US President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda stressed Monday that they stand united in opposition to provocations by North Korea, following a failed rocket launch this month, DPA reported.
Obama said North Korea's actions, seen as part of a move to develop a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, were "a sign of weakness and not strength, and only serve to deepen Pyongyang's isolation."
"Pyongyang is very clear that the United States, Japan, South Korea, other countries in the region are unified in insisting that it abide by its responsibilities, abide by international norms, and that they will not be able to purchase anything from further provocative acts," he said during a White House press conference following meetings with Noda.
The Japanese leader noted that in the past North Korea had followed tests of missile technology with nuclear tests, and there was a "great possibility" they could do so again.
Noda said he believed the international community "all together will need to call for restraint" by North Korea.
=
"We Have Done With Hope and Honor, We are lost to Love and Truth.
We are Dropping down the ladder rung by rung;
And the measurement of our torment is the measure of our youth.
God help us; for we knew the worst too young."
The United States and Japan have warned North Korea not to carry out a new nuclear test, during the Japanese Prime Minister's visit to Washington.
US President Barack Obama says North Korea's "old pattern of provocation" will not be tolerated.
Mr Obama says the communist north's recent actions, including a failed rocket launch, would "only serve to deepen Pyongyang's isolation".
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is the first Japanese leader to visit Washington in three years.
Mr Noda says there is a great possibility that Pyongyang will carry out its first nuclear test since 2009.
The visit comes as the two countries agreed to relocate 9,000 US marines from Okinawa to Guam.
More than 20,000 US troops are stationed in Japan, leading to local resentment.
The leaders say they will continue to work towards an early resolution on this issue and have pledged to strengthen defence ties.
=
"We Have Done With Hope and Honor, We are lost to Love and Truth.
We are Dropping down the ladder rung by rung;
And the measurement of our torment is the measure of our youth.
God help us; for we knew the worst too young."
JERUSALEM — The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, said Monday night that the international talks on the Iranian nuclear program do “not fill me with confidence,” reiterating his hard-line position about all options — including an independent Israeli attack — remaining on the table, despite mounting criticism from the security establishment here and a growing sense abroad that a diplomatic solution may be possible.
“They say in the Middle East a pessimist is simply an optimist with experience,” Mr. Barak said in a speech to about 100 members of the Foreign Press Association at the King David Hotel. Acknowledging that a military strike was “not simple” and would be “complicated by certain risks,” he said that a “radical Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons would be far more dangerous both for the region and, indeed, the whole world.”
“Israel cannot afford to be duped,” he added. “The No. 1 responsibility is to ensure that our fate will remain firmly in our own hands.”
Mr. Barak spoke days after his former internal security chief issued a blistering attack of him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, part of a growing chorus of criticism of their hawkish stance that the defense minister dismissed as “politically motivated” and coming from people who “prefer to bury their heads in the sand.” Though many here, as in Washington, are increasingly confident that Israel will not strike Iran this year, Mr. Barak and Mr. Netanyahu seem reluctant to abandon their hawkish narrative.
And one reason is they believe their tough words are working.
“In a way, it is paying off: they achieved the awakening of the international community and the involvement of the United States,” explained Yossi Melman, whose history of the Israeli intelligence community, “Spies Against Armageddon,” is scheduled for publication in two months. “It’s difficult to sense whether it’s manipulation, or part of it is psychological warfare,” Mr. Melman added. “I think he really genuinely believes in what he says.”
The tough talk makes Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak seem increasingly isolated in the international arena, where predictions of war in the near future have all but disappeared amid a focus on the negotiations scheduled to continue in Baghdad this month. American officials believe the looming threat of tighter sanctions July 1 has made the Iranians take the talks more seriously, and that the government has begun to prepare the people for a deal.
In Israel, the dissent that burst into public view in recent days has been simmering here for some time, so it may actually have less of an effect.
A poll conducted last week by Smith Research for The Jerusalem Post showed that fewer than half of Israelis back an independent strike on Iran. But about half disagreed with the harsh critique of Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak by Yuval Diskin, who retired last May as head of Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent of the F.B.I., according to a poll conducted by Dahaf Institute.
Other recent surveys show that about three-quarters consider a nuclear Iran an existential threat, and almost as many support a strike with American backing. Mr. Netanyahu’s popularity is strong, with polls showing his Likud Party would pick up seats in the next election, which is now expected in late summer or early fall.
“Israelis like the hawkish rhetoric,” said Mina Zemach, director of the Dahaf Polling Institute. “Netanyahu is very strong now. What the public hopes is that Netanyahu prepares us just in case, if no one will stop Iran, then we have to attack.”
Several political and security experts said that they did not expect to see a change in policy or tone from Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Barak, but that the move to elections indicates that they do not believe a strike is imminent. And campaign season is likely to push the issue aside in favor of domestic concerns.
“The minute we have a date set for elections, you have to assume that Bibi and Barak are not going to risk their electoral chances by taking some dramatic military initiative which could go wrong,” said Yossi Alpher, a strategic analyst who is an editor of BitterLemons.net, a Web site about the Middle East. “The Palestinian issue and Iran are not the first issues. This is not what preoccupies the public.”
Iran insists that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, but Israel says that Tehran must be prevented from developing the capacity to build a nuclear weapon.
Despite the move toward early elections, and what many here believe is a commitment Mr. Netanyahu made to President Obama in March not to attack before the American elections, a senior intelligence official said the military option remains very much a live possibility. “It is affecting the regime,” he said of the international pressure. “We don’t think it will bring the regime to change the strategy.”
In his speech, Mr. Barak said that sanctions had “forced the Iranians to take note, sit down and talk,” but that “actions speak louder than words.” He repeated his view that Iran is “approaching what I have termed the immunity zone,” in which the enrichment of uranium to weapons grade could not easily be stopped.
“Just imagine the most unstable elements in the hands of the most unstable regime in one of the most unstable regions of the world,” he warned. “It is well understood in Washington, D.C., as well as in Jerusalem that as long as there is a future existential threat to our people, that all options to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons should stay on the table, and they will.”
Yehuda Ben Meir, one of the directors of the national security and public opinion project at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that there was some discomfort among Israelis with Mr. Netanyahu’s comparing the Iranian threat to the Holocaust, but that “there’s a consensus about the severity of the threat and there’s a consensus that Israel should do whatever it can.”
David Horovitz, a veteran journalist here who runs the new Web site The Times of Israel, said many Israelis view the strident tone as a “successful effort to create the sense in the international community that there needs to be more dramatic action in a nonmilitary sense.”
“I don’t think what’s unfolding is deemed by Netanyahu and Barak to justify, ‘O.K., we can tone down the process,’ ” Mr. Horovitz said of the international pressure. “Quite the reverse.”
=
"We Have Done With Hope and Honor, We are lost to Love and Truth.
We are Dropping down the ladder rung by rung;
And the measurement of our torment is the measure of our youth.
God help us; for we knew the worst too young."
The United States seems to have two plans to deal with what is fast becoming a civil war in Syria. Plan A calls for the full implementation of the UN ceasefire and the complete cooperation of Bashar Assad, a dictator who would, at the risk of his very life, give up some power to the opposition.
Plan B, on the other hand, envisions a military response through air power. For that to be implemented, Plan A must fail and more Syrians must die.
Just how many more Syrians must die no one can say. But it seems pretty clear that the toll — now in excess of 9,000 — must mount before the U.S., NATO and maybe the Turks and the Saudis will move to bring the slaughter to a halt. Bloomberg News reports that “more than 500 people” have been killed since the start of the ceasefire on April 12. This ceasefire is more fire than cease.
Few people in Washington have much faith in the UN plan, advanced by former Secretary General Kofi Annan. He has been doing what he has been trained to do — go through the motions of peacemaking.
Time is not on the side of moderation or accommodation. The longer the killing goes on, the more radical and extreme the anti-Assad forces become.
The intelligentsia that initially supported the movement will be marginalized by Islamic extremists — volunteers from nearby Arab countries who can’t abide Assad and his secularism. (Already, bombings have been reported.)
As with Saddam Hussein, his late neighbor, Assad and his family have long been at odds with the Muslim Brotherhood and similar organizations. In 1982, Assad’s father killed perhaps 20,000 in the Brotherhood stronghold of Hama. It is now payback time.
Those of us who have long advocated that the U.S. put some muscle into its diplomacy — even bomb Syrian military installations and impose a no-fly zone — have to concede the difficulties entailed.
The Syrian air-defense system is thick, designed by the Russians to deter an Israeli attack. The composition of the Syrian opposition is largely unknown. More worrisome, Syria has a vast stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.
Still, none of this is insurmountable. Israel was able to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, apparently without losing a single airplane — and whatever Israel can do, the U.S. can do as well. What’s missing at the moment is not the wherewithal to deal militarily with the Assad regime but the will to do so — and to do so expeditiously. This is a matter of leadership and, so far, President Obama has provided precious little.
In “Prague Winter,” her compelling new memoir, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright emphasizes the importance of leadership — or its lack — in world affairs. As a woman, she is the Czechoslovakian-born daughter of Josef Korbel and Anna Spiegelova. As a diplomat, she is a daughter of Munich, the infamous agreement that turned part of her country over to Nazi Germany.
The Munich analogy can be overdone. (Saddam was no Hitler.) But the analogy to the supposed antidote to Munich, Vietnam, can also be overdone. Not every military action is a quagmire. The military interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya did not require boots on the ground.
The Syrian revolution is going to spiral into something awful. The longer it lasts, the more people die and the greater the chance of it spilling across borders. The plan, as it is now, is to wait for the inevitable — the failure of Kofi Annan and, after that, the predictable failure of an arms embargo that will weaken the opposition much more than it will Assad.
Somehow, multiple failures are supposed to lead to success. That’s worse than Munich. It’s madness.
"We Have Done With Hope and Honor, We are lost to Love and Truth.
We are Dropping down the ladder rung by rung;
And the measurement of our torment is the measure of our youth.
God help us; for we knew the worst too young."
The United States seems to have two plans to deal with what is fast becoming a civil war in Syria. Plan A calls for the full implementation of the U.N. cease-fire and the complete cooperation of Bashar al-Assad, a dictator who would, at the risk of his very life, give up some power to the opposition. Plan B, on the other hand, envisions a military response through air power. For that to be implemented, Plan A must fail and more Syrians must die.
Just how many more Syrians must die no one can say. But it seems pretty clear that the toll — now in excess of 9,000 — must mount before the United States, NATO and maybe the Turks and the Saudis will move to bring the slaughter to a halt. Bloomberg News reports that “more than 500 people” have been killed since the start of the cease-fire on April 12. This cease-fire is more fire than cease.
Few people in Washington have much faith in the U.N. plan, advanced by former secretary-general Kofi Annan. He has been doing what he has been trained to do — go through the motions of peacemaking. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but there is a protocol to these things that has to be honored. Yet as each ticket is punched, more people die.
Time is not on the side of moderation or accommodation. The longer the killing goes on, the more radical and extreme the anti-Assad forces become. The intelligentsia that initially supported the movement will be marginalized by Islamic extremists — volunteers from nearby Arab countries who can’t abide Assad and his secularism. (Already, bombings have been reported.) As with Saddam Hussein, his late neighbor, Assad and his family have long been at odds with the Muslim Brotherhood and similar organizations. In 1982, Assad’s father killed perhaps 20,000 in the Brotherhood stronghold of Hama. It is now payback time.
Those of us who have long advocated that the United States put some muscle into its diplomacy — even bomb Syrian military installations and impose a no-fly zone — have to concede the difficulties entailed. The Syrian air-defense system is thick, designed by the Russians to deter an Israeli attack. The composition of the Syrian opposition is largely unknown (to quote Butch Cassidy: “Who are those guys?”). More worrisome, Syria has a vast stockpile of chemical and biological weapons. The weapons have not been used — they’re hard to control — but a regime fighting for its life may well use everything at its disposal. Saddam did against the Kurds.
Still, none of this is insurmountable. Israel was able to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 apparently without losing a single airplane — and whatever Israel can do, the United States can do as well. What’s missing at the moment is not the wherewithal to deal militarily with the Assad regime but the will to do so — and to do so expeditiously. This is a matter of leadership and, so far, Barack Obama has provided precious little.
In “Prague Winter,” her compelling new memoir, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright emphasizes the importance of leadership — or its lack — in world affairs. As a woman, she is the Czechoslovakian-born daughter of Josef Korbel and Anna Spiegelova. As a diplomat, she is a daughter of Munich, the infamous agreement that turned part of her country over to Nazi Germany. She rebuts Tolstoy, “who argued that scholars routinely exaggerate the ability of the great and powerful to control events,” by citing the weak and vacillating leaders who failed to recognize evil and stand up to Hitler. They were accessories before the fact, changing history by inaction.
The Munich analogy can be overdone. (Saddam was no Hitler.) But the supposed antidote to Munich, Vietnam, can also be overdone. Not every military action is a quagmire — and, anyway, quagmires can be avoided by using air power. The military interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya did not require boots on the ground. They ended when they were finished — a brilliant exit strategy.
The Syrian revolution is going to spiral into something awful. The longer it lasts, the more people die and the greater the chance of it spilling across borders. The plan, as it is now, is to wait for the inevitable — the failure of Kofi Annan and, after that, the predictable failure of an arms embargo that will weaken the opposition much more than it will Assad. Somehow, multiple failures are supposed to lead to success. That’s worse than Munich. It’s madness.
=
"We Have Done With Hope and Honor, We are lost to Love and Truth.
We are Dropping down the ladder rung by rung;
And the measurement of our torment is the measure of our youth.
God help us; for we knew the worst too young."
For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use..... http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/po...rway_for_syria
Obama official: No NATO planning underway for Syria
Posted By Josh Rogin Monday, April 30, 2012 - 5:11 PM Share
Comments 1
There is no formal planning going on inside NATO to prepare for defending Turkey from the violence spilling over from Syria, even though Turkey is considering whether to formally invoke NATO's chapters on collective defense, a top Obama administration official said Monday.
"Our Supreme Allied Commander [Adm. James Stavridis] can do a certain amount of planning... but there has been no formal tasking and there has been no formal request by the Turks for consultations in an Article 4 or Article 5 scenario," said Liz Sherwood-Randall, the National Security Council's senior director for Europe, in remarks Monday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davotoglu briefed his foreign minister and defense minister counterparts on Syria at a high level meeting in Brussels this month, and reports said that Davotoglu discussed at length a cross border attack by Syrian forces on a refugee camp inside Turkey that killed two. Davotoglu is also reported to have said the Syrian regime has "abused a chance offered by the Annan plan."
The Obama administration also believes that the Annan plan "is failing," is currently searching for a "plan B" in Syria, and is preparing military related options in case they are diplomacy breaks down. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that NATO might have to get involved earlier this month, during a ministerial meeting of the "Friends of Syria" group in Paris.
"Turkey already has discussed with NATO, during our ministerial meetings over the last two days, the burden of Syrian refugees on Turkey, the outrageous shelling across the border from Syria into Turkey a week ago, and that Turkey is considering formally invoking Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty," Clinton said.
Sherwood-Randall was speaking to preview the upcoming May NATO Summit in Chicago, which she said would focus on three dimensions: NATO's mission in Afghanistan, NATO's defensive capabilities, and the effort to get NATO countries to increase their contributions to the alliance.
On Afghanistan, she said NATO "will shape the next phase of the transition" to Afghan control ahead of the full handover to the Afghan government in 2014.
"Setting forth the next phase of the transition in Chicago is an important step that will ensure we complete our work on time," she said. "In order to ensure a responsible transition of security, we need to development milestones along the way, and it's our intention to do that in Chicago."
She did not say whether those milestones would be the same milestones that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced accidentally by reading internal talking points to reporters on the plane to Brussels in February, which amount to the goal of handing over the lead combat control to Afghan forces in 2013 while maintaining combat participation by allied forces.
Sherwood-Randall said that there will be no NATO-Russia Council meeting in Chicago as there was in Lisbon in 2010 and she said that was because the Russian government declined to participate.
She also said that the United States would have to shoulder the burden of defense spending in NATO for a long time to come and that European countries were not expected to increase their spending on defense until their economic troubles subside.
"We can anticipate growth in European defense spending when Europe has recovered from its economic crisis and obviously there is a lot of work to be done on that front," she said. "We are so interdependent economically that it effects our growth as well. That said, we have got to find a way to maintain our alliance capabilities in this time of fiscal constraint and that's what we intend to do."
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