Pentagon: Iraqi Troops Downgraded

No Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support
CNN
Saturday, February 25, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The only Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support has been downgraded to a level requiring them to fight with American troops backing them up, the Pentagon said Friday.

The battalion, made up of 700 to 800 Iraqi Army soldiers, has repeatedly been offered by the U.S. as an example of the growing independence of the Iraqi military.

The competence of the Iraqi military has been cited as a key factor in when U.S. troops will be able to return home.

"As we see more of these Iraqi forces in the lead, we will be able to continue with our stated strategy that says as Iraqi forces stand up, we will stand down," President Bush said last month.

The battalion, according to the Pentagon, was downgraded from "level one" to "level two" after a recent quarterly assessment of its capabilities.

"Level one" means the battalion is able to fight on its own; "level two" means it requires support from U.S. troops; and "level three" means it must fight alongside U.S. troops.

Though officials would not cite a specific reason for downgrading the unit, its readiness level has dropped in the wake of a new commander and numerous changes in the combat and support units, officials said.

The battalion is still deployed, and its status as an independent fighting force could be restored any day, Pentagon officials said. It was not clear where the battalion is operating within Iraq.

According to the congressionally mandated Iraq security report released Friday, there are 53 Iraqi battalions at level two status, up from 36 in October. There are 45 battalions at level three, according to the report.

Overall, Pentagon officials said close to 100 Iraqi army battalions are operational, and more than 100 Iraq Security Force battalions are operational at levels two or three. The security force operations are under the direction of the Iraqi government.

The numbers are roughly the same as those given by the president last month when he said 125 Iraqi combat battalions were fighting the insurgency, 50 of them taking the lead.

"In January 2006, the mission is to continue to hand over more and more territory and more and more responsibility to Iraqi forces," Bush said. "That's progress."

The Coming Fall of Pakistan

By WILLIAM S. LIND
CounterPunch
February 24, 2006

The riots in Pakistan are hardly news anymore: if they appear in the paper at all, it is on page C17, between a story on starvation in the Sudan and a report that Mrs. McGillicuty fell down the stairs. The riots continue nonetheless, seemingly unconcerned that the rest of the world is no longer watching.

Perhaps it should. Periodic riots are normal in parts of the world; England was famous for them in the 18th century. But when rioting continues day after day, it can serve as a sort of thermometer, taking the temperature of a population. Pakistan, it would seem, is running a fever, one that shows little sign of breaking.

On the surface, the rioting is a protest against cartoons of Mohammed. Throughout the Islamic world, the anti-cartoon demonstrations are both an expression of rage at Islamic states' impotence and a demonstration of Islam's power outside the state framework. But in Pakistan, the immediate target of the riots is all too evident: Pakistani President Musharraf and his working relationship with America's President Bush (in Pakistan, Musharraf is often called Busharraf).

After 9/11, when Bush announced that anyone in the world who was not with us was with the terrorists, Musharraf had to make a strategic choice. He had to make it fast, since America wanted to attack Afghanistan, and it needed Pakistan's help to do so. Musharraf chose to ally with Bush. That choice has paid Pakistan dividends internationally, but at a price: Musharraf's legitimacy at home became dependent on the Pakistani people's view of America. In effect, Musharraf reincarnated himself as a political satellite of Bush.

Not surprisingly, America's popularity among Pakistanis was not helped by our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Taliban was largely a Pakistani creation, and its fall was not welcomed in Pakistan, especially when Afghanistan's American-installed President, Mr. Karzai, quickly cozied up to India.

Then, the strong American response to Pakistan's disastrous earthquake turned Pakistani opinion around. Only America really came through for the tens of thousands of people de-housed by the catastrophe, and other people noticed; when mullahs in radical mosques denounced the Americans, their congregations told them they were wrong.

Of course, America blew it in classic American fashion, with the Predator strike on homes in a Pakistani border town. As always, the target wasn't there, because, as always, we depended on intelligence from "systems" when only humint can do the job. The resulting Pakistani civilian deaths threw away all the good will we earned from the earthquake response and made America the Great Satan once more. Musharraf paid the political price.

If the riots continue and grow, the Pakistani security forces responsible for containing them will at some point go over and join the rioters. Musharraf will try to get the last plane out; perhaps he will find Texas a congenial place of exile. If he doesn't make that plane, his head will serve as a football, not just of the political variety.

A new Pakistani government, in quest of legitimacy, will understand that comes from opposing Bush's America, not getting in bed with it. Osama will be the new honorary President of Pakistan, de facto if not de jure. Our, and NATO's operation in Afghanistan will become strategically unsustainable overnight. That nice Mr. Karzai will, one hopes, find a seat on a C-17.

The fall of Pakistan to militant Islam will be a strategic disaster greater than anything possible in Iraq, even losing an army. It will be a greater disaster than a war with Iran that costs us our army in Iraq. Osama and Co. will have nukes, missiles to deliver them, the best conventional armed forces in the Moslem world and an impregnable base for operations anywhere else. As North Korea's Dear Leader has shown the world, nobody messes with you if you have nukes. Uncle Sam takes off his battle rattle and asks Beijing, or somebody, if they can possibly sponsor some talks.

That ticking sound Mr. Bush hears is not Mr. Cheney's pacemaker. It's the crocodile, and he's getting rather close.

William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress

Push for Democracy Loses Some Energy

On Mideast Tour, Rice Focuses On Hamas
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 25, 2006; A13

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, Feb. 24 -- When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a high-profile tour of Egypt and Saudi Arabia last June, she confronted those governments about opening up their political systems. Revisiting both countries this week, however, her call for greater democracy appeared more muted, as some of the aftershocks of the democracy push have given autocratic governments more leverage in their dealings with the United States.

The Bush administration had advocated legislative elections in the Palestinian territories as a way to reinvigorate Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, but the move resulted in a sweeping victory last month by the radical Islamic group Hamas. Now, in order to restore hopes for reviving stalled peace talks, the United States needs the help of Egyptian and Saudi leaders to press Hamas to moderate its unyielding demand for Israel's destruction.

Rice did win Arab agreement that the incoming Palestinian cabinet must support peace talks with Israel. But while the United States plans to cut aid to the Palestinians immediately after Hamas members are given posts in the cabinet, both Egypt and Saudi Arabia urged patience before acting against Hamas -- time both countries can also use to fend off U.S. demands for greater democracy.

Other foreign policy goals on Rice's agenda this week -- such as seeking agreement to confront Iran over its nuclear program and enlisting Arab support for the new Iraqi government as bloody sectarian violence erupted -- also appeared to overshadow the administration's democracy campaign.

Egypt, which U.S. officials describe as enormously influential with Hamas, signaled it could shrug off U.S. pressure when it canceled local elections on the eve of Rice's visit. And after Rice left Cairo for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday, the Egyptian government brought new charges against jailed presidential candidate Ayman Nour, and even against Nour's wife for holding rallies about her husband's case.

Nour had met with Rice during her visit in June, but he has since been convicted for campaign-related violations after a politicized trial. The Bush administration showed its displeasure by suspending talks on a free trade agreement. But Rice brought up Nour's case in public only when reporters asked about it.

In Cairo, Rice met with Egypt's intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, for nearly two hours, seeking his insights on Hamas. The session with Suleiman was longer than a lively meeting Rice held with democracy activists. They urged the United States to put more pressure on Egypt before President Hosni Mubarak succeeds in crippling moderate, secular groups.

The activists told Rice that Mubarak -- who has ruled Egypt for a quarter-century -- was trying to eliminate all opposition but the Muslim Brotherhood in order to make the choice between his rule and democracy even starker for the United States.

On her trip, Rice acknowledged that there had been "disappointments and setbacks" in Egypt, but she also praised Mubarak for allowing a multiparty presidential election for the first time, calling him a "wise man."

Rice bristled when asked if she was sending a signal that democracy had moved lower on the U.S. agenda. "I don't think that there can be any doubt that the United States remains strongly -- and I want to underline 'strongly' -- committed to democracy," she said. "We believe that people ought to be given a choice, and that when they are not given a choice, the pressures fill in unproductive ways."

In Saudi Arabia, Rice made only a brief reference to continuing a dialogue with King Abdullah on "the course of internal reform." In June, Rice had raised the issue of three jailed petitioners; they were later released. But in November, when the United States launched a "strategic dialogue" with the kingdom, none of six U.S.-Saudi discussion groups were tasked to deal with political reform.

In the Arab world, the impression left by Rice's trip -- which also included stops in Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates -- was that she was on a mission to round up support to punish a series of U.S. enemies, such as Hamas, Iran and Syria. The campaign against Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, drew particular scorn because it was seen as hypocritical to want to punish a group that had achieved power through democratic elections. The United States and the European Union have designated Hamas a terrorist organization.

The skepticism in the region was reflected in the blunt questions posed to Rice by Arab journalists.

In Saudi Arabia, a female journalist, dressed head to toe in a black abaya , demanded: "How is it possible to harmonize the U.S. position as a nation supporting freedom of expression and the right of people to practice democracy with your effort to curb the will of Hamas?"

Egyptian Television's Mervat Mohsen also rattled off a series of tough questions. "American calls for democracy have unwittingly brought unprecedented support for the Muslim Brotherhood, but you're not happy with the Muslim Brotherhood in power," he said. "Is this some kind of designer's democracy then, Dr. Rice?"

Watching the Dissolution of Palestine

For Those Who Haven't Noticed
By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN
Oxford, England.
February 24, 2006

For those who haven't noticed, Israel opposes a two-state solution. It has been doing everything in its power to prevent a Palestinian state from emerging and will continue to do so as long as it can count on the complicity of its powerful friends and on abundant popular indifference. Under such circumstances, it is incumbent upon ourselves to ask why Hamas has therefore been ordered - by Israel and its same powerful friends --to accept "the two-state solution" especially when, unlike Israel, it has stated clearly and repeatedly that it would accept a Palestinian state on the lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Indeed, all of its key spokespeople have said this:Zahar, Haniye, Meshal, and Yassin and Rantisi before they were murdered.

Judea and Samaria which are, or were, the northern and southern West Bank, have been subdivided and parceled out over decades to hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers for their houses and orchards and gardens. They have been crisscrossed and circled with Jewish-only roads that bind the land, the houses and orchards and gardens, to Israel. They have been manned with guards and gunmen and tanks and blue and white Israeli flags that defend, protect and assure the settlers, their houses and orchards and gardens, that they are in fact Israelis belonging to a single Jewish state.

The settled lands with their settler families, their houses and gardens, shops and schools, clubs and cafes and pools, have been mapped and assigned, seized and secured from the Arabs in the shabby clothes in the rundown! villages who live outside of, or have been forced to leave, the protected colonial zones. The projected frontiers, the future borders, depend on the disappearance of these Arabs, which is anxiously anticipated and actively encouraged. Most of the eastern perimeter of the current state is a concrete wall erasing from view that Other Side, which is unmentionable in polite company. The eastern perimeter wall will soon be the western perimeter wall because the acting Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has just announced that the rest of the unincorporated West Bank land will soon be annexed to Israel: The Jordan Valley, the West Bank's border with the state of Jordan, now to be Israel's eastern border with the state of Jordan, will also be secured by the wall and off-limits to "non-Israelis," meaning Palestinians, who will then be fully encircled in their stagnant reservations unable to access the outside world.

In the same breath as! he announces this latest unilateral declaration of confiscated lan d for a Jewish State, Olmert announces a sanctions regime against the Palestinians of the occupied territories for refusing to believe that this land transformation in which one society is strengthened and expanded and the other is dissolved into a thousand pieces is actually the two-state solution.

Israel allots to itself first use of the natural resources, especially water, from the territory it has appropriated or surrounded. An army of thieves and wreckers has turned the remainder-- the pot-holed roads, the untended groves, the homes, the schools, the mosques and churches, the hospitals, universities, shops and remaining civil institutions -- into a series of impassable mazes, a legal no-man's-land, where travel restrictions, permits, coded IDs, passes, random searches, incursions and arbitrary accusations reduce the inhabitants into suspicious beings without names, faces, addresses or rights; a collective villain to be de-educat! ed and de-nationalized and, one day perhaps, deported for the sake of the Israeli raison d'etre. It is becoming as difficult for travelers from abroad to visit the occupied territories as it is for the rightful inhabitants to move freely among them. It is therefore more difficult for outsiders to corroborate that the dangers they are warned against come directly from Israel, not the hapless people they have besieged. The daily threat to life and property is growing not abating.

For those who haven't noticed, there is no sign of this process coming to an end. Instead, in addition to the bizarre demand that Hamas accept the two-state solution that Israel has categorically rejected and each day renders even more geographically impossible, another two demands are added to it: Hamas must recognize Israel and it must renounce violence. In other words, it must recognize a state whose policies and whose leaders have worked tirelessly for decades to deny, undo, renounce, prevent and reject the existence both of Palestinians and of Palestine --not only in the present and future but also through erasing the past. Still, our media take it upon themselves to show the world a circus-mirror reality, grotesque in its distortions, in which a democratically elected government-without-a-state and its trampled, largely destitute people are made out to be holding hostage the hoodlums that are busy stomping them to death.

While they are being stomped, shot, beaten, demolished, assassinated, intimidated, robbed, despoiled, starved, uprooted, dispossessed, harassed, insulted and killed with bullets, missiles, armored bulldozers, tanks, helicopter gun-ships, cluster-bombs, fleshettes, fighter-bombers, semi-automatic submachine guns, sonic booms, tear gas, electrified fences, blockades, closures and walls, they must renounce violence so that the hoodlums won't get hurt. If they defend themselves they lose. If they complain, they are insincere; if they ask for something in return, they are untrustworthy; If they ask for a fair hearing, they are advancing an "agenda;" If they hit back randomly, they are an instrument of terro! r. So when the furies of the thousands of dead, tens of thousands of wounded and detained, and millions of bound and gagged rise up together in a whirlwind to protest, they will be pointed to as evidence of innate evil that must justifiably be contained, justifiably occupied, with justified indignation and bottomless financial aid.

Hamas' reward for coming to power just in time to provide all the aspiring Sharons the most perfect, served-up-on-a-silver-platter pretext for continuing their well-worn policies with a vengeance, has been for the Kadima party -- the party of the future-- to announce that it will put the Palestinians on a starvation diet for presuming to exercise their rights. Hamas' reward for verifying the smashing success of Israel's goal to destroy Fatah has been Israel's insistence that it abide by all the agreements, treaties and accords that Fatah, essentially the PA, signed but which Israel shredded page by p! age. With every new brick laid for the settlements, every new road pav ed to Ariel, Maale Adumim, Illit, Gush Etzion and beyond, with every permit denied for work, education, medical care and travel, every truck left waiting with rotting produce at Sufa and Karni, every tax and customs dollar stolen from a people interned on their own land, Israel parades its contempt for human decency and gets standing ovations in the US Congress and elsewhere.

When Osama Bin Laden opines that it is legitimate for al-Qaida to murder Americans because, as citizens in a democratic country, they are responsible for their government, "civilized" society erupts, appropriately, in indignation. When Dov Weisglass and his smug, sadistic associates advocate appalling varieties of collective punishment against Palestinians for having had the audacity to democratically replace the failed Fatah with Hamas, "civilized" society nods its head in sanctimonious approval.

For those who haven't noticed, Israel opposes a two-state solu! tion. It also opposes a one-state and a bi-national state, a federated secular state, and the zillion interim-state solutions that have been drawn up and debated and argued over the years. It opposes them because it opposes the presence of another people on land it has claimed as the exclusive patrimony of the Jews. This has to be the starting point for effective activism against the racist and hegemonic vision that Israel is implementing and the US guaranteeing, not faraway discussions on the most ideal solution. An effective opposition must not retreat into a slumbering or sidetracked lethal indifference.

Jennifer Loewenstein is a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University's Refugee Studies Centre. She has lived and worked in Gaza City, Beirut and Jerusalem and has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, where she has worked as a free-lance journalist and a human rights activist.

US Marines Probe Tensions Among Iran's Ethnic Minorities

By Guy Dinmore
Financial Times (UK)
February 23, 2006

Washington -- The intelligence wing of the US marines has launched a probe into Iran's ethnic minorities at a time of heightened tensions along the border with Iraq and friction between capitals.

Iranian activists involved in a classified research project for the marines told the FT the Pentagon was examining the depth and nature of grievances against the Islamic government, and appeared to be studying whether Iran would be prone to a violent fragmentation along the same kind of fault lines that are splitting Iraq.

The research effort comes at a critical moment between Iran and the US. Last week the Bush administration asked Congress for $75m to promote democratic change within Iran, having already mustered diplomatic support at the UN to counter Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme.

At the same time, Iran has demanded that the UK withdraw its troops from the southern Iraqi city of Basra which lies close to its border. Iran has repeatedly accused both the US and UK of inciting explosions and sabotage in oil-rich frontier regions where Arab and Kurdish minorities predominate. The US and UK accuse Iran of meddling in Iraq and supplying weapons to insurgents.

US intelligence experts suggested the marines' effort could indicate early stages of contingency plans for a ground assault on Iran. Or it could be an attempt to evaluate the implications of the unrest in Iranian border regions for marines stationed in Iraq, as well as Iranian infiltration.

Other experts affiliated to the Pentagon suggest the investigation merely underlines that diverse intelligence wings of the US military were seeking to justify their existence at a time of plentiful funding.

Lieutenant-Colonel Rick Long, a marines spokesman, confirmed that the marines had commissioned Hicks and Associates, a defence contractor, to conduct two research projects into Iraqi and Iranian ethnic groups.

The purpose was "so that we and our troops would have a better understanding of and respect for the various aspects of culture in those countries", he said. He would not provide details, saying the projects were for official use only.

Marine Corps Intelligence defines its role as focusing "on crises and predeployment support to expeditionary warfare". It also provides threat and technical intelligence assessments for the Marines.

The first study, on Iraq, was completed in late 2003, more than six months after marines spearheaded the US invasion. About 23,000 marines are still in Iraq. The Iran study was finished late last year.

Hicks and Associates is a wholly owned subsidiary of Science Applications International Corp, one of the biggest US defence contractors and deeply involved in the prewar planning for Iraq.

The Strategic Assessment Center of Hicks and Associates advertises one of its current projects as the "Impact of Foreign Cultures on Military Operations". SAIC confirmed it completed the confidential studies for the Marine Corps.

While most analysts would agree that Iran has a far stronger sense of national identity than Iraq, its ethnic mix is even more complex than its neighbour.

Different in language and divided between followers of Sunni and Shia Islam, the ethnic minorities have little coherence. At times tensions among themselves are greater than with Tehran. Iran's strongly centralised government does not release statistics on the ethnic groups that mainly inhabit sensitive border regions with Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Farsi-speaking Persians who dominate the central government are generally believed to make up a slim majority, followed by Azeris and Kurds in the north and west, Arabs in the oil-rich southwest and Baluch in the southeast.

A patchwork of Turkmen, Christian Armenians and Assyrians, Jews and tribal nomads are among many groups scattered across a country of some 68m people.

Diplomats in Washington expressed shock at the possible implications of the Marine Corps research.

The Financial Times interviewed several Iranians in the US who were invited to help. Some refused, seeing it as part of an effort to break up Iran. However several exiled politicians representing minority groups opposed to the Islamic regime did agree to take part, although they said they wanted a peaceful transition to a democratic, federal Iran and were opposed to any US military action.

Mauri Esfandiari, US representative of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan which ended its armed struggle in 1997 and is based mostly in northern Iraq, said he believed the Pentagon was acting on its long-standing distrust of CIA and State Department analysis. He thought the Pentagon was looking to counter the prevailing administration view that US support for Iran's minorities would create a disastrous backlash.

"They want to study and see if the State Department's chaos theory is a valid hypothesis," he told the FT. The US could not look to the Kurds to support an invasion as they did in Iraq, he said. "Iran will become democratic only if it is built by the Iranians. The democracy movement is strong enough to find its way without military struggle," he said.

Karim Abdian, head of the Ahvaz Human Rights Organisation which campaigns on behalf of Iranian Arabs in the south-west, said his meeting with SAIC was video-taped. He was told the report would be made public.

Questions put to him were wide-ranging -- on the ethnic breakdown of Khuzestan province on the Iraq border, populations in cities, the level of discontent, the percentage of Arabs working in the oil industry, how they were represented in the central government, and their relations and kinship with Iraqi Arabs next door.

Mr Abdian said he did not know the motives behind the survey, whether the Marines were seeking a better understanding of the region that directly affects them, or were forming a contingency plan in case they had to "enter" Iran. They were learning from the lessons of Iraq where they had not understood the ethnic dynamics, he suggested.

Mr Abdian, who says his organisation has no government funding, accused Iran of using the threat of a US invasion as a pretext to suppress ethnic grievances rather than address what he called the root causes of land confiscation and discrimination.

Exiled Iranians from various ethnic groups held a "Congress" of nationalities in London a year ago. They issued a "manifesto" for a federal, democratic Iran with separation of mosque and state. Seven organizations included Baluch, Azeris, Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen.

Iran has recently experienced some of the worst unrest and violence among its Kurdish and Arab populations in recent years.

Although the root causes of the unrest -- economic and cultural grievances -- are long standing, analysts in the US believe that events in Iraq -- where the new constitution has embraced the concept of federalism and a Kurd has become president -- are serving as a catalyst.

Last month two bombs exploded in Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan province close to Iraq. Eight people were killed on the same day that President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad had been due to visit. Six people were killed in bombings last October. Oil installations have been attacked. Iran has repeatedly accused the UK and US of being behind the violence, using separatist Arab groups in southern Iraq to foment instability inside Iran.

"We are very suspicious of British forces' involvement in terrorist activities," Mr Ahmadi-Nejad was quoted as saying last October. He accused British troops in Iraq of "hiring terrorists for sabotage".

London and Washington have strongly denied Iran's allegations.

Tehran cannot afford to dismiss minority grievances out of hand and seeks to blame the violence on outside forces, says Bill Samii, an Iran analyst with Radio Free Europe.

"The regime can crush dissent when it is localised and relatively small," he commented."But if sporadic incidents of ethnic unrest occurred across the country simultaneously, or if such troubles coincided with labour troubles and student demonstrations then the regime would have its hands full." Given these developments, the question of Iran's minorities has aroused interest across Washington.

State Department officials met representatives of the London "Congress" in the first such talks between the Bush administration and a coalition claiming to represent Iran's minorities, participants told the FT.

Last October, the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) held a conference chaired by Michael Ledeen, a proponent of regime change in Iran. It triggered uproar among exiled opposition groups, especially Persian nationalists. Mr Ledeen called the conference "Another case for Federalism?" and denied that AEI was seeking to foment separatism.

Reuel Gerecht, also with AEI and a former CIA specialist on the Middle East, says the State Department under Condoleezza Rice, and not the Pentagon, is running Iran policy. He said State was "several steps removed" from discussing covert action and "nowhere near the point" of trying to use separatist tendencies among minorities as traction against the Tehran regime. No one knew whether that would work, he added.

However, he complimented the Pentagon for "looking down the road".

A former intelligence officer said the Marines' probe reflected the "contingency planning" mindset of the US military. Nonetheless, he said, it was important to note that the ultimate purpose of the intelligence wing was "to support effective ground military operations by the Marine Corps".

Egypt donning the veil

By Akiva Eldar
Haaretz
23/02/2006

CAIRO - Seven or eight women were crammed into the little clothing stall in Khan al-Khalili, Cairo's huge market. Some wore traditional galabias and modest veils, while others merely covered their heads with colorful scarves. The salesman, a bored young man in jeans and a T-shirt, kept his eyes on the hands of the women, which burrowed through the piles of daring nightgowns, sexy panties and see-through bras. That same night, the heads of the women who arrived in shiny Mercedes at a wedding held at the Hilton Hotel on the banks of the Nile, were also thoroughly covered. But their faces were caked in generous layers of makeup, they wore long-sleeve dresses that were the epitome of curve-emphasizing elegance, and they sported glittering stiletto heels on their feet.

Egypt may produce wine, and billboards at road intersections may advertise the local Stella beer, but every year increasingly more restaurants that serve alcohol are closed for Ramadan. In his best-selling book "The Yacoubian Building" (on which a soon-to-be released film has been made), Ala al-Aswani exposes the Egypt under the veil. He describes prudish women by day who are sexually depraved by night, and men who emerge from prayers at the mosque and head to the neighborhood bar to get drunk.

Ayelet Yehiav, who is responsible for the Egypt desk of the diplomatic research branch of Israel's Foreign Ministry, relates that an Egyptian friend told her he could hardly believe that this kind of book was published in his country, mainly because the lifestyles it describes are far from being a figment of the author's wild imagination. The last time she went to a cinema in Cairo, in an auditorium that seated about 400 people, she could spot no more than two bare-headed women, while half-naked women were prancing across the screen.

Six years ago, Prof. Bernard Lewis wrote that women are the most significant of the three factors that can help advance the Middle East (the other two were the countries of Turkey and Israel). The noted Middle East scholar expressed his belief that Muslim countries will never reach the level of the "progressive world" as long as they continue to thwart the self-fulfillment of a group that comprises one-half of the population. He predicted that women would be the most powerful factor working for social and political freedoms in the region. Lewis did not imagine that change could also happen in a completely opposite way. For instance, intelligence analysts have made much of the recent disclosure that the wife of Egyptian defense minister Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, one of the most powerful men in Egypt, does not leave the house without a veil concealing her face.

Religion is slowly seeping into every avenue of Egyptian society. It does not escape the highest echelons of the political, military and diplomatic establishments. The Muslim movement is making strides, in its own way: cunningly, pleasantly, patiently. In Egypt, the Islamic cartoon affair passed with barely any rioting. Anyone strolling among the embassies in the Cairo neighborhoods of Maadi and Zamalek could understand how the Danish diplomats were able to remain in Cairo even at the height of the furor. Even on an ordinary weekday, scores of armed gendarmes are patrolling the area. Nevertheless, Egypt played a more fundamental role in the affair - even if not in the streets and squares. It was the Egyptian ambassador in Copenhagen who filed the first official protest with the Danish foreign ministry, and provoked the other Arab ambassadors to follow her example. In the past few days, the Danes have begun to point an accusatory finger in the direction of Cairo.

State of Islamic law

Yehiav has been tracking the social and political fluctuations in Egypt for many years, and reports on her impressions to the senior professional ranks of the ministry, and from there to the decision-makers. Had they read her reports, they might have learned a thing or two about the modus vivendi of Hamas, the little sister of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood movement, which was founded in 1928. Perhaps they would understand that notwithstanding the disadvantages, the secular alternative - Fatah - is inordinately better for the Jews.

A few days before the elections in the territories, Yehiav wrote an article that was published in the journal of the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. "Despite the differences in the electoral system, the nature of the movements and the way they have chosen to conduct themselves, Hamas (like other Islamic groups) draws encouragement from the success of the Brotherhood in Egypt as it heads into the election for the [Palestinian] legislative council," she wrote.

Yehiav explains that there is no difference between the ultimate objective of the two movements, or even between their tactical means of achieving it. Like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas aspires to create an Islamic state in Palestine. Neither of the two movements is in a rush, and they are both prepared to make compromises. One offers Israel a years-long hudna (cease-fire); the other has found a way to circumvent the law preventing religious parties from running in elections. In the territories, as in Egypt and other Arab states, the Islamic movements do not appeal only to the downtrodden and the hungry (in Egypt there are 10 million people suffering the disgrace of hunger), but to all sectors of the nation.

Yehiav says that the purge of the secular opposition, through the good offices of Hosni Mubarak, made the Muslim Brotherhood the sole alternative to Mubarak's regime. They are attracting academics, members of the free professions and journalists - the middle class that in the West furnishes the foundations for building a democracy. "I doubt whether anyone who cast a ballot for the 'independent' candidates that ran on the Muslim Brotherhood ticket is crying out for the vengeance of a state of Islamic law," wrote Yehiav. "Most people's votes were prompted by their opposition to the regime and the National Democratic Party."

Sound familiar? She also notes that the recent elections to the People's Assembly, held in late 2005, were prefaced by long months of preparations in which the Brotherhood capitalized on the fact that the public is fed up with Mubarak's regime. Here, too, in order not to deter the voters, the Islamists took pains to obscure their true vision - Egypt's transformation into a state of Islamic law.

After the regime opted not to allow political expression to members of the educated and well-heeled classes, the latter looked around and found the Brotherhood. Traces of the phenomenon may be found in the words of L., a college graduate who easily moves from English to Spanish to German. I asked him if he had tried his luck at the Egyptian foreign ministry. He chuckled. "What are you talking about? I don't belong to the right class." L. may not have joined the Brotherhood, but many of his friends did.

Yehiav finds signs of a new social-political phenomenon among some adherents of the Brotherhood, whom she calls Islamic Calvinists, or Egypt-style New Agers. She is referring to high-ranking businessmen and executives, including more than a few women, who do not have an Islamic education but are drawn to charismatic preachers, contribute to the construction of new mosques and are in the practice of inviting the indigent to their homes for dinner during Ramadan.

At present, these groups are opening their pocketbooks for a fundraising drive for Hamas. Yehiav explains that this is also a way to clear the collective conscience of Egypt, the only Arab state in the region that does not have refugee camps - on the condition that the Palestinians do not cause too much trouble for Egypt, or undermine its stability. Egypt fears that the political center of gravity will shift from the West Bank to Gaza. Mubarak realized that the tunnels running under the border are not one-way, and that given the lethal vision of Al-Qaida's proxies (Islamic Jihad, according to the Egyptians), these tunnels may very well run in both directions.

"Egypt doesn't like those who rock the boat," says Yehiav. "The Hamas victory has breathed new life into the wing of the Brotherhood that is striving to increase its political involvement, and that concerns the regime. They have good reason for concern. The juxtaposition of political repression, economic desperation and the feeling that there is no way out, turn Islam into highly explosive material."

Yearning for a monarchy

Mubarak has grown adept in using the strengthening of the Muslim Brotherhood to repulse American pressure on him to step up democratization. He prefers a limited and controlled Islamic Movement to political liberalization that would allow the formation of a non-Islamic opposition. This would be harder to curb through constitutional manipulation, arrests and threats.

The ruler looks down from above at his subjects in the city streets and plazas. He has ruled Egypt for 24 years, the longest period anyone has been in power since Mohammed Ali. Sixty-five percent of Egyptians have never known any other ruler. The state of the 78-year-old leader's health has been a matter of concern of late to his domestic political partners and to foreign supporters of a secular Egypt, mainly the United States. According to recent reports, Mubarak has been suffering from inner ear problems that have caused a lack of balance. Ailing knees have forced him to give up playing squash. He has ruled this large and important country for a quarter- century, but has left no legacy.

L. says his father, who remembered the pre-revolution period well, spoke with yearning for the era of monarchy until his dying day. "True, they built themselves palaces and reveled with women," he explains, "but at least they shared a little of the wealth with the poor people."

So as to prevent any shock to the system, the Egyptian constitution was tailored to the measurements of the heir-apparent, Jamal Mubarak, who is 42. As opposed to his father, who came from a village and to some extent understands the mind-set of the poor Egyptian masses, Jamal has spent his entire adult life in palaces (he was nine years old when his father became vice president).

Will Egypt follow the same path as Jordan and Syria? Will the Islamic opposition accept the coronation of the designated heir - a post-modern interpretation of democracy?

"For the Islamic groups, democracy is nothing more than a channel for establishing themselves within the ruling administration, so that they will be able to annul it when they feel sure of their hold," states the Foreign Ministry's Yehiav.

Similar sentiments expressed by other experts have fallen on the deaf ears of President George W. Bush, the father of the vision of Middle East democratization. What can be done now to stop the Muslim Brotherhood from riding the wave of democracy? One possibility raised by senior Egyptian political columnist Fahmi Howeidi is that the regime will respond to the deeply rooted problems to which the Brotherhood is offering answers: the lack of social-welfare and health services, the corrupt bureaucracy that lacks transparence, and the unfair division of the government pie.

Yehiav believes it is more likely that the regime will "let the Muslim Brotherhood be burned in the blazing sun of political involvement." Given the cracks in the ranks of the movement since it won 88 seats in the People's Assembly, some people in the Egyptian regime are suggesting that the administration wait patiently until these cracks turn into out-and-out rifts - and until that happens, keep them on a low flame. Of course, this option does not exist when democracy has already allowed the little sister of the Brotherhood to turn Palestine into a state of Islamic law.

Iranian advisor: We'll strike Dimona in response to U.S. attack

By Yossi Melman
Haaretz
25/02/2006

If the United States launches an attack on Iran, the Islamic republic will retaliate with a military strike on Israel's main nuclear facility.

Dr. Abasi, an advisor to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, said Tehran would respond to an American attack with strikes on the Dimona nuclear reactor and other strategic Israeli sites such as the port city of Haifa and the Zakhariya area.

Haifa is also home to a large concentration of chemical factories and oil refineries.

Zakhariya, located in the Jerusalem hills is - according to foreign reports - home to Israel's Jericho missile base. Both Israeli and international media have published commercial satellite images of the Zakhariya and Dimona sites.

Abasi, a senior lecturer at Tehran University, was quoted in the Roz internet news site, identified with reform circles in Iran.

Iranian affairs experts believe Abasi's statements are part of propaganda battle being wages by all sides - including Israel and Iran - in the lead up to next months United Nations Security Council debate on Iran's nuclear program.

At this stage, the possibility that sanctions will be leveled at Iran are extremely low.

Sectarian Bloodshed Reveals Strength of Iraq Militias

By EDWARD WONG and SABRINA TAVERNISE
The New York Times
February 25, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 24 — The sectarian violence that has shaken Iraq this week has demonstrated the power that the many militias here have to draw the country into a full-scale civil war, and how difficult it would be for the state to stop it, Iraqi and American officials say.

The militias pose a double threat to the future of Iraq: they exist both as marauding gangs, as the violence on Wednesday showed, and as sanctioned members of the Iraqi Army and the police.

The insurgent bombing of a major Shiite shrine on Wednesday, followed by the wave of killings of Sunni Arabs, has left political parties on all sides clinging to their private armies harder than ever, complicating American efforts to persuade Iraqis to disband them.

The attacks, mostly by Shiite militiamen, were troubling not only because they resulted in at least 170 deaths across Iraq, but also because they showed how deeply the militias have spread inside government forces. The Iraqi police, commanded by a Shiite political party, stood by as the rampage spread.

Now, after watching helplessly as their mosques and homes burned, many Sunni Arabs say they should have the right to form their own militias.

For their part, Shiite political leaders and clerics say they are justified in keeping — and even strengthening — their armies, including those units in the government security forces, to prevent insurgent attacks like the one that destroyed the golden dome of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra on Wednesday.

That stance threatens to derail recent American efforts, especially those of Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, to persuade Shiite leaders to dissolve their militias and weed out police officers and soldiers whose allegiances lie with their own sect and not with the state. That is essential for the process of forming a government that would be credible to all of Iraq's religious and ethnic groups.

Shiite leaders' denunciations of Mr. Khalilzad, who hinted Monday that Americans might not pay for security forces run by sectarian interests, made it clear that positions had hardened. "We have decided to incorporate militias into the Iraqi security forces, and we are serious about this decision," Hadi al-Amari, the head of the Badr Organization, a thousands-strong Shiite militia, said in a telephone interview. Since the Shiites took control of the Interior Ministry last spring, Badr members have swelled the ranks of the police.

Mr. Khalilzad was trying "to prevent the Shiites from getting the security portfolio," he added. "The security portfolio is a red line, and we will never relinquish it."

Since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, American officials tried unsuccessfully to disband Iraq's myriad private armies, from Kurdish pesh merga in the mountainous north to the black-clad Mahdi Army patrolling poor Shiite enclaves in Baghdad and Basra. The Coalition Provisional Authority had plans to force Iraqi leaders to dissolve their militias, but never followed through. Nor did the Americans press the case even after putting down two uprisings by the Mahdi Army in 2004.

The persistence of the Mahdi Army, the militia of Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shiite cleric, illustrates the challenge facing the Americans in Iraq. A grass-roots organization, it operates both openly in the streets, as it did this week, when young men with Kalashnikov rifles attacked Sunni mosques, and inside the system, where members serve as police officers wearing uniforms and cruising around in patrol cars.

Though many Shiite leaders denounced the anti-Sunni reprisals this week, none of them chastised the Mahdi Army or called for disbanding it. That itself was a clear indication of how the politicians were looking to the militia as a protector of Shiite interests in the wake of the shrine attack.

Those political leaders who have no militias, particularly Sunni Arabs, say they feel more helpless than ever in this shifting landscape of private armies.

"Anybody who has a militia now has power," said Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister and member of the newly elected Parliament. "The Mahdi Army, Badr, the insurgents, these are the ones who wield power. They have weapons, they can move around and they are determined. It's not a question of political personalities, but of arms and weapons."

Mahmoud al-Mashhadany, a senior official in the main Sunni political bloc, said the rampaging Shiite militiamen this week, and the passivity of the police, showed that "we have been left alone in the field." He added: "The Kurds have their militia, and they're part of the army. The Shiites run the government. We've been left alone with our mosques in the field."

Even before the eruption of violence, Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad were holding discussions about organizing their own neighborhood protection forces. In Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, the western stronghold of the insurgency, reports have emerged of people forming a private army called the Anbar Revolutionaries.

Mr. Khalilzad has been trying to assuage Sunni fears by pressing for conservative Shiites to give up control of the Interior Ministry, which oversees the 120,000-member police and commando forces. They are being trained by American military advisers who monitor them but do not directly control them.

The shrine attack has left the ambassador with considerably less leverage, because the Shiites now say their welfare depends on their command of the security forces. On Friday, Mr. Khalilzad, speaking to reporters, did not lay out any American plan to deal with the militias, and simply said the problem would have to be solved by the four-year Iraqi government, which has yet to be formed.

"The militias are an issue that the next government will have to deal with," he said. "Iraq needs a strong national army, a strong national police. It needs weapons in the hands of those who are authorized to have them."

On Friday, the Pentagon released a quarterly assessment report required by Congress that included a warning about the continued sectarian nature of the police forces. "Insurgent infiltration and militia influence remain a concern for the Ministry of the Interior," the report said. "Many serving police officers, particularly in the south, have ties to Shia militias."

The ascent of the militias inside the security forces was quick and quiet. Soon after the Shiite-led government swept into power last spring and Bayan Jabr, a senior Shiite politician, become interior minister, a housecleaning began, in which about 140 high-ranking officials were dismissed and political allies of the Shiites were put in their place, according to several former ministry officials who feared reprisals if they gave their names. In addition, recruitment drives brought hundreds of ordinary Shiites into the security forces, many of whom identified more strongly with their political parties than with the Iraqi state.

By summer, an American government adviser to the ministry, Mathew Sherman, recalled writing in his notes that "the ministry is quickly being infiltrated by militia and by Badr people."

When Mr. Sherman brought up his concerns, Mr. Jabr, a bookish, fluent English speaker, pledged to address them. Mr. Jabr has acknowledged that 2,500 members of the Badr Organization have been added to the payroll, but American and Iraqi officials say the number is far higher.

"There was a lot happening behind the scenes," said Mr. Sherman, who left his job in December. "By the time we put all the pieces together, everything was falling apart."

Even if it wants to do so, the new government will face a serious challenge in extricating the militias from the security forces. In the last two months, a new round of purges has taken place in the ministry, according to Mr. Sherman and three Iraqi officials who still work in the ministry. About 20 senior officials, mostly Sunni Arabs, have lost their jobs, including the Baghdad police chief, who was widely respected among Iraqis and American military officials. The move, the former officials said, was an attempt by Shiite parties to strengthen their grip on the ministry before the new government is assembled.

The militias use their police positions to further the ambitions of their political parties. Mahdi Army fighters — most often found in Baghdad among the city police and a paramilitary force called the Public Order Brigade, as well as in police units in the south — were discovered last fall using police patrol cars to enforce the rulings of so-called Islamist "punishment committees," according to a senior American military official whose forces discovered the practice but was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

In addition, the official said, the transportation minister, a Sadr aide, tried to consolidate control over Baghdad International Airport by recruiting Mahdi members into security forces protecting it.

Beyond the now-familiar reports of death squads and torture chambers operated under government cover, there have also been instances of men dressed in police uniforms committing ordinary crimes, further undermining public confidence in an already weak institution.

Fatin Sattar, a homemaker in southeast Baghdad, said her husband was shot and killed last year by several men dressed as Iraqi policemen who were carrying out a robbery at a neighbor's home. Assuming they had come as police officers, the husband, himself an official in the Interior Ministry, had approached the men in a friendly manner.

Behind the scenes, the American military has been making efforts to rein in the police units heaviest with militiamen. American officials say they are considering a plan that would place more American advisers with the Iraqi police and commando units. Last fall, American officials even proposed transferring oversight of the often unruly commando forces from the Interior Ministry to the Defense Ministry, where the American military has direct operational control. Shiite leaders resisted.

Reporting for this article was contributed by Robert F. Worth, Qais Mizher and Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi from Baghdad, and Thom Shanker from Washington.

Venezuelan Oil, Political Heat

Hartford Courant
February 24 2006

So long as Congress keeps holding up federal funds for energy assistance to low-income households, Connecticut officials have every right to consider CITGO Petroleum Corp.'s offer of cheap heating oil.

CITGO, based in Houston, is a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. In November, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez began making good on his offer to ship heating oil at a discounted price to low-income households in New York and Massachusetts. New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. has worked out a deal with the nonprofit Citizens Energy Corp. in Boston to have 4.8 million gallons of the oil delivered to low-income New Haven residents.

In a letter to Gov. M. Jodi Rell early this month, Mr. DeStefano said Citizens Energy Corp. is also willing to work with the 12 community action agencies that administer the energy assistance program in Connecticut. The governor demurred, requesting a legal opinion from Attorney General Richard Blumenthal before endorsing the idea.

The price of CITGO's oil may be discounted, but it does carry an extra political cost. Although Venezuela is already a big supplier of oil to the United States, the leftist Mr. Chavez, a frequent critic of President Bush, is accused of coming up with the low-cost heating oil program to embarrass the White House. Mr. DeStefano is a Democratic candidate for governor.

On Capitol Hill, however, Republican senators seem to be doing a good job of embarrassing themselves. With a dozen states in the Northeast and Midwest already out of federal heating assistance (Connecticut is due to run out next month), Congress adjourned for the Presidents' Day recess without replenishing the fund.

The roots for this stalemate go back to December when GOP senators (led by Alaska's Ted Stevens) tried to sneak through a controversial measure allowing drilling for oil and gas in the protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. When the strategy failed, they retaliated against their Northeastern colleagues by stripping away a provision for $2 billion in energy assistance.

Senate Republicans ought to forgo this politics of pettiness and replenish the low-income energy assistance program. Until they do, Connecticut should give serious consideration to taking part in the Venezuela-CITGO heating oil program.

Back In The Regime-Change Business

By Daniel Schorr
Christian Science Monitor
February 24, 2006

WASHINGTON – What with all the Cheney hullabaloo, you might not have noticed, but it looks as though the US government is getting back into the "regime change" business.

Regime change typically begins with a process of fomenting disaffection, encouraging people to turn against their government. The United States tried it a couple of times in Iraq. The Pentagon poured millions of dollars into backing exile groups with connections in Iraq. A lot of it went to the Iraqi National Congress, based in London, headed by Ahmed Chalabi. It didn't work. In the end, the Pentagon had to change the Iraqi regime the old-fashioned way - by invasion. And today it is the insurgency that is fighting for regime change.

Now, the Bush administration, viewing alarming developments in Iran and the possible development of a nuclear bomb, is squaring off for another effort at regime change, but it is no longer calling it that. The theory is that if Iran does eventually succeed in developing a nuclear weapon, it would be helpful if the government wielding that weapon were a bit friendlier. The administration is also concerned about Iran's taking the lead in bankrolling a Palestinian Hamas government.

The project to penetrate Iran surfaced when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice applied to Congress for $75 million on top of an initial $10 million. She told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the idea was to confront the extremist policies of the Iranian regime and support the aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom. Money would be provided to Iranian labor unions and an around-the-clock broadcast service in Farsi would be inaugurated.

The secretary is on a tour of Arab countries in the Middle East this week to enlist their support in trying to contain Iran. The Bush administration believes - based on what, I do not know - that there is a substantial underground opposition to the radical new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in spite of his landslide election victory. Some American officials believe that Mr. Ahmadinejad's intemperate statements, like his threat to wipe Israel off the map, have not gone down well at home.

But, meanwhile, the extremist government in Tehran presses on with its nuclear plans. The talks this week in Moscow about enriching uranium for Iran in Russia have apparently gone nowhere, and they look more and more like a stalling tactic.

The Bush administration will need something tougher than promoting democracy in Iran if the regime is to be contained.

Daniel Schorr is a senior news analyst at National Public Radio.

Arrogance On 2 Sides Clouds Guantanamo

By Richard Bernstein
International Herald Tribune
February 24, 2006

BERLIN--When someone of the moral stature of Archbishop Desmond Tutu says that your behavior has become unconscionable and that it resembles that of South Africa's old apartheid regime, then you know you've lost the battle for public opinion.

And Tutu, the Nobel Peace Laureate from South Africa, is only one in a rapidly building chorus of voices being heard in Europe and elsewhere about the American policy of indefinite detention of "enemy combatants" in Guantánamo, Cuba.

It doesn't take long before a kind of conventional wisdom, shared by a sort of critical mass of decent opinion, gains the kind of force that no countervailing argument can shake, and this seems to be what is occurring regarding Guantánamo and other war- on-terrorism actions of the United States these days.

Just before Tutu's BBC interview there was the release of the report by five specialists from the UN Human Rights Commission concluding that Guantánamo represented continuing human rights violations and needed to be shut down.

That came on the heels of the report by the Council of Europe a few weeks ago citing the United States for the sorts of atrocities more associated with banana republics than the greatest democracy in human history.

The Bush administration still sends out its emissaries to argue its case (Karen Hughes, who has overall responsibility for the hearts and minds struggle, was in Berlin this week), but it is losing the argument.

Indeed, just how badly it has lost the argument was clear in Berlin recently when one of the biggest popular successes at the Berlin Film Festival was a movie called "The Road to Guantánamo," which doesn't so much provide a direct answer to the Bush administration's case as subject it to merciless ridicule.

Created by the British director Michael Winterbottom, it seems destined to add considerable weight to the emerging conventional wisdom, that Guantánamo is the rough American equivalent of the Gulag Archipelago and equally unjustified.

I stress Winterbottom's movie because it illustrates the moral concern behind much of the criticism of Guantánamo and the other dubious elements in the war on terror. But it also illustrates the weakness of that criticism, especially its willingness to place the worst possible interpretation on American behavior, even while failing to take account of the very real threat of terrorism, or to offer alternatives to the measures being taken.

Indeed, watching the movie in Berlin a week ago, I found myself in a kind of plague-on-both-your-houses mood, angry at the Bush administration for so badly tarnishing the reputation of the United States and at Winterbottom and his many reverential acolytes in Berlin for making, not a real argument, but a skillful, emotionally wrenching, indeed demagogic piece of propaganda.

First the Bush administration. The plain fact would seem to be that much of the conventional wisdom about Guantánamo is due to its arrogance, its lack of regard for decent opinion, and the generally maladroit way in which it has made its case.

I happen to have a bit of experience with this, having once contacted the Pentagon press office for information about a German-born Turkish citizen named Murat Kurnaz who has been held in Guantánamo for four years despite what would appear to be no evidence, classified or unclassified, of any connection with terrorism or Al Qaeda or Islamic radicalism. I called the Pentagon to ask about Kurnaz, and the unhelpful, uninformative, vaguely hostile boilerplate I got in response reminded me of the years I spent in China in the early 1980s, asking the official government spokesman about human rights violations there.

The shroud of secrecy, the evasiveness, the strenuous effort of the Bush administration to block any kind of civil legal process from applying to the Guantánamo inmates and to appeal every judicial decision on the matter that has gone against it, all create an impression of obfuscating bureaucratic self-protection worthy of Franz Kafka.

But then there are Winterbottom and his movie, which promises to be a popular culture watershed in the debate over the proper way to wage the war on terror.

The main problem is not that Winterbottom has made essentially a work of the imagination masquerading as a documentary. He uses actors and sets to re-enact the compelling story of the so-called Tipton Three, Muslim men from the British West Midlands who got picked up in Afghanistan during the post-Sept. 11 invasion of that country and spent two pretty miserable years in Guantánamo before they were released.

The main problem isn't even that the story the men tell can't be confirmed, or that they really don't have a very good explanation of why they went to northern Afghanistan in the first place. And there is very little problem with Winterbottom's portrayal of the very harsh treatment they received, both before and during their incarceration at Guantánamo. The presentation here is entirely consistent with other reports that have emanated from the prison camp, and the Tipton Three's story is mostly believable.

What is mainly objectionable in "The Road to Guantánamo" is its sense of moral superiority, the absolute certainty with which it makes its case, even while failing to address the real nature of the terrorist threat, its very special, very murderous, very fanatical and morally very unhinged nature. Winterbottom's portrayal of American interrogators facing the Tipton Three is a caricature, and so is his portrayal of the only suspects we see in the film, the gentle, likeable, mistreated trio. No Mohamed Attas among them.

Winterbottom in this sense represents a persistent European trait, which is to benefit from American protection even while keeping its hands spotlessly clean, even while failing to recognize that a position of moral aloofness can be maintained only if somebody else does the dirty work.

I wish, in this sense, that the Bush administration were more responsive to its critics and could find a less secretive, more morally persuasive way of making its case. In fact, I wish, with Winterbottom, that the recourse to Guantánamo had never taken place, though exactly what I would have done, with the Taliban and Al Qaeda members picked up in Afghanistan I cannot say.

At the same time, even as they watch Winterbottom's ridiculing and shocking critique of American behavior, it would be good if Europeans kept in mind a couple of facts: that not every "enemy combatant" is one of the Tipton Three and that there is a deadly and proven danger out there that might actually require extraordinary measures to combat.

Degrading Interrogation Outlined

By Drew Brown
Miami Herald
February 24, 2006

WASHINGTON - Military interrogators posing as FBI agents at the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, wrapped terrorism suspects in an Israeli flag and forced them to watch pornography under strobe lights during interrogation sessions that lasted as long as 18 hours, according to one of a batch of FBI memos released Thursday.

FBI agents working at the prison complained about the military interrogators' techniques in e-mails to their superiors from 2002 to 2004, 54 e-mails released by the American Civil Liberties Union showed. The agents tried to get the military interrogators to follow a less coercive approach and warned that the harsh methods could hinder future criminal prosecutions of terrorists because information gained illegally is inadmissible in court.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was in charge of the prison at the time, overrode the FBI agents' protests, according to the documents.

The memos offer some of the clearest proof yet that the abuses and torture of prisoners in U.S. military custody weren't the isolated actions of low-ranking soldiers but a result of policies approved by senior officials, the ACLU said.

''We think this should provide further reason to hold senior officials, not just low-ranking soldiers, accountable for the torture of prisoners,'' said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer.

Lt. Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, called the ACLU's release of the documents ''another example of recycling old information.'' The Pentagon has conducted 12 major investigations and reviews and has never found a ''DoD policy that ever encouraged or condoned abuse of detainees at Guantánamo,'' he said.

The FBI memos originally were released in 2004 under the Freedom of Information Act as part of a lawsuit by the ACLU, but were largely censored. The latest batch contained extensive information that had been blocked out.

TIA Lives On

By Shane Harris
National Journal
February 23, 2006

A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens.

It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget.

Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.

It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget. However, the projects that moved, their new code names, and the agencies that took them over haven't previously been disclosed. Sources aware of the transfers declined to speak on the record for this story because, they said, the identities of the specific programs are classified.

Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA.

A $19 million contract to build the prototype system was awarded in late 2002 to Hicks & Associates, a consulting firm in Arlington, Va., that is run by former Defense and military officials. Congress's decision to pull TIA's funding in late 2003 "caused a significant amount of uncertainty for all of us about the future of our work," Hicks executive Brian Sharkey wrote in an e-mail to subcontractors at the time. "Fortunately," Sharkey continued, "a new sponsor has come forward that will enable us to continue much of our previous work." Sources confirm that this new sponsor was ARDA. Along with the new sponsor came a new name. "We will be describing this new effort as 'Basketball,' " Sharkey wrote, apparently giving no explanation of the name's significance. Another e-mail from a Hicks employee, Marc Swedenburg, reminded the company's staff that "TIA has been terminated and should be referenced in that fashion."

Sharkey played a key role in TIA's birth, when he and a close friend, retired Navy Vice Adm. John Poindexter, President Reagan's national security adviser, brought the idea to Defense officials shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The men had teamed earlier on intelligence-technology programs for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which agreed to host TIA and hired Poindexter to run it in 2002. In August 2003, Poindexter was forced to resign as TIA chief amid howls that his central role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s made him unfit to run a sensitive intelligence program.

It's unclear whether work on Basketball continues. Sharkey didn't respond to an interview request, and Poindexter said he had no comment about former TIA programs. But a publicly available Defense Department document, detailing various "cooperative agreements and other transactions" conducted in fiscal 2004, shows that Basketball was fully funded at least until the end of that year (September 2004). The document shows that the system was being tested at a research center jointly run by ARDA and SAIC Corp., a major defense and intelligence contractor that is the sole owner of Hicks & Associates. The document describes Basketball as a "closed-loop, end-to-end prototype system for early warning and decision-making," exactly the same language used in contract documents for the TIA prototype system when it was awarded to Hicks in 2002. An SAIC spokesman declined to comment for this story.

Another key TIA project that moved to ARDA was Genoa II, which focused on building information technologies to help analysts and policy makers anticipate and pre-empt terrorist attacks. Genoa II was renamed Topsail when it moved to ARDA, intelligence sources confirmed. (The name continues the program's nautical nomenclature; "genoa" is a synonym for the headsail of a ship.)

As recently as October 2005, SAIC was awarded a $3.7 million contract under Topsail. According to a government-issued press release announcing the award, "The objective of Topsail is to develop decision-support aids for teams of intelligence analysts and policy personnel to assist in anticipating and pre-empting terrorist threats to U.S. interests." That language repeats almost verbatim the boilerplate descriptions of Genoa II contained in contract documents, Pentagon budget sheets, and speeches by the Genoa II program's former managers.

As early as February 2003, the Pentagon planned to use Genoa II technologies at the Army's Information Awareness Center at Fort Belvoir, Va., according to an unclassified Defense budget document. The awareness center was an early tester of various TIA tools, according to former employees. A 2003 Pentagon report to Congress shows that the Army center was part of an expansive network of intelligence agencies, including the NSA, that experimented with the tools. The center was also home to the Army's Able Danger program, which has come under scrutiny after some of its members said they used data-analysis tools to discover the name and photograph of 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta more than a year before the attacks.

Devices developed under Genoa II's predecessor -- which Sharkey also managed when he worked for the Defense Department -- were used during the invasion of Afghanistan and as part of "the continuing war on terrorism," according to an unclassified Defense budget document. Today, however, the future of Topsail is in question. A spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., which administers the program's contracts, said it's "in the process of being canceled due to lack of funds."

It is unclear when funding for Topsail was terminated. But earlier this month, at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, one of TIA's strongest critics questioned whether intelligence officials knew that some of its programs had been moved to other agencies. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and FBI Director Robert Mueller whether it was "correct that when [TIA] was closed, that several ... projects were moved to various intelligence agencies.... I and others on this panel led the effort to close [TIA]; we want to know if Mr. Poindexter's programs are going on somewhere else."

Negroponte and Mueller said they didn't know. But Negroponte's deputy, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who until recently was director of the NSA, said, "I'd like to answer in closed session." Asked for comment, Wyden's spokeswoman referred to his hearing statements.

The NSA is now at the center of a political firestorm over President Bush's program to eavesdrop on the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who the agency believes are connected to terrorists abroad. While the documents on the TIA programs don't show that their tools are used in the domestic eavesdropping, and knowledgeable sources wouldn't discuss the matter, the TIA programs were designed specifically to develop the kind of "early-warning system" that the president said the NSA is running.

Documents detailing TIA, Genoa II, Basketball, and Topsail use the phrase "early-warning system" repeatedly to describe the programs' ultimate aims. In speeches, Poindexter has described TIA as an early-warning and decision-making system. He conceived of TIA in part because of frustration over the lack of such tools when he was national security chief for Reagan.

Tom Armour, the Genoa II program manager, declined to comment for this story. But in a previous interview, he said that ARDA -- which absorbed the TIA programs -- has pursued technologies that would be useful for analyzing large amounts of phone and e-mail traffic. "That's, in fact, what the interest is," Armour said. When TIA was still funded, its program managers and researchers had "good coordination" with their counterparts at ARDA and discussed their projects on a regular basis, Armour said. The former No. 2 official in Poindexter's office, Robert Popp, averred that the NSA didn't use TIA tools in domestic eavesdropping as part of his research. But asked whether the agency could have used the tools apart from TIA, Popp replied, "I can't speak to that." Asked to comment on TIA projects that moved to ARDA, Don Weber, an NSA spokesman said, "As I'm sure you understand, we can neither confirm nor deny actual or alleged projects or operational capabilities; therefore, we have no information to provide."

ARDA now is undergoing some changes of its own. The outfit is being taken out of the NSA, placed under the control of Negroponte's office, and given a new name. It will be called the "Disruptive Technology Office," a reference to a term of art describing any new invention that suddenly, and often dramatically, replaces established procedures. Officials with the intelligence director's office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

U.S. Detainees' Deaths Go Unaccounted

While a rights group says many go unpunished, Pentagon disagrees.
By Drew Brown, Inquirer Washington Bureau
Philadelphia Inquirer
February 23, 2006

WASHINGTON - Ninety-eight detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan have died in U.S. custody since August 2002, and 34 of them were suspected or confirmed homicides, a human-rights group reported yesterday.

Only 12 cases have resulted in punishment of any kind, New York-based Human Rights First said in its report.

Taken together, the deaths reflect a pattern of systematic and widespread abuse by U.S. troops, CIA operatives, and civilian contractors caused by vague policies governing interrogation procedures and a lax command atmosphere in which abuses are either encouraged or ignored, the group charged.

"People are dying in U.S. custody, and no one is being held to account," said Deborah Pearlstein, U.S. law and security program director at Human Rights First.

In close to half of the 98 cases that Human Rights First examined, the official cause of death remained undetermined or unannounced, the group said. At least eight of the homicides resulted from torture, the group concluded. The 128-page report was based on official Army documents, published accounts and interviews.

The Pentagon acknowledged that deaths in U.S. custody have occurred, but a spokesman rejected the report's findings.

"We fully investigate every detainee death no matter what the circumstances are to ensure that every aspect of detainee operations has been humane," Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros said. "The Department of Defense's policy has always been to treat detainees in our custody humanely. To state that the department has not held people accountable in cases of detainee mistreatment is not accurate."

Ballesteros said that the U.S. military had investigated more than 600 allegations of detainee abuse. Approximately 250 servicemen and servicewomen have been held accountable for their actions, he said.

"People have been sent to jail for detainee mistreatment," he said.

One of 20 questionable deaths profiled in the report is that of Dilar Dababa, 45, an Iraqi who died of a blow to the head during an interrogation at a U.S. detention camp in Iraq in June 2003, according to a military autopsy report.

His body was covered with at least 22 bruises and 50 abrasions, most on his head and neck. He suffered bleeding in the brain and a fractured rib. Military investigators reported a year later that they were looking into Dababa's death, but no charges had been filed.

In the 34 deaths that the U.S. military classified as suspected or confirmed homicides, investigators recommended criminal charges in fewer than two-thirds, the report said. The most severe sentence handed down in any of the homicide cases was 25 years in jail, said Hani Shamsi, the primary author of the report.

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, who was convicted last month of negligent homicide after stuffing a former Iraqi general headfirst into a sleeping bag and suffocating him during a November 2003 interrogation, was given a reprimand, fined $6,000, and restricted in his movements for 60 days.

Retired Army Brig. Gen. David R. Irvine said that U.S. military officers were ultimately responsible for the actions of the soldiers under their command but that almost none had been held accountable.

"Soldiers became torturers because their chain of command chose to look the other way," he said.

Only one high-ranking officer, former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, has been disciplined for prisoner abuse by those under her command, at Abu Ghraib. She was reprimanded and demoted to colonel.

President Wants NATO To Expand Darfur Role

Washington Post
February 23, 2006

President Bush told French President Jacques Chirac that NATO should take a more active role in international efforts to stop the bloodshed in Sudan's Darfur region, the White House said.

In a 30-minute telephone conversation initiated by Chirac, Bush "raised his concern about the deteriorating situation in Darfur and his view that NATO should be more actively involved in a robust international response to this crisis," said Frederick L. Jones II, spokesman for the National Security Council.

Bush said last week that NATO should have an organizational role and that the number of international peacekeepers in Darfur should be doubled.

The conflict in Darfur began when non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003, accusing the government of neglect and repression.

Since then, tens of thousands of Sudanese have been killed and more than 2 million have been driven from their homes and herded into grim camps.

War In The Information Age

In a 24/7 world, the U.S. isn't keeping up with its enemies in the communication battle.
By Donald H. Rumsfeld
Los Angeles Times
February 23, 2006

Our nation is engaged in what promises to be a long struggle in the global war on terror. In this war, some of the most critical battles may not be in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq but in newsrooms in New York, London, Cairo and elsewhere.

Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we — our government, the media or our society in general — have not.

Consider that violent extremists have established "media relations committees" and have proved to be highly successful at manipulating opinion elites. They plan and design their headline-grabbing attacks using every means of communication to break the collective will of free people.

Our government is only beginning to adapt its operations for the 21st century. For the most part, it still functions as a five-and-dime store in an EBay world.

I have just returned from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. In Tunis, the largest newspaper has a circulation of roughly 50,000 — in a country of about 10 million people. But even in the poorest neighborhoods you can see satellite dishes on nearly every balcony or rooftop.

Regrettably, many of the TV news channels being watched using these dishes are extremely hostile to the West. The growing number of media outlets in many parts of the world still have relatively immature standards and practices that too often serve to inflame and distort rather than to explain and inform. Al Qaeda and other extremist movements have utilized these forums for many years, successfully adding more poison to the Muslim public's view of the West, but we have barely even begun to compete in reaching their audiences.

The standard U.S. government public affairs operation was designed primarily to respond to individual requests for information. It tends to be reactive, rather than proactive, and it operates for the most part on an eighthour, five-days-a-week basis, while world events — and our enemies — are operating 24/7 across every time zone. That is an unacceptably dangerous deficiency.

In some cases, military public affairs officials have had little communications training and little, if any, grounding in the importance of timing, rapid response and the realities of digital and broadcast media. Let there be no doubt that the longer it takes to put a strategic communications framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by hostile news sources who most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place.

We have become somewhat more adept in these areas, but progress is slow.

In Iraq, for example, the U.S. military command, working closely with the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy, has sought nontraditional means to provide accurate information to the Iraqi people in the face of an aggressive campaign of disinformation.

Yet this has been portrayed as inappropriate: for example, the allegations of "buying news." The resulting explosion of critical media stories then causes all activity, all initiative, to stop. Even worse, it leads to a "chilling effect" among those who are asked to serve in the military public affairs field.

Improving our efforts will likely mean embracing new institutions to engage people around the world. During the Cold War, institutions such as the U.S. Information Agency and Radio Free Europe proved to be valuable instruments for the United States. We need to consider the possibility of new organizations and programs that can serve a similarly valuable role in the war on terror.

Although the enemy is increasingly skillful at manipulating the media and using the tools of communications to its advantage, it should be noted that we have an advantage as well. And that is, quite simply, that truth is on our side. Ultimately, the truth wins out.

I believe with every bone in my body that free people, exposed to sufficient information, will, over time, find their way to the right decisions.

We are fighting a battle in which the survival of our free way of life is at stake. It is a test of wills, and it will be won or lost with our public and the publics of free nations around the world. We need to do all we can to correct the lies being told, shatter the appeal of the enemy and attract supporters to our noble and necessary efforts to defeat violent extremism around the globe.

DONALD H. RUMSFELD is the secretary of Defense.

Kicking Arabs In The Teeth

By David Brooks
New York Times
February 23, 2006

It's come to my attention that many of the foreign goods we import into our country are made by foreigners who speak foreign languages and are foreign. It's come to my attention that many varieties of hummus and other vital bread schmears are made by Arabs, the group responsible for 9/11. Furthermore, it's come to my attention that the Chinese have a menacing death grip on America's pacifier, blankie, bunny and rattle supplies, and have thus established crushing domination of the entire non-pharmaceutical child sedative industry.

It's therefore time for Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Bill Frist and Peter King to work together to write the National Security Ethnic Profiling Save Our Children Act, which would prevent Muslims from buying port management firms, the Chinese from buying oil and mouth-toy companies, and the Norwegians from using their secret control of U.S fluoridation levels to sap our precious bodily fluids at the Winter Olympics.

In other words, what we need to protect our security and way of life is a broad-based, xenophobic Know Nothing campaign of dressed-up photo-op nativism to show foreigners we will no longer submit to their wily ways.

Never mind — the nativist, isolationist mass hysteria is already here.

This Dubai port deal has unleashed a kind of collective mania we haven't seen in decades. First seized by the radio hatemonger Michael Savage, it's been embraced by reactionaries of left and right, exploited by Empire State panderers, and enabled by a bipartisan horde of politicians who don't have the guts to stand in front of a xenophobic tsunami.

But let's be clear: the opposition to the acquisition by Dubai Ports World is completely bogus.

The deal would have no significant effect on port security. Regardless of who operates the ports, the Coast Guard still controls their physical security. The Customs Service still controls container security. The harbor patrols, the port authorities and the harbor police still do their jobs. Nearly every expert who actually knows something about port security says the ownership of the operating companies is the least of our concerns. "This kind of reaction is totally illogical," Philip Damas, research director of Drewry Shipping Consultants, told The Times. "The location of the headquarters of a company in the age of globalism is irrelevant."

Nor would the deal radically alter the workplace. If the Dubai holding company does acquire the operating firm, the American longshoremen would stay on the job, the American unions would still be there to organize them, and most or all of the management would probably stay, too.

Nor would the deal be particularly new in the world of global shipping. Dick Meyer of CBS News reports that Dubai Ports World already operates facilities in Australia, China, Korea and Germany. It's seeking to acquire facilities in 18 other countries — none of them caught up in an isolationist fever like the one we see here. Eighty percent of the facilities at the port of Los Angeles are run by foreign firms — somehow without national collapse — including one owned by the government of Singapore.

Nor is Dubai a bastion of Taliban radicalism. All Arabs may look alike to certain blowhard senators, but the United Arab Emirates is a modernizing, globalizing place. It was the first country in the region to sign the U.S. Container Security Initiative. It's signed agreements to bar the passage of nuclear material and to suppress terror financing. U.A.E. ports service U.S. military ships, and U.A.E. firms have made major investments in Chrysler and Time Warner, somehow without turning them into fundamentalist bastions.

In short, there is no evidence this deal will do any harm. But it is certain that the xenophobic hysteria will come back to harm the U.S.

The oil-rich nations of the Middle East have plenty of places to invest their money and don't need to do favors for nations that kick them in the teeth. Moreover, this is a region in the midst of traumatic democratic change. The strongest argument the fundamentalists have is that they are engaged in a holy war against the racist West, which imposes one set of harsh rules on Arabs and another set of rules on everybody else. Now comes a group of politicians to prove them gloriously right.

God must love Hamas and Moktada al-Sadr. He has given them the America First brigades of Capitol Hill. God must love the folks at Al Jazeera. They won't have to work to stoke resentments this week. All the garbage they need will be spewing forth from press conferences and photo ops on C-Span and CNN.

US-funded park demolished in West Bank

AFP
23 February, 2006

NABLUS: Using a bulldozer, the Israeli army yesterday destroyed a US-funded public park, including a children’s playground and swimming pool, in a West Bank village, witnesses and officials said.

The bulldozer, protected by a force of Israeli soldiers, demolished the park in Azzun, close to the northern town of Qalqilya, on the grounds that it had been built without permission of the Israeli authorities in the occupied territory.

Construction work on the park had begun in November last year and was almost completed, said Azzun mayor Ihssan Abdellatif.

He said that the project, that cost around $120,000, had been financed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

“I can confirm that the park that was destroyed today was funded by USAID,” said agency spokeswoman Anna-Maija Litvak.

The spokeswoman added that USAID had contributed around $80,000 towards the cost.

No immediate reaction was available from the Israeli army which regularly demolishes buildings that it says have been constructed without authorisation.

The army also destroyed two other houses yesterday, built “without permission” in two other villages in the Qalqilya area, according to Palestinian security sources.

Plagiarism!!!

The editorial was published in Rose el-Youssef Newspaper on Monday Feb 20, 2006, page 6......Hanan

2006-02-23

أيمن نور يطالب رايس بمفاعلات نووية لاستخراج الطاقة في مصر

طالب رئيس حزب الغد المصري المعارض أيمن نور من سجنه أمس وزيرة الخارجية الأمريكية كوندوليزا رايس بأن تبحث إمكانية استفادة بلاده من عرض أمريكي لمساعدة الدول النامية على توليد طاقة نووية، وذلك في رسالة إليها لم تتطرق إلى موضوع سجنه، ولم يبد فيها شكوى من متاعب تواجه حزب الغد الذي يتزعمه.

وقال نور في الرسالة التي أصدر حزب الغد بيانا بمحتواها نشر في صحيفة الغد الناطقة باسم حزبه إن مصر تحتاج إلى ستة مفاعلات نووية طاقة 2000 ميجاوات على الأقل، لتوليد نصف احتياجاتها من الكهرباء كبديل لتوليد الكهرباء باستخدام الغاز الطبيعي الذي يستخدم حاليا في إنتاج الكثير من الطاقة الكهربية في مصر.

كما قال نور إنه كان يجب على الحكومة المصرية أن تطلب من الولايات المتحدة تزويدها بتلك المفاعلات، قبل أن تؤيد واشنطن هذا الشهر في الوكالة الدولية للطاقة الذرية في مجال إحالة ملف إيران النووي إلى الأمم المتحدة.

(رويترز)

Egyptian opposition leader seeks nuclear reactors
(Reuters)
22 February 2006

CAIRO - Imprisoned Egyptian opposition leader Ayman Nour asked US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday to look into whether Egypt can benefit from a US offer to help developing countries develop nuclear energy.

Nour, President Hosni Mubarak’s main rival in presidential elections last year, is serving a five-year sentence for forgery but says the charges were fabricated to keep him out of politics.

One of his deputies in the liberal Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, Hesham Kassem, is seeing Rice on Wednesday when she meets a group of prominent Egyptian liberals and intellectuals.

At a news conference with Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Tuesday, Rice described Nour’s imprisonment as a setback and a disappointment. Aboul Gheit said Nour’s case had gone through due legal process.

But in his letter to Rice, released on Wednesday in the form of a statement by the Ghad Party, Nour surprisingly did not mention his own case or complain at the government’s treatment of his party.

Instead, he said Egypt needed six 2,000 megawatt nuclear reactors to produce half its electricity needs and replace natural gas, which now produces much of Egypt’s electricity.

President George W. Bush offered last week to provide developing countries with small-scale reactors that are secure and cost-effective, provided they forego activities, which could lead to nuclear weapons.

Nour faulted the Egyptian government for failing to ask about Bush’s offer before it supported the United States against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency this month.

Analysts said Nour raised the nuclear issue to underline his concern with issues other than his treatment by the government.

Egypt liberals to Rice: Mubarak stifles secularists

Reuters
Wednesday, February 22, 2006

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian liberals told visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday their government was helping the Islamist opposition by stifling other forms of political activity.

Rice encouraged the liberals to organize themselves and speak to the government with "a concerted voice."

She said the United States would keep pressing the Egyptian government to carry out the political reform program which President Hosni Mubarak promised during last year's elections.

Rice met seven selected members of Egyptian civil society, all of them English-speaking and most of them associated with the small secular liberal wing in Egyptian politics.

They included a close associate of imprisoned opposition leader Ayman Nour, the Egyptian head of the American Chamber of Commerce, business people, intellectuals and academics.

But none of them spoke on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement which emerged in last year's parliamentary elections as the largest opposition force in the country. The Brotherhood has 88 members in the 454-seat parliament.

As in the Palestinian elections last month, the electoral success of the Islamists poses a dilemma for the United States, which says it favors democracy in the Arab world.

Tareq Heggy, a liberal oil executive and writer, told Rice the United States should give the Egyptian government advice on how to "pull the carpet from under the Muslim Brothers."

He said that trying to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood would be completely undemocratic. "So the issue is how we (the liberals) can compete with them," he added.

Corporate lawyer Taher Helmy said: "They (the Muslim Brotherhood) are much stronger than what you see. The reason for that is that there is a political vacuum."

The liberals, including Ayman Nour's Ghad (Tomorrow) party, fared poorly in elections in November and December.

SMEAR CAMPAIGN

Hala Mustafa, an academic who is in Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP), complained to Rice that Egypt's government-owned media had waged a smear campaign against advocates of reform.

Holding up an article attacking liberals in the state-owned weekly Rose el-Youssef, she said: "If you are really serious (about pressing for reform), you should criticize this."

Saadeddin Ibrahim, a sociologist who has both U.S. and Egyptian citizenship, told Rice the United States must link its financial aid to Egypt, close to $2 billion a year, to progress on political reform. "Condition it," he said.

He said Mubarak's strategy was to confine the political competition in Egypt to himself and the Islamists. "(He knows) that the West will always side with him," he added.

"She (Rice) urged civil society groups to coordinate, to be outspoken and to keep the Americans informed," Ibrahim told Reuters after the meeting.

At a joint news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Tuesday, Rice said the political events of the last year in Egypt included "setbacks and disappointments."

The presidential elections, in which Mubarak won 89 percent of the vote, and the parliamentary elections were seriously marred by government interference and violence by the security forces, monitoring groups said.

Rice had talks with Mubarak over breakfast on Wednesday and then left for the Saudi capital Riyadh. She will also visit the United Arab Emirates on her Middle East trip.