Just Foreign Policy News
May 19, 2008

McCain on “Working with Hamas” in 2006:
Reporter: Do you think American diplomats should be…working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?
McCain: “They’re the government, and sooner or later we’re going to have to deal with them, in one way or another…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzDBi2nURNk&

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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Sen. McCain blasted Sen. Obama for being willing to talk with Iranian leaders without preconditions, the Washington Post reports. Obama responded, “Demanding that a country meets your conditions before you meet with them, that’s not a strategy, it’s naive, wishful thinking…Iran, they spend one one-hundredth of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance. And we should use that position of strength that we have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen… ” Obama concluded, “We might not compromise on any issues, but at least we should find out other areas of potential common interest, and we can reduce some of the tensions that has caused us so many problems around the world.”

2) France confirmed it had been engaged in contacts with leaders of Hamas, the New York Times reports. Israeli officials said European officials feel uneasy about the European position because they are concerned it is unrealistic and would like to formulate a new one. A French diplomat said his Hamas interlocutors told him nothing that they had not repeatedly stated in public. “They assured me that they were ready to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, which amounts to an indirect recognition of Israel,” he said. Hamas has always said that such a Palestinian state could be established only if Israel pulled back from all land occupied in 1967, a step Israel is not prepared to take [a step generally considered to be in line with international consensus and international law - JFP.]

3) The US, Russia, and China remain opposed to a treaty banning cluster bombs, but disarmament specialists suggest the treaty will constrain countries outside the convention, the International Herald Tribune reports. One contentious provision would prevent signatories from engaging in joint operations with forces still employing cluster munitions.

4) Colombia’s defense minister rejected an accusation by Venezuela that Colombian troops had illegally entered a border region of Venezuela, the New York Times reports. The Times report concedes that Colombian troops have been sighted “rarely” on the Venezuelan side of the border in the past. The Times report notes that “Independent proof” of Colombia’s allegations of Venezuelan support for the FARC “has not emerged.”

5) The diplomatic initiative launched by President Bush has made substantial progress in rolling back North Korea’s drive to become a nuclear power, writes Stanford’s John Lewis in the Boston Globe. But that progress is now in jeopardy, as fulfillment of US obligations has stalled under attack by the critics who derailed the last agreement with North Korea.

6) The U.S. military is holding about 500 juveniles in detention centers in Iraq, AP reports. The ACLU denounced the detentions as a violation of US treaty obligations under the

Iran
7) While President Bush was denouncing those who would negotiate with countries such as Iran as appeasers, his diplomats were offering Iran another incentive package to stop enriching uranium, writes Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations in the Washington Post. But the Administration’s approach of trading incentives for cessation of enrichment is hopeless. Instead, the US should seek to allow enrichment in exchange for full transparency.

8) Iraqi President Talabani dismissed claims Iran is sending weapons into Iraq and called for strong Iran ties, Press TV reports.

Afghanistan
9) The Bush Administration may not be practicing what the president preaches when it comes to “appeasement,” Newsweek reports. The administration has sanctioned such discussions in Sunni areas of Iraq, Pakistani tribal areas and Afghanistan. Last week, Defense Secretary Gates suggested the US “need[s] to figure out a way to develop some leverage with respect to the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them.” That notion evidently extends to elements of the Taliban. A Canadian expert on Afghanistan says high-level U.S. officials admitted there was no purely military solution to Afghanistan’s problems and expressed a “willingness” to negotiate with “moderate” Taliban figures. Administration officials told Newsweek Washington has assented to efforts by Afghan President Karzai to talk with Taliban factions that do not share the extremism of Mullah Omar. Those inside the administration who object, said one official, have been somewhat mollified by the use of semantic legerdemain: “We say it’s not negotiation. It’s dialogue.”

10) The Pentagon plans to build a 40-acre detention complex on the main US military base in Afghanistan, indicating the US is likely to continue to hold prisoners there for years to come, the New York Times reports. The detention center would replace the “makeshift” prison at Bagram, which US military personnel describe as worse than Guantánamo. Some U.S. Senators have demanded that the Afghan government be consulted about the project.

Pakistan
11) Pakistan’s army lodged a formal protest Friday to “allied forces” in neighboring Afghanistan over a suspected U.S. missile strike that killed 14 people in a Pakistani border village, AP reports. Islamist parties, regional lawmakers and the governor of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province had already condemned the attack as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty; the governor warned it would undermine public support for Pakistan’s efforts against terrorism.

Venezuela
12) President Chávez told US newspaper editors he would like to work with the U.S. to address poverty, hunger, and access to education and health care in Latin America, the Boston Globe reports. He expressed regret for past criticism of the United States.

Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) McCain Blasts Obama Over Iran Talks
Peter Slevin, Washington Post,  May 19, 2008
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/19/mccain_blast_obama_over_iran_t.html?hpid=topnews

Accusing Sen. Barack Obama of “inexperience and reckless judgment,” Sen. John McCain blasted his likely Democratic opponent on Monday for being willing to talk with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions during his first year as president. McCain said such talks would only embolden “an implacable foe of the United States.” McCain tested an argument central to his general election strategy when he told members of the National Restaurant Association that Obama fails to understand “basic realities of international relations.”

“It is likely such a meeting would not only fail to persuade him to abandon Iran’s nuclear ambition, its support of terrorists and commitment to Israel’s extinction,” McCain said of Ahmadinejad, “It could very well convince him that those policies are succeeding in strengthening his hold on power, and embolden him to continue his very dangerous behavior.”

Obama has stuck firmly to his position that the president should be willing to talk with America’s enemies as part of a return to a more open and ambitious use of diplomacy. He cites President Nixon’s opening to China and President Reagan’s negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. He frequently quotes President Kennedy’s position during the escalating nuclear arms race that the United States should be willing to meet with its adversaries. “So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness and sincerity is always subject to proof,” Kennedy said in his 1961 inaugural address. “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”

In a speech in Billings, Mont., on Monday, Obama hit back sharply at McCain, accusing him of “using the same George Bush textbook” in which “anything but their failed cowboy diplomacy is called appeasement.” Obama called Iran “a grave threat” that has grown more dangerous because of the war in Iraq and what he called the Bush administration’s avoidance of “direct diplomacy.”

“For all their tough talk, one thing you have to ask yourself is what are McCain and Bush afraid of,” Obama said. “Demanding that a country meets your conditions before you meet with them, that’s not a strategy, it’s naive, wishful thinking. I’m not afraid we’ll lose some propaganda fight with a dictator. It’s time to win those battles, because we’ve watched George Bush lose them year after year after year.”
…
“Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us,” Obama had said. “And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, ‘We’re going to wipe you off the planet.’ And, ultimately, that direct engagement led to a series of measures that helped prevent nuclear war, and over time allowed the kind of opening that brought down the Berlin Wall.”

Obama went on, “Iran, they spend one one-hundredth of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance. And we should use that position of strength that we have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen.

“That doesn’t mean we agree with them on everything,” Obama concluded. “We might not compromise on any issues, but at least we should find out other areas of potential common interest, and we can reduce some of the tensions that has caused us so many problems around the world.”

2) France Admits Contacts With Hamas
Steven Erlanger, New York Times, May 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/world/europe/20france.html

France confirmed Monday that it had been engaged in contacts with the leaders of Hamas, the radical Islamic group that is running Gaza, for several months to try to better understand its positions.

The Bush administration, which recently likened talks with Hamas and other groups to appeasement of the Nazis, quickly criticized the French for the contacts, calling them unhelpful. There was no immediate comment from the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who has said he will not talk to Hamas, which he accuses of carrying out a bloody coup in Gaza last June.

The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said there had been no negotiations with Hamas, labeled a terrorist group by the United States, Israel and the European Union. “These are not relations; they are contacts,” Kouchner said on Europe 1 radio. “We are not the only ones to have them. We must be able to talk if we want to play a role.”

Kouchner confirmed a report in the daily newspaper Le Figaro that quoted a retired French diplomat and former ambassador to Iraq, Yves Aubin de La Messuzière, as saying that he had met a month ago in Gaza with Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister, and Mahmoud Zahar, among the most important Hamas leaders in the Palestinian territories.
…
Israeli officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the French meeting was part of what they called a general softening in the European position toward Hamas. Various European officials, they said, feel uneasy about the European position because they are concerned that it is unrealistic and would like to formulate a new one. This meeting, they said, is part of those efforts.
…
According to the account of Aubin de La Messuzière, however, his Hamas interlocutors told him nothing that they had not repeatedly stated in public. “They assured me that they were ready to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, which amounts to an indirect recognition of Israel,” he said.

Hamas, however, has always said that such a Palestinian state could be established only if Israel pulled back from all land occupied in 1967, a step Israel is not prepared to take. Hamas would not recognize the state of Israel in perpetuity, allowing only the idea of living side by side with it for 10 to 15 years, in a hudna, or truce.

Hamas has enforced a largely effective ban on suicide bombings inside the post-1967 Israeli borders since August 2004, with a few bombings carried out by local cells. Hamas has been talking to the Egyptians, who have been trying to mediate a cease-fire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas for months to end rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli attacks in Gaza, and to bring about a release of prisoners, including Gilad Shalit, a young Israeli corporal captured in Israel and taken to Gaza in a Hamas-led operation on June 25, 2006.
…
The European Union said it would continue to maintain its ban on formal contacts with Hamas.

Kouchner said he found that Hamas was “more flexible than before,” but was still unwilling to recognize the state of Israel. He did not elaborate.

Hamas leaders like Haniya and his adviser, Ahmed Youssef, have regularly said they would like to have good relations with Western European countries, which they regard as more sympathetic to their positions than Washington. Their implicit desire is to split the United States and Europeans on the issue.

So far, all three main American presidential candidates have said that they will continue the Bush administration’s ban on discussions with Hamas until the group meets previously agreed-upon criteria: recognition of the right of Israel to exist, acceptance of previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements and an end to violence.

3) Conferees seek cluster bomb ban
Russia, China, US oppose treaty
Nick Cumming-Bruce, International Herald Tribune, May 18, 2008
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2008/05/18/conferees_seek_cluster_bomb_ban/
…
Delegates from more than 100 countries will open a conference in Dublin tomorrow that will try to hammer out a treaty banning the production, use, stockpiling, or transfer of cluster munitions - bombs or artillery shells packed with up to several hundred bomblets or submunitions that are sprayed over wide areas of territory.

Major producers and stockpilers of cluster munitions, the United States, Russia, and China, will be absent and are opposed to a treaty, but disarmament specialists liken the cluster treaty to the Ottawa Treaty of 1997 banning land mines, which was shunned by the major powers but has proved influential in shaping the policies of countries outside the convention.

Support for a ban on cluster weapons has risen sharply since the 2006 conflict between Israel and Lebanon, when, according to United Nations estimates, Israeli troops fired some 4 million Vietnam War-era submunitions, of which a quarter failed to explode.

These have reportedly caused more than 200 casualties since the end of the war and required a costly and hazardous cleanup operation by international aid agencies - often funded by Western governments.
…
Among the most contentious [issues] is a proposed clause that would prevent those who sign onto the treaty from engaging in joint operations with forces still employing cluster munitions.

4) Colombia Denies Its Forces Entered Venezuela Illegally
Simon Romero, New York Times, May 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/world/americas/19venez.html

Tension between Colombia and Venezuela increased Sunday after Colombia’s defense minister rejected an accusation by Venezuela’s government that 60 Colombian troops had illegally entered a border region of Venezuela known to be a redoubt for Colombian guerrilla groups.
…
Tension resurfaced last week after Interpol verified that computer files recovered by Colombian forces in the Ecuadorean raid had not been altered. The files refer to military and financial support by Venezuela of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a group classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.

Independent proof of such support has not emerged.

In the latest episode, Venezuela’s foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro, said Saturday night that Colombian troops had been detected Friday in Apure State in western Venezuela, about 875 yards from the Colombian border. In a rare written protest, Maduro asked Colombia “to immediately cease these violations of international law.”

Maduro said the troops, a battalion from Cubará Military Base in Colombia’s Arauca State, had been quickly told to return to Colombia. On Sunday the Colombian defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, denied Maduro’s assertion. “There was no incursion,” Santos said in comments broadcast on Colombian radio.
…
Clashes between the two rebel groups have been reported on Venezuelan territory. Colombian paramilitaries, which oppose both groups, are also known to operate in three western states in Venezuela: Apure, Táchira and Zulia. But sightings of Colombian soldiers on the Venezuelan side are considered rare. [If they are frequent enough to be “rare,” then the Venezuelan claim is quite plausible - JFP.]

5) US Must Fulfill Its Commitment To Diplomacy With North Korea
John W. Lewis, Boston Globe, May 17, 2008
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/05/17/us_must_fulfill_its_commitment_to_diplomacy_with_north_korea/

[Lewis, emeritus at Stanford, is coauthor of “Negotiating with North Korea: 1992-2007.”]

The diplomatic initiative launched by President Bush in the wake of North Korea’s nuclear weapon test in October 2006 has made substantial progress in rolling back the nation’s drive to become a nuclear power.

That success, however, will be for naught if the administration fails to follow through on promises it made to encourage the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to destroy its nuclear weapons programs. The United States must honor its commitments in order to begin normalizing relations with North Korea.

Unfortunately, a recent barrage of criticism against the administration’s policy aims to derail this process. Even as Pyongyang has taken more than 80 percent of the required steps to disable its Yongbyon nuclear weapons facilities, the fulfillment of US obligations has stalled.

The critics who want to stymie all forward movement, are, for the most part, the same specialists who can take credit for jettisoning in 2003 the agreement with North Korea, known as the 1994 Agreed Framework, which had stopped its plutonium production for almost a decade. Only after the collapse of the Agreed Framework did the North Koreans process the fissile material needed to build and test nuclear weapons. Three years later, in 2006, the president adopted a more realistic policy that is now under attack.
…
Recent developments are even more impressive. On May 8, the North Koreans passed to a US State Department official a trove of 18,822 pages of operating records for the Yongbyon 5MWe reactor and reprocessing plant, which date back to 1986. That is 18,822 pages more than we ever had before, and begins a verification process previously impossible.

Also, the International Atomic Energy Agency and US nuclear experts have overseen the shutdown and continuing disablement of all key plutonium production facilities at Yongbyon. Discussions have been held to ship out the monitored unused reactor fuel rods.

If diplomacy is to succeed, Washington needs to begin delivering on some of the promises it has made as part of the Six-Party agreements. It must move toward normalizing relations with Pyongyang: That means beginning “the process of removing the designation of the DPRK as a state-sponsor of terrorism” and starting to “advance the process of terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to the DPRK.”

We know that North Korea seeks better relations with the United States to create the environment essential to facilitate economic recovery, give it more diplomatic space, and smooth the way for an upcoming political succession. Since the New York Philharmonic concert in Pyongyang last February, it has begun portraying the United States in a more positive light to its own people, laying the groundwork for a major breakthrough in relations with the United States.

This breakthrough is needed if the United States is to achieve its ultimate objective: to cap, roll back, and completely eliminate the North’s nuclear weapons program. Critics in Washington, like those in Pyongyang, are afraid of exploring the future and only want to cling to the past. That isn’t the way out.

6) US: 500 youths detained in Iraq; 10 in Afghanistan
Peter James Spielmann, Associated Press, Monday, May 19, 2008; 4:47 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/19/AR2008051900196.html

The U.S. military is holding about 500 juveniles in detention centers in Iraq, and has about 10 detained at the U.S. base at Bagram, Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations. A total of 2,500 youths under the age of 18 have been detained, almost all in Iraq, for periods up to a year or more in President Bush’s anti-terrorism campaign since 2002, the United States reported last week to the U.N.’s Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Civil liberties groups such as the International Justice Network and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) denounced the detentions as abhorrent, and a violation of U.S. treaty obligations.

In the periodic report to the United Nations on U.S. compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United States confirmed that “as of April 2008, the United States held about 500 juveniles in Iraq.”

“The juveniles that the United States has detained have been captured engaging in anti-coalition activity, such as planting Improvised Explosive Devices, operating as lookouts for insurgents, or actively engaged in fighting against U.S. and Coalition forces,” the U.S. report said. The majority are believed to be 16 or 17 years old. In the United States a 17-year-old can enlist in the U.S. army, with parental consent.

The report said that of the total of 2,500 juveniles jailed since 2002, all but 100 had been picked up in Iraq. Of the remainder, most were swept up in Afghanistan. The U.S. military says it has held eight juveniles, ages 13-17, at Guantanamo since the detention center opened in 2002.
…
According to the ACLU, the lack of protections and consideration for the juvenile status of detainees violates the obligations of the U.S. under the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict that the U.S. ratified in 2002, as well as universally accepted international norms. The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child is scheduled to question the U.S. delegation on its compliance with its obligations on May 22 in Geneva.

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the General Assembly in 1989, with backing at the time from the U.S. government of President Bill Clinton, and with strong lobbying from then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who now is competing for the Democratic Party presidential nomination with Barack Obama. [Bill Clinton did not become President of the U.S. until 1992. The US signed the convention in 1995 but has never ratified it - JFP.]

Iran
7) Shaping a Nuclear Iran
The West’s Diplomatic Goal Needs to Move From ‘Suspension’ to ‘Transparency’
Ray Takeyh, Washington Post, Sunday, May 18, 2008; B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/16/AR2008051603434.html

[Takeyh is senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.]

As President Bush addressed the Israeli parliament last week, denouncing negotiations with recalcitrant regimes as the “false comfort of appeasement,” his diplomats, in conjunction with their European counterparts, offered Iran another incentive package to stop enriching uranium. Even though they are making another effort to disarm Iran through mediation, the administration’s approach is hopelessly defective. Beyond insisting on onerous conditions that are unlikely to be met by any Iranian government, the United States and its allies still hope that Tehran will trade its enrichment rights for inducements. If Washington is going to mitigate the Iranian nuclear danger, it must discard the formula of exchanging commercial contracts for nuclear rights and seek more imaginative solutions.

Although Iran’s theocratic regime is perennially divided against itself, it has sustained a remarkable consensus on the nuclear issue. In today’s political climate, neither Western sanctions nor offers of incentives will fracture state unity. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has rejected any compromise, saying that “we will forcefully continue on our path and will not allow the oppressors to step on our rights.” In a rare note of agreement, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Khamenei’s rival and a politician known for his pragmatism, has similarly claimed, “It is our natural right; if we retreat on this path, we will allow the enemy to interfere with every issue of our country.”

Across the Iranian political spectrum, the nuclear program is seen as an attribute of a great power and an indicator of scientific achievement. To be sure, an advanced nuclear infrastructure would also provide Iran with a capacity to assemble bombs and attain its regional hegemonic aspirations.

Moreover, while Western powers seem frustrated with their strategies and continuously tinker with them, Iran is both satisfied and successful. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s firebrand president, has noted that the “nuclear issue demonstrates that if we stand firm, they will back down.” At a time when the United States is preoccupied with Iraq, and China and Russia both view Iran as a commercial opportunity rather than a strategic threat, it is hard to argue with Ahmadinejad’s bombastic assertions.

After three years of inconclusive diplomacy, it is time to discard the formula of “suspension for incentives” for one that trades “enrichment for transparency.” Under such a formulation, Western powers would concede to Iranian indigenous enrichment capability of considerable size in exchange for an intrusive inspection regime that would ensure nuclear material is not being diverted for military purposes. Such verification procedures must go beyond the measures in place; they should encompass 24-hour monitoring, continuous environmental sampling and the permanent presence of inspectors who have the right to visit any facility without prior notification. Moreover, Iran’s breakout capacity must be constrained by limiting the amount of fissile material it is allowed to keep in stock. The relevant question is no longer whether Iran will have a nuclear infrastructure but how we can regulate the program and make certain that untoward activities are not taking place.

Iran’s surging nuclear ambitions reflect the limits of American power. While Bush makes threat after threat and Western foreign ministers gather in various conclaves, Iran continues to expand its nuclear capacity. Though hardly ideal, the advantage of a plan that trades enrichment for transparency is that it meets Iran’s nationalistic mandates while also alleviating the great powers’ proliferation concerns. Should an intransigent Islamic Republic reject such a generous offer, it might affect Chinese and Russian calculations.

In an ideal universe, Iran would not be spinning a single centrifuge. In the here and now, though, Iran has an elaborate nuclear apparatus and is enriching uranium. It is impossible to turn back the clock. Instead of reviving an incentive package rejected long ago by Iran or issuing calls for military retribution that worry no one in the country’s hierarchy, the United States and its European allies would be wise to negotiate an arrangement that would meet at least some of their demands. This may just be the last chance we have before Iran crosses the nuclear weapons threshold.

8) Talabani: Iran sends no weapons to Iraq 
Press TV, Sat, 17 May 2008 05:12:59
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=56077&sectionid=351020201

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has dismissed claims that Iran is sending weapons into his country and called for strong Iran ties. “Those who make such claims against Iran only express their personal views which don’t reflect those of the Iraqi government,” he said in interview with the Al-Arabiya TV on Friday. “I, as the president of Iraq, do not agree with such views,” he added. “Our Iranian brothers are ready for dialogue on any such issues,” Talabani said.
…
Talabani also called for enhanced ties between Iraq and Iran and said that “I strongly believe that the relations between Iran and Iraq in different fields could be further strengthened,” IRNA quoted him as saying.

Afghanistan
9) Speaking With The Enemy
Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, May 17, 2008
http://www.newsweek.com/id/137523

The Bush Administration may not be practicing what the president preaches when it comes to “appeasement.” In a speech to Israel’s Knesset, which was regarded as an attack on Barack Obama and other Democrats, Bush condemned as a “foolish delusion” the belief “that we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals.” But the administration itself has sanctioned such discussions in Sunni areas of Iraq, Pakistani tribal areas and Afghanistan. Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested that the United States “need[s] to figure out a way to develop some leverage with respect to the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them.”

That notion evidently extends to elements of the Taliban. Mark Sedra, a Canadian expert on Afghanistan, says high-level U.S. officials, who he declined to name, admitted during a private Washington think-tank conference earlier this year that there was no purely military solution to Afghanistan’s problems and expressed a “willingness” to negotiate with “moderate” Taliban figures. Four administration officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing policy deliberations, told NEWSWEEK that Washington has already assented to efforts by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to talk with Taliban factions that do not share the nihilist religious extremism of Supreme Leader Mullah Omar. “If the Afghans want to peel away so-called [Taliban] ‘reasonables,’ we’re fine with that,” one of the officials said. Those inside the administration who object, said another of the officials, have been somewhat mollified by the use of semantic legerdemain: “We say it’s not negotiation. It’s dialogue.”

10) U.S. Planning Big New Prison In Afghanistan
Eric Schmitt & Tim Golden, New York Times, May 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/world/asia/17detain.html

The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come.

The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift American prison on the Bagram military base north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Until now, the Bush administration had signaled that it intended to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan. It had planned to transfer a large majority of the prisoners to Afghan custody, in an American-financed, high-security prison outside Kabul to be guarded by Afghan soldiers.

But American officials now concede that the new Afghan-run prison cannot absorb all the Afghans now detained by the United States, much less the waves of new prisoners from the escalating fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
…
Military officials have long been aware of serious problems with the existing detention center in Afghanistan, the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. After the prison was set up in early 2002, it became a primary site for screening prisoners captured in the fighting. Harsh interrogation methods and sleep deprivation were used widely, and two Afghan detainees died there in December 2002, after being repeatedly struck by American soldiers.

Conditions and treatment have improved markedly since then, but hundreds of Afghans and other men are still held in wire-mesh pens surrounded by coils of razor wire. There are only minimal areas for the prisoners to exercise, and kitchen, shower and bathroom space is also inadequate.

Faced with that, American officials said they wanted to replace the Bagram prison, a converted aircraft hangar that still holds some of the decrepit aircraft-repair machinery left by the Soviet troops who occupied the country in the 1980s. In its place the United States will build what officials described as a more modern and humane detention center that would usually accommodate about 600 detainees - or as many as 1,100 in a surge - and cost more than $60 million.
…
There has been mixed support for the project on Capitol Hill. Two prominent Senate Democrats, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia and Tim Johnson of South Dakota, have been briefed on the new American-run prison, and have praised the decision to make conditions there more humane. But the senators, in a May 15 letter to the deputy defense secretary, Gordon England, demanded that the Pentagon explain its long-term plans for detention in Afghanistan and consult the Afghan government on the project.

The population at Bagram began to swell after administration officials halted the flow of prisoners to Guantánamo in September 2004, a cutoff that largely remains in effect. At the same time, the population of detainees at Bagram also began to rise with the resurgence of the Taliban.

Military personnel who know both Bagram and Guantánamo describe the Afghan site, 40 miles north of Kabul, as far more spartan. Bagram prisoners have fewer privileges, less ability to contest their detention and no access to lawyers. Some detainees have been held without charge for more than five years, officials said.

Pakistan
11) Pakistan protests suspected US missile strike
Zarar Khan, Associated Press, Friday, May 16, 2008; 1:14 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/16/AR2008051600898.html

Pakistan’s army lodged a formal protest Friday to “allied forces” in neighboring Afghanistan over a suspected U.S. missile strike this week that killed 14 people in a Pakistani border village. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said Pakistan concluded that Wednesday’s attack on a house in Damadola village was launched by drones from Afghanistan.

Abbas said a formal protest was lodged Friday with “allied forces” in Afghanistan, an apparent reference to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force that is fighting the Taliban-led insurgency there. The U.S. is among the nations contributing to ISAF. Abbas said 14 people died in the attack.

It was unclear if any foreign militants were killed because local tribesmen had sealed off the area in the aftermath and buried the victims, he said.

Islamist parties, regional lawmakers and the governor of Pakistan’s volatile North West Frontier Province have already condemned the attack as a violation of the country’s sovereignty. Gov. Ovais Ahmed Ghani warned that it would undermine public support for Pakistan’s efforts against terrorism. It was the first such strike since Pakistan’s new civilian government took power six weeks ago.

Venezuela
12) Chávez envisions US as partner in fighting injustice
Offers wide range of views to US editors
Martin Baron, Boston Globe, May 18, 2008
http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2008/05/18/chvez_envisions_us_as_partner_in_fighting_injustice/

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela had just wrapped up a press conference, extravagant in its theatrics, where he denounced an Interpol report that authenticated documents linking his government to rebels in neighboring Colombia. That lasted four hours, and then he extended a surprise invitation to a delegation of American newspaper editors on a “fact-finding mission” to Venezuela: Perhaps we can spend 10 to 15 minutes together over coffee?

Ten to 15 minutes became nearly two extraordinary hours Thursday, going deep into the night, as aides waited to get Chávez onto the plane that would carry him to a summit of European, Latin American, and Caribbean leaders the next day in Lima, Peru.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors, in planning its trip, had requested months ago to meet Chávez but the request went unanswered. Now the editors saw a president who was both jocular and jousting, who would talk at length about his passion for baseball (he’s a Yankees man, he told one editor), his history of blunt anti-American rhetoric (no offense, please), the fate of democracy and free expression in Venezuela (not a problem, he insists), his personal bond with Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and what he might do if he leaves office on the current mandatory schedule of 2013.
…
On his attacks on the United States: I beg for a pardon from them. I beg for forgiveness if in my speech I’ve hurt any feelings back in the States. I ask for forgiveness. When I speak about the United States, I do not refer to the people, to the citizens. I refer to the elite that is governing the United States - and not even referring to all of the elite governing the United States. Because we have friends among the elite governing the US. The economic elite, we have friends. We have friends among the cultural elite of the United States . . . Danny Glover. Kevin Spacey came over here. Sean Penn. Those are my friends, close friends . . . And when they come over here, they say what they like and what they don’t like. And we still are friends. And that’s what we want. We want to be friends. And I hope that with the new government we can then open new space for exchange - and discuss.

On his favorite candidate in the US presidential election: It would be a lie if I say I have no preference. However, I don’t want to take this personal, and take this candidate or that candidate . . . I shouldn’t say anything that might be used against someone. I’d rather be careful and see things from a distance. Our preference would be that whoever is elected, we might start immediately with some exchange. It is through talking we can then come closer and share and compare our views and then reach an agreement.
…
On future relations with the United States: I would love, for instance, to be able to work with the United States, together, and other countries as well, regardless of the ideology, to work in the field of health, for instance, infant mortality, food production. In Latin America, we have 19 million malnourished people . . . Haiti, this is a disaster. Children that die of hunger. Education. So many things that we can do together. Forget about the complexity of ideology. No matter how we think, there’s a world waiting for us to tackle injustices. So I wish we can do that together. Well, if we couldn’t do all that, at least we can sit down and talk.

-
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
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May 16, 2008

Congressional Letter in Opposition to Israeli Settlement Expansion Extended
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The Real News: Anti-US protests after drone missile attack in Pakistan
Several people were killed in a missile strike in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday. Witnesses said US drones fired missiles on a compound where militants had gathered for dinner.  On Thursday, several thousand protesters led by Islamist political party leaders attended anti-US and anti-Musharraf rallies in response to “the U.S. aggression.”
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Arab mediators brokered a deal Thursday to end Lebanon’s internal fighting, inviting factions to Qatar for talks, the Washington Post reports. The agreement underlined Hezbollah’s strength following the fighting, as its opponents in the U.S.-backed government essentially acceded to demands that the group had made at the start of the crisis. Analysts say no consensus among key players - Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the US - has emerged on a compromise. The article notes that the Cabinet of the pro-US government lacks representation of Shiite Muslims, the country’s single-largest community.

2) Sen. McCain vowed as President to end the war in Iraq by 2013, the Washington Post reports. McCain rejected the idea that he would set a firm date for withdrawal, saying that he is “promising that we will succeed in Iraq” but not promising that troops would come home if success did not occur. McCain admirer Leslie Gelb described the speech as “almost in la-la land.” The head of the largest Sunni bloc in Iraq’s parliament burst into laughter after a reporter described the speech. “I don’t expect the United States will leave Iraq for another 50 years,” he said.

Iran
3) The Pentagon said the US is not trying to create incentives to bring Iran to the negotiating table but rather is seeking ways to intensify pressure to force it to change its ways, AFP reports. A Pentagon spokesman denied there was any contradiction between the President’s speech in Israel suggesting that those who want to negotiate with Iran were akin to Nazi appeasers and Defense Secretary Gates’ support of future talks with Iran. [The AFP article understates the degree of apparent contradiction; the Washington Post reported yesterday that Gates had talked Wedenesday about incentives and increasing the number of Americans visiting Iran:

Gates: U.S. Should Engage Iran With Incentives, Pressure
Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, Thursday, May 15, 2008; A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/14/AR2008051403553.html
- JFP.]

Iraq
4) Arab governments aren’t persuaded Iraq has turned a corner on internal security, national reconciliation, or its relationship with “Persia,” the Washington Post reports. And they see no reason to accommodate the wishes of a lame duck administration. “They will wait for the American election,” Iraq’s Foreign Minister has said.

Afghanistan
5) The New York Times reports on charges by UN investigator Alston of US killing civilians in Afghanistan. Alston said civilian casualties in Afghanistan were intolerably high and often could be avoided. The lack of accountability, and the complacency at so many killings by the police and international forces, was staggering, he said.

6) The World Food Program says almost one in five Afghans are receiving food aid, the New York Times reports. Some teachers are not coming to work because they can’t make ends meet. A WFP official called for greater international investment to help Afghan farmers increase food production.

Pakistan
7) Pakistani officials say they have no interest in stopping cross-border attacks by militants into Afghanistan, the New York Times reports. Civilian leaders say they have advised the US against fighting in Pakistani territory populated by Pashtuns, as this will only increase support for militants. They say a key to isolating Pakistani militants is to allow Pakistan’s major political parties to operate in the tribal areas.

Colombia
8) Interpol says files found on computers that Colombia seized from a FARC guerrilla camp were not tampered with, Inter Press Service reports. But Interpol also said the initial handling of the laptops was not in accordance with international standards and that could complicate their use in a judicial proceeding. Interpol commission was only tasked with verifying whether Colombia modified the files and handled them properly. It did not analyse the content of the documents. US and British academics criticized media coverage that conflated Interpol validation that the laptops hadn’t been altered with validation of claims of the Colombian government concerning their contents.

Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Factions in Lebanon Agree to Meet for Talks
Government Strikes Deal With Hezbollah, but Issues Remain
Anthony Shadid & Alia Ibrahim, Washington Post, Friday, May 16, 2008; A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/15/AR2008051503758.html

Arab mediators brokered a deal Thursday to end Lebanon’s worst internal fighting since its 15-year civil war, inviting factions to Qatar for talks but leaving unresolved questions that have embroiled the country for 18 months.

In a sign of ongoing tension in Lebanon, announcement of the agreement was delayed repeatedly through the day, as politicians haggled over the minutia of phrases and the sequence of single words. In effect, the deal returned Lebanon to the status quo that prevailed before Hezbollah, angry at government decisions, sent its militiamen and allied fighters to occupy parts of Beirut last week. But the agreement also underlined Hezbollah’s strength following the fighting, as its opponents in the U.S.-backed government essentially acceded to demands that the group had made at the start of the crisis.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jasim al-Thani, who led the delegation, said the talks would begin Friday in the Persian Gulf country’s capital of Doha, and would continue “until an agreement was reached.” Leaders in the Hezbollah-led opposition spoke of turning a new page. But government officials, forced into a humiliating decision Wednesday to retract the measures that had targeted Hezbollah, were dubious of a quick breakthrough, and many analysts believe that no international consensus among the key players in Lebanon - Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the United States - has emerged yet on a sweeping compromise.
…
Residents lined the streets to watch bulldozers and trucks haul away burned tires, dirt and rubble, and the national carrier, Middle East Airlines, dispatched its first flight here in a week on Thursday evening.

All the factions’ leaders have pledged to attend the talks in principle, said Ghazi Aridi, the information minister, although Nasrallah was expected to remain here for security reasons. Their task is complicated by the same issues that have paralyzed the country since 2006: reconstituting a Cabinet that lacks representation of Shiite Muslims, the country’s single-largest community; filling a presidency that has remained vacant since November; and reopening a parliament effectively closed by the crisis.

So far, both sides have agreed in principle on the choice of Gen. Michel Suleiman, the army commander, as president, although his standing has diminished among government supporters, who believe the army facilitated Hezbollah’s seizure of West Beirut. The sides remain unsettled over a law for parliamentary elections and more sharply divided over sharing power in the Cabinet, where Hezbollah and its allies want the power of veto.

Until the latest crisis, those negotiations had proceeded under a phrase that dates to the 1975-90 civil war of “la ghalib wala maghloub” or “no victor and no vanquished.” The words were even mentioned Thursday by Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Kassem.
…
But the group’s show of force and the ensuing sectarian clashes that left at least 62 people dead, replete with marauding urban gunmen redolent of the civil war, have refigured the constellation of power, setting down new red lines. Whatever the outcome of the negotiations, Hezbollah has already made clear that it will not permit any government move that targets its infrastructure.

“I think we’ve gotten over this sort of showdown between the state and Hezbollah, and Hezbollah has won. It has made it clear that you’re not to do this again,” said Paul Salem, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center. “Now, we’re in more of the stage of bargaining, the creative, patchwork quilt to throw over this situation.”

“Now if you want to elect a president, the rules are clear,” he said.

The past two days underlined the new arrangement. In the contentious Cabinet meeting Wednesday, at least two ministers reportedly threatened to resign over the agreement to repeal the two decisions. And the deal announced Thursday met demands that Nasrallah made last week, before his fighters occupied West Beirut, that the government agree to a dialogue without conditions. Some government supporters insisted the disarming of Hezbollah be put on the agenda. Instead, they settled for a mild suggestion that the parties would address “armed groups’ relationship to the state.”

“We were very clear from the beginning, we’re not interested in civil strife,” said Aridi, the information minister. “We have to find an exit for all of us.”

2) McCain Sees U.S. Troops Leaving Iraq by 2013
He Still Opposes Firm Date
Michael D. Shear & Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, Friday, May 16, 2008; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/15/AR2008051500005.html

Sen. John McCain on Thursday offered for the first time what he hopes will be an end date for the war in Iraq, part of a vision he presented in which his policies lead to peace and prosperity at home and abroad by 2013, the end of what would be his first term as president.
…
The Iraq comments appeared designed to blunt the political toll of the presumptive GOP nominee’s unwavering support for the unpopular war. Democrats have spent months pillorying McCain for saying that U.S. troops could remain in Iraq for as long as 100 years - a reference the candidate later said was intended to describe an American presence like those in Germany or South Korea.

But he quickly dismissed the suggestion that he was abandoning his criticism of Democrats and their plans for a precipitous departure. “I think it’s dangerous for the future of America to set a date for withdrawal,” he said. “We are succeeding in Iraq. We will have succeeded further in Iraq in 2013.”

McCain’s advisers disputed any likeness between his goals for Iraq and the positions of the Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. While Democrats want to withdraw troops without any regard for the military situation in Iraq, aides said, McCain would leave troops on the ground beyond his first term if he thought it was necessary. “There is no similarity,” McCain adviser Steve Schmidt said. Said Mark Salter, a top McCain aide: “He’s not saying ‘Win or lose, they come home in four years.’ “

Speaking to reporters, McCain rejected the idea that he would set a firm date for withdrawal, saying that he is “promising that we will succeed in Iraq” but not promising that troops would come home if success did not occur.
…
The speech was immediately mocked by McCain’s political rivals, military experts and Iraqis, who described it as fanciful and said his decision to promise a date for the end of the war was a flip-flop designed to appeal to voters who oppose the continued U.S. involvement in the conflict.
…
Even some of McCain’s admirers expressed puzzlement about the speech. “I think John McCain has been one of the most important voices on national security policy for many years now,” said Leslie H. Gelb, a former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who described the speech as “almost in la-la land.”

“It is unsupported generalizations and predictions that he would have scoffed at as the old John McCain,” Gelb said.
…
In Iraq, political leaders were skeptical as well. “2013?” said Adnan al-Dulaimi, the head of the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, who burst into laughter after a reporter described the speech. “I don’t expect the United States will leave Iraq for another 50 years. They might withdraw their forces from the cities and streets, but they will not leave Iraq.”

Some Iraqi lawmakers said they were disappointed that McCain, who is widely admired among the Iraqi political class, offered a quasi-deadline at all. “I was surprised when I heard McCain’s speech. I thought he was aware of Iraq’s situation,” said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish parliament member. “Unfortunately, it’s only electoral propaganda. Nobody could guess what Iraq’s situation will be five years from now.”

Iran
3) Pentagon: US Seeks To Pressure Iran, Not Give It Incentives
AFP, Thu May 15, 3:10 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080515/wl_mideast_afp/usmilitaryiraniraqgates_080515191043

The United States is not trying to create incentives to bring Iran to the negotiating table but rather is seeking ways to intensify pressure to force it to change its ways, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell indicated, however, that the Pentagon does not currently plan an increase in US military presence in the Gulf as a form of pressure on Iran.

Morrell sought to clarify remarks Wednesday by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that were interpreted here as a call for a combination of incentives and pressures to induce Iran to negotiate. Morrell said there was “absolutely no gap” on the issue between Gates and President George W. Bush, who said in Jerusalem Wednesday that negotiating with “radicals and terrorists” was “a foolish delusion.”

What Gates and the rest of the administration were focused on, the spokesman said, “is continuing to find ways to increase the pressure on the Iranian government to change their behavior.”

“The only incentive that would be offered to the Iranians would be a reduction, a diminishment of that pressure if they were to change their behavior, if they were to abandon their pursuit of a nuclear program and stop destabilizing the region in which they live,” Morrell said.

In his remarks to a foreign policy group, Gates indicated that the United States lacks leverage to fruitfully engage the Iranians in negotiations now.  

“We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage with the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them,” he said, referring to general US relations with Tehran.

“If there is going to be a discussion then they need something, too,” he said. “We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the ‘demandeur’ with them not feeling they do not need anything from us.”

But Morrell said Gates saw “no prospect” for government-to-government talks “until such time that the Iranians feel such pressure from the diplomatic, economic and military pressure we are putting them under that they want to change their ways.”

Iraq
4) Iraq Finds Its Arab Neighbors Are Reluctant To Offer Embrace
Sunni States Refuse to Forgive Debt, Send Ambassadors
Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, Friday, May 16, 2008; A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/15/AR2008051503730.html

When Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal greeted his Iraqi counterpart with a bear hug at a Persian Gulf conference last month, Bush administration officials watching from the sidelines were all smiles. After years of trying to bring their client state and the Arab giant together, it looked like things were finally starting to click.

But despite U.S. entreaties, there has been no second date. Riyadh - along with every other Sunni Arab state - still declines to send an ambassador to Baghdad or to forgive billions of dollars of Hussein-era debt.

To frustrated U.S. matchmakers, it is blindingly obvious that Iraq needs the Arabs and the Arabs need Iraq, as a stable economic and political partner and a regional bulwark against Iran. Iraq may be a Shiite-majority country with a Shiite-dominated government - like Iran - they say, but it is Arab, not Persian.
…
But Arab governments say they are far from persuaded that Iraq has turned a corner on its internal security, reconciliation among its ethnic, religious and political factions, or its relationship with Persia, as they often refer to Iran.

Beneath differing U.S. and Arab assessments of Iraq’s progress are more fundamental divides that neither mentions in polite company. The administration is convinced that the Arabs have a deep-seated, psychological resistance to embracing a Shiite-ruled Iraq, no matter how even-handed its government. What they fail to understand, according to the U.S. view, is that their absence from Baghdad leaves the field open for Iranian influence.

For their part, some Arab officials describe lingering resentment over what they considered Washington’s cavalier disregard of their warnings that the U.S. invasion would destabilize Iraq and the region, and its subsequent failure to safeguard the interests of Iraq’s minority Sunnis in the U.S.-orchestrated reconstruction of the Iraqi political balance. And they see no reason why they should rush to accommodate the wishes of a lame duck administration that only recently adopted what they consider an effective Iraq policy. “They will wait for the American election,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari predicted in a recent interview.

Those Arab states who once had representation in Iraq either scaled back or closed their embassies by the end of 2005 - after Jordan’s embassy was bombed, Egypt’s ambassador was killed, and Algerian and United Arab Emirates diplomats were kidnapped. Some said security is their only hesitation.

But U.S. and Iraqi officials dismissed Arab security concerns as a smokescreen. “If I believed the issue were purely one of security, it would be one thing,” a senior Bush administration official said. The Iraqi government has offered the Arabs space inside the fortified Green Zone, where the U.S. embassy and much of the Iraqi government is located.

The real basis for Arab reluctance, the U.S. official said, “is political. It’s a choice, an acknowledgement that there is a new Iraq, of recognizing that its political structures, its constitution, its government, is in fact legitimate.”

The Arabs, unsurprisingly, say that is nonsense. “Iraq is an Arab country and we want the same things the Americans want,” an Arab official said. But beyond diplomatic security, he and others said they are not convinced that the Basra offensive proved that Maliki is ready to stand up to Tehran. They also note that Maliki’s government has so far failed to incorporate more than a fraction of the largely Sunni Awakening security forces backed by the U.S. military into the Iraqi police and military forces.

Several Arab officials questioned whether Iraq’s military offensives against Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia were staged to crack down on “criminals,” as Maliki has said, or to benefit Sadr’s Shiite rivals, who are allied with the prime minister. Administration officials raised that possibility themselves immediately after the Basra assault, one Arab noted, before they decided to hail it as evidence of Maliki’s willingness to go after his co-religionists.

Several Arab officials attributed their hesitation partly to what they describe as Iraqi government incompetence. Egypt has complained that it has yet to receive the body of its assassinated ambassador, and also that political factions in Baghdad have been unable to agree on Iraq’s envoy to Cairo. A Saudi official noted that while Iraq complains about Riyadh’s failure to forgive billions in debt, Baghdad has not provided the necessary paperwork and has paid no principal or interest for the past 20 years. Still, the Saudi official said, “nobody is taking them to the credit bureau.”

The Arab states are signatories to the International Compact With Iraq, a document signed at the first neighbors conference last May that commits them to assisting Iraqi political and economic development. The Bush administration has expressed hopes that the region will make substantive moves in that direction at the next compact meeting, late this month in Stockholm. But Arab officials say Iraq is not yet close to completing its side of the bargain, including progress toward political reconciliation and the passage of laws regulating the oil industry.

Afghanistan
5) U.N. Official Raises Alarms Over Killings In Afghanistan
Carlotta Gall, New York Times, May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/world/asia/16afghan.html

A special investigator for the United Nations on Thursday accused foreign intelligence agencies of conducting nighttime raids and killing civilians in Afghanistan with impunity. The investigator, Philip Alston, would not specify the nationalities of the intelligence agencies. But the descriptions he gave of units operating out of two American bases in southern and eastern Afghanistan suggested that he was accusing the Central Intelligence Agency or American unconventional-warfare units of operating without accountability to the Afghan government or the foreign military command in the country. Afghan forces working with foreign units were not under the control of the Afghan government, he said.

American officials in Afghanistan declined to comment on Alston’s accusations.

Alston, who directs a center for human rights and global justice at New York University’s Law School, spoke at a news conference after a 12-day visit to Afghanistan as the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. He reports to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
…
Alston said he had concluded that civilian casualties in Afghanistan were intolerably high, and often could be avoided. The lack of accountability, and the complacency at so many killings by the police and international forces, was staggering, he said. His comments seemed at odds with claims by NATO that civilian casualties had been greatly reduced in recent months.

International military forces have killed as many as 200 civilians in the first four months of this year, often in aerial bombings, but also in joint operations with Afghan security forces, he said. The Taliban have killed 300 civilians in the same period, he said. The Taliban may be attacking military targets, but 95 percent, probably more, of their victims were civilians, he said, citing figures compiled by the United Nations’ Afghan mission.

Alston said he regretted that the government had given him a clear message not to approach the Taliban. He said it would be useful to talk to the insurgents and make the case for them to avoid civilian casualties. “The Taliban exist, they are engaged in widespread killings; we have an obligation not to stand on formalities, but to seek to diminish civilian casualties and killings,” he said.

But he reserved his strongest criticism for the two American-run military bases, one known as Camp Ghecko, on the outskirts of Kandahar, and one in the eastern province of Nangarhar. “It is absolutely unacceptable for heavily armed internationals accompanied by heavily armed Afghan forces to be wandering around conducting dangerous raids that too often result in killings without anyone taking responsibility for them,” he said in his report.

6) Hunger And Food Prices Push Afghanistan To Brink
Carlotta Gall, New York Times, May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/world/asia/16kandahar.html
…
Afghanistan is in a particularly unforgiving situation, Anthony Banbury, director for Asia with the United Nations World Food Program, said during a recent visit to Kandahar. It is not only one of the poorest countries, but it is grappling with a prolonged conflict, and all the attendant problems of lawlessness, displacement, poorly developed markets and destroyed infrastructure, which leave the population especially vulnerable to price shocks, he said. “For millions of Afghans, the poorer segments of society, who spend up to 70 percent of their meager income on food, these food price rises put the basic necessities simply out of their reach,” Banbury said.

Six million people in Afghanistan, out of a population of about 32 million, are already receiving food aid, and the World Food Program is gearing up to help more.

It has agreed with the government to reopen an assistance plan through bakeries for the urban poor, a program that it ran during the years of the Taliban government but discontinued after the American-led invasion in late 2001. The government is also asking for help in providing food aid to 172,000 teachers countrywide, some of whom are not coming to work because they cannot make ends meet. That alone is an indication that things are getting harder, he said. “Every school we went to, in every classroom, the teachers were saying we need more salary or food,” Banbury said.
…
World Food Program officials said food aid was not a long-term answer to Afghanistan’s hunger.

Despite the billions spent in Afghanistan over the last six years, international donors have failed to invest substantially in agriculture, the sector on which the majority of the population survives, Banbury said. He called for a large-scale, countrywide program to distribute improved seeds and tools to farmers to help increase food production. “Farmers are the most rational people in the world,” he said. “If you give them the seeds, they’ll do it.”

Pakistan
7) Pakistan Defies U.S. On Halting Afghanistan Raids
Jane Perlez, New York Times, May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/world/asia/16pstan.html

Pakistani officials are making it increasingly clear that they have no interest in stopping cross-border attacks by militants into Afghanistan, prompting a new level of frustration from Americans who see the infiltration as a crucial strategic priority in the war in Afghanistan.

On Wednesday night, the United States fired its fourth Predator missile strike since January, the most visible symbol of the American push for a freer hand to pursue militants from Al Qaeda and the Taliban who use Pakistan’s tribal areas as a base to attack Afghanistan and plot terrorist attacks abroad. In Afghanistan, cross-border attacks have doubled over the same month last year and present an increasingly lethal challenge to American and NATO efforts to wind down the war and deny the Taliban and Al Qaeda a sanctuary.

In an unusual step during a visit to Pakistan in March, Adm. Eric T. Olson, the commander of United States Special Operations Command, held a round-table discussion with a group of civilian Pakistani leaders to sound them out on the possibility of cross-border raids by American forces. He was told in no uncertain terms that from the Pakistani point of view it was a bad idea, said one of the participants.

Instead, Pakistani officials are trying to restore calm to their country, which was rattled by a record number of suicide attacks last year. Within days, they are expected to strike a peace accord with Pakistan’s own militants that makes no mention of stopping the infiltrations. In fact, Pakistani counterinsurgency operations have stopped during the new government’s negotiations with the militants.

“Pakistan will take care of its own problems, you take care of Afghanistan on your side,” said Owari Ghani, the governor of North-West Frontier Province, who is also President Pervez Musharraf’s representative in charge of the neighboring tribal areas.

Ghani, a key architect of the pending peace accord, believes along with many other Pakistani leaders that the United States is floundering in the war in Afghanistan. Pakistan, he said, should not be saddled with America’s mistakes, especially if a solution involved breaching Pakistan’s sovereignty, a delicate matter in a nation where sentiment against the Bush administration runs high.
…
Still, in the talks, which were organized by the United States Consulate here in late March, the civilian leaders said they advised the Americans against fighting in Pakistani territory populated by Pashtuns. Pakistan’s government has long been wary of nationalist and separatist strains among the Pashtuns, whose population straddles the Pakistani-Afghan border.

“I said it would be extremely dangerous,” Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of North-West Frontier Province, said he told Admiral Olson. “It would increase the number of militants, it would be a war of liberation for the Pashtuns. They would say: ‘We are being slaughtered. Our enemy is the United States.’ “
…
Although Aziz and Khattak criticized sending American forces into the tribal areas, both men also blamed the Pakistani Army, which was first sent to the tribal areas at American insistence in 2002.

Most of the 100,000 soldiers are from the Punjab, the largest and most sophisticated province of Pakistan. They feel like foreigners in the impoverished tribal areas, and are treated as such. Their training in conventional warfare has been a liability against the more limber militants. Under such conditions, Aziz said, the army had been reduced to a mass of “demoralized, quivering flesh.” They had taken a “bad beating,” and were just waiting to leave.
…
A key to isolating the militants, Khattak said, is to allow Pakistan’s major political parties to operate in the tribal areas. Under the complicated archaic rules of governing over the tribal areas, The parties are forbidden in the region, making it difficult to provide a viable alternative to the standoff between the government and the militants, he said. To ease that difficulty, his party, the Awami National Party, favors combining the North-West Frontier Province and the tribal areas into one entity, he said.

Colombia
8) Interpol Notes Improper Initial Handling of FARC Laptops
Constanza Vieira, Inter Press Service, May 15
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42391

Interpol reported Thursday that the files found on computers that Colombia seized from a FARC guerrilla camp in March were not tampered with and did belong to the rebel group. But it also said the handling of the laptops and hard drives in the first 48 hours after they were discovered “may complicate validating this evidence for purposes of its introduction in a judicial proceeding”.

The computers were found in a FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) camp two kilometres inside the Ecuadorean border, which was targeted in a Mar. 1 aerial bombing by the Colombian armed forces that prompted Ecuador to break off diplomatic ties with that country.
…
Because of doubts raised when the Colombian Defence Ministry leaked bits and pieces of information from the FARC laptops to the media, the government of Álvaro Uribe handed them over to Interpol on Mar. 10, to have them authenticated.

The Interpol commission was only tasked with verifying whether Colombia modified the files and handled them properly. It did not analyse the content of the documents. In fact, the commission was made up of forensic experts from Australia and Singapore who do not speak or read Spanish, “which helped to eliminate the possibility that they might be influenced by the content of any data they were examining,” according to the report.
…
The information leaked to the press by Colombian authorities includes internal FARC correspondence that shows that the guerrillas obtained weapons on the black market, apparently through corrupt Venezuelan military personnel or officials - something that has been occurring at least since the mid-1990s.
…
According to the Colombian government, the documents show that Chávez has provided financial and logistical support for the FARC. National Police chief Óscar Naranjo said on Mar. 2 that the documents “not only show close ties, but imply an armed alliance between the FARC and the Venezuelan government.”

But Adam Isaacson, a Colombia specialist at the Washington-based Centre for International Policy (CIP), pointed out that “…the documents in question are communications between guerrilla leaders. Several offer accounts of meetings with officials of the Venezuelan government, some of them high-ranking. No documents or writings from the Venezuelans themselves appear; the FARC communications only reflect the guerrillas’ version of events.”
…
When Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza testified before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Western Hemispheric Affairs in mid-April, he clearly stated that there is “no evidence” linking Venezuela to the Colombian guerrillas.

In an open letter issued to the press on Apr. 26, 21 U.S. and British academics who criticised media coverage of the laptop documents, said that “there is no evidence that the publicly available documents support any of the extreme claims by the Colombian government that Venezuela and Ecuador had any sort of financial relationship with the rebels.”

“The authentication of the laptops does not mean the validation of the Colombian interpretation of their contents,” they stated, adding that there is a “gap between Colombia’s exaggerations and what the documents actually say.”

-
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
           
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans.

Just Foreign Policy News
May 15, 2008

Chicago and Evanston Consider War with Iran
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Chicago City Council considered a resolution against a U.S. attack on Iran. The resolution was deferred until the June meeting; Mayor Daley expressed opposition, claiming that he feared it would hurt the Obama campaign. Alderman Moore, sponsor of the resolution, rejected the charge, noting that he was also an Obama supporter, and that Obama had spoken out against war and in favor of diplomacy.
Meanwhile, the City of Evanston, just north of Chicago, approved a resolution 7-1 “urging the federal government not to go to war against Iran“:
Aldermen say no to invasion of Iran
http://www.evanstonnow.com/government/bill-smith/story/2008/05/13/aldermen-say-no-to-invasion-of-iran

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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) A coalition of antiwar Democrats and Republicans angry at the Democratic leadership in the House voted down a $162.5 billion proposal to continue funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Washington Post reports. [The roll call is here:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll328.xml - JFP.] The House voted to demand troop withdrawals, force the Iraqi government to shoulder more war costs, expand education benefits for veterans, and force the CIA to adhere to a ban on torture.

2) Defense Secretary Gates said the US should use a combination of incentives and pressure to engage Iran, and may have missed earlier opportunities to begin a useful dialogue, the Washington Post reports. He suggested that more Americans should visit Iran.
 
3) President Bush used a speech to the Israeli Parliament to denounce those who would negotiate with “terrorists and radicals,” a remark interpreted as a rebuke to Senator Obama, who has argued the US should talk directly with Iran and Syria, the New York Times reports.

4) Thomas Fingar, who led the process that produced the Iran NIE, attributed attacks on the NIE to anger among hard-liners that the report didn’t conform to their preconceived views, the Los Angeles Times reports. “The unhappiness with the finding - namely that the evil Iranians might be susceptible to diplomacy - adroitly turned into an ad hominem assault,” Fingar said. “Why do we have an intelligence community if all you want are cheerleaders?” Fingar said he was dismayed by praise of him and his analysts as courageous, as if doing their jobs honestly were something spectacular.  

5) The Lebanese government rescinded two decisions Wednesday that had targeted Hezbollah and ignited the worst internal fighting since the civil war, the Washington Post reports. Hezbollah has also demanded that the cabinet agree to a national dialogue before allowing the airport and port to reopen.

Iran
6) The Bush Administration’s plan to create a new crescendo of accusations against Iran for allegedly smuggling arms to militias in Iraq was derailed by the defection of the Iraqi government from the plan and by the US failure to produce Iranian weapons it had promised to reporters, write Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service. He argues that the failure to produce Iranian weapons suggests that the dependence of the Mahdi Army on arms manufactured in Iran is insignificant.

Afghanistan
7) An investigator for the U.N. Human Rights Council accused US intelligence agents of leading secret raids on suspected insurgents in Afghanistan and shirking responsibility when innocent civilians are killed, AP reports.

Pakistan
8) The Pakistan Army released 40 Taliban militants in exchange for 12 members of the army and the paramilitary Frontier Corps, the New York Times reports.

Colombia
9) Fourteen right-wing paramilitary leaders who had been expected to shed light on how they committed brutal crimes were extradited to the US Tuesday to face charges of drug trafficking, not murder, the Christian Science Monitor reports. The move was criticized by victims who say the paramilitary leaders will now have less incentive to cooperate with Colombian prosecutors.

Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) House Rejects $162.5B War Funding Bill
Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, Thursday, May 15, 2008; 5:38 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/15/AR2008051502874.html

An unusual coalition of antiwar Democrats and angry Republicans in the House today torpedoed a $162.5 billion proposal to continue funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into next year, eliminating, for now, the one part of the controversial bill that had seemed certain to pass.

Instead, House members voted to demand troop withdrawals from Iraq, force the Iraqi government to shoulder more war costs and greatly expand the education benefits for returning veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict.

The surprise on war-funding left antiwar activists on and off Capitol Hill exultant and Democratic leaders baffled. House leaders had broken the war-funding bill into three separate measures, the first to fund the wars, the second to impose strict military policy measures opposed by President Bush, and the third to fund domestic priorities, including expanded education benefits and flood control work around New Orleans.

But that legislative legerdemain became the plan’s undoing. Democratic leaders knew that many members of their caucus, who have vowed not to approve another penny for the Iraq war, would reject the supplemental appropriation for the conflicts, but they expected Republicans to push it through. Instead, 131 House Republicans voted “present” on the measure, incensed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and a few of her lieutenants had drafted the war bill largely in secret.
…
The measure would have brought the total cost of the wars since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to $752 billion, a figure that exceeds the cost of any U.S. war since World War II. Of that, $660 billion - about the cost in today’s dollars of World War I, the Korean War, the Civil War and the Gulf War combined - has gone to Iraq, according to the Congressional Research Service.
…
As approved, the House bill would require the United States to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq within 30 days, with a goal of removing all combat forces by December 2009. The Iraqi government would have to match U.S. reconstruction funding, dollar for dollar, and would be required to offer the U.S. military the same fuel subsidies it provides its own citizens.

Troops would get more rest between combat deployments, and every branch of government - including the Central Intelligence Agency - would have to abide by the Army Field Manual’s guidelines on interrogation, which ban actions that amount to torture. Those policy prescriptions passed the House 227 to 196, with a surprising eight Republican votes.

2) Gates: U.S. Should Engage Iran With Incentives, Pressure
Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, Thursday, May 15, 2008; A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/14/AR2008051403553.html

The United States should construct a combination of incentives and pressure to engage Iran, and may have missed earlier opportunities to begin a useful dialogue with Tehran, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday.

“We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them,” Gates said. “If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us.”

In the meantime, Gates told a meeting of the Academy of American Diplomacy, a group of retired diplomats, “my personal view would be we ought to look for ways outside of government to open up the channels and get more of a flow of people back and forth.” Noting that “a fair number” of Iranians regularly visit the United States, he said, “We ought to increase the flow the other way . . . of Americans” visiting Iran. “I think that may be the one opening that creates some space,” Gates said.

The Bush administration has said it will talk with Iran, and consider lifting economic and other sanctions, only if Iran ends a uranium enrichment program the administration maintains is intended to produce nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies. Although the U.S. and Iranian ambassadors to Baghdad met three times last year for discussions on Iraq, Iran has refused to continue that dialogue.

Others, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who is running for president, have said that talks with Iran on a range of issues might be useful.

Gates publicly favored engagement with Iran before taking his current job in late 2006. In 2004, he co-authored a Council on Foreign Relations report titled “Iran: Time for a New Approach.” At the time, he explained yesterday, “we were looking at a different Iran in many respects” under then-President Mohammad Khatami. Tehran’s role in Iraq was “fairly ambivalent,” he said. “They were doing some things that were not helpful, but they were also doing some things that were helpful.”

“One of the things that I think historians will have to take a look at is whether there was a missed opportunity at that time,” Gates said. Khatami was replaced in 2005 by hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Gates was also a member of the bipartisan 2006 Iraq Study Group, which advocated reaching out to Iran.

3) Bush Speech Criticized as Attack on Obama
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times, May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/world/middleeast/16prexy.html

President Bush used a speech to the Israeli Parliament on Thursday to denounce those who would negotiate with “terrorists and radicals” - a remark that was widely interpreted as a rebuke to Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential contender, who has argued that the United States should talk directly with countries like Iran and Syria.

Bush did not mention Obama by name, and the White House said his remarks were not aimed at the senator, though they created a political firestorm in Washington nonetheless.

In a lengthy speech intended to promote the strong alliance between the United States and Israel, the president invoked the emotionally volatile imagery of World War II to make the case that talking to extremists was no different than appeasing Hitler and the Nazis.

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Bush said. “We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

The president was alluding to Senator William E. Borah, an Idaho Republican noted for his powers of oratory and his isolationist views. In 1938, when Hitler was gobbling up parts of Europe, Borah expressed admiration for him, and in 1939 he did indeed lament that he had not been able to talk to Hitler before the Nazi invasion of Poland.

4) Political clashes underline limits to intelligence reform
Analysts are forced to defend their controversial Iran report, which was intended as a symbol of change.
Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-intel15-2008may15,0,7030980,full.story

As head of analysis for all U.S. spy agencies, Thomas Fingar was making final edits last summer on a long-awaited intelligence report on Iran.

The draft concluded that Tehran was still pursuing a nuclear bomb, a finding that echoed previous assessments and would have bolstered Bush administration hawks. Then, just weeks before the report was to be delivered to the White House, new intelligence surfaced indicating that Tehran’s nuclear weapons work had stopped.

Fingar was acutely aware of the stakes. Five years earlier, grave errors helped start a war in Iraq that most Americans now regret. “This was a WMD issue in the country adjacent to Iraq,” Fingar said of the Iran intelligence. “We wanted to get this right.”

But Fingar