WAR 05/24 to 05/30 ***The***Winds***of***WAR***

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U.S. Considering Support For Arming Syrian Rebels

By Ali Gharib on May 25, 2012 at 9:30 am
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/05/25/490384/us-considering-support-for-arming-syrian-rebels/​

The U.S. appeared to be moving closer to supporting arms shipments to Syrian rebels by regional Arab Persian Gulf allies and Turkey, according to unnamed officials speaking to the Associated Press.

The current official policy eschews sending more arms into the 15-month long conflict between anti-government fighters and the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad, but frustration with the lack of progress on ending the conflict may be forcing the U.S. to approve allies’ arms shipments. The U.S.’s support would entail vetting potential recipients of lethal assistance — an issue complicated by questions about the role of Islamic extremists fighting among or alongside rebels.







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UN chief:
There is no 'plan B' for ending the Syrian conflict

At least 200 have died in Syria in the two months since a UN-backed cease-fire went into effect, but Ban Ki-moon rejects assertions that part of the problem is the low number of monitors on the ground.

By Ariel Zirulnick, Staff writer / May 25, 2012
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terr...eds/world+(Christian+Science+Monitor+|+World)​

Ariel Zirulnick is the Monitor's Europe editor, overseeing regional coverage both for CSMonitor.com and the weekly magazine. She is also the main contributor to the international desk's terrorism and security blog.

Syria's opposition concerned about independent armed rebel groups

Critical mass: Assad losing his iron grip after eight months of Syria protests

In a live television interview on the CNN program Amanpour yesterday, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon admitted that, despite the failure so far of a UN peace plan for Syria, there is no "plan B" for ending more than a year of violence that has killed an estimated 10,000 Syrians.

"At this time, we don't have any plan B. The joint special envoy Kofi Annan has proposed six peace proposals, among which the complete cessation of violence is No. 1. Unfortunately, this has not been implemented…" Mr. Ban said.

The interview followed the release of a report yesterday on the UN investigation into the conflict in Syria. While finding evidence on both sides of "gross human rights violations" since a UN-backed cease-fire went into effect in April, the report pinned most of the blame on the Syrian military and security forces controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Reuters reports.


Government abuses included heavy shelling of residential areas, executions and torture. Syrian forces routinely drew up a list of wanted persons and their families before blockading and then attacking a village or neighborhood, the report said.

"Most of the serious human rights violations documented by the commission in this update were committed by the Syrian army and security services as part of military or search operations conducted in locations known for hosting defectors and/or armed persons, or perceived as supportive of anti-government armed groups," the report said.

However, the rebels are also guilty of violations, the report states. It notes that they executed and tortured soldiers and government supporters and abducted civilians for bartering in prisoner exchanges and to secure ransom payments.

Investigators, who were not allowed into the country and based their findings on more than 200 interviews, said there have been at least 207 deaths in the almost two months since the cease-fire went into effect, Reuters reports.

Agence France-Presse notes that the report came "hot on the heels of accusations by Amnesty International that 'the pattern and scale of state abuses may have constituted crimes against humanity.' The London-based rights watchdog denounced the UN Security Council for failing to refer Assad to the International Criminal Court as it had done with Libya's Muammar Gaddafi."






Syria's Day Press News reports that President Assad told a special envoy from Iran yesterday that Syria has "overcome the pressures and challenges that faced it" and will emerge from the crisis "thanks to its people's steadfastness and adherence to its unity and independence."

Syria's opposition concerned about independent armed rebel groups
Critical mass: Assad losing his iron grip after eight months of Syria protests

In his television interview Mr. Ban told Christiane Amanpour, the host of the program, that violence has been "dampened" by the deployment of 300 UN monitors throughout the country, but acknowledged that the complete cessation of violence was far off. However, he dismissed the assertion by Ms. Amanpour – who compared the UN monitors' job to "trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon" – that the problem was the low number of monitors in the country.

"Of course it's not a matter of a number of monitors. We have almost 300 [inaudible] number of monitors. … They are deployed in seven cities, including Damascus ... Homs, Hama, Idlib, Aleppo. They are patrolling every day wherever possible. They try their best to cease this violence. [Inaudible] strong political will at the level of President Assad and also it requires full cooperation by the opposition forces," Ban said. "There are so many spoilers at this time which really make the situation very difficult. We have not been able to commence a political dialogue."

Despite the seeming intractability of the conflict and signs it could be spilling over into Lebanon, Ban seemed to dismiss a suggestion from Amanpour that the UN might consider an intervention like the one authorized in Libya.

While not outright rejecting her suggestion, Ban did not acknowledge it, instead responding, "The Security Council members, when they are united, they can make a huge impact to maintaining peace and security of the international community."

At least 10 people have been killed in Lebanon in the past two weeks in violence linked to Syria's own unrest. According to Lebanese officials, armed gunmen in Syria kidnapped 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims earlier this week, prompting protests in Beirut, Associated Press reports.







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Middle East waits for U.S.
approval to arm Syrian rebels

Matthew Lee
WASHINGTON— The Associated Press
Published Thursday, May. 24, 2012 2:38PM EDT
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...approval-to-arm-syrian-rebels/article2442643/​

As one diplomatic effort after another fails to end more than a year of brutal violence in Syria, the Obama administration is preparing a plan that would essentially give U.S. nods of approval to arms transfers from Arab nations to some Syrian opposition fighters.

The effort, U.S. officials told The Associated Press, would vet members of the Free Syrian Army and other groups to determine whether they are suitable recipients of munitions to fight the al-Assad government and to ensure that weapons don’t wind up in the hands of al-Qaeda-linked terrorists or other extremist groups such as Hezbollah that could target Israel.

The plan, which has not yet been finalized, reflects U.S. frustration that none of the previous efforts – including diplomatic rhetoric from the United Nations and the multinational Friends of Syria group, and special envoy Kofi Annan’s plan for a cease-fire – has even begun to nudge President Bashar al-Assad from power. The vetting would be the first tiny step the U.S. has made toward ensuring that the Syrian opposition uses the weapons to fight Mr. al-Assad and not to turn it into a full sectarian conflict.

While some intelligence analysts worry that there may be no suitable recipients of lethal aid in the Syria conflict, the vetting plan has arisen as the least objectionable idea in a complicated situation.

U.S. officials, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, stressed that the United States, which is already providing non-lethal aid to Syria’s political opposition, is not supplying military assistance to Mr. al-Assad’s foes.

The administration’s position remains that adding more weapons to the conflict is a bad idea and will only fan the fire of instability.

“We don’t think that adding fuel to this fire is the right way to go,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

“Our decision is to support the civilian opposition in nonlethal ways,” she said. “There are other countries who have made other decisions. That’s their sovereign decision to make. We’ve made our decision.”

But she added: “We are obviously consulting with various states about the decisions that we’ve made, that they’ve made.”

Privately, officials say that as conditions continue to deteriorate, it would be irresponsible not to weigh in with Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and others such as Turkey that have indicated interest in arming the rebels.

By some accounts, those nations already have begun to ship weapons with tacit U.S. agreement. In Turkey, private businessmen have begun funnelling weapons into Syria.

Libya’s new rulers, fresh from their own revolution that toppled long-time dictator Moammar Gadhafi, have pledged support for the Syrian rebels, but actually transferring weapons is tricky. Last month, Lebanese authorities seized a ship carrying rocket-propelled grenades and heavy-calibre ammunition, possibly bound for Syrian rebels.

The fighters’ attempts to bring in heavier arms that could change the course of the 15-month-old uprising so far have been stymied at every turn, even by countries sympathetic to the revolt. All are wary of being drawn into the fight

The rebels have cast a wide net, contacting weapons dealers in Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Without some type of U.S. vetting as to who should receive such shipments, the Obama administration and some of its European allies fear that weapons might be used against Western interests.

While the “main” Syrian opposition is not aligned with al-Qaeda, the chance that weapons might fall into the wrong hands in an unstable environment like Syria is “always a concern,” said a senior intelligence official.

Al-Qaeda has established a limited operational capability in Syria and is responsible for several attacks on al-Assad targets, the official said. He said analysts believe the goal is to “sow further chaos” and advance an extremist agenda.

The official would not comment on any military aid that might be given to the rebels by U.S. allies.

Yet he and others acknowledged the situation is growing more dire.

AP interviews with security officials, rebels and arms dealers in countries neighbouring Syria indicate that individual rebel units have to scrounge for weapons. They have no central organization and no import routes for anything heavier than automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

It is into this mix that the U.S. may soon be inserting itself.

Washington’s supplies of communications equipment and medical supplies to opposition members it has approved are already under way, Officials said that those supplies can now be easily augmented with weapons from other donors.

“Smuggling lines are smuggling lines. We use the same donkeys,” said one, pointing out that the routes are essentially the same for bandages as they are for bullets.





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24 May 2012 Last updated at 17:05 ET

Syrian general Hashem urges
action to stop 'genocide'

By Frank Gardner
BBC security correspondent
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18200090​

Scars of fighting in the opposition stronghold of Homs: Gen Hashem says the least that is needed is a "safe zone" in north-west Syria

Click to expand...

One of the most prominent critics of the Syrian regime, a former high-ranking officer in the Syrian army, has called for urgent international military intervention to stop what he called the "barbaric genocide" being committed by government forces in his country.

In a talk at Britain's House of Commons on Thursday, Brig-Gen Aqil Hashem said more than 15,000 people had now been killed in Syria, and that the only way out of the conflict was for the world's militaries to intervene.

Speaking to a packed audience of MPs, diplomats, journalists and others at a seminar hosted by the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, Gen Hashem said the very minimum the world needed to do in Syria was to carve out a militarily protected "safe zone" in north-west Syria, similar to the one made for the Kurds in northern Iraq in 1991.

“
Start Quote

I believe it is the utmost evil genocide in Syria. The regime is killing its own people.”
End Quote

Brig-Gen Aqil Hashem

Click to expand...

Gen Hashem, who served for 27 years in the Syrian army, including in three wars, said that ideally, he would welcome the sort of full-scale military intervention seen in Libya last year, but added that he appreciated there was little appetite for that.

Air strikes​

Instead, he suggested that targeted air strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) against the regime's "150 intelligence and security bases across the country" would be sufficient to demoralise many key figures into defecting and thereby break the regime's will to survive.

Gen Hashem, who said he was in daily contact with a wide range of sources inside Syria, said he was well aware of the arguments against military intervention, including the risk of a sectarian civil war, the proliferation of weapons and the creation of unregulated militias.

But using the delayed international intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s as an example, he said: "The more we delay this intervention, the more likely those risks are to come true."

"For the first seven months of the Syrian uprising," he said, "the demonstrations were peaceful, and yet 5,000 people were killed by the regime then." Today, he puts the death toll at over 15,000, with 80,000 injured and countless numbers missing.

President Assad and his wife: Gen Hashem said his forces are torturing opponents out of sheer hatred
"I believe it is the utmost evil genocide in Syria," he said. "The regime is killing its own people."

Gang-raped​

The former army officer recounted to a shocked audience a recent case in the city of Hama in which, he said, 46 people from an extended family were rounded up by plainclothes thugs known as shabiha.

Widespread torture, he said, is being practised by the regime, not for information gathering, but for reasons of "hatred and enjoyment".

But Gen Hashem, when questioned by his audience, gave a hint of the disunity and fractiousness that plagues the Syrian opposition.

It was clear he had fallen out with some key figures and he accused the opposition Muslim Brotherhood of fomenting problems inside both the political and military rebel groups, saying "they are only following their own agenda, rather than working for the common cause of bringing down this regime".






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May 25, 2012 10:43 AM

EU bank crises worsens as Bankia suspends stock

ByConstantine von Hoffman
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-57441577/eu-bank-crises-worsens-as-bankia-suspends-stock/​

(MoneyWatch) Bankia, Spain's 4th largest bank, suspended trading in its stock today as it waits to see if Madrid will be able to come up with more than $19 billion in bailout funds. This action, along with downgrades to some of the EU's largest and best capitalized banks, puts more pressure on the European Central Bank - already trying to cope with a sharp increase in withdrawals from banks in Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland this week.

Bankia, whose stock has dropped by 50 percent since January, suspended trading in its shares pending a board meeting this afternoon at which it was expected to formally request a bailout from the Spanish government. It was partially nationalized two weeks ago because of problems with bad property debt. While the exact size of the bailout has yet to be made public, it is certain to be more than the $17.7 billion Bankia the government was requiring it to come up with to meet capital requirements.

The government of Prime Minister Mario Rajoy has gone to extraordinary lengths to say that Bankia's status is not representative of all the nation's banks. Last week, following the withdrawal of $1.25 billion in under a week, it denied reports of a run on Bankia deposits. Bankia officials have not as yet put out a denial of their own. On Wednesday the nation's finance minister called Bankia a "unique case" and that the nation's bank rescue agency would be able to handle it.

Greek banks may be nearing complete collapse
Where will Spain get money for bank bailouts?
Big Spanish banks slide closer to bankruptcy


It is difficult to see how Spain, with a 23 percent unemployment rate and already grappling with $36 billion in public debt from its regional governments, will be able to bailout Bankia and the nation's many other troubled banks without international help.

Perhaps even more unsettling for investors is today's announcement of Moody's downgrade to the credit rating of some of the largest, best-capitalized banks in the EU's Nordic countries. The agency downgraded Sweden's Nordea, Handelsbanken and agricultural lender Landshypotek as well as Norway's DNB Bank. The rating cuts were based on Moody's conclusion the banks would have trouble raising capital in the event of a crisis, not because of any weakness in the bank's holdings. This underscores the possibility of that the banking crisis cannot be limited to Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland - the EU's most troubled economies.

The ECB has had to increase alternate types of funding for banks which aren't in good enough condition to qualify for mainstream ECB loans. There has been a marked increase in use of the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) program, which allows nation's central banks to borrow money on behalf of troubled banks. Also, on Thursday banks took almost $5 billion overnight ECB loans. This is the most a jump in mid-March following the Greek debt restructuring-fuelled and comes immediately after some Greek banks were cut off from mainstream ECB funding. The ECB has provided very limited information about which nations and banks are using these programs.






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05/25/2012

The World from Berlin
'The Greeks Can't Have Their Cake and Eat It Too'

REUTERS
http://www.spiegel.de/international...ntial-greek-exit-from-euro-zone-a-835260.html​

Anxieties have reached a new high in Europe as uncertainty reigns over a potential Greek exit from the euro zone and new figures raise fears that the crisis may be affecting the German economy. German commentators on Friday review the currency union's options.

Time appears to be running out as fears of a Greek financial collapse continue to mount in Europe. Without a stable government capable of implementing promised reforms, the likelihood that Greece will be forced to leave the euro zone seems ever greater.

Greece's caretaker government is not in a position to implement critical reforms due to the upcoming new parliamentary election on June 17, German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Friday. The paper wrote that, according to information it had obtained, the "already lagging reform efforts by the government in Athens have practically ground to a halt recently." It cited the failure to privatize state assets as one example.

Additionally, many Greeks have apparently quit paying their taxes in fear of a possible Greek exit from the euro zone, the paper reported. The Greek Finance Ministry expects to collect 10 percent less tax revenue in the month of May due to the ongoing recession, which is now in its fifth year, according to the news agency Reuters.

Because of fears that the left-wing Syriza party, which has demanded that the EU lift austerity demands on Greece, may come to power after the election next month, euro zone member states are reportedly already developing contingency plans for the event that the country leaves the currency union soon after the vote. Still, the official line is that the euro zone wants to keep Greece in the fold.

Meanwhile Germany, up until now the most solid country in the euro zone and the currency union's biggest economy, appears to be running into trouble itself on fears of a Grexit, as the media has dubbed a possible Greek departure from the euro area. On Thursday, new figures revealed that the German manufacturing sector has been shrinking at the fastest rate in three years in May, and the service sector saw little growth in May. Also on Thursday, the leading Ifo Institute for Economic Research reported that German business sentiment had gone down in May for the first time in seven months.

To make matters worse, French President François Hollande challenged German Chancellor Angela Merkel's policies on Wednesday by proposing the implementation of controversial euro bonds, or jointly issued bonds, as the center of his growth agenda.

As the clouds darken on the euro-zone horizon, German editorialists examine the increasingly precarious efforts to keep financial disaster at bay.

Conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:​

"From Athens comes the threat of a full-blown storm. If their repeated parliamentary election on June 17 -- the same day as the run-off for the French National Assembly -- fails to yield a viable majority, or if one of the parties that wants to reject the troika's 'diktat' gains a majority … then Greece's exit from the euro-zone will be tangibly close. The fact that this is being so openly discussed is an attempt to make clear to Greek voters what is at stake. They can't have their cake and eat it too. Nor will the euro zone allow itself to be blackmailed by fears of possible turmoil in the financial world. But there is yet more behind this. Every country in the euro zone must understand that they can't fall into unlimited debt at the cost of others, and that the recovery of competitiveness is impossible without making sacrifices -- that means a drastic reduction in quality of life in some countries."

"The German government has also had to learn a lot in the last two years. After the elections in Greece and France, it became clear that austerity alone is not enough to solve the euro crisis."

Conservative daily Die Welt writes:​

"French President François Hollande is suggesting that the euro-zone countries should collectively borrow money and take joint reponsibility for servicing their debt, . That means that the countries who enjoy the trust of the markets will pay more (to borrow money) than they do today."

"Euro bonds erode the confidence that the causes of the crisis can ever be changed. Athens will be allowed to continue with its mismanagement and rejection of reforms, making such behavior more palatable to other countries. Why should they carry out reforms? Why make the social system, labor market and state administration more secure for the future when money falls from the sky? … Hollande hasn't given up on the dream of life in a hammock financed by German tax money. … The use of tax revenue touches on the heart of the political system. The citizen trusts the political powers to which he or she gives his vote -- which can also be taken away again. Therefore, the German government must not give in."

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:​

"For two years, the chancellor has been trying to cure symptoms instead of correcting the deeper causes of the financial crisis. This can worsen an illness, and it will now have an effect on the Germans."

"It would be in our best interest to stop the downward spiral. That could be through growth programs for the countries in crisis, which would absorb the slumps in the real economy resulting from the financial turbulence. Or it could be through euro bonds, which is probably the only way to stop the fatal logic of financial markets in panic mode that are throwing one country after the next into crisis."

"The Germans still appear to be profiting from the crisis through absurdly low interest rates that only exist because other euro-zone countries are in crisis and everyone is fleeing to German bonds. But that won't last much longer, if the falling economic figures are any indication. If the chancellor isn't stopped soon, the German economy will also soon find itself in crisis."

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:​

"The scenario that Greece could leave the euro is not new. The Europeans have been dealing with this option for two years now, ever since it became clear that there was no consensus in Greek society as to where we go from here. The only new thing now is our emotional state. In the past, nearly all observers thought it unlikely that Greece would leave the euro. Now, many do."

"However, this forecast overlooks a very difficult condition -- someone will have to eventually decide that Greece no longer belongs in the euro zone. But who would that be? The Greeks want to stay in the euro. That means the other euro-zone countries would have to decide they no longer want the Greeks. This is legally impossible, because of the EU treaties, and it's too difficult politically."

"Europe has a dilemma: To reintroduce the drachma in Greece, the country would need an effective government. But if there were such a government, Greece could remain in the euro."

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:​

"French President François Hollande continues to toy with the idea of euro bonds, the thing that Chancellor Angela Merkel detests, and not completely without reason -- they would violate the European treaties and go against the logic of incentive and consequences. This is the heart of her message, her deep conviction: There is no solution without sacrifices, no new Europe without new rules, no growth without the right structures."

"Merkel has tried to spread this message throughout the crisis. It has been accepted by most governments, which Hollande must have also realized at the summit meeting in Brussels on Wednesday night. (...) The critical upcoming election in Greece and the discord between Germany and France give the impression that the rescue path has been wrong so far, and that there was an alternative. But nothing confuses the markets more than uncertainty and strife."

The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung takes a look at the prospects for getting Merkel's pet project, the fiscal pact, through the German parliament, where it will need opposition support to get passed:

"Not just abroad, but at home, the criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel's austerity measures grows louder. It's not certain that the Bundestag and Bundesrat (the two houses of the German parliament) will approve the fiscal pact for more budgetary discipline before the summer break."

"Of course the opposition also wants to score points against the chancellor. If she fails to get her own fiscal pact through in her own country without delay, it doesn't exactly enhance her -- already damaged -- reputation internationally."

"Party tactical considerations therefore play a role. But the Social Democrats and the Greens can also give objective reasons for their resistance. There are now almost daily doubts about Merkel's European policy. (...) And so Germany is projecting a bizarre image of itself in Europe. Its euro-zone partners must quickly commit to strict deficit reduction due to pressure from Berlin. But Germany takes its time in implementing Merkel's fiscal pact. Embarrassing."





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Crisis-led suicide epidemic:
Greek mother & son jump to death

Published: 24 May, 2012, 20:00
Reuters / John Kolesidis
TRENDS:Eurozone crisis
http://www.rt.com/news/greece-double-suicide-crisis-136/​

A 60-year-old Greek musician and his 91-year-old mother jumped to their deaths from their 5th floor apartment, driven to despair by financial woes. This double death is the latest in a rising epidemic of crisis-induced suicides in Greece.

*Witness accounts vary – some say the mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, jumped first, screaming a prayer as she plummeted to her death. Other neighbors say the mother and her son jumped together, holding hands.


But the one thing everyone seems to agree on is that the family had been struggling for a long time. The night before, Antonis Perris posted a suicide note of sorts on a popular Greek forum, saying he had no way of resolving the family’s financial issues.


“The problem is that I didn’t realize that I would need to have cash, because the economic crisis came so suddenly. Even though I have been selling our possessions, we have no cash flow, we have no money to buy food anymore and my credit card is maxed out with 22% interest rate.”

Perris continued to say that both his and his mother’s health deteriorated, and that he saw no solution to his most basic problems – getting food and medical help.

He ended his emotional statement by blaming the “powerful of this earth”, holding them responsible for the country’s – and his own – financial crisis.

Crisis suicides are no longer isolated incidents in Greece. Just two days ago a man committed suicide in central Athens, slashing his wrists on a well-populated square. In April, a student, a professor and a priest took their own lives in the country’s capital.

But it was the death of pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas, who shot himself in the head on a central Athens square, that most acutely exposed the plight of Greeks amid savage austerity.

Before shooting himself amid morning rush hour on April 4th on Syntagma Square, opposite the Greek parliament building, the 77-year-old pensioner wrote a suicide note.

"I see no other solution than this dignified end to my life so I don't find myself fishing through garbage cans for sustenance," wrote Christoulas, who has since become a national symbol of the austerity-induced pain that is squeezing millions.

Greek media have reported suicides almost daily over the last few months – a shocking fact for a country that previously boasted one of the lowest suicide rates in the world.







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Japan breaks oil embargo against Iran before Baghdad talks end

Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://www.debka.com/article/22022/

Japan breaks oil embargo against Iran before Baghdad talks end
DEBKAfile Special Report May 23, 2012, 6:23 PM (GMT+02:00)
Tags: Iran nuclear Japan Britain Russia-Iran negotiations oil embargo


A senior official in Tokyo announced Wednesday, May 23, that the Japanese government will seek parliamentary approval for a bill allowing Japanese firms to insure tankers carrying Iranian oil to Asia if European insurers refused to do so. The new law would apply to 16 Iranian tankers in the first stage.

This decision means that any intention to stiffen the oil embargo against Iran, as Israel had expected, was virtually voided even before the resumed nuclear talks ended between the six powers and Iran in Baghdad. Instead of taking place under the shadow of tougher sanctions, the oil embargo had begun falling apart and a major disincentive for Iran to continue its drive for a nuclear bomb was fading.

Still, without any real grounds, European coordinator Catherine Ashton and IAEA head Yukiya Amano were openly optimistic about the outcome of the current round of talks. In this, they backed US President Barack Obama’s expectation of successful negotiations with Iran and his advocacy of continuing diplomacy in contrast to his earlier remarks this month that the window for negotiations was closing.

By spreading good cheer, Ashton and Amano obscured the real state of play with Iran. Amano said Tuesday that a deal for inspections would soon be signed with Iran although he didn’t know when. Now it appears that there was no deal.

And all Ashton’s spokesman would say was, "I am not going to go into the details of what we are proposing, but of course we are putting proposals on the table that are of interest to Iran."

Israeli ministers who urged the world powers to make tough demands of Iran and impose stiff penalties were clearly talking through their hats. Japan is not alone in helping Iran beat the toughest sanction, the embargo on its oil exports, India and Turkey were in there first. They were all essentially signaling Tehran that its inflexibility in negotiations would not rate serious punishment because some of the threatened sanctions are no longer workable.

No comment was forthcoming from US official sources on the developments around the Baghdad talks Wednesday. Other American sources close to the Obama administration, such as Dennis Ross, the president’s former adviser on Iran, warned Tuesday, May 22, on the eve of the resumed talks not to expect any breakthrough or dramatic progress.

Ross stressed that Tehran would get no sanctions relief until uranium enrichment is discontinued – and not only the 20-percent grade but lower levels too.

Russia and the UK, alone of the powers (the others are the US, France, Germany, China) represented in Baghdad, spoke openly about the possible failure of the meeting and the outbreak of war with Iran in consequence.

The Russians again warned Tehran that the West is using the screen of negotiations for a conspiracy to set a military trap. In London, just before the talks began, British ministers were warned of their likely breakdown and were reported to have prepared “contingency plans” for a possible conflict between Israel and Iran.

Some sources reported that under discussion was British military and diplomatic aid to Israel, in particular the deployment of Royal Navy vessels on Israel’s coast.

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use......
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/25/inside-jordan-worries-about-iran-and-syria/

May 25th, 2012
02:00 AM ET
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Inside Jordan, worries about Iran and Syria

Editor's note: CNN's Barbara Starr is covering the Eager Lion military exercise in Jordan. Read all her reporting here.

By Barbara Starr

The tiny nation of Jordan may be one of the most important U.S. allies in the Middle East, but these days trouble is brewing from growing al Qaeda threats in the region.

In several days of talking here with senior U.S. military, diplomatic and Jordanian officials, the word most often heard is "instability." What worries Jordan is that regional stability could be shaken even more by unrest in neighboring Syria and also by Iran's nuclear intentions.

And the Syria and Iran problems increasingly may be linked.

These officials also informally believe that the Syrian crisis now essentially has distracted the Iranian leadership so much it may be lessening the immediacy of a nuclear weapons threat from Teheran. Up until a few months ago Jordanian leaders privately believed Israel was likely close to striking Iranian nuclear sites, but now they say, that seems to have eased.

But they also warn the Arab world sees the new Israeli government as a "war cabinet," and Iran could make the decision yet to proceed with a nuclear agenda.

Still, the worries Jordan feels from Iran are significant.

"Iran is a problem for the whole region," one official here said. Hezbollah ties to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) are now virtually complete, Jordan feels, with the Iranian regime providing the group weapons and full financial and other support.

Jordan is in fact worried Hezbollah operations could target it.

The most senior Jordanian officials tell CNN they do not believe Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, has any intention of attacking Jordan, knowing that would bring down the wrath of the United States.

But the Jordanians' worry is more complex.

Jordanian officials say there is extensive evidence Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is shipping weapons to the Syrian regime and that Russia is determined to keep supporting al-Assad, so that it has a base for intelligence operations. Those weapons are mainly limited to hand-held weapons such as AK-47s that Syrian troops can use in urban assaults.

In addition, Jordan now believes there are upwards of 1,500 al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers in Syria, most coming in from Iraq. U.S. intelligence officials tell CNN's Suzanne Kelly that the U.S. believes there are approximately 500 al Qaeda operatives in Syria but cannot quantify how many more sympathizers there might be.

In recent weeks there have also been infiltrations from Lebanon, and trouble has erupted on that border.

Jordan's own long northern border with Syria remains stable, for now. But officials say they have caught smugglers, and even a small number of people trying to bring weapons into Jordan. They've also caught Syrian intelligence agents coming into Jordan to spy of the growing Syrian refugee population.

All of that equals worry.

The Jordanian military also has stepped up its training with U.S. special forces, just in case.

"We have to anticipate any surprises," from Syria, says a senior Jordanian official. Elite Jordanian special forces and U.S. Army Green Berets are training in Jordan in case they have to move to secure Syria's chemical or biological weapons. There is even on-going training on how to rescue a downed pilot.

Jordan already is struggling under the economic burden of tens of thousands of Syrians refugees. If al-Assad pushes more out of Syria, that, too, could destablize Jordan's already shaky economy.

But for the United States, the most direct worry still comes from al Quaeda in Yemen, also known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The Jordanian assessment is that some Jordanian fighters have traveled to Yemen to join the group as well as fighters from the Palestinian territory, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Libya

_____

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May 25th, 2012
05:54 PM ET
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Exclusive: U.S. and Jordan forces share secrets

Now more than ever Jordan's elite special forces are a key ally for US troops. CNN's Barbara Starr was granted exclusive access to see US anti-terrorism troops and Jordian special forces learn lessons from each other and share the latest secrets on how to capture or kill terrorists.
Post by: By CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr
Filed under: Eager Lion 2012 • Jordan
May 25th, 2012
02:00 AM ET
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Inside Jordan, worries about Iran and Syria

Editor's note: CNN's Barbara Starr is covering the Eager Lion military exercise in Jordan. Read all her reporting here.

By Barbara Starr

The tiny nation of Jordan may be one of the most important U.S. allies in the Middle East, but these days trouble is brewing from growing al Qaeda threats in the region.

In several days of talking here with senior U.S. military, diplomatic and Jordanian officials, the word most often heard is "instability." What worries Jordan is that regional stability could be shaken even more by unrest in neighboring Syria and also by Iran's nuclear intentions.

And the Syria and Iran problems increasingly may be linked.

FULL POST
Post by: By CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr
Filed under: Eager Lion 2012 • Iran • Jordan • Syria
May 23rd, 2012
05:34 PM ET
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Al Qaeda's growing reach in Syria

CNN's Barbara Starr reports from Jordan on growing worries about an al Qaeda presence in neighboring Syria. A senior Jordanian official tells CNN that there are nearly 1,500 al Qaeda members and sympathizer in Syria. While some US officials say the Jordanian estimate is high, one U.S. expert on jihadists in Syria agrees with Jordan's view.

Editor's note: CNN's Barbara Starr is covering the Eager Lion military exercise in Jordan. Read all her reporting here.
Post by: CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr
Filed under: Al Qaeda • Eager Lion 2012 • Jordan • Middle East • Syria • Terrorism
May 22nd, 2012
05:29 PM ET
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12,000 troops train in massive war game in Jordan

In the Middle East thousands of U.S. and allied forces are training for a nightmare scenario– the region exploding in a full-fledged war. CNN’s Barbara Starr got exclusive access to their mission in Jordan.

Editor's note: CNN's Barbara Starr is covering the Eager Lion military exercise in Jordan. Read all her reporting here.
Post by: By CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr
Filed under: Eager Lion 2012 • Jordan • Military • Syria
May 21st, 2012
02:00 AM ET
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Inside Jordan's elite fighting force

Editor's note: CNN's Barbara Starr is covering the Eager Lion military exercise in Jordan. Read all her reporting here

By Barbara Starr

On top of a desert mountain military post 20 minutes outside the Jordanian capitol of Amman, we are silently greeted by soldiers clad fully in black, heads and faces masked by balaclavas, carrying assault rifles.

There is no enemy here. But for Jordan's 71st Counter Terrorism Battalion, it does not matter. They pride themselves on being one of the premier special operations units among U.S. allies in the Middle East, and so every day, even on their home base, they are ready to fight.

Recommended: Tense times on Jordan's border with Syria

The battalion is taking part in Eager Lion, a massive international military exercise being staged in Jordan and involving some 12,000 troops from 19 nations.

FULL POST
Post by: By CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr
Filed under: Afghanistan • Eager Lion 2012 • Jordan • Middle East • Syria
May 18th, 2012
11:41 AM ET
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Tense times on Jordan's border with Syria

Editor's Note: Barbara Starr is in Jordan covering the Eager Lion 2012 exercise. Read her reporting here. Watch her reports on Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer (4pET-6pET)

By Barbara Starr, reporting from the border crossing between the towns of Ar-Ramtha Jordan, and Daara Syria

In the no-man's-land between Jordan and Syria, tensions can be high. Tens of thousands of Syrians have escaped across this remote desert region.

They are being shot at by their own security forces as they try to escape, Jordanian officials tell CNN's Security Clearance. In fact, in a local hospital on the Jordanian side, they tell us they have treated many Syrian refugees suffering from gunshot wounds.

Recommended: The Syrian elephant in the room during military exercise in Jordan

But there is cross-border commerce as well. The Syrian border is an economic lifeline for Jordan. FULL POST
Post by: By CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr
Filed under: Assad • Eager Lion 2012 • Jordan • Middle East • Syria
Syria: the elephant in the room amid military exercise in Jordan
May 16th, 2012
02:57 PM ET
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Syria: the elephant in the room amid military exercise in Jordan

Editor's Note: Barbara Starr is in Jordan covering the Eager Lion 2012 exercise. Read her reporting here. Watch her reports on Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer (4pET-6pET).

By Barbara Starr

With a photo of a raging lion over their shoulders, senior U.S. and Jordanian generals opened a massive military exercise dubbed "Eager Lion."

The kickoff came with adamant statements that the 12,000 troops from 19 countries now in Jordan were here only for the training - and it all has nothing to do with the violence now raging across Jordan's northern border inside Syria.

Recommended: U.S. in waiting game on Syria

But it is hard to avoid. Even the exercise name has raised suspicions. In Arabic, the word for lion is asad.

But the name has nothing to do with the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, say Maj. Gen. Awni Ad Adwan, head of Jordanian military operations and training, and Maj. Gen. Kenneth Tovo, head of U.S. Central Command's special operations force.

Technically, everyone is correct. The name of the exercise was chosen two years ago, the timing of it set nearly three years ago. Officially, the exercise is about 19 nations training together and, as with all U.S. military training exercises, the threat the troops are practicing to fend off is unnamed.

But there is the technical answer and then there is reality. Syria looms large here.
FULL POST
Post by: CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr
Filed under: Assad • Eager Lion 2012 • Jordan • Military • Syria
Thousands amass in Jordan for major military exercise
May 15th, 2012
02:00 AM ET
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Thousands amass in Jordan for major military exercise

Editor's Note: Barbara Starr is in Jordan covering the Eager Lion 2012 exercise. Read her reporting here. Watch her reports on Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer (4pET-6pET).

By Barbara Starr

U.S. Department of Defense photo

It couldn't come at a more delicate time in the Middle East. No one will say it publicly, but the Eager Lion 2012 exercise - and the 12,000 multinational forces gathering in Jordan - are sending a not-so-quiet message to others in the region: they are ready for whatever comes.

From now until the end of May, one of the largest multinational military exercises the region has seen is taking place in Jordan. There are more than 19 nations, including the United States and a number of Arab and European allies, gathering to practice their combat skills, just in case.

Several U.S. military officials say while it's not the primary intention, the exercise is meant to be noticed by Syria and Iran especially. The message: even with the United States out of Iraq, and winding up the war in Afghanistan, there is a formidable U.S. presence in the region, and other countries are capable of filling in the gaps.

The U.S. Navy already is keeping two aircraft carriers in the next-door Persian Gulf region, and stepping up the presence of minesweepers in those waters. The Air Force has sent half a dozen F-22 fighters to the United Arab Emirates. The Joint Special Operations Command has conducted several deadly drone strikes against al Qaeda in Yemen. FULL POST
Post by: By CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr
Filed under: Eager Lion 2012 • Iran • Jordan • Middle East • Military • Saudi Arabia • Syria

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http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NE26Ak02.html

Middle East
May 26, 2012
All eyes now on Moscow talks
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Comments

Although it was a net victory for the host nation Iraq, to add to its regional prestige and showcase its ability to provide a safe and secure environment for a major international gathering, the two-day talks in Baghdad between Iran and the world powers produced few tangible results, save an agreement to continue for another round set in Moscow two weeks from now.

According to Catherine Ashton, the European Union's High Representative, the talks showed progress even though important differences remain, obviously enough to prevent a timely breakthrough in the Iran nuclear standoff that has resulted in tough sanctions on Iran and the constant military threats by Israel.

At this juncture, the mere agreement to continue the dialogue is considered a step forward, but obviously the big question is whether or not these rounds will eventually culminate in an agreement, given the approaching European embargo on Iranian oil is due to commence on July 1.

In his press conference, Iran's top negotiator, Saeed Jalili, clarified that the "package" by the P5 +1 nations that was orally submitted to Iran on the first day of the multilateral talks actually consisted of "a single proposal" that focused on Iran's uranium enrichment program. (The P5+1 - Iran Six - consists of the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany.)

Jaili's deputies accompanying him to the meeting have expressed their disappointment that there was no offer to bargain an Iranian nuclear concession for lifting any aspects of the sanctions.

Small step forward, giant leap backward
Indeed, if the Baghdad talks (which followed an earlier round in Istanbul) revealed anything, it was on the one hand Tehran's determination to defend its "inalienable rights" and, on the other, the West's equally steadfast determination to stop Iran's uranium enrichment program, beginning with the most sensitive 20% enrichment.

In other words, all the pretensions, ie of Western consent to allow Iran's low-grade enrichment by giving up on the "zero centrifuges" option, have now been clearly exposed, thus raising the question of what is the real US-led strategy toward Iran?

"Moving the goal posts is one thing but reintroducing the 'red line' on zero enrichment under the guise of honest and sincere diplomacy is another thing and really shows their [Western] duplicity," says an Iranian source close to the negotiation team who wishes to remain anonymous.

He adds that in his "personal opinion", the West has "hardened its position since the Istanbul talks in April" and that "is definitely not a good sign".

Countering the other side's "single idea" with a "comprehensive and step-by-step" proposal that focused on both nuclear and non-nuclear issues, including regional security issues, Iran's hope at the Baghdad talks was to move the process along the Russian "step-by-step" proposal that had been reflected in the Group of Eight communique at Camp David one week earlier. Yet, somehow, it was replaced at the last minute with a new and abbreviated proposal that simply demanded that Iran forfeit 20% enrichment without presenting Iran with any viable incentives or mentioning any "endgame".

Instead of making any substantive suggestions that could end the Iran nuclear crisis, the Western delegates headed by Ashton put the focus on "near-term" solutions while insisting that any lifting of Western sanctions was unthinkable, thus in effect precluding a successful breakthrough in Baghdad.

Henceforth, unless there is a shift of approach by the Western powers between now and June 8, the date set for the Moscow round, it is difficult to foresee a different, and more hopeful, result then that would distinguish itself from the Baghdad meet.

"We are at a deadlock at this moment on two fronts: sanctions and Iran's low enrichment, and on both fronts either they will show new flexibility or the talks are doomed," says the Tehran source.

In effect, then, the US and its allies could be blamed for the absence of a breakthrough in Baghdad by refusing to present Iran with even a minimal concession on sanctions that would enable the Iranian negotiation team to strike an agreement on the issue of 20% enrichment, within the overall context of Iran's nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) right to a civilian enrichment program.

Clearly, the US's negotiation strategy of obfuscation was to appease Israel, whose leaders have insisted on a complete halt of all enrichment activities in Iran. But, is this is a wise strategy?

The real US strategy is centered on crippling sanctions that have been legislated into comprehensive laws and are difficult to reverse by the executive branch, even in the absence of sinister motives to keep the furnace of the Iran nuclear crisis burning.

Simultaneously, this is a crisis that gives the US certain leverage over both China and Russia, by adding to China's strategic energy insecurity and also pressuring Russia on its southern flank, not to mention the crisis' functional utility to contain Iranian power and to perpetuate US hegemony in the Persian Gulf.

As for Israel, this is a crisis of opportunity to continue to receive generous Western assistance and to portray itself as an aggrieved nation that must prioritize the Iran threat instead of the Palestinian problem. For Europe, on the other hand, there is comparatively little to gain from the continuation of a crisis that affects its economic well-being.

Signs of US-EU divergence
Despite reverting to a more hawkish line against Iran prior to the Baghdad meeting, Ashton in her post-talk press conference sounded guardedly upbeat and again reiterated the NPT framework of the talks, which is considered a major plus by Iran since it is tantamount to acknowledging Iran's right to civilian enrichment.

Yet, as of this date, no one in the US administration, including the US envoy to the talks, Wendy Sherman, has ever echoed Ashton on this delicate yet crucial subject matter.

In turn, this has put the Barack Obama administration at a critical fork in the road: either continue with the hardline, yet unrealistic, zero enrichment approach, presently nuanced by select-focusing on 20% enrichment, and thus see the talks end in failure, or shift gears to a new policy that respects Iran's rights even though it may unacceptable to Israel.

Indeed, the US's policy incoherence and built-in ambiguities, reflected in its behavior at both rounds in Istanbul and Baghdad, clearly shows that the US is caught at the crossroads of a dilemma between Iran and Israel. (See US caught between Israel and Iran Asia Times Online, April 28.)

It is possible that the US has no real fear of an impending Iranian proliferation risk and if it did it would have put itself in a bargaining position.

The non-bargaining posture in Baghdad was geared to prevent a breakthrough, and thus appease Israel. This revealed much about the US's non-changing red line on zero enrichment.

Prospects for Moscow talks
One key advantage of the coming Moscow round is that it will inevitably renew interest in the Russian "step-by-step" proposal that calls for the gradual lifting of Iran sanctions in return for Iran's satisfaction of certain nuclear demands.

Spotlighting the Russian proposal after it was temporarily set aside in Baghdad will undoubtedly present a viable option to resolve the Iran nuclear crisis, again depending on the US's willingness to revise its script vis-a-vis Iran.

At the moment, in terms of atmospherics, Iran has the upper hand, having improved its standing with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is about to sign an new modality for cooperation with Iran after last week's Tehran visit by the IAEA general director, Yukiya Amano, and stating its preparedness to make significant concessions as long as the other side reciprocates with regards to sanctions.

This means that it will be doubly hard for the US to maintain its present course and to rally world public opinion against Iran, no matter what the Iranphobic noise from the halls of the US Congress.

For sure, one thing US policymakers could think about is how their uncompromising stance is fueling a closer Iran-China relationship, in the light of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's planned trip to Beijing to attend a security summit in June, as well as cordial bilateral talks between Jalili and Chinese officials at the Baghdad talks.

In essence, Washington is hurling Iran into the bosom of China, hardly the sign of a prudent Western diplomacy.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry, click here. He is author of Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 2008) and Looking for rights at Harvard. His latest book is UN Management Reform: Selected Articles and Interviews on United Nations CreateSpace (November 12, 2011).

Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.

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I once more suggest that the Apartheid South African nuclear weapons program should be the reference point for comparison to what we know of Iran's program....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.......
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/26/iran-uranium-nuclear-weapons

Iran has enough uranium for five nuclear weapons, claims US thinktank

Institute for Science and International Security says uranium output up by a third but needs more refining for use in bombs

Damien Pearse and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 26 May 2012 06.03 EDT

Iran has significantly increased its output of low-enriched uranium and if it was further refined could make at at least five nuclear weapons, according to a US thinktank.

The Institute for Science and International Security, which tracks Iran's nuclear programme, made the analysis on the basis of data in the latest quarterly report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The UN watchdog's report, published on Friday, showed Iran pressing ahead with its uranium enrichment work in defiance of UN resolutions calling on it to suspend the activity.

It said Iran had produced almost 6.2 tonnes of uranium enriched to a level of 3.5% since it began the work in 2007 – some of which has subsequently been further processed into higher-grade material.

This equates to nearly 750 kg more than in the previous IAEA report issued in February, and the thinktank said Iran's monthly production had risen by roughly a third.

"This total amount of 3.5% low enriched uranium hexafluoride, if further enriched to weapon grade, is enough to make over five nuclear weapons," its analysis said.

But the thinktank added that some of Iran's higher-grade uranium had been converted into reactor fuel and would not be available for nuclear weapons, at least not quickly.

Enriched uranium can be used to fuel power plants, which is Iran's stated purpose, or to provide material for bombs, if refined to a much higher degree. The west suspects that may be Iran's ultimate goal despite the Islamic Republic's denials.

Iran began enriching uranium to a fissile concentration of 20% in 2010, saying it needed this to fuel a medical research reactor. It later expanded the work sharply by launching enrichment at an underground site, Fordow.

It alarmed a suspicious west since such enhanced enrichment accomplishes much of the technical leap towards 90% – or weapons-grade – uranium.

The IAEA report said Iran had added another 350 enrichment centrifuges to the existing 700 at Fordow, which is buried deep under rock and soil to protect it against any enemy attacks.

Although not yet being fed with uranium, the new machines could be used to further boost Iran's output of uranium enriched to 20%.

The Institute for Science and International Security said Iran still appeared to be experiencing problems in its testing of production-scale units of more advanced centrifuges that would allow it to refine uranium faster, even though it had made some progress.

Related

25 Feb 2012

Iran warns Israel not to attack its nuclear facilities

22 Dec 2009

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says US fabricated nuclear documents

7 Sep 2005

Iran could acquire the bomb in five years, say British researchers

27 Feb 2012

The US must stop the strategic blunder of an attack on Iran

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use......
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-nuclear-iran-uranium-idUSBRE84O0SN20120526

Iran has enough uranium for five bombs: expert
By Fredrik Dahl
Comments 4
VIENNA | Sat May 26, 2012 4:57am EDT

(Reuters) - Iran has significantly stepped up its output of low-enriched uranium and total production in the last five years would be enough for at least five nuclear weapons if refined much further, a U.S. security institute said.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a think-tank which closely tracks Iran's nuclear program, made the analysis on the basis of data in the latest quarterly U.N. watchdog report which was issued on Friday.

Progress in Iran's nuclear activities is closely watched by the West and Israel as it could determine how long it could take Tehran to build atomic bombs, if it decided to do so. Iran denies any plan to and says its aims are entirely peaceful.

During talks in Baghdad this week, six world powers failed to convince Iran to scale back its uranium enrichment program. They will meet again in Moscow next month to try to defuse a decade-old standoff that has raised fears of a new war in the Middle East that could disrupt oil supplies.

Friday's report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a Vienna-based U.N. body, showed Iran pressing ahead with its uranium enrichment work in defiance of U.N. resolutions calling on it to suspend the activity.

It said Iran had produced almost 6.2 metric tons (6.83 tons) of uranium enriched to a level of 3.5 percent since it began the work in 2007 - some of which has subsequently been further processed into higher-grade material.

This is nearly 750 kg more than in the previous IAEA report issued in February, and ISIS said Iran's monthly production had risen by roughly a third.

"This total amount of 3.5 percent low enriched uranium hexafluoride, if further enriched to weapon grade, is enough to make over five nuclear weapons," ISIS said in its analysis.

It added, however, that some of Iran's higher-grade uranium had been converted into reactor fuel and would not be available for nuclear weapons, at least not quickly.

Enriched uranium can be used to fuel power plants, which is Iran's stated purpose, or to provide material for bombs, if refined to a much higher degree. The West suspects that may be Iran's ultimate goal despite the Islamic Republic's denials.

Iran began enriching uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 percent in 2010, saying it needed this to fuel a medical research reactor. It later expanded the work sharply by launching enrichment at an underground site, Fordow.

It alarmed a suspicious West since such enhanced enrichment accomplishes much of the technical leap towards 90 percent - or weapons-grade - uranium.

The IAEA report said Iran had installed more than 50 percent more enrichment centrifuges at Fordow, which is buried deep under rock and soil to protect it against any enemy attacks.

Although not yet being fed with uranium, the new machines could be used to further boost Iran's output of uranium enriched to 20 percent.

ISIS said Iran still appeared to be experiencing problems in its testing of production-scale units of more advanced centrifuges that would allow it to refine uranium faster, even though it had made some progress.

(Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

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Analysis & Opinion

Don’t forget Iran’s record of deception
Now is the time to not only maintain pressure on Iran, but increase it

For links see article source.....
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http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/spainish-bank-bankia-euro-crisis/1/184877.html

Spanish bank asks for $24 bn in state aid
Associated Press Madrid Last Updated: May 26, 2012 | 13:18 IST

Spain's troubled bank, Bankia, has asked the Spanish government for $23.8 billion in financial support just as a leading credit rating agency downgraded it to junk status.

Jose Ignacio Goirigolzarri, the bank's president, said late on Friday that the bailout would "reinforce the solvency, liquidity and solidity of the bank."

The request came as Standard & Poor's downgraded Bankia and four other Spanish banks to junk status because of uncertainty over restructuring and recapitalization plans.

Trading in Bankia shares was suspended on Friday while its board determined how much new aid was needed. The bank's shares have experienced turbulent trading in recent weeks on fears it would not be able to cover the massive losses it has built up in bad loans to the country's collapsed real estate sector.

For links see article source....
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http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/china-s-looming-economic-crisis-1.87771

26 May 2012 | Last updated at 01:35AM
China's looming economic crisis
By Fareed Zakaria | comments@fareedzakaria.com 0 comments

NATURAL SLOWDOWN: All the factors that pushed China forward have begun to wither

THERE has been much speculation about power struggles in China in the wake of the ouster of Bo Xilai, the powerful Communist Party boss of Chongqing who used populism, money and intrigue to rise to the top. Had he not been brought down this year -- by a series of mistakes, revelations and bad luck -- Bo might have rattled the technocratic-authoritarian system running the country. China might well survive its political crisis, but it faces a more immediate challenge: an economic crisis.

Every year for two decades, experts have told me that China's economy was set to crash, felled by huge imbalances and policy errors. They would point to non-performing loans, bad banks, inefficient state-owned enterprises and real estate bubbles. Somehow, none of these has derailed China's growth, which has averaged an astonishing 9.5 per cent annually for three decades.

Ruchir Sharma, who runs Morgan Stanley's Emerging Markets Fund, makes a different and more persuasive case in his new book, Breakout Nations, pointing not to China's failures but to its successes: "China is on the verge of a natural slowdown that will change the global balance of power, from finance to politics, and take the wind out of many economies that are riding in its draft."

Evidence is accumulating to support his view.

China's growth looks remarkable. But it isn't unprecedented. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all grew close to nine per cent annually for about two decades and then started to slow. Many think that China's fate will be like that of Japan, which crashed and slowed down in the 1990s and has yet to boom again. But the more realistic scenario is Japan in the 1970s, when the original Asian tiger's growth slowed from nine per cent to about six per cent. Korea and Taiwan followed similar trajectories.

What caused these slowdowns? Success. It becomes much more difficult to grow at a breakneck pace when you have a large economy and a middle-class society.

Sharma does the math: "In 1998, for China to grow its US$1 trillion (RM3.16 trillion) economy by 10 per cent, it had to expand its economic activities by US$100 billion and consume only 10 per cent of the world's industrial commodities -- the raw materials that include everything from oil to copper and steel.

"In 2011, to grow its US$5 trillion economy that fast, it needed to expand by US$600 billion a year and suck in more than 30 per cent of global commodity production."

All the factors that pushed China forward have begun to wither. China became an urbanised country last year, with a majority of its people living in cities. The rate of urban migration has slowed to five million a year. This means that soon the famous "surplus labour pool" will be exhausted. This decade, only five million people will join China's core workforce, down dramatically from 90 million in the previous decade. And thanks to the one-child policy, there are fewer Chinese to take the place of retiring workers.

Sharma's picture is largely shared by the Chinese government. For years the leadership in Beijing has been preparing for a slowdown. Premier Wen Jiabao argued in 2007 that China's economy was "unbalanced, uncoordinated, unstable and unsustainable". He sounded a similar note this week, calling for government measures to stimulate the economy.

In some ways, China still has a lot of gunpowder in its arsenal. Its central bank can lower interest rates and the government can spend money. But even its firepower has limits. Sharma argues that on paper China's debt to gross domestic product is a modest 30 per cent but that when you add up the debt of Chinese corporations, many of which are government-owned, the numbers look alarming. The government will spend more on infrastructure but will get diminishing returns for these investments. Chinese consumers are spending more but -- in a country with no safety nets and an aging population -- saving rates will remain high.

Sharma predicts trouble for countries that have been buoyed by a booming China -- from Australia to Brazil -- as its demand for raw materials drops. He even predicts a decline in oil prices, which, coming on top of the shale boom, should worry oil-producing states everywhere.

As for China, Sharma suggests that six per cent growth should not worry the Chinese; these would be enviable rates for anyone else. The country is richer, so slower growth is more acceptable. But China's authoritarian regime legitimises itself by delivering high-octane growth. If that fades, China's economic problems might turn into political ones.

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use......
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/utes/54185747-68/china-economy-government-chinese.html.csp

Economic ripples feared as China’s output slows sharply
Concerns » The economy still expands, but construction workers are losing jobs and retail sales grow at the slowest pace in more than three years.

By KEITH BRADSHER | The New York Times
First Published May 25 2012 12:40 pm • Last Updated May 25 2012 12:47 pm

Xi’an, China • A nationwide real estate downturn, stalling exports and declining consumer confidence have produced what a Chinese Cabinet adviser, quoted on the official government website on Thursday, characterized as a "sharp slowdown in the economy."

Though the Chinese economy continues to expand, construction workers are losing jobs in droves and retail sales grew last month at the slowest pace in more than three years. Investments in fixed assets have increased more slowly this year than in any year since 2001.

The most striking feature of the slowdown is that it extends beyond the coastal provinces, which depend on exports and are closely linked to the global economy, to the country’s far more insular interior, including cities like Xi’an in northwestern China.

China’s unexpected economic difficulties are starting to unnerve investors in world markets, especially commodity markets, as China is the world’s largest consumer of most raw materials and the second-largest consumer of oil.

A deepening slowdown would ripple across the world economy. Until now, China’s economy barreled ahead mostly unhindered as the main engine of global growth, even as Europe struggled with its government debt crisis and the United States limped along with a crippled housing market.

Government indexes show real estate prices are falling in more than half of the country’s top 70 urban markets. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services and Moody’s each issued reports on Thursday warning that many of China’s real estate developers face a severe cash squeeze as apartment sales slow to a crawl. The developers still owe heavy interest payments on bank loans.

"Weak property developers in China are likely to face a test of their survival this year," S&P said.

China’s economy was 8.1 percent larger in the first quarter of this year than a year earlier, but virtually all of that growth took place last year. The economy barely grew in the first quarter compared with the fourth quarter of 2011, and the second quarter of this year is likely to show even less growth from the preceding quarter, said Diana Choyleva, a China economist in the Hong Kong office of Lombard Street Research.

The World Bank also warned on Wednesday of a slowdown.

"Clearly the economy is much, much weaker than most people thought until recently," Choyleva said. "They have a real mess on their hands."

China is the world’s largest importer of a long list of commodities, like iron ore and copper. It has also been a big buyer of European factory equipment and luxury goods. The U.S. economy is much less exposed to a slowdown in the Chinese economy, with exports to China representing less than 0.2 percent of U.S. economic output last year.

Benefiting from heavy government spending on highways and other infrastructure and voracious demand for apartments as poor laborers arrived from the countryside, China’s inland cities had continued to expand even when the rest of the world’s economy fell into serious difficulty in late 2008 and early 2009. But now the economic troubles are evident here in Xi’an, an economic cornerstone of northwestern China that serves as one of the country’s largest transportation and distribution hubs and a manufacturing center for everything from bulldozers to aircraft components.

Sun Yufang, a wholesale dealer in Xi’an in ovens, ranges and water heaters, said that residents had nearly stopped outfitting new apartments or redecorating old ones.

"We didn’t really feel the global financial crisis, but this year, we’ve really felt it — I don’t see a solution unless people start buying," Sun said, sitting in a spacious shop with no customers in sight.

Premier Wen Jiabao expressed concern last weekend about the economy after an inspection tour to Wuhan in east-central China. He then led a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday that produced the government’s strongest statement yet.

The government should "place stabilizing growth in a more important position and carry out pre-emptive policy adjustments and fine-tuning more forcefully according to the changing situation," the Cabinet statement said.

An explanatory statement from the official Xinhua news agency drafted Wednesday and posted on the Chinese government’s website on Thursday cited Zhang Liqun, a senior economist advising the Cabinet, as saying that, "the sharp slowdown in the economy has aroused attention from policymakers."

A preliminary reading of a monthly purchasing managers index showed that manufacturing had continued to weaken, with the index falling to 48.7 in May from 49.3 in April; a figure below 50 indicates a slowing sector.

The Cabinet called for stimulating the economy through faster construction of railroads, schools, clinics and other infrastructure. With the Chinese economy still heavily dependent on investment spending, some economists are optimistic that China can quickly reignite growth.

"When you’ve got state banks lending to state enterprises to implement the state’s five-year plan, you don’t have a lot of downside to investment," said Paul Gruenwald, a former International Monetary Fund official in Hong Kong who is now the chief Asia economist at ANZ, one of Australia’s biggest banks.

China has the financial resources to expand government spending sharply. China has a low ratio of debt to economic output, even when sizable local government debts are added to the national debt. Chinese banks have among the world’s lowest rates of loans to deposits, although some banking analysts have questioned whether many loans by state-owned banks to politically influential borrowers will be repaid.

But with the country having finished building much of its infrastructure, it is having a harder time finding further projects that can pass cost-benefit analyses. The Chinese interior has been the biggest beneficiary of infrastructure spending over the last decade, but now shows signs of catching up with the more developed coast.

The Xi’an airport opened a third terminal and another runway on May 3, giving it the capacity to handle as many passengers as John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, despite considerably smaller daily traffic. Bullet trains connect Xi’an to Zhengzhou, nearly 300 miles to the east, while no fewer than three concentric beltways encircle Xi’an, although traffic jams continue to bedevil the ancient city’s core.

One more big infrastructure project remains: The city opened its first subway line late last year, plans to finish a second line later this year and has begun construction on a third. But crisscross the city these days and there are fewer streets torn up for building projects than in the past.

At the same time, residential real estate construction has slowed sharply after the government imposed a stringent ban last year on the purchase of multiple homes in an effort to discourage speculation and make housing more affordable.

Wei Li, a real estate broker in downtown Xi’an, said that prices had fallen 20 percent since the start of this year for new apartments in the hundreds of towers under construction on the city’s periphery, but she said downtown real estate prices were stable. Construction material vendors here, however, say that apartment prices are also falling in downtown neighborhoods.

Developers across the country have responded to the drop in prices by abandoning the longstanding practice of floodlighting construction sites and working around the clock. They have cut back to one daytime shift, sharply reducing the demand for construction workers.

"It’s getting harder and harder to find work," complained Li Bo, a construction worker here.

Xi’an is best known in the West as an ancient capital of China, a Silk Road entrepot that is home to the terra-cotta warriors. But modern-day Xi’an also plays an important role in the Chinese economy as a regional economic hub with 8 million residents.

Store owners and other traders from across northwestern China converge at large covered markets here to buy goods, making Xi’an one of the best places to take the pulse of China’s interior. And right now, that pulse feels a little weak, particularly for consumer spending.

Until late March, Ma Xiechuan sold pork at his butcher shop here by hacking large chunks and handing them to lines of customers to take home and carefully slice and dice. But with sales now down by a third, he has so much extra time that he deftly wields his steel cleaver to produce thin slivers, ready for the customer’s wok.

"It’s the fastest downturn in business I’ve seen in more than 10 years here," Ma said.Yian Leilei, a wholesaler of tablecloths and car seat covers, said that sales nose-dived after Chinese New Year on Jan. 23 and had not recovered. Wang Heiyen, a wholesaler of insulated food and beverage containers whose shop is full of rows of his wares in every possible hue and shape, said his sales were sliding steadily and customers were becoming ever pickier. Ding Lei, the co-owner of a paint and plaster store, and Cai Xiaoyen, a retailer of apartment doors, each said their sales had halved since the start of this year.

"People are just not buying apartments," Ding said. "It was OK in 2009. I’ve never seen it as bad as it is now."

Mayor Dong Jun of Xi’an expressed worry in a post last week on the city’s website.

"The economic situation in the whole city from January through April this year is not that optimistic," he said. "Maintaining the growth rate continues to be very difficult."

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://johnbatchelorshow.com/jb/2012/05/slowdown/

Slowdown
By John Batchelor on May 26, 2012 12:51 AM | 0 Comments

Video

Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, and Peter Navarro, California at Irvine, help make the argument that the data points from China these last weeks point to a slowdown in the Chinese miracle. The Atlantic Magazine " uses the word, "recession." The Economist Magazine speaks disdainfully of "the thundering heard of ursus sinica." The debate remains open, however there are many sell-side analysts who have leaned way to far to the old tale that the new China will work itself out of its difficulties. Gordon Chang and I aimed to connect the slowdown in the economy with the disorder in the governance, the roiling palace coup around Bo Xilai. Jon Hilsenrath, WSJ, writes that there is talk of a worldwide slowdown. The Spanish nationalization of the third largest bank, Bankia, suggests there are more weaknesses to come as the Euro zone struggles with the Greek fail, the Grexit. My narrow-minded glimpse at all this noise is that there is a loss of confidence that spreads like a fog across American business and politics. Not a positive for the Obama re-elect. Plenty of opportunity for Mitt Romney to explain the threat environment. Am told that this China trouble is not cyclical: it is long-term and the direct result of can-kicking by the G-8 for decades.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/b...-transfers-reflect-broader-fears.html?_r=1&hp

May 24, 2012
In Spain, Bank Transfers Reflect Broader Fears
By LANDON THOMAS Jr. and RAPHAEL MINDER

Ángel de la Peña, a Spanish government worker, is seriously considering the once unthinkable: converting some of his savings from euros to British pounds.

Alvaro Saavedra Lopez, a senior executive for I.B.M. in Spain, says many of his corporate counterparts across the country are similarly looking for safer havens by transferring their spare cash to stronger euro zone countries like Germany “on a daily basis.”

It is only a trickle so far, and not nearly enough to constitute a classic bank run. But these growing transfers of deposits out of troubled Spanish banks reflect a broader fear that the country’s problems could make it hard for Spaniards to get to their money if banks fail and cannot be supported by the government. In a worst case, some even worry their money will be worth substantially less if Spain is forced to leave the euro currency zone and re-adopt its old currency, the peseta.

Money already has been pouring out of banks in Greece, where many citizens believe it is increasingly likely that their country will be forced to leave the euro zone. But for European policy makers and economists, the possibility of mini-runs on banks spreading from Greece to other, bigger countries like Spain — with 1 trillion euros, or $1.25 trillion, in bank deposits — poses a much more serious risk. Indeed, the outflow of money from Spanish banks could increase if the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, as expected, downgrades Spanish banks, in effect saying that their weakened state makes them riskier.

The havoc that a stampede might cause to the Continent’s financial system would greatly complicate efforts by European Union officials to fashion a longer-term plan to ease the debt crisis and revive Europe’s economy, because authorities would have to cope with the staggering added costs of shoring up banks.

“A bank run can happen very quickly,” said Matt King, an expert on international fund flows in London for Citigroup. “You are fine the night before, but on the morning after it’s too late.” It was a similar liquidity crisis on Wall Street in September 2008 — which started with nervous investors pulling money from troubled institutions, then quickly from healthier ones — that set off the financial crisis.

In Greece, more than two years into its financial crisis, nearly one-third of the country’s bank deposits have already left the country.

There has been no such exodus in Spain so far, where over the last year about 4.3 percent of bank deposits, or 41 billion euros, the equivalent of about $51 billion, has been transferred out of the country. But that amount is in addition to a decline of 140 billion euros in foreign-owned financial assets in the last year, like the sale by foreigners of Spanish government bonds.

The trend worries European officials. At an informal meeting of European Union leaders on Wednesday in Brussels, Italy and some other countries began pushing a proposal to increase confidence in banks — and stem withdrawals — by creating a regionwide deposit insurance system to buffer account holders against banking collapses, similar to Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the United States. It is especially a concern for Spain, where the national deposit insurance fund is virtually bankrupt.

What is more, the condition of Spanish banks is expected to worsen over the next year as commercial real estate and mortgage losses, a big source of the nation’s bank troubles, continue to mount.

On Friday, Bankia, the ailing Spanish lender, requested an additional 19 billion euros in rescue funds, at the same time that its credit rating and that of two other Spanish banks were cut to junk by Standrad & Poor’s.

So far there is little sign that specific plans for a Europe-wide deposit fund are imminent. But officials in Brussels say the idea, along with the more controversial question of issuing euro bonds backed by the credit of all euro zone members, will be discussed in more detail next month when the European Union leaders hold their next formal meeting.

The idea of euro zone-wide deposit insurance has been around for a long time, but it faces the obvious political hurdle of German taxpayer resistance to backing 2.8 trillion euros worth of deposits in risky countries like Spain and Italy, as well as those that have already been bailed out — Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

In a recent report, Mr. King, the Citigroup analyst, highlighted how the flight of money held by foreigners presaged broader bank crises in Ireland and Greece before those countries required European bailouts. Italy, too, is now nervous about the sudden exodus of 220 billion euros in foreign money over the last year.

Such hot-money flows are not unusual and do not always signify a similar migration of domestic money. But Mr. King pointed out that if these foreign runs began to approach the levels reached in Ireland and Greece, where more than half of foreign bank deposits and a third of bond holdings exited those countries before they were bailed out, Spain and Italy could have their own banking tailspins.

At their essence, bank runs are a fear-driven phenomenon. Once they start, they are difficult to stem.

The less damaging versions occur when money stays in the country, but moves from weaker institutions to stronger ones. This was the case in Britain in 2007, when many depositors who feared losing their money at the regional bank Northern Rock moved their funds to the international giant HSBC, hastening Northern Rock’s need to be bailed out by the government. Such deposit migration is now happening in Spain as people move money from weak savings banks, called cajas, to stronger institutions with international reach, like Santander.

More devastating to an economy is when cash leaves the country en masse, as occurred in Argentina in 2001. The government imposed capital controls, making it illegal to transfer money abroad. Mass money emigration is now taking place in Greece, where, under euro zone rules, it would be illegal to impose capital controls.

One indicator of money flow trends is what happens to corporate banking deposits. Corporate deposits tend to be much smaller than consumer bank savings. But because company treasurers tend to be more sophisticated when it comes to assessing financial risk, they tend to withdraw money more quickly when they perceive a bank might be troubled than individual depositors do.

In Greece, for example, corporate deposits have been fleeing much faster — by 27 percent over the last 12 months, compared to 15 percent for consumer deposits.

By this measure, the professional money is fleeing Spain, too, at a much faster pace compared with consumer funds. The country’s 721 billion euros in individual deposits is down only 1.4 percent for the year. But corporate deposits have exited at a rate of 14 percent, shrinking to 190 billion euros during that period, according to Goldman Sachs.

While many Spanish consumers may still be trusting the government to protect their money — perhaps not realizing that the country’s Deposit Guarantee Fund has been depleted and now exists mainly in name only — the in-the-know money is heading for the border at an increasingly brisk pace.

“If confidence in the Spanish banking sector falls any further, the possibility of panic and a bank run becomes very real,” said Mr. Saavedra of I.B.M., who leads the banking risk management practice at the software group in Spain.

Analysts sound a further note of caution. Because the official deposit data for Spain is current only through March, the figures do not reflect anxieties about the deepening political crisis in Greece since the May 6 elections.

Nor do the deposit data yet track what has happened since the Spanish government nationalized Bankia, the country’s largest property lender, in the following days. Cleaning up Bankia’s mortgage mess will cost at least 9 billion euros, Luis de Guindos, Spain’s economy minister, warned Wednesday.

And clearly, some consumers are now picking up on the warning signals. Mr. de la Peña, the civil servant in Madrid, said that he had recently transferred 80,000 euros, essentially his life savings, from Ibercaja, one of Spain’s savings banks, to Santander.

But now, with daily news reports on the prospect of Greece’s possible departure from the euro currency union, he is seriously considering converting his nest egg to British pounds.

“I’m exasperated because the situation changes every day,” he said. “But what is certain is that if Greece now leaves, it’s going to be one huge and bloody chaos.”

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http://www.debka.com/article/22032/...fficial-with-negative-report-on-Baghdad-talks

Netanyahu, Barak refuse to see US official with negative report on Baghdad talks
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report May 26, 2012, 10:25 AM (GMT+02:00)
Tags: Iran nuclear US Israel negotiations Saeed Jalili


The rupture between the US and Israel over Iran’s nuclear program widened further Friday, May 25 when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided not to be available to hear the briefing brought to Jerusalem from Baghdad by Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman who headed the US delegation to the Six Power talks. The report she delivered to National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror and Foreign Ministry Director-General Rafi Barak was that no progress had been achieved in Baghdad due to Iran’s refusal to budge on its “right” to enrich uranium at low (3.5-5 percent) or high (20 percent) levels or shut down the Fordo nuclear plant near Qom.

Although the participants agreed to reconvene in Moscow in three weeks, the Iranian delegation stressed there would be no progress until the US and the other five world powers (Britain, France, Russia, Germany and China) recognized Iran’s absolute “right” as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium.

Meanwhile, every day spent on diplomacy is thoroughly exploited by Iran to zip ahead with its nuclear plans. The Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog (IAEA)’s quarterly report released Friday reveals that since February Iran almost doubled its stockpile of more highly enriched uranium which is close to weapons grade from 73.4 to 145 kilograms.

The centrifuges at the Fordo facility, built into the side of a mountain, rose to over 500 from 300 in the last report.

Using the IAEA figures, debkafile calculates that if Fordo goes on producing 23.9 kilograms of 20-percent enriched uranium per month, Iran will by the end of December have accumulated 336 kilograms of near-weapons quality uranium.

The IAEA also reported that Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to less than 5 per cent grew to 6,232 kilograms from 5,451 reported in February.

Its inspectors recorded “the presence of particles” of 27 per cent-enriched uranium at Fordo. Iran maintained the particles were a result of “technical reasons beyond the operator’s control.”

The IAEA report was released a day after talks between Tehran and the six powers ended without progress.

Iran’s senior delegate Saeed Jalili declared that his government would never accept the Washington-ruled distinction between two categories of nations – one permitted and the other forbidden to enrich uranium. He claimed this was against international treaties.

Friday, the Washington Post quoted Mohammad Hoseyn Moussavian of Princeton University as revealing that in 2004, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, “I would resign if for any reason Iran is deprived of its rights to enrichment.”

Moussavian is presented as an Iranian academic visiting Princeton to lecture and write a book on the Iranian nuclear issue. debkafile reveals that he was the contact man in one of the direct, back-channel negotiations taking place in Paris between the White House and Khamenei. His words therefore were intended to carry weight as a reminder to Obama that the supreme leader, like the US president, intended to come out of their dialogue strengthened – not undermined. And therefore, for both their sakes, Washington must endorse Iran’s “right to enrichment.”

Tehran presented a second ultimatum for the nuclear talks to continue: phased sanctions relief, starting with the postponement of the European Union’s oil embargo scheduled for July 1 until the end of negotiations and the reconnection of Iranian banks to the SWIFT international money transfer system.

The gap between Israel and the Obama administration widened in the course of Washington’s direct, secret give-and-take with Tehran. In early April, Defense Minister Barak reported that Israel offered some compromise on the enrichment issue. debkafile disclosed at the time that Israel had informed Washington of its approval of a “1,000 formula.” Iran would be permitted to activate 1,000 centrifuges for enrichment and keep 1,000 kilograms of 3.5-per cent enriched uranium.

The Netanyahu government backtracked when this concession was used by US officials as a lever for further accommodations with Iran.

The direct US-Iran channel and the second round of Six Power talks with Iran have clearly left the standoff over Iran’s nuclear solidly in place: Iran stands by its right to enrich uranium up to weapons grade, the US stands by diplomacy, however hopeless, for resolving the controversy, while Israel demands a time limit for negotiations. Its military option was put back on the table for so long as Iran’s enrichment centrifuges continue spinning at top speed.

Wow Ragnarok - that's one crazy picture...... scary as all get out.

The Flying Dutchman said:

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Israel Worried by US's Made-in-China Jet Parts

Senate report on fake parts in U.S. jets gives Israel
cause for concern regarding components in its own jets.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/156192​

Israel is concerned by a U.S. Senate report regarding fake parts used on USAF aircraft, and is checking whether some of the parts found their way to systems on IAF aircraft as well, writes IsraelDefense.

The Senate report, as cited by CNN, says a million counterfeit parts have been discovered in systems used on American jets and helicopters, i about 1,800 separate cases. The parts were counterfeited in China and then bought and installed by U.S. defense contractors.

The investigators focused on three types of parts: one that could compromise the SH-60B Navy helicopter's night-vision system; another that could affect systems on the C-130 and C-27 cargo planes that inform pilots of their performance; and a part on the P8-A, a Navy version of the Boeing 737 used for anti-submarine warfare, that should never have been on the airplane.

Israel is worried because IAF aircraft also contain electronic systems made by the same American manufacturers involved in the fake part debacle. Israeli experts told IsraelDefense that stopping the flood of fake Chinese parts will be hard. "They are experts at reverse technology and the copy almost everything," they said.






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Click to expand...

Whoever in the US made the decision to have China make any parts for the military should be executed.

Middle East
May 26, 2012
All eyes now on Moscow talks
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Comments

Click to expand...

All these talks ever do is give the bad guys more time to be bad, and make the not-quite-so bad guys (or sort of good guys) more time to ride their own gravy trains and "feel good about themselves". All on their respective citizens' dime.

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use......
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/edit...-pakistan-is-turning-into-another-afghanistan

Pakistan is turning into another Afghanistan
Published 1 hour 8 minutes ago
By Haroon Siddiqui Editorial Page

Last month, a Canadian family went to Karachi for a wedding. The day after their arrival in Pakistan’s centre of commerce, crime and terrorism, their ancestral home was invaded in broad daylight by three armed men. They held a gun to the mother’s head and threatened to kidnap her 3-year-old granddaughter.

For the next hour-and-a-half, they helped themselves to the bride’s trousseau, including gold ornaments and jewelry, and almost everything else of value. But they did leave behind, after much pleading, the family’s most valued possession: Canadian passports.

A few days later, a neighbour was kidnapped and released for a ransom of 20 million rupees ($222,000 — a princely sum in Pakistan). And the neighbourhood grocer was robbed and gunned down dead, along with his two sons and two assistants.

Such harrowing incidents are routine in the city of 18 million, Pakistan’s largest.

More people are being kidnapped and killed in Karachi than in the Afghan-Pakistan border areas that provide sanctuary for Al Qaeda, Taliban and other militants.

Karachi is arguably more Talibanized than Quetta (the exile home of Taliban leader Mullah Omar) or Abbottabad (where Osama bin Laden was killed) or Peshawar (home of Afghan refugees).

Taliban and several associated militants raise funds in Karachi, and run guns and drugs.

Karachi is also crawling with other armed political and criminal gangs engaged in turf wars, bank heists and other robberies, occupying properties that are even temporarily empty, organizing labour strikes, shutting down industries and bazaars.

Pistol-waving youth go carjacking and holding up people for a cellphone or gold rings, bangles or necklaces.

Police are under-resourced or complicit in the crimes. Other state institutions are equally ineffective and corrupt.

About 500 people have been killed so far this year. At least 800 were killed last year, and 775 the year before.

The downfall of Karachi is tragic.

It was Pakistan’s capital until 1960 (when it was shifted to Islamabad). It remains the capital of the province of Sindh. It has long been the economic engine of the country, generating more than two-thirds of national tax revenues. It is home to a highly cultured elite of industrial tycoons, landed gentry, the intelligentsia as well as the media and high fashion establishment.

The port city has also been a key transit point for the underground economy of smuggled goods into Pakistan and landlocked Afghanistan.

During the 1980s, Karachi was where the CIA delivered 5,000 tonnes of arms and ammunition per month for the Islamic Afghan warriors fighting the Soviet occupation. The hundreds of Arab jihadists who joined them also passed through Karachi, including bin Laden.

Post-Sept. 11 when Pakistan joined the American-led war on terror, the jihadists declared war on the Pakistan government as well and have waged part of it in Karachi.

Khalid Shiekh Mohamed, the mastermind of Sept. 11, operated from there. Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was beheaded there.

“Karachi is microcosm of Pakistan,” says Shuja Nawaz, South Asia expert at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C.

“The future of Karachi is the future of Pakistan. You get Karachi right, you can get Pakistan right. If you fail Karachi, you fail Pakistan.”

But getting it right is not easy.

Karachi is now Pakistan’s largest Pushtun city, home to 5 million Afghan Pushtuns as well as Pakistani Pushtuns. These Pashto-speaking people are represented by the Awami National Party.

The majority in Karachi consists of Urdu-speaking people, immigrants from India who constituted Pakistan’s original political and administrative elite. They are represented by a party known by its Urdu initials MQM.

The third major group consists of native Sindhis, represented by the Peoples Party of Pakistan (of the Bhuttos). It is in power both federally and provincially, in coalition with the MQM.

But Karachi municipality is controlled by the MQM, using “guns and goondas” (thugs). What seems to be happening is that the other two parties are battling the MQM on its own terms.

Pakistan has a dizzying array of problems, most of them self-inflicted. It has also been duplicitous, allied with the U.S. but also supporting the Taliban.

Equally, there’s no denying that Pakistan has paid the price for Afghanistan, co-operating with the U.S., first against the Soviet occupation and then in the war on terror.

In that war it has lost 5,000 troops and policemen, more than all NATO fatalities in Afghanistan. It has lost about 37,000 civilians to terrorist attacks and collateral damage — nearly 10 times those killed on 9/11. While it got $10 billion from the U.S., it has lost an estimated $100 billion in foreign investments in the last decade.

Its democracy is semi-functioning. For the first time in its history, an elected government may last its full term until next year. Its judiciary is independent. Its economy is doing badly but is not bankrupt.

A failed Pakistan would threaten the stability of Afghanistan and the entire region. As a paper commissioned in 2008 by Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, put it: “The U.S. has no vital national interests in Afghanistan. Our vital national interests are in nuclear Pakistan.”

That holds true for Canada and all NATO partners.

Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca

For links see article source......
Posted for fair use........
http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=401080

Comment
Lebanon’s perilous street politics
Michael Young, May 25, 2012

Consider Shadi Mawlawi, Sheikh Ahmad Assir, the combatants in Bab al-Tabbaneh, Jabal Mohsen and Tariq al-Jadideh, and the angry youths in Beirut’s southern suburbs who burned tires on Tuesday to protest against the abduction of Shia religious pilgrims in Syria. Lebanon is succumbing to populist impulses and their impresarios, which cannot represent a good development for the future.

Lebanon’s political class is frequently, and quite reasonably, maligned. However, the street is infinitely worse. It was a clearly concerned Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah who took to the airwaves Tuesday evening urging young Shia to calm down after the news of the pilgrims’ fate broke. What Nasrallah sought to avoid at all cost was an outbreak of violence between Shia and Sunnis.

To a great extent, Hezbollah has only itself to blame. The arrest of Mawlawi by the General Security directorate was a reckless, suspicious operation that was certain to lead to a heightening of sectarian animosities. The party, and behind it the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, manipulated events in Tripoli to show that the city is a Salafist stronghold—in that way confirming Assad’s contention that he is fighting a coalition of armed jihadists.

Like many traps, it threatened to backfire when two Sunni clerics were killed in Akkar and fighting spread to Beirut. A Sunni-Shia conflict is not something Hezbollah desires, not when its strategic objective is to use legislative elections next year to gain control of parliament, then the presidency, then the broader apparatus of the state. This mad scheme cannot conceivably work, even less so when the Sunni community feels invigorated by the failure of the Assad regime to prevail in Syria. Yet Hezbollah, in order to survive in a post-Assad Middle East, needs to anchor itself somewhere while simultaneously avoiding suicide in a new Lebanese civil war.

That is where the street comes in. No less than Nasrallah, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri sensed the potential dangers on Tuesday when he felicitously issued a statement calling for the release of the Shia pilgrims. This should be taken further. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has called for a resumption of dialogue between the Lebanese parties. While March 14 sources spun this into censure of Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s government, it actually meant rather more than that, creating an opening that must be exploited.

King Abdullah is right about one thing: Lebanon’s leaders urgently need to engage in dialogue. For now the agenda must focus on achievable ambitions, above all avoiding Lebanon being dragged into the Syrian conflict. Syria has reportedly sought to pressure Mikati into taking a more forceful stance against the Syrian opposition. But such a step would only break the country apart and push the Lebanese toward the very predicament that Hezbollah, and everybody else, seeks to avert, namely sectarian civil war.

Hezbollah’s views on the pressure against Mikati seem ambiguous, but if the party fears Lebanon’s breakup then it must welcome a dialogue. Yes, it might have to accept Mikati’s efforts to defend Lebanese non-alignment, or split personality, over the Syrian crisis. On the other hand this would provide valuable advantages down the road, because Hezbollah’s self-preservation would necessarily require that the party improve relations between Shia and the other Lebanese communities, above all the Sunni community.

And what would be in it for the Sunnis? Justifiably, Hezbollah’s arms remain a bone of contention for many Lebanese, and that will not soon change. However, the more urgent priority today is to impede a slide toward the sectarian abyss. As for the longer term, if Assad falls, as he will, the Sunni leadership can then engage in a conversation with Hezbollah from a position of strength over those issues that it considers essential—weapons above all. But that should not prevent a dialogue today. Nor should it prevent March 14 from mobilizing to challenge Hezbollah politically when the elections come.

As King Abdullah surely knows, for an inter-Lebanese dialogue to make sense, Saad Hariri must be intimately involved in it. The former prime minister cannot participate by proxy, especially as there is a worrisome drift of the initiative in the Sunni community toward the extremes. The extremists remain a minority, but as we saw in Tripoli last week, in periods like these they can impose their will.

After initial confusion, Future politicians read the dangers of the Mawlawi arrest relatively well, and did so again after the shooting of the two sheikhs in Akkar. However, their allies on the ground took a different tack. When Khaled Daher of the Jamaa Islamiyya—who worried that he might be overwhelmed from his right—accused elements in the army of deliberately killing the clerics, this crossed a red line that disturbed many people, not least Future’s Christian ally Sami Gemayel.

The army is a house of myriad murky corners, but it is the only national institution that stands between a semblance of peace and a security void. There are also substantial numbers of Sunnis in the ranks, so it makes no sense to undermine the military in the eyes of the community. Only a national dialogue, with a reinforced role for the Army at its core, can counter the perils of visceral politics.

Now is not the time to engage in petty politicking. Mikati made many enemies by becoming prime minister against the will of a majority of his coreligionists, in what was a sordid arrangement that has brought him, and us, only misery. However, if Mikati were to resign today, the absence of a consensus would mean a prolonged period without a functioning government. This vacuum would carry Lebanon into the unknown, and into another minefield favored by Syria.

Michael Young is opinion editor of The Daily Star. He tweets @BeirutCalling.

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use......
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/wor...n-90-dead-in-syria-many-of-them-children.html

U.N. official: More than 90 dead in Syria, many of them children
May 26, 2012 | 1:04 pm

AMMAN, Jordan, and BEIRUT — More than 90 people, a third of them children, were killed in what appeared to be the worst violence against civilians in Syria since a U.N.-backed cease-fire went into effect last month, the chief of the United Nations mission in Syria said Saturday.

The casualties were the victims of artillery and tank shells, the U.N. said, strongly suggesting that the government of President Bashar Assad was the likely culprit in the Friday attack.

The killings took place in the district of Houla, a collection of small towns and villages in the central province of Homs, which has been the epicenter of the 14-month rebellion against Assad.

Gruesome video posted online purported to show bloody and battered corpses, including many children.

Observers dispatched to the scene counted more than 90 bodies, Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, chief of the U.N. team in Syria, said in a statement that did not blame either side for the killings.

"Whoever started, whoever responded and whoever carried out this deplorable act of violence should be held responsible," Mood said in a statement issued in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

Opposition activists blamed the government for shelling the restive region starting Friday. The state-run news agency blamed "armed terrorists" for attacking authorities and civilians in the town of Teldo.

Each side in the Syrian conflict has repeatedly accused the other of committing "massacres' of civilians, obscuring the identity of the perpetrators in a conflict that has left at least 10,000 people dead, including civilians and security personnel. The government has limited access to foreign observers and journalists, making it hard to determine who is behind the killings.

But the confirmed death toll from Houla would seem to be another sign that the peace plan is fraying.

In a joint statement, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his predecessor, Kofi Annan, the special envoy for Syria, condemned the killings and said an investigation had confirmed that "artillery and tank shells were fired at a residential neighborhood."

That finding would seem to support opposition allegations that the Syrian government shelled the district.

"This appalling and brutal crime involving indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force is a flagrant violation of international law and of the commitments of the Syrian government to cease the use of heavy weapons in population centers and violence in all its forms," the two U.N. officials said in a strongly worded condemnation of the incident. "Those responsible for perpetrating this crime must be held to account."

MORE:

Shelling in Houla reportedly kills at least 90

Iran talks show little progress, but will continue

Iran uranium of elevated enrichment raises concern

-- Patrick J. McDonnell in Beirut and Rima Marrouch in Amman

Be Well said:

All these talks ever do is give the bad guys more time to be bad, and make the not-quite-so bad guys (or sort of good guys) more time to ride their own gravy trains and "feel good about themselves". All on their respective citizens' dime.

Click to expand...

It is not in the immediate internal political interests of the EU and US leadership to really "deal" with the Iranian nuclear weapons and other WMD programs, nor is it in the interests of the PRC or Russians to change the current status quo. As for the GCC and Israel, neither really wants to go it alone on this. Hence talking is doing something that is nothing.

In the case of the GCC, there are issues again of internal politics, concerns of their real military capabilities after starting something where their proximity to Iran makes anything they start necessitate concluding to the end. So they aren't going to do anything until they have no choice or are in coalition with the Western powers.

For Israel, between the distances and limited resources they have at their disposal for "kinetic" action against Iran, and being bordered by Iranian proxies, they too are in a position to where if they start something they have to end it "decisively" and quickly. This is why the Israelis IMHO will likely wait to the absolute last moment to act and or they will completely change "the game" in some manner.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/b...-euro-zone-a-lethal-vacuum-economic-view.html

Economic View
A Power Vacuum Is Killing the Euro Zone
By TYLER COWEN
Published: May 26, 2012

AS problems mount in the euro zone, it’s increasingly evident that we’ve been witnessing an institutional failure of monumental proportions.

What is to be done about Greece? Simply keeping it in the euro zone won’t help much, even if it’s possible. The continuing crisis has sapped confidence in banks not only in Greece, but also in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland, though to varying degrees. Unless there are explicit guarantees to these banks soon, the market will likely take a further turn for the worse.

An absence of guarantees could prompt a broader chain reaction of capital flight and bank collapses across several countries.

The basic problem is that many people won’t keep their euros in a Greek bank, and perhaps not in a Spanish bank, either, when those euros can be moved to Germany or some other haven.

Yet German citizens do not appear ready to guarantee Spanish banks or, by extension, the whole credit system of Spain and the other periphery nations. Guarantees of that scope are probably impossible and may also require constitutional changes in some nations.

We thus face the danger that the euro, the world’s No. 2 reserve currency, could implode. Such an event wouldn’t be just another depreciation or collapse of a currency peg; instead, it would mean that one of the world’s major economic units doesn’t work as currently constituted.

We are realizing just how much international economic order depends on the role of a dominant country — sometimes known as a hegemon — that sets clear rules and accepts some responsibility for the consequences. For historical reasons, Germany isn’t up to playing the role formerly held by Britain and, to some extent, still held today by the United States. (But when it comes to the euro zone, the United States is on the sidelines.)

THERE appears to be a power vacuum, and the implications are alarming. We may be entering a new world where international cooperative arrangements, in environmental areas as well as finance, are commonly recognized as impossible. If the core European nations cannot coordinate effectively, what can we expect in dealings with China, Russia and other countries that have less of a common background and understanding?

In the euro zone, we are seeing two refusals to cooperate: Germany won’t renew financial pledges to Greece without Greek compliance on previous agreements, and Greece doesn’t want Germany to control its national budget. Both seem reasonable positions, and maybe they are, but reasonable positions can apparently destroy an international agreement rather easily.

Is there a way out? To seek a binge of pro-growth government spending, in the hope of stimulating economies, is to assume what already stands in doubt. The crisis has reached a head partly because the market already lacks trust in the periphery governments to invest money for sustainable economic growth.

There is also talk of forming a true fiscal union, but that seems to be doubling down on a bad idea. If the euro zone cannot summon enough cooperation now, how is any union requiring tighter cooperation supposed to work? How would national budgets be set and approved? A credit collapse remains a real possibility.

Is it too late for monetary policy to make a difference? The other euro-zone nations might allow Greece to leave, while guaranteeing payments for food and fuel, both of which Greece imports, for a reasonable period. Higher price inflation might then depreciate the euro, limit the need for difficult downward wage adjustments, and help Spain and Italy improve their competitiveness. The inflation could come through central bank bond purchases from the troubled nations, thus easing their debt problems. That may be the only useful option still on the table.

But that’s also not easy. First, economically healthier nations may be reluctant to accept the inflation, which would represent a rather direct, continuing redistribution of wealth to the troubled debtor countries.

The second problem is that some of the banking systems in the periphery nations may be too broken for monetary policy to take hold. Imagine the European Central Bank trying to infuse new money and credit into Spain, while bank deposits move quickly to Germany, Switzerland and other safer places. Again, why would anyone want to keep money in the bank of a fiscally troubled nation? That loss of confidence will not be easily repaired.

Since December, the European Central Bank has lent more than a trillion euros to euro-zone banks, but that has bought no more than a few months of peace. It isn’t clear how much more can be done. It probably is about time to judge the euro zone as a failed idea — and rarely is it wise to double down on failed ideas.

What is most disturbing is that the euro-zone nations are democratic, protective of basic liberties, and have advanced intellectual and research communities. The final lesson of this debacle is that smart nations with noble motives can make very big mistakes. And that should concern us all.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
A version of this article appeared in print on May 27, 2012, on page BU5 of the New York edition with the headline: A Power Vacuum Is Choking The Euro Zone.

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Egypt's top candidates try to broaden support

By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press – 8 minutes ago

CAIRO (AP) — The two surviving candidates in Egypt's presidential election appealed Saturday for support from voters who rejected them as polarizing extremists in the first round even as they faced a new challenge from the third runner-up who contested the preliminary results.

Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, vowed he won't revive the old authoritarian regime as he sought to cast off his image as an anti-revolution figure, while the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, Mohammed Morsi, reached out to those fearful of hardline Islamic rule and the rise of a religious state.

Many votes are up for grabs, but the two candidates will have a tough battle wooing the middle ground voters amid calls from activists for a boycott of the divisive vote.

Adding to the uncertainty, Hamdeen Sabahi called for a partial vote recount, citing violations that he claimed could change the outcome, a prospect that may further enflame an already explosive race. Sabahi, a socialist and a champion of the poor, came in third by a margin of some 700,000 votes, leaving him out of the next round to be held on June 16-17.

Many Egyptians were dismayed by the early results, which opened a contest that looked like a throwback to Mubarak's era — a rivalry between a military-rooted strongman promising a firm hand to ensure stability and Islamists who were repressed under the old regime but have become the most powerful political force in post-revolutionary Egypt.

Each candidate has die-hard supporters but is also loathed by significant sectors of the population.

The first round race was tight. Preliminary counts Friday from stations around the country reported by the state news agency gave Morsi 25.3 percent and Shafiq 24.9 percent with a less than 100,000-vote difference. The election commission said about 50 percent of more than 50 million eligible voters turned out for the first round, which had 13 contenders.

A large chunk of the vote — more than 40 percent — went to candidates who were seen as more in the spirit of the uprising that toppled Mubarak, that is neither from the Brotherhood nor from the so-called "feloul," or "remnants" of the old autocratic regime.

Sabahi came in third with a surprisingly strong showing of 21.5 percent, followed by Abolfotoh, a moderate Islamist who broke with the Brotherhood.

Steven Cook, an Egypt expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S. think tank, said the outcome of the battles between the two extremes is hard to predict.

"Egypt is following the classic pattern of revolutions. People who made them get frozen out," he said.

He said Shafiq will rely on the same "dynamics" of fanning fears of the Islamists that Mubarak relied on in the past. On the other hand, the Brotherhood will play on the fear of Shafiq's recreating the old regime.

In an effort to broaden his support, Morsi met with public figures and political groups Saturday, and tried to present himself as the candidate for all Egyptians. But in a sign of the tough task ahead for the Brotherhood, three of the presidential candidates, including Sabahi, didn't turn up.

The Brotherhood won close to 50 percent of the seats in parliament in the country's first parliamentary elections in the post-Mubarak era. But the fundamentalist group's credibility has taken a hard hit since because of the legislature's performance and the Brotherhood's reneging on a string of public pledges — including not to run a presidential candidate.

Speaking after the meeting, Morsi said that his group respects democratic principles, and stressed that his candidacy is the sole bulwark against attempts to recreate Mubarak's regime, through Shafiq's return.

"We are certain that the remnants of Mubarak's regime and his gang, and those that belong to it, and trying to bring back the former regime will fall flat and will land in the garbage bin of history," he said.

He added if he is elected president he will seek to form a broad-based coalition government. A leading Brotherhood member, Mohammed el-Beltagy, said the meeting Saturday discussed proposals to appoint Sabahi and Abolfotoh as vice presidents.

Shafiq, the last prime minister to serve under Mubarak, spent much of his campaign for the first round criticizing the revolution that ousted his former boss. But on Saturday, he vowed there would be no "recreation of the old regime."

"I am fed up with being labeled 'old regime,'" Shafiq said at a news conference in his campaign headquarters in Cairo. "All Egyptians are part of the old regime."

A former air force commander and a personal friend of Mubarak's, Shafiq was booted out of office by a wave of street protests shortly after Mubarak stepped down on Feb. 11, 2011.

The 15 months since Mubarak's ouster have seen a surge in crime, a faltering economy and seemingly endless street protests, work stoppages and sit-ins. The disorder has fed disenchantment with the revolutionary groups, and played to Shafiq's advantage as he portrayed himself as the candidate best placed to provide security.

But Shafiq is also associated with Egypt's military leadership, which has been accused of mismanaging the transitional period and failing to reform corrupt institutions or to provide stability. They also have been widely blamed for the deaths of more than 100 protesters, the torture of detainees and holding military tribunals for at least 12,000 civilians.

"Egypt has changed and there will be no turning back the clock," said Shafiq, 70. "We have had a glorious revolution. I pay tribute to this glorious revolution and pledge to be faithful to its call for justice and freedom."

Shafiq also tried to enlist the support of youth groups, singling out the large associations of soccer fans known as "ultras" and April 6, both of which played a key role in the uprising.

"Your revolution has been hijacked," he said twice, "I pledge to bring its fruits between your hands."

His outreach was swiftly rejected by the revolutionary group April 6.

Shafiq also held out the possibility of naming Sabahi as a deputy if elected president — an apparent bid to draw supporters of the third-place finisher to his side.

Sabahi later said he was not ready to accept the results that have been released by regional commissions. The Central Election Commission planned to release official results in the coming days. Those cannot be contested.

"We are waiting for official results. We will manage to contest in the runoff and succeed in fulfilling what we started," Sabahi told a crowd of about 3,000 people outside his headquarters in Giza. Some broke out in tears.

Sabahi's campaign manager, Hossam Mounis, said they had received video clips filmed by supporters showing violations, and complaints had been filed across the country to judges overseeing polling centers.

Hafez Abou Saada, a veteran rights activist and an election observer, said violations such as vote buying and busing in voters were limited but there were more significant problems in the process of tallying votes at regional counting centers. He said the violations were not sufficient to force a new vote but could be cause for a recount.

"The differences are very tight and the aggregation of votes can be difficult," he said.

Observers were largely not allowed to attend that process, but candidate deputies were present.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter also said Saturday that his center was restricted in its monitoring mission, but the process was generally acceptable and violations won't affect the runoffs.

"I don't think the mistakes and errors and improprieties that we have witnessed in the last few days will have a negative impact on the runoff," he told reporters.

Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Washington Post - 10 hours ago

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http://www.sundaytimes.lk/120527/Timestwo/int01.html

Muslim Brotherhood seeks unity ahead of Egypt runoff

CAIRO, May 26 (Reuters) The Muslim Brotherhood is reaching out to rivals including politicians knocked out of the presidential race in an attempt to rally support around its own candidate who faces a runoff against Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq.

Warning of "determined efforts to recreate the old regime," the Brotherhood said parties that supported the uprising that swept Mubarak from power must unite "so that the revolution is not stolen from us."

The Brotherhood's presidential candidate, Mohamed Mursi, beat the rest of the field in the first round of the election, with Shafiq a close second, according to an unofficial Brotherhood tally of the vote count. Official results are due out on Tuesday.

The outcome sets up a June 16-17 ballot box struggle between a former air force commander who has described Mubarak as a role model and an Islamist group the deposed leader dealt with mostly as an enemy of the state.

In an apparent overture to the group he is set to face in the runoff, Shafiq told Egyptian television on Friday he saw no problem with the idea of a Muslim Brotherhood-led government if he were elected president.

The runoff will be a historic moment for Egypt and the region, giving voters the choice between a continuation of rule by men from a military background and a government led by a long-oppressed Islamist group with broad regional influence. It is a choice that many Egyptians are not relishing, either out of fear that a Shafiq victory would mark a blow to hoped-for reform or out of worry a Brotherhood victory would steer the country towards fundamentalist rule.

The army council that has been governing since Mubarak stepped down is due to hand power to the president on July 1 - officially the last stage in a messy and sometimes bloody transition to civilian rule overseen by the generals.

Although the Brotherhood and Shafiq came out on top in the first round, held on Wednesday and Thursday, the unofficial results showed the race to have been very tight, with fewer than 8 percentage points separating the top four candidates. The 25 percent won by Mursi was a less spectacular outcome
for the Brotherhood than the result of the parliamentary elections in which the group won close to half the seats, hinting at a decline in its popularity in the past six months.

The presidential election result also indicated a strong showing by reform-minded independents who between them won more votes than either Shafik or Mursi, underlining the growth of a new centre in Egypt's fast-evolving political landscape. "The Brotherhood will have to reach out in a grand and dramatic way to the centre and the other political parties if they have any hope of winning their support and any hope of winning the presidency," said Elijah Zarwan of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

'WE WILL SUCCEED'

The third-and fourth-place contenders - leftist Hamdeen Sabahi and independent Islamist Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh - were among the politicians the Brotherhood would invite to a preliminary meeting on Saturday, a Brotherhood official said.

The initiative marked a new attempt by the Brotherhood to reach out to other forces that have accused it of seeking to dominate public life since Mubarak was toppled - a charge the group fiercely denies.

Hummmm......

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Sunday May 27, 2012
"Big Five" crushes "Small Five" over UN veto powers
By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, 2012 (IPS) - At the height of the Cold War, a Peruvian diplomat, Dr. Victor Andres Belaunde, publicly expressed scepticism about the ability of small countries to survive the diplomatic might of the big powers in the world body.

The United Nations, he was quoted as saying as far back as the 1960s, was an institution "where there is always something that disappears". "When two small powers have a dispute," he observed, "the dispute disappears. And when a great power and a small power are in conflict, the small power disappears."

That's presumably what happened last week when five of the U.N.'s smallest member states, describing themselves as the "small five" (S5), challenged the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council, namely the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, over the misuse of their veto powers.

Hours before it was to be debated and voted in the 193-member General Assembly, the resolution unceremoniously disappeared from the hallowed precincts of the United Nations - and probably from the face of the earth.

As former New York Times Bureau Chief Kathleen Teltsch recounts in her 1970 "Crosscurrents at Turtle Bay", the Peruvian diplomat went one step further when he added: "When two great powers have a dispute, the United Nations disappears."

Mercifully, both the United Nations and the S-5 -- Costa Rica, Jordan, Liechtenstein, Singapore and Switzerland -- survived the ordeal last week and lived to tell the tale. The aborted resolution, couched in delicate diplomatic jargon, "recommended" that the P5 members of the Security Council consider "refraining from using their vetoes on action aimed at preventing or ending genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity".

But right from the beginning, the P5 clearly signaled that the General Assembly has no business offering such recommendations to the Security Council. William Pace, executive director of the World Federalist Movement- Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP), told IPS that even though the S5 were compelled to withdraw their historic resolution, non- governmental organisations (NGOs) hope this is just the opening chapter to the General Assembly -- after 67 years -- beginning to work with the Security Council to address the U.N.'s massive need to improve the organisation's ability to maintain international peace and security.

"The dysfunctional pillars of the Cold War Security Council must be remolded, and by the Council agreeing to the provision not to use the veto to block action on major war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity would be an indispensable beginning," he said.

Pace said it was "outrageous" that the issue of a recommendation is being opposed. Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS the withdrawal of the resolution shows the P5 still run things in the world body.

"But they are coming under increasing challenge, their credibility is weakening, and their moral failure is becoming increasingly obvious to an ever larger majority of the international community," he said.
The importance of this resolution is that it implicitly challenges not just the Chinese and Russian vetoes regarding repression in Syria, and the Chinese vetoes regarding genocide in Sudan, but U.S. vetoes and related policies to block U.N. action regarding Israeli war crimes as well, said Zunes who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council.

"These small countries pushing this resolution recognise that violations of international humanitarian law are inexcusable regardless of any of the P5s relations with the offending government."

He said it is particularly timely not only because of the ongoing repression in Syria, but the nearly-unanimous vote of the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this month which stated it is the official policy of the United States to veto any one-sided U.N. Security Council resolutions critical of Israel.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Third World diplomat told IPS the S5 withdrew the draft resolution last Wednesday -- the very day on which action was planned, after they came under intense pressure from the P5, both in New York and in the capitals.

The Office of Legal Affairs (OLA), he pointed out, also complicated matters by putting out the opinion that the resolution needed a two- thirds majority before it could be adopted, implying it involved the reform of the Security Council.

"The OLA was probably doing the bidding of the P5 -- and it is interesting that China circulated the OLA text to all member states even before it was made public indicating the P5 had advance notice of OLA's opinion," he said.

"This has stymied all momentum behind the reform of the Security Council. It has also undermined the effectiveness of the Council," he said. By blocking the slightest of reforms, the P5 might have won the battle for now, but in the long run they might have done untold damage to the credibility of the Security Council.

"We might increasingly see many countries bypassing the Council or refusing to comply with its decisions," the diplomat said. Pace told IPS that besides the P5 opposition, the S5 could not convince enough governments to separate the Charter amendment issues of Security Council expansion from the issue of reforming the working methods and procedures of the Council.

This is also constrained by the 1993 General Assembly resolution requiring any decision should have a two-thirds majority of all member states of the U.N., or 129 countries. "A key goal, I believe, is to separate non-Charter amendment issues from the 1993 restrictions. This can be done by a majority decision of the General Assembly," Pace said.

While the issue of expansion of the Council is extremely important, said Pace, these will require years, probably decades, to resolve, and the other reforms of the Council must be addressed immediately, by both the General Assembly and the Council.

The S5, he pointed out, was not challenging the legitimacy of the veto, but the misuse of the veto, which is responsible for millions upon millions of deaths.

Criticising the overwhelming silence in most of the mainstream media, Pace said, "The fact that Inter Press Service (IPS), and only a few other media in the world covered the S5 resolution, is a frightening comment on the status of international relations journalism."

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Syrian regime, rebel supporters put pressure on Jordan

Suha Philip Ma'ayeh
May 27, 2012

RAMTHA, JORDAN // At the lush border with Syria, Jordanian soldiers occasionally conduct their own foreign policy.

Despite Jordan's determination to avoid taking sides in the Syrian revolt, the border guards don't remain neutral when people fleeing across the border come under fire from Syrian soldiers.

Syrian watch towers dot the distance in an open valley near the Jordanian border town of Ramtha. Syrian rebels and refugees often flee through the valley.

In November, an army officer saved a pregnant woman who was fleeing with her husband and eight-year-old son. She had been shot by a Syrian guard and was struggling to reach the border. Jordanian soldiers fired at Syrian troops to provide cover and the family was saved.

"We saved her in our own way," said an officer, refusing to elaborate because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

But helping the opposition is not official Jordanian policy. The kingdom is trying to remain neutral despite pressure from Syria to crack down on the refugees and pressure from Gulf states to help the rebels.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar want Jordan to allow weapons to move across the border to supply the rebels. Jordan, of course, is worried that President Bashar Al Assad will survive the uprising and punish Jordan for aiding the opposition.

There is precedent. In 1970 Syria invaded Jordan briefly and took control of 125 square kilometres of Jordanian territory. The countries finally settled the dispute in 2004, but the boundaries still are not clearly marked.

"Jordan is under tremendous pressure, particularly from the Gulf, to act as a conduit but the country is fretting about its security," Suleiman Ghneimat, a retired Jordanian army general said.

Mr Ghneimat said the Gulf kingdoms are offering financially ailing Jordan considerable aid for its cooperation.

"But if it takes action, the Syrian regime has supporters here both Syrians and Jordanian and they can act as a destabilizing force with the support of the Syrian regime.

"Also if the Syrian regime is pressured by more than one front, it will act like a cornered cat", he said.

Publicly, Jordan is neutral. But as violence worsens in Syria, Jordan may play a clandestine role in arming the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the main rebel fighting group.

Syrian rebels say that the FSA gets smuggled light weapons and bullets paid for by wealthy Syrian expats in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

The arms are flowing into Syria from Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan, rebels say.

Adding to tensions is a military exercise Jordan is hosting along the border with Sryia.

The "Eager Lion 2012" exercise is the largest in the region in 10 years and brings together army units from 17 countries, including the United States, France, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Jordan and US officials denied the exercise has anything to do with Syria.

Syria accused Jordan this month on Syrian TV of "conspiring against Syria and supporting terrorists."

Jordanian officials deny they are being pressed to let the rebels smuggle weapons across the border.

Instead, the government talks about humanitarian assistance and estimates more than 100,000 refugees have entered Jordan since the uprising began 15 months ago.

Jordan says it has opened its schools for 6,500 Syrian students and provides free medical treatment at state hospitals. A royal-sponsored NGO says it distributes aid to 25,000 refugees.

Despite its neutral stance, the kingdom is worried that the Syrian regime might try to destabilise Jordan.

Syrian army defectors have been transferred from one military-guarded camp to another after Syrian regime moles tried to poison water tanks at the original camp, defectors and rebels have told The National.

Activists say restrictions have been imposed on visitors at a refugee housing complex after a similar poisoning attempt.

Mr Al Assad's regime has applied direct diplomatic pressure, too. Jordanian websites have reported that Assef Shawkat, the Syrian deputy minister of defense, visited Jordan several months ago, demanding that the kingdom hand over defectors and threatening to use military action. King Abdullah told him Jordan cannot be threatened.

But the Syrian pressure is affecting Jordan, Syrian activists say. They complain that Jordanian security officers have harassed, questioned and detained them in recent weeks.

Mohammad Abu Rumman, an analyst and commentator with Al Ghad, a local newspaper, attributed the treatment to the country's desire to avoid a confrontation with the Syrian regime.

For now, Jordan wants to play safe. It already has plenty of problems.

The Muslim Brotherhood's offshoot in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, had elections this month and hardliners emerged with more power within the movement.

That development comes as the country's economy is suffering from a staggering budget deficit, its citizens are angry over the slow pace of reforms and consumers are chafing over recent price hikes.

smaayeh@thenational.ae

Housecarl said:

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U.N. official: More than 90 dead in Syria, many of them children
May 26, 2012 | 1:04 pm

AMMAN, Jordan, and BEIRUT — More than 90 people, a third of them children, were killed in what appeared to be the worst violence against civilians in Syria since a U.N.-backed cease-fire went into effect last month, the chief of the United Nations mission in Syria said Saturday.

The casualties were the victims of artillery and tank shells, the U.N. said, strongly suggesting that the government of President Bashar Assad was the likely culprit in the Friday attack.

The killings took place in the district of Houla, a collection of small towns and villages in the central province of Homs, which has been the epicenter of the 14-month rebellion against Assad.

Gruesome video posted online purported to show bloody and battered corpses, including many children.

Observers dispatched to the scene counted more than 90 bodies, Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, chief of the U.N. team in Syria, said in a statement that did not blame either side for the killings.

"Whoever started, whoever responded and whoever carried out this deplorable act of violence should be held responsible," Mood said in a statement issued in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

Opposition activists blamed the government for shelling the restive region starting Friday. The state-run news agency blamed "armed terrorists" for attacking authorities and civilians in the town of Teldo.

Each side in the Syrian conflict has repeatedly accused the other of committing "massacres' of civilians, obscuring the identity of the perpetrators in a conflict that has left at least 10,000 people dead, including civilians and security personnel. The government has limited access to foreign observers and journalists, making it hard to determine who is behind the killings.

But the confirmed death toll from Houla would seem to be another sign that the peace plan is fraying.

In a joint statement, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his predecessor, Kofi Annan, the special envoy for Syria, condemned the killings and said an investigation had confirmed that "artillery and tank shells were fired at a residential neighborhood."

That finding would seem to support opposition allegations that the Syrian government shelled the district.

"This appalling and brutal crime involving indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force is a flagrant violation of international law and of the commitments of the Syrian government to cease the use of heavy weapons in population centers and violence in all its forms," the two U.N. officials said in a strongly worded condemnation of the incident. "Those responsible for perpetrating this crime must be held to account."

MORE:

Shelling in Houla reportedly kills at least 90

Iran talks show little progress, but will continue

Iran uranium of elevated enrichment raises concern

-- Patrick J. McDonnell in Beirut and Rima Marrouch in Amman

Click to expand...

Hc his may push Syria over the edge

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Updated Sunday, May 27, 2012 0:09 am TWN, The China Post news staff

Report claims Chinese airstrip near disputed islands near completion

The China Post news staff--Attack warplanes and land-to-air missiles are being deployed to a Chinese air base with an operational radius reaching both Taipei and the disputed islands in the South China Sea as tension in the region continues to mount, a report said yesterday.

The hardware being deployed includes China's Jian 10 and Sukhoi Su-30 jet fighters, unpiloted attack planes, and S-300 anti-aircraft missiles.

Taiwan intelligence officials, however, were not overly concerned, saying the project may be intended to beef up China's combat readiness against possible flare-ups in the South China Sea. The moves are probably aimed at keeping Japanese and U.S. naval vessels and military aircraft at bay in the East China Sea, an intelligence officer said, but conceded that the presence of a new airport in the area leaves Taiwan aircraft less room to maneuver, at least in the north.

Google Earth images show the Shuimen Airport (水門機場), being built 364 meters above sea level on a tract of land reclaimed from a razed hilltop in the northern part of the east coastal province of Fujian, overlooking East China Sea. The location is slightly to the north of the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese-language United Evening News said in a report, adding that the air base is nearing completion.

After its completion, it will put Taipei, 246 km to its southeast; the Tiaoyu Islands (called the Senkaku Islands in Japan), 380 km to its east; and the offshore Chunxiao Oilfield, 200 km to its northeast, within its striking distance. However, it is also within the range of Taiwan radars.

Aircraft taking off from the airstrip can reach the skies of Taipei in less than 10 minutes.

The airport boasts a pair of parallel runways, one regular, the other auxiliary, a complex network of connecting roads, a command post, living quarters for military personnel, a tunnel at the end of the runways, and camouflaged hangars.

Images of the airport were first captured in 2009 and images of the aircraft and missiles there were first seen last year.

Thank you, Housecarl. What you say makes sense.

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"POT!.....KETTLE!.....BLACK!"


Iran complains to UNSC
of Israeli 'warmongering'

By JPOST.COM STAFF, REUTERS
05/26/2012 17:17
http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=271531

Tehran downplays IAEA report showing it is pressing ahead with
its uranium enrichment work, accuses Barak of unlawful rhetoric.​

Iran has lodged a complaint with the UN Security Council, accusing Israel of warmongering remarks that contradict international law, Iran's Fars News Agency reported on Saturday.

In a letter delivered to the UN Security Council on Friday, Iranian UN envoy Mohammad Khazayee said that comments made by Defense Minister Ehud Barak on a potential attack against Iran's nuclear sites "are considered as violation of the basic principles of the UN Charter, international rules and a move against the global endeavors to foster regional and international peace and security," according to Fars.

Khazayee added in the letter that Barak's "baseless" remarks about Iran's pursuing of nuclear weapons were made by an official of a regime which threatens international and regional peace with its nuclear arsenal.

Iran's reiteration that its nuclear program is peaceful came as both the UN nuclear watchdog and an influential US think tank suggested otherwise over the weekend.

Iran has significantly stepped up its output of low-enriched uranium and total production in the last five years would be enough for at least five nuclear weapons if refined much further, a US security institute said Saturday.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a think-tank which tracks Iran's nuclear program closely, based the analysis on data in the latest report by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency which was issued on Friday.

Progress in Iran's nuclear activities is closely watched by the West and Israel as it could determine how long it could take Tehran to build atomic bombs, if it decided to do so. Iran denies any plan to and says its aims are entirely peaceful.

During talks in Baghdad this week, six world powers failed to convince Iran to scale back its uranium enrichment program. They will meet again in Moscow next month to try to defuse a decade-old standoff that has raised fears of a new war in the Middle East that could disrupt oil supplies.

Friday's report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a Vienna-based UN body, showed Iran was pressing ahead with its uranium enrichment work in defiance of UN resolutions calling on it to suspend the activity.

It said Iran had produced almost 6.2 tons of uranium enriched to a level of 3.5 percent since it began the work in 2007 - some of which has subsequently been further processed into higher-grade material.

This is nearly 750 kg more than in the previous IAEA report issued in February, and ISIS said Iran's monthly production had risen by roughly a third.

"This total amount of 3.5 percent low enriched uranium hexafluoride, if further enriched to weapon grade, is enough to make over five nuclear weapons," ISIS said in its analysis.

Friday's IAEA report also said environmental samples taken in February at Iran's Fordow facility - buried deep beneath rock and soil to protect it from air strikes - showed the presence of particles with enrichment levels of up to 27 percent.

Iran's permanent representative to the body played down the findings, saying some western media sought to turn a technical issue into a political one.

"This matter is a routine technical discussion that is currently being reviewed by experts," IRNA quoted Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as saying.

The IAEA report suggested it was possible that particles of uranium enriched to higher-than-declared levels could be the result of a technical phenomenon. Experts say that while it is embarrassing for Iran, there is no real cause for concern.

The UN agency also said satellite images showed "extensive activities" at the Parchin military complex which inspectors want to check over suspicions that research relevant to nuclear weapons was done there.

After talks in Tehran earlier this week, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said the two sides were close to an agreement to let inspectors resume investigations into suspected nuclear explosive experiments in Iran.





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Iranian general: ‘Entire Middle
East in range of our missiles’

Statement comes hours after Iranian ambassador to UN calls
Israeli rhetoric about Iranian strike ‘a threat to world peace’

By Ilan Ben Zion
May 26, 2012, 11:41 pm1
http://www.timesofisrael.com/entire-middle-east-in-range-of-our-missiles-iranian-general-says/​

Hours after Iran’s ambassador to the UN condemned Israeli statements about a possible strike at Iran’s nuclear program as “a threat to world peace,” a senior Iranian general announced on Saturday that the Islamic Republic’s missiles can strike anywhere in the Middle East.

“Today, there is no base in the region lying outside the reach of the Iranian missiles,” said the second-in-command of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami.

Salami spoke at a ceremony in memory of Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam, one of the founders of the Iranian missile program who was killed in a blast at an IRGC base in December.

“Wherever you imagine these bases are, they are within the reach of Iranian missiles,” Salami stated, noting the range, power, and precision of Iran’s various missile systems.

Earlier on Saturday, the Iranian envoy to the UN said that belligerent remarks made by Israeli officials against the Islamic Republic, including threats to strike at targets in Iran, were a threat to world peace and a violation of the UN charter.






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Gerald Warner: Yet more volatile ingredients
added to Iran’s explosive mix


Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
described Israel as a "mosquito."

By GERALD WARNER
Published on Sunday 27 May 2012 00:00
http://www.scotsman.com/scotland-on...ients-added-to-iran-s-explosive-mix-1-2320343​

PROGRESS was reported last week at the end of the so-called P5+1 talks in Baghdad on Iran’s nuclear activities. “Progress”, in the context of negotiation with the Islamic Republic of Iran, means simply that none of the attendees pulled their opponent’s hair or left in a rage.


Arguably, the claims of progress are not totally comical; both sides are playing for such high stakes that the pace of play is inevitably cautious and snail-like. The P5+1 group consists of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – plus Germany. Negotiators’ minds are concentrated by their awareness that the Israelis, whom Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has expressed an unkind ambition to wipe from the face of the Earth, are stirring ever more uneasily as Tehran continues its programme of uranium enrichment.

What concentrated minds in Britain was a report that the government has sought legal advice on the implications of the UK supporting military action against Iran. The likeliest explanation of this superficially dramatic news is that, learning from Tony Blair’s misrepresentation of the casus belli in Iraq, the government wants to be briefed against all contingencies, while sending a message calculated to give Iran’s leadership food for thought. Britain is not alone in playing games.

Last week, Israel publicly urged world leaders not to back down from confronting Iran. Ahmadinejad, for his part, described Israel as “nothing more than a mosquito”, dismissing any idea of war between the two states.

Then, more originally, the Ken Livingstone of the Middle East added: “Based on Islamic teachings and the clear fatwa of the supreme leader, the production and use of weapons of mass destruction is forbidden and have no place in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s defence doctrine.”

How his co-religionists in the nuclear-armed government of Pakistan reacted to that postulate is unrecorded. However, this observation was more than a capricious soundbite.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did apparently sign an unpublished edict six years ago condemning nuclear weapons. On 22 February this year, he publicly stated possession of an atomic bomb “constitutes a major sin”. Is this grandstanding to deceive the West or a genuine theological principle? If the latter, in a theocracy such as Iran, it would be of critical importance. The US state department is taking the hypothesis seriously.

It is worthy of note that Iran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, is the personal representative of Khamenei, not of the mercurial Ahmadinejad.

The immediate issue is Iran’s insistence on enriching uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 per cent for energy purposes, while America and her allies fret that it is a short step thereafter to 90 per cent, or weapons grade, enrichment.

Iran sees this as a matter of national sovereignty. Israel views it as a matter of national survival. Israeli intelligence and armed forces chiefs are concerned that Iran may already have made its research facilities so bombproof as to be invulnerable even to bunker-busting devices.

That raises the nightmare prospect of an Israeli pre-emptive strike that could prove ineffectual, while destabilising the Middle East.

Disagreement among Israeli strategists is voluble and public. In the Iranian camp, Ahmadinejad is not the power he was, and the Islamic republic has a lot more to worry about than either the Great Satan in Washington or the Zionist entity nearer home. The Arab Spring has reduced Iranian influence in the Middle East. While BBC fantasists prate about “democracy”, the local reality is of Sunni resurgence at the expense of Shia interests.

In Syria, Iran is trying to perpetuate an Alawite ascendancy against an insurgent Sunni population. Iranian influence in the Middle East was always hobbled by the ethnic disadvantage that Iranians are not Arabs; now the complementary sectarian fissure is being enlarged.

To maintain economic strength, too, Iran wants to avoid lasting and punitive western sanctions on its oil exports. In corollary, a recession-hit West could do without inflating global oil prices by putting the world’s fifth-largest producer out of business.

Above all, there is Iran’s new rival for local hegemony: neo-Ottoman Turkey, increasingly indifferent towards the European Union, becoming daily more Islamic and looking to the Middle East as a theatre of influence. It is playing directly against Iran in Syria, subverting the regime Iran is trying to prop up. It is a very different landscape from the fall of the shah in 1979 and there were many unacknowledged preoccupations haunting last week’s talks in Baghdad. They will equally dominate the third round of negotiations in Moscow next month.






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Sunday27/5/2012May, 2012, 12:32 AM Doha Time

Iran downplays UN find,
media wary over talks

AFP/Tehran
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topi...=508254&version=1&template_id=37&parent_id=17​

Iran yesterday downplayed a report by the UN atomic watchdog that uranium traces have been detected of a higher grade than any found before, as media voiced doubts about the next round of talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Higher than expected traces of enriched uranium “are a normal technical issue that is being investigated by (IAEA) experts,” Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency Ali Asghar Soltanieh was quoted as telling the official Irna news agency.

The agency report said that the traces found at the Fordow site, inside a mountain bunker near Qom, were of uranium enriched to purities of 27%. Previously, the highest level recorded by the agency in Iran was 20%.

The West fears that Iran could be covertly aiming to enrich uranium towards the 90% needed to develop atomic bombs, a claim Tehran vehemently denies.

“Addressing technical and trivial issues, which also occur in the nuclear facilities of other nations, show media reports are seeking political goals,” Soltanieh said.

“Highlighting and politicising a technical issue is a sign of efforts to damage the atmosphere of constructive co-operation between Iran and the agency,” he added.

Soltanieh said the report “is more proof of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear activities and of our country’s success in the field of nuclear technology, in particular enrichment, and its full co-operation with the agency”.

Iran’s atomic chief Fereydoon Abbasi Davani urged IAEA head Yukiya Amano not to report such issues “while we are currently discussing (other) issues”.

“We can enrich in higher purities since these machines have the capabilities. If technical glitches occur it can be discovered that it was an error. The issue of 27% enriched uranium is not a special issue to be converted into conflict,” Abbasi Davani was quoted by the Isna news agency as saying.

Analysts cautioned that the 27% find could just be a processing glitch and not necessarily a sign of a deliberate effort to enrich above 20%.

In the IAEA report, Iran also explained that enrichment above 20% “may happen for technical reasons beyond the operator’s control”.

The report said the IAEA was “assessing Iran’s explanation and has requested further details”. Early this month it took samples from the site that were being analysed.

The report was published a day after Iran ended two days of crunch talks in Baghdad with world powers over its disputed nuclear drive.

Little was achieved except scheduling another meeting in Moscow for June 18-19 and establishing that they are poles apart on crucial issues.

Iranian media yesterday expressed pessimism about the Moscow talks after this week’s negotiations, which one newspaper described as “fruitless”.

“Solution: stop the negotiations,” ran the headline of an editorial in the hardline Kayhan daily.

“It is better not to attend the talks because one can expect right now that the talks in Moscow will not gain any achievement either,” said the newspaper’s managing director Hossein Shariatmadari, who was appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It was the world powers who needed to keep the talks going so “they can control the oil prices”, he added.

“Nuclear talks in Baghdad ended fruitless,” the conservative Jomhuri Eslami newspaper announced, with an editorial pinning the failure of talks on Israel and its demands allegedly conveyed by representatives of the P5+1 powers—the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

Israel, the sole if undeclared nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, accuses Iran of masking efforts to acquire an atomic weapon. It wants the Islamic Republic to dismantle its Fordow nuclear site.

“The deadlock will be resolved when the West breaks the Zionist regime’s dominance. Until then Iran cannot hope for any change” in the Western approach, Jomhuri Eslami said.






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Sunday27/5/2012May, 2012, 12:32 AM Doha Time

Syria civil war warning
after massacre in Houla

AFP/Damascus
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topi...=508232&version=1&template_id=37&parent_id=17​

The head of a UN mission warned yesterday of “civil war” in Syria after his observers counted more than 92 bodies, 32 of them children, in the town of Houla following reports of a massacre there.

The rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) announced it was no longer committed to the UN-backed peace plan for Syria unless there was prompt UN intervention to protect civilians.

UN head of mission Major General Robert Mood condemned “in the strongest possible terms the brutal tragedy” in Houla in central Syria, where he said UN monitors counted 92 bodies including “more than 32 under the age of 10”.

“The circumstances that led to these tragic killings are still unclear,” Mood told reporters in Damascus.

“Whoever started, whoever responded and whoever carried out this deplorable act of violence should be held responsible.

“Those using violence for their own agendas will create more instability, more unpredictability and may lead the country to civil war,” Mood added, describing the violence as “indiscriminate and disproportionate”.

The killings triggered condemnations from Britain, Germany and France, where Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said he was making “immediate arrangements” for an international meeting on Syria.

His British counterpart William Hague said consultations were under way and “we will be calling for an urgent session of the UN Security Council in the coming days.”
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement he was “shocked and horrified” by the killings.

Mood confirmed that artillery and tank shells were used to pound Houla and called “on the Syrian government to cease the use of heavy weapons and to all parties to cease violence in all its forms”.

But the rebel FSA said it could no longer commit to the ceasefire brokered by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.

“We announce that unless the UN Security Council takes urgent steps for the protection of civilians, Annan’s plan is going to go to hell,” an FSA statement said.

Earlier the head of the FSA’s military council, Turkey-based General Mustafa Ahmed al-Sheikh, urged the Friends of Syria nations to launch air strikes against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Targeted strikes against regime forces are the “appropriate stance after the heinous crime committed by Assad’s assassin regime in the Houla region”.

The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) demanded prompt UN Security Council action, while the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights accused the Arab and international communities of being “complicit” in the killings.

The shelling of Houla began at around midday on Friday and continued until dawn yesterday, the Observatory said.

Amateur videos posted on YouTube showed horrifying images of dead children, with at least one child’s head partly blown away.

SNC spokeswoman Basma Kodmani said “some of the victims were hit by heavy artillery while others, entire families, were massacred.”

“The Syrian National Council urges the UN Security Council to call for an emergency meeting to examine the situation in Houla and to determine the responsibility of the UN in face of such mass killings, expulsions and forced migration from entire neighbourhoods.”

State news agency Sana blamed “armed terrorist groups” for the killings, adding that “clashes led to the killing of several terrorists and the martyrdom of several members of the special forces.”

Regime forces pounded rebel positions elsewhere in Homs province yesterday, according to the Observatory, which reported 18 people killed nationwide, including 13 civilians.

And for the second consecutive day the army used helicopter gunships against rebels in mountain villages near the Turkish border, the Observatory said.

Killings in Houla and elsewhere are taking place “under the eyes of the UN observers”, the FSA statement said, urging the international community to “announce the failure of the Annan plan”.

The UN-backed peace plan drawn up by Annan included a ceasefire that technically began on April 12, and days later UN observers began deploying in Syria to monitor the truce.

But the ceasefire has been breached daily, with the Observatory saying nearly 1,500 people have been killed since April 12.

“Annan is singlehandedly responsible for the Houla massacre,” read a sign held by a protester in the northwestern Idlib province town of Kfarnabel yesterday.

Activists said scores of men and women took to the streets there after news of the Houla killings.

Annan is due in Syria “soon” as he continues efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis, his spokesman Ahmed Fawzi said. Diplomats in Geneva said he would visit Damascus early next week.

Fabius said he would speak to Annan today. “In the face of horror, the international community must mobilise still further to stop the martyrdom of the Syrian people,” he said.

Britain’s Hague said: “Our urgent priority is to establish a full account of this appalling crime and to move swiftly to ensure that those responsible are identified and held to account.”

Westerwelle said it was “appalling that the Syrian regime does not put an end to the brutal violence against its own people. Those responsible for this crime must be punished.”

The Observatory says more than 12,600 people have been killed across Syria since the uprising demanding reforms and regime change began in March last year.






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UN observers confirms death
of 92 people in Syrian town

May 27, 2012 8:32 am
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/bre...ms-death-of-92-people-in-Syrian-30182905.html​

Beirut - United Nations observers confirmed Saturday, after visiting a town in central Syria, that 92 people had died there - among them 32 children - in what activists said was shelling by government forces.

The head of the UN observers in Syria, Robert Mood, described the incident in the town of Houla as a "brutal tragedy."

Members of the UN team toured Houla to assess the situation after reports of a massacre in the town, where activists said more than 100 people were killed on Friday night after heavy shelling on the area by Syrian troops.

Blasts and gunfire were heard in Houla, 200 kilometres north of Damascus, as the observers arrived in the town, activists said.

The reported massacre was one of the worst in Syria’s 15-month uprising.

The rebel opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) called on the UN to meet its responsibilities and stop the violence in Syria. Otherwise, it said, the group could no longer commit to the ceasefire brokered by UN-Arab League envoy, Kofi Annan.

Annan and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement condemning the killings.

"This appalling and brutal crime involving indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force is a flagrant violation of international law and of the commitments of the Syrian government to cease the use of heavy weapons in population centres and violence in all its forms," they said in a statement released in New York and Geneva.

"Those responsible for perpetrating this crime must be held to account," they said, calling on President Bashar al-Assad to end the use of heavy weaponry in populated areas and end all violence in the country.//DPA






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