03/22 to 03/29 ***The***Winds***of***WAR

[Housecarl]

For links see article source....
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http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/malis-unfolding-coup

Mali's Unfolding Coup
March 23, 2012 | 2151 GMT

Summary

Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo, leader of Mali's military junta, seized control of the capital of Bamako on March 21. The following day, he declared himself president of the National Committee for the Return of Democracy and the Restoration of the States (CNRDR). The coup appears to have started with what may have been an impromptu mutiny at the Kati barracks outside the city after a visit by Malian Defense Minister Gen. Sadio Gassama reportedly failed to address troops' grievances.

The discontent in the ranks takes place amid a renewed Tuareg insurgency in Mali's far north, and some Malian military forces fighting in the north have fallen back to the city of Gao in the aftermath of the coup. While it is not clear whether those forces' loyalties lie with Sanogo or Malian President Amadou Tomani, a significant amount of territory has already been ceded to Tuareg militants and may prove difficult for the Malian government to win back.

Analysis

Frustration with Toure and senior military officers appears to have been significant among the ranks for some time; in mid-February, less than a month after the most recent spate of clashes between the military and Tuareg rebels, deserters and their families began protesting in Bamako.

After the mutiny started, Sanogo appears to have led an effort to seize power. In addition to the presidential palace -- the physical seat of government power -- soldiers seized the state television and radio stations, shut down the airport and closed Mali's borders. These are critical targets in a coup because seizing them establishes control over key symbols of power and means of communications (and also denies the incumbent regime access to those resources).

The coup, led by officers in their 20s and 30s (notably backed by some more senior and older officers), was followed by a statement of grievances, the suspension of the constitution and the creation of the CNRDR, with Sanogo as president. These actions were couched in terms of returning the country to democracy, though Sanogo has already postponed elections scheduled for April -- a delay that could easily last into 2013. A curfew was imposed, but by March 23 people were encouraged to return to work during daylight hours (few did).

In a sense, Mali is two countries, with the demographic core in the south distinct and distant from the restive north. The intensifying Tuareg insurgency in the north that Mali has struggled to contain is thus separate from the coup in Bamako, located in the country's south. The two events are related, however: As the small Malian military moved more units northward to reinforce the intensifying counterinsurgency campaign, Bamako was left vulnerable in terms of the military forces located in and around the city. In other words, with so much of Mali's military engaged in the north, the number of units that must be co-opted, neutralized or isolated in and around the city for a successful coup was reduced.

The coup did face some challenges. While Malian Foreign Minister Soumeylou Boubaye Maiga and Territory Administrator Kafrougouna Kone appear to be in CNRDR custody, the president evaded capture and reportedly is in hiding, protected by members of the 33rd Parachute Regiment or "Red Berets," a loyalist unit of paratroopers in which the president once served. This is an important factor, since Toure can serve as a rallying point for loyalist forces and as a figure who foreign governments could support. Additionally, the coup occurred shortly after an African Union summit in Bamako and several prominent foreign diplomats are stuck in the capital, potentially attracting foreign attention counterproductive to the coup.

However, there is little immediate prospect of a meaningful counter-coup. While Burkina Faso to the southeast has intervened in coups in the region before, the popular support for the coup plotters (who appear to share some cultural and ethnic links to Burkina Faso) could hinder an overt intervention, which in any case would present serious logistical and operational obstacles. So while direct military intervention is unlikely, Burkina Faso could play a role as a mediator.

CNRDR is doing what it can to craft an image of broad support within the rank-and-file of the military, and the mutiny that occurred in the northern city of Gao prompted by news of the coup would suggest there is legitimacy to that claim. Furthermore, while elements of the loyalist 33rd Parachute Regiment may be protecting the president, much of that regiment is thought to be committed to the fight in the north, meaning it may not be in a position to intervene quickly.

It is not clear how unified the Malian military forces in the north are and where loyalties lie, as illustrated by the mutiny in Gao -- one of the two main northern cities being used as a key base of operations for Malian forces fighting the Tuareg. Malian military units are now falling back from operations farther north and rallying in Gao, though it is unclear whether the result will be more infighting or a unified force -- and to whom that force's loyalty will go. Meanwhile, Tuareg rebels claim to be advancing rapidly on Kidal, the other main base of Malian military operations in the north.

Basic military theory teaches that speed can be everything in a coup, and despite some important tactical failures such as Toure remaining at large, the junta appears to be in control of Bamako and could even have broad support among the population. The more time the coup plotters have to consolidate that control and support, the more difficult they will be to displace. The greatest threat to the junta at this point would be the return of Malian forces from the north to Bamako en masse -- though that would involve its own logistical and operational challenges, especially given the potentially broad discontent among the rank-and-file.

The junta claimed that the government's campaign against the Tuareg insurgency was ineffective in order to garner support, but it is far from clear that the coup leaders will be able to wage a different or more effective counterinsurgency campaign in the north. Mali's inability to marshal the resources necessary to pacify the region remains. But by returning hastily to Gao, Malian forces have ceded a great deal of territory to the Tuareg, changing the operational reality. Militants likely will be harder to remove if the Malian government mounts a new offensive to retake the ceded territory. For now, it appears the Tuareg rebellion is benefiting the most from the coup in Bamako.

Read more: Mali's Unfolding Coup | Stratfor

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion...156/story.html

Mali feels the effects of NATO’s Libya mission

By Robert Fowler March 24, 2012 9:02 PM

President Amadou Toumani Touré — ATT as he is universally known — was instrumental in saving my life and that of my colleague, Louis Guay, when he helped secure our release from al Qaeda captivity almost three years ago. Perhaps, therefore, I am not objective about the Malian army mutiny that deposed the elected government of ATT last week, but I don’t think so.

Well before our kidnapping, I was a big fan. He is the kind of leader we all wanted to see much more of in Africa. He made his country the darling of aid agencies and think-tanks alike, and his overthrow by a motley crew of disgruntled junior army officers is not only deeply disappointing, it is a disgrace and a disaster for the 15 million people of Mali, and, indeed, for the entire Sahel region.

Further, it is an indictment of the thoughtlessness, the lack of foresight and the hubris with which we in NATO launched our effort to force a regime change in Libya while pretending it was motivated by that will-o’-the-wisp, R2P (Responsibility to Protect). Early last week, the Royal United Services Institute (a respected U.K. think-tank) issued a report, which noted, inter alia:

“The Libyan campaign was hailed as a triumph for the principle of the Responsibility to Protect, but the truth may be otherwise. For the manner in which the initial Security Council Resolution (passed a year ago this month) was contorted out of all recognition from the protection of civilians to, in effect, outright regime change has left a sour taste …”

Far more germane, and whatever the motivation of the principal NATO belligerents, the law of unintended consequences is exacting a heavy toll in Mali today and will continue to do so throughout the Sahel as the vast store of Libyan weapons spreads across this, one of the most unstable regions of the world. On Nov. 8 last year, in a speech to the Canadian Club in Ottawa, I suggested:

“The core of (Moammar) Gadhafi’s ‘African Mercenaries’ were Tuareg, a desert people who in the ’70s formed the vast bulk of his ‘Islamic Legion.’ These ruthless desert warriors have now returned to northern Mali and Niger — flush with cash, armed to the teeth and with significant experience and very bloody hands. All this does not augur well for peace and stability in the region.

“A week ago, The United Nations Security Council called on Libya and its neighbours to stamp out the proliferation of looted arms, noting concern that they could fall into the hands of al Qaeda and other militant groups. But does anybody really believe that the National Transitional Council is up to such a task? Are we sure that this is a task they all want to see accomplished?

“Western and Northern Africa (but particularly the Sahel zone) is now awash in weapons. Heavier weapons, more sophisticated weapons and in greater quantities than it has ever known.”

The Tuareg insurgents have formed a new group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). This is the third Tuareg rebellion in the last 20 years in Mali. When Louis and I were kidnapped by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), we were attempting to bring a similar Tuareg rebellion in neighbouring Niger to a negotiated conclusion. It is clear that there is some sort of collusion — which may be but a marriage of convenience — between the MNLA and AQIM in the current Malian offensive.

It is estimated that there are as many as 4,000 seasoned and well-armed fighters in the MNLA, and since the beginning of the year they have been battling to free northern Mali from Bamako’s control. They have been doing well against the ill-equipped and under-trained Malian forces and have committed appalling atrocities, including the alleged execution of 82 prisoners in Aguelhok in late January. They were bound and many had their throats slit.

Mali ranked 175th out of 187 countries surveyed in the 2011 United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report; thus, one of the poorest countries in the world, beset by the ravages of climate change, as the Sahara streams inexorably southward, and Mali’s inhabitants and scanty resource base are challenged by the seventh-highest rate of population increase in the world. It is about the size of Alberta and Saskatchewan combined, but most of it is uninhabitable desert.

In 1991, Touré, led a coup against the oppressive dictatorship that had ruled the country for the 30 years following independence from France in 1960, but made good on his promise to hold elections as soon as civilian institutions could assume the responsibility. Alpha Oumar Konoré became president in 1992 and was re-elected in 1997 in what were judged to be free and fair elections. Mali’s constitution limits its president to two five-year terms, so Konoré stepped down in 2002 and Touré, after becoming a civilian, replaced him, and was elected in another free and fair election in 2007. Presidential elections were to take place next month, in April, and Touré had made clear that he could not and would not be a candidate. Despite the paucity of its fiscal resources, for 20 years Mali has been a shining example of an effectively functioning democracy, blessed with a government that strove mightily to keep in close touch with its people; not the norm for the West African region.

For these reasons, Mali was a favoured partner of development agencies throughout the world. Canadian development assistance to Mali began in 1972 and has increased almost eight-fold over the past decade to a current level of about $110 million annually, making Mali one of the top five or six recipients of Canadian development assistance, and Canada, Mali’s third or fourth most important development partner.

In such circumstances, how could Canadians be anything but aghast at the mindless mutiny of junior army officers who seem bent on destroying such a fine democratic track record and risk ruining the reputation of an outstanding development partner? We are told that Touré is alive and in safe hands, and I know very many Canadians join me in hoping that this is and remains true.

Mali’s friends have roundly condemned the action of the mutineers, as has the United Nations, and the Economic Community of West African States. Canada’s foreign minister, John Baird, has wisely and forthrightly suspended our aid program, branded the coup “illegitimate” and demanded that the mutineers withdraw “so that constitutional order, peace and stability may be restored and aid resumed.” The United States has called for the “immediate restoration” of constitutional rule in Mali, while the African Union has condemned the actions of the soldiers. If the mutineers refuse to heed such unequivocal demands, life for the citizens of Mali will take a dramatic turn for the worse as the MNLA rebels press southward and the coup perpetrators are abandoned by Mali’s friends and their generosity.*

Robert Fowler is a former Canadian diplomat and senior public servant. In July 2008, the secretary general of the United Nations appointed Fowler to be his special envoy to Niger. In December of that year, Fowler and Louis Guay were captured by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. In November 2011, HarperCollins (Canada) published Fowler’s book, A Season in Hell: My 130 days in the Sahara with Al Qaeda.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

[Housecarl]

Hummm....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNew...82N00S20120324

EU to train security forces in Africa's Sah
Sat Mar 24, 2012 9:24am GMT

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union agreed on Friday to send experts to Africa's Sahel region to train security forces, particularly in Niger which faces a growing Islamist threat, and to increase food aid.

The Council said the mission would be deployed by the end of summer 2012 in the region which includes northern Nigeria and parts of Sudan and Darfur as well as Mali - in crisis after a military coup on Wednesday - and Niger.

No further details were available on the size or profile of the mission.

Western concerns over instability in the southern Sahara have grown in recent months, with a spate of kidnappings of Westerners by al Qaeda's North African wing, and expectations of worsening food shortages later this year.

"The fragile security of the region has been further exacerbated both by a deepening food and nutrition crisis affecting 15 million people and the humanitarian consequences of the conflict in northern Mali," the Council of the European Union said in a statement.

The EU also said it would provide an additional 9 million euros for emergency assistance to people affected by conflict in northern Mali. The EU has to date provided 123.5 million euros of humanitarian aid to the Sahel.

Separately, it plans to allocate a further 164.5 million euros to development action for food security in Sahel.

© Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use......
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNew...82N05P20120324

ANALYSIS: Mali coup shakes cocktail of instability in Sahel
Sat Mar 24, 2012 3:13pm GMT

By David Lewis

BAMAKO (Reuters) - Spillover from the overthrow of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi last year has been stirring a toxic cocktail of rebels, weapons, refugees, drought, smugglers and violent Islamic militants in Africa's turbulent Sahel region.

Now this backwash of instability from one field of the Arab Spring has now claimed its first government south of the Sahara - with this week's coup in Mali, where renegade low-ranking officers in the West African state toppled President Amadou Toumani Toure.

They overthrew him early on Thursday because they said his government had not adequately supported the Malian army's fight against an advancing Tuareg-led rebellion in the north that was swelled by arms and former pro-Gaddafi fighters from Libya.

"It was a cascade effect," said Yvan Guichaoua, a lecturer in African politics at the University of East Anglia, speaking to Reuters from the Malian capital Bamako where the mutinous soldiers have been stealing vehicles and looting petrol stations and businesses. But despite frequent bouts of gunfire, there appears to have been relatively little bloodshed so far.

Mali, Africa's third largest gold miner and a major local cotton grower, was viewed on the continent and in the wider world as a relatively stable democratic state in a permanently restless region dogged for decades by coups and mutinies.

It was an ally of regional and Western governments in their efforts to stop attacks and kidnappings by al Qaeda-associated Islamic militants from spreading southwards down through the Sahara. Such violence is already causing bloodshed in Africa's top oil producer Nigeria, in the form of the Boko Haram sect.

"It's clearly unfortunate for Mali ... This is plunging one of the most stable countries in West Africa into instability," Gilles Yabi, the Dakar-based West Africa project director for the International Crisis Group think tank, told Reuters.

"Disputes should not be resolved by arms. It's a bad sign for other countries which are in the process of consolidating their democracies," said Nadia Nata, political governance officer at the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).

The United States had been providing counter-terrorism training to Mali's army. One of the coup leaders, Captain Amadou Sanogo, president of the newly formed National Committee for the Return of Democracy and the Restoration of the State (CNRDR), said he received training from U.S. Marines and intelligence.

But the overnight coup, carried out apparently by mid-level and junior officers, will put an end to such support for the moment. The World Bank, the African Development Bank and European Commission have all suspended aid funding to Mali.

"NO CLEAR AGENDA"

The coup leaders of the CNRDR have promised to hand power back to a democratically-elected president "as soon as the country is reunified".

But the Tuareg rebels in the north, whose recent battlefield humiliations of the Malian army triggered the putsch in Bamako, are already pushing south, taking advantage of the confusion.

The coup chiefs' seeming inability to control the soldiers under their command, to judge by the pillaging and wild shooting in the streets, bodes ill for the immediate future.

"There is no clear agenda ... what will happen next is very unclear,' said Guichaoua.

ICG's Yabi said: "This is giving an impression of chaos".

The uncertainty was compounded on Friday when the African Union said it was told President Toure was still in Mali, safe and protected by loyalists, not far from Bamako.

Amnesty International said coup leaders had arrested several members of Toure's government. It demanded their release.

Despite Toure's public image as a steadfast "Soldier of Democracy", analysts said Western backers like France and the United States had been less than happy recently with his government's efforts in countering the threat of al Qaeda and its allies in Mali's vast and remote desert north.

"There was the view that he was using the counter-terrorism argument as a prop for himself in office," Guichaoua said, and he cited concerns too about corruption in the Malian government.

Toure, who had initially won his democratic credentials by quickly handing over power to civilian rule after seizing it in a 1991 coup, was planning to leave office following elections in April, after serving two consecutive elected terms.

But analysts said that with swathes of the north effectively outside government control, and with thousands displaced by the spreading insurgency there, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to hold credible elections next month.

Suspicions existed that some members of Toure's administration secretly tolerated rebel and al Qaeda networks in the north to be able to benefit from lucrative drug smuggling and other illegal businesses that thrive in the desert area.

"PANDORA'S BOX"

The Tuareg-led rebels now thrusting south have said they want to set up an independent area across the northern region.

Bourema Dicko, a member of parliament in charge of the defence and security commission in Mali's parliament, told Reuters before the coup the rebels had no real clear political agenda. "They just want to be able to smuggle weapons and drugs through the north. They don't really want security," he said.

However, one diplomat gave a more nuanced view of the latest Tuareg insurgency, saying that while the desert rebels sought a homeland, pragmatism meant that they had to work with Islamists and smuggling cartels in the lawless north.

"This is a hybrid operation - liberation and sharia law. Deals will be done. Palms will be greased," the diplomat, who asked not to be named, said.

Guichaoua said there was still hope that the coup leaders might prove capable of forging some kind consensus with the country's political forces, perhaps even agreeing a peace with the northern rebels, to be able to hold credible elections.

But as Bamako residents watched soldiers, some seemingly drunk, roaming the streets and looting, many wondered just what kind of new rule they were in for.

"They said the reason for the coup was the problem in the north. So let them tell us what solutions they have for the problem in the north. Let them tell us the way they want to run the country," said Bamako resident Fouseyni Diarra.

OSIWA's Nata said the coup could exacerbate already worsening security and criminality in the wider Sahel.

"This opens (a) Pandora's box," she said.

© Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://af.reuters.com/article/worldN...82M0NF20120324

Suburban tensions fester as France debates shooting
Sat Mar 24, 2012 4:24pm GMT

Police stand opposite the French domestic intelligence agency (DCRI) headquarters in Levallois-Perret, near Paris, March 24, 2012. Abdelkader Merah, elder brother of Mohamed Merah who died in an assault by special forces police in Toulouse on Thursday, and his girlfriend were transfered to the DCRI from Toulouse for further questioning about the massacre, and would be brought before a judge to decide whether there are grounds for opening legal proceedings over possible links with Mohamed's attacks. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
1 of 1Full Size

By Nicholas Vinocur

TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - In the aftermath of a killing spree that shocked the nation, France's Paris-based politicians and national media are deep in debate about its impact on the upcoming presidential election and the need for tighter security.

In the drab Toulouse suburbs where gunman Mohamed Merah killed seven people before being cut down by police commandos, the talk is more of bubbling tensions between ethnic and religious communities and how solutions are nowhere in sight.

The gap is not just between the capital to the north and Toulouse in the southwest. In the gritty outskirts of Paris, within sight of the Eiffel Tower, an "us and them" mentality still haunts the streets rocked by immigrant riots in 2005.

"Politicians in France love to talk about harmony, how there are no communities and everybody lives together," said Georges Dray, 72, a retired Jewish bar owner who came to Toulouse in the wave of French settlers who left former colony Algeria on its independence in 1962.

"That is pure cinema. They should say how things really are," he said.

The Toulouse killings claimed the lives of three soldiers, three Jewish children and a rabbi, before gunman Merah died in a shootout with police.

An hour later, conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is campaigning for re-election in the April-May poll, proposed tougher security measures, such as sanctions for people whose frequent viewing of jihadist websites could mean links to radical Islamism.

"This is going to raise questions about our system of integration, our approach to (Islamic) fundamentalism and our tolerance of certain practices here. You're going to hear a lot about that in the weeks to come," a senior Sarkozy campaign adviser said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Lahsen Edbas, 29, a Muslim grocery store worker in the eastern Paris suburb of Le Raincy, echoed a widespread scepticism about the Paris elite: "Why is all this happening now, just before an election?"

TOUGHER CAMPAIGN TO COME

Sarkozy's re-election campaign has already hammered away at those issues, calling for tighter controls on immigration and tougher access to social benefits for foreigners settling here.

Muslim and Jews here, many of them born in France and well integrated, saw these as code words and terms aimed against them. There are about 5 million Muslims and 600,000 Jews in the 63 million population of metropolitan France.

When Prime Minister Francois Fillon suggested in early March that Muslims and Jews should give up the "ancestral traditions" of halal and kosher meat, leaders of those minorities said they were being stigmatised so Sarkozy could win far-right votes.

Debates like that over halal and kosher slaughter practices or the killings in Toulouse - where there were both Muslim and Jewish victims - have brought national leaders of the two communities closer together.

But the gap between majority and minority, and between Jew and Muslim, seems to be growing at the grassroots level.

Mohamed, a Toulouse construction worker in his 30s, noted Merah reportedly turned to radicalism after being rejected twice by the army. "You think that's only because of the dumb things he did as a kid?" he asked. "Your name and the colour of your skin also count."

Mohamed said divisions in French society were widening. "There are also big tensions between the communities," he said, referring to Muslims and Jews. "This sort of event, given how it's distorted in the media, will make that worse."

MUSLIM-JEWISH STRAINS

Dray said Jews had encountered prejudice in the past from French anti-Semites but now suffered it mostly "from the Islamists" and said it had got worse over the years.

"They talk about being brothers, but they are only brothers among themselves and full of hatred for Jews and everyone else."

Roger, a 50-year-old supporter of the anti-immigrant National Front, said violence, crime and the number of mosques had all been on the rise for years in Toulouse.

"In France, we keep a lid on things," he said. "But I'll tell you one thing; France is at a boiling point, and some day, it's going to explode."

Amairi Messaoud, 55, a Tunisian-born fast-food restaurant manager in Le Raincy, had more confidence in his non-Muslim neighbours: "I don't think it will affect relations, not in France, because the French know what Islam is really about."

Analysts pondering the effect of the killings on French society did not expect copy-cat attacks.

Roland Jacquard, head of the International Terrorism Observatory, told Reuters Television that very few young Frenchmen had gone for training in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"There may remain about 10 of them in France," he said.

Antoine Basbous, a terrorism expert at the Observatory of Arab Countries, also stressed the apparent "lone wolf" nature of Merah's attack. "Right now this does not represent a threat to social peace," he said.

But Basbous said France still had a problem with its minorities. "A country that no longer can integrate its immigrants and treat them correctly is a problem," he said.

(Reporting by Nicholas Vinocur in Toulouse, Vicky Buffery in Le Raincy, Catherine Bremer and Tom Heneghan in Paris; Writing by Tom Heneghan; Editing by Will Waterman)

© Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use......
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17487767

23 March 2012 Last updated at 14:32 ET

Somalia pirates: EU approves attacks on land bases
Comments (182)
A Somali pirate gazing at the captured MV Filitsa, 7 January 2010 The EU says fighting piracy is a priority of the mission in the Horn of Africa
Continue reading the main story
PIRACY CRISIS

On patrol with the pirate hunters
Marine violence
Losing battle
Q&A: Prosecuting pirates

The European Union has agreed to expand its mission against Somali pirates by allowing military forces to attack land targets as well as those at sea.

In a two-year extension of its mission, EU defence ministers agreed warships could target boats and fuel dumps.

The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner says the move is a significant step-up in operations, but one that also risks escalation.

Up to 10 EU naval ships are currently on patrol off the Horn of Africa.

They have policed shipping routes and protected humanitarian aid since 2008. The extension means they will stay until at least December 2014.

An EU official said the new mandate would allow warships or helicopters to fire at fuel barrels, boats, trucks or other equipment on beaches, according to Agence France-Presse.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told reporters: "The EU plan is to allow attacks on land installations when ships are assaulted at sea," adding that "much care" would be taken to avoid civilian deaths.

Rear Admiral Duncan Potts, the operation commander for the EU Naval Force in Somalia, said it had already made considerable progress targeting the pirates at sea.

"If you look at last year, 30 ships and up to 700 hostages were held - today that is eight [ships] and around 200 [hostages]," he told the BBC's 5Live.

"At sea we've had an effect on the pirates' ability to operate but we haven't changed the strategic conditions, which is why we want to target every stage of their operations."
'Robust action'

A two-decade war has wrecked Somalia, leaving it without a proper government.
Continue reading the main story
Analysis
image of Frank Gardner Frank Gardner BBC security correspondent

Taking the fight against Somali piracy to bases on land is a major step-up for EU operations. Until now, pirates have been able to operate from coastal bases in towns like Eyl, Haradhere and Hobyo with relative impunity, returning from lengthy raids at sea to enjoy the spoils back home, though many drown or return empty-handed.

Now, it seems, the paraphernalia of piracy will all become fair game, hitting the pirates where it hurts and trying to disrupt what an EU admiral described to me as "the pirates' business model".

But this new, aggressive policy comes with significant risks. Pirates who see their bases destroyed are likely to protest they were innocent fishermen. It's also possible that, over time, innocent Somali fishermen really will be hurt.

Either way, its likely to enrage the pirates who may be tempted to take out their frustration on the hapless merchant sailors they regularly kidnap for ransom.

The transitional government only controls the capital Mogadishu, while al-Shabab militants, who recently joined with al-Qaeda, hold large swathes of territory.

The EU says the main tasks of the mission are the protection of vessels of the World Food Programme delivering food aid to displaced people in Somalia, and the fight against piracy off the Somali coast.

"Today's important decision extends [Operation] Atalanta's mandate for two more years and allows it to take more robust action on the Somali coast," the EU's foreign policy head Catherine Ashton said in a statement.

The statement said the EU would be working with Somalia's transitional federal government and other Somali organisations to support their fight against piracy from the coastal area.

Brussels also said the Somali government had told the UN secretary general that it accepted its new offer of collaboration.

The statement also said "a budget of 14.9m euros (£12.4m; $19.7m) is provided for the common costs of the prolonged mandate".

In February world leaders agreed to boost support for measures to fight piracy, terrorism and political instability in Somalia, at a conference held in London.

The summit agreed a seven-point plan promising more humanitarian aid, support for African Union peacekeepers and better international co-ordination.

On Wednesday British woman Judith Tebbutt was freed by Somali pirates after being held hostage for more than six months.

The Times newspaper claims her family paid a ransom of $1.3m (£800,000), which was dropped from an aircraft.

[homecanner1]

Looks like the EU travel ban has been extended to 100 of the Assad regime, per the UK

This could get sticky if any of them plan to flee abroad to London when they host the Olympic games this summer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...a-bashar-syria

Here are the top 4 women

"...The new sanctions, bringing to more than 100 the number of regime figures targeted by the EU, showed a resolve, said Hague, "to intensify the pressure, the economic and diplomatic stranglehold on this regime. We cannot just accept that this killing, this repression of the citizens of Syria, goes on."

The Assad women:


Anisa Makhlouf Anisa Makhlouf

The matriarch who maintains influence over the clan, 12 years after the death of her husband, Hafez al-Assad. Helped convince regime chiefs that the uprising is an Islamist coup.

Asma al-Assad Asma al-Assad

The leaked emails painted a portrait of a woman comfortable with the trappings of office. She ordered luxury goods as Syria burned in chaos and seems very loyal to her husband.

Bushra al-Assad

Bushra al-Assad Bushra upset the Assad clan when she eloped 13 years ago to marry Assef Shawkat, a divorced father 10 years her senior. Influential behind the scenes, but eschews the spotlight.

Manal al-Assad

The wife of the youngest Assad brother, Maher, who is reputed to be the regime's enforcer. The couple have two children and enjoy a life of privilege in Damascus...."

[Fred's Horseradish]

Homecanner1, good to see you post, long time member. Keep it up!

[The Flying Dutchman]

=

Iran working with Shi'ite rebels
in north, south Yemen: report

Reuters
8:53 a.m. EDT, March 25, 2012
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...,7593972.story

DUBAI (Reuters) - Washington believes Iran is working with Shi'ite Muslim rebels in northern Yemen and secessionists in the country's south to expand its influence at the expense of Yemen's Gulf neighbors, the U.S. envoy to Sanaa was quoted as saying on Sunday.

The pan-Arab daily al-Hayat cited Gerald Feierstein, in an interview in London, as accusing Lebanon's Hezbollah and Hamas of helping their backers in Shi'ite Iran at the expense of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a bloc in which Sunni-led oil giant Saudi Arabia's influence is dominant.

Ali Abdullah Saleh "The Iranians want to build influence in Yemen... both internally and more broadly in the region by establishing a foothold in the Arabian Peninsula," the paper quoted Feierstein as saying in remarks published in Arabic.

"It's something that's naturally regarded as a security threat to Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC states."

Feierstein told Reuters in an interview last month that there were signs of greater Iranian activity in Yemen, but did not specify where and how.

"There is evidence that Hezbollah and Hamas support this Iranian effort. We are aware of a southern Yemeni presence in Beirut that has been used as a conduit for Iranian support for obstruction in southern Yemen," he said.

A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Yemen did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment on the published remarks.

Feierstein was referring to the resurgence of secessionist sentiment in the south, formerly a separate socialist republic which fought a civil war with the north in 1994 after four turbulent years of formal political union.

That sentiment, based in charges of economic and political marginalization, gained strength in the final years of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's rule, and the south saw a boycott of a vote last month to replace Saleh with his deputy.

That election was a key to a transition deal, crafted by the GCC with U.S. and U.N. endorsement to avert civil war after mass protests against Saleh turned into fighting among a divided military and territorial gains by the country's al Qaeda wing.

Feierstein said the group had benefited from Yemen's political turmoil, but could be defeated by a reunited Yemeni military. The U.S. has backed units of the military led by Saleh's relatives as part of its campaign against al Qaeda, which has plotted abortive attacks abroad from Yemen.

"If we solve some of the political problems that created chaos in the Yemeni military, we will have improved the possibility of succeeding in our initiatives against al Qaeda," he said.

Washington has carried out a campaign of drone strikes - including one last year to assassinate a U.S. citizen it claims played a role in plotting an attack - against alleged al Qaeda members in Yemen.

Its top "counter-terrorism" official has made co-ordination with a united Yemeni military a priority in relations with the administration of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. An attack claimed by al Qaeda killed at least 26 people hours after Hadi was sworn in, vowing to fight the group.

Feierstein refused to comment when queried about the present U.S. role in airstrikes earlier this month that killed dozens in areas of south Yemen controlled by an al Qaeda-linked Islamist group.

"I can say that we are working closely with the security institutions of the Yemeni government regarding counter-terrorism initiatives, specifically those aimed at defeating al Qaeda," he was quoted as saying.






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14:23 25.03.12

A Palestinian warning sign to Israel

Why did the Palestinians decide they need a
UN investigation into Israel's settlement activities?

By Akiva Eldar
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/a-pal...srael-1.420622

The Palestinian leadership, as most experts say about the Iranian leadership, is calculating its steps rationally.

Ramallah knew that the appeal to the United Nations Human Rights Council would elicit a response from Israel, would annoy the Americans, and wouldn’t bring them any closer to ending the occupation.

Why would a rational person think a UN probe into the settlements would lead to any other results than those the results of the Mitchell Report, which recommended that construction be completely stopped and that outposts be evicted, or of the Road Map that recommended the Mitchell Report findings be implemented?

What more can we learn from an investigation into the settlement that we haven’t yet learned from Attorney Talia Sasson's report on illegal outposts? What will the UN probe into the settlements teach us about the settlers’ attacks on the rights of Palestinians that haven’t been made public in the periodic publications of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs or the websites of Peace Now, B'Tselem, Yesh Din, Bamakom, and Breaking the Silence?

It’s enough to look through the archives of the Israeli High Court of Justice and the Israeli press to determine that the settlers - aided by the Israeli government after Israeli government - are depriving Palestinians of their land, restricting their freedom, and generally making their lives generally more difficult. It is a shame to waste money on the stipends of the investigation staff.

So why did the Palestinians decide they need this investigation? They know no good came to them from the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead. It is hard to believe that they have forgotten the onslaught they suffered in the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the American Congress, as a result of their failed attempt to be admitted to the UN and their admission to UNSECO.

It is unlikely that sober leader like Mahmoud Abbas hadn’t first considered the repercussions that Netanyahu’s friends in Congress would dish out in retaliation for their appeal to one the most loathed intuitions in American politics. Doesn’t he know that Republicans are looking for excuses to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority?

In light of the fact that this move seems to play to the hands of Netanyahu, every rational Israeli should be worried by it. It is another testimony to the erosion in the faith the Palestinians hold in the prospect of reaching an agreement with Israel on a final settlement through negotiations, in the United States, and in the Quartet.

What we are seeing is the behavior of a neighbor that is swinging his fists erratically at windmills in despair. This is a warning signal, maybe the last, before more than 120 recognize Palestine as a sovereign nation with the 1967 lines as its borders.

It is true that a vote in the UN General Assembly isn’t equivalent to a vote in the Security Council, but it will make it a lot harder for Netanyahu to claim, as he has in the past, that the West Bank isn’t occupied rather it is “disputed territory.”

Through the years the Palestinians have stubbornly refused to appeal to the UN or the International Court in The Hague to take action against the settlements. According to international law, the transfer of civilian populations into occupied territory is forbidden. Israel claims that this is willful immigration and not government a sanctioned transferring of populations.

The Palestinians believe that measures taken against Israeli settlements outside the West Bank would be misconstrued as recognition of Israeli sovereignty beyond the Green Line. Were Israel to have a more rational government, it would see the Palestinian actions as what they are a Palestinian recognition of Israel within the 1967 borders.






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Report says Israel operating in Iran

Published: March. 25, 2012 at 8:16 AM
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-Ne...8601332677814/

LONDON, March 25 (UPI) -- Israeli spies have been operating inside Iran to gather information and evidence about Iran's nuclear program, sources told The Sunday Times.

The British newspaper reported Israel has established a secret base in northern Iraq where it dispatches Special Forces to conduct covert operations and compile intelligence inside Iran.

The mission is to find "smoking gun" evidence that Iran's nuclear program is centered on the production of weapons, the newspaper said.

Western intelligence sources told The Times Israeli forces enter Iran disguised as Iranian soldiers and operate near a number of the country's nuclear facilities. They also measure the levels of radioactivity and magnitude of explosions from tests conducted by Iran.

The sources said Israeli forces use vehicles as well as helicopters in order to travel from place to place and that Israel has been conducting such missions for several years and has intensified efforts in recent months near the Parchin military complex near Tehran.

"We've detected clean-up efforts recently in Parchin, which might indicate that the Iranians are trying to hide evidence of warhead tests in preparation for a possible IAEA visit," an unnamed source said, referring to Iran's refusal to permit inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the site.

Operations have also been conducted near the Fordow uranium enrichment facility, the paper said.

There has been no Israeli response to the report.


Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-Ne...#ixzz1q8OMicbl


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Obama Omits Deadline on 'Diplomatic Window' for Iran

Obama says “window is closing” on Iran but there still is time
for diplomacy. He did not set a deadline, likely after November.

By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
First Publish: 3/25/2012, 2:04 PM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/154119

President Barack Obama said Sunday that a “window is closing” on Iran but there still is time for diplomacy. He did not set a deadline, but it would likely be after the presidential elections in November.

The president made his remarks to reporters in Seoul on the eve of a nuclear security summit. “I believe there is a window of time to solve this diplomatically, but that window is closing," the president said.

President Obama’s statement was nothing new – he said 10 days ago that the diplomatic window is “shrinking,” but his constant talk on Iran represents his determination to jawbone Israel by demonstrating willingness to strike Iran militarily to keep it from attaining nuclear capability.

The U.S. administration still is banking on economic sanctions to convince Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to cooperate with United Nations officials and allow them open and free inspection of Iranian nuclear facilities.

The president is anxious to avoid another military intervention in a foreign country before the elections, but Israel is worried that November will be too late as Ahmadinejad continues to fortify nuclear facilities in mountainous areas and under concrete bunkers.

A military battle with Iran before the elections also would create what is perhaps a worse problem for President Obama – soaring oil prices.

"Right now the key thing that is driving higher gas prices is actually the world's oil markets and uncertainty about what's going on in Iran and the Middle East. That's adding a $20 or $30 premium to oil prices, and that obviously affects gas prices,” he said in an interview with the American Automobile Association (AAA).

AAA, which reports on national gas prices, reported that the national average of the price at the pump is $3.89 a gallon, nearly 20 percent higher than at the beginning of the year.

The state-controlled Iranian Fars News Agency told its readers that a “prominent member of the Iranian parliament” said that President Obama exempted 11 countries from tough sanctions against purchasing Iranian crude in order to keep gasoline prices from rising further.






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Sunday March 25, 2012

Angry over latest probe, Israel
may recall Geneva UN envoy

Dan Margalit

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/news...on.php?id=1625

The Un-Human Rights Council

The United Nations Human Rights Council was assembled six years ago in a way that allows Muslim nations to bend it to their will. According to the council’s charter, all 47 member states must have impeccable human rights records. But within the council one can find nations that chop off the arms of thieves in town squares and forbid women from driving. There are member states that massacre their own people, scoff at freedom of the press and whose justice system is an extension of the ruling regime.

This is the face of the council that recently decided to launch an investigation into the effect of Jewish settlements on the human rights of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. In the past, the council established an investigative committee, headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, to probe Israel’s 2008 offensive in Gaza – Operation Cast Lead – and twisted the truth in such epic proportions that even Goldstone himself wrote an article in the Washington Post a year ago reconsidering the accusations he had leveled against Israel in his scathing report. Now the council is trying to revive these accusations against Israel under a different pretext.

What will this investigation investigate? After all, every Israeli Arab prefers that his complaints be heard in the High Court of Justice in Jerusalem over any other court in the Middle East. Where does Israeli-Arab MK Dr. Ahmad Tibi (Ra’am-Ta’al) choose to demonstrate against the government? Does he prefer to face security forces in Tel Aviv or in Damascus? His silence speaks volumes.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the average Arab citizen prefers cruel self-determination to liberal Jewish rule. Already in the 1930s, Palestinian nationalist Musa Alami told David Ben-Gurion: He would choose a poor Palestine devoid of Jews over a thriving state with Jews in it. Alami represented, then and still today, his people’s sentiments.

The malicious decision to establish a U.N.-sponsored investigative committee to probe settlements must be examined from two perspectives. First of all, the entire world does in fact oppose the settlements even though they were established in self-defense in the face of Palestinian aggression in 1967 (the Palestinians refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist until the 1993 Oslo Accords). This difference of opinion is well established but there is no point in our rehashing it as the debate can only be detrimental to Israel. All that can be done is to hope for a peace agreement based on a two-state solution.

The second perspective is this: Is Israel in fact infringing on the individual rights of Palestinians in the territories for reasons other than security and protecting human lives? This is an important line of defense for Israel. Because the most important human right is the right to life.

There are no doubt flaws in our conduct toward the Palestinians. There are injustices and harassments and needless arrests. I am not taking these things lightly or ignoring the constant need for supervision and rectification. But an “occupation” that, at the end of the day, submits to the rule of law and evacuates (though begrudgingly) private land in Migron and Ramat Gilad and Alon Moreh, is not a cruel regime that warrants a human rights investigation. But the U.N. – whose employees constantly badmouth Israel – is not preparing a fair investigation. It is preparing a one-sided indictment.

Should we cooperate with the investigation or boycott it? In the last round, when it came to the Goldstone Committee, boycotting the investigation was greatly detrimental to Israel. Even when Goldstone recanted, the damage wasn’t undone. This new committee has the power to inflict harm. It is not clear that we should take the boycott route again. Perhaps we should defer that decision until we know who will be carrying out the investigation.






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Missing Presumed Dangerous
The World's Missing Nuclear Materials

Politics / Nuclear Power
Mar 25, 2012 - 05:48 AM
By: Andrew_McKillop
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article33778.html

About 50 heads of state will attend the Nuclear Security Summit on Monday and Tuesday 26 and 27 March in Seoul, South Korea, drawing US president Barack Obama and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev as well as leaders from potential transit countries such as Moldova, Lebanon and some African states that smugglers may use to move illicit nuclear materials. Iran and North Korea, which are in violation of United Nations resolutions demanding a halt to their nuclear work, are among countries excluded from the summit because the conference organizers’ are seeking consensus.

Consensus is critical for the 5-nation Declared Nuclear States of the UN Security Council and the 41 other members of the UN accredited Nuclear Suppliers Group - nations which sell nuclear goods and services from reactor building and fuel supply, to reprocessing, waste handling and IT services for the now troubled nuclear industry. With officials still unsure on the basic information they need to gauge how much highly enriched uranium and plutonium has been lost or is unaccounted-for, worldwide, leaders meeting in Seoul want reassuring and convincing majority decisions for the modest measures they will put to vote, and which will appear to better protect civil populations from the rising risks of nuclear terror.

Even a small nuclear blast by terrorist organizations would cause enormous casualties and heavily disrupt the world economy. The most recent nuclear catastrophe, at Fukushima, is estimated as causing some $50 billion of economic damage only in the 3-year period 2011-2014. Long term damage from this disaster, like Chernobyl, will probably exceed $250 billion. In the Chernobyl case, including death tolls of the "Liquidators", the total bodycount from this disaster almost certainly exceeds 50 000. The legacy of the Soviet Union’s breakup, inadequate atomic stockpile controls worldwide, and the proliferation of nuclear-fuel technology effectively means the world is awash with the materials needed as weapons ingredients, ripe to be picked up by terrorists. Rather than the media-touted image of "suitcase bombs" the cheapest, most effective and most likely modus operandi for nuclear terrorists will be simply spreading high level nuclear wastes in city centers - forcing their total evacuation - in so called Dirty Bomb attacks.

MISSING AND DANGEROUS

Nuclear security advisers, obligatorily speaking oof the record explain that "loose materials" are very easy to dissimulate. Taking them off the radar screen of trackers of stolen and lost nuclear materials is easy, resulting in a de facto situation where it may already be impossible to either contain or account for them. In particular, this concerns highly-enriched uranium and plutonium, the two most-basic ingredients for nuclear weapons, and in the case of plutonium the most deadly (and man-made) material that exists on this planet, with massive cancer-causing effects at doses of a few millionths of one gram. Stocks of plutoninum, only at France's Cap de la Hague site, and the UK's Dounreay site, may exceed more than 350 tons, equivalent to the plutonium needed to build and explode 35 000 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs, or more than 45 000 bombs of the more plutonium-efficient type developed by Abdul Kader 'Bombs R Us' Khan, of Pakistan in the late 1980s.

Security officials in all of the 5 Declared Nuclear states of the UN Security Council (the US, Russia, China, France and the UK by rank of their declared bomb inventories) are still seeking the most basic information about how much high-enriched uranium and plutonium has been lost or is unaccounted-for. Due to critical lack of clear information, leaders meeting in Seoul on 26 and 27 March will be forced to settle for modest but reassuring measures, adapted to the slender intellectual status of their middle class voting publics, which would seem to protect these key voters from the risk of terrorists obtaining nuclear materials or building and exploding a nuclear weapon.

US simulations of worst-case Dirty Bomb attacks tell another story. A nuclear-armed terrorist attack on a key strategic port like San Jose, California, would kill 60 000 people and could cost as much as $1 trillion in damage and cleanup, according to a 2006 Rand Corporation study commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security. Even a low-level radiological or dirty-bomb attack on Washington, with low level numbers of deaths, could cause economic damage of $100 billion, according to Igor Khripunov, the former Soviet Union’s START arms-control envoy, now a leading analyst at the US Center for International Trade and Security.

Because a terrorist needs only about 25 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium or 8 kilograms of plutonium to improvise a bomb, the margin of error for material accounting is small. Plutonium oxide, easily vaporized and spread across cities using crop-sprayer aircraft, could make entire city centres uninhabitable and a total economic loss in a weekend surprise attack.

NO LIMIT TO STOCKS

Taking only declared and known weapons-grade material, there are at least 2 million kilograms of stockpiled weapons-grade nuclear material left over from decommissioned bombs and from civil nuclear power plants, according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, a nonprofit Princeton, New Jersey research institute that tracks nuclear material. Each year, the world's 440 civil reactors (excluding the more-than-300 military and dual function reactors), produce an estimated 75 tons of plutonium.

Present known or declared stocks are enough to make at least 100 000 new nuclear weapons, over and above the weapons stocks of the 5 Declared Nuclear states, of about 22 000, already stocked in their weapons delivery systems such as submarine launched missiles, and in their weapons stockpiles. For the USA former senator Sam Nunn “The elements of a perfect storm are gathering,” and his Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative provides extensive lists of plutonium and highly enriched uranium weapons-capable nuclear materials spread over several hundred sites, in 32 countries. Nunn's research group underlines that a massive majority of these materials are poorly secured. At the same time. the "nuclear genie is out of the bottle", as shown by Abdul Kader Khan producing highly effective and efficient atomic weapons - some 25 years ago - before moving on to offer the know-how to all comers, especially those with an Islamic flavor and the needed cash.

French Greenpeace, the anti-nuclear environmental group provided total proof on how easy it is to breach security at EDF (Electricite de France) reactors, in December 2011. Where reactor sites also include fuel cooling stores, the jackpot for terrorists is only larger, but physical intrusion is in no way obligatory for "taking out" nuclear reactors, causing a worst-case meltdown, and the maximum possible release of deadly toxic nuclear materials.

At least since 9 / 11, nuclear states such as France have reviewed existing barriers around reactor sites, and moved to lower cost security upgrades such as guard dogs and tasers, but fully functional antiaircraft missile batteries would be needed, around every large reactor, to provide total security against drone attacks or crash-landed hijacked airliners. This protection is not economically possible, and several nuclear operators at the Seoul conference will present briefing papers on how saboteurs, if they penetrated a reactor site and disabled the power supply, can trigger a sequence of events similar to what happened when the tsunami struck the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant in Japan, in March 2011: nuclear fuel rods would melt and there would be massive release of radioactive materials into the air.

INFILTRATING THE ECONOMY

The Global Zero Initiative, whose US chapter is headed by former nuclear negotiator Richard Burt, said in February 2012 that the greatest nuclear security threat in Russia comes from bases in western Russia that house tactical nuclear warheads targeting Europe. These bases provide inadequate security against theft or sabotage, according to the report, whose authors included Russian former arms-control negotiators. In particular, and in a macabre link with the global economy and rising commodity prices, nuclear contaminated materials also including copper, manganese, tin and other high-value metals are increasingly stolen, transported and sold for their scrap value.

About 100 grams of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, lodged inside a nuclear fission chamber, was plucked out of a Rotterdam scrap- metal yard in late 2009 by Jewometaal Stainless Processing BV’s radiation-safety chief. This recycling company, the largest in Europe for stainless steel, has since 2005 received increasing amounts of radioactive contaminated metals and runs regular radiation checks on incoming scrap.

Quantities of these materials are unfortunately not possible to accurately estimate, but at the end of the Cold War, in 1989, the Soviet Union had about 22 000 nuclear weapons stored in Russia and in satellite states of the Warsaw Pact and Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Highly reasonable doubt exists that all of this weapons-usable material was recovered when warheads were repatriated to Russia and hastily dismantled under chaotic conditions with either incomplete or no records.

The legacy of the USSR's collapse and the operation of so-called "civil" reactors have created a context where accurately accounting for weapon-capable nuclear material around the world is a major obstacle to eliminating the threat of nuclear terrorism: if we dont know what is available, estimating the risk will be very difficult. Other countries not invited to the Seoul conference include Belarus, home to about 200 kilogram of known highly-enriched uranium, and Niger, the West African nation falsely accused of supplying uranium to Saddam Hussein of Iraq before the 2003 war, in part justified by an alleged Iraqi fnuclear-weapons program *****

By Andrew McKillop





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Report:
Iran Targeting Israeli Ships

Iranian terrorists planned to hit Israeli vessels
in the Suez Canal, Egyptian daily reports.

By Maayana Miskin
First Publish: 3/24/2012, 8:09 PM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/154094

Iranian terrorists planned to attack Israeli ships in the Suez Canal, the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram reports. Egyptian security forces reportedly thwarted the attack.

Two Egyptian suspects are accused of attempting to pay a third man to carry out the planned strike. The two allegedly had a budget of more than $8 million.

The two are believed to have received their instructions and funding from Iran. They have had their remand extended for another 15 days.

According to earlier reports, the attack was to involve launching a missile at ships from a farm bordering the canal.

Iran has been linked to recent attacks on Israeli embassies worldwide, including a bombing in Delhi in which an Israeli woman was wounded.






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updated 17 minutes ago

Israeli spies ‘step up missions into
Iran seeking proof of nuclear plans’

The Sunday Times: Israeli special forces clad in Iranian
uniforms infiltrate regularly from base in northern Iraq

By Bracha Kurtzer and AP
March 25, 2012, 11:12 am2
http://www.timesofisrael.com/report-...nuclear-plans/

Israeli “spies” are scouring Iran’s nuclear bases for evidence that its nuclear program is operating to create weapons, Britain’s Sunday Times reported in a detailed article Sunday. The intelligence gathering has been going on for years, it said, but has been stepped up of late.

The Israeli “special forces” allegedly operate out of a base in northern Iraq, and regularly infiltrate Iranian soil in order to gather evidence of its nuclear weapons program.

According to the report in the London paper, the Israeli operatives dress up as Iranian soldiers and monitor radioactivity at various suspicious locations. Their mission is to find “smoking gun” evidence that Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at production of weapons. They reportedly use “sensitive equipment” to measure levels of radioactivity and to gather evidence of nuclear weapons-related testing.

Black Hawk helicopters are used to ferry “commandos disguised as members of the Iranian military,” the paper reported, and they travel inside Iran in Iranian military vehicles.

The paper said the missions have been going on for years, facilitated thanks to Israel’s good relations with the semi-autonomous Kurds in northern Iraq. Of late, though, the scouting has been stepped up — focusing on the Parchin military base not far from Tehran, which has attracted UN attention (including IAEA suspicions that Iran has tried to cover up nuclear activities there), and an enrichment site at Fordow outside Qom.

The Sunday Times suggested that the cross-border operations might signify an imminent Israeli military strike. Prior to Israel’s strike at a Syrian reactor in 2007, it noted, Israeli troops carried out a clandestine mission to collect information at the site.

Israel’s leaders say a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat. Iranian leaders often demonize Israel. Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said he is willing to give sanctions and negotiations a few more months to deter Iran from trying to obtain nuclear weapons, but suggests that, if efforts fail, Israel could strike this year. Iran insists it is pursuing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, but warns it will strike back if attacked.

In Israel, surveys show that a majority oppose a solo Israeli attack on Iran without American military cooperation.

Retired Israeli military and intelligence leaders have advised against striking Iran, arguing, among other reasons, that Israel doesn’t have enough bomb shelters or gas masks to absorb a possible Iranian counterattack.





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Report:
Israeli soldiers search Iran for nuclear sites

Published: 03.25.12, 07:03 / Israel News
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...207259,00.html

Israel is secretly searching Iran for nuclear sites, Western intelligence elements told the Sunday Times. According to the report, Israeli soldiers travel through a northern Iraq base and pose as Iranian troops.


The forces are trying to find "a smoking gun" – evidence proving the Iranian nuclear program is military-oriented. (Ynet)




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03:53 25.03.12

Behind the scenes of Israel's
new submarine deal with Germany

Israel's agreement with Germany to buy a top-of-the-line submarine proves
that Chancellor Merkel is a true friend of Israel's, says ex-ambassador.

By Barak Ravid
http://www.haaretz.com/news/features...rmany-1.420551

Israel's deal with Germany to acquire three new submarines over the next six years represents more than just a boon to the Israeli navy's fleet. Last week's agreement between Israel and Germany suggests a surprisingly good rapport between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chancellor Angela Merkel at a time when relations are otherwise thought to be tense, according to a veteran diplomat involved in the deal.

Two new German-made Dolphin submarines are expected to cross the Mediterranean and join the Israel Navy's fleet within the next two years, under a deal reached previously between Israel and Germany. This Wednesday, after numerous stops and starts, another agreement was reached, whereby Germany will pay for one-third of the production costs of a third submarine, which is estimated at $400 million.

Present at the signing of the agreement in Berlin on Wednesday - along with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli Ambassador to Germany Yaakov Hadas - was Yoram Ben Zeev, the ambassador's predecessor in Berlin, who only recently left the German capital. Ben Zeev recalls numerous obstacles over the years that threatened to thwart the agreement.

At 67, Ben Zeev is a veteran diplomat who served for 40 years in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He took up his position in Berlin at the start of 2008 after more than a decade working in the United States - first as the consul in Los Angeles and later as head of the North America desk. During the years of the Oslo Accords, Ben Zeev was the coordinator of the peace negotiations on behalf of the Foreign Ministry. He maintained close relations with the German leadership, particularly officials in Merkel's bureau. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office at the end of March 2009, Ben Zeev had already been serving in Berlin for more than a year.

Netanyahu made his first visit to Berlin in August of that year, but even before he set foot on German soil the preparatory talks between his national security advisor, Uzi Arad, and Arad's German counterpart, Christoph Heusgen, hit a rocky patch. Arad demanded that the chancellor not bring up the issue of the settlements during the press conference after the meeting with Netanyahu. Heusgen rejected this request, and Arad responded by threatening that Netanyahu would cancel his visit.

"You know what? Cancel it," Heusgen reportedly charged back.

In the end, the visit was not canceled, and at the press conference following the meeting with Netanyahu, Merkel called upon Israel to freeze construction in the settlements immediately.

Despite this tense start, the meeting between Netanyahu and Merkel did prove fruitful, and Israel asked Germany to provide a sixth German-made submarine for its navy.

Germany had already delivered its first three Dolphin submarines to Israel at the end of the 1990s. The German government, then headed by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and subsequently by Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, funded most of their cost.

Later, under the leadership of former prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, Israel agreed on the acquisition of two additional submarines from Germany. These submarines are now being completed and are expected to join the Israeli fleet in 2013 and 2014. They are equipped with more advanced systems than their predecessors, and are thus able to spend longer periods underwater.

Germany agreed to pay for one-third of these submarines' production costs - without which Israel would not have been able to acquire the advanced submarines.

Foreign sources report that the German submarines are equipped to carry guided missiles made in Israel, which have a range of 1,500 kilometers and can be armed with nuclear warheads. According to these reports, the submarine fleet is intended to afford Israel second-strike capability in case of a nuclear attack. At a time when the diplomatic-security discourse is focused almost entirely on Iran's attempts to arm itself with nuclear weapons, the importance of the submarines is especially clear.

'Do you want it or not?'

During the August 2009 meeting between Netanyahu and Merkel, Netanyahu requested a sixth submarine, to be purchased under a similar agreement; the deal would cost Germany 135 million euros, as a grant to Israel. Netanyahu's argument for the submarine was operational: Israel, he claimed, needed a sixth submarine to maintain continuous naval activity throughout the year.

The chancellor agreed - but some Israeli officials pooh-poohed the deal.

The Israeli navy argued that it needed additional up-to-date missile ships more than it did another submarine. The Defense Ministry, meanwhile, criticized the high cost of the submarine and refused to pay for it from its own budget.

Ben Zeev says he was surprised to hear from a senior defense establishment figure at the time that there had been "no decision to invest in a sixth submarine." According to the former ambassador, "There were elements who opposed it and said it wasn't needed at all. The internal debate in Israel leaked to the Germans and they asked: 'What's going on? Do you want a submarine or don't you?'"

In May 2010 Ben Zeev met with Eyal Gabbai, the director general of the Prime Minister's Office at the time, who made it clear that the prime minister was still interested in the submarine deal. But by this point, other political factors had come into play.

Two months earlier, during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to Israel, a controversial tender was published for the construction of 1,600 housing units in Ramat Shlomo, located beyond the Green Line in Jerusalem. Along with Washington, Berlin was sharply critical of the agreement, and in coordination with the White House, Merkel phoned Netanyahu to voice her disapproval. Netanyahu's bureau leaked word of the conversation, along with the mendacious suggestion that Netanyahu had initiated the phone call with Merkel.

"This was a great disappointment in Germany," Ben Zeev recalls. "At every meeting Merkel would say it is necessary to stop Iran and the settlements in order to save the vision of two states. The Germans did not believe the prime minister [when he said he] had not known in advance about the regional planning committee's decision in the matter of Ramat Shlomo. This weighed very heavily on relations."

Two months later, when Gabbai attended a meeting in Berlin with Merkel's advisers to discuss the submarine, he received a clear message: German funding of the sixth submarine would be dependent on Israel's actions with regard to the settlements and peace talks with the Palestinians.

The leading opponents of the deal were the chairman of the Social Democratic Party, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (formerly the foreign minister ), and the chairman of the Green Party, Jurgen Tritten.

"Both of them demanded that here be a connection between the grant and progress in the peace process or an Israeli gesture to the Palestinians," says Ben Zeev, adding that their opposition delayed closing the deal.

"The Germans told us: 'We need to get [the deal] through Parliament; give us tools to deal with this," recalls Ben Zeev.

Netanyahu was aware of the German position, according to Ben Zeev: "This also came up in his talks with Merkel. He explained to the Germans that the Palestinians did not want to come to the negotiating table even after the freeze on building in the settlements."

In September of 2011, shortly after Germany helped thwart the Palestinian move to gain recognition as a state in the United Nations, another crisis erupted: In the midst of the mediation between Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Merkel learned that Israel had approved the building of 1,100 housing units in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, beyond the Green Line. The chancellor was furious. Germany's opposition parties renewed their opposition to the submarine deal in Parliament.

"Heusgen, Merkel's advisor, said to me: 'Transmit the message to Jerusalem - the chancellor needs to persuade the Bundestag to support the deal,'" Ben Zeev recalls.

Finally, Ben Zeev and Heusgen found a solution: Just weeks earlier Israel had frozen about $100 million in taxes it collected for the Palestinian Authority in response to the Authority's acceptance into the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. At the start of December 2011, Netanyahu's forum of eight senior ministers decided to release the money, which Israel had not been allowed to freeze in the first place. "The decision to release the Palestinian tax monies gave the Germans good enough tools vis-a-vis the parliament," relates Ben Zeev.

But meanwhile, numerous leaks to both German and Israeli media cast yet another shadow on the provision of the submarine. Ben Zeev recalls: "This was nearly routine - before a point of no return there would be an Israeli leak. Apparently someone was trying to sabotage the deal."

One report had to do with the German-made Israeli submarines crossing the Suez Canal or cruising in the Persian Gulf. "Foreign Minister [Guido] Westerwelle called me in for a meeting, took out a newspaper clipping and said to me: 'You are going to attack the Iranians.' Each time anew it was necessary to mollify and soothe. Every step forward we took a number of steps back," says Ben Zeev.

After so many opportunities for the deal to fall through, Ben Zeev sees the agreement reached Wednesday as a major achievement. Two months ago, when he left his post and returned to Israel, he received a personal letter of appreciation from Netanyahu. National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror brought him as a memento the secret cable in which he reported on the signing of the deal.

According to Ben Zeev, the deal proves that despite Merkel's criticism of Netanyahu's policy, she remains a true friend of Israel's. "In the end, responsibility for Israel's security is a policy principle in Germany and personal principle of Merkel's," says Ben Zeev. "With her, this overrides politics, personal tensions and any other consideration."






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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Israel ministers bracing for border marches

By DANIEL ESTRIN
Associated Press
Sunday, March 25, 2012 at 6:20 a.m.
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/articl...API/1203250607

An Israeli official says senior Cabinet ministers are holding a special session to discuss how to respond to marches toward Israel's borders announced by pro-Palestinian activists.

He spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because the meeting's agenda was confidential.

Activists in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt have planned March 30 marches near Israel's borders.

Last year, thousands of Arab protesters marched on Israel's frontiers, sparking clashes that killed at least 15.

The Israeli official said ministers will also discuss a U.N. committee's plan to investigate Israel's West Bank settlements. Some officials have urged barring the panel from entering Israel and the Palestinian territories.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

JERUSALEM (AP) - An Israeli official says senior Cabinet ministers are holding a special session to discuss how to respond to marches toward Israel's borders announced by pro-Palestinian activists.

He spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because the meeting's agenda was confidential.

Activists in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt have planned March 30 marches near Israel's borders.

Last year, thousands of Arab protesters marched on Israel's frontiers, sparking clashes that killed at least 15.

The Israeli official said ministers will also discuss a U.N. committee's plan to investigate Israel's West Bank settlements. Some officials have urged barring the panel from entering Israel and the Palestinian territories.





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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Sunday March 25, 2012

Israel bracing for violence ahead
of mass pro-Palestinian march
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/news...le.php?id=3659

Defense establishment is preparing for potential disturbances and border breaches on Friday as mass rally planned • Israel sends message to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority, warning that any attempted breach into sovereign Israeli territory will be met with a harsh response.

The defense establishment is making preparations for the Global March to Jerusalem, a mass demonstration scheduled for this Friday in which pro-Palestinian activists from the region are planning to march on Israel’s borders in a show of support for the Palestinians.


This Friday, March 30, is the day that Israeli Arabs mark Land Day, the day in 1976 that Palestinians called a general strike to protest Israel’s announcement it would expropriate land for settlements and security, and that has become a symbol of solidarity for the Palestinians.


Officials are preparing for potential disturbances along the borders with Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip. One defense official told Israel Hayom that the biggest threats appear to be from the Israel-Lebanon border, as members of terrorist group Hezbollah are expected to participate in the march, and from Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria.


Officials in the defense establishment are not ruling out potential disturbances along the Egyptian border, which could harm the already sensitive diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt. Considering the unrest in Syria and Bashar al-Assad’s efforts to maintain control there, in addition to rallies last year along the Syrian border on Nakba day and Naksa day [when Palestinians mark the creation of the state of Israel and the capture of east Jerusalem, respectively], officials are also keeping close watch on the Syrian border. Since last year’s protests, in which Israeli forces opened fire on demonstrators who breached the border with Syria, the Israel Defense Forces have improved their preparedness along the Syrian border, erecting fences there as well.


According to Arab media outlets, more than 50,000 protesters are expected to march in the Global March to Jerusalem.


Sources in the defense establishment claim that Iran has publicly supported the event, and has taken part in preparations for the march toward Israel’s borders. Sources say Iran’s involvement is proof of the radical Islamic nature of the event. Groups such as Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are also expected to take part in the event.


March organizers have said the event would be “non-violent,” but defense establishment officials fear those are false claims.


London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Israel sent a message to the Arab nations and to the Palestinians, warning of a severe response to anyone who tries to cross the border. According to the report, the message was relayed to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority, and emphasized that the events of last year’s Nakba and Naksa day marches, in which protesters broke through Israel’s border fence, would not be tolerated again.


“Israel, like any sovereign nation, will defend its borders,” an Israeli official said.


Despite the concern in Israel, Arab media outlets speculated that, in light of the current strife in Syria and the political situation in Egypt, there may be small rallies in some areas, but not large marches. A Lebanese report said that the Lebanese Army would allow protesters to march until the Beaufort castle, north of the Litani river, so as to avoid confrontation with Israeli troops.


During last year’s Nakba day rallies, dozens of Syrian protesters breached the border fence and infiltrated into Israel, creating mass disturbances in the Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams. One of the infiltrators even made his way to Jaffa after getting a ride to Tel Aviv from activists. He later turned himself in to police.






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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Sun Mar 25, 2012 16:55 pm (KSA) 13:55 pm (GMT)

Israeli spies scour Iran to find
‘smoking gun’ nuclear evidence

Sunday, 25 March 2012
By AL ARABIYA
http://english.alarabiya.net/article...25/203102.html

Western intelligence sources have uncovered an Israeli intelligence mission’s effort to spy on Iran in a bid to find “smoking gun” evidence that the Islamic republic was building a nuclear warhead, according to a report on Sunday.

Israel is using a permanent base in northern Iraq to launch its missions, which have been conducted on Iran for several years, The Sunday Times reported.[/b]

But in recent months, the Israeli spy operations have intensified. Their spy teams are using “sensitive equipment … to monitor the radioactivity and magnitude of explosives tests” being carried out at the Parchin military complex near Tehran, the newspaper reported.

Iran had previously denied access to the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), when it requested entry into Parchin during a recent investigation into its nuclear abilities.

“We’ve detected clean-up efforts recently in Parchin which might indicate that the Iranians are trying to hide evidence of warhead tests in preparation for a possible IAEA visit,” a “western source” told the newspaper.

The IAEA has previously voiced suspicions that a military nuclear capability is being developed at Parchin, while Iran has maintained its nuclear program is peaceful, and will only be used for civilian purposes.

“Israeli special forces are using Black Hawk helicopters to carry commandos disguised as members of the Iranian military and using Iranian military vehicles,” according to the report, citing Western sources.

“The Black Hawks can carry about 10 commandos in full gear and two pilots about 500 miles without refueling,” it added.

According to the sources, operations are also aimed at Fordow near the city of Qom where Iran says it is working on high-level enrichment. Although Tehran insists it is intended for peaceful purposes, the process could lead to military-grade purification.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly passed on new evidence to U.S. President Barack Obama about the Iranian nuclear program, some of which was a result of cross-border operations, the newspaper stated.

Cross-border operations by the Israelis in the past have been the precursor to a military strike, The Sunday Times noted.

“In September 2007 Israeli jets attacked a secret Syrian nuclear reactor built with the help of North Korean experts and financed by the Iranians.
“A short time before the attack, a group of Israeli soldiers carried out a cross-border intelligence operation to collect evidence of radioactivity.” it stated.

Iran’s nuclear program is reported to have three components: uranium enrichment, the Shahab-3 missile and weaponization – to fit the bomb and detonator to the missile. The program began 20 years ago but was stalled in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq “for fear of being the next in line,” the newspaper noted.

But in 2007, the program was reportedly being continued by Tehran.

“While the weaponization stopped, building ballistic missiles and the enrichment process continued,” the Western source told the newspaper.





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[The Flying Dutchman]

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02:33 25.03.12

Israel warns Lebanon authorities ahead of
planned Palestinian protests near border

On Nakba Day last year hundreds of people breached Israel's border with Syria,
although a repeat of that scenario is considered unlikely due to unrest in country.

By Barak Ravid, Avi Issacharoff
and Gili Cohen
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomac...order-1.420538

Israel has asked Lebanon, using intermediaries, to stop its residents from approaching the Israeli border on Friday as part of Land Day protests. The forum of eight senior cabinet ministers will consider security preparations in Israel and the West Bank when they meet today.

Protests are expected in the Gaza Strip, near the Erez border crossing, and at West Bank sites such as the Qalandiyah checkpoint, north of Jerusalem. But it is the prospect of people approaching from the Lebanese side of the border in the north that has security officials most worried.

On Nakba Day last May hundreds of people breached Israel's border with Syria. A repeat of that scenario for Land Day this year is considered unlikely because of the unrest in that country. Jordanian and Egyptian security forces will presumably patrol their respective borders and prevent infiltration from their territories into Israel.

Land Day marks the loss of Arab lands in the Galilee. On the first Land Day, in 1976, Israeli soldiers shot and killed six Arab demonstrators.

Evidence collected by Israeli authorities points to high-level Iranian involvement in planning the protests in Lebanon. A media adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Lebanon about a week ago and approached the Israeli border fence. Ahmadinejad met in Tehran recently with a large group of activists that is expected to participate in the events near the border.

The Israel Defense Forces is closely monitoring developments. Officials say an ongoing hunger strike by Palestinians in administrative detention could intensify the protests. The IDF is preparing for a scenario in which nonviolent protests spiral out of control.





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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Medvedev:
Annan mission Syria’s last chance to avoid civil war

March 25, 2012 - 13:54 AMT
http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/100284/

PanARMENIAN.Net - United Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Syria Kofi Annan mission is, perhaps, Syria’s last chance to avoid civil war, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday, March 25, RIA Novosti reported.

“We appreciate your efforts. Perhaps, it’s Syria’s last chance to avoid a bloody civil war,” Medvedev said at a meeting with Annan who is in Moscow now.




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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Human Rights Watch:
Syrian forces using civilians as shields

March 25, 2012 - 15:57 AMT
http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/100286/

PanARMENIAN.Net - Human Rights Watch accused Syrian forces Sunday of using civilians as human shields during recent military operations, as diplomatic pressure on President Bashar Assad's regime intensified, AP reported.

In a new report, the New York-based international watchdog said the Syrian army and pro-regime gunmen forced residents to march in front of them as they advanced on opposition-held areas in the northern Idlib province earlier this month.

The group cited witnesses who said it was clear that the purpose of the marching order was to protect the army from attack.

"By using civilians as human shields, the Syrian army is showing blatant disregard for their safety," said Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The Syrian army should immediately stop this abhorrent practice."

International condemnation and high-level diplomacy have failed to stop the year-old Syria crisis that the U.N. says has killed more than 8,000 people, many of them civilian protesters. In recent months, the uprising has transformed into an armed insurgency as army defectors and others say they want to bring down the regime by force.

Seeking to stem the violence, the U.S. and other key allies are considering providing Syrian rebels with communications help, medical aid and other "non-lethal" assistance.

President Barack Obama discussed the potential aid options Sunday in a lengthy private meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Both leaders are in Seoul, South Korea for a nuclear security summit.

The U.S., Europe and many Arab states have called on Assad to stand down, but Russia and China have protected Syria from condemnation by the U.N. Security Council.

Joint U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan is to discuss the crisis with Russian official in Moscow on Sunday. He is due to visit Beijing on Tuesday and Wednesday.





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[The Flying Dutchman]

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Russia’s Medvedev: Annan’s mission is Syria’s
last chance to avoid protracted civil war

By Associated Press
Updated: Sunday, March 25, 9:17 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...jZS_story.html

MOSCOW — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the U.N. and Arab League envoy to Syria on Sunday that his mission “may be the last chance for Syria to avoid a protracted bloody civil war” and promised Russia’s full support.

Kofi Annan was in Moscow for meetings with Russia’s president and foreign minister. He now travels to China, which along with Russia has shielded Syrian leader Bashar Assad from United Nations’ sanctions over his crackdown on an uprising. More than 8,000 people have been killed since the uprising began a year ago.

Syria is Moscow’s last remaining ally in the Middle East and is a major customer for Russia’s arms industry. But Moscow has recently shown impatience with Syria, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pointedly criticizing Assad for being too slow to implement long-needed reforms.

“We highly value your efforts,” Medvedev told Annan in the televised portion of their meeting. “This may be the last chance for Syria to avoid a protracted bloody civil war. Therefore we will provide any assistance at any level.”

Medvedev’s foreign policy adviser, Sergei Prikhodko, said in a briefing statement Saturday that Russia’s top priority for Syria is a swift halt to the violence and to persuade the opposition “to sit at the negotiating table with government representatives and reach a peaceful resolution of the crisis.”





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[TorahTips]

Flying Dutchman and others, thanks so much for these updates. We will never see this stuff on MSM.

Personally, I believe that Iran is testing a proxy war against Israel right now. Remember, they have Russian advisers and Russia is the master at proxy wars. I believe that Iran has infiltrated and probably controls many of the splinter groups in and around Israel. I believe that the actions involving Gaza are actually proxy operations by Iran.

When Israel takes decisive action again one or more of these groups, then there will be an outcry against them that will justify the launch of significant military attacks from nations surrounding them (even countries like Egypt). Their enemies will "hope" that a multinational action against them will prevent them from striking Iran directly because their military will be spread too thin.

I could be wrong, but I don't think Israel will use jets to take out Iranian facilities.

[Housecarl]

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...ian-peace-plan

Bloomberg News
Russia Supports UN’s Annan in ‘Last Chance’ Syrian Peace Plan
By Ilya Arkhipov on March 25, 2012

* 0 Comments

President Dmitry Medvedev pledged Russia’s support for Kofi Annan’s “last chance” mission to end Syria’s yearlong conflict and avert full-scale civil war.

“Probably this is the last chance to avoid long-lasting and bloody civil war,” Medvedev said at a meeting with Annan, a former United Nations Secretary-General, in Moscow today. “We will render our full support to the extent Russia is capable of. We hope your mission will have positive results.”

Russia blames the fighting largely on the armed opposition, though it has criticized President Bashar al-Assad’s government for mistakes made during the crisis.

Efforts to end the conflict have so far failed, with Russia and China twice blocking UN Security Council resolutions aimed at removing Assad. Last week, the world body agreed a non- binding statement supporting Annan’s mission to agree a ceasefire and access for humanitarian supplies. Assad’s battle to preserve his family’s four-decade hold on power has claimed more than 8,000 lives, the UN estimates.

“A cease-fire in Syria will be difficult to achieve without blocking military and political support for the opposition from abroad,” Sergei Prikhodko, Medvedev’s foreign policy aide, told reporters in Moscow earlier on Friday.

Medvedev met Annan at Vnukovo airport near Moscow before taking off to South Korea for a nuclear security summit due to be attended by about 50 world leaders. Tomorrow Medvedev will meet U.S. President Barack Obama to discuss the conflict in Syria, the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and missile defenses in South Korea.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ilya Arkhipov in Moscow at iarkhipov@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net

[Housecarl]

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...01d9bbe5a70095

Battles in Syria as Russia warns of 'last chance'

By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY, Associated Press – 1 hour ago

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian forces attacked flashpoint areas Sunday, carrying out raids and clashing with rebels as President Bashar Assad's allies in Russia said the country may be facing its last chance for peace.

Syrian activists reported clashes in Daraa, the southern province where the uprising began last March.

A spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army, Muneef al-Zaeem, said government troops invaded the town of Nawa, with a population of 100,000.

International condemnation and high-level diplomacy have failed to stop the year-old Syria crisis. The U.N. says more than 8,000 people have been killed, many of them civilians. In recent months, the uprising has transformed into an armed insurgency as army defectors and others say they want to bring down the regime by force.

The U.S., Europe and many Arab states have called on Assad to stand down, but Russia and China have protected Syria from condemnation by the United Nations Security Council. Syria is Moscow's last remaining ally in the Middle East and is a major customer for Russia's arms industry, but Russia has recently shown impatience with Assad.

"This may be the last chance for Syria to avoid a protracted bloody civil war," Medvedev told Kofi Annan, the U.N. and Arab League envoy to Syria, during a meeting in Moscow. "Therefore we will provide any assistance at any level."

Annan travels next to China.

Seeking to stop the violence, the U.S. and other key allies are considering providing Syrian rebels with communications help, medical aid and other "non-lethal" assistance.

President Barack Obama discussed the aid options Sunday in a lengthy private meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The leaders are in Seoul, South Korea, for a nuclear security summit.

As the conflict turns increasingly violent, Human Rights Watch accused Syrian forces of using civilians as human shields during recent military operations.

In a new report Sunday, the New York-based international watchdog said the Syrian army and pro-regime gunmen forced residents to march in front of them as they advanced on opposition-held areas in the northern Idlib province earlier this month.

The group cited witnesses who said it was clear that the purpose of the marching order was to protect the army from attack.

"By using civilians as human shields, the Syrian army is showing blatant disregard for their safety," said Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The Syrian army should immediately stop this abhorrent practice."

AP writer Dale Gavlak contributed to this report from Amman, Jordan.

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Related articles

* Russia Supports UN's Annan in 'Last Chance' Syrian Peace Plan
Bloomberg - 1 hour ago
* Medvedev: Annan's Mission Is Syria's Last Chance
ABC News - 2 hours ago
* Syrian army pounds battered Homs
Montreal Gazette - 17 hours ago

[Housecarl]

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...82O0BE20120325

Bamako returning to normal, Mali's north threatened



By David Lewis and Tiemoko Diallo

BAMAKO | Sun Mar 25, 2012 12:05pm EDT

BAMAKO (Reuters) - Life in Bamako returned slowly to normal on Sunday after most mutinous soldiers left the streets, but rebels exploiting the army coup in Mali pushed toward three northern towns.

Gas stations and market stalls reopened in the capital after a decrease in the gunfire and looting that followed Wednesday's overnight coup. The military junta that ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure has ordered all soldiers back to barracks.

"Compared to those other days, things are calm. We can get on with our lives a bit," said Bouba Traore, drinking tea with friends under a tree. "I'm not sure we can say it is completely normal though. We'll have to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday for that."

Traffic police returned to busy intersections and workers were back on building sites for the first time in days. At the Medine market, trucks were unloading mountains of yams, onions and tomatoes from the growing regions of Sikasso and Segou.

Last week's coup was born out of frustration among mainly low-ranking soldiers over a lack of equipment to battle Tuareg-led rebels fighting for independence for the vast desert north.

While the rebels were strengthened by men and arms returning from Libya's war, Malian soldiers complained they had been dispatched to the front short of everything from weapons to food, leading to several routs of the government army.

Despite international isolation, and just a month before Toure was due to step down anyway, the junta has said that it had to seize power to restore order before polls.

A few hundred pro-coup demonstrators took to the streets of the capital late on Saturday. A coalition of political parties and civil society groups opposed to the coup were due to announce their planned response later on Sunday.

In the north, separatist MNLA rebels and Ansar Eddine, a group that wants to impose sharia law in Mali, both have forces surrounding the town of Kidal, diplomats and residents said.

A Kidal resident reported gunfire on Sunday morning for the second day in a row. A diplomat said loyalist troops in the town had held talks with both groups but the outcome was not clear.

"Kidal is surrounded," said an official who works in the north and who asked not to be named. "The army is outnumbered. It is just a question of time for the capture of the town."

Immediately after the coup, soldiers abandoned Anefis, a major base southwest of Kidal. Military sources said the junta had set up a regional command post in Gao that was scrambling to reinforce positions around the northern town.

Mali's coup reinforced regional and Western worries that the Sahel-Sahara band in West Africa is becoming a no-man's land where Islamists, rebels and smugglers can operate freely.

Mali is at the heart of this zone and risks losing millions of dollars in Western military aid if the junta clings to power.

While Mali had been criticized for a lax approach to security, the disruption caused by the coup is likely to have a more significant impact, analysts say.

"The coup has created excellent conditions for al Qaeda to entrench itself in Mali with minimal interference and is probably the greatest gift possible for those seeking to create the new nation of Azawad," Andrew McGregor, a security expert, wrote in a report for the Jamestown Foundation.

"Unless the internal collapse within the armed forces can quickly be reversed, both AQIM (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) and the MNLA (Azawad National Liberation Movement) will score what may prove to be irreversible gains against a state rendered largely defenseless by its own military," he added.

(Additional reporting by Adama Diarra; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Alistair Lyon)

Related News

* U.N.-African delegation tells Mali junta to go
Sat, Mar 24 2012
* Mali junta leader Sanogo denies counter-coup rumors
Sat, Mar 24 2012
* Soldiers loot in Mali after coup, AU says president safe
Fri, Mar 23 2012
* Soldiers say they have seized power in Mali
Thu, Mar 22 2012
* Mali soldiers attack palace in coup bid
Thu, Mar 22 2012

[Housecarl]

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use....
http://www.rnw.nl/english/bulletin/m...oup-disarray-0

Mali army claims upper hand over rebels amid coup disarray
Published on 25 March 2012 - 2:44pm

Malian soldiers on Sunday repelled a fresh attack by Tuareg rebels in the north following a coup as the junta struggled to restore order after ousting the west African nation's president.

The Tuareg had said they were advancing on the key northern town of Kidal, but a military official in the town told AFP the rebels had been pushed back.

"Today we repelled an attack by Islamist rebels," a military official in Kidal told AFP on condition of anonymity, referring to one of two rebel movements fighting for independence of the traditional homeland of the desert nomads.

The desert tribes in January launched their first rebellion since 2009 in a decades-old demand for independence, boosted by the return of heavily-armed battle-hardened fighters from Libya who served late dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Their forces overwhelmed the weak Malian army, and scores of soldiers are said to have been killed and captured, causing anger among troops over the way the conflict is being handled by the government.

Angry soldiers revolted in Bamako Wednesday, leading to a full-blown coup early Thursday as they seized government buildings and forced the president to flee.

Junta leader Captain Amadou Sanogo has invited the rebels to hold talks and begin a "peace process" as he tries to restore order.

Bamako was tense on Sunday with few people venturing out as security forces patrolled the streets.

Banks and most shops were shut in the usually bustling city, although some petrol stations have reopened after being asked to do so by the junta.

President Amadou Toumani Toure's whereabouts are unknown, but he is believed to be safe under the protection of his loyalist paratrooper guard, while 14 members of his government detained by the putschists have threatened a hunger strike.

"There are 14 of us in a room of 12 square metres, sleeping three to a mattress. Our basic rights are being violated," said a message from one of the officials sent to AFP.

They are being held at the Kati military barracks outside Bamako where Sanogo is seeking to reinforce the impression of control, holding meetings and making several public declarations.

He met French ambassador Christian Rouyer and other dignitaries on Saturday, state television reported, but the junta has been largely frozen out by the international community in a chorus of rebukes and suspension of aid.

On Sunday, Nairobi announced that the Kenyan and Zimbabwean foreign ministers were evacuated by a chartered flight after being stranded in Mali following the coup.

After widespread looting by soldiers in the coup aftermath, the junta urged "all those in uniform to report to their barracks for an inspection" and reminded unit commanders they were responsible for their men.

On Saturday Sanogo took to the television to show he was still alive and douse rumours of a counter-attack by loyalist troops.

The Tuareg rebels said in the wake of the coup they would continue their offensive, and The Islamist rebel group Ansar Dine, or Defenders of Faith in Arabic, said Saturday its fighters had surrounded Kidal.

"Thanks to Allah the almighty and his blessings, we will soon take our land in Kidal," said a statement from the group.

While Ansar Dine is demanding the imposition of Islamic law, the other rebel group, the Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA) has distanced itself from religious objectives.

Mali will on Monday will mark the 21st anniversary of the last coup, when Toure led the overthrow of dictator Moussa Traore and steered the country to its first democratic election a year later for which he is considered a hero.

After Mali's democratic advances in the past two decades, Thursday's coup alarmed the international community which reacted with swift condemnation.

The African Union temporarily suspended Mali, while Europe and Canada froze aid and the United States has threatened to follow suit.

A joint mission from the African Union and Economic Community of West African States met representatives of the junta on Friday, according to Mali state television, without giving further details.

ECOWAS heads of state will hold an emergency meeting in Abidjan on Tuesday, the day the junta has called for civil servants to return to work.
© ANP/AFP

[Housecarl]

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use....
http://www.france24.com/en/20120325-...-sanogo-bamako

Latest update: 25/03/2012 - coups - Mali - military

Confusion reigns in wake of Mali coup d’etat

The streets of Bamako were deserted Sunday in the wake of the coup d’etat. The coup leader said on state TV that the putschists were in control, but some soldiers were still looting and firing off volleys in the capital, terrifying residents.
By FRANCE 24 (video)



AFP - Bamako's main market was a shadow of its normal bustling self, shops were shuttered and people preferred to stay home days after Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure was ousted in a coup.

"People are scared to go out," said schoolgirl Kady Kante, admitting with a nervous laugh that she too was a bit scared to leave her home but did not want to miss out on a shopping trip with a friend.

Kady, trying out necklaces at one of the few open stalls to the sound of the local Mandingo music, was wearing a shirt printed in 2010 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the west African country's independence.

But on Thursday, troops angry with the government's handling of the fight against Tuareg rebels in the north seized government buildings and forced Toure to flee.

Coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo insisted on state television that the putschists were in control of the situation, but some soldiers were still looting and firing off volleys in the capital, terrifying residents.

Bamako's streets were largely deserted, thanks in part to dwindling petrol supplies.

Becaye Soukoule, a trader in his late 20s, chatted with friends at the market but was not ready to open his spare parts shop. "We're scared that they will come and steal things," he said.

The coup leaders also issued a statement Saturday calling on soldiers to return to barracks and reminding unit commanders they were responsible for their men.

With petrol running short, soldiers urged filling station owners to open up for business.

But many local people were still too shaken by the breakdown in law and order that followed the coup as soldiers -- and other opportunists -- took advantage of the confusion.

Dramane Drago decided to open his hardware store Saturday only to find that the customers were not coming. Summing up the atmosphere, the 50-year-old trader said: "It's calm and it's precarious."

That precariousness was most keenly felt at sites where soldiers were still controlling access: the state television station ORTM and the main roads in and out of the capital.

The banks were closed, and any business to be done in the city would have to be completed before 6:00 pm because of a dusk-to-dawn curfew announced by the army.

"Yesterday (Friday) there was shooting," said Ibrahima Diallo, who had come to visit relatives in the working-class district of Bagadadji, in the centre of Bamako near the market and the city's main mosque.

But Diallo's main concern was how to get petrol for his moped.

With most stations still closed, black market sellers were making a killing, selling the petrol for more than double its normal price, he said.

For Diallo, a young man looking for work, that was too steep for him.

Some stations were beginning to reopen Saturday under guard by soldiers, and 20 bikers could be seen queued up at one of them.

But the station worker made it clear that stocking up would be difficult. "The reserves here, it's all we've got," he said.

Another employee confided that other filling stations had decided to stay closed because they had been robbed by soldiers.

The new military rulers have called on people to return to work on Tuesday.

Kady, for one, hopes it will be business as usual at the market by then. "Tuesday, inch'Allah (God willing)," she said.

African Union suspends Mali
REUTERS - The African Union said on Friday it had suspended Mali's membership after mutinous soldiers staged a coup against President Amadou Toumani Toure this week.

"(The) council decided Mali should be suspended from further participation in all its activities until effective restoration of constitutional order is achieved without delay," Paul Lolo, chairman of the African Union's Peace and Security Council, said.

*
Mutinous soldiers loot Mali's capital after coup
MALI
Mutinous soldiers loot Mali's capital after coup
*
African Union suspends Mali over military coup
MALI
African Union suspends Mali over military coup
*
Mali president and ministers 'safe', coup leaders say
MALI
Mali president and ministers 'safe', coup leaders say

Date created : 25/03/2012

[Housecarl]

For links see article source...
Posted for fair use....
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...otiations.html

Obama Warns North Korea Rocket Jeopardizes Future Negotiations
By Julianna Goldman, Margaret Talev and Sangwon Yoon - Mar 25, 2012 8:21 AM PT

President Barack Obama warned North Korea its plan to fire a long-range rocket undermined prospects for future negotiations as the military in Seoul said Kim Jong Un’s forces had moved the missile to its launch site.

Obama, who peered through binoculars into the North as he toured the Demilitarized Zone yesterday, spoke at a meeting in the South Korean capital with President Lee Myung Bak. He’ll hold talks today with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao as they gather for a nuclear security summit aimed at keeping fissile material out of the hands of terrorists.
Enlarge image U.S. President Barack Obama
U.S. President Barack Obama
U.S. President Barack Obama

Pool/Yonhap News via Bloomberg

U.S. President Barack Obama, center left, uses binoculars as he looks at North Korea from Observation Post Ouellette in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom, South Kore.

U.S. President Barack Obama, center left, uses binoculars as he looks at North Korea from Observation Post Ouellette in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom, South Kore. Source: Pool/Yonhap News via Bloomberg
Enlarge image Obama Warns NKorea Rocket Jeopardizes Future Negotiations
Obama Warns NKorea Rocket Jeopardizes Future Negotiations
Obama Warns NKorea Rocket Jeopardizes Future Negotiations

Yonhap News via Bloomberg

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and Lee Myung Bak, South Korea's president, attend a joint news conference after their meeting at the presidential office in Seoul, South Korea.

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and Lee Myung Bak, South Korea's president, attend a joint news conference after their meeting at the presidential office in Seoul, South Korea. Source: Yonhap News via Bloomberg

Kim, who took over when his father Kim Jong Il died in December, is putting at risk 240,000 metric tons of food aid from the U.S. even as many of his people go hungry. Obama, who faces an election this year, is using his trip to increase pressure on North Korea and Iran over their nuclear programs.

The rocket launch “would constitute a direct violation” of North Korea’s commitments and obligations and “seriously undermine the prospects of future negotiations,” Obama said. “North Korea will achieve nothing by threats or by provocations.”

There are 28,500 U.S. forces in South Korea, facing off against a North Korean military that has placed 70 percent of its ground forces within 90 kilometers of the DMZ, including about 250 long-range artillery systems capable of striking the Seoul area, according to U.S. Forces Korea.
‘Weapons Technology’

“Long-range rocket launches are worrisome because they could improve North Korea’s weapons technology, serving as a chance to test missile systems that can carry nuclear warheads,” said Koh Yu Hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.

Obama said during his news conference with Lee that he will press China’s Hu in their meeting to take a tougher stance toward North Korea to fulfill its international obligations and move toward denuclearization. North Korea is dependent on energy and food assistance from China, which has sought to support its neighbor to avoid unrest that could hinder trade and prompt a wave of refugees across its border.

“My suggestion to China is that how they communicate their concerns to North Korea should probably reflect the fact that the approach they’ve taken over the last several decades hasn’t led to a fundamental shift in North Korea’s behavior,” Obama said.

Obama met Lee at the presidential Blue House less than two weeks after the two nations’ free-trade pact came into effect and as their militaries continue war games aimed at deterring any aggression from the regime in Pyongyang.

“The contrast between South Korea and North Korea could not be clearer,” Obama told troops at Camp Bonifas on the edge of the DMZ. “Both in terms of freedom but also in terms of prosperity.”
Guard Posts

The president stopped for about 10 minutes at Observation Post Ouellette, within 100 yards (90 meters) of the demarcation line that was drawn at the end of the Korean War in 1953. U.S. and South Korean troops make foot patrols from the post, which has four guard towers and underground bunkers.

Obama looked into North Korea, where guard posts, the industrial complex at Gaeseong and sparsely vegetated hillsides and fields are visible from Ouellette. South Korean manufacturers employ North Korean workers at the Gaeseong complex, which has kept running even as political tensions rise.

It was like peering into “a time warp” of a half-century of missed progress, Obama said at his press conference with Lee.

A North Korean flag flew at half mast in the distance as the totalitarian regime yesterday marked 100 days since the death of Kim Jong Il.
‘Smear Campaign’

Lee and Obama said they weren’t prepared to make strategic assessments of Kim Jong Un. Obama added that North Korea’s long- term objectives weren’t clear and it was difficult to see “who’s calling the shots” in the country.

North Korea and Iran aren’t participants in the two-day Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, where the focus will be on preventing radioactive material from getting into the hands of terror groups. The legacy of the Soviet Union’s breakup, inadequate atomic stockpile controls and the proliferation of nuclear-fuel technology mean the world may be awash with unaccounted-for weapons ingredients, ripe to be picked up by terrorists.

North Korea described the event as a platform for an “international smear campaign” against it, according to a statement on March 23 carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

South Korea was the U.S.’s seventh-largest goods trading partner, with $88 billion in total for 2010, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Pressure on Iran

The free-trade agreement between the two nations is the biggest for the U.S. in almost two decades. It will cut about 80 percent of tariffs between them and may increase U.S. exports as much as $10.9 billion in the first year it’s in full effect, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission.

This is Obama’s third visit to South Korea since taking office in 2009. Previous U.S. presidents to visit the DMZ were Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

He is also using his meeting with world leaders to ratchet up economic pressure on Iran in an effort to persuade it to abandon any illicit part of its nuclear program. The U.S., Europe and Israel have accused Iran of seeking the capability to build a nuclear weapon. Iran says its program is for civilian energy and medical research.
Launch Site

North Korea’s announcement of a mid-April rocket launch will make it difficult to move forward with a Feb. 29 U.S. aid deal and broader efforts to get the regime back to negotiations on its nuclear weapons program, Obama said. The South Korean and U.S. militaries are aware that North Korea has moved the fuselage of a long-range missile to an indoor launch site at Tongchang-ri in the nation’s northwest, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters in Seoul yesterday.

The planned rocket launch is designed to put a satellite into orbit and is “an issue quite different” from the Feb. 29 agreement, an unidentified spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement on KCNA on March 23.

North Korea will “inevitably” be compelled to take countermeasures against “any sinister attempt” to hinder its planned rocket launch, the spokesman said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Julianna Goldman in Washington at jgoldman6@bloomberg.net; Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net; Sangwon Yoon in Seoul at syoon32@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net

[Housecarl]

Hummm....

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stori...191202/1/.html

Unclear who is running North Korea, says Obama
Posted: 25 March 2012 2359 hrs
US President Barack Obama looks through binoculars to see North Korea from Observation Post Ouellette in the Demilitarised Zone in Panmunjom, South Korea. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Photos 1 of 1

US President Barack Obama looks through binoculars to see North Korea from Observation Post Ouellette in the Demilitarised Zone in Panmunjom, South Korea. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)


Related News
• N. Korea takes rocket main body to launch site
• North Korea's rocket plan 'provocative', says UN chief
• UN chief warns N. Korea rocket launch could affect aid

SEOUL: US President Barack Obama said on Sunday it was unclear who was "calling the shots" in North Korea under its new young leader and stepped up demands for Pyongyang to abort its planned rocket launch.

Obama stood with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak to present a united front against the communist North, hours after staring into what he termed a "time warp" as he visited the last land border left over from the Cold War.

The US leader also had some unusually public criticism of China for its failure to induce its North Korean ally to open its nuclear programme to inspections and end years of "provocations" and "bad behaviour".

"It is hard to have an impression of Kim Jong-Un, in part because the situation in North Korea still appears unsettled," Obama said of the man proclaimed "great successor" after the death of his father Kim Jong-Il last December.

"It is not clear exactly who is calling the shots and what their long-term objectives are," he told a press conference, in Washington's frankest assessment yet of Pyongyang's murky power politics.

His comments deepened speculation about the elevation of Jong-Un, aged in his late 20s, and raised the alarming prospect of a power struggle in a volatile and erratic nation armed with nuclear weapons.

What was clear, Obama said, was that the North's leaders "have not yet made that strategic pivot where they say to themselves, 'What we are doing isn't working. It is leading our country and our people down a dead end'."

The president earlier got an up-close look into the isolated Stalinist state when he climbed a cliff-top observation post 25 metres from the demarcation line that has divided the Koreas for six decades.

After squinting through high-powered binoculars from behind a bulletproof screen over a border guarded by mines, barbed wire and tank traps, Obama said he had stared into a "time warp".

He then turned towards a huge North Korean flag flapping in the stiff breeze at half-mast to mark the 100th day since Kim Jong-Il's death, and to a horizon dotted with rudimentary buildings peeking through the haze.

The visit, during which Obama told some of the 28,500 US troops guarding South Korea that they stood at "freedom's frontier", was meant as a firm show of unity with Seoul and appeared partly aimed at Kim Jong-Un.

Obama, in South Korea for a 53-nation nuclear security summit, joined Lee to stiffen a call for North Korea to halt a satellite launch next month to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

"North Korea will achieve nothing by threats or by provocations," Obama said, adding that Pyongyang would deepen its isolation by firing off a rocket.

Washington says this would really be a missile test that would flout UN resolutions and scupper a recently agreed US food aid deal.

Lee was equally blunt.

"President Obama and I have agreed to respond sternly to any provocations and threats by the North and to continually enhance the firm South Korea-US defence readiness," he said.

Obama also delivered an unusually blunt critique of China's unsuccessful attempts to rein in its volatile neighbour, which has defied the world for years by developing nuclear weapons despite a punishing battery of sanctions.

His comment came a day before he is due to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao for talks in Seoul, and appeared to be another sign of Obama's increasing frustration with Beijing as he sets his sights on a second White House term.

Though he said he sympathised with China's desire for stability on its border, Obama argued that efforts to "paper over" North Korea's repeated belligerence and defiance had not worked.

"My suggestion to China is that how they communicate their concerns to North Korea should probably reflect the fact that the approach they have taken over the last several decades has not led to a fundamental shift in North Korea's behaviour," Obama said.

He also delivered a scathing assessment of life in North Korea, saying it was decades behind its southern neighbour and would remain so until it made a "strategic" pivot and accepted offers of help in return for ending its nuclear programme.

Obama said the North was guilty of a long cycle of provocations designed to win concessions from the West.

"President Lee and I have agreed from the start of our relationship that we are going to break that pattern," Obama said.

- AFP/de

[Housecarl]

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use....
http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-ne...korean-threat/

Obama, Lee Present United Front Against Possible North Korean Threat
Posted Sunday, March 25th, 2012 at 11:40 am

U.S. President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak met in Seoul Sunday and presented a united front against any possible threat from North Korea.

At a joint news conference after their meeting, Mr. Obama said North Korea would achieve nothing by making threats and said the country would only deepen its isolation if it carries out an announced rocket launch next month.

Mr. Lee agreed, calling the planned long-range launch a provocative action that threatens global peace and is against U.N. resolutions and an agreement with the U.S.

The comments came on the eve of an international nuclear security summit that will likely be overshadowed by North Korea's announcement that it will launch a satellite into space using a long-range rocket as part of celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the April 15 birth of its late founder and President Kim Il Sung.

Mr. Obama also said China is “rewarding bad behavior” by “turning a blind eye to deliberate provocations” by North Korea. He urged China to use its influence to encourage North Korea to halt such behavior.

President Obama said he plans to discuss the matter with Chinese President Hu Jintao during a meeting in Seoul on Monday.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Obama visited the demilitarized zone dividing the two Koreas. The president, standing behind thick, bulletproof glass peered across the border into North Korea with the help of powerful binoculars.

He also met with American troops guarding the DMZ and told them they are a long line of soldiers who have enabled South Korea to prosper. He told the soldiers that South Korean President Lee Myung-bak had once confided he was able to rise from poverty as a child, to a successful career, thanks in large part to America's military aid and support.

President Obama visited the DMZ hours after arriving in South Korea, flying into at a U.S. air base south of Seoul. He will attend this week's global summit on nuclear security while in South Korea. He also plans various bilateral meetings with world leaders on the sidelines of the summit.

The North's nuclear ambitions, along with those of Iran and other countries will be the focus of the leaders of more than 50 nations at the summit, which begins Monday.

The U.N., U.S., European Union, Russia and Japan have warned North Korea that its scheduled rocket launch is in violation of U.N. resolutions, and urged Pyongyang to abandon the plan. Even North Korea's ally China has expressed concern that such a launch would undermine stability in the region.

The United States has said the launch would cancel an agreement to send North Korea a large shipment of U.S. food aid in exchange for halting its nuclear and long-range missile programs.

[Housecarl]

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use....

North Africa
March 25, 2012
Islamists Win Majority on Egypt's Constitution-Drafting Panel
VOA News

Egyptian Islamists have won a majority of seats on a 100-member panel assigned with drafting a new constitution that secular and liberal groups fear will boost the role of Islam in society.

Egypt's official MENA news agency published the names of the panel members on Sunday, a day after they were selected in a joint session of parliament's lower house and senate, both dominated by Islamists.

Of the 50 lawmakers selected for the constituent assembly, Egyptian media say 37 are Islamists. The other 50 panel members selected from civil society also include enough Islamists to give them a majority in the 100-seat assembly.

Egyptian liberal and leftist lawmakers from minority parties boycotted parliament's selection of the panel, in protest at what they call Islamist attempts to monopolize the constitution-drafting process. The liberals and leftists fear the new constitution will ignore their concerns and values.

The constituent assembly is due to hold its first meeting on Wednesday. A key goal of Egypt's new charter will be to define the balance of power between the Islamist-dominated parliament and the post of president, formerly held by the all-powerful Hosni Mubarak until a popular uprising toppled him last year.

An Egyptian military council that took over from Mubarak has been exercising executive powers since the February 2011 revolution, with the help of an army-appointed Cabinet. The role of Egypt's military in the country's political system is another issue expected to be addressed by the new constitution.

Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
Related Articles

* Thousands of Egyptians demonstrate on March 24, 2012, as they carry the coffin of a 13 year old boy who was shot dead on March 23 during clashes between Egyptian forces and football fans in Port Said.
1 Killed, 68 Wounded in Egypt Football Clashes

Al-Masry soccer club banned for 2 seasons, Port Said Stadium closed for three years in response to deadly soccer riot last month

* Clinton Clears $1.3 Billion in Aid to Egypt
* Coptic Pope Laid to Rest as Transition Looms

[TorahTips]

As Commander-In-Chief I don't think I would be so quick to admit that my own Military Intelligence Network was not capable of determining who was in charge of a country. That kinda makes us look incompetent.

[Housecarl]

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use....
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news...71_107684.html

03-25-2012 23:15
Nuclear Security Summit opens today

‘Nuclear terrorism is not impossible’

By Park Si-soo

The Seoul Nuclear Security Summit will start today for a two-day run, during which leaders from 58 countries and international organizations will adopt concrete measures to prevent any weapons-use nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists.

The summit is the largest-scale and highest-level meeting that Korea has ever hosted. Participating leaders include President Lee Myung-bak, host of the summit, U.S. President Barrack Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Japanese Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko.

Heads of the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the European Union and Interpol will also attend the meeting to contribute to reinforcing the world’s nuclear security.

The leaders are accompanied by nearly 10,000 delegates and reporters, according to the summit’s preparatory secretariat.

Lee will chair a general meeting Tuesday, playing a key role to address the meeting’s key agenda items: nuclear threat responses, physical protection of nuclear material and facilities, illicit nuclear trafficking prevention, and strengthening the management of radiological materials.

Other major issues include nuclear forensics and the protection of sensitive information.

The Seoul Communique, will be announced at the end of the summit by Lee.

Officials said the document will include political pledges to “significantly reduce” stocks of weapons-use nuclear materials, particularly highlyenriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium, and detailed action plans.

It will also include putting into force the 2005 Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM), strengthening education and training through the establishment of Centers of Excellence, and the conversion of nuclear reactors from running on HEU to lowenriched uranium.

“Nuclear security threats are real and immediate, and must be addressed,” said IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano.

Experts say South Korea is not free from nuclear terrorism, citing the country’s closeness to nuclear-armed North Korea.

“I would say it is not impossible,” said Graham Allison, a professor at the John F.Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

“How could a nuclear bomb explode in Seoul? I think it would come from North Korea or would come in a covered mechanism.” Experts also voice concerns about the vulnerability of radioactive materials stored at civilian facilities.

The amount of plutonium stored at civilian facilities worldwide is enough to make more than 30,000 nuclear weapons, according to Frank von Hippel, a nuclear physicist and professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University.

As of mid 2011, the scientist said, the global stock of HEU amounts to about 1,400 tons, which is enough for more than 5,000 nuclear weapons. The global stock of separated plutonium amounts to about 500 tons as of mid 2011, he added.

A sense of urgency to reinforce security of civilian facilities with fissile materials has been felt in recent years as the number of attempts to steal weapons-use nuclear material has increased.

In 2009 alone, there were 215 attempts to steal material reserved for power generation, medical or other commercial purposes, according to the IAEA.

pss@koreatimes.co.kr

[Housecarl]

Hummm....

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use....
http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/arc...-leap-day-deal

Rockets and the Leap Day Deal

By Jeffrey | 23 March 2012 | 12 Comments

I am beginning to understand how the US-DPRK “Leap Day Deal” came apart .

You have to hand it to the North Koreans. They screwed the Obama Administration.

But the Obama Administration didn’t do itself any favors, either.

1.

To understand what happened, the most important observation relates to process.

I had, somewhat carelessly, assumed that the unilateral DPRK and US statements represented some sort of agreement — not least because overeager officials called it the Leap Day Deal. A deal, however, is something one negotiates — which is to say actual human beings sit in a little room and argue about specific words to appear on paper. In theory, that process allows the two parties to determine that they really are in agreement. But that isn’t what happened at all!

Rather, the process went something like this. Glyn Davies and Ford Hart show up at the Westin in Beijing on February 22 for “bilateral exploratory talks” with Kim Gye Gwan et al on February 23. The talks go surprisingly well — the two sides talk for six and half hours that Thursday, including a substantive dinner.

They meet again on the morning of February 24 for another couple of hours, before the US side lunches with Wu Daiwei and then heads home. One of the officials, probably Davies, will later describe the unexpectedly long meeting with the North Koreans as “extra innings.” You can recreate the agenda yourself by looking at the press statements by Davies on 22, 23 and 24 (am|pm) February, with an assist from the 29 February background briefing.

Now, Davies and Kim do not reach an agreement in Beijing, nor do they draft any kind of agreed statement. Before Davies heads home (with obligatory stops in Seoul and Tokyo), a reporter asks him whether the parties achieved a “breakthrough.” Davis says:
“Oh my goodness, no. I think the word breakthrough goes way too far, folks. I wouldn’t want anyone using the word breakthrough.”

And then Leap Day happens.

On February 29, the North Koreans issue a statement that basically summarizes the discussion Beijing, ending with this little zinger:

The DPRK, upon request by the U.S. and with a view to maintaining positive atmosphere for the DPRK-U.S. high-level talks, agreed to a moratorium on nuclear tests, long-range missile launches, and uranium enrichment activity at Nyongbyon and allow the IAEA to monitor the moratorium on uranium enrichment while productive dialogues continue.

Now, of course, the DPRK agreed to no such thing in Beijing. More on that in a moment.

The Administration responds with simultaneously releases its own statement (the time stamp on the US statement is actually slightly before that on the KCNA item), presumably the sort of things that the US had indicated might be forthcoming if the DPRK took what US officials called “pre-steps.” (Apparently, only the Bush Administration insisted on preconditions for negotiations.)

2.

The DPRK and US statements, however, contain significant differences.

Some reporters immediately notice those differences and start asking questions in both a 29 February background briefing and in Toria Nuland’s 1 March press briefing. One reporter, for instance, asks the anonymous senior official, probably Davies, why the DPRK statement didn’t make any reference to the reprocessing facility at Yongbyon. Senior Official One say he doesn’t know:

The negotiating record’s clear on that. We did talk about that. We expect that the IAEA will also confirm the disablement of that reactor and associated facilities. I can’t speak to why they didn’t include it; these were, after all, unilateral statements that each side made, and that is an issue that we will clearly have to come back on. But there’s no doubt in our mind that they’ve agreed to that, and we will expect that that will be addressed … [Emphasis added.]

Let’s look at that claim again: “I can’t speak to why they didn’t include it; these were, after all, unilateral statements that each side made, and that is an issue that we will clearly have to come back on.” The State Department official is really saying “I don’t have the slightest idea what the North Koreans statement means. You’d have to ask the North Koreans. I know what we want it to mean. I guess, now that you mention it, we may need to ask them about that.”

The North Koreans, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly what they meant, which is probably why they omitted “of any kind” from the statement. Why the US side didn’t notice it, I can’t explain.

3.

Now, Administration officials are screaming to high heaven that Davies told the North Koreans that a space launch was a missile launch. The Nelson Report, the irreplaceable daily record of US Asia policy, has one official after another making that point very, very clear. One Obama Administration official told Nelson that “in the process of negotiating the Feb. 29 agreement, Special Envoy Amb. Glyn Davies, and Ford Hart, explicitly, directly warned DPRK lead-negotiator Kim Gye-gwan that any missile test, for any purpose, would violate the terms of the agreement under negotiation…”

The problem is that telling the DPRK is not the same thing as the DPRK agreed.

Kim Gye Gwan, for example, can say exactly the same thing: “in the process of negotiating the Feb. 29 agreement, Special Envoy [Kim Gye Gwan ] explicitly, directly warned [US] lead-negotiator [Glyn Davies] that any missile test, for any purpose, would [not] violate the terms of the agreement under negotiation.” In fact, the DPRK now has a statement that says precisely that:

The DPRK’s satellite launch is an issue quite different from the February 29 DPRK-U.S. agreement. The DPRK had already consistently clarified at the three rounds of the DPRK-U.S. high-level talks that the satellite launch is not included in the long-range missile launch.

The statement released by North Korea on February 29 carefully omits the agreed language from 1999 — of any kind – that probably expressed the equivalence of space and missile launches. That should have been a signal.

4.

You have to hand it to the North Koreans. They’ve backed the Obama Administration into a quite a corner.

The US claimed that the “nutritional assistance” — what the hell is wrong with the phrase “food aid” anyway? — was not linked to the outcome Six Party Talks. The IAEA has inspectors packing their suitcases for spring in Yongbyon at the invitation of the DPRK.

Does the US blow this up over one stupid rocket launch? It’s not a very pretty state of affairs, is it?

What’s amazing is that the senior officials from the Obama Administration still don’t get it. One Administration official told Chris Nelson that “The DPRK delegation left Beijing without a scintilla of doubt that a satellite test would doom this entire process…”

This word “scintilla.” I am not sure it means what you think it does.

The DPRK delegation understood the US position, but the DPRK leadership just calculated it might get both the satellite launch and enough Plumpy’nut to keep Kim Jong Un at his fighting weight. The DPRK leadership probably concluded that there wasn’t much downside, even if the Administration wasn’t bluffing, given that collapsed negotiations usually end in a DPRK nuclear test, followed by another round of negotiations.

The Administration’s mistake here was not to try to reach an agreement with North Korea, but for thinking it was this easy. Just blow into Beijing, lay down the law, have a nice dinner with Kim Gye Gwan and then hit Seoul and Tokyo on the way home. And don’t forget to pick up a new tie for the Nobel Prize ceremony.

In both briefings on 29 February and 1 March, Administration officials were just too confident to notice all the discrepancies that reporters were pointing out. Here is a rather lengthy exchange between a reporter and Nuland that captures that confidence. Emphasis, as always, is mine:

QUESTION: Yeah. Going back to the subtle differences between the two statements, your statement says that the North Koreans will stop nuclear activities generally speaking. And then they say that they’ll stop uranium enrichment specifically. Is plutonium activity also a part of this? Is that your understanding?

MS. NULAND: Yeah. Have you – you’ve read our statement, right?

QUESTION: Yes, I have. But their – the North Koreans say they’ll stop uranium enrichment. They don’t say anything about plutonium. So I’m wondering if there – is there any disagreement here or is this – what’s your understanding?

MS. NULAND: I don’t have their statement in front of us, but are you talking about the part about the five-megawatt –

QUESTION: It’s the – basically the last section of their statement says: “agreed to moratorium on nuclear tests, long-range missile launches, and uranium enrichment activity.” Whereas your statement says that: “agreed to implement a moratorium on long-range missile test, nuclear test, and nuclear activities at Yongbyon.” So –

MS. NULAND: Including uranium enrichment activities.

QUESTION: Including uranium enrichment activities. So I’m asking, is plutonium part of this agreement as well?

MS. NULAND: Yes.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. NULAND: Most definitely.

QUESTION: Follow up on that?

MS. NULAND: Please.

QUESTION: So there’s some differences in statements issued by both sides. So are you ready to meet with North Koreans again to qualify the difference, or do you expect that this type of issue might be brought up in the next meeting with North Koreans on the nutritional aid?

MS. NULAND: No. As we clarified in the background briefing that we gave yesterday – and I would refer you to it if you didn’t get a chance to participate – the next step on the nuclear side with regard to the commitments that are made by both sides in these statements is that they now need to be implemented by the North Korean side and that implementation needs to be verified by the, So we are looking to the DPRK, as a next step, to invite the IAEA in to verify that all the steps that we’ve agreed upon, all the steps you see reflected in the U.S. statement, are, in fact, being implemented. So that’s the next step on that side.

With regard to nutritional assistance, we do still have a little bit of technical work to do and we’re going to try to do it through existing channels before we can ship.

QUESTION: So you don’t see the need to clarify the difference at this point?

MS. NULAND: We don’t see any difference. The only thing that is effectively sort of left out, if you will, with regard to the DPRK’s statement is this issue of the five-megawatt reactor, and from our perspective, the U.S. and the DPRK both know that the DPRK agreed that the IAEA would be allowed in to confirm the disablement of the five-megawatt reactor and associated facilities. So that’s something that we’re expecting also to be on the list when the IAEA goes to North Korea.

To get the full effect, watch the briefing starting at 32:10. Nuland just isn’t prepared for the issue of discrepancies.

Remember, the DPRK signed a Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula that prohibited the possession of “nuclear reprocessing facilities.” That was on February 19, 1992. On May 20, 1992, South Korean officials confronted the DPRK officials about the continued construction on Yongbyon. DPRK officials explained that it was not a reprocessing facility, but a “radiochemical laboratory” for research purposes.

You have to have the DPRK statement in front you. The details matter.

5.

The politics of this are, of course, terrible. If the Administration doesn’t collapse what remains of the deal — and there are some useful pieces left including the possibility of an IAEA presence at Yongbyon — they are going to get killed in the press.

Of course, the North Koreans have plenty of options for mischief, including testing a Musudan IRBM or perhaps this road-mobile ICBM of lore. And then there is always the option to blow a little more plutonium. Maybe they want to try out an HEU bomb. And of course they can always sink a South Korean warship, shell an island or revive some of their nasty habits from the 1970s. Really, the possibilities are endless.

Had things gone down differently — had North Korean conducted the satellite launch for Kim Il Sung’s birthday, then announced compliance with the pre-steps — that might have worked. A blanket exception for space launches is a problem, of course, but what’s one measly Unha launch among parties to an armistice?

Then again, if you can launch your rocket, embarrass Barack Obama and then gorge yourself on therapeutic food products, well that’s seems like the best option to me.

6.

By the way, I notice that the Boston Herald published an op-ed by Peter Brookes titled, “N. Korea welshes on food aid deal.”

Usually, the author doesn’t write the headline, so to whoever chose that slur: go to hell.

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12 Responses to “Rockets and the Leap Day Deal”

1.

anon | March 23, 2012

Jeffrey,

Are you of Welsh origin? Very testy.

Otherwise, good article.

-anon
Reply
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Jeffrey | March 23, 2012

I am.
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Cameron | March 24, 2012

Yeah that got a letter to the editor.

As for the substance of the statements, if you’re China, how are you not working to push this back down? It feels like North Korea is pushing the archipelgo states into an even closer alliance with the US. How is that helpful to Chinese foreign interests?

As for domestic fallout, I’m not sure the Obama Admin is going to take to much heat on this, Iran is where people are focusing if they’re focusing on FP at all. I’m sorry that they got burned by North Korea, you’re right that they got a good short term gain out of it, but long term is Obama going to make another offer like this? North Korea may end up wishing they had tried a little more diplomacy and a little less 12 year old gotcha word play.
2.

Cthippo | March 24, 2012

I suppose the only upside to this is that no one seems to be paying much attention in the US. Everyone is too focused on what Rick Santorium said to worry about things that might, you know, matter.
Reply
3.

A Complete Stranger | March 24, 2012

Thanks for this very illuminating post! I was getting together some talking points about the launch and I can see I am going to have to totally side step the “legality” of the test… This was an excellent heads up.
Reply
4.

bob | March 24, 2012

How about a neologism? I propose “to nork” . . .

You all should know the definition by now.
Reply
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joshua | March 24, 2012

That works, especially if the past participle is nork’d.
5.

Eve | March 24, 2012

Norkologia
Reply
6.

Seb | March 24, 2012

Jeffrey, I don’t know if this is something you’ve heard before and know to be wrong, but I had thought that although people tend to assume that it has something to do with the Welsh being untrustworthy, the term apparently derives from 17th century London bookies slang (hence the archaic spelling in the UK): someone who Welched on their debt was a bookie who, having made the mistake of taking on bets that they couldn’t cover, promptly fled to Wales, it being generally harder to pursue them there and drag them off to debtors prison. Or so I was told by my English teacher back in the day.

Although that etymology doesn’t casts aspersions on the nature of the Welsh, I suppose the implication that Wales is too much of a backwater for it to be worth while chasing someone with a civil case isn’t particularly nice.
Reply
7.

George William Herbert | March 25, 2012

Interlinking…

NK taking advantage of expected Israeli strike?

Or trying to distract the US from Iran a bit at the moment?
Reply
8.

George William Herbert | March 25, 2012

Stepping back…

What’s the case that NK intended this, really?

Alternate theory being that the NKs thought this was more preliminary and signaled their position, and the US side just overreached on interpreting the situation?

Given the long history of NK negotiations in bad faith it’s tempting to do what you did, but … Reading it clean I just don’t know.
Reply
9.

Mark Lincoln | March 25, 2012

I don’t see what the gripe is about. The DPRK agreed to suspend military activities and the Obama administration is embarrassed because it never thought about the satellite program.

This is a misapprehension going back to the last US administration which also failed to consider satellite launch attempts as anything other than ICBM tests.

Satellites remain a ‘prestige’ item in the third world even if they have long been ‘ho-hum’ to the major powers.

The only lesson to be learned is assume nothing when dealing with the DPRK.

Remember that Korea “won” it’s first war with the USA by the simple expedient of refusing to recognize the US invasion which had captured five forts and crushed the 300 or so defenders.

Korea ‘won’ because the USA assumed that military adventure could open trade with the Hermit Kingdom. The US ‘trade mission’ composed of five warships and a landing force of some 650 men could take forts, but it could not achieve US goals.

What IS our goal with the DPRK? Do we know?

What to do when the bird does not sing?
Nobunaga would have it killed, Hideyoshi would have forced it to sing, Ieyasu said ‘wait.’

China is wise to understand that the big danger from the DPRK is the threat of precipitous collapse, not military adventure.

Better it should show off with a gesture than the usual mad military act.

[Housecarl]

Some more analysis....

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use....
http://38north.org/2012/03/aabrahamian0319/

Post Published: 19 March 2012
Found in section: Commentary

Satellites and Missiles: The US-DPRK “Choose Your Own Adventure” Experience

By Andray Abrahamian

The US-DPRK deal signed last month is a softline message; the Satellite Launch is a hardline one. Washington would do well to ignore the hardline one.

In 1962, with the United States and the USSR seemingly spiraling towards nuclear war, Khrushchev and Kennedy engineered history’s most important diplomatic breakthrough.

At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with both the White House and the Kremlin under incredible pressure, Khrushchev sent Kennedy a message that demanded a declaration of non-aggression from the United States towards Cuba in return for a Soviet withdrawal. The next morning, however, after consultation with government officials more inclined to take a harder line, Khrushchev sent Kennedy a second letter. This one demanded the United States remove its Jupiter missiles from Italy and Turkey as part of the deal, a proposal that would have made Kennedy appear to cave to high-stakes blackmail had he accepted it.

Kennedy and his executive committee’s choice at this juncture was to prove crucial: they ignored the hardline message and merely responded to the first, while later making a backroom deal to get rid of the Jupiter missiles.

What this served to do was empower Khrushchev and the ‘softliners’ in his cabinet to go back and essentially say, “We have a breakthrough here, we’ve won a concession that may not be perfect, but it offers a road towards solving this mess.”

North Korea’s announcement of a satellite test planned for April has understandably kicked up quite a fuss as governments try to decide how to respond. South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said it would be a “grave provocation,” while Japan’s cabinet secretary urged North Korea not to carry out the test, saying it was a violation of UN sanctions.

Pyongyang will argue strenuously that it is a peaceful satellite launch, legally covered by the 1966 Space Treaty to which Pyongyang signed up in 2009. It has also chosen a location the Northwest in a move to assuage any concerns the Japanese would have over a North Korean missile flying in their direction again.

The counter will be that ballistic missile tests—which these will also be—are forbidden under UN sanctions. Moreover, it violates the spirit, and possibly the letter, of a US-DPRK agreement signed so recently the fax machines are still warm. That agreement has North Korea freezing nuclear activities at Yongbyong and suspending “long-range” missile tests in return for 240,000 tons of food aid.

The initial reaction of many must have been to think this is typical North Korean deal-breaking. But North Korea hasn’t seen a single high-nutrition biscuit from that deal yet, so why would it do something that could very likely scupper the whole thing before it gets what it bargained for?

A few possibilities come to mind.

First, as has been the case before, it may be that Pyongyang was negotiating with the United States as sort of a probe with no intention of seeing the deal through. However, while there are some new personalities on both sides—by all accounts very cordial—the Obama government is now more than three years old; the Koreans are acquainted with this administration. There is also not much logic in attempting to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington. Lee Myung Bak is in the twilight of his presidency. Obama is gearing up for his re-election campaign. Pressure from Pyongyang only emboldens the candidates they’d rather not deal with in both countries.

Second, we might be inclined to think this is part of a strategy in which quickly backsliding on the deal was premeditated. In this scenario, North Korea has set something of a trap for the United States. If food aid is apolitical, as the US claims, backing out of the deal makes the US appear disingenuous. The value of this compared to waiting for at least some of the aid first seems uncertain, especially as North Korea appears disingenuous by calling for a satellite launch so soon after inking the food aid deal.

Third, it may be that since the agreement would provide nutritional assistance not in the form of rice or other grains, that Pyongyang deemed its value too low to warrant the freeze of its nuclear and missile programs. This may be the case, but then why not just reject the deal at the negotiations themselves?

Fourth, perhaps it is a case of domestic concerns trumping external ones. Symbolism is highly important to North Korea and demonstrating that it is a high-technology great power to its citizens on Kim Il Sung’s centenary birthday may just be more valuable than either food aid or improved relations with the United States. Perhaps an ongoing debate about whether to bolster the celebrations with a high-tech show was unresolved until just recently.

There is another possibility that assumes a master plan. It is possible that North Korea intends to back out of the satellite launch, using the affair to further demonstrate the new government’s good intentions and reasonableness to the outside world. Making the announcement a month in advance leaves a lot of time for North Korea to back down. However, if this is the case, Pyongyang will have to use its best writers for the tricky job of explaining why they decided against such a symbolic exercise, as they made the announcement in the most public way possible on their domestic TV channel.

All these guesses make the mistaken assumption that North Korea is a unitary actor—a “one mind, one voice” kind of government. It is not. Like any government, individuals and institutions have varying perspectives and goals. The Foreign Ministry tends to have an interest in bettering relations with the United States, while the military is less inclined to deal with its longtime enemy.

If one accepts this perspective, the most likely explanation becomes that the people who negotiated the deal—the Foreign Ministry—did not know the satellite/missile test was going to take place, certainly not so soon. Somewhere in the swirl of interests competing for Kim Jong Un’s graces—and vice versa—things became uncoordinated and antagonistic points of view could not be harmonized by the maximal leader or among the regency surrounding him.

The situation then appears to be two different groups of elites, with two different intentions. One group has sent softline messages, with the “food for freeze” agreement. (There were even reports this week of a North Korean suggestion to set up mutual liaison offices in Washington and Pyongyang). The other has sent a hardline message, with the announcement of the rocket launch.

Ignoring the hardline message, as Kennedy did, will be impossible for Obama. American policy is also formed under the constraints of both domestic and international alliance politics. It would be a dramatic change in approach, and in the United States—as in North Korea—political actors operate under the constraints of a domestic hardline vs. softline spectrum. The voices calling to scrap the deal are strong already—if the test goes ahead, those voices will be overwhelming.

Some North Korea watchers have suggested the United States could find a way to admit limited satellite testing is legally acceptable, perhaps while arguing for international monitoring. But this would require spending political capital Obama probably cannot afford to waste, especially in the minefield that has been US-DPRK relations. Obama will simply appear too weak to continue with the deal.

The political need for the United States to yank the nutritional supplements will be unfortunate, then, for two reasons. First, the constitution of the food aid does a pretty good job of targeting the most vulnerable in the population; the Korean People’s Army is just not that interested in baby formula. From a purely humanitarian perspective it should continue.

Second, it tells the hardliners that they can mess up any thaw in relations even with provocations that threaten relatively little. It simultaneously strips the softliners of their achievement, so they return to the internal debate empty handed instead of giving them capital with which to say “look, our way is paying dividends.” Instead, the parameters of the US-DPRK relationship are continually set by hardliners.

As the Cuban Missile Crisis shows, responding to the right message is key. Kennedy had the luxury (one of very few those two nightmarish weeks) of making the choice behind closed doors. This is out there in the public sphere making it almost impossible for the Obama Administration to justify continuing with the soft-liners under the shadow of a Taepodong-2. If someone doesn’t try it at some point, however, will the road out of this mess ever be found?

Find more artilces by Andray Abrahamian.

[Housecarl]

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use....
http://38north.org/2012/03/wright03161/

Post Published: 16 March 2012
Found in section: WMD

North Korea’s New Launch Site

By David Wright

This article was originally published on 38 North on February 23, 2011. It has been reposted in light of DPRK’s announced intention to launch a satellite in April 2012. Find more articles by David Wright here.

Last week press stories announced that North Korea had completed a second launch site for long-range rockets, which is bigger and more sophisticated than its original site. Tim Brown and Joseph Bermudez of globalsecurity.org found the new site, called Tongch’ang-dong after a nearby town, using satellite images in 2008 and has been following its progress since then.

Previously, North Korea launched its multi-stage rockets from a site in Musudan-ri on the east coast of the country, near the Sea of Japan. The most recent launch from that site was in April 2009 when the Unha-2 launcher failed to place a small satellite into orbit.

The new launch site is instead located on the west coast of the country (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: This map shows the location of North Korea’s original launch site (Musudan) and its new site (Tonch’ang-dong), as well as South Korea’s Naro launch site.

In addition to much improved roads and facilities, several reports state that the new site has a significantly taller launch tower than the old site—50 versus 32 meters. (Brown suggests a more modest increase of 8 meters to a total height of 40 meters.)

Two interesting questions raised by the new site are: why the new location, and why the larger tower?

Why the New Location?

Why would North Korea build a new launch site on the west coast rather than modify its existing site? Speculation on this point abounds, including:

(a) The new site is relatively close (100km) to the Sanum-dong long-range missile development center in Pyongyang, simplifying the transfer of missiles to the site.

(b) It is only 70 kilometers from the Yongbyon nuclear complex, and could therefore “reduce the time and cost for delivering nuclear warheads to the new launch site” if North Korea develops a warhead that can be delivered by long-range missile.

(c) The location “complicates U.S. airborne and seaborne surveillance and intelligence collection, because it is on the northern portion of the Yellow Sea between China and North Korea.”

(d) It reduces the incentive for an attack on the site since it is less than 50 kilometers from the border with China.

(e) It would reduce Japanese objections to rockets that overfly Japan since they would be launched from further west and would therefore be at a somewhat higher altitude as they passed over Japan.

(f) The location would allow North Korea to launch heavier payloads.

Both (e) and (f) can be discounted. My analysis of the Unha launch indicates it passed over the northern part of Japan at an altitude of some 400 kilometers. Launching from 400 kilometers further west, which is the distance between the two launch sites, would only have increased that altitude by about 50 kilometers, which is unlikely to affect Japan’s view of an overflight. Point (f) is simply incorrect.

The other points may be incentives for a new site, since the Musudan-ri site was relatively isolated.

But the most compelling reason to me is the fact that this location allows North Korea to launch south and avoid overflying any country during its boost phase (see Figure 2). Pyongyang can argue this represents a more responsible approach to flight testing, and that it removes Japan’s objections about overflights. Attempting to launch south from its original launch site would overfly South Korea. Moreover, since the flight path would be very similar to the trajectory that South Korean launches follow, Pyongyang can argue that objections to its launches represents an international double standard.

Figure 2: Launch paths from North and South Korea. The white line shows the eastward launch path of North Korea’s Unha-2 in 2009 from its original launch site. The yellow line shows the approximate path of South Korea’s 2009 and 2010 satellite launch attempts. The red line shows a similar path that launches from North Korea’s new launch site could follow.

Launching south rather than east is not optimal for putting satellites in orbit since by launching east the rocket gains speed from the rotation of the Earth (about 0.3 kilometers per second in North Korea’s case—about 4% of the amount needed to reach orbit). Indeed, North Korea’s Taepo-dong 1 (1998) and Unha-2 (2009) were both launched due east (see Figure 2).

Some may argue that building a site to launch south indicates it is not intended for satellite launches. But this argument is not compelling since Figure 2 shows that South Korea is also forced to launch satellites to the south because of the same geographic constraints. Other examples are even more extreme; for example, because of the local geography, Israel launches satellites westward, meaning that the Earth’s rotation actually works against its launches.

So geographic constraints can lead to sub-optimal launch direction, and the new site could plausibly be used either for launching either satellites or testing ballistic missiles.

Why a 50-meter Tower?

Assuming reports of a 50-meter tower are correct, what might this imply?

North Korea’s Unha-2 launcher was roughly 30 meters long. Since the tower at Musudan-ri where the Unha was launched is reportedly only slightly longer than this (32 meters), it suggests that a 50-meter tower could accommodate launchers well over 40 meters in length.

To put that in perspective, it’s useful to compare these lengths to rockets that use similar fuels to the Unha-2, which include some Chinese and Russian missiles and space-launch vehicles. The Unha-2 is roughly the same size and mass (roughly 80 tons) as the first Chinese space-launch vehicle, the Long March 1, which used similar technology to the Unha. The Long March 1 and Unha are 2.25 and 2.4 meters in diameter, respectively.

The considerably more capable Long March 2 space launcher, as well as China’s DF-5 intercontinental-range ballistic missile, are only slightly longer than the Unha—32 to 33 meters. Their greater capability results from their larger diameter—3.35 meters—which allows them to carry much more fuel. As a result, these rockets have a much larger mass than the Unha—180 to 190 tons. The DF-5 can carry a three-ton warhead more than 10,000 kilometers. Similarly, the Soviet SS-18 ballistic missile, which also uses storable liquid fuel, is roughly the same size as the DF-5, with a length of 32 meters.

The more modern Chinese Long March 3 and 4 space launchers, which can carry heavier satellites into orbit, also have diameters of 3.35 meters, but are 42 meters long.

As a result, if North Korea follows a typical path for developing missiles, it would not need a 50-meter tower to launch a long-range ballistic missile.

In principle it could attempt to build a missile with significantly more fuel than the Unha by continuing to use a 2.4-meter first stage, but increasing its length. However, lengthening the Unha by 10 meters would give a very large length-to-diameter ratio, which can lead to structural instabilities when subjected to the large forces during launch. So it seems unlikely that a stretched Unha would approach 40 meters in length, and would therefore not require a 50-meter tower.

Given this, it seems that a tower of this size would only be required if North Korea planned to eventually develop and launch a space-launch vehicle like modern Chinese vehicles.

This may seem like a fantasy, and may well be one. But Pyongyang has long argued that it wants to develop and sell space-launch services. Building the tower may be one step of this process it can carry out any time soon.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that while North Korea may use its new launch site to develop ballistic missiles, neither its location nor the size of its tower seems to indicate that it was optimized for that purpose. In fact, both are consistent with its use for space launches.

Reader Feedback
4 Responses to “North Korea’s New Launch Site”

1.
Weekly News Brief – 21 March 2012 « NORTH KOREA NEWS BRIEF says:
March 22, 2012 at 4:04 am

[...] the International Telecommunication Union and the International Maritime Organization of its plans. David Wright on the West coast launch site. NK Tech on the launch [...]
2.
Asia Security Watch: US Goes Ballistic Over North Korean Missiles | Japan Security Watch says:
December 10, 2011 at 8:23 pm

[...] Launch Site (동창동 미사일 발사장): The newest, western North Korea-based, launch site, discovered in 2008 seems capable of hosting a significantly larger system than has been fielded by North Korea [...]
3.
Tweets that mention North Korea’s New Launch Site | 38 North: Informed Analysis of North Korea -- Topsy.com says:
February 25, 2011 at 6:49 am

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mark Williams, DPRK News Line. DPRK News Line said: North Korea’s New Launch Site (38 North) (David Wright) (February 23 2011) http://ow.ly/1buXAc [...]
4.
The Crazy North Korean Space Vision Thing | Rearranging Prejudices says:
February 24, 2011 at 2:17 am

[...] and co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), thinks North Korea’s new launch facility at Tongchang-dong is for launching satellites, not ballistic [...]