Just Foreign Policy News
May 22, 2009

NYT: Taliban Offer Afghan Peace Plan
According to yesterday’s New York Times, talks between Taliban leaders and Afghan government representatives have accelerated since Obama’s election, and Afghan officials say they have Washington’s blessing for the talks. Judging from the NYT report, the Taliban demands appear eminently reasonable. The signaled position of the US has been: we’re not in any hurry for talks, because we want to bloody the Taliban first, so they’ll be more flexible in negotiations. But if the Taliban are already being flexible, perhaps we could skip over the bloodying part - given that for every bloodied Taliban, there are going to be fifty bloodied Afghan civilians - and move straight to meaningful negotiations.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/nyt-taliban-offer-afghan_b_206936.html

Will Speaker Pelosi Stand Up to the IMF?
The failure of Senator DeMint’s amendment to strip money for the International Monetary Fund from the supplemental means the question of IMF reform will now go to House-Senate conference. House Speaker Pelosi is in a unique position to require that the IMF implement observable reforms as the price of new U.S. tax dollars.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/will-speaker-pelosi-stand_b_205958.html

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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) The Senate passed 86-3 a $91.3 billion military spending bill, allowing Obama to significantly ramp up the war in Afghanistan, AP reports. Feingold, Sanders, and Coburn voted no. Sen. Boxer, who voted yes, said: "I don’t support an open-ended commitment of American troops to Afghanistan." Sen. Corker won approval of an amendment requiring the president to set forth U.S. objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan and issue quarterly reports detailing whether those goals were being met. By a 64-30 vote, the Senate rejected an amendment by Sen. DeMint to kill a proposed $100 billion line of credit for the International Monetary Fund [IMF]. [Sanders and Feingold voted to cut the IMF money - JFP.] House Appropriations Chair Obey said again he’s "very, very reluctant" to support any additional IMF money.

2) $108 billion in new funds for the IMF approved by the Senate won’t help developing countries counter the world recession, CEPR says. The IMF has been mandating economic conditions for countries receiving new loans, including deficit reduction, monetary tightening, and inflation-targeting measures, that run counter to the worldwide need for an increased economic stimulus. Thirty-three Democratic members of the House sent a letter to Appropriations Chair Obey and Foreign Ops Chair Lowey outlining legislative language that should be included to ensure the IMF uses the funds to facilitate economic stimulus in recipient countries, instead of pro-cyclical conditions.

3) Vice President Biden said future U.S. aid to Lebanon depends on the outcome of upcoming elections on June 7, AP reports. Hezbollah criticized Biden’s visit as a U.S. attempt to influence the vote. [The AP writer appears to regard Hizbollah’s allegation as obviously true - JFP.] Biden’s visit was clearly timed to bolster the faction led by Prime Minister Saniora ahead of the vote, AP writes.

4) The apocalyptic rhetoric about moving Guantanamo detainees to federal prisons rarely addresses the fact that 33 international terrorists, many with ties to al-Qaeda, reside in a single federal prison in Florence, Colo., with little public notice, the Washington Post reports. Detained in the supermax facility in Colorado are Ramzi Yousef, who headed the group that carried out the first bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993; Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted of conspiring in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; Ahmed Ressam, of the Dec. 31, 1999, Los Angeles airport millennium attack plots; Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, conspirator in several plots, including one to assassinate President Bush; and Wadih el-Hage, convicted of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya. "We have a vast amount of experience in how to judge the continued incarceration of highly dangerous prisoners, since we do this with thousands of prisoners every month, all over the United States, including some really quite dangerous people," said Philip Zelikow, who was executive director of the 9/11 Commission.

Israel/Palestine
5) Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu insisted that all of Jerusalem will always remain under Israeli sovereignty, AP reports. After the 1967 war, Israel annexed east Jerusalem, a move that no other country has recognized. Previous Israeli governments have indicated willingness to cede Arab neighborhoods to the Palestinians in the framework of peace. Netanyahu has always rejected giving up control of any part of Jerusalem. an aide to Palestinian President Abbas said the Palestinians have accepted a two-state solution based on east Jerusalem as the capital of their state. Secretary of State Clinton voiced the toughest criticism to date of Israeli settlement construction, AP says: "First, we want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth, any kind of settlement activity," she told Al-Jazeera.

Bolivia
6) President Morales called for an about-face in relations with Washington, saying past diplomatic spats can be overcome if the new U.S. government refrains from meddling in Bolivia’s affairs, AP reports. Morales said said U.S. aid should be channeled to his government instead of other groups in the country, which he accuses of conspiring against him. Morales met with Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, who said their talks were a "good start" toward improving ties. Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca, who met Shannon Wednesday, expressed willingness to cooperate on anti-drug efforts.

Panama
7) President Obama is throwing his support behind a trade deal with Panama, courting a potential backlash among his labor supporters and human rights groups, the Los Angeles Times reports. Obama is pushing for approval by July 1.

Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Senate passes $91.3 billion war funding bill
Andrew Taylor, Associated Press, Friday, May 22, 2009 1:43 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052100291.html

The Senate on Thursday passed a $91.3 billion military spending bill, shorn of money President Barack Obama wants to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but allowing him to significantly ramp up the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

The Senate voted 86-3 to pass the bill, which provides money for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, setting up House-Senate talks on a compromise measure to present to Obama next month.
…
Among the few cautionary voices was Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. "I want to give this administration … the resources it needs to successfully end these wars," Boxer said. "I don’t support an open-ended commitment of American troops to Afghanistan. And if we do not see measurable progress, we must reconsider our engagement and strategy there."
…
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., won approval Thursday of an amendment requiring the president to set forth U.S. objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan and issue quarterly reports detailing whether those goals were being met.
…
By a 64-30 vote earlier Thursday, the Senate rejected an amendment by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., to kill a proposed $100 billion line of credit for the IMF to shore up the ability of countries around the globe cope with financial crises, along with $8 billion for existing commitments. [Democratic caucus members voting to strip the IMF money included Feingold and Sanders - JFP.]
…
House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., said again Thursday that he’s "very, very reluctant" to support any additional IMF since European countries have been slow to take deficit-financed steps to stimulate their economies.

Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., voted against the measure war spending bill.

2) New Funds for IMF Approved by U.S. Senate Would Worsen Global Economic Downturn, Economists Say
Center for Economic and Policy Research, May 22, 2009
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/press-releases/press-releases/new-funds-for-imf-approved-by-u.s.-senate-would-worsen-global-economic-downturn,-economists-say/

$108 billion in new funds for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved by the U.S. Senate yesterday is not likely to help developing countries counter the world recession, according to economists at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Contrary to remarks by IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn that rich country contributions to the IMF make "this…the most coordinated stimulus ever," the IMF has been mandating economic conditions for countries receiving new loans, including deficit reduction, monetary tightening, and inflation-targeting measures that run counter to the worldwide need for an increased economic stimulus.
…
In what media reports and observers see as an effort to limit debate and scrutiny, the White House has attempted to obtain the new money for the IMF through back channels by attaching it to the war supplemental bill in the Senate. The House version of the bill does not include the IMF funds, and attaching the IMF funding in conference is likely to face strong opposition from many representatives.

Yesterday, thirty-three Democratic members of the House sent a letter to Appropriations Chair David Obey and Foreign Operations Subcommittee Chair Nita Lowey outlining legislative language that should be included to ensure the IMF uses the funds to facilitate economic stimulus in recipient countries, instead of pro-cyclical conditions. The letter also urges that transparency and governance reforms be required of the IMF, and that a portion of revenue from planned IMF gold sales be used for debt cancellation or grants for the poorest countries.

"There’s little evidence that the IMF has actually helped boost GDP growth in developing countries over the past 30 years, and a lot of evidence to the contrary," Weisbrot said. "Giving the IMF this money without reform conditions is a mistake, and one that will come back to haunt us in the future."

3) Biden links US aid to outcome of Lebanon election
Sam F. Ghattas, Associated Press, Fri May 22, 2:06 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090522/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_lebanon_biden

Beirut - Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that future U.S. aid to Lebanon depends on the outcome of upcoming elections, a warning aimed at Iranian-backed Hezbollah as it tries to oust the pro-Western faction that dominates government.

Confident its alliance will win, Hezbollah criticized Biden’s visit as a U.S. attempt to influence the June 7 vote and held a mass rally to show its popular support.

Biden is the highest-level U.S. official to visit Lebanon in more than 25 years and the attention shows American concern that the vote could shift power firmly into the hands of Hezbollah. U.S. officials have said before they will review aid to Lebanon depending on the composition of the next government, apparently meaning military aid.

"The election of leaders committed to the rule of law and economic reform opens the door to lasting growth and prosperity as it will here in Lebanon," Biden said. The U.S. "will evaluate the shape of our assistance programs based on the composition of the new government and the policies it advocates."

The U.S. considers Hezbollah a terrorist group and Biden’s one-day visit was clearly timed to bolster the Western-leaning faction led by Prime Minister Fuad Saniora ahead of the vote. He expressed strong support for the government.
…
Biden said the U.S. did not want to interfere in the elections and tried to steer clear of the political divisions by meeting the neutral president, Saniora and Hezbollah-allied parliament speaker Nabih Berri.

But he signaled a tilt toward America’s allies when he met behind closed doors with leaders of Saniora’s faction at a private residence. A similar meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the monthlong Hezbollah war with Israel in 2006 was broadcast on TV and drew months of sharp condemnation from Hezbollah.
…
Biden’s visit caps a transformation in American policy toward Lebanon. It began four years ago after more than two decades of steering clear of the country long viewed as a quagmire. Pro-Iranian militants targeted Americans with bombings and kidnappings in the 1980s during the civil war and more than 250 Americans were killed. That led to a 12-year U.S. ban on citizens traveling to the country that was lifted in 1997.

But by stepping into Lebanon’s political fray, the United States risks deepening the rift between rival factions. If it does not win, an embittered Hezbollah could take a harder line against its opponents.
…
The coalition dominated by the heavily armed Hezbollah stands a good chance of winning, which could increase the influence of its sponsors Iran and Syria in the region. Israel and U.S. Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt are concerned about the growing influence of Iran in the Middle East, especially through the militant groups Tehran backs such as Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza.
…
U.S. support for Lebanon shot up after the Hariri assassination under the former Bush administration, which had isolated Syria.

But the Obama administration has shifted policy, reaching out for a dialogue with Syria and Iran. Those moves have alarmed America’s allies in Lebanon, prompting recent reassurances from U.S. officials that they will not sell out Lebanon in any dialogue with Syria.

4) Supermax Prisons In U.S. Already Hold Terrorists
Carrie Johnson and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Friday, May 22, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052102009.html

In news conferences, speeches and debates this week, lawmakers from both parties, as well as the director of the FBI, have sounded alarms about moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to federal prisons, where they could launch riots, hatch radical plots or somehow be released among the populace.

"No good purpose is served by allowing known terrorists, who trained at terrorist training camps, to come to the U.S. to live among us," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.).

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said Tuesday, before saying he was open to changing his position, "Part of what we don’t want is them be put in prisons in the United States."

But the apocalyptic rhetoric rarely addresses this: Thirty-three international terrorists, many with ties to al-Qaeda, reside in a single federal prison in Florence, Colo., with little public notice.

Detained in the supermax facility in Colorado are Ramzi Yousef, who headed the group that carried out the first bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993; Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted of conspiring in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; Ahmed Ressam, of the Dec. 31, 1999, Los Angeles airport millennium attack plots; Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, conspirator in several plots, including one to assassinate President George W. Bush; and Wadih el-Hage, convicted of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya.

Inmates in Florence and those at the maximum-security disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., rarely see other prisoners. At Leavenworth, the toughest prisoners are allowed outside their cells only one hour a day when they are moved with their legs shackled and accompanied by three guards.

"We have a vast amount of experience in how to judge the continued incarceration of highly dangerous prisoners, since we do this with thousands of prisoners every month, all over the United States, including some really quite dangerous people," Philip D. Zelikow, who was counselor to Bush administration Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and executive director of the 9/11 Commission, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
…
Still, one economically pressed community in Montana is bucking the trend of "not in my back yard." Some residents in Hardin are volunteering to open their unused, 464-bed Two Rivers Regional Detention Facility to the detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The City Council recently passed a resolution in support.

But Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) put his foot down. "We’re not going to bring al-Qaeda to Big Sky Country - no way, not on my watch," he told Time magazine this month.

Israel/Palestine
5) Netanyahu Says All Jerusalem to Remain Israeli
Mark Lavie, Associated Press, Thu May 21, 2:44 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090521/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians

Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted Thursday that all of Jerusalem will always remain under Israeli sovereignty, taking a hard line on a key Israeli-Palestinian peace issue just hours after his forces removed an unauthorized settlement outpost in the West Bank.

The twin moves came a day after Netanyahu returned from talks in Washington, where President Barack Obama backed creation of a Palestinian state and urged an end to Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank, setting up a potential confrontation between Israel and the U.S.

Netanyahu has refused to endorse Palestinian statehood, and his uncompromising statement about Jerusalem focused attention on another issue that could cause friction between Israel and Obama’s administration.

The U.S. has long held that the future of Jerusalem must be decided in negotiations, but Netanyahu offered no flexibility. "United Jerusalem is Israel’s capital," Netanyahu said. "Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided."

Netanyahu was speaking at a ceremony marking 42 years since Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war.

Before the war, Jordan controlled east Jerusalem, while Israel had the western section. A barbed wire barrier and wall separated the two sides. Shortly after the war, Israel annexed east Jerusalem, a move that no other country has recognized. Israel did not annex other territories, like the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Previous Israeli governments have indicated willingness to cede Arab neighborhoods to the Palestinians in the framework of peace. Netanyahu, who took office on March 31, has always rejected giving up control of any part of Jerusalem.

Rafik Husseini, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, rejected Netanyahu’s stand. He said the Palestinians have accepted a two-state solution based on east Jerusalem as the capital of their state. "Israeli occupation of east Jerusalem is illegal," he told The Associated Press, adding that an Israeli attempt to keep control of east Jerusalem would be a "major obstacle to peace."
…
On Thursday morning, Israeli forces moved on a small West Bank settler outpost and tore it down, but critics charged that the gesture was almost meaningless, and settlers quickly began putting the makeshift buildings back up.

Israeli peace groups say there are at least 100 wildcat outposts in the West Bank, in addition to 121 settlements authorized by the government. For years, Israel has pledged to remove outposts, but little has been done.

More than 280,000 Israelis now live in West Bank settlements, including several thousand in outposts, many of them little more than a a few mobile homes.
…
In a television interview, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton voiced the toughest criticism to date of settlement construction. "First, we want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth, any kind of settlement activity," she told Al-Jazeera this week.

Bolivia
6) Bolivia’s leader advocates change in US relations
Carlos Valdez, Associated Press, Thu, May. 21, 2009
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/nation_world/20090521_ap_boliviasleaderadvocateschangeinusrelations.html

La Paz, Bolivia - President Evo Morales called for an about-face in relations with Washington on Thursday, saying past diplomatic spats can be overcome if the new U.S. government refrains from meddling in Bolivia’s affairs.

Morales met with U.S. envoy Thomas Shannon, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, who said their talks were a "good start" toward improving ties.

Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador last year, claiming he had conspired with the Bolivian opposition to incite violence. U.S. officials denied it, and former President George W. Bush’s administration kicked out Bolivia’s envoy to Washington and suspended trade preferences.

Morales said Thursday the two nations must treat each other with "mutual respect" and Washington should not interfere in Bolivia’s internal matters , which he frequently accuses U.S. officials of doing.

The leftist leader, a close ally of Venezuela and Cuba, also said U.S. aid should be channeled to his government instead of other groups in the country, which he accuses of conspiring against him.

The Bolivian government has expressed hope of improved ties under President Barack Obama. As recently as last month, however, Morales said he believed Washington continued to conspire against him.

Morales also suspended cooperation with U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents last year, accusing them of espionage and funding "criminal groups" trying to undermine his government. The U.S. in turn added Bolivia to its anti-narcotics blacklist.

Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca, who met Shannon on Wednesday, expressed willingness to cooperate on anti-drug efforts and said Bolivia hopes Obama reverses course on Bush policies that he called "injustices" against the Andean nation.

Shannon said the talks helped "deepen the goodwill between the two countries."

Panama
7) Panama moves to top of Obama’s list for a trade agreement
The president, in a turnabout that reflects his vow to shun protectionism and his goals of rewarding strategic allies and confronting economic necessity, is pushing for passage of a deal by July 1.
Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-panama-trade21-2009may21,0,6727251.story

A frequent critic of NAFTA and other trade pacts when he was on the campaign trail, President Obama is now throwing his support behind a trade deal with Panama, courting a potential backlash among his labor supporters.

The administration is expected to make its case before a Senate Finance Committee hearing today in Washington, where his team is likely to face sharp questioning about Obama’s change of heart on a deal the president now apparently views as a strategic imperative.

The Panama trade deal, which Obama is pushing for approval of by July 1, is one of three bilateral accords negotiated by the Bush administration that later stalled in Congress. The others are deals with Colombia and South Korea, both of which Obama wants passed this year as well.

The Panama pact bogged down over U.S. lawmakers’ concerns about that country’s poor enforcement of labor rights and its reputation as a haven for offshore tax evasion. Last week a White House negotiating team visited the Central American nation and successfully extracted concessions from the Panamanians on those issues, according to people familiar with the talks.

Panama’s trade deal was behind that of Colombia on the Bush agenda. Obama has moved it to the forefront because the administration sees it as having the best chance at passage, creating momentum for the two others, according to the people familiar with the White House legislative strategy, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
…
But the president has offended some of his strongest election backers, including the AFL-CIO and human rights groups that oppose such trade agreements on general principles. The president risks "alienating core supporters in a way that could cripple the broader agenda," said Farnsworth, adding that "the fight in Washington has only just begun."

On Wednesday, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) sent a letter to Obama urging him to postpone the deal until Panama cooperates in combating international tax evasion. "In this time of economic distress, we can no longer afford to ignore the billions of dollars of tax revenue lost to the U.S. Treasury due to the bank secrecy practices of Panama and other tax havens," Doggett and Levin wrote.

-
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 21, 2009

A Failsafe Plan to Reduce AfPak Civilian Deaths from U.S. Operations
If reducing Afghan and Pakistani civilian casualties from U.S. military operations were a priority, it would be a requirement. If the Pentagon were required to reduce civilian deaths, they could surely comply.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/a-failsafe-plan-to-reduce_b_206356.html

Will Speaker Pelosi Stand Up to the IMF?
The failure of Senator DeMint’s amendment to strip money for the International Monetary Fund from the supplemental means the question of IMF reform will now go to House-Senate conference. House Speaker Pelosi is in a unique position to require that the IMF implement observable reforms as the price of new U.S. tax dollars.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/will-speaker-pelosi-stand_b_205958.html

Help us build for a Just Foreign Policy
Your financial contributions to Just Foreign Policy help us create opportunities for Americans to advocate for a just foreign policy.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate.html

Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Leaders of the Taliban and other armed groups battling the Afghan government are talking to intermediaries about a potential peace agreement, with initial demands focused on a timetable for a withdrawal of U.S. troops, the New York Times reports. The talks are being supported by the Afghan government. The Obama administration says it is not involved in the discussions, but Afghan officials believe they have tacit support from the Americans. The talks are significant because they suggest how a political settlement may be able to end the war, the Times says.

2) International efforts to slow the pace of worldwide climate disruption face against powerful interests who advocate a fundamentalist conception of intellectual property, writes Mark Weisbrot in the Guardian. Developing countries such as Brazil, India and China have indicated that if they are going to have to make sacrifices to reduce carbon emissions, they should be able to license some of the most efficient available technologies for doing so. But the US Chamber of Commerce is planning to fight to limit the access of developing countries to environmentally sound technologies.

3) One possible reason for the resilience of the Taliban insurgency is their access to US weapons, the New York Times reports. Of 30 rifle magazines recently taken from insurgents’ corpses, at least 17 contained cartridges, or rounds, identical to ammunition the US had provided to Afghan government forces. The US has been criticized by the GAO for failing to account for thousands of rifles issued to Afghan security forces.

Iran
4) Former AIPAC official Keith Weissman says there is no viable military option for dealing the Iranian nuclear threat, the Jeruslem Post reports. "The only viable solution is dialogue," Weissman says. The Arab states are at least as worried as Israel about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and they should all be working together to deal with it, Weissman said, "but because nothing is moving on the Palestinian problem, there can’t be any overt and probably little if any covert cooperation."

5) New reports by prominent think tanks downplay the potential dangers presented by Iran, concluding that Tehran is at least six years away from building a deliverable nuclear weapon and that its ability to wreak havoc in the Middle East through surrogates is exaggerated, the Los Angeles Times reports. A report by Russian and US scientists at the EastWest Institute says although Iran could build a nuclear device within one to three years of deciding to do so, it would not be able to deliver a long-range weapon for many more years and that a U.S. missile defense system being considered for Central Europe would be useless against an Iranian nuclear weapon. A separate by the Rand Corp. found Iran a less formidable adversary than some believe. Rand paints Iran as a military paper tiger, with poorly maintained and outdated equipment and shortages of personnel. Tehran exercises less control over militant groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and its allies in Iraq than popularly believed, the report says.

Afghanistan
6) The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s first audit of reconstruction work in Afghanistan found the person responsible for a $404 million reconstruction contract in Afghanistan is unable to provide adequate oversight as to where all the money is going, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

Pakistan
7) The US plans to provide as much as $110 million to help Pakistanis who have been displaced by their government’s attacks on militants in northwestern tribal areas, the Los Angeles Times reports. The announcement appeared to reflect the Obama administration’s concern that the Pakistani offensive, which was strongly urged by Washington, not create a humanitarian catastrophe that might turn ordinary Pakistanis against the counterinsurgency effort, the LAT says. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 2 million Pakistanis have fled their homes.

8) Pakistan and India have begun sharing intelligence on Islamic extremists, with the prodding of the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reports. Washington hopes the cooperation will get a lift from last week’s Indian elections, in which the incumbent Congress Party won by a wide margin over a Hindu nationalist party traditionally more hostile to Pakistan. U.S. officials hope a calming of tensions can allow India to resume peace talks with Pakistan over Kashmir.

Iraq
9) To comply with the June 30 deadline for US military withdrawal from Iraqi cities, US and Iraqi military officials have agreed by fiat that some military bases aren’t in cities, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Plans for a promised referendum on the SOFA agreement appear to have quietly disappeared, the CSM says. "We promise a lot of things we don’t deliver," says one Iraqi member of parliament when asked about the poll.

Israel/Palestine
10) Israeli police said they razed a tiny Jewish settlement outpost in the West Bank in what Israeli media called a gesture to President Obama, AFP reports. The international community considers all settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory illegal, while Israel considers as illegal only the outposts built without Israeli government authorisation. Israel reiterated at Annapolis in 2007 it would freeze settlement activity but Peace Now says 1,518 new structures were built in settlements and outposts in 2008, compared to 898 structures in 2007.

Panama
11) Sen. Levin and Rep. Doggett have urged Obama to postpone sending a trade deal with Panama to Congress until concerns about the Central American nation’s banking secrecy laws are addressed, CQ Today reports. Levin and Doggett said Panama should have to sign a tax information exchange agreement with the US and pass legislation changing Panamanian law to "allow for sufficient transparency and access to financial and corporate information."

Colombia
12) Interpol no longer wants Colombia´s intelligence agency DAS to be its contact with Colombian authorities and has asked the National Police to take up this role, according to Colombia Reports. The DAS has come under pressure now that it is suspected of having conducted illegal wiretaps on Supreme Court judges, opposition politicians and journalists. A former director of the agency is being investigated for alleged collaboration with paramilitary death squads. [The DAS was Interpol’s source for the "magic laptop" which allegedly linked FARC guerillas to the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador, as well as to members of the US Congress - JFP.]

Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) U.S. Pullout a Condition in Afghan Peace Talks
Dexter Filkins, New York Times, May 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/asia/21kabul.html

Kabul - Leaders of the Taliban and other armed groups battling the Afghan government are talking to intermediaries about a potential peace agreement, with initial demands focused on a timetable for a withdrawal of American troops, according to Afghan leaders here and in Pakistan.

The talks, if not the withdrawal proposals, are being supported by the Afghan government. The Obama administration, which has publicly declared its desire to coax "moderate" Taliban fighters away from armed struggle, says it is not involved in the discussions and will not be until the Taliban agree to lay down their arms. But nor is it trying to stop the talks, and Afghan officials believe they have tacit support from the Americans.

The discussions have so far produced no agreements, since the insurgents appear to be insisting that any deal include an American promise to pull out - at the very time that the Obama administration is sending more combat troops to help reverse the deteriorating situation on the battlefield. Indeed, with 20,000 additional troops on the way, American commanders seem determined to inflict greater pain on the Taliban first, to push them into negotiations and extract better terms. And most of the initial demands are nonstarters for the Americans in any case.

Even so, the talks are significant because they suggest how a political settlement may be able to end the eight-year-old war, and how such negotiations may proceed. They also raise the prospect of potentially difficult decisions by President Hamid Karzai and President Obama, who may have to consider making deals with groups like the Taliban that are anathema to many Americans, and other leaders with brutal and bloody pasts. Some of the leaders in the current talks have been involved with Al Qaeda.

While the talks have been under way for months, they have accelerated since Obama took office and have produced more specific demands, the Afghan intermediaries said.

The Taliban leaders, through their spokesman, and those of other armed groups publicly deny that they are involved in any negotiations. But several Afghans here and in Pakistan say they have been talking directly to the Taliban leadership group headed by Mullah Muhammad Omar, the movement’s secretive founder. The council is based in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

Discussions have also been held with representatives of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a longtime warlord with a record of extreme brutality, and with Sirajuddin Haqqani, whose guerrilla army is based in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Haqqani’s group is also known for its ruthlessness and for sending suicide bombers into Afghanistan.

"America cannot win this war, and the Taliban cannot win this war," Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, a former Taliban ambassador and one of the intermediaries, said in an interview. "I have delivered this message to the Taliban."

The talks under way now appear to be directed not at individual bands of antigovernment insurgents - the strategy suggested by President Obama - but at the leaders of the large movements.

American officials insist they are not participating in any talks. "The U.S. would support such efforts only if Taliban are willing to abandon violence and lay down their arms, and accept Afghanistan’s democratically elected government," said Ian Kelly, a State Department spokesman. Still, two of the principal intermediaries, Zaeef and Daoud Abedi, said they had held extensive discussions with American officials.

A State Department memo described a single meeting with Abedi, but said it ended abruptly because American officials were not permitted to meet with representatives of Hekmatyar. There is no independent confirmation of Zaeef ’s claim to have met with Americans.
[…]
In an interview, Abedi said he undertook the negotiations - with Hekmatyar and with the Taliban leaders - at the behest of the State Department, a claim that American officials deny. Abedi said he met several times with American officials in Washington before and after his trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. He declined to say which American diplomats he met, saying, "I am a Pashtun, and I swore on my honor that I would not reveal the names of the people I met with, so I cannot."

Abedi said he hammered out a common set of demands between the Taliban and Hekmatyar’s group. The groups agreed to stop fighting if those conditions were met, Abedi said. The Taliban’s demands seem incompatible with much of Obama’s strategy, which is to substantially weaken the Taliban through a combination of military force and economic development.

Nor did the deal Abedi described mention either Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahri, the two senior Qaeda leaders believed to be hiding in Pakistan under the protection of the Taliban or some other armed group.

The first demand was an immediate pullback of American and other foreign forces to their bases, followed by a cease-fire and a total withdrawal from the country over the next 18 months. Then the current government would be replaced by a transitional government made up of a range of Afghan leaders, including those of the Taliban and other insurgents. Americans and other foreign soldiers would be replaced with a peacekeeping force drawn from predominantly Muslim nations, with a guarantee from the insurgent groups that they would not attack such a force. Nationwide elections would follow after the Western forces left.
[…]
After the agreement between the Taliban and the Islamic Party was reached, Abedi said, the Taliban leaders added more conditions: an end to the drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas, and the release of some Taliban prisoners.

Abedi said that when he returned to the United States with his proposal, he was greeted with enthusiasm by officials at the State Department. But he said they never called him back.
[…]
Their plan would be for the guerrillas and the government to reconcile slowly, starting with the least contentious issues. One of the main low-level demands of the opposition leaders is that their names be removed from a so-called blacklist, contained in a resolution passed by the United Nations Security Council, which obliges governments to detain them. More difficult issues would follow. "Blood begets blood, but talking begets peace," Rahmani said.

Zaeef said the public declarations of Mullah Omar, who usually vows to fight on, are not necessarily to be taken seriously. "A policy can have many faces," he said.

2) Big Business Gears Up to Fight Green Technology
Big business is gearing up to fight the use of green technology by developing countries seeking to reduce carbon emissions
Mark Weisbrot, Guardian, Wednesday 20 May 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/may/19/wto-climate-change-intellectual-property

The battle over intellectual property rights is likely to be one of the most important of this century. It has enormous economic, social and political implications in a wide range of areas, from medicine to the arts and culture - anything where the public interest in the widespread dissemination of knowledge runs up against those whose income derives from monopolising it.

Now it appears that international efforts to slow the pace of worldwide climate disruption could also run up against powerful interests who advocate a fundamentalist conception of intellectual property.

According to Inside US Trade, the US chamber of commerce is gearing up for a fight to limit the access of developing countries to environmentally sound technologies (ESTs). They fear that international climate change negotiations, taking place under the auspices of the United Nations, will erode the position of corporations holding patents on existing and future technologies.

Developing countries such as Brazil, India and China have indicated that if - as expected in the next few years - they are going to have to make sacrifices to reduce carbon emissions, they should be able to license some of the most efficient available technologies for doing so.

Big business is worried about this, because they prefer that patent rights have absolute supremacy. They want to make sure that climate change talks don’t erode the power that they have gained through the World Trade Organisation.
[…]
Developing countries such as Brazil, India and China want to make sure that such possibilities are open for new environmentally sound technologies, eg in the areas of renewable energy, that might enable them to meet future targets for reducing carbon emissions. A Brazilian official noted that his country had only issued one compulsory license, for the anti-Aids drug Efavirenz, produced by Merck.

But big business doesn’t want to take any chances. Today they are launching a new coalition called the Innovation, Development and Employment Alliance (Idea). (You’ve got to love the Orwellian touch of those marketing consultants). Members include General Electric, Microsoft and Sunrise Solar. They will reportedly also be concerned with intellectual property claims in the areas of healthcare and renewable energy.
[…]
Environmental awareness and a sense of urgency with regard to climate change are much more broadly shared today. The Obama administration should take note of this and place itself squarely on the side of promoting the spread of environmentally sound technologies.

3) Arms From U.S. May Be Falling Into Taliban Hands
C. J. Chivers, New York Times, May 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/world/asia/20ammo.html

Kabul - Insurgents in Afghanistan, fighting from some of the poorest and most remote regions on earth, have managed for years to maintain an intensive guerrilla war against materially superior American and Afghan forces.

Arms and ordnance collected from dead insurgents hint at one possible reason: Of 30 rifle magazines recently taken from insurgents’ corpses, at least 17 contained cartridges, or rounds, identical to ammunition the United States had provided to Afghan government forces, according to an examination of ammunition markings by The New York Times and interviews with American officers and arms dealers.

The presence of this ammunition among the dead in the Korangal Valley, an area of often fierce fighting near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, strongly suggests that munitions procured by the Pentagon have leaked from Afghan forces for use against American troops.

The scope of that diversion remains unknown, and the 30 magazines represented a single sampling of fewer than 1,000 cartridges. But military officials, arms analysts and dealers say it points to a worrisome possibility: With only spotty American and Afghan controls on the vast inventory of weapons and ammunition sent into Afghanistan during an eight-year conflict, poor discipline and outright corruption among Afghan forces may have helped insurgents stay supplied.

The United States has been criticized, as recently as February by the federal Government Accountability Office, for failing to account for thousands of rifles issued to Afghan security forces. Some of these weapons have been documented in insurgents’ hands, including weapons in a battle last year in which nine Americans died.

Iran
4) Washington Watch: Ex-AIPACer: There is no military option in Iran
Douglas Bloomfield, Jerusalem Post, May 19, 2009
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1242212417034&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

There is no viable military option for dealing the Iranian nuclear threat, and efforts by the Israeli government and its supporters to link that threat to progress in peace with the Palestinians and Syria are "nonsense" and an obstacle to the Arab-Israeli and international cooperation essential to changing Iranian behavior.

That’s the conclusion of Keith Weissman, the Iran expert formerly at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), speaking publicly for the first time since the government dropped espionage charges against him and his colleague, Steve Rosen, earlier this month.

There’s no assurance an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities - even if all of them could be located - would be anything more than a temporary setback, Weissman told me. Instead, a military strike would unify Iranians behind an unpopular regime, ignite a wave of retaliation that would leave thousands dead from Teheran to Tel Aviv, block oil exports from the Persian Gulf and probably necessitate a ground war, he said.

"The only viable solution is dialogue. You don’t deal with Iran with threats or preaching regime change," said Weissman, who has lived in Iran, knows Farsi (as well as Arabic, Turkish and French) and wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago on Iranian history. That’s where the Bush administration went wrong, in his view.

"President Bush’s demand that Iran halt all nuclear enrichment before we would talk with the regime was an excuse not to talk at all," Weissman said. "And the administration’s preaching of regime change only made the Iranians more paranoid and told them there was no real desire to engage them, only demonize them. The thing they fear most is American meddling in their internal politics."

He said President Barack Obama is right to make it clear that regime change is not our goal. "Without that assurance we can’t begin any dialogue or hope to be able to do anything about their nuclear program. Without a doubt, talking with Iran will be very difficult and frustrating, but there are no other viable options."

AIPAC has been the driving force on Capitol Hill for a get-tough policy, pushing through Congress a series of sanction bills, and Weissman was the lobby’s expert on the topic.

"All along the idea was that sanctions were a bargaining chip to be traded for something tangible," he said. "We never opposed America and Iran talking to each other about these issues. However, the US strategy should have been directed at the supreme leader; he’s the guy at the top and the one who makes the important decisions, not politicians like presidents Khatami or Ahmadinejad."

Weissman said Israel’s worries about Iran getting a nuclear weapon are understandable, but despite some of the rhetoric coming out of Teheran, the Iranian leaders "are not fanatics and they’re not suicidal. They know that Israel could make Iran glow for many years." He was referring to reports that Israel may have 200 or more nuclear weapons as well as the missiles and aircraft for devastating retaliation.
[…]
The Arab states, especially in the Gulf, are at least as worried as Israel about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and they should all be working together to deal with it, Weissman said, "but because nothing is moving on the Palestinian problem, there can’t be any overt and probably little if any covert cooperation."

Trying to separate the issues, even refusing to endorse the two-state approach, "is part of the sophistry of people like [Binyamin] Netanyahu who want to avoid confronting the peace process," he said. "Iran’s ability to screw around in the Israel-Arab arena would be severely impaired by pressing ahead on the Palestinian and Syrian tracks instead of looking for excuses not to."

"We’re going to have to end up accepting some kind of peaceful Iranian nuclear energy program - and they actually need it; it’s already too late to stop it entirely. That’s why it is so important to establish a relationship with Iran in which they accept international inspection and obey international law," he said. "For that to happen, there has to be a discussion of some overarching security architecture for the region that includes both Israel and the Arabs, but before that can even be considered there has to be Arab-Israel reconciliation."

5) Iran nuclear danger downplayed in reports, Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2009
Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2009
The EastWest Institute says Iran could build a nuclear weapon in one to three years, but it would take up to 15 to develop long-range technology that would pose a threat to the West.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-threat20-2009may20,0,5589113.story

A pair of reports released Tuesday by prominent think tanks downplay the potential dangers presented by Iran, concluding that Tehran is at least six years away from building a deliverable nuclear weapon and that its ability to wreak havoc in the Middle East through surrogates is exaggerated.

A report by a group of Russian and American scientists and engineers at the EastWest Institute concludes that although Iran could build a nuclear device within one to three years of deciding to do so, it would not be able to deliver a long-range weapon for many more years. The scientists also say that a U.S. missile defense system being considered for Central Europe would be useless against an Iranian nuclear weapon.

A separate 230-page report by the Rand Corp., the result of political and military research for the U.S. Air Force begun in 2007, found Iran a less formidable adversary than some believe.

The report notes "significant barriers and buffers" to Iran’s ambitions because of the reality of regional ethnic and religious politics and "its limited conventional military capacity, diplomatic isolation and past strategic missteps."
[…]
The Rand report argues that Iran "feeds off existing grievances with the status quo, particularly in the Arab world," rather than activating agents to stir up trouble. It suggests that the outside world ignore Iranian officials’ sometimes aggressive, religiously tinged rhetoric and focus on its activities.

"Its revolutionary ideology has certainly featured prominently in the rhetoric of its officials," the report says. "However, the record of Iranian actions suggests that these views should be more accurately regarded as the vocabulary of Iranian foreign policy rather than its determinant."

Iran’s foreign policy is driven more by old-fashioned nationalism and a desire to maintain territorial integrity and ensure the Islamic Republic’s survival than by a desire to expand Iran’s revolutionary ideology, the report says.

Rand also paints Iran as a military paper tiger, with poorly maintained and outdated equipment and shortages of personnel. Tehran exercises less control over militant groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and its allies in Iraq than popularly believed, the report says.

Afghanistan
6) Shades Of Iraq, Millions Spent In Afghanistan Lack Adequate Oversight
The inspector general finds too few watchdogs keeping an eye on how US reconstruction funds are spent.
Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor, May 19, 2009
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0520/p02s04-usmi.html

The person responsible for a $404 million reconstruction contract in Afghanistan sits nine time zones away in suburban Maryland and is unable to provide adequate oversight as to where all the money is going, according to a new government report.

The audit suggests that the US is confronting the same kinds of problems in Afghanistan as it did in Iraq, where billions of dollars were unaccounted for during six years of reconstruction there, and has little plan yet to address the problems.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) released its first audit of reconstruction work in Afghanistan, focusing on a single, $404 million contract let by the American command responsible for training Afghan security forces.

The auditors discovered the sole person overseeing the massive contract - just one of an untold number of contracts let under the training command - cannot provide the proper oversight because the individual is not in Afghanistan but instead works an Army contracting center in Maryland.

Recognizing the problems inherent in overseeing such a massive contract far away from where the work was actually being done, the contracting officer hired a subordinate to work in-country. But that person has limited contracting experience and is not able to visit many of the actual work sites where the work is performed under the contract.

Pakistan
7) Pakistan will get up to $110 million in U.S. aid for displaced, Clinton says
Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2009
The announcement appears to reflect concern that Pakistan’s offensive on militants in tribal areas may create a humanitarian catastrophe that could turn civilians against counterinsurgency efforts.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-clinton-pakistan20-2009may20,0,1555718.story

The United States plans to provide as much as $110 million to help Pakistanis who have been displaced by their government’s attacks on militants in northwestern tribal areas, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday.

Clinton, speaking at the White House, said U.S. relief officials were already on the ground in northwestern Pakistan evaluating the needs of the hundreds of thousands of people who have been driven from their homes since the Pakistani government’s offensive began last month.
[…]
The announcement appeared to reflect, in part, the Obama administration’s concern that the Pakistani offensive, which was strongly urged by Washington, not create a humanitarian catastrophe that might turn ordinary Pakistanis against the counterinsurgency effort.

Pakistani forces have been using heavy artillery and aircraft to batter the militants, but the fighting has sent columns of civilians fleeing the Swat Valley and prompted criticism that the government’s tactics are heavy-handed.

The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 2 million Pakistanis have fled their homes.

8) Pakistan, India And U.S. Begin Sharing Intelligence
Jay Solomon and Siobhan Gorman, Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124287405244442187.html

Washington - Pakistan and India have begun sharing intelligence on Islamic extremists, with the prodding of the U.S., in an arrangement that represents unprecedented cooperation between the two nuclear-armed South Asian nations.

Washington hopes the cooperation will get a lift from last week’s Indian elections, in which the incumbent Congress Party won by a wide margin over a Hindu nationalist party traditionally more hostile to Pakistan.

With the Congress party’s recent win in India’s elections, intelligence reporter Reporter Siobhan Gorman explains why the time may be right for longtime rivals Pakistan and India to forge an alliance that allows for greater intelligence sharing with the U.S.

The Central Intelligence Agency arranged for Pakistan and India to share information on Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group widely blamed for last November’s terrorist attack on Mumbai, as well as on Taliban commanders who are leading the insurgency against Pakistan’s government, said U.S. officials.

The U.S. is stressing to Indian and Pakistani leaders that they face a common threat in Pakistan-based militant groups. Washington hopes that when India sees the intelligence and evidence that Islamabad is seriously fighting the militants in some areas, it will ease its deployments against Pakistan - which in turn would prompt Islamabad to put even more focus on the battle at home.

"We have to satisfy the Mumbai question, and show India that the threat is abating," said a U.S. official involved in developing Washington’s South Asia strategy.
[…]
A U.S. official said Washington isn’t "under any illusions" about the difficulty of erasing decades-old suspicions between India and Pakistan, but sees some progress. U.S. officials hope that a calming of tensions can allow India’s Congress Party government, strengthened by its election victory, to resume peace talks with Pakistan over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. Some U.S. officials believe Lashkar-e-Taiba orchestrated the assault specifically to undermine the peace process.

The Obama administration has been concerned that Lashkar could carry out a second strike on India in a bid to stoke a war. President Barack Obama came into office pledging to craft a regional solution to the instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
[…]
The government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is hoping that Congress’s victory can also provide the Indian government with the political cover to move one or two divisions away from the Pakistan border in coming months, according to an official briefed on the diplomacy.

But Indian officials say they aren’t ready to do so. An Indian government official said New Delhi has documented an escalation of cross-border infiltrations by Pakistani militants into Kashmir.

Iraq
9) To Meet June Deadline, US and Iraqis Redraw City Borders
‘What is a city’ is one question the US and Iraq must answer as they try to balance a requirement that US combat forces withdraw from cities next month and the need for US help to maintain security.
Jane Arraf, Christian Science Monitor, May 19, 2009
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0519/p06s05-wome.html

On a map of Baghdad, the US Army’s Forward Operating Base Falcon is clearly within city limits.

Except that Iraqi and American military officials have decided it’s not. As the June 30 deadline for US soldiers to be out of Iraqi cities approaches, there are no plans to relocate the roughly 3,000 American troops who help maintain security in south Baghdad along what were the fault lines in the sectarian war. "We and the Iraqis decided it wasn’t in the city," says a US military official.
[…]
A major question ahead of the June 30 deadline - whether US troops will be asked to stay in the volatile cities of Mosul and those in Diyala Province - is still unanswered.

Senior Iraqi military officials are expected to recommend to Maliki that US combat forces remain in those areas to help fight an ongoing insurgency. Maliki publicly has said he will not extend the deadline but privately is believed to be willing to consider it. As commander in chief of the Iraqi Security Forces, Maliki has the final decision on whether to ask US forces to stay.

Some US and Iraqi officials suspect that his hard-line rhetoric is almost purely for political purposes in a country where people are widely opposed to the continued presence of US forces. The Iraqi parliament voted to approve the SOFA late last year only after linking it to a referendum this summer which would allow Iraqis to vote on whether US troops should leave sooner than the end of 2011.

With Maliki’s public insistence that there will be no extension for US forces, plans for the promised referendum appear to have quietly disappeared. "We promise a lot of things we don’t deliver," says one Iraqi member of parliament when asked about the poll.

Israel/Palestine
10) Israel Dismantles West Bank Settlement Outpost
AFP, May 21, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iq2q8UsS6wXxehuTHHpafG59f9Cw

Kokhav Hashahar, West Bank - Israeli police said they razed a tiny Jewish settlement outpost in the West Bank on Thursday in what media called a gesture to US President Barack Obama after his talks with Israel’s prime minister. "We dismantled seven tin huts," said police spokesman Danny Peleg, specifying that the outpost had been built without government authorisation.
[…]
No violence was reported as police, backed by army troops, evacuated settlers from the Maoz Ester outpost, near the Kokhav Hashahar settlement east of Ramallah, the political capital of the West Bank.

The international community considers all settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory illegal, while Israel considers as illegal only the outposts, often just a few hundred meters away from larger settlements, built without Israeli government authorisation.

Obama told right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during White House talks on Monday that Israel should stop all settlement activity, in line with its commitments at peace negotiations.
[…]
Israel reiterated at the 2007 Annapolis, Maryland peace conference it would freeze the activity but Israel’s anti-settlement Peace Now movement says that 1,518 new structures were built in settlements and outposts in 2008, compared to 898 structures in 2007.

Peace Now says more than 280,000 people live in 120 settlements and about 100 outposts in the West Bank.

Panama
11) Senior Democrats Seek Delay of Panama Trade Deal
CQ Today, May 20, 2009
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=cqmidday-000003121947

Two senior Democrats urged the administration Wednesday to postpone sending a stalled trade deal with Panama to Congress until concerns about the Central American nation’s banking secrecy laws are formally addressed.

In a letter to President Obama, Sen. Carl Levin , D-Mich., and Rep. Lloyd Doggett , D-Texas, said that the Panamanian government should have to sign a tax information exchange agreement with the United States and pass legislation changing Panamanian law to "allow for sufficient transparency and access to financial and corporate information."

Such an agreement would allow for an exchange of tax information between the United States and Panama and help the IRS enforce U.S. tax laws when it comes to American companies operating in Panama.

"Given Panama’s interest in successfully concluding the U.S.-Panama FTA, it is essential that we not waste the opportunity to insist on real cooperation from Panama in the fight against international tax evasion," Doggett and Levin wrote.

Colombia
12) Interpol no longer wants to work with DAS
Colombia Reports, Sunday, 17 May 2009 09:22
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/4061-interpol-no-longer-wants-to-work-with-das.html

International Police organization Interpol no longer wants Colombia´s intelligence agency DAS to be its contact with Colombian authorities and officially asked the National Police to take up this role, Police Commissioner Oscar Naranjo said Saturday.

The DAS has come under pressure now that it is suspected of having conducted illegal wiretaps on Supreme Court judges, opposition politicians and journalists. Some of the highest officials of the Presidency are being investigated for allegedly ordering these interceptions. A former director of the agency is investigated for alleged collaboration with paramilitary death squads.

Naranjo told Caracol Radio that Interpol had said it no longer wants to work with the intelligence agency and wants the Police to be its partner in the international fight against crime.

However, according to the Police Commissioner, Interpol had requested to strengthen ties with the National Police before the wiretap scandal. The two institutions are already in the process of shifting responsibilities away from the DAS.

-
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 19, 2009

Obama: Israeli Settlements "Have To Be Stopped"
President Obama, at his press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, said Israeli settlements on the West Bank "have to be stopped." The question is whether the Obama Administration will use its substantial leverage with the Israeli government - including a planned increase in U.S. military aid - to bring this about.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/obama-israeli-settlements_b_204961.html

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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) UNHCR says the Pakistani exodus from Swat is turning into the world’s most dramatic displacement crisis since the Rwandan genocide, the Guardian reports. Almost 1.5 million people have registered for assistance, bringing the total number of war displaced in North West Frontier province to more than 2 million, not including 300,000 the provincial government believes have not registered. Aid workers and political analysts warn that if international aid to ease the crisis is not urgently delivered, the strain on the displaced and those helping them could lead to political destablisation.

2) Palestinians slammed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for failing to endorse the creation alongside Israel of a Palestinian state, which has been at the basis of all peace initiatives over the past nearly two decades, AFP reports. "Calling for negotiations without a clearly defined end-goal offers only the promise of more process, not progress," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat.

3) The Obama administration offered business groups more assurances it intends to move several pending trade agreements as soon as possible, The Hill reports. USTR Kirk expressed optimism to the Chamber of Commerce that the Panama trade deal would be submitted to Congress soon, and that he would try to move the Colombia deal this year.

4) An analysis by top U.S. and Russian scientists says a planned U.S. missile shield to protect Europe from a possible Iranian attack would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran is likely to deploy, the Washington Post reports. The team also judged it would be more than five years before Iran is capable of building both a nuclear warhead and a missile capable of carrying it over long distances. "The missile threat from Iran to Europe is thus not imminent," their report said. The report predicts that the country could probably build a simple nuclear device in one to three years - if it kicked out U.N. inspectors and retooled its uranium-processing plants to make weapons-grade enriched uranium.

Afghanistan
5) Senior officials say former US Ambassador Khalilzad could assume a powerful, unelected position inside the Afghan government, the New York Times reports. The position would allow Khalilzad to serve as "a prime minister, except not prime minister because he wouldn’t be responsible to a parliamentary system," a US official said. US officials insisted that the US was not behind the idea.

Iraq
6) Stories of missing drugs, of desperately ill-equipped doctors and of patients left to suffer the consequences are everywhere in Iraq’s public health care system, McClatchy News reports. With violence down, improvements in health care should be coming far faster than they are, according to doctors, patients, aid organizations and some public officials; they fault widespread corruption.

Israel/Palestine
7) Likud faction MKs who oppose a two-state solution said Prime Minister Netanyahu would not be able to advance the formation of a Palestinian state, due to the wide majority against it in the Likud faction, the Jerusalem Post reports. Likud MKs said they were concerned about reports Netanyahu would not rule out the formation of a Palestinian state in his meeting with Obama. They said they had been worried since they read an article in The Jerusalem Post about AIPAC delegates lobbying Congress for a two-state solution with the blessing of the Prime Minister’s Office. Meretz leader Haim Oron said he would not be surprised if Netanyahu caved in to Obama on the Palestinian state issue: "We cannot expect a man who has zigzagged throughout his entire political career to suddenly act differently now."

Colombia
8) Three of President Uribe’s closest advisers are under investigation in a political spying scandal, the Washington Post reports. Former U.S. ambassador to Colombia Myles Frechette said the scandal could lead the US to curtail aid. "I think that Washington is increasingly nervous about this," Frechette said. "I just don’t think that people in Congress, even the Republicans, are going to feel very comfortable with this kind of thing coming out about Uribe." The spying revelations detail how the DAS, the intelligence service that answers to the president, spied on some of Uribe’s opponents, including politicians and journalists. DAS agents also tailed Supreme Court judges.

9) The Fellowship of Reconcilation says the US is planning to establish a new military facility in Colombia that will give the U.S. increased capacity for military intervention throughout most of Latin America, based on US planning documents. FOR says the plan should be subjected to vigorous debate.

Cuba
10) Up to 20 billion barrels of oil sits off Cuba’s northwest coast, the Washington Post reports. If Cuban estimates are correct, they rival US reserves. The prospect of development could prove a powerful incentive to remove the US embargo, the Post says.

Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Swat Valley Could Be Worst Refugee Crisis Since Rwanda, UN Warns
Declan Walsh Guardian, Monday 18 May 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/18/swat-valley-pakistan-refugee-crisis

The human exodus from the war-torn Swat valley in northern Pakistan is turning into the world’s most dramatic displacement crisis since the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the UN refugee agency warned.

Almost 1.5 million people have registered for assistance since fighting erupted three weeks ago, the UNHCR said, bringing the total number of war displaced in North West Frontier province to more than 2 million, not including 300,000 the provincial government believes have not registered. "It’s been a long time since there has been a displacement this big," the UNHCR’s spokesman Ron Redmond said in Geneva, trying to recall the last time so many people had been uprooted so quickly. "It could go back to Rwanda."
…
The operation continues to enjoy broad public support. Opposition parties endorsed the action at a conference called by the government, dispelling the notion that the army was fighting "America’s war".

But that fragile unity could be threatened by heavy civilian casualties or a further deterioration in the conditions of the 2 million displaced. Returning from a three-day trip to Pakistan, the UNHCR head António Guterres termed the displacement crisis as "one of the most dramatic of recent times". Relief workers were "struggling to keep up with the size and speed of the displacement," a statement said.

The main difference with African refugee crises such as Rwanda, however, is that a minority of people are being housed in tented camps. According to the UN just 130,000 people are being accommodated in the sprawling, hot camps in Mardan and Swabi districts, while most are squeezed into the homes of friends or relatives, with as many as 85 people in one house.

Nevertheless aid workers and political analysts warn that if international aid to ease the crisis is not urgently delivered, the strain on the displaced and those helping them could lead to political destablisation. Acknowledging the scale of the crisis, the prime minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gilani, said: "The displaced men, women and children should not feel alone. We won’t leave any stone unturned in providing them help and protection."

The UN is expected to launch an international appeal for aid running into hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming days.

2) Obama, Netanyahu bare Iran, Palestinian divides
Stephen Collinson, AFP, Tue May 19, 2:17 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090519/pl_afp/usisraelmideast_20090519074134

During an intense first meeting as heads of state, President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid bare differing approaches on Iran and the US goal of a Palestinian state.

In blunt comments after more than three hours of talks Monday, Netanyahu offered discussions "immediately" with the Palestinians but stopped short of endorsing Obama’s call for a two-state solution.
…
Netanyahu, who described the talks as "extraordinarily friendly," did not use the words "Palestinian state" but also warned against obsessing on "terminology."

"I want to make it clear that we don’t want to govern the Palestinians - we want to live in peace with them," Netanyahu said. "We want them to govern themselves (minus) a handful of powers that could endanger the state of Israel," he said, referring, for example, to control of airspace and other areas related to security concerns.

The Palestinians slammed Netanyahu for failing to endorse the creation alongside Israel of a Palestinian state, which has been at the basis of all peace initiatives over the past nearly two decades. "By failing to endorse the two-state solution, Benjamin Netanyahu missed yet another opportunity to show himself to be a genuine partner for peace," top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said in a statement. "Calling for negotiations without a clearly defined end-goal offers only the promise of more process, not progress."

There were also signs of division between the two men on the issue of the construction and expansion of Jewish in the occupied West Bank. "Settlements have to be stopped," Obama said, hours after Israel issued construction tenders for the West Bank settlement of Maskiot.

3) Obama’s trade representative makes plea for business’s help
Kevin Bogardus, The Hill, 05/18/09
http://thehill.com/business-lobby/obamas-trade-representative-makes-plea-for-businesss-help-2009-05-18.html

The Obama administration on Monday offered business groups more assurances it intends to move several pending trade agreements as soon as possible.

At the same time, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, during a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said President Obama wants help from those same business groups on a range of other issues, including healthcare and tax reform.
…
He said he was working to resolve a few final issues that would allow the administration to send a trade deal with Panama to Congress. Kirk added that the administration continues to work on more controversial deals negotiated by the Bush administration with Colombia and South Korea that have drawn strong opposition from Democrats in Congress.
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The speech is the latest in a series of moves that shift Obama’s tone from the trade criticism displayed on the campaign trail, particularly during the Democratic primary battle, when Obama took a harsher tone toward trade deals. That worried business groups like the Chamber, but they’ve enjoyed the more recent words from the administration on trade. On Monday, Kirk was met with resounding applause at the end of his speech.

Kirk offered optimism that the Panama trade deal would be submitted to Congress soon. "We are doing everything we can to resolve the outstanding issues, from labor to tax, to get it ready so we can send it up to Congress," he said.

Kirk is completing a review of the Colombia deal and has begun a dialogue with the Korean government to work out the kinks of that agreement. He said the administration is also "breathing fresh life" into the stalled Doha round of global trade talks.
…
Prodded to give his assurance that the administration would move on the Colombia deal within the year, Kirk said he wants to finish the trade agreement soon.

"What I would love to do is give you that assurance," Kirk said. "What I can promise you is we will work every day and every hour to make that possible."

4) U.S.-Russian Team Deems Missile Shield In Europe Ineffective
Joby Warrick and R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post, Tuesday, May 19, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/18/AR2009051803055.html

A planned U.S. missile shield to protect Europe from a possible Iranian attack would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran is likely to deploy, according to a joint analysis by top U.S. and Russian scientists.

The U.S.-Russian team also judged that it would be more than five years before Iran is capable of building both a nuclear warhead and a missile capable of carrying it over long distances. And if Iran attempted such an attack, the experts say, it would ensure its own destruction. "The missile threat from Iran to Europe is thus not imminent," the 12-member technical panel concludes in a report produced by the EastWest Institute, an independent think tank based in Moscow, New York and Belgium.

The report, scheduled for release today, could further dampen the Obama administration’s enthusiasm for a Bush administration plan to deploy radars and interceptor missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. The missile shield has been promoted as a safeguard against future attacks from rogue states, particularly Iran. But the plan has severely strained relations with Moscow, which says it would undermine strategic stability and lead to a new arms race.

The year-long study brought together six senior technical experts from both the United States and Russia to assess the military threat to Europe from Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. The report’s conclusions were reviewed by former defense secretary William J. Perry, among others, before being presented to national security adviser James L. Jones and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The report acknowledges dramatic technological gains by Iran, and it predicts that the country could probably build a simple nuclear device in one to three years, if it kicked out U.N. inspectors and retooled its uranium-processing plants to make weapons-grade enriched uranium. Another five years would be needed to build a warhead that would fit on one of Iran’s missiles, the panel says. U.S. intelligence agencies have made similar predictions; Israel maintains that Iran could build a bomb in as little as eight months.

The U.S.-Russian experts say Iran faces limits in developing ballistic missiles that could someday carry nuclear warheads. Its current arsenal is derived from relatively unsophisticated North Korean missiles, which in turn are modified versions of a Russian submarine-launched missile that dates from the 1950s. "We believe that these components were likely transferred to North Korea illegally in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Russia was experiencing major political and economic chaos," one of the U.S. team members said in a separate commentary.

As a result, the missiles have inherent weaknesses stemming from such aged technology, despite some improvements in their range, the report states. Moreover, the country lacks "the infrastructure of research institutions, industrial plants, or the scientists and engineers that are needed to make substantial improvements."

They conclude that it would take Iran at least another six to eight years to produce a missile with enough range to reach Southern Europe and that only illicit foreign assistance or a concerted and highly visible, decade-long effort might produce the breakthroughs needed for a nuclear-tipped missile to threaten the United States.

Moreover, if Iran were to build a nuclear-capable missile that could strike Europe, the defense shield proposed by the United States "could not engage that missile," the report says. The missile interceptors could also be easily fooled by decoys and other simple countermeasures, the report concludes.

"The much more urgent problem is to seek a resolution" of the Iranian nuclear crisis, the report says. "That is a project on which the United States and Russia need to cooperate more closely."

Afghanistan
5) Ex-U.S. Envoy Considers Key Role In Afghan Government
Helene Cooper, New York Times, May 19, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/world/asia/19diplo.html

Zalmay Khalilzad, who was President George W. Bush’s ambassador to Afghanistan, could assume a powerful, unelected position inside the Afghan government under a plan he is discussing with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, according to senior American and Afghan officials.

Khalilzad, an American citizen who was born in Afghanistan, had considered challenging Karzai for the presidency in elections scheduled for this summer. But Khalilzad missed the May 8 filing deadline, and the American and Afghan officials say that he has been talking with Karzai for several weeks about taking on a job that the two have described as the chief executive officer of Afghanistan.

Such an alliance would benefit Karzai by co-opting a potential rival. For its part, the White House has made no secret of its growing disenchantment with Karzai, and some Afghanistan experts said that enlisting Khalilzad would have the virtue of bringing a strong, competent leader into an increasingly dysfunctional Afghan government.

The position would allow Khalilzad to serve as "a prime minister, except not prime minister because he wouldn’t be responsible to a parliamentary system," a senior Obama administration official said. Taking the unelected position would also allow Khalilzad to keep his American citizenship.

Administration officials insisted that the United States was not behind the idea of enlisting Khalilzad to serve in the Afghan government, and they gave no further details on what his duties might be.

They said that Karzai had sought out Khalilzad, but that the idea of enlisting a chief executive had also been raised by Gordon Brown, the British prime minister.

American and British officials expressed concern that any belief that the West was behind the plan would harm its chances inside Afghanistan.
…
"This has the makings of a really bad movie," said Teresita C. Schaffer, a South Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The idea of having an American as a major senior official of Afghanistan is a very risky one both for the Afghan government and the person in question."

Iraq
6) Iraq’s Once-Envied Health Care System Lost to War, Corruption
Corinne Reilly, McClatchy Newspapers, May 18, 2009
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/68193.html

Baghdad - Dr. Zinah Jawad leaned over her patient and peered into his glazed eyes. It doesn’t look good, she said, shaking her head. The man had arrived at Baghdad Teaching Hospital’s emergency department a few hours earlier with a high fever and dizziness. Now he lies shaking, sweat soaking his dirty clothes.

The Teaching Hospital’s emergency room is cleaner than most in Baghdad. In fact, it’s widely considered the best in the Iraqi capital. Still, flies buzz overhead, and on busy days there aren’t enough beds or oxygen tanks. Across the room, a crude sign made with binder paper and tape marks the department’s two-bed cardiac unit, which lacks a reliable defibrillator.

Jawad, a second-year medical resident, turns to the sick man’s wife, who’s perched anxiously on a ripped chair at his bedside. "We suspect meningitis," she says. If Jawad is correct, the man probably will die long before she can confirm her diagnosis. Her chances of getting antibiotics to treat him are even slimmer.

The hospital can’t perform the lab test she needs. Its stock of drugs and basic supplies is so unreliable that doctors routinely dispatch patients’ relatives to fetch medicines, IV fluids and syringes from private merchants or the black market.

Jawad can’t explain the shortages. Her department is always careful in placing its orders with the national health ministry, which supplies all of Iraq’s public hospitals. Often, though, the medicines never show up. "No one can tell us why," Jawad said. "It is as if they just disappear somewhere."

Stories of missing drugs, of desperately ill-equipped doctors and of patients left to suffer the consequences are everywhere in Iraq’s public health care system. Some hospitals are filthy and infested with bugs. Others are practically falling down. More and more, the blame is being placed on Iraq’s U.S.-backed government, which by many accounts is infested with corruption and incompetence.

There’s no doubt that years of economic sanctions, followed by years of war, have taken a heavy toll on all public services in Iraq. However, with violence down and some tentative sense of normalcy returning, improvements in health care should be coming far faster than they are, according to doctors, patients, aid organizations and some public officials.

They fault widespread problems at all levels of Iraq’s government, and the examples they cite are troubling. Health ministry workers routinely siphon drugs from hospital orders to make extra cash on the black market. Bribery is rampant. Millions of dollars meant for clinics and equipment have gone missing. Millions more have been wasted on government contracts to buy expired medicines.

Israel/Palestine
7) Likud ministers ready to resist PA state
Gil Hoffman, Jerusalem Post, May. 18, 2009
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1242212399287&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would not be able to advance the formation of a Palestinian state, due to the wide majority against it in the Likud faction, MKs who oppose a two-state solution said Sunday.

They said that unlike the fight against the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, when only 15 MKs out of 40 dared challenge then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, this time around, two-thirds of the Likud faction would defy a potential effort by Netanyahu to withdraw from parts of Judea and Samaria.

The rebellion against Sharon also suffered from a lack of leadership, because the only Likud minister who actively opposed him was then-minister-without-portfolio Uzi Landau.

This time around, no fewer than seven Likud ministers vocally oppose a Palestinian state: Gideon Sa’ar, Bennie Begin, Moshe Ya’alon, Yuli Edelstein, Gilad Erdan, Yisrael Katz and Moshe Kahlon.

"MKs might be afraid now to say that Bibi doesn’t have a majority for two states in the faction or other Likud bodies, but later on they will make their voice heard," said Likud MK Danny Danon, who wrote Netanyahu on Friday warning him against concessions to US President Barack Obama in their Monday meeting.
…
Likud MKs said they were concerned about reports from Netanyahu’s flight to Washington that he would not rule out the formation of a Palestinian state in his meeting with Obama. They said they had been worried since they read an article in The Jerusalem Post on May 4 about AIPAC delegates lobbying Congress for a two-state solution with the blessing of the Prime Minister’s Office.

"We must also continue to insist on the absolute Palestinian commitment to ending terrorist violence and to building the institutions necessary for a viable Palestinian state living side-by-side, in peace with the Jewish state of Israel," read a letter that AIPAC delegates lobbied their congressmen to sign.

The lobbying took place after a meeting between AIPAC heads and Netanyahu in Jerusalem. When asked about the letter, Netanyahu’s adviser Ron Dermer said he did not think there was a difference between the positions of Netanyahu and AIPAC.

"This article was the first sign," Danon said. "When Sharon endorsed a Palestinian state in a speech at Latrun [in 2003] we were taken by surprise. This time, we have to be ready. The first step is telling Netanyahu that if he will be too flexible, he will have problems at home."

Meretz leader Haim Oron said he would not be surprised or disappointed if Netanyahu caved in to Obama on the Palestinian state issue. "Accepting two states for two peoples is not a concession to the Palestinians but the supreme interest of Israel," Oron said. "We cannot expect a man who has zigzagged throughout his entire political career to suddenly act differently now. The test of the Bibi-Obama meeting is not whether Netanyahu will leave it in peace, but whether it will create a basis to advance to peace."

Colombia
8) Scandals Surround Colombian Leader
Top Aides Suspected in Secret Police Case
Juan Forero, Washington Post, Sunday, May 17, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/16/AR2009051602301.html

Bogota - For weeks after the news broke, Colombians knew only that the secret police had spied on Supreme Court judges, opposition politicians, activists and journalists. Suspicions swirled that the orders for the wiretapping, as well as general surveillance, had come from the presidential palace.

Then on Friday, the inspector general’s office announced an investigation against three of President Álvaro Uribe’s closest advisers and three former officials of the Department of Administrative Security, or DAS, the intelligence service that answers to the president. Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez investigates malfeasance in government agencies, and his findings can be used in criminal prosecutions.

The latest revelations have come on top of an influence-peddling scandal involving the president’s two sons, Tomás and Geronimo, and a widening probe of the links between Uribe’s allies in Congress and right-wing paramilitary death squads. Though Uribe remains popular for having brought security and economic prosperity to a once-chaotic country, the scandals are hitting hard just as he weighs a run for a third term.

Latin America policymakers in Washington are also watching the controversy closely. The United States has funneled nearly $6 billion in mostly military and anti-drug aid to the Uribe administration for its fight against Marxist rebels and drug cartels. Myles Frechette, a former U.S. ambassador in Bogota who closely tracks Colombia policy, said one possible ramification of the scandal is that the Obama administration could curtail aid.

"I think that Washington is increasingly nervous about this," Frechette said. "I just don’t think that people in Congress, even the Republicans, are going to feel very comfortable with this kind of thing coming out about Uribe."
…
The Colombian government has characterized the surveillance as the work of rogue DAS agents. José Obdulio Gaviria, a former presidential aide now spearheading Uribe’s reelection effort, told the Bogota daily El Tiempo on Friday that criminal elements had infiltrated the department to hurt the government’s image. "We are in a political war," he explained.

But the news media reported this past week that Jorge Alberto Lagos, former DAS director of counterintelligence, told prosecutors during 14 hours of interrogations how information about judges was turned over to two top Uribe aides, Bernardo Moreno and Gaviria. The attorney general’s office, meanwhile, is offering to make deals - leniency in exchange for information - with other DAS employees, 33 of whom have been fired since the scandal broke in February.

El Tiempo, in an editorial Friday, questioned how the agency could have acted against Uribe’s wishes when he controls it. "In everything that has happened, what has stood out are the poor arguments of the Casa Nariño," the editorial said, referring to the presidential palace.

The spying revelations, first made by Semana magazine, detail how the DAS zeroed in on some of Uribe’s most vocal opponents, including Carlos Gaviria, who ran against Uribe in the 2006 election, and journalists who oversee tough coverage of government, among them Daniel Coronell, who runs a small Bogota television station and is a columnist.

DAS agents also intercepted phone conversations, studied financial records and tailed Supreme Court judges, authorities say.

9) Pentagon Plans Latin America-Wide Intervention Ability for New Military Base in Colombia
Press Release, Fellowship of Reconciliation, May 18, 2009
http://www.forpeace.net/blog/pentagon-plans-latin-america-wide-intervention-ability-new-military-base-colombia

Oakland, CA - The United States is planning to establish a new military facility in Colombia that will give the U.S. increased capacity for military intervention throughout most of Latin America. Given the tense relations of Washington with Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, as well as the Colombian military’s atrocious human rights record, the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) believes the plan should be subjected to vigorous debate.

"This base would feed a failed drug policy, support an abusive army, and reinforce a tragic history of U.S. military intervention in the region," said John Lindsay-Poland, Latin America Program Co-director for FOR. "It’s wrong and wasteful, and Congress should scrap it."

The new facility in Palanquero, Colombia would not be limited to counter-narcotics operations, nor even to operations in the Andean region, according to an Airlift Military Command (AMC) planning document. The U.S. Southern Command aims to establish a base with "air mobility reach on the South American continent" in addition to a capacity for counter-narcotics operations, through the year 2025.
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President Obama’s Pentagon budget, submitted May 7, includes $46 million for development of the Palanquero base, and says the Defense Department seeks "an array of access arrangements for contingency operations, logistics, and training in Central/South America." A U.S. Embassy spokesperson in Bogota told FOR that negotiations were not yet concluded for the base.
…
The "mission creep" in the proposal for continent-wide operations from Colombia is also evident in President Obama’s foreign aid request for Colombia. While the budget request for $508 million tacitly recognizes the failure of Plan Colombia drug policy by cutting funds for fumigation of coca crops, the White House is asking for an increase in counterinsurgency equipment and training to the Colombian Army.

Cuba
10) Cuba’s Undersea Oil Could Help Thaw Trade With U.S.
Nick Miroff, Washington Post, Saturday, May 16, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/15/AR2009051503416.html

Deep in the Gulf of Mexico, an end to the 1962 U.S. trade embargo against Cuba may be lying untapped, buried under layers of rock, seawater and bitter relations.

Oil, up to 20 billion barrels of it, sits off Cuba’s northwest coast in territorial waters, according to the Cuban government - enough to turn the island into the Qatar of the Caribbean. At a minimum, estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey place Cuba’s potential deep-water reserves at 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, stores that would rank the island among the region’s top producers.

Drilling operations by foreign companies in Cuban waters are still in the exploratory stage, and significant obstacles - technological and political - stand between a U.S.-Cuba rapprochement eased by oil. But as the Obama administration gestures toward improved relations with the Castro government, the national security, energy and economic benefits of Cuban crude may make it a powerful incentive for change.

Limited commercial ties between U.S. businesses and the island’s communist government have been quietly expanding this decade as Cuban purchases of U.S. goods - mostly food - have increased from $7 million in 2001 to $718 million in 2008, according to census data.

Thawing relations could eventually open up U.S. investment in mining, agriculture, tourism and other sectors of Cuba’s tattered economy. But the prospect of major offshore reserves that would be off-limits to U.S. companies and consumers has some Cuba experts arguing that 21st-century energy needs should prevail over 20th-century Cold War politics.

"The implications of this have the potential to be a sea change, literally and figuratively, for the Cubans," said Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska-Omaha who studies Cuba’s energy sector.

At a House subcommittee hearing last month on U.S.-Cuba policy, former oil executive Jorge Piñón told lawmakers that the United States has a strategic interest in helping Cuba tap its potentially vast hydrocarbon stores and that U.S. companies should receive special permission to do so.

"American oil and oil equipment and service companies have the capital, technology and operational know-how to explore, produce and refine in a safe and responsible manner Cuba’s potential oil and natural gas reserves. Yet they remain on the sidelines because of our almost five-decade-old unilateral political and economic embargo," said Piñón, a member of a Brookings Institution advisory group on Cuba policy reform.
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The larger deposit is thought to be in a section of the gulf known as the Eastern Gap, to which Mexico and the United States also have a claim. Cuban officials believe there are 10 billion to 15 billion barrels of crude stored there under more than 5,000 feet of seawater and 20,000 feet of rock- costly to extract but accessible with existing technology. By comparison, U.S. proven reserves total 21 billion barrels.

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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.