been lobbied for by Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Hakim is a creation of Iran and an ally of Sistani. His family is also the historical contender to Shi'ite leadership in Iraq against the family of Muqtada.

The young Muqtada believes in a united and Arabist Iraq. He pays little more than lip service to the mullahs of Tehran, arguing that they should not interfere in domestic politics. Both men have an ultimate goal of creating an Iran-style theocracy in Iraq. Sistani wants it influenced and controlled by Iran, while Muqtada wants it to be independent from Tehran. This brings the two men further apart when added to how they view the US occupation of Iraq. While both may be equally opposed to it, each deals with this occupation in a very different manner.

Historically, one must remember that it was Sistani who saved Muqtada from the hangman's noose in 2004. Muqtada went to war in April 2004 and Sistani ordered a ceasefire that went into effect in May. That August, however, Sistani went to London for surgery and before reaching Heathrow Airport, fighting had resumed between the Americans and the Sadrists.

Some speculated that Sistani's journey to London at such a time was deliberate: a green light to the Americans to launch a full assault on Muqtada. If the Americans won, then Sistani would have rid himself of a noisy challenger in Shi'ite politics. If they lost (which was impossible) then he would get rid of the Americans.

What happened was a different story. During Sistani's absence, more fighting broke out. On his return, when Muqtada and his men were stranded in combat, Sistani stepped in at the last moment to end the crisis. He secured another ceasefire, a pardon for Muqtada, and his continuation in the political life of Iraq.

Sistani was sending Muqtada a message: "I saved you in a minute, and if I wish, I can also destroy you in a minute. Do not get too strong or overambitious. I am No 1 in the Shi'ite community of Iraq."

This message reached Muqtada loud and clear in 2004. Fate - and US mishandling of Iraq - which leaves no room for "honorable cooperation" anymore, played directly into the hands of Muqtada, making him "No 1" in the Shi'ite community of Iraq.

Postscript: This author submitted a question by e-mail to Sistani.org, asking the ayatollah whether, if history repeats itself, he would step in to save Muqtada again, the way he did in 2004. In other words, did he regret his "wisdom" in 2004? To date, there has been no answer.